"Half-dozen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature. They could not escape exercising their executive ability, any more than a crab could escape crawling or a bird could escape flying. And so it was that all the splendid force of the men who had previously worked for themselves was now put to work for the good of society. The half-dozen great railway chiefs co-operated in the organizing of a national system of railways that was amazingly efficacious. Never again was there such a thing as a car shortage. These chiefs were not the Wall Street railway magnates, but they were the men who formerly had done the real work while in the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... cares, joys, and catastrophes, the only person neglected in the house is myself. If the children have been naughty, often I don't get rid of my curl-papers all day. Their tempers rule my toilet. As the price of a few minutes in which I write you these half-dozen pages, I have had to let them cut pictures out of my novels, build castles with books, chessmen, or mother-of-pearl counters, and give Nais my silks and wools to arrange in her own fashion, which, I assure you, is so complicated, that she is entirely absorbed in ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... at once, driving the pick into the compressed snow; but after the first half-dozen strokes, seeing how the fragments flew, he took off his broad-brimmed felt hat and laid it against Abel's head as a screen. Then commencing again he made the chips fly in showers which glittered in the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... as he and Marsh enter). This tavern's still deserted. Is there naught alive in this town save the half-dozen Indians we've met a-prowling the streets! Where's the landlord? RICHARD (mock-humble). He's absent, sir, on business of importance. But he will soon return. If I may serve you—some cider, sir, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... him, the shrewd habitants, Bourdon and Desrochers, who were to profit by his theory of an advance in rye. The young doctor, Boucher from Boucherville, leaned near, superior in broad-cloth frock coat, red tie, and silk hat. Along a bench, squeezed a jolly half-dozen "garcons," and a special mist of tobacco smoke hung imminent over their heads. About the floor, the windows, the corners of the room, the bar of the court, sat, lounged, smoked, and stood, in friendly groups, a host of neighbors, amiably listening, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... question. "One's my cousin." I pulled out a half-dozen coppers, and held my hand toward him. "See if there is one for each." They had no difficulty in solving the simple mathematical problem except the smallest girl, who cried for fear and baffled longing. I tossed the coin to her, and a little fat dog darted out at her feet and caught ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... splashed their way across the stream, and with swords and pistols drove through the King's assailants and surrounded his coach. The ruffians made an attempt to rally and resist the onset, but presently broke and ran, pursued by a half-dozen of his Majesty's defenders. Five of the assailants were killed and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... village of Overhaddon, which lies one mile across the hills from Haddon Hall. My horse had cast a shoe, and we stopped at Faxton's shop to have him shod. The town well is in the middle of an open space called by the villagers "The Open," around which are clustered the half-dozen houses and shops that constitute the village. The girls were mounted, and I was standing beside them in front of the farrier's, waiting for my horse. Jennie Faxton, a wild, unkempt girl of sixteen, was standing ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... comrade!" he shouted to the man next to him. The fellow braced himself, and in an instant the agile Zouave was on the narrow parapet, running along as nimbly as a cat, and winding himself past the huge statues at every half-dozen steps. He jumped down at the other end and ran for the Borgo Santo Spirito at the top of his speed. The broad space was almost deserted and in three minutes he was before the gates of the barracks, which were situated on the right-hand side of the street, just beyond the College of the Penitentiaries ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... was acted in London by Beerbohm Tree, and in America by William Faversham. Neither of these plays was a failure, but it is regrettable that he wrote for the stage at all. His genius was not adapted for drama, and the quality of his verse was not improved by the experiment, although all of his half-dozen pieces have occasional passages of rare loveliness. His best play, Paolo and Francesca, suffers when compared either with Boker's or D'Annunzio's treatment of the old story. It lacks the stage-craft of the former, and ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... was thoroughly disgusted with the journey, jumped back, released the reins, broke the girths, and, kicking up her heels higher than her head some half-dozen times, by way of salutation, started off through the brush, showing very plainly that she needed no one's assistance in finding ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro—the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd people trying in vain to extricate themselves—the attack'd man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse—the silent, resolute, half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms—made a fitting side-scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gain'd the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... business. Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the last ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... (half-boxes are the most practically useful size for a small party); chow-chow; pates-de-foie-gras; a selection of various potted meats; a few hundred Zwiebacks from our Berlin baker, and as many sticks of Italian bread from our Milanese; a dozen pounds of hard-tack, and a half-dozen of soda-crackers; an assortment of canned fruits, including, as absolute essentials, peaches and the Shaker apple-butter; a pot of anchovy-paste; a dozen half-pint boxes of concentrated coffee, and as many of condensed milk, both, as the writer has abundantly tested, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... a grateful glance. The council voted their thanks to Nea and a tribute to her father. She was assigned a half-dozen helpers to fashion as many of the globes as she could. