"Rumour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Berlin by the announcement that Mr. G. B. SHAW had decided to be known in future as Mr. BERNHARDI SHAW have given place to bitter disappointment on the peremptory denial of the rumour by the famous comedian himself. As a matter of fact he is hesitating between Benckendorff, Balakirev ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... demons, into which they naturally generalise the one instance. The busy tongues were not silenced when they left the synagogue. Verse 28 shows what happened, in one direction, when the meeting broke up. With another 'straightway,' Mark paints the swift flight of the rumour over all the district, and somewhat overleaps the strict line of chronology, to let us hear how far the echo of such a blow sounded. This first miracle recorded by him is as a duel between Christ and the 'strong ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... was at least such a scandal amongst the Puritans, and the influence which Sir Geoffrey Peveril certainly appeared to possess amongst the Catholic gentlemen of Derbyshire and Cheshire, seemed to give countenance to the rumour. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... may close, Which, instantly a palm expanded shows. 170 Justice and faith never forsake the wise, Yet may occasion put him in disguise; Not turning like the wind; but if the state Of things must change, he is not obstinate; Things past and future with the present weighs, Nor credulous of what vain rumour says. Few things by wisdom are at first believed; An easy ear deceives, and is deceived: For many truths have often pass'd for lies, And lies as often put on truth's disguise; 180 As flattery too oft like friendship shows, So them who speak plain truth we think our foes. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... a-butting to prove whose horns were the harder; it might have turned out seriously, had not your horned giants joined in the affray." "Well," said Lucifer, "since ye are all so ready with your arms, come with me to trounce the other rebels." But when the rumour reached these that Lucifer was approaching with three horned armies, everyone ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the March of 1601 a great calamity fell on these two. A fire, which consumed several houses near the Corraterie, and flung wide through the streets the rumour that the enemy had entered, struck the bedridden woman—aroused at midnight by shouts and the glare of flames—with so dire a terror, not on her own account but on her daughter's, that she was never the same again. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... stir or rumour in the world than many of his admirers expected. Sir Samuel Romilly, for example, writing on the 20th of August to a French lady who had wanted a copy of the new edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, says: "I have been surprised and, I own, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... admitted that the old rumour about Cripple Sim's fabulously rich lost gold mine might be an "exaggeration." With much hemming and hawing, he then agreed that if the lost mine were rediscovered he would accept ten thousand dollars and rid Dead ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... was repeated, and prolonged, owing to another cause than the accusation just heard. When the accuser was borne forwards to the cart, a rumour spread among those more remote that an attack was being made on Mutimer and his friends. The rumour reached that part of the Green where Redgrave was then haranguing. At once the listeners faced about in the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... This then they did secretly, without the knowledge of Retief, but being delayed upon their journey by one accident and another, which he set out in detail, they only reached the Bushman's River too late, after the massacre had taken place. Subsequently, as the commandant knew, hearing a rumour that Marie Marais and other Boers had trekked to this place before the slaughter, they came here and learned that they had done so upon a warning sent to them by Allan Quatermain, whereon they returned and communicated ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... new American manager of the Great Eastern Railway, says that his ideal is to satisfy the public. This disposes of the absurd rumour that his appointment was made in the interests of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... to his telegrams he had embarked, and it is perhaps as well that he did not wait, since none of the replies were particularly satisfactory. Bosambo was evidently un-get-at-able, and the most alarming rumour of all was that which came from Sierra Leone and was to the effect that Bosambo had embarked for England with the expressed intention of seeking an interview with ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... of this fellow knows no bounds! Not content with spreading a ghastly rumour with an unabashed face, he offers to measure ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... than for the whole school to learn by rumour the next morning that all the prefects of Bramhall House had been mysteriously withdrawn from their Olympian class-rooms to a special cabinet meeting under the presidency of Stanley, the gorgeous house-captain? Clearly some ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of his wife and daughter, whom he had been compelled to send away; there was the hidden enmity of Cargrim, which he did not know how to baffle; and now there was the shame of Gabriel's engagement to a barmaid; of George's choice of a wife, who, if rumour could be believed, was the daughter of a scoundrel. With these ills heaped upon his head, the bishop did not know how he ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... The rumour that CARPENTIER and DEMPSEY, in order to avoid further fuss and publicity, have decided to fight it out privately, appears to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... query concerning the rumour that Messrs. Guinness were in treaty for the purchase of the National hell Factory, Parkgate Street, a representative of that firm said this afternoon: 'We have no statement to make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... matter whether this engagement was signed or not.