"Hardly a" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I've told you I can't. But I don't understand why you want such a change. Hardly a week goes by without some Yawk boy coming to me and asking to be turned into a Spacer, and I have to refuse him for the same reasons I'm refusing you! That's the usual course of events—the romantic Earther boy wanting to go to space, and not being ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... assembled for the evening service (hardly a day had passed since they left England on which they had not done the same); and after it was over, they must needs sing a Psalm, and then a catch or two, ere they went to sleep; and till the moon was high in heaven, twenty mellow voices rang out above the roar of the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... number of the people one meets there having hardly a rag to cover them; and the more the swarming goes on, the more it promises to revive this old story. And when the story is perfectly revived, the swarming quite completed, and every cranny choke-full, then, too, no doubt, the faces in the East of London will ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the most dismal aspect amid its surroundings. The walls bent outward, and there was hardly a pane of glass in any of the windows, except some of the fragments, which looked like the water of the marshes—dull green. The spaces of wall between the windows were covered with spots, as if time were trying to write there in hieroglyphics the history ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... William, who was now sober and looked sorry. They dressed his wounds, and Tom Denison took him on board early in the morning, intending to take him to sea till the memory of his misdeeds had toned down a bit, for Billy was a great institution in Samoa, and had many friends. Hardly a white man in the place, no matter how hard up he was, but would stand Billy a bottle of lager or a chew of tobacco. (I forgot to mention that Billy would drink anything and chew anything, except cigarettes, at which he snorted with contempt.) Now Denison's little ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... herself, and readily responded, with a manner that gave sweetness to all she said. She was not very young-looking, and Maria's notion might be justified that she was at Hyeres on her own account, for there was hardly a tint of colour on her cheek; she was exceedingly spare and slender, and there was a wasted, worn look about the lower part of her face, and something subdued in her expression, as if some great, lasting sorrow had passed over her. Her eyes were large, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... say anything," explained Leslie, "because there was hardly a chance. It was just before ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... and powder-blackened men, who, in spite of their breathlessness, had followed up their British cheer with a tremendous petillating roar of laughter, which ran along the line from end to end and back again—a roar of laughter so loud that hardly a man knew that the band was now playing in full force "God save the Queen," with an additional obbligato from the drums—that one known as the "big" threatening collapse from the vigorous action of the stick-wielder's ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the priests, and the cattle That feed in the penfolds of kings, Sleek is their flock and well-fed; Hardly she giveth you bread, Hardly a rest for the head, Till the day of the blast of the battle And the storm of ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... useless delays and difficulties, I had the satisfaction of seeing the convent outhouse empty at last; passed through a final ceremony of snuff-taking, or rather, of snuff-giving, with the old Capuchin, and ordered the traveling carriages to be ready at the inn door. Hardly a month had elapsed since our departure ere we entered Naples successful in the achievement of a design which had been ridiculed as wildly impracticable by every friend of ours who had heard ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... usually lies in making a scapegoat of someone who is only as criminal as the rest, but a little weaker. Asbury's friends and enemies had succeeded in making him bear the burden of all the party's crimes, but their reform was hardly a success, and their protestations of a change of heart were received with doubt. Already there were those who began to pity the victim and to say that he had been ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Hop, with the best heart in the world, and a thousand good qualities, has a thousand enemies, and hardly a friend; simply from ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... conscientious fidelity . . . which prevented the introduction of anything new, and his pure taste in the balancing of discordant recitations." He had already written that "Scott had, I firmly believe, interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of his ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... cure with great respect. "That's the sort of a priest I like," he was continually saying. "Half-measures don't do for him," and he zealously set a good example by frequently confessing and communicating. Hardly a day passed now without the vicomte going to the Fourvilles, either to shoot with the comte, who could not do without him, or to ride with the comtesse regardless ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... 1681, I find, "Dril—a stone-cutter's tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, etc. Also a large overgrown Ape and Baboon, so called." "Drill" is used in the same sense in Charleton's "Onomasticon Zoicon," 1668. The singular etymology of the word given by Buffon seems hardly a probable one.] ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... first appear belong to the highest order of the class, and show no links of an insensible gradation into fishes. In the tertiary deposit of the London clay the evidence of concatenation entirely fails. Among the millions of organic forms, from corals up to mammalia of the London and Paris basins, hardly a single secondary species is found. In the south of France it is said that two or three secondary species struggle into the tertiary strata; but they form a rare and evanescent exception to the general rule. Organic nature at ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... There was hardly a horse or rider among the survivors that did not bring away some mark of the fray. I saw one animal with no less than seven wounds,—none of them serious. Scabbards were bent, clothes and caps pierced, pistols injured. I saw one pistol from which the sight had been cut as neatly as it could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... earthworms. On the other hand, metamorphosis among animals is associated with eggs of small size, with aquatic habit, and with relatively low zoological rank. The young of a starfish, for example, has hardly a character in common with its parent, while a marine segmented worm and an oyster, unlike enough when adult, develop from closely similar larval forms. If we take a class of animals, the Crustacea, nearly allied to insects, we find that its more lowly members, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... had died, and the bark had fallen down on the brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light which struggled through the thick boughs above. Nearer to the sea, the valley assumed a more open, though hardly a more cheerful character; it looked dark and overhung by sea-fog through the greater part of the year, and even a farm- house, which usually imparts something of cheerfulness to a landscape, failed to do so here. This valley formed the greater part ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ruined old mill-wheel around: Long years have passed by since its bed became dry, And the trees grow so close, scarce a glimpse of the sky Is seen in the hollow, so dark and so damp, Where the glow-worm at noonday is trimming his lamp, And hardly a sound from the thicket around, Where the rabbit and squirrel leap over the ground, Is heard by the toad in his spacious abode In the innermost heart of that ponderous stone, By the gray-haired moss and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... linseed, harvests were good and money was flowing into the country. Then came a very bad year, 1889; the harvest was practically lost owing to the heavy and continuous rains which fell from December till July with hardly a clear day. This, together with a bad government and the revolution of 1890, created a great panic and a tremendous slump in all land, from which it took a long time to recover. Where people had bought ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led the movement in New England, and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against him." Four of his books were of particular importance: Christian Nurture (1847), in which he virtually opposed revivalism and "effectively turned the current of Christian thought ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the regiment and yourself, Colonel von Falkenhein. The regiment, because it has such an excellent commanding officer at its head; and you, because you have made your regiment such a splendid body of men." Hardly a very brilliant or very witty remark, this; but it sounded pleasantly, and one could not reasonably ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... been supplied with English articles, instead of creusets de Bourgogne. And no wonder! He treated them by a strong blast in a furious coal-fire without previous warming. His muffle was a wreck, and such by degrees became the condition of all his apparatus. However, as we sought, so we found: hardly a Bedawi lad in camp but unpouched some form of metallic specimens. The Shaykhs declared that the wealth of "Krn" must have been dug here; and I vainly told them that the place of punishment of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... house had also opened. From the high nursery windows especially, queer shapes of shadow flitted down to join the others. For the sun was far away behind the cedars now, and that Net of Starlight dropped downwards through the air. So carefully had he woven it years ago that hardly a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Several of the boys were near by—sycophantic followers of Jim, who were enjoying in advance the rumpus they expected. I am afraid schoolboys do not always sympathize with the weaker side. In the present instance, there was hardly a boy who had not at some time or other felt the weight of Jim's fist, and, as there is an old saying that "misery loves company," it was not, perhaps, a matter of wonder that they looked forward with interest to seeing another suffer the same ill-treatment ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... imposed so much upon your Reverence and many others in the Fatherland, concerning the docility of these people and their good nature, the proper principia religionis and vestigia legis naturae which are said to be among them; in whom I have as yet been able to discover hardly a single good point, except that they do not speak so jeeringly and so scoffingly of the godlike and glorious majesty of their Creator as the Africans dare to do. But it may be because they have no certain knowledge ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... early part of Charles the Second's restoration, says: "As yet the Acts of Trade were hardly a subject of controversy. The Parliament, which had welcomed back the King, had indeed re-enacted with additional clauses the ordinance of 1651—an Act which, by restricting exportations from America ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to the officers and men on board the ship. They conducted themselves with the greatest steadiness and coolness; and although under a heavy fire, pointed their guns with the utmost precision, there being hardly a shot that did not take effect.... It is but fair at the same time to state that, much to the credit of the ship's company, the Bishop and one of the principal inhabitants of the town came off to express their gratitude for the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... to office seeking employment, answering advertisements, asking for work of any kind, ready to do no matter what, but all to no purpose. Nobody wanted him at any price. What was the good of a man being willing to work if there was no one to employ him? A nice look-out certainly. Hardly a dollar left and no prospect of getting any more. He hardly had the courage to return home and face