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... things in readiness for breakfast. Beside the sheet-iron heater in the front room, her husband, carefully swaddled in a big checked apron with the strings tied in a bow under his left ear, was busily engaged in dressing the half-dozen prairie chickens he had trapped that day. As fast as he removed the feathers he thrust them into the stove, and the pungent odor mingled with the suggestive tang of the bacon that had been the foundation of the past supper, and with the odor of cigarettes with which ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... gained ground in the hand to hand struggle and now a bare half-dozen brave fellows held on, fighting singly or in pairs, back to back. The brig's captain, wounded in several places and seeing his crew in a fair way to be annihilated, flung up a tired arm and cried for quarter. Almost at once the fighting ceased and half the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... Rynason didn't know many of them by name, but he recognized a lot of the faces. The men of the Edge, though they lacked money, education, often brains and usually ethics, at least had the quality of distinctiveness: they didn't fit the half-dozen convenient molds which the highly developed culture of the inner worlds fitted over the more civilized citizens of the Terran Federation. These men were too self-interested to follow the group-thoughts which controlled the centers of empire, and the seams and wrinkles ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... glasses and bottles of liquor. The rest of the wall space was thickly hung with more plate mirrors, dozens of well-executed oil paintings, and strips of tapestry. At one end was a small raised stage on which lolled half-dozen darkies with banjos and tambourines. The floor was covered with a thick velvet carpet. Easy chairs, some of them leather upholstered, stood about in every available corner. Heavy chandeliers of glass, with hundreds of dangling crystals and prisms, hung from the ceiling. The gambling ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... had been—a square room bounded by long seats before tables. Some two dozen young ladies of various nationalities wandered about the center of the room, trying their best, but with manifest effort, to keep pace to the frenzied music of an orchestra paid to keep frenzied. A half-dozen of the ladies pounced upon Monte as he sat alone, and he gladly turned over to them the wine he purchased as the price of admission. Yvonne, she with the languid Egyptian eyes, tried to rouse the big American. ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... away. At last Valentine shut the door, and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some half-dozen times, composed himself once more ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... A half-dozen young fellows ran for the nearest carriage, toward which Agnew was conducted as rapidly as possible. Harry Rattleton seemed dazed, and began to look about on the ground as the crowd thinned out ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... bigger than an ordinary room,—perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen wide,—but still it is a perfect church. It contains an old carved pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with dark old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen seats for the poor; and also a vestry. The roof is high pitched, and of black old oak, and the three large beams which support it run down to the side walls, and terminate ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... house-dog, indicative of a well-watched home; with the lowing of cattle, and other domestic calls that proclaim it worth watching. A galaxy of little lights, in rows like street lamps, indicate the "negro quarter;" while in the foreground a half-dozen windows of larger size, and brighter sheen, show where stands the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Rynders, and other New York politicians, while at a private house leased by Mr. S. M. Barlow, the claims of Buchanan were urged by Senators Bayard, Benjamin, Bright, and Slidell. General Pierce had few friends beyond the holders of Federal offices, and General Cass received a cold support from a half-dozen old friends. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... lack of sufficient timber, a difficult job before us; and as the morning wore on it was made additionally so by the appearance of several ravenous sharks close to us, which were only restrained from making an attack by an incessant splashing maintained by all hands except the half-dozen we could spare to get on ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the little town on the brow, then swept down again. The portico of the hacienda house was set in the wall where the road almost touched, so that the traveler could alight at the very threshold of the venerable place. Mounting the half-dozen steps, Driscoll crossed a vast porch whose bare cement columns stood as sentinels the entire length of the high, one-storied facade, and on the heavy double doors he found a knocker. Visitors were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... here, and hearing from a Dutch ship just in from Europe that war was threatening between England and Spain, he hurried up his preparations for departure and got all his men on board, though some were still very ill. In addition he managed to enter some half-dozen men for the ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Rouletta, all of which she declined. He was still arguing the medicinal value of these beverages when the swinging doors from the street burst open and in rushed the Mocha Kid, a pie in each hand. Other eatables and drinkables appeared as by magic, the faro-table was soon spread with the fruits of a half-dozen hasty and hysterical forays. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... sweet that is choice and very healthful. If made now, when oranges and lemons are plentiful, it may be had at a cost of from five to six cents for a large glass. The recipe calls for one dozen oranges (sweet or part bitter), one half-dozen lemons, and ten pounds of granulated sugar. Wash the fruit in tepid water thoroughly, and scrub the skins with a soft brush to get rid of the possible microbes that it is said may lurk on the skins of fruit. Dry the fruit; take a very sharp knife, and on a hard-wood board slice it very ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... cynical enough, forsooth, but what I heard that afternoon surpassed my comprehension. I knew that artistic matters were at a low ebb in New York, yet I never realized the lowness thereof until then. I was introduced to a half-dozen smartly dressed men, some beardless, some middle-aged, and all dissipated looking. They regarded me with curiosity, and I could hear them whispering about my clothes, I got off a few feeble jokes on the subject, pointing to my C-sharp ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... in their embarrassment, rose and walked away, leaving the half-dozen men standing in ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... moustaches over a kettle. He left it at once to draw the cork of a pint-bottle of champagne. Swithin smiled, and, nodding at Bosinney, said: "Why, you're quite a Monte Cristo!" This celebrated novel—one of the half-dozen he had read—had produced an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ride up the magnificent valley of the Lim brought us to a khan, and here we found another half-dozen men awaiting us, and another officer. These preparations seemed rather formidable for a journey of about an hour through a friendly country, but we knew already the uncertainty of the Albanian ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... make it the only means of telling her how much he loved her. No kind wishes towards the overseer whose fears and scruples had hurried him away, or towards Miss Phillips, who had interrupted him when he was about to say something he had hoped Elsie could not mistake, accompanied the half-dozen different attempts at a love-letter, which were written before he could please himself. Emily was his friend; Jane, he thought, would be his friend too. Elsie was really a kind-hearted girl, and if he could only convince her that he would be ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the isthmus, connecting Auckland with Onehunga on the Manukau Harbour, where the West Coast traffic is carried on, and thus placing Auckland, like Corinth, upon two seas. The railway also extends southwards to the Waikato.[1] Onehunga is only some half-dozen miles from the outskirts of the city, and the road to it lies between fields and meadows, bordered with hedgerows, by villa and cottage and homestead, quite in English rural style. The road also leads by Ellerslie race-course, and the Ellerslie ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... vile a creature as the dog obtained general recognition as a deity. There this filthy beast is considered so divine that it is freely admitted to the domestic circle and cherished as an honored guest. Scarcely a family that is able to support a dog is without one, and some have as many as a half-dozen. Indeed, the dog is the special deity of the poor, those families having most that are least able to maintain them. In some sections of the country, particularly the southern and southwestern provinces, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the half-dozen cripples were dropped to the rear. "You can come back to-morrow morning and get these tender steers," said the foreman, "and drift them up above the improvements. You'll find them near here on the water. Now, we'll sight the tent around ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... your property, and though this appointment—which is like to prove dear-bought—for the moment enables ye to face the world, it is but a short-lived dependence. To ye I will confide what is as yet known to but a half-dozen: his Majesty has accepted Sir William resignation, and he leaves us so soon as Sir Henry Clinton arrives. The new commander will have his own set of hungry hangers-on to provide with places, and your father's days will be numbered. In my own ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... later than three in the morning. He quitted the detestable bed where a dream—one of some half-dozen in the course of his life-had befallen him. For the maxim of the healthy man is: up, and have it out in exercise when sleep is for foisting base coin of dreams upon you! And as the healthy only are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of his child's beauty, as though he were some curious animal to be seen in a show. But Bertha, my dear heart! we clean forgot to buy any honey—and only this minute is it come to my mind. Tie on thine hood, I pray thee, and run to the druggist for an half-dozen pounds." ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... are identical. Every one has freedom to express his convictions and to adduce contributory arguments or evidence. There are no restrictions save the implied one of decorum. The utmost courtesy obtains in the recitation, even at the sacrifice of some eagerness. There may be a half-dozen members of the group on their feet and anxious to be heard, but they do not interrupt ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... its now emphatic agent. "A half-dozen tenants, to say nothing of Mr. Searles himself, have looked it carefully over. All the walls are intact; there is absolutely no opening anywhere ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... presumably careless display of it. A Halfmoon D youth mounted a blocky bay and as he threw his leg across it he loosed a shrill yip and reached forward to rake the horse's shoulder. The bay dropped his head and performed. A half-dozen others followed his example and their horses pitched off in as many