[32] As a Frenchman thus mentions it, the rumour of its signature must have been very strong. It is probable that the English heard of it, and believed it to be conclusive proof of the secret understanding between the Nawab and the French. The privilege of individual trade was particularly ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... time it was reported about the town that our little circle was a hotbed of nihilism, profligacy, and godlessness, and the rumour gained more and more strength. And yet we did nothing but indulge in the most harmless, agreeable, typically Russian, light-hearted liberal chatter. "The higher liberalism" and the "higher liberal," that is, a liberal without any definite aim, is ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lapsed into her former life of loneliness; and by these prompt measures the ghost of a rumour which had barely started into existence was speedily laid to rest. It had probably originated in her own dwelling, and had gone but little further. Yet, despite her self-control, a certain north window of the Great House, that commanded an uninterrupted view of the upper ten feet of the column, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... wild by hunger and privation. There is nothing more tragic in the history of exploration than the desertion of Henry Hudson and his boy in their newly discovered bay. Every detail of the conspiracy is given by Prickett. We know how the rumour spread, how the crew resolved to turn the "master" and the sick men adrift and to share the remaining provisions among themselves. And how in the early morning Hudson was seized and his arms ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained a culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was departing, he rushed down after her, and, in a dramatic fashion which demonstrated ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Earl he could not suspect; but even the discovery of such a passing intrigue with a lady of Mistress Amy Robsart's rank was a secret of the deepest importance to the stability of the favourite's power over Elizabeth. "If Leicester himself should hesitate to stifle such a rumour by very strange means," said he to himself, "he has those about him who would do him that favour without waiting for his consent. If I would meddle in this business, it must be in such guise as my old master uses when he compounds his manna of Satan, and that ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... rumour. I didn't know that it amounted to an engagement. Monsieur du Laurier is to ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... best of the four sets, though perhaps I only think so on account of their opening ground less familiar to me than the manners of the Highlanders. . . . If Tom—[His brother, Mr. Thomas Scott.]—wrote those volumes, he has not put me in his secret. . . . General rumour here attributes them to a very ingenious but most unhappy man, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, who, many years since, was obliged to retire from his profession, and from society, who hides himself under a borrowed ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the Jesuits and seminary priests in the hope that when they were removed the people might be induced to submit, and to insist on compliance with the terms of the Act of Uniformity. He issued a proclamation (4 July 1605) denying the rumour that he intended "to give liberty of conscience or toleration of religion" to his Irish subjects, and denouncing such a report as a libel on himself, "as if he were more remiss or less careful in the government of the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... For nothing visible, they say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play'd about With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd My voice and cried "Wide Afric, doth thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?" A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! The bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Majesty, without saying a word, put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room with real German imperturbability! Neither the astounded prelate nor the subservient council ventured to utter a word. The will was never more heard of: and rumour declared that it was burnt. The contents, of course, never transpired; and the legacy of L40,000, said to have been left to the Duchess of Kendal, was never more spoken of, until Lord Chesterfield, in 1733, married the Countess of Walsingham. In 1743, it is said, he ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... project had failed, and that he could only put it into execution by bloodshed, gave it up, and walked quietly along the shore to regain his boat, when a rumour spread that one of the principal chiefs had been killed. The women and children were therefore sent away, and all directed their attention ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... was cancelled. Scarborough had been bombarded on December 22nd, and there was apparently a bit of a "breeze." According to one writer this was due to a little lack of liaison between our Naval and Military authorities. The former had apparently spread a rumour that an invasion of the German Coast was to take place, and the enemy concentrated numbers of troops there in case it happened. This concentration came to the knowledge of our military spies, who, however were not told of the cause, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... whilst Edward was proceeding to Tolchurch by the footpath across the fields, Owen Graye had left the village and was riding along the turnpike road to the county-town, that he might ascertain the exact truth of the strange rumour which had reached him concerning Manston. Not to disquiet his sister, he had said nothing to her ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... grace and unbending dignity of demeanour which were the admiration and envy of all aspirants to social fame. It was said that Mrs. Stornaway had been a beauty in her youth, and there were those who placed confidence in the rumour. Mrs. Stornaway did so herself, and it had been intimated that it was this excellent lady who had vouched for the truth of the statement in the first instance; but this report having been traced to a pert young relative who detested and derided her, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... them a brace of quarts, Whose anagram is call'd true hearts; If all were well, as I would ha't, And Britain cured of its tumour, I should very well like my fate, And drink my sack at a cheaper rate, Without any noise or rumour, Oh then I should ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... seen his heir, who was now almost a year old, when the rumour reached Mortgrange that the baronet was about to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... but