Annie. With a muttered exclamation of impatience he spat from his mouth the half-consumed cigarette which was hanging ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... hung low over the western woods when Menard, at the close of the second day, headed the canoe shoreward. The great river swept by with hardly a surface motion, dimpling and rippling under the last touch of the day breeze. Menard's eyes rested on Father Claude, as the canoe drew into the shadow of the trees. The priest, stiff from the hours of sitting and kneeling, had taken ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... engaged that morning, and soon departed, with hardly a word from Theodora, whose amiability had been entirely overthrown by finding her service postponed to that ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see what a plight you have brought us into!" he snarled. "Here we are miles and miles from anywhere, and with hardly a dollar in our pockets! It's a shame! If I had remained in the East, selling mining stock, or something like that, instead of going on ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... the bear was upon his guard, the heifer was hardly a match for him, for he could usually elude her charges and punish her sorely at each rush; but one thing was certain: It would be no easy matter to carry off the dead calf, and carry on such a fight as this ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... dozens of furry bodies that swarmed over him, he had hardly a chance to even try to fight back. His cartridge-belt and guns, his Silver Belts and his wrist-watch were stripped from him by the dozens of claw-like hands that searched his body. Other claw-hands jerked his arms behind his back and lashed ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... life. The Khan's son is a boy a week old. Nevertheless I tell you that boy is the danger in Chiltistan. The father—we know him. A good fellow who has lost all the confidence of his people. There is hardly an adherent of his who genuinely likes him; there's hardly a man in this Fort who doesn't believe that he wished to sell his country to the British. I should think he is impossible here in the future. And everyone in Government House knows it. We shall do the usual thing, I have ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain. I answered, it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver threepence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nutshell; and so I went on, describing the rest of his household stuff and provisions after the same manner. For, although the queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... months there had been hardly a drop of rain. The wind had been almost continuously north-west, and from that to east. Occasionally there were light airs from the south-west, and vapour rose, but there was nothing in it; there was no true south-westerly breeze, and in a few hours the weather-cock returned to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the entities who may "communicate" at a seance, or may obsess and speak through an entranced medium, their name is simply legion; there is hardly a single class among all the varied inhabitants of the astral plane from whose ranks they may not be drawn, though after the explanations given it will be readily understood that the chances are very much against their coming from a high one. A manifesting ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... wind that day, and the sea was as smooth as glass. The ship stood almost still; there was hardly a breath of ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... preponderating proportion of institutions that reach far into the past. "The great difficulty which presses on the student of the English constitution, regarded as a set of legal rules," observes a learned commentator, "is that he can never dissociate himself from history. There is hardly a rule which has not a long past, or which can be understood without some consideration of the circumstances under which it first came into being."[1] It is the purpose of the present volume to describe European governments as they to-day exist and operate. It will be necessary in all cases, however, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... bridge within fifty miles. Over it day and night the retreating Boche armies are passing. There's hardly a minute that guns and regiments may not be seen ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Boston, and Mr. George Livermore of Cambridge. Governor Armstrong surrendered these three books in consideration of certain modern books being given to the Prince Library, and of the modern bindings bestowed on the two other copies; which seems to us hardly a ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... professional people in the eighteenth century. They had splendours of double doors and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... annually sent him some little comforting present from her own hand. And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed, finding in them a flavour of the unascetic godliness of ancient days which was gratifying to her palate. But in politics there was hardly a name remaining to which she could fix her faith and declare that there should be her guide. For awhile she thought she would cling to Mr. Lowe; but, when she made inquiry, she found that there was no base there of really ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... have been revealed. In the months of July and August, and not at all the less during the very middle watch of the day, I sate in the closest proximity to a blazing fire; cloaks, blankets, counterpanes, hearthrugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders, but with hardly a glimmering of relief. At night, and after taking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could sometimes afford to smile at the resemblance of my own case to that of Harry Gill. [Footnote: 'Harry Gill:'—Many readers, in this generation, may not be aware of this ballad as ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and through the gate with hardly a word. With the gate closed behind them he turned ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... question. Wilson had stamped himself as an anti-machine progressive, and if the machine conservatives threatened he might