directions. All eyes were turned on Harris as he neared the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... case what is my remedy? Put yourself in my position. Be a widower with two young children. What is more natural than that the mother of my poor wife should come and superintend my family? My own mother can't. She has a half-dozen of little half brothers and sisters, and a husband of her own to attend to. I dare say Mr. Bonnington and my mother will come ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blow of the attack. There was renewed activity among the paddle wielders. Two canoes were not fifty yards from the most southerly floating mine. Courtenay commenced to haul in the slack of one among the half-dozen thin cords: he turned to tell Suarez to be ready for the duty which had been entrusted to him, when his glance happened to travel towards the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... to the parish church, and occasional martial exercises with the sword or the bow, which were little more than an amusement. The true fighting man trusted to his own strong right arm rather than to armaments, and considered that he was himself a match for any half-dozen of the enemy. Even in actual time of war it was often difficult to find either zeal or money to supply the munitions of war. The Diary of the industrious Pepys, who achieved so much for the English navy, shows that the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... rushed terror-stricken into my room. "I have drunk nothing whatever," he faltered, "but I must be either very drunk or else mad, for I keep fancying that my room is full of moving electric lights." I went into his room, where I found some half-dozen of the peculiarly brilliant Jamaican fireflies cruising about. The Guardsman refused at first to believe that any insect could produce so bright a light, and bemoaned the loss of his mental faculties, until I caught ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... now." Just here they came upon a number of huge bones, evidently the remains of some saurian, and many times the size of a grown crocodile. On passing a growth of most luxuriant vegetation, they saw a half-dozen sacklike objects, and drawing nearer noticed that the tops began to swell, and at the same time became lighter in colour. Just as the doctor was about to investigate one of them with his duck-shot, the enormously inflated tops of the creatures collapsed with a loud report, and the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... evening we passed Washburn, the "steamboat center" of the upper river, fifty water miles from Bismarck. It made a very pretty appearance with its neat houses climbing the hillside. Along the water front, under the elevators, a half-dozen steamboats of the good old-fashioned type, lay waiting for their cargoes. Two more boats were building ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... up to have a look at the beast. I shouted to them as I hurried along to be careful and not to go too near, in case by any chance he might not be dead; but they paid little heed to the warning, and by the time I got up, some half-dozen of them were gathered in a group at the lion's tail, gesticulating wildly and chattering each in his own language, and all very pleased and excited. On getting near I asked if the lion was dead, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... be. The government surveys were thorough. The last record of a specimen dated back over a half-dozen years ago. It was impossible that any survivors remained. And all during the safari these past days, not a sign or a ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... they will it so but because it is with youth that the power-looms must be fed. Well, this teaches them to make provision, and they have the means as they never had before. Not in batches are boys now sent to college; the half-dozen a year have dwindled to one, doubtless because in these days they can begin to draw wages as they step out of their fourteenth year. Here assuredly there is loss, but all the losses would be but a pebble in a sea of gain were it not for this, that with so many of the family, young mothers ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... towers to a great height, looking like the tall mast of a ship; and, could any supposable influence throw the marble floor on which it rests into billows, it might ride safely on their tops, beneath the stone roof of the Cathedral. A priest was saying mass, and some half-dozen of persons on the wooden benches before the chancel were joining in the service. It was a cold affair; and the vastness of the building but tended to throw an air of insignificance over it. The languid faces of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Since returning to London he had taken the trouble of looking up his name in Who's Who and had found that he was not so undistinguished as he had supposed. He was, it appeared, a Regius Professor and the author of some half-dozen works on sociology—a record, Owen felt, that almost justified loaf-slinging and earhole clipping in ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... struggle between the two races now brought face to face in a death struggle, are just as marked and just as strikingly conspicuous in the first twenty years which followed the invasion as they are during the succeeding half-dozen centuries. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... a drop of some half-dozen steps, and, going gingerly down these, stopped with a common exclamation of surprise on ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... month previous at Florence, newspaper readers asked, "Who is Landor?" The few who remember him remotely through the medium of Mr. Hillard's selections from his writings exclaimed, "What! Did he not die long ago?" The half-dozen Americans really familiar with this author knew that the fire of a genius unequalled in its way had gone out. Two or three, who were acquainted with the man even better than with his books, sighed, and thanked God! They thanked God that the old man's prayer had at last been answered, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... a sinking heart watching my belongings come aboard and chiding my weakness of will which prevented me from uttering the few words that would put a stop to it. As for the half-dozen men who were now carrying the luggage aft into the cabin, they were unlike any concept I had ever entertained of sailors. Certainly, on the liners, I had observed ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and for the next two years, so far as the higher forms of literature are concerned, "the rest is silence." The author of the prefatory memoir in the edition of Coleridge's Poetical and Dramatic Works (1880), enumerates some half-dozen slight pieces contributed to the Morning Post in 1801, but declares that Coleridge's poetical contributions to this paper during 1802 were "very rich and varied, and included the magnificent ode entitled ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... got over quickly, and everybody was again at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails, and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first. Most of them were about a year old and could be ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... her room-mate. Later, when she found that a half-dozen girls who had dropped in after dinner were there for the evening, she went out into a music-room to look at her new text-books. Routed from here by more butterflies, with "beaux," she did her reading on a bench ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... morning MacVeigh started north. He reached the half-dozen igloos which made up the Eskimo village late the third day. Bye-Bye, the chief man, offered him no encouragement, MacVeigh gave him a pound of bacon, and in return for the magnificent present Bye-Bye told him that he had seen no white people. MacVeigh gave him another pound, and Bye-Bye added that ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... the very heart of "Dickens-land" the picture upon which the "Battle of Life" is opened: the joyous dance of two girls, "quite unconstrained and careless", "in one little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch", "while some half-dozen peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... art they had been enjoying and by the fresh night air, a full half-dozen came in: M. and Mme. De l'Isle, whom the others had chanced upon as they left the theatre; Dubroca and his wife; Mme. Alexandre; and finally Beloiseau. "Melanie!" was the cry of each of these as he or she turned from saluting madame; this was one of madame's largest joys; to ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... solved by having two or three children and forswearing all adults. This is certainly a prettier and less expensive arrangement, for children look more picturesque as bridesmaids than the {73} average half-dozen grown-up girls who cannot be chosen for their appearance. Elderly bridesmaids in youthful frocks and girlish hats are ridiculous to the unthinking, but pathetic to those ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... to the piers. But the coasting steamer had not yet arrived; in fact, she did not come in until after eight o'clock, and it was two hours later before the flyers succeeded in getting their tanks filled with the gasoline she had brought. Then it was found necessary to secure the aid of a half-dozen negroes, and to lay down many strips of heavy bark for traction, before the Sky-Bird could be run out of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... leather breeches of some half-dozen sightseers, and knocked down and trampled on some score of men and women, he rushed out of the city by the same gate, and never stopped till he arrived at the inn where he had been hostler. The master of the inn, thinking that some mishap had befallen the ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... as the most troublous years in the establishment of a periodical, the first half-dozen years of its existence, had already been weathered by the editor and publisher. The wife as editor and the husband as publisher had combined to lay a solid basis upon which Bok had only to build: his task was simply to rear a structure upon the foundation already laid. It is to the vision and ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... She came promptly over to my side, while a half-dozen of the other children jumped off the benches and ran to the rocking-chair to squabble over the question of who should take the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... error excusable from ignorance of the terrain. For Hooker had shown his knowledge of the importance of celerity; and his own declared plan made Banks's Ford, still a half-dozen miles distant, his one objective. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he thus refers to his plan: "As soon as Couch's divisions and Sykes's corps came up, I directed an advance ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... few seconds sprawling and kicking upon the heads and shoulders of the great throng. In this manner he was gradually pushed toward the stand, and finally reached it, doubtless to his great relief, 'in the arms of some half-dozen gentlemen,' who set him down in full view of his clamorous admirers. 'The cheering was like the roar of the sea. Hats were thrown up by the Chicago delegation, as if hats were no longer useful.' Mr. Lincoln rose, bowed, smiled, blushed, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all, but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... pleases, if he only will not think he is going to fall. You go up half-a-dozen steps of a ladder without fear, and then persuade yourself you can go no farther; but there is nothing more dangerous in the next half-dozen, so far as they are themselves concerned; nor in the next hundred, nor the next thousand, for that matter. My secret consists in my knowing all this, although I feel that I have only described when, not how the knowledge came. Perhaps you, who are book-learned, may be able to make it out, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... hearts on gaining and preserving for Christianity, but behind it is many centuries' accumulation of sand encroaching upon the fertile plain, and