rode on with knit brows. The question so lightly asked was one he had often weighed in his own mind nor found a clear answer. Rumour said of him—but under her breath, for to speak at all was dangerous—that he was shamefully neglected, slow-witted, ill-taught, or, worse still, untaught, but, and here rumour whispered yet lower, that flashes ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames reached, James was the most affected. He had long forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... America—because there will be struck the most dreadful blow to the independence of Europe. In Constantinople, when Russia wishes to turn a grand vizier out of office, it does not attack him: it praises him rather, and spreads the rumour of having him in its pay; and it is sure that foreign influential diplomatists will then turn out for it the hated grand vizier. When on the other hand a grand vizier is wavering in his position, and Russia likes him to continue in office, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... with a sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow. Love is not to be prepared, I know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at last rattled to the door and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the tumult of hopes ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... was who, though the very centre of all these merry doings, the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they were set afoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous crowd. This was Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her kinsman, the Lord Giovanni, was paying a most ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... we should meet quietly," the merchant said, as they shook hands. "I know the Ghentois, how greedily they swallow every rumour, how they magnify the smallest things, and how they rage if their desires are not gratified, and give themselves wholly up to the demagogues. 'Tis for that reason that I think it well that you have come ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... vigour. In that peaceful retreat I neither hear nor speak anything of which I have occasion to repent. I suffer none to repeat to me the whispers of malice; nor do I censure any man, unless myself, when I am dissatisfied with my compositions. There I live undisturbed by rumour, and free from the anxious solicitudes of hope or fear, conversing only with myself and my books. True and genuine life! Pleasing and honourable repose! More, perhaps, to be desired than the noblest employments! Thou solemn lea and solitary shore, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... time—and Hayes was very much frightened at the prevalence of the rumour—it suddenly began to be about in his quarter that he was going to quit the country. The story was in everybody's mouth; people used to sneer when he turned pale, and wept, and passionately ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speaker had only just got past the haddocks and was feeling his way tentatively through the shrimps. "The Rosary" had been sung and there was an uneasy doubt as to whether it was not going to be sung again after the interval—the latest rumour being that the second of the rival lady singers had proved adamant to all appeals and intended to fight the thing out on the lines she had originally chosen if they put her ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... world. I am John Carter, Prince of the House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Perchance some faint rumour of me may have leaked within the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were going to India; we were going to East Africa... some one even mentioned Japan! There was a new rumour ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... service of coasting steamers was established, he sent Mr. Roebelin to make a thorough investigation. His enterprise and sagacity were rewarded, as usual. After floating round for twenty-five years amidst derision, the rumour proved true in part. Ph. Sanderiana is not scarlet but purplish rose, a ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... the "evidence" to which the corpulent Regent is made to refer in the sketch before us? It was not of course evidence, but rumour; and rumour said the strangest things of the Princess Caroline. It associated her name with that of a courier,—a low Italian, named Bartolomeo Bergami; it said that she had enriched and ennobled this man and other members of his family; procured for him a barony in Sicily; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the news, at once prepared to take advantage of it, crossed the Rhine on a bridge of boats at Spires, and passed the Neckar, General Merci retiring before him. Stuttgart opened its gates, and Turenne established himself at Marienthal on the river Tauber. Merci, as he fell back, had caused a rumour to be spread that he ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... rumour of a common fight, When host meets host, and many names are sunk; But of a ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... up a dreamy bigot whose one ambition was to lead a crusade against the Moors—an ambition in which popular rumour said he was encouraged by the Jesuits at the instigation of his cousin, Philip of Spain, who would profit so much by ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... for the royal carriages, which he recognised instantly, by the description of them with which he was furnished. He ordered his soldiers to mount and follow the king; but the national guards of Sainte Menehould, amongst whom the rumour of the likeness between the travellers and the royal family had been rapidly circulated, surrounded the barracks, closed the stables, and opposed by force the departure of the soldiers. During this rapid and instinctive movement of the people, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... 