hope for support from the Nebraskan orator. From the first the real contest appeared to be between Wilson and Champ Clark, who although hardly a conservative, was backed for the moment by the machine leaders. The deciding power was in Bryan's hand, and as the strife between conservatives and radicals waxed hot, he turned to the support of Wilson. On the forty-sixth ballot Wilson was ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... to grease the cartridges of the Indian army, was one of the proximate causes of the great Sepoy rebellion of 1857. There are no animals of greater use to man than the tribe to which the ox belongs. There is hardly a part of them that does not enter into some of the arts and purposes of civilized life. Of their horns are made combs, knife-handles, boxes, spoons, and drinking-cups. They are also made into transparent plates for lanterns; ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... youngster! Those travels have corrupted you, till I believe you are hardly a Spaniard! Look you, that he denies what everybody knows, what is taught in all the schools! And the Catholic kings; were they nothing? You need no books to know that. Go into the choir, and you will see on the lower stalls all the battles that those religious kings gained over the Moors ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... possible contingency, the doctrine of paramount allegiance to the individual States, and secondary allegiance merely to the General Government—a perpetual indoctrination of incipient treason—was invented, and has been sedulously taught at the South from the very inception of the Government. Hardly a child in attendance upon his lessons in an 'old-field' schoolhouse throughout that region but has been imbued with this primary devotion to the interests of his State; certainly, not a young lawyer commencing to acquire his profession, and riding the circuit from county ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lived with the farmers, many of them ten or twelve, and even a greater number of years, suddenly, and without the smallest provocation, turned round and murdered them, or turned them out of their houses with hardly a rag upon them, destroyed their property, and walked over to the enemy." Hardly a man who speaks of them, that does not complain of their pilfering propensities; the farmers grievously as ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... ran to her. The father had never loosened his hold, and her gown was smoking. I tried to deaden the fire, but with one hand he pushed me off. There was no water in the cottage or I could have done better, and all that time he laughed—such a terrible laugh, mynheer, hardly a sound, but all in his face. I tried to pull her away, but that only made it worse. Then—it was dreadful, but could I see the mother burn? I beat him—beat him with a stool. He tossed me away. The gown was on fire.! I WOULD put it out. I can't ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of the saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes more than the whole." The taste and judgment of the author are shown by what he leaves out as much as by what he leaves in. There is hardly a dull page in the book, and in each place he only notes what is curious, leaving out of the question all that is commonplace. More could not ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... comfort. Some day it may be that the world will change, and that war may become a thing of the past; but to my mind, boy, I doubt whether men will be any happier or better for it. The priests, no doubt, would tell you otherwise; but then you see I am an armourer, and so perhaps am hardly a fair judge on the matter, seeing that without wars my craft would ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... he did so, as whom should he see going in at the main entrance but Maroney. He hastily excused himself from the game and walked out. He had gone hardly a block from his boarding-house before Maroney came down and got into a carriage. He had gone at once to his room, ordered his trunk down, paid his bill and was now being hurried ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... other hand, the intellectual results of the cruise were abundantly satisfactory. The students had made excellent progress in their studies, and not a few of them were already competent navigators. There had been hardly a case of sickness on board, and the boys were all in rugged health. Mr. Lowington, therefore, had every reason to be satisfied with the success of his great experiment. He intended to make some changes in the vessels, and return to Europe the following spring, after spending the winter ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... uninteresting as far as Pont-sur-Yonne. Chapelle de Champigny affords a tolerably exact idea of a Spanish village; each farm-house and its premises forming a square, inclosed in blank walls, and opening into the street by folding gates, with hardly a window to be seen. From Pont-sur-Yonne to Sens, the road becomes more cheerful; and its fine old cathedral forms a good central object in the valley, along which the Yonne is seen winding. The principal inn at Sens being full for the night, we found neat ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Valley it is no uncommon thing for one man's name to stand for 100,000 acres. This grabbing of large tracts has discouraged immigration to California more than any other single factor. A family living on a small holding in a vast plain, with hardly a house in sight, will in time become a very lonely family indeed, and will in a few years be glad to sell out to the land king whose domain is adjacent. Thousands of small farms have in this way been acquired by the large holders at nominal prices. [Footnote: "The ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... hardly a Child born into it, on whom the Parents do not look with some pleasing Expectation that it shall comfort them concerning their Labour[c]. This makes the Toil of Education easy and delightful: And truly 'tis very early ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... vanished between the rows of currant bushes. She was hardly a radiant vision as she flew down to the gate; in those few minutes what could have happened to ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... a