"Small hours" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'll tell it thee. When William Molines lay a-dying his mind was sore distraught at leaving his poor, motherless maid alone, for his son Joseph had gone before him, so he sent for me to watch with him that night, and somewhere in the small hours we thought his time had come, and he besought me to promise that I would take the maid under my keeping and not let her come to want. He said naught of marriage, nor did I, for my wife was but then at rest, and such speech would have been unseemly for him and hateful to me. I ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims - She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair - Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing - Down comes her hair, but what does she ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... even if the positions had been reversed. Being a wise youth, however, and knowing that the best of runners may fail through under-training, he had for the last week or so been going in for a steady course of over-training, getting up in the small hours and going for before-breakfast spins round the track on a glass of milk and a piece of bread. Master R. Robinson was nothing if not thorough in ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... In the small hours of the next morning, while Patsy was on duty in the hospital section, the young Belgian became wakeful and restless. She promptly administered a sedative and sat by his bedside. After a little his pain was eased and he became quiet, but he lay there with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... Nest." What he designed to do next morning I cannot say, but we determined his actions from the other end. Having first appeared before him by Black Wood and lifted the curtain on the second act of my romantic comedy, I remained there a while, then ascended to Strete Farm and presently, in the small hours, awakened the farmer, showed myself stealing ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... connexion with these men. His expeditions were made alone on some dark, unpromising night, when the regular poachers were in bed and asleep. He would steal away after bedtime, or would go out ostensibly to look after the sheep, and, if fortunate, would return in the small hours with a deer on his back. Then, helped by his mother, with whom he lived (for this was when he was a young unmarried man, about 1820), he would quickly skin and cut up the carcass, stow the meat away in some secret place, and bury the head, hide, and offal ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the Turkish aeroplanes occasionally tried to "lay eggs," a by no means easy affair with a moving train as a target. Whatever the reason was, and I never succeeded in discovering it, the trains invariably left Baghdad in the wee small hours, and as the station was on the right bank across the river from the main town, and the boat bridges were cut during the night, we used generally, when returning to the front, to spend the first part of the night sleeping ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... conclusion of the opera at 8-30, the bonne compagnie in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the grande allee, or sit at the cafes listening to open-air performers, sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... night of the bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said. The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first round—with many an ominous shake of the head—the slatternly serving-boys had scarcely risen from their beds in the passages, before she was afoot, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... her to bed and kept her there by main force until she was exhausted. They were up with her all night, and she died in the small hours of the morning. There was nothing for it but to bury her in ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... on the following day, in the tiny withdrawing-room which leads out of the hall at Acol Court. When he had stolen into the house in the small hours of the morning he had seen Richard Lambert leaning out of one of the windows which gave upon ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Kurt said that several of the men were sea-sick, but the motion did not inconvenience Bert, whose luck it was to be of that mysterious gastric disposition which constitutes a good sailor. He slept well, but in the small hours the light awoke him, and he found Kurt staggering about in search of something. He found it at last in the locker, and held it in his hand unsteadily—a compass. Then he ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... a ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims— She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven til all is blue! At ball or drum, til small hours come (Chaperon's fans concealing her yawning) She'll waltz away like a teetotum. And never go home til daylight's dawning. Lawn-tennis may share her favours fair— Her eyes a-dance, and her cheeks a-glowing— Down comes her hair, but then what does she care? It's all ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the equivalent of Maxim's of Paris. The great place for luxurious entertainments, it opens its doors at twilight, and does not close them till the small hours are well advanced. When evening falls, the scene grows animated: business men and women of pleasure crowd the rooms. Gradually the crowd assumes a cosmopolitan character. A band of Hungarian gipsies plays inspiriting and seductive music. The crush increases, the noise grows ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... evidence against Mrs. Zebedee when the inquiry was resumed. To assist the ends of justice she was now put into the witness-box. The discovery of her murdered husband, when she woke in the small hours of the morning, was passed over as rapidly as possible. Only three questions of importance were ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... mud-pies down in the yard. In these conversations, it should be observed, the child was never supposed to be present, except on that single occasion when Mr. Jafifrey leaned over the cradle. After one of our seances I would lie awake until the small hours, thinking of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible dreams about him. Through the day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations, I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now! There