1912, having wintered at Schultz Lake. In May, 1913, that well-known northern patrol man, Sergeant W. G. Edgenton, of the Mounted Police, who was in command of the post at Fullerton, reported that a rumour had come to him through Eskimo that Radford and Street had been killed by the Eskimos in June, 1912. A few days later one of the Eskimos, by name Akulack, who had travelled part of the way with the explorers, came to Chesterfield Inlet ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... example of the ridiculous lengths to which the national defence cranks will go in their hatching of alarmist reports, a rumour was actually spread in Fleet Street at an early hour this morning that this commonplace accident to the telegraph wires was caused by an invading German army. This ridiculous canard is reminiscent of some of the foolish scares which frightened our forefathers a little ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... another letter, the boy was the first to carry word of the firing to the Rue St. Honore; and that his news wherever he brought it was received with hurrahs. It was an odd entrance upon life for a little English lad, thus to play the part of rumour in such a crisis of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strong post of Ticonderoga was adequately garrisoned by a formidable force. A general gloom was cast over the political affairs of the colony; and it was understood that a great effort was to be made, the succeeding campaign, to repair the loss. Rumour spoke of large reinforcements from home, and of greater levies in the colonies themselves than had been hitherto attempted. Lord Loudon was to return home, and a veteran of the name of Abercrombie was to succeed him in the command ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the Neapolitan regime, and though the Government protested, it did not go to the rescue. It is a question whether it would not have been forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour had declared war. France joined in the protests of the other Powers, and Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he was going to give up Genoa to win Napoleon's complaisance. In reply to an anxious inquiry from the British Government, he declared that under no circumstances would he yield another foot ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... meditation, together with a little seltzer, he smiled faintly, and told himself that there was no use in debating the point—a man with brains is predestined to make progress. But he couldn't help reflecting that now, more than ever, if any echo of his New York escapades, or any rumour of his guarded habits got to Mirabelle's ears—or, for that matter, to anybody's ears at all—his dreams would float away in vapour. Perhaps it would be wise to explain to Mirabelle that he had once been a sinner. She would probably forgive him, and appreciate him all the more. Women ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... of Bishop Patteson knew how preposterous the supposition was, and his brother took pains to contradict the rumour. As a matter of fact, as his letters soon proved, he was not only not in company with the 'Curacoa' at the time, but had no knowledge either of the outrage or the chastisement, till Sir William Wiseman mentioned it to him when they were ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strange,—Mourning my own afflictions, This rumour reached me; straight all else forgotten, Hither by love and duty urged I sped, Nor come I trust in vain,——this phial holds Drops of most precious power.—Good Inis take it, And in your lady's drink infuse this liquid: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... by means of poison. And this dreadful deed was the more awful through the talented actress taking the fatal drug in the theatre itself. She had scarcely been taken home when to the universal grief, she expired. There is a rumour in the town that an unfortunate love affair drove her to ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the country with French lace, and brandy, and tobacco, at a low price! Most of the old houses in Deal are full of mysterious cellars, and invisible places of concealment in walls, and beams, and chimneys; showing the extent to which contraband trade was carried on in the days of our fathers. Rumour says that there is a considerable amount of business done in that way even in our own days; but everybody knows ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... on December 17, 1596. Proclamation had been made, that the Earl of Mar should keep the West Port, Lord Seton the Nether-Bow, and Buccleuch, with sundry others, the High Gate. "Upon the morn, at this time, and befoir this day, thair wes ane grate rumour and word among the tounesmen, that the kinges M. sould send in Will Kinmond, the common thieffe, and so many southland men as sould spulye the toun of Edinburgh. Upon the whilk, the haill merchants tuik thair haill ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... begins and ends with a life. The continuance even of the two libraries above mentioned in private hands cannot be regarded as otherwise than precarious and terminable; the fourth succession of Miller has just expired in an unexpected manner, and the destiny of the Britwell treasures is problematical. Rumour has long since pointed to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought of the "palatial residence" rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston, and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburnt fingers. Then he doubled up his fist and struck it ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... prophesied gaily to that ardent Pre-Raphaelite, then marching on from success to success: "Millais! my boy, I have met in Rome a versatile young dog called Leighton, who will one of these days run you hard for the presidentship!" This was early days for such a rumour to reach the Academy, who knew an older school, represented by Landseer and Eastlake, and a younger school, represented by Millais and Rossetti, but as yet ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... had made an end to slaying Tryggvi Olafson, Harald Grey-Cloak and Gudrod his brother hied them to the homesteads that had been his. But ere they came thither Astrid had fled & of her learned they no tidings save a rumour that she was with ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... that euery manne should haue twoo wiues, more meter it were, that one woman should haue twoo housban- des. Straunge it was in the Senators eares soche a request, whereupon a proofe made how that rumour rose, Papirius was found the aucthor, who tolde before the Senate, his mo- ther alwaies inquisitiue to knowe that, whiche he should not tell, and thereupon he faigned that, whiche he might better tell. It is to be supposed the Senators mused thereat, and ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... saved by a mere chance; but in the open country the rebellion went on unchecked. The trembling planters fled for shelter to the towns as the clansmen poured back over their old tribal lands, and rumour doubled and trebled the number of the slain. Tales of horror and outrage, such as maddened our own England