no effort has been made to stop the inroad. The gallant half-dozen having reported to the 156th Brigade that Askalon was open to them—the Brigade occupied the place at noon—rode across the sand-dunes to the important native town of Mejdel, where there was a substantial bazaar doing a good trade in the essentials for native existence, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... laid out my parents and they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... man, clad in a brown riding-suit, dusty and travel-stained, appeared in the doorway. Not pausing for any monkish salutations or genuflections, he strode some half-dozen paces up the hall; then swung off his hat, stopped short with his spurs together, and bowed in soldierly fashion toward ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... another." Phebe jumped down and helped herself to two more turnips, carefully choosing the largest and best, and ruthlessly sacrificing a half-dozen more in the process. "Here, Isabel, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... morning, September 19th, the cry of "Indians" startled the command. Every man jumped for his horse. A half-dozen red-skins, yelling and whooping and making a hideous racket, and firing their guns, rode up and attempted to stampede the horses, several of which, together with the four pack-mules, were so frightened that they broke loose and got ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... audience immediately, and he desired that I would follow him. I did so, and was forthwith introduced into the audience room, where his Lordship received me with all that parade of overstrained politeness which belongs to a finished courtier. He was surrounded by some half-dozen lordlings, who, from the manner in which he ordered them out of the room, appeared to be hungry expectants, seeking and supplicating some place, office, or boon. They vanished in a twinkling, and his Lordship could not hear a word for the world, till I ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... renewed her pleadings. But his refusal was positive, and now she went back to the hated school without a visible token of regret. She saw her trunks consigned to the porter, listened to a brief conversation between Dr. —— and her father, and after a hasty embrace and half-dozen words, watched the tall, soldierly form re-enter the carriage. Then she went slowly up the broad stairway to her cell-like room, and with dry eyes unpacked her clothes, locked up the ring in her jewellery-box, and prepared ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... though his Sindai islands are dropt far away. But it would not be difficult to show that Ptolemy's islands have been located almost at random, or as from a pepper castor." (Yule, Oldest Records, p. 657.)] The group consists of a larger island about 12 miles long, two of 2 or 3 miles, and some half-dozen others of insignificant dimensions. The large one is now specially called Pulo Condore. It has a fair harbour, fresh water, and wood in abundance. Dampier visited the group and recommended its occupation. The E.I. Company did establish ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... past two days. They were all, with the exception of Clinton, in the drawing-room, when Hamilton, Steuben and Fish arrived; and several of the Crugers, Colonel Duer, General Knox, Mayor Duane, Melancthon Smith, Mr. Watts, Yates, Lansing, and a half-dozen lesser lights. Mrs. Croix sat in the middle of the room, and her chair being somewhat higher and more elaborate than its companions, suggested a throne: Madame de Stael set the fashion in many affectations which were not long travelling ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... expected hour of their arrival was towards the close of afternoon service. Hamish had boasted that he should walk his father through Helstonleigh for the benefit of beholders, if happily he came home capable of walking; but, like poor Tom and his plan, that had to be relinquished. In the first half-dozen paces they would meet half a dozen gossipers, and the first remark from each, after congratulations, would be, "What a sad thing this is about your little Charles!" Hamish lived in doubt whether it might not, by some untoward luck, come out at the station, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... measure. The handle of a portly jug resembled an arm stuck akimbo, and its cork, tilted askew, was like a hat set on one side; Si fancied there was a most unpleasant grimace below that hat. The churn-dasher, left upon a shelf to dry, was sardonically staring him out of countenance with its half-dozen eyes. The strings of red pepper-pods and gourds and herbs, swinging from the rafters, rustled faintly; it sounded to Si like ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... The half-dozen native guards in the control room allowed the four to enter, standing close against the near wall. Then they fell upon them. Taken by surprise and attacked by a greater number, the fugitives had no chance. The H'Lorkan warrior, last into the room, fought bravely, ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... how much time and mental anxiety a man can spend on an apparently simple question like this. When you are buying flies in a shop it seems as if you never had half enough. You keep on picking out a half-dozen of each new variety as fast as the enticing salesman shows them to you. You stroll through the streets of Montreal or Quebec and drop in at every fishing-tackle dealer's to see whether you can find a few more good flies. Then, when ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... I became a practical angling writer, and the half-dozen or so of books which I inflicted upon my brethren of the Angle gradually came into existence. It is necessary to mention this to account for the fact that the majority of what I write has appeared before the public from year ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... deuce is she grateful to me for?" grumbled Mr. Redmain when he read it. "I never did anything for her! By Jove, the gypsy herself wouldn't let me! I vow she's got more brains of her own than any half-dozen women I ever