most extraordinary case. In some respects it has hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New England history. This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage. The actors in it were not surprised by any lionlike temptation springing upon their virtue, and overcoming ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... served both for kitchen and parlor, and talked to Hannah the housemaid. "How short the days are," she said, "and how quickly night overtakes us. In the old country there is a long twilight, but here in the forest is hardly a moment between daylight and lamplight. Yet how grand winter is with its spotless mantle ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... Yet the doctrines should, by no means, be regarded as identical or even similar in Hinduism and Christianity. It should be remembered that in Hinduism it is believed and magnified by those who also hold the law of Karma as supreme. There is hardly a Vaishnavite and Krishnaolater who does not believe firmly that his destiny is writ large upon his forehead—that nothing that this or any god may do can affect his adrishta which is that felt but unseen power working out the Karma vivaka, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sure," General Webb muttered. He didn't much like tartness in responses, but the Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, was hardly a subordinate, and therefore not subject to the general's choler. Silly little ass! he said to himself. Rather liking the sound of the words—albeit in his mind—he repeated them over again, adding embellishments like "pompous" and "mousy" and "squirrel-eyed." ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... of Assyria have added valuable information to Layard's first discovery. Dr Wallis Budge, of the British Museum, whom I have to thank for much kind assistance, tells me that "Kouyunjik is hardly a good example of a Mesopotamian library, for it is certain that the tablets were thrown about out of their proper places when the city was captured by the Medes about B.C. 609. The tablets were kept on shelves.... When I was digging at Derr some years ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Hardly a man touched his food, and as soon as they were out of earshot of the women, he spoke what was in his mind. The crew heard him at the table and many of them gathered to listen. For the first time in their lives they were worried. Their lives depended on the earthmen ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... Ruggieri, there is no proof whatever of his having had any share in the business—hardly a ground of suspicion; so that historians look upon him as an "ill-used gentleman." Dante, in all probability, must have learnt the real circumstances of the case, as he advanced in years; but if charity is bound to hope that he would have altered the passage accordingly, had ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of deliberation, were striving for the first place, with Aleck easily leading. Like a piece of machinery, Aleck and his team worked together. Quickly and neatly both driver and horses moved about their work with perfect understanding of each other. With hardly a touch of the lines, but almost entirely by word of command, Aleck guided his team. And when he took up the whiffletrees to swing them around to a log or stump, his horses wheeled at once into place. It was beautiful to see ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Dona Emilia died a few months after they reached Madrid. Her funeral did not come up to the dreams the illustrious widow had always fashioned. Hardly a score of her countless relatives were present. Poor old lady, if she had known how her hopes were destined to be disappointed! Renovales was almost glad of the event. With it, the only tie that bound them to society was broken. He and Josephina lived in a fifth story flat on the Calle de Alcala, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... your favour) from that turbulent and riotous disposition of mine, which impelled me into every species of mischief,—all these circumstances combined to destroy an intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and memory compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my mind at this moment. I need not say more,—this assurance alone must convince you, had I considered them as trivial, they would have been less indelible. How well I recollect the perusal of your 'first ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... matter in the quarters—it was impossible to remedy, and it ultimately cost the loss of the fort. The excuse that it never could have been anticipated that the fort would be attacked from the land side is hardly a valid one, for a foreign fleet might possibly have effected a landing on Morris Island; or they might have set fire to the quarters from the decks of the vessels by means ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... She was, however, successful, for she looked very beautiful when she came down, and so dignified, so composed, so quiet in her happiness, and yet so very happy in her quietness. Fanny was anything but a hypocrite; she had hardly a taint of hypocrisy in her composition, but her looks seldom betrayed her feelings. There was a majesty of beauty about her, a look of serenity in her demeanour, which in public made her appear ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... chairman, "there are three points on which we have reason to congratulate ourselves to-day, namely, the safety, the efficiency, and the economy with which our railway has been worked. As regards the first, I find that ten millions of journeys have been performed on our line during the half-year with hardly a detention, with very few late trains, at high speeds, and with only one accident, which was a comparatively slight one, and was unattended with loss of life or ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the present Union. As time went on the crowd became more and more dense, and a breathless pressman, who reached his post at twelve o'clock, stated that the seething myriads of Donegal Place and the adjacent streets were "hardly a circumstance" to what he had seen in the York Road, where the people awaited the hero of the hour. Things were getting serious at 12.15, and then it was