when they reached us from Cawnpore, came day after day over the Irish Channel; and sworn depositions told how husbands were cut to pieces in presence of their wives, their children's ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... What rumour'd heavens are these Which not a poet sings, O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze Of sudden wings Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space To fan my very face, And gone as fleet, Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat, With ne'er a light ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... carelessly circulated at the club, and he listened to them without much interest, though he took the trouble to deny their truth on his own responsibility, which surprised the men who knew him and gave rise to the story that he was in love with Madame d'Aranjuez. The most annoying consequence of the rumour was that every woman to whom he spoke in society overwhelmed him with questions which he could not answer except in the vaguest terms. In his ignorance he did his best to evolve a satisfactory history ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the Biron affair the attention of all Paris. The young lady, whose reputation and the care which had been spent on her breeding, no less than her gifts of person and character, deserved a better fate, attained in a moment a notoriety far from enviable; rumour's hundred tongues alleging, and probably with truth—for what father can vie with a gallant in a maiden's eyes?—that her inclinations were all on the side of the pretender. At any rate, St. Mesmin had credit for them; there was talk of stolen meetings and a bribed waiting-woman; and though ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... receive them. I shall have to send them, or to invite him to Lexington after my return. I propose to leave here, if nothing prevents, on Monday, 25th inst. If I go by Goshen, I hope to reach Lexington that night, or Tuesday morning after breakfast. I have heard a rumour that the water has been withdrawn from the canal above Lynchburg for the purpose of repairs. If that is so, I shall have to go by Goshen. My cold continues, but is better. The weather is very hot and to me is almost insupportable. At 6:00 P. M. yesterday, the thermometer in ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... and the proprietor and initiator of London's newest and most up-to-date and most intellectual theatre, surrounded by a complicated apparatus of telephones and typewriters in his managerial room at the Regent. He received me very courteously. "Yes," he said in response to my question, "the rumour is quite true. The principal part in 'The Orient Pearl' will be played on the first night by Miss Euclid's understudy, Miss Olga Cunningham, a young woman of very remarkable talent. No, Miss Euclid is not ill or even indisposed. But she and I have had a ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... despatches captured {p.212} on Boer couriers on November 25, directing Joubert to return at once to Ladysmith, and even to prepare for moving homeward. An official synopsis of the papers,[24] then given to the press by the military authorities, does not fully establish the truth of the rumour, but it does give fair ground to infer that such an influence was exerted upon the counsels of Pretoria by the operations in Cape Colony; notably by the battle of Belmont, November 24, and the consequent demoralisation among ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... Madame de Maintenon's apartment was heard the rumour which usually precedes such an arrival, the King became sufficiently embarrassed to change countenance several times. The Duchesse de Bourgogne appeared somewhat tremulous, and fluttered about the room to hide her trouble, pretending not to know exactly by which door the Prince would arrive. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cordially respected and liked, he found himself nearly always in tacit opposition. Paul's friendship with Kitty was the only connecting link between him and the rector; otherwise they would have drifted hopelessly apart before now. Then, on this particular morning, as he returned home he heard a rumour that May Webster was going to be married to a baronet who had haunted the Court pretty frequently during the last few months; and the hint had filled Paul with unreasoning irritation. Not that it mattered to him whom she married, he assured himself; but the Court had ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... the sense itself, sometimes failing, sometimes false; observation, careless, irregular, and led by chance; tradition, vain and fed on rumour; practice, slavishly bent upon its work; experiment, blind, stupid, vague, and prematurely broken off; lastly, natural history, trivial and poor;—all these have contributed to supply the understanding with very bad materials ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... as Heraclitus says truly, It is more difficult to control love than anger; for whatever love has a fancy to, it will buy even at the cost of life, money, and reputation. Who lives a more quiet life in our town than Ismenodora? When did ever any ugly rumour attach itself to her? When did ever any breath of suspicion sully her house? Some divine inspiration, beyond human calculation, seems now to have ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... King, and the Queen, wilt but arise and stand in the window, and go forth into the hanging gallery thereof, then shall ye know at once what is this rumour, and therewithal shall ye see a sight meet to rejoice the heart of a king new come ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... he is highly in their favour. Bright Stella, Quilca's greatest pride, For them he scorns and lays aside; And Sheridan is left alone All day, to gape, and stretch, and groan; While grumbling, poor, complaining Dingley, Is left to care and trouble singly. All o'er the mountains spreads the rumour, Both of his bounty and good humour; So that each shepherdess and swain Comes flocking here to see the Dean. All spread around the land, you'd swear That every day we kept a fair. My fields are brought ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... convince. Homer, Musaeus, Ovid, Maro, more Of those godful prophets long before Held their eternal fires, and ours of late (Thy mercy helping) shall resist strong fate, Nor stoop to the centre, but survive as long As fame or rumour hath or trump or tongue; But unto me be only hoarse, since now (Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) I