had to do ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Metamorphoses. With the strangeness characteristic of the whole work, this wonderful and exquisitely told story is put in the mouth of a half crazy and drunken old woman, in the robbers' cave where part of the action passes. But her first half-dozen words, the Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina, lift it in a moment into the fairy world of pure romance. The story itself is in its constituent elements a well-known specimen of the maerchen, or popular tale, which ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... told. Well, ma'am, I left Tetherdown with Colonel Boyce, and we rode posthaste to Newhaven. He was there joined by some half-dozen fellows, low fellows to my eye. This much surprised me, and I took occasion to tell him so, for he had given out that his was a very secret errand of Marlborough's privy policy, into which he would admit none but me. He made ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... turmoil of the camp. My quarters were in one of the old Flemish country-houses, which had been the headquarters of the French general, and had thus escaped the usual ravage. The chateau was large, well furnished in the national fashion, and the half-dozen domestics who remained after the escape of their master, were charmed with the expenditure which always follows the presence of English troops. My companion, the captain of dragoons, was one of the finest specimens of his country—the heir of a noble family, generous and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... in a few minutes was out of the house and off to join Lochiel not more than a mile distant. As it happened, Lord Loudon's troops had already been foiled and driven back by a bold manoeuvre of some of 'Colonel Anne's' men. A blacksmith with some half-dozen men—two pipers amongst them—were patrolling the woods near the high road, when in the dim morning twilight they saw a large body of the enemy approaching. They separated, planted themselves at intervals ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... mercilessly. She tore off her hat, rumpled her hair, rubbed her cheeks and gazed again. There were some little fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and as she looked and looked under the strong light, there stood out, silvery around her temples, amid the fairness, the first half-dozen grey hairs. The sight of them petrified her; she had not known she ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... seamen. Some quickly clambered up on the roof and into the front seats, and others behind; those who had climbed outside shouting out that the ship would be top-heavy if the rest did not stow themselves away below, the last half-dozen or so ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... the Governor's men out of mere kindness of heart, because I liked him the first time I saw him, but the Ten are determined to get him into their hands, and I have no fancy to go with him and answer for the half-dozen crowns my mate and I broke ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... remarked Capt. Mazard. "These scientific men are very apt to differ on such subjects. One will observe phenomena, and ascribe it wholly to one cause, when perhaps a half-dozen causes have been at work. Another man will ascribe it wholly to another of these causes. And thus they seem to contradict each other, when they are both, in part, right. I've noticed that very frequently since I began to read the scientific ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of the half-dozen greatest organs in the world. It has more than 7,000 pipes. The heaviest of them weigh as much as 1,200 pounds apiece. Though mere size is not the essential quality of a fine instrument, it is hard to ignore the real immensity of this. The echo organ alone is larger than most pipe organs. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... You have the circular, and the glowing map, with the creeks and three vials of oil in the window, and a flaming advertisement in the newspapers. Now let the books be opened! Better if you can have a half-dozen offices in one room; then the agent can accommodate you with anything you desire. If you want to take a "flyer" in this and a "flyer" in that, you ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... with some half-dozen men-at-arms, were to form her escort, and upon the very next day, the sun shining bright, and the wind blowing fresh from the north over the wet lands, drying them somewhat after the long rains, we ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the earliest of my patients, and they are easily first among our friends. I have watched more than a half-dozen of their children from infancy to adult life, and this alone would be a strong bond; but in addition to this is the fact that the whole family, from father to youngest child, possess in a wonderful degree that subtle sense of true camaraderie which is ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... present offices; and they know that neither their successors nor any one else will ever purchase or pay rent for them. No mosques, mausoleums, temples, seraees, colleges, courts of justice, or prisons to be seen in any of the towns or villages. There are a few Hindoo shrines at the half-dozen places which popular legends have rendered places of pilgrimage, and a few small tanks and bridges made in olden times by public officers, when they were more secure in their tenure of office than they are ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the precipitous edge of the wooded glen, itself half-buried among the wild forest that covered that long and solitary range. There was no human habitation within a circle of many miles, except the half-dozen hovels and the small thatched chapel composing the little village of Murroa, which lay at the foot of the glen among the straggling skirts ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... busier than ever, holding court, looking after her home, and doing missionary work. On Sundays she held a half-dozen or more services in the nearby villages in which lived the people with whom she worked during the