that the active members of the crowd swarmed on the railings, balancing themselves in most uncomfortable situations, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... hand, and, turning his own horse's head towards the cliffs, lashed the terrified animals into a gallop straight towards the brink. He was only thwarted in his mad object by Julien, who with a quick blow sent him headlong in the dry grass, and reined in the terrified animals hardly a yard from the cliffs. When this happened, and no word of explanation was granted, only a sullen silence that lasted for days, it became clear that poor Jean's brain was wrong in some way. Heloise devoted herself to him with infinite patience,—though ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... laborious the task of remodelling must have been. He suppressed the touching incident of Olinda and Sophronia. He changed the name of Rinaldo to Riccardo; and ruthlessly swept his pen through all the flatteries, direct and indirect, which he had originally bestowed upon the house of Este. There is hardly a single stanza that is not changed. But in the process of revision he deprived his poem of all life. Religious mysticism has been substituted for the refined chivalry of the Crusades, and poetry and romance have been sacrificed for classical regularity ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... notice; no, he looked, and called for others, and finally bought a good dark green and a black, the mate to Mrs. Coles' black silk. At the glove counter he handed the matter over to Wych Hazel. She had watched all his proceedings with observant eyes, saying hardly a word, unless upon some point of quality where she knew best. Now she ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... and, after belonging to her about three weeks, here was I left naked on the shores of Ireland, I am sorry to say, my feelings were those of repining, rather than of gratitude. Of religion I had hardly a notion, and I am afraid that all which had been driven into me in childhood, was already lost. In this state of mind, I naturally felt more of the hardships I had endured, than of the mercy that had been shown me. I look back with shame at the hardness of heart ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... against the door of post headquarters which attributed to them as a crime their best and most sacred aspirations. It was so hard, too, to have to receive their intelligence of German victories through the cheering of the garrison! Hardly a day passed over their heads that they were spared this bitter humiliation; the soldiers would light great fires and sit around them, feasting and drinking all night long, while the townspeople, who were not allowed ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... fellows might be continually seen toiling and sweating along the streets, laden with more than they could comfortably carry, in the shape of change for fifty livres. The crowds around the bank were so great, that hardly a day passed that some one was not pressed to death. On the 9th of July, the multitude was so dense and clamorous that the guards stationed at the entrance of the Mazarin Gardens closed the gate, and refused to admit any more. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... been given. She had said little or nothing in reply, and he had only finished as they entered the Square. She had hardly a minute allowed her to think how far she might follow, and in what she must ignore, her husband's instructions. If she might use her own judgment she would tell her father at once that a residence for a time beneath his roof would be a service to them pecuniarily. But this ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Alabama, in 1818-19, I frequently saw slaves on and around the public square, with hardly a rag of clothing on them, and in a great many instances with but a single garment both in summer and in winter; generally the only bedding of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the wound being proved, I bend back the head of the bee, so as to open the articulation. I see under what we may call the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is exposed uncovered. It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the bee's armour, that the sting is inserted. Why is this point attacked rather than another? Is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... instinct was to let her be. Her manner towards him since her arrival, with hardly a break, had been such as to chill the most sociable temper. And Helbeck's temper was far ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Catholic Church has certain formulae for its dying children, to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is hardly a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the "consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless, but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do not quarrel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... departed from many of the churches. Picnics, church theatricals, church fairs, fine houses, personal display, have banished thoughts of God. Lands and goods and worldly occupations engross the mind, and things of eternal interest receive hardly a ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... manner changed when they by some stroke of fortune caught a trapper or hunter alone on the prairie or in the foot-hills; he was a dead man sure, and his scalp was soon dangling at the belt of his cowardly assassins. Hardly a day passed without witnessing some poor fellow running for the fort with a band of the red devils after him; frequently he escaped the keen edge of their scalping-knife, but every once in a while a man was killed. At one time, two herders who were with their ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... few such striking illustrations of the relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if some of the designs were fantastic and abortive, none the less the influence is a fact. Hardly a Western State but has been the Mecca of some sect or band of social reformers, anxious to put into practice their ideals, in vacant land, far removed from the checks of a settled form of social organization. Consider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourierists, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... THOUGHTFULNESS.