my desires screw from thee, and direct Them and my thoughts to that sublim'd respect And conscience unto priesthood; 'tis not need (The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed Wiser ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... received at his home, in a plain envelope, stamped with the Three Rivers postmark, the sum of one hundred dollars, and a typed slip bearing the name, 'Severac Bablon.' Mr. Oppner had been approached, but is very reticent upon the subject. There is a rumour circulating here to the effect that he himself is the donor. But I have been unable to obtain confirmation ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... very long after a very lengthy absence from England, whither I had come to live when King Solomon's Mines had made me rich. Therefore it happened that between the conclusion of my Kendah adventure some years before and this time I saw nothing and heard little of Lord and Lady Ragnall. Once a rumour did reach me, however, I think through Sir Henry Curtis or Captain Good, that the former had died as a result of an accident. What the accident was my informant did not know and as I was just starting on a far journey at the time, I had no ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... sighs, groans, outcries and passionate words, from which she can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy and which are to be heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three partitions. There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a brothel not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but had gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible, insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both the housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... A loud noise, or murmur, as of stir and tumult, is one of the old meanings of 'rumor.' So in King John, V, iv, 45: "the noise and rumour of the field." Since the interview of Brutus and Portia, he has unbosomed all his secrets to her; and now she is in such a fever of anxiety that she mistakes her ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... impatiently expected by the public; and the sum which she obtained for it was, we believe, greater than had ever at that time been received for a novel. We have heard that she cleared more than three thousand guineas. But we give this merely as a rumour. Camilla, however, never attained popularity like that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed; and it must be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not indeed in humour or in power of portraying character, but in grace and in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Only in the hospital that serves the division are the events of his bit of war correlated and reduced to a comprehensive whole. Even then the resulting knowledge is usually wrong. For the imagination of officers, and of men in particular, is wonderful, and rumour has its birthplace in the hospital ward. One may take it as an established fact that the ordinary regimental officer or soldier knows little or nothing about events other than his particular bit of country. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... quite say that, for it is many a long day since the coach was attacked between Newbury and Wancote; but rumour has been busy." ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... dress, but covered with dust, rushed into the circus, bearing in his hand a tall lance, on which was fixed a scroll. The marshals of the games endeavoured to prevent his advance, but he would not be stayed. His message was to the king alone. A rumour of news from the army circulated throughout the crowd. And news from the army it was. Another victory! Scherirah had defeated the Sultan of Roum, who was now a suppliant for peace and alliance. Sooth to say, the intelligence had arrived at dawn of day, but the courtly Honain had contrived ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... the war with the king then my master (God absolve his soul) and we were camped within the Turk's ground many a mile beyond Belgrade—would God it were ours now as it was then! But so happed it that in our camp about midnight there suddenly rose a rumour and a cry that the Turk's whole army was secretly stealing upon us. Therewith our whole host was warned to arm them in haste and set themselves in array to fight. And then were runners of ours, who had brought those ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... on, until one day universal agitation was excited in the neighbourhood by a rumour that one of the ladies was dead. The rustic authorities immediately repaired to the cottage, accompanied by a long train of eager followers; and found that the report was true. The surviving lady ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... time the lady Agatha became his wife. She had suddenly disappeared from her grounds a short time before, and to the amazement and wonder of all, returned with the Baron Wurtzheim, to whom she was united the same evening. Rumour was busy upon this occasion, but the mystery which enveloped it was never dispersed. The lady Agatha, however, seemed oppressed with a ceaseless gloom; in a short time she devoted herself entirely to seclusion, and in a year after her marriage, expired in giving birth to a son. The demeanour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... last night) to come to their senses. The Duke was quite in the right; there is no doubt that some very unwise and improper instructions have issued from the Admiralty, and their purport has got abroad by the indiscretion of somebody, but we only know, or rather suspect from public rumour, that such is the case; they have never been acted upon if they do exist; no overt act has been done, and the production of this document might be attended with very seriously inconvenient consequences. Brougham cares for nothing but the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... when the two young men had lived among the Samanas for about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a myth reached them after being retold many times: A man had appeared, Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths. He was said to wander through the land, teaching, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... had, and so the rumour ran, But 'mid the clash of arms, my Lycidas, Our songs avail no more than, as 'tis said, Doves of Dodona when an eagle comes. Nay, had I not, from hollow ilex-bole Warned by a raven on the left, cut short The rising feud, nor I, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... 1801, and is referred to in a proclamation of the Royalists of La Vendee. In the same year, 1801, Roux Fazaillac, a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator, published a work in which he asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask (as known in rumour) was not one man, but a myth, in which the actual facts concerning at least two men were blended. It is certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if he was wrong, the Man in the Iron Mask was an obscure valet, of French birth, residing ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... If the rumour of the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore of the island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in the cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of glory, or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... himself." And such for the most part are your princes, potentates, great philosophers, historiographers, authors of sects or heresies, and all our great scholars, as [1925]Hierom defines; "a natural philosopher is a glorious creature, and a very slave of rumour, fame, and popular opinion," and though they write de contemptu gloriae, yet as he observes, they will put their names to their books. Vobis et famae, me semper dedi, saith Trebellius Pollio, I have wholly consecrated myself to you and fame. "'Tis all my desire, night and day, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... it is true, trials when the good man must appeal to God from the injustice of man; and amidst the whining candour or hissing of envy, erect a pavilion in his own mind to retire to, till the rumour be overpast; nay, the darts of undeserved censure may pierce an innocent tender bosom through with many sorrows; but these are all exceptions to general rules. And it is according to these common laws ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Osman, the Russian army would never have been permitted to cross the Balkans, much less reach Constantinople.[1] But after the fall of Plevna the resistance of the Turkish army was feeble, and the Muscovites were not long in pitching their camp at San Stefano. Indeed, a rumour got abroad one night that the Russians were in the suburbs of Constantinople. This roused the indignation of the English jingoes to such a pitch that the great Jewish Premier, with the dash that characterized his career, gave peremptory orders for the British ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... of the towns lying on this side of the Urals a rumour was afloat that a Persian magnate, called Rahat-Helam, was staying for a few days in the town and putting up at the "Japan Hotel." This rumour made no impression whatever upon the inhabitants; a Persian had arrived, well, so be it. Only Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, the mayor of the ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... it should seem that some rumour of our whimsical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the irritable genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from several candidates that we had just been thinking of. Gray declined our invitation, though he had not yet been asked: Gay offered to come and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... steam-engines and casual labourers sleeping off their wages in other people's summerhouses, there went about a word of a great find. A pot of copper had been found, some said; of coppers, said others; of Roman gold coins, there was a rumour, and all the coins exchanged for beer. Perhaps some coins were found; what certainly was found was a beautifully made bronze bucket, buried deep below clay and sand in a bed of gravel. It has been classified by the experts as belonging to a Venetian workshop of the seventh century B.C.—actually ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... question as best he could, for he simply could not tell this girl with the pathetic eyes that an old rumour had risen, which made it necessary for the doctor to go farther afield, and so the practice had been disposed of to the first person who was willing to give a little ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... to deal slaughter through Libyan homes, or to drive plundered spoils to the coast. Such violence sits not in our mind, nor is a conquered people so insolent. There is a place Greeks name Hesperia, an ancient land, mighty in arms and foison of the clod; Oenotrian men dwelt therein; now rumour is that a younger race from their captain's name have called it Italy. Thither lay our course . . . when Orion rising on us through the cloudrack with sudden surf bore us on blind shoals, and scattered us afar with his boisterous gales and whelming brine over waves and trackless reefs. To these your ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... 22nd of October, rumour gave way to fact. Rebellion had definitely broken out in the Transvaal and the Free State; Beyers, the ex-Commandant General, Kemp and others were leading in the Transvaal; the names of De Wet and Wessel Wessels were coupled with the Free State. For ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... who accompanied me, was a character. A squat little bundle of furs, with beady black eyes twinkling slyly from a face to which incessant cold and bad brandy had imparted the hues of a brilliant sunset. Local rumour gave Mikouline forty years, but he might have been any age, certainly an octogenarian in such primitive vices as were feasible within the restricted area of his Arctic home. Mikouline had once travelled some distance down the coast, and was therefore installed as ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... late last night; In fact, past six this morning. My rascal valet, in a fright, Awoke, and gave me warning. But what of that?