was no shaking him off; he became an inseparable ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... another's gaps; and there were plenty of them towards the morning; but, luckily, people don't notice those things when the small hours ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Londres was the favourite rendezvous after the play. Here till the small hours assembled nightly the elite of European Tiflis. Russian and Georgian officers in gorgeous uniforms of dark green, gold lace, and astrachan; French and German merchants with their wives and daughters; with a sprinkling demi-mondaines from Odessa or Kharkoff, sipping ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... was read a third time. So was the Health Insurance Bill, but not until a few Independent Liberals, led by Captain WEDGWOOD BENN, had been rebuked for their obstructive tactics by Mr. MYERS and Mr. NEIL MACLEAN of the Labour Party. As the small hours grew larger this split in the Progressive ranks developed into a yawning chasm, and the Government got a third Bill passed before the weary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... into the depths of mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights where the unspeakably green water was roaring, I don't know how many hundred feet below! If you could have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat in the big rooms of ancient inns at night, until long after the small hours had come and gone, or smelt but one steam of the HOT punch (not white, dear Felton, like that amazing compound I sent you a taste of, but a rich, genial, glowing brown) which came in every evening in a huge broad china bowl! I never ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... collection of romantic incidents associated with the neighbourhood, and has told them in a very quaint and effective fashion. From his collection I now cite a specimen or two. I by no means recommend them as reading for the small hours of the morning. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her stark bewilderment, plagued ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... when the two girls were coming out of the forest with their baskets full and their faces happy, Axel Lohm was riding thoughtfully past, having just settled an unpleasant business at Kleinwalde. Dellwig had sent him an urgent message in the small hours; there had been a brawl among the labourers about a woman, and a man had been stabbed. Axel had ordered the aggressor to be locked up in the little room that served as a temporary prison till he could be handed ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... American, (3) a Belgian, and (4) an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... on 201?" he asked, Train 201 being the westbound passenger overtaken and left behind in the small hours of the morning by the lighter and ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... was completely ostracized. While the children were frolicking like young savages in the fields with their mother, the sick man sat at his dormitory window, or peeped out of his doorway, seeking a ray of sunshine. In the small hours of the night came the visit of the muse, and the man, sick and melancholy, seated himself at the piano, where, coughing and moaning, out of the bitterness of his spirit he improvised his ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... herself in the arms of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, who was resolved, as she says, to be the first to congratulate her on her success. The hour is a late one; supper is served, and conversation is prolonged into the "small hours." All at once Mme. d'Abrantes exclaims, with an explosion of delight,—"Ah! what a charming time is the night! one is so deliciously off for talking! so safe! so secure! safe from bores and from duns!" (on ne craint ni les ennuyeux ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... till the small hours came. Winifred's face cleared of every trace of sorrow, and she loved to think of the cheer and help that Hubert would have in the far-off land. No braver heart of all they knew could have been found to share his pilgrimage; and they ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... continued, still looking into the fire; "it may have been six. I left somewhere in the small hours of the morning, and walked along the Albert Road on the unlit side of the street. As I passed the corner here, I saw a hansom waiting before your door, and you—with somebody ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... In the small hours Arthur fell into troubled sleep and before his eyes were fully shut—as it seemed to the drowsy man—he was roused by his companion pulling the blankets from under him. Ridley sat up. The soft sounds of the desert night had died away, the less subdued ones of ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... knows, had no farther claim upon her—his existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the small hours the wife of his bosom—after having cast her off and driven her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a foul murder and he was guillotined—gentleman and artist of merit though ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... habits. There was a desk and reading lamp for night work near the fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at night, a silver biscuit tin; all the apparatus for the lonely intent industry of the small hours. There was a bookcase of bluebooks, books of reference and suchlike material, and some files. Over the mantelpiece was an enlarged photograph of Lady Hardy and a plain office calendar. The desk was littered with the galley proofs of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... up, the laugh had not been completely against him. He had received the honourable distinction of extra lesson for ragging in French. He had been "touched up" by the prefect of his dormitory for creating a disturbance in the small hours. In fact, he had gone through all the usual preliminaries, and become a ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... lovely pond; and young and gay hearts were often there to wake the echoes with their cheerful, laughing voices. Cato played on the violin, and, when the evenings were chilly or rainy, the young people danced till the small hours of the night. ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical life cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his mild and amiable temper.... The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... family of kittens, who slept on the edge of my mosquito-net, and made frequent inroads upon the inside, with hens and chickens and sundry dogs, who went in and out at will. The music and dancing, the laughter and talking outside, continued till the small hours. Every now and then an Indian girl would come in to rest for a while, take a nap in a hammock, and then return to the dance. When we first arrived in South America, we could hardly have slept soundly under such circumstances; but one soon becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... above her head, and some of her soft brown hair rested in the little open palm. The other stretched down toward the centre of the bed, as if fearlessly to invite the touch of those weird things with which imagination peoples the solemn night—which the wakeful eye, in the still, small hours, sees moving in the darker corners, or passing swiftly by the bedside, or hovering in the air, wearing the semblance of one's dead friends, or filling large portions of the room with some formless presence of unutterable malignity ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had worn a straw hat into November and the last stages of decay, and how it had been burnt by a special commission ceremonially in the great court. He couldn't convey to her the long sessions of beer and tobacco and high thinking that went on in Prothero's rooms into the small hours. A certain Gothic greyness and flatness and muddiness through which the Cambridge spirit struggles to its destiny, he concealed from her. What remained to tell was—attenuated. He could not romance. So she tried to fill in his jejune outlines. She tried to inspire ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... home to-night till the small hours have struck. Miss Atherton will take care of that. There is no fear of her finding us ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to London in the small hours of the day following his scene with Rachel, intending to keep his promise, and let his former wife alone. The cashing of Rachel's cheque had given him and Anita some agreeable moments; though Anita was growing disturbed that he would not tell her ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certain assurance. The scare and perplexity of his first discovery was now qualified by pride in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... want to read, and every day, or rather every night, it gets better and will continue to get better until the Brandenberg gate opens to let the Allies in. This paper is not a morning paper and not an evening paper. It is published at night, in the smallest of the small hours, and I am its sole subscriber, for it is the paper of my dreams. Whether or not I am its editor I could not say. That question leads to the greater one which would need a volume for its decision: Do we compose our own ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... fire was a bad sign and the fact that the enemy's guns were firing from a knoll a few hundred yards East of Anafarta Sagir was proof that our troops were not holding Tekke Tepe. But the Officer of the Watch said that the small hours passed quietly; no firing ashore during the hours of darkness. Could not make head or ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... at which the actual organization of the province was effected and the officials were appointed and sworn in. After this there was a long formal dinner, with the endless courses which characterize such functions in the Philippines, and then came a ball which lasted till the wee small hours. When at last we got on board, tired out, our steamer sailed, and often brought us to some new ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... and Senator G. A. Noftzger (Rep.) led the opposition. The vote resulted in 22 yeas—16 Rep., 4 Pop., 2 Dem.; 13 nays—12 Rep., 1 Pop. The friends had every reason to believe the House would pass the bill, but in the still small hours of the night following the action of the Senate, its Republican members in caucus decided that this might injure the party at the approaching State election, and the next morning it was reconsidered and defeated by 14 yeas—9 Rep., 4 Pop., 1 Dem.; 23 nays—21 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Denvil was written in the small hours. Harry never discovered its contents; but his mother, after reading it half a dozen times, locked it up with a hoard of sacred treasures pertaining to her boy. And soon after six, in the pitiless gold of dawn, the two men cantered leisurely down to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... is apparently just as intense, and he lies awake, saying bad words about the mosquitoes which buzz around him, until the small hours of the morning. When his "boy" wakes him at six o'clock, he feels as if he had had no sleep at all. All the same it is a little cooler now; so he gets up to enjoy the fresh air outside in the verandah. After he has ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... too, were feeling the effect of last night's dissipation. The ball was not over at twelve o'clock, as the invitations had intimated it would be, but had gone on into the wee small hours of morning. It was not often that Ryeville had the chance to trip the light fantastic toe to the music of a Louisville band and the eager dancers had begged for more and more. The old people had dropped out, one by one, but the youngsters ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... tired, and reckoned on going to bed now—but no such thing. Fyall ordered Jupiter to bring a case from his gig—box, containing some capital brandy. A new brewage of punch took place, and I found about the small hours that we were all verging fast towards drunkenness, or something very like that same. The Yankee was specially plied by Fyall, evidently with an object, and he soon succeeded ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the murmur of the City seemed to leap suddenly to articulate words, the clanging thunder of the entire nation—the whole round world thrilling with this great news that had come to it from out the north in the small hours of this hot summer's night. And the chanting cries of the street rolled to her like the tremendous diapason of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... almost inaccessible among the hills, and if they are not found and brought back to the pastures within easy reach of the corral, they become wild, and then there is mischief to pay. They sneak down late at night or in the small hours of the morning to the corn and wheat fields, break the fences, and trample the crops in a way that spells disaster to ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... friend in him. He was markedly kind to children, especially little girls, to servants, to animals. When he was himself in great poverty he would put pennies in the hands of the children sleeping on doorsteps in the Strand, as he walked home in the small hours of the morning. He left most of his property to his negro servant Frank: and so united a delicate consideration for Frank's feelings with an affection for his cat Hodge that he always went out himself to buy oysters ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... unsleeping eye for developments. Her office window commanded the entrance to Blake's suite of rooms, and no one went up by day whom she did not see. Her bedroom commanded Blake's house and grounds, and every night she sat at her darkened window till the small hours and watched for possible suspicious visitors, or possible suspicious movements on ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... my questions, and busied himself all evening in an abstruse chemical analysis which involved much heating of retorts and distilling of vapors, ending at last in a smell which fairly drove me out of the apartment. Up to the small hours of the morning I could hear the clinking of his test-tubes which told me that he was still engaged in his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... small hours of the night came a cold so intense that he was driven to sleep in the cabin where reigned the small iron stove that brewed the skipper's odorous pot. After he had slept a good way into the next day, he came up again to find the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... creeping up into the camp. How many there were we could not tell, but later on we learnt that some of them had been killed, and seeing the flash of the rifles, which was a new experience to them, the rest had retreated for the time being, but soon rallied together for attack that night or in the small hours of the morning. Knowing that if they once rushed us in the darkness we should all be doomed for their cooking pots, the state of our feelings can ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... let James know that she had borne him a son, she did not perceive that thus she would withhold the most potent of influences for his repentance and restoration to God and his parents. She did not see James again that night; and before she fell asleep at last in the small hours of the morning, she had made up her mind that, ere the same morning grew clear upon the moor, she would, as the only thing left her to do for him, be far away from Stonecross. She would go back to Deemouth, and again seek ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... period in the evening, or more generally towards the still small hours of the morning, in which we so far unbend as to take a single glass of hot whisky and water. We will neither defend the practice nor excuse it. We state it as a fact which must be borne in mind by the readers of this article; for we know ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... you will find exceedingly useful." Here Humphreys' talk became professional and his speech surcharged with technicalities—for he was an enthusiast in everything relating to the combating and cure of disease, and far into the small hours he descanted learnedly upon his beloved science, confiding to and instructing Dick in many valuable secrets that, by dint of laborious research and much consumption of midnight oil, he had wrung from Dame Nature. And on many an ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the dog, came out with a gun and Paul could not explain his presence there any too quickly. The keeper called off the dog, gave the Captain a supply of matches, who lighted up his bull's eye and was soon forging ahead again. During the small hours of the night, he passed the steamers Osceola, James Howard and Andy Baum, all of which spoke him and inquired if he was in need of anything. At daybreak, the Osceola Belle stopped and gave him some hot coffee and the City of Helena gave ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... an office in Throgmorton Street and went to business every day. He dined at home, and sometimes had friends to dinner. When he was alone he invariably went to the club, where he stayed until the small hours ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... never known. Jaffery, with conscience still sore, and childishly anxious that I should not account him a traitor and a scoundrel, and a brute too despicable for human touch, told me, as I have already stated, over and over again, until I yawned for weariness in the small hours of the morning, what had taken place in his staggering interview with Doria; but as regards Liosha, he was shyly evasive. After all, I fancy, it was a very simple affair. She had told me bluntly that when the two men, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... possessing no legality behind it; and he indeed obstinately resisted every attempt to seduce him. Although his resignation was refused he stood his ground manfully, and it became clear that some other expedient would have to be resorted to. In the small hours of the 13th June what this was was made clear: by a rapid reshuffling of the cards Dr. Wu Ting-fang's resignation was accepted and the general officer commanding the Peking Gendarmerie, a genial soul named General Chiang Chao-tsung, who had survived unscathed the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... beside the kitchen fire, he would fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange and interesting events, the secrets of families, brave deeds of war, the miraculous discovery of crime, the visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle would sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: Jonathan applauding the unexpected incidents with many a slap of his big hand; Nance, perhaps, more pleased with the narrator's eloquence and wise reflections; and then, again, days would ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on walking in the night, can tell the hour by the smell, the taste, the elusive fine aroma of the quiet air. Before midnight it is like a new-lit censer; in the small hours the smell of old camp fires comes trailing, and the scent of rain ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, 'That lassie is very natural. Some of the ways you say she had - your mother had them just the same. Did you ever notice what an extraordinary ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... the pound," Lonegan observed, regarding the other's bulk with one eye shut. "I never heard of Mowbray spending much time in bed outside of the small hours." "How old ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely. That, combined with all the shouting and clatter of trollies, etc., rather racking in the small hours. At 5 a.m. we arrive at ——, where we ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... cream in his cup. And whether the pleasure or the pain were the keenest even then, I cannot tell; but it was one of those minutes when one chooses the pleasure, and will have it and will taste it, whatever lies at the bottom of the draught. The small hours of night, the fire-lit kitchen, the daintily-spread table, she and Evan at opposite sides of it; the pleasure of ministering, such as every woman knows; the beauty of her bread, the magnificence of her coffee, the perfection of her cookery, the exultation of seeing him enjoy it; ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... tonight, at least, she would try and sleep. Her hand was on the switch to turn out the lights when there came a knocking at the door. It was such a strange, peremptory knocking—such a careless outraging of the small hours, that for a moment she stood rooted with astonishment and apprehension, staring at herself in the mirror that composed the back of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... slip into the Assize Court and see that Anarchist tried there; we afterwards gaze upon his execution by the guillotine; we are also on the boulevards when the lamps are lighted for a long night of revelry, and we stroll along the quiet streets in the small hours of the morning, when crime and homeless want are ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... best she might. The nights were cold, after the fire had gone out, and she covered herself with a cloak of Veronica's. In itself, it was no great hardship for a tough woman of the mountains, as she was. But she slept little, for she feared something. In the small hours she often thought she heard some one breathing on the other side of the door, close to the lock, and once she was quite sure that a single ray of light flashed through the keyhole, below the half-turned key. Yet this might have been her imagination. And as for the breathing, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... greatly upset, however unreasonably, he himself should have accompanied her homeward, in her most need to go by her side. And thinking these things, the disturbed young man had tumbled out of bed in the small hours, to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... night to the sound of a great flock of sheep going past. I suppose they were going by forced marches to the fair over at Hylesbury: It was in the small hours: and a few of them lifted up their voices and complained of this robbery of night and sleep in the night. They were so tired, so tired, they said: and so did the muffawully patter of their poor feet. The lambs said most; and the sheep agreed ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... exceedingly comfortless supper. And as darkness drew down, a feeling of the utmost unease and disquietude came over me. All my talks with Seaton returned on me with a suddenly enriched meaning. I recalled again his face as we had stood hanging over the staircase, listening in the small hours to the inexplicable stirrings of the night. There were no candles in the room; every minute the autumnal darkness deepened. I cautiously opened the door and listened, and with some little dismay withdrew, for I was uncertain of my way out. I even tried the garden, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... cried Eugenia, "they are terrible people! I don't know what they may do over there. I am a quiet little humdrum woman; I have rigid rules and I keep them. One of them is not to have visitors in the small hours—especially clever men like you. So ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... for the studies by which his mind was kept so full of useful and curious knowledge, I cannot well conceive. He loved to protract an interesting conversation into the small hours of the night, and he was by no means, as it is said most long-lived men are, an early riser. An anecdote related by a gentleman of the New York bar will serve to illustrate, in some degree, his desultory habits during that part of his ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... less, all other members of the world of fashion went to the entertainment, which proved one of surpassing brilliancy. The night was fine, and the company, which began arriving soon after nine o'clock, stayed till the small hours of the following morning. The walks adjacent to the Palace were enclosed and converted into temporary rooms, glittering with lights and festooned with flowers. The supper took place at two o'clock in the morning in an exquisite grotto of rare exotics, and along the centre of the table, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... menacer on the head, and said, very quietly,—"Young man! I'm Cribb."[683] W*** seized the great pugilist's hand, and shook it warmly, got him to his own rooms in college, collected some friends, and had a symposium which lasted until the large end of the small hours. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... his acts were irreparable. He could undo them. He could make amends. The small hours of the morning are not perhaps the most suitable time for making amends, but Mr. Bennett was too remorseful to think of that. Do It Now had ever been his motto, so he started by ringing the ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... he could do anything better," her cousin said to her that night. Lady Glencora was now in the habit of having Alice with her in what she called her dressing-room every evening, and then they would sit till the small hours came upon them. Mr Palliser always burnt the midnight oil and came to bed with the owls. They would often talk of him and his prospects till Alice had perhaps inspired his wife with more of interest ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... these remarks in dull despair. It was true that he might receive news from Ellen at Sedalia, but Sedalia would not be reached before the small hours of the following morning, when his journey would be practically ended. Nor was there any nearer town, large enough to support a night telegraph-office, where he could expect a message to be received in season to reach him. He thanked the operator for his suggestions, and returned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... may not have been the chocolate, but in the small hours of the following morning it became expedient that I should admit Nobby into the open air. And so it came about that I stood patient and shivering, in a fur coat and pyjamas, at a garden door, while a small white rough-haired thing heaved upon the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to turn in, it was along in the wee small hours of morning before slumber crept in on ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that "she" would soon come on duty, and there was an air of conscious expectancy among the veterans of the ward. "She," the V.A.D. girl who had received us when we were deposited at the hospital in the small hours of the morning, was—and is—an efficient nurse, a good comrade, a beautiful woman, and the friend of every casualty lucky enough to have been in her charge. For a wounded officer staled by the brutalities of trench life there could be no better mental tonic than the ministrations ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... mail after your letter; I went to a medical meeting in the evening; during my absence my oldest daughter read the book, and on my return, when I opened the door, she told me how well she liked it. I had to sit down and read it, and I did so until far out in the small hours. I must say that the book opened new views to me, and I am sorry that I did not know the many valuable facts contained in it when I was in Berlin last year, when you know the wind that was blowing was anything but Philhellenic. ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to these friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized over the financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends; she sat up till the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl; during the height of their careers she organized plots for their assistance; and even when their stars were plainly on the decline, she would often ask them to lunch, if she happened to ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... in, in quite a matter-of-fact way. "Do you know that the small hours are getting to be large hours, and we are sitting here as unconcernedly as if it were just after dinner. Come, let us both get upstairs and to bed as fast as our feet can carry us," and she promptly set the example by extinguishing the lamp and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a corner in the small hours of the morning, I came suddenly upon a gang of drunken roughs ripe for mischief. The leader had a long dirk-knife with which he playfully jabbed me in the ribs, insolently demanding what I thought of it. I seized him by the wrist with as calm a pretence ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... by the way, which he took right good care to defeat in his own person; for in less than five hours after we retired, which was about the first of the small hours, he rushed into my room, and finding that the awful noises which he made, had no effect in waking me, dragged me bodily out of bed, and clapping my wet sponge in my face, walked off, as he said, to fetch the bitters, which were to make ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... good deal of singing and dancing going on in the town that night, the rumpus being so great that it was well on into the small hours before it subsided sufficiently to allow me to get to sleep; and on the following morning I learned, through my boy Piet, that so great had been the king's gratification at the result of his interview with me that he had ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... If the officer at the bridge refused to pass them, how were they to be certain that they would fare any better at the hands of his superior, probably a crusty village official who would not relish being awakened in the small hours of the morning even by a belated army officer? At the order of Captain Goritz, the chauffeur Karl backed the car into a meadow and put out the lights. Then Goritz lighted a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... you are making a search, I entreat you to take care of the papers on the table in my bedroom. They are notes that have cost me a great deal of labour in the small hours of the night. Also—" ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... more than a baby in arms. Usoof was going home to find his relations and tell them all about himself, and "Tuan"[2] X. happened to be going too. This being a fact widely reported and discussed nightly far into the small hours of the morning, while friends ate light refreshments of bread and sugar with pink-coloured syrups to wash them down, it is not to be wondered at that X. began at last to feel that it was settled he was going principally to search for Usoof's mother, who was possibly living in a village somewhere ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... Treacher, setting down the bottle of gin. "And what's more, I don't go a-sheevoing it around Garrison Hill in the small hours, and a-holding on to railings, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... waited awhile on the hills till Old Gerard should be gone about his business. What this was Young Gerard did not know, he only knew that each year on this night the old shepherd left him to his own devices, and returned in the small hours of the morning. Not therefore until he judged that the master must have left the hut, did the boy fold his sheep; and this done he ran out on the hills again, seeking the lost lamb. For careless though he was he cared for his sheep, as he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... out as it did; though I admit and have always admitted that my moral responsibility is but little if any the less on that account. Yet I was never a consenting party to wholesale murder, whatever else I was. The night before I sailed, Santos and the captain were aboard with me till the small hours. They promised me that every soul should have every chance; that nothing but unforeseen accident could prevent the boats from making Ascension again in a matter of hours; that as long as the gig was supposed to be lost with all hands, nothing else mattered. ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... warnings upon this subject are startling enough, even as addressed to students, but in their application to poets and novelists they have far greater significance. It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is whispered, have a close connection with fiction) always write in the 'small hours,' but their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet their exceptional requirements; whereas we storytellers live like other people (only more purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system of illumination also—we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist who ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary. It was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes, stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark, blurred outlines of the landscape and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... with a sort of half-hour's preliminary practice in the various classrooms; the school then assembled for prayers, after which came breakfast. During the progress of this meal on the Friday morning, in the small hours of which had been enacted the scene described at the end of the previous chapter, it became evident that "something was up." The table, at which sat most of the boys of the Third Form, was in a state of great disorder, while the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... that this was really claiming a kinship with him, and a picture which presented itself to his mind's eye, of himself foraging for food in his father's castle with the Heavenly Twins in the small hours of the night, appealed to him. It was an opportunity ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... great gun in the small hours of the morning had startled all the people in the vicinity, though it was not till they left their beds that the news was conveyed to them. A party in the town just below the scene of the disaster to the Vampire had been collected, and they had taken a steamer to explore the river in search of the ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... safe from me. But what of the man Hawk? There no such considerations swayed me. I would interview the man Hawk. I would give him the most hectic ten minutes of his career. I would say things to him the recollection of which would make him start up shrieking in his bed in the small hours of the night. I would arise, and be a man and slay him—take him grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes, broad-blown, as flush as May; at gaming, swearing, or about some act that had no ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... the small hours, a Tommy with a water-cart strayed into our lines, asking for the Boer prisoners, for whom he had been sent to get water. He swore copiously at the nature of his job in particular, and at war in general. I showed him the way, and ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... one of Paul's friends, gave a supper at the Bachelors' Club. A supper in honor of Paul, or to testify the sorrow of the Club at the loss of one of its members. It was a very hilarious occasion, and the toasting and wine-drinking extended far into the small hours. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... During the small hours of November 28 the wind rose to a velocity of sixty miles per hour, but gradually diminished to a twenty-knot breeze as the day advanced. Light snow fell from a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... with the professor that night, and the small hours were growing large before they ended the long talk of which their strange bargain, and the still stranger experiment which was to result from it, formed the subject. The next day the packing-case containing the mummy was transferred to Djama's laboratory, ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... At last in the small hours of the morning something happens. How it has been arrived at nobody seems to know; but when the roll is called for the thirteenth time, Norfolk, heretofore loyal to Sir Henry, suddenly votes for Crooks. Tremendous excitement follows. The word goes round that ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... occupants. I expected nothing less. The fire flickered and the shadows danced, memories of strange historic things rose vividly in my mind; but midnight chimed solemnly from a seven-foot clock, and nothing happened. My imagination would not be hurried, and the chill that is with the small hours had come upon me, and I had nearly abandoned myself to sleep, when in the hall adjoining there arose the rustling of silk dresses that I had waited for and expected. Then there entered two by two the high-born ladies and their gallants of Jacobean ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... waters cover the sea." At a Watch-Night service in Fetter Lane (Dec. 31st, 1738) the fervour reached its height. At that service both the Wesleys, George Whitefield, Benjamin Ingham, Kinchin and other Oxford Methodists were present, and the meeting lasted till the small hours of the morning. "About three in the morning," says John Wesley, "as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... was in no haste. In the small hours of the morning the currents of enthusiasm, like those of life, run slow. It is then that the spirit of a man is at its weakest. Or perhaps it was the sight of Valmy that cooled his optimism. There it lay, grey and forbidding even with ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the small hours. The moon was on her bed and the air was very cold. She came awake suddenly, with a thought in her mind so concrete that it was as though some one ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... style, singing a song the while from the gladness of his heart. It was a merry song, about mother slowly going down the hectic path of phthisis pulmonalis, and sister, who has—one is led to believe—taken to small bottles, small hours and undesirable companions, refusing to come home and lift the mortgage which is shortly to be foreclosed—all in the narrow confines of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... which could not be described as being "a short way from here." It would have taken eight or nine hours—a day's journey. Mr. Pickwick left Eatanswill about one or two, for the lunch was going on, and got to Bury in time for dinner, which, had he left Yarmouth, would have taken him to the small hours of ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... is, from ten till five, the sun that comes to say goodbye to the apples, that will all be plucked by the end of the month, is so strong that forest trees are duped, and are ready to do their part towards a green Yule if only the midday warmth will linger on to those deadly small hours of the morning, when hoarfrost gets the thin end of its wedge into the almanack, and sleepers go the length of coming out of bed for something to put over their feet, and end by putting it over most of their total. From ten till five, at least, the last swallows ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... slight alteration in the course. The Blue-Bell ran merrily on until the small hours of the morning, when everybody on board was suddenly awakened by ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... was gloriously drunk, and utterly reckless, and after the meeting was over quite a bunch of us became as drunk as he, though not quite so gloriously. He was quite helpless toward the small hours, when our party broke up, and I took Terry home with me, as Katie was not there, and on the way I had the pleasure of acting as a referee when he and a stranger, who Terry fancied had insulted him, did really have a fist-fight; I gathered up their hats and neck-ties and kept out of the way, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... became not quite so excellent. I had been accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake. But now this began to fail me. When I had read two or three of the small hours away and was as wide awake as ever, I found that a drink furnished the soporific effect. Sometimes two or three drinks ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the gorge and added fuel to the fire. For a time the wind increased in velocity until a stiff gale was blowing, then, as the small hours came on, it waned, and the beacon flared straight ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... All through the small hours of the morning Estein sat on the poop in silence. Helgi, wrapped in his cloak, threw himself on the deck beside him and fell asleep with a lightened heart, while the long ship, slipping down the sound with the tide, turned westwards into the swell ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... at the farm-house where the peddler, whose name was Joel Rogers, was always welcome, and where he usually staid when in Allington. Between Peter Jerrold and the peddler there was a strong friendship, and the two often sat into the small hours of the night, while the latter told marvelous tales of his wild Welsh country, which he held above all other lands, and to which, the last time he was seen in Allington, he said he was ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... handicapped by circumstances—to be good company without discarding the fatal air was extremely difficult; also the cause may have been that the daring spirits felt their courage forsake them in a tete-a-tete; but it is certain that once when Florozonde drove home in the small hours to the tattered aunt who lived on her, she exclaimed violently that, "All this silly fake was giving her the hump, and that she wished she were 'on the road' again, with a jolly good fellow who ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... encampment, and after the night halt rode forward to inspect it. He returned in the small hours reporting it a train of Mormons stopped for sickness. A boy of fifteen had broken his leg ten days before and was now in a desperate condition. The train had kept camp hoping for his recovery, or for the advent of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... line of forest whence came nothing but the singing of night birds and the calling of wild animals. Yet Trent would have no caution relaxed, the more they progressed, the more vigilant the watch they kept. At last came signs of the men of Bekwando. In the small hours of the morning a burning spear came hurtling through the darkness and fell with a hiss and a quiver in the ground, only a few feet from where Trent and the boy lay. Trent stamped on it hastily and gave no alarm. But ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the two friends were left alone together drinking wine, Athelwold was still troubled in his mind, although his suspicion and fear were not so acute as at first, and the longer they sat talking—until the small hours—the more relieved did he feel from Edgar's manner towards him. Edgar in his cups opened his heart and was more loving and free in his speech than ever before. He loved Athelwold as he loved no one else in ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... small hours of the night my master woke me. The fire was still burning, and the snow ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... feeding. They graze until about ten o'clock and then sleep on well into the small hours, wake and begin to feed again at ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... somewhat pleasant lounging place for young officers in their few leisure hours. While there is plenty of comfort at an officers' club there are few in which anything like real luxury is to be found. And, while the civilian may remain at his club until well into the small hours the Army officer, with his next day of arduous duty ahead of him, usually leaves his club between nine and ten in the evening, if ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... can't go home without confessing, although I know it is a heinous offence to interrupt the kind of musing that goes with dying embers and faded roses in the small hours. But it would weigh on my conscience all night if I didn't. I was asleep, but I wakened up just before you came in and went to the window. I didn't mean to spy upon anyone—but that street was bright as day! And if you will let an M.P. kiss you on the doorstep in glaring moonlight, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... play at railway speed, like a night express—puffing out volumes of smoke as he panted along. "I dip my pen in their blood," he said from time to time, and threw back his head and laughed aloud in the silence of the small hours. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