—Remember to bring into the house your best smile and sunshine. It is good for you, and it cheers up the home. There is hardly a nook in the house that has not been carefully hunted through to drive out everything that might annoy you. The dinner which suits, or ought to suit you, has not come on the table of itself. It represents much thoughtfulness and work. You can do no more manly thing than find some way of expressing, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... was drawn by two horses, and was considerably larger than the ordinary victoria used in the town. It was quite dark, and though the streets were flanked with many houses, hardly a person appeared to be stirring at this hour. But a vehicle loaded down with the rough visitors of the place could not be an unusual sight, for they were the kind of people who were disposed to make the night hideous, ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... wishes to find types of boys to be avoided with utter dislike, one will find them in another story by Kipling, called "Stalky & Co.," a story which ought never to have been written, for there is hardly a single form of meanness which it does not seem to extol, or of school mismanagement which it does not seem to applaud. Bullies do not make brave men; and boys or men of foul life cannot become good citizens, good Americans, until they change; and even after the change scars will ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the spurious and fanciful sublimities of the classical poetry—with the nod of the Olympian Jove, or the seven-league strides of Neptune? Flying Childers had the most prodigious stride of any horse on record; and at Newmarket that is justly held to be a great merit; but it is hardly a qualification for a Pantheon. The parting of Hector and Andromache—that is tender, doubtless; but how many passages of far deeper, far diviner tenderness, are to be found in Chaucer! Yet in these cases ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the child he seduced, incidents of the seduction charged with the beauty of pity, thronged Lee's mind with sensations and ideas. However, it was the world surrounding the central motive, the action, that most engaged him; hardly a trait of generosity dignified it; and, exaggeratedly as a universal meanness and self-righteous cruelty was shown, it scarcely departed, he felt, from ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice . . . as far as any improvement in his ailment goes. I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... cart-load instead of scraping it together coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had almost invariably failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the final one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature of his fortunate speculation, one intimating that the ancient Peter had made the gold by alchemy; ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Colloquies, even in the first purely formulary ones, there is the sketch for a comedy, a novelette or a satire. There is hardly a sentence without its 'point', an expression without a vivid fancy. There are unrivalled niceties. The abbot of the Abbatis et eruditae colloquium is a Moliere character. It should be noticed how well Erasmus always sustains his characters and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... trains, taking pellmell such men as fell in his way, without regard for rank or caste, imprudently wounding the prejudices most dear to the country he had come to govern. Fort St. David was taken and razed. Devicotah, after scarcely the ghost of a siege, opened its gates. Lally had been hardly a month in India, and he had already driven the English from the southern coast of the Coromandel. "All my policy is in these five words, but they are binding as an oath—No English in the peninsula," wrote the general. He had sent Bussy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... name, has an area of 333 square miles. It contains numerous mountains, some of them nearly 3,000 feet high; and their slopes are covered with magnificent forests. Of the ancient town of Sulu (the residence of the "sultan"), on the southern shore, hardly a trace remains; the present town of that name was built by the Spaniards in 1878, and is modern in style. See U. S. Gazetteer ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... became the outstanding figure of the Government in which he occupied a comparatively minor position. Soon he was as prominent in Britain as, when a youth, he was prominent in Wales. Hardly a week passed in which he was not by his daring speeches or actions raising storms of anger among opponents or choruses of approval among the advanced Liberals. Vital force radiated from him. When Campbell-Bannerman ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... he enquired for dogs, and hardly a day passed without his buying several, big and little, greyhounds, spaniels, lap-dogs, and sheep-dogs—in fact, every kind of dog that you could think of, and very soon he had a troop of fifty or sixty trotting ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... mind giving you a cup,' said Mrs. Lahens, 'but I think you might have taken the trouble to change your clothes: that's hardly a costume to receive ladies in. Look at him, Lady Castlerich—that's what I've to put ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... her pages. It was unavoidable. To see only the behavior, as Dickens did, amuses us; to study only the motive at the root of the behavior, as George Eliot does, saddens us. The humor of Mrs. Poyser and the wit of Mrs. Transome only deepen the pathos by relieving it. There is hardly a sarcasm in these books but ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... glimmer; The moon, that was a pallid ghost, Hung low on the horizon, faint and lost, Comes up, a full and splendid golden round By black and sharp-cut foliage overcrossed. The girls laugh and whisper now with hardly a sound Till all sound vanishes, dispersed in the night, Like a wisp of cloud that fades in the moon's light, And the garden grows silent and the shadows grow Deeper and blacker below The mysteriously moving and murmuring trees, That stand out darkly against the star-luminous ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various |