—I'm very young. And you've "been in the Oven," or, Like me, you're wrong'd by rumour's tongue, So—pray don't tell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... but lay down all ready for flight if necessary, with our hats and little bundles beside us. The Bishop and Mr. Ruppell watched all night in the porch. Friday morning the Chinese, continually urged by the Bishop, determined to return to Bau. Later on they heard a rumour that the Malays would attack them on the river; then they made the Datu Bandar sign a promise not to follow them. Still they felt no confidence that he would not, so they said they would take Mr. Helms with them as a hostage ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... a table in Middle Temple Hall, also said to have been there during Elizabeth's time. Mr. Douthwaite alludes to the rumour of the Queen's gift in his book, and endeavoured to substantiate it from records at his command, but in vain. The authorities at Middle Temple are also, so far as we have been able to ascertain, without any documentary evidence to ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... these things, every considerate Man trembles at; and the more, because the frequent cheats of Passion, and Rumour, do precipitate so many, that I wish I could say, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Jedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn he had heard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him with more than the contempt which all men now showed him, but which from none could wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour accounted Mary's lover. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... father felt it due to his position to give, and which generally took the form of solemn dinners to which he invited some of his brother judges, a few eminent barristers, a few political friends, and their wives. But rumour had whispered that the judge and his daughter had not got on too well together—that Miss Fewbanks was a strange girl who did not care for Society or the Society functions which most girls of her age would have delighted ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the time localized the Rukh in the direction of Madagascar was perhaps some rumour of the great fossil Aepyornis and its colossal eggs, found in that island. According to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, the Malagashes assert that the bird which laid those great eggs still exists, that it has an immense power of flight, and preys upon the greater ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp: perhaps as he is about to seize the first place which he has long had in his eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in before him, and carries off the prize, leaving him to commence his irksome toil again. He is in a state of alarm at every appearance or rumour of the appearance of a new actor: 'a mouse that takes up its lodgings in a cat's ear'(2) has a mansion of peace to him: he dreads every hint of an objection, and least of all, can forgive praise mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult; to discriminate is to degrade: he ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... was a rumour (there always is) that we were to return to Pretoria. But the direction we took on marching belied it. Of course, I was "footslogging," but this day, having no horse to drag after me, was able to wander more ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... be curious to know owing to what circumstances so extraordinary an invention as that which imputed cannibalism to the King of England should have found its way into his history. Mr. James, to whom we owe so much that is curious, seems to have traced the origin of this extraordinary rumour. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... rumour of his illness had drawn together, surrounded the death-bed of Henry I and awaited the result. Among them was his natural son Robert of Gloucester; but his legal heiress, the daughter for whom he had done so much and risked so much, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... man's doubts, fears, and perplexities, a certain whisper, say rather, an uncertain rumour, a vague legendary murmur, has been at the same time about, rather than in, his ears—never ceasing to haunt his air, although hitherto he has hardly heeded it. He knows it has come down the ages, and that some in every age ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... he exclaimed as he came up to us, panting from his exertions. "About Mr. Hearn, I mean. There is a rumour that he has been found dead on ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... King Edward and Queen Alexandra (then, of course, Prince and Princess of Wales) paid us a long visit at the Castle. My father had heard a rumour that recently the Prince of Wales had introduced the custom of smoking in the dining-room after dinner. He was in a difficult position; nothing would induce him to tolerate such a practice, but how was he to avoid discourtesy to his ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... doubt, a preconcerted scheme between her and Miss Isabella Tod, to hear what Mr. Andrew Pringle had said to his friend Mr. Snodgrass, and likewise what the Doctor himself had indited to Mr. Micklewham; some rumour having spread of the wonderful escapes and adventures of the family in their journey and voyage to London. Had there not been some prethought of this kind, it was not indeed probable, that both the helper and session-clerk of Garnock could have been there together, in a party, where it ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Hubert, the chasuble-maker. The Bishop having absolutely refused to consent to the marriage, the Huberts endeavoured to separate the lovers by persuading Angelique that Felicien no longer cared for her. They were aided in this by a rumour that Felicien was to marry Claire de Voincourt. A meeting between Angelique and Felicien cleared away the mists, but by this time the girl had fallen into ill-health and appeared to be dying. The Bishop, who had formerly been secretly moved by an appeal made to him by Angelique, came to ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... matter the Major had certainly been well advised. A rumour had become prevalent among sporting circles that Silverbridge had refused to condemn the Major. It was known that he had paid his bets without delay, and that he had, to some extent, declined to take advice from the leaders of the Jockey Club. The Major's friends were informed that the young ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of hair, and a big turban. He rides Moorish fashion, with his stirrups very short, and wears a curved cutlass in his belt. He is a great friend of Caesar Borgia's, which does not prevent Caesar and his father, according to public rumour, from poisoning him at a farewell banquet in Capua. And here is Giovanni Sforza again, on foot. Are those two children the younger sons of Alexander VI? Or are they Lucrezia and Caesar again? I don't know. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... in the Parliament House," said Glenalmond. "It runs riot below among the bar and the public, but it sifts up to us upon the bench, and rumour has some of her voices even in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