week. On some of these trips she brought back orphan children to join her already "overstuffed" household. But all this ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... fireplaces, in which fires were burning, and before which various goodly joints were being roasted, while a number of cooks and scullions were congregated round them. At a large table in the centre of the kitchen were seated some half-dozen yeomen of the guard, together with the clerk of the kitchen, the chief bargeman, and the royal cutler, or bladesmith, as he ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her party went to Sammett's for dinner that evening. This garden, once Angermann's and made famous by Wagner, is still a magnet. The Americans listened calmly to furious disputes, in a half-dozen tongues, over the performance to the crashing of dishes and the huddling of glasses always full, always empty. Arthmann ordered the entire menu, knowing well that it would reach them after much delay in the inevitable guise of veal and potatoes. The women were in no hurry, but the sculptor ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... later Louis de Camors, the Prince d'Errol, and a half-dozen guests of both sexes, took possession of an apartment, the closed doors of which ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... had kept herself, by her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses of bygone years; the taints, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... came out, greetings, sentences of admiration of the church, and of inquiry for her absent sisters, were crowded upon her, as people moved towards the school, where a luncheon was provided for them, to pass away the interval until evening service. The half-dozen oldest Cocksmoorites were, meantime, to have a dinner in the former schoolroom, at the Elwoods' house, and Ethel was anxious so see that all was right there; so, while the rest of her party were doing civil things, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... I finally came off victor. At the end of that time he seemed to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration. He had, in our week's deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and dust-laden paper flowers. He administered the ironical consolation meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring pupils would see that the supply was renewed. To my eternal sorrow he ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... one eye while she watched the visitors with the other. She did the watching better than she did the pulses. For instance, she was distinctly aware that Stanislas Krzykolski's wife, in the bed next the end, had just slid a half-dozen greasy cakes, sprinkled with sugar, under his pillow. She knew, however, that not only grease but love was in those cakes, and she did not intend to confiscate them until after Mrs. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... history of this one colony of six sections of old wheat land is the key to Fresno's prosperity. It proves better than columns of argument, or facts or figures, the immense return that careful, patient cultivation may command in this home of the grape. Near this colony are a half-dozen others which were established on the same general plan. The most noteworthy is the Malaga colony, founded by G.G. Briggs, to whom belongs the credit of introducing the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... feasible plan, I, with many internal maledictions upon the stupid mischance, accompanied the agent to an hotel or inn where he had already chartered quarters for his short stay in the place. There are some half-dozen of these establishments in Port Arthur. Three or four of them are wretched hovels, which existed in the squalid infancy of the town; the newer ones are larger and fairly commodious and comfortable. The ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... and brown two small onions. Have ready two quarts of boiling water, into this empty the contents of the saucepan, slice into it six tomatoes, two potatoes, one carrot and one turnip; add two cupfuls of green peas, one cupful of lima beans and a half-dozen cloves. Let all simmer slowly for two hours, then put all through a colander, return it to the pot, heat to boiling, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in cornstarch, season with pepper and salt to taste and ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... together a group of lyrics, delicate in workmanship, fragrant with sentiment, and phrased in pure and unexceptionable English. Then he has another group of dialect verses, racy of the soil, pungent in flavor, swinging in rhythm and adroit in rhyme. But where he shows himself a pioneer is the half-dozen larger and bolder poems, of a loftier strain, in which he has been nobly successful in expressing the higher aspirations of his own people. It is in uttering this cry for recognition, for sympathy, for understanding, and above all, for justice, that Mr. Johnson is most original and ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... catarrh, and bought a half-dozen bottles of your Dr. Sage's Catarrh Remedy, also some of Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery to purify my blood and I am happy to say I am ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... morning, some half-dozen ladies, of various ages and stability of person, and all suffering, in a greater or less degree, from various fashionable complaints—such as neuralgia, indigestion, rheumatism, or its aristocratic cousin, rheumatic-gout—were in Room Number ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... than the Bishop, and though younger than the latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The spiritual ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... village of Catton, the name of "Rebel Hill" reminds us that it was a vicar of Allendale, Mr. Patten, who joined young Derwentwater in the rising of "The Fifteen," and was appointed chaplain of the little army. He met some half-dozen men of the neighbourhood at this hill, when they set off together to join the rest of the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry |
