"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cautiously. The room was uninhabited; stark bare of furniture, save for the quadrant key left to hang from the midmost beam; the "hellen "-slated floor clean as a ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... his hand cordially and turned to depart. Vincenzo was in waiting with the carriage. Once I looked back, as with slow steps I left the field; a golden radiance illumined the sky just above the stark figure stretched so straightly on the sward; while almost from the very side of that pulseless heart a little bird rose from its nest among the grasses and soared into the heavens, singing rapturously as it flew into the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Pandora in fayre Cynthia's steede, And make the moone inconstant like thyselfe, Raigne thou at women's nuptials, and their birth, Let them be mutable in all their loves. Fantasticall, childish, and folish, in their desires Demanding toyes; and stark madde When they ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable will ring the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... smothered cries for help. Smoke that filled his throat, eyes, brain, soul. Terrible, enfolding, imprisoning smoke; thick, yellow, gray, menacing! Smoke that shut his soul away from all the universe, as if he had been suddenly blotted out, and made him feel how stark alone he had been born, and always would ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line—'I would he ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... math agut!' (Pretty well, thank you,) says the bear. The people were surprised to hear how plainly he spoke—but the mayor ordered him directly to be ripped up; and after some opposition, and a good deal of difficulty, Pat stepped forth stark naked out of the bear's-skin wherein he had been fourteen or fifteen days most cleverly stitched. The women made off—the men stood astonished—and the mayor ordered his keepers to be put in goal unless they satisfied him; but that was presently done. The bear afterwards ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... hundred yards outside Reninghelst where we stayed until the 28th. The weather remained hot and fine, except for two very heavy showers in the middle of one day, when most of the officers could be seen making furious efforts to dig drains round their bivouacs from inside, while the other ranks stood stark naked round the field and enjoyed the pleasures of a cold shower-bath. We spent our time training and providing working parties, one of which, consisting of 400 men under Capt. Jeffries, for work at Zillebeke, proved an even greater ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... feet in amazement and horror, and stood staring at the body of his master and friend lying stiff and stark beneath the yellow light of the hanging lamp. Then suddenly he sprang forward and kneeled again beside the pale noble head that looked so grand in death. He took one of the hands and chafed it, he listened for the beating of the heart ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... along the highroad, a tramcar went rocking by, doubtless bearing a few belated workers homeward. The stark incongruity of the thing was appalling. How little those weary toilers, hemmed about with the commonplace, suspected that almost within sight from the car windows, in a place of prosy benches, iron railings, and unromantic, flickering ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ''Twas there he died ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... which the name Of fair Savitri, men would give,— And then he vanished in a flame. "Adieu, great god!" She took the soul, No bigger than the human thumb, And running swift, soon reached her goal, Where lay the body stark and dumb. ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... that Susanna Martin, upon a Causeless Disgust, had threatned him, about a certain Cow of his, That she should never do him any more Good: and it came to pass accordingly. For soon after the Cow was found stark dead on the dry Ground, without any Distemper to be discerned upon her. Upon which he was followed with a strange Death upon more of his Cattle, whereof he lost in one Spring to the Value of Thirty Pounds. But the said John Kembal had ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Alix, what on earth are you saying? Are you stark, staring crazy? You come right upstairs and get into bed this minute. My land, I—I believe you're going to be sick. You've got the queerest look in your eyes. Come on, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... STARK'S Experiments on Diet, p. 110, that "when he fed upon roasted goose, he was more vigorous both in body and mind ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself," people said: no one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... stark ruin. This man had drawn into his hands every penny she possessed, and was utilizing it for the furtherance of his own nefarious business. She had an idea—vague as yet, but later taking definite shape—that if she might ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... ruins of the stable. His shelter had not escaped the fury of the battle. He could not run away, for they had tied him fast when they carried his old mother off. So now he lay amid that debris, his eyes half open in death and his legs stretched out stark ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... of the utility of knowledge, is its promoting the happiness of mankind."—Dr. Stark on Diet, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... chance escaped from the guardians which the good Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... No mechanical contrivance has ever been designed that is comparable to the hand in flexibility, deftness, adaptability, or power of prehension. It can pick up a needle or a cannon-ball at will. Its touch is as light as a feather or as stark as a catapult. It can be as gentle as mercy or as harsh as battle. It can soothe to repose or rouse to fury. It can express itself in the gentle zephyr or in the devastating whirlwind. Its versatility is altogether worthy of notice, and we may well hold the lesson ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... bring. Stark-eyed the hero dies. Do you not know that thus for twenty years I've faced both ball and bullet!—for no prize But weal of France, my country? In man's ears, Yea and before God's all-beholding eyes, I swear I ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... necessary to reach the river. When I overtook the party I altered the course and at 3.20 p.m. reached a creek that probably drains a great deal of back country. As there was water in its channel we encamped. The creek I named Stark Creek. Before we reached here we crossed two other creeks; the first I named Salton Creek and other Isabella Creek. The country we passed over from our last camp consists chiefly of high and wooded downs, and though the soil was rich the grass and saltbush, from the want of rain, ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... people, foremost one who swung An earthen bowl with lighted coals, behind The kinsmen shorn, with mourning marks, ungirt, Crying aloud, "O Rama, Rama, hear! Call upon Rama, brothers"; next the bier, Knit of four poles with bamboos interlaced, Whereon lay, stark and stiff, feet foremost, lean, Chapfallen, sightless, hollow-flanked, a-grin, Sprinkled with red and yellow dust—the Dead, Whom at the four-went ways they turned head first, And crying "Rama, Rama!" carried ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... into the recesses of man's natural appetites will never be surpassed. How under the glance of his Norman anger, all manner of pretty subterfuges fade away; and "the real thing" stands out, as Nature and the Earth know it—"stark, bleak, terrible and lovely." His subjects may not wander very far from the basic situations. He does not deal in spiritual subtleties. But when he ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... stark bewilderment. He knew the history of Leah's necklace. It was merely an oddity, and nothing more—a freak piece of costume jewelry made from fragments of an Arizona meteorite. Leah had worn the necklace a dozen times before, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... master's heart, The Douglas, stark and grim; And woe is me I should be here, Not side by side ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... creepy dark, Have told of arrows, cloth-yard long, Whistling before them clean and strong, Of Huns that got them, pierced and stark; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... from which he had suffered, he peered at this apparition, a mystic figure in the aura of the fog—the shade of Frank Vaniman, so his frantic belief insisted—and leaped up, screaming like a man who had gone stark, staring mad. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... brothers follow on the trail we blaze. Where howled the wolf and ached the naked plain Spring bounteous harvests at our brothers' hands; In place of war's alarums, peaceful days; Above the warrior's grave the golden grain Turns deserts grim and stark to laughing lands. ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... it was time to lead his family to the orange orchard. One day they flamed and rioted up and down the shining river, raced over the corn field, and tilted on the sumac. The next, a black frost had stripped its antlered limbs. Stark and deserted it stood, ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded—the long hours, lying there tense, stark-eyed, sickened with desire. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... one corner lay a child sleeping. On the bed, covered with a dingy sheet, lay the stark form out of which the miserable ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... for which he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the subject ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... opportunity of seeing some of these at Bhopal, and the following is the picturesque description that he gives of them: "I remarked some groups of religious mendicants of a frightfully sinister character. They were Jogins, who, stark naked and with dishevelled hair, were walking about, shouting, and dancing a sort of weird dance. In the midst of their contortions they brandished long, sharp poniards, of a special form, provided with steel chains. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... by flitter—Asaki, one of his Hunter pilots, and the three from the Queen—lifting over the rim of mountains behind the fortress-palace and speeding north with the rising sun a flaming ball to the east. Below, the country was stark—rocks and peaks, deep purple shadows marking the veins of crevices. But that was swiftly behind and they were over a sea of greens, many shades of green, with yellow, blue, even red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops. Another chain of heights and ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... lorry had gone into the mud at the side of the road and was being dug out. A horse neatly disembowelled lay on its back in the road, its four stark legs pointed upward. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Unyoro people and the tribes we had hitherto seen was most striking. On the north side of the river the natives were either stark naked or wore a mere apology for clothing in the shape of a skin slung across their shoulders. The river appeared to be the limit of utter savagedom, and the people of Unyoro considered the indecency of nakedness precisely in the same ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... FLORIO sent (to cool His flame for BIANCAFIORE) to school, Where pedant made his pathic bum For her sake suffer martyrdom? Did not a certain lady whip 885 Of late her husband's own Lordship? And though a grandee of the House, Claw'd him with fundamental blows Ty'd him stark naked to a bed-post, And firk'd his hide, as if sh' had rid post 890 And after, in the sessions-court, Where whipping's judg'd, had honour for't? This swear you will perform, and then I'll set you from th' inchanted den, And ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... thriller. It was full of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and passengers were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Lifesaving station. And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her shoulders knelt beside it wringing ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was overheard by another madman, who was in an opposite cell; and raising himself up from an old mat, whereon he had thrown himself stark naked, he demanded aloud, who it was that was going away recovered ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... thirty thousand men were we to force the Jumna fords — The hawk-winged horse of Damajee, mailed squadrons of the Bhao, Stark levies of the southern hills, the Deccan's sharpest swords, And he the harlot's traitor son ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... our peoples melt In covert to abide; Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill Our Jungle Barons glide. Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain, That draw the new-yoked plough; Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red Above ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... case; but the truth is, I see nothing that can be done for the Daltons. To talk of putting a family, in such a state as they are now in, back again, upon such a farm, is stark nonsense—without stock or capital of any ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... could possibly secure arms and ammunition with which to equip the army of Albert Sidney Johnston, these gunboats were steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi bearing thousands of troops armed, drilled and led by stark, game-fighting generals from ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... across to the barn where it lay, stark and lifeless in the shade in which it had taken refuge ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a delay and an anxious inquiry from above: 'What's the matter?' 'Haul away,' is the response, and the bucket comes heavy this time. Oh, it's only a man, stark naked, fainting, with a rope beneath his arms, and head away to one side. 'Hospital case, overcome, haul away,' and another bucket ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... troubled, for he felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young wife's unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So when Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to Natchez, accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered to go with them as an additional protection against the Indians who were then especially active, and his escort was very gladly accepted. The trip was made in safety, and after seeing the lady ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... ridiculous fashion, as if he were a blacksmith's fire, and then squeezing out a single drop of essence of pepper, vinegar, or beef-tea from a glass syringe upon the dry surface, not unnaturally arrive at the conclusion that master has gone stark mad, and that, in their private opinion, it's the microscope and the skeleton as ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... unheard, for the grave-digger was looking at the stark body rolled in a soiled blanket now lying face downward in ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... we went to work in a new place, a place where some time previously a fire had swept through a strip of the woods, killing the trees, but leaving them standing, stark and bare, but still sound as nuts—just the thing we wanted. Our chief difficulty this time was in getting the felled timbers out from amidst their fellows—for the dead trees were very thick and the mountain-side ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... and each man his boat, ffor they are that makes the least boats. The company that we had filled above 360 boats. There weare boats that caryed seaven men, and the least two. It was a pleasur to see that imbarquing, ffor all the yong women went in stark naked, their hairs hanging down, yett it is not their coustoms to doe soe. I thought it their shame, but contrary they thinke it excellent & old custome good. They sing a loud and sweetly. They stood in their boats, and remained in that posture halfe a day, to ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... sides, and as the squadron swept by the men showered on the poor dead body remarks expressive of their contempt. Corporal Glazier was an exception. Moved by an impulse born of our common humanity, he returned and buried the cold, stark corpse, covering it with mother Earth; and when questioned why he gave such consideration to a miserable dead rebel, replied, that he thought any man brave enough to die for a principle, should be respected for that bravery, whether his cause were ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... up his bright shining sword, cleared of its ten years' rust, and struck him so strong a blow that his head was cleft asunder, and he fell stark dead to the ground. Thereupon Peter Unticare went in and told the rest how it was with the keeper, and at once they came forth, and with their weapons ran him through and cut off his head, so that no man should know who ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... go drawing on down or cliff Let no soft curves intrude Of a woman's silhouette, But show the escarpments stark and stiff As in utter solitude; So shall you ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... devour the grass That grows on graves, and gnaw the bare bones down Which wolves have left! Stark-naked may she pass, Chased by the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Bureau county, laid about sixty rods of two-inch tile up a slight depression in his corn-field, discharging the same under a box culvert in the public road. This depression continued into a pasture field of Mr. J. H. Mellor, of Stark county, about eighteen rods to a running stream. Mr. Mellor sued Mr. Pilgrim for trespass, and the case was twice tried successively in the circuit courts of Stark and Bureau counties. The juries each time decided for Mr. Pilgrim, but the Appellate court each time reversed the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... absorb it, or at least give a background to shadow over its likelihood, the scenery and atmosphere to lend an evanescent credibility, changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... nothing to measure it; for his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... yards from the shed, Sunbeam shied violently. Looking to one side, she beheld in the shadow of a mass of scrub-oaks the body of a horse lying stark and still. Close beside the head was a dark spot in ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... hurried to the door. The unfortunate man had shot himself dead! The next morning what should come rolling out of the lottery wheel but his numbers—16, 42, 51—a prize of twenty thousand dollars! Tricked by fortune, the man lay cold and stark at the Morgue. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... discovering the north pole, or about the President's message when the dog had a rat cornered under the corn-crib and was barking like mad. But, then, parents can't see things in their right relations and proportions. And there sat mother, too, darning stockings, and the dog just stark crazy about that rat. 'Tis enough to make a boy lose faith in parents forevermore. A dog, a rat, and a boy—there's a combination that recks not of the fall of empires or the tottering of thrones. Even chicken-noodles must take ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... my care of her. Heaven and earth should not restrain me,—no, they should not,——But her least frown should still me, tame me, and make me a calm coward: say this, say all, say any thing to charm her rage and tears. Oh I am mad, stark-mad, and ready to run on business I die to think her guilty of: tell her how it would grieve her to see me torn and mangled; to see that hair she loves ruffled and diminish'd by rage, violated by ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... housings bright are trailed amid their gore; Dark blood is on their manes and sides, all deeply clotted o'er; All vainly now the spur would strike these cold and rounded flanks, To wake them to their wonted speed amid the rapid ranks: Here the bold riders red and stark upon the sands lie down, Who in their friendly shadows slept throughout the halt at noon. Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array? See where it straggles 'long the fields for leagues on leagues away, Like riches from ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... were ordered into the "brig," a jail-house between two guns on the main-deck, where prisoners are kept. Here they laid for some time, stretched out stark and stiff, with their arms folded over their breasts, like so many effigies of the Black Prince on his monument ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... ruffled into low foothills. Although he laid a zigzag course as his searchlight brought cactus clumps and thorn bushes into view, in the main he succeeded in dodging obstacles, and yet held to a fairly direct route. A mound of rocks, stark and almost shapeless in the gloom, guided him like a fingerboard; or a flat-topped hill, or a peculiar-shaped valley between two uplifts, set him on the right track. Mile by mile the black mountains came closer, and then Clancy himself began to pick up a ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... viel Leute schon gegeben, die waren stark in dem Bestreben, Durch Bcherschreiben zu bereiten sich gut Gercht fr alle Zeiten; Und darauf auch gerichtet war ihr starkes Sehnen immerdar, Dass man in Bchern es erzhlte, wie ihnen Tatenlust nicht fehlte. Dazu verlangte ihre Ehre, dass auch ihr Scharfsinn sichtbar wre, 5 So wie ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and striding over the dead bodies, in silence, and with apparent unconcern; with troops of the sans-culottes running about, covered with blood, and carrying, at the end of their bayonets, rags of the clothes which they had torn from the bodies of the dead Swiss, who were left stark ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... of another autumn swirled through the masonry-lined canons of the metropolis and sighed among the stark trees of its deserted parks. They caught up the tinted leaves that dropped from quivering branches and tossed them high, as Fate wantons with human hopes before she blows her icy breath upon them. They shrieked among the naked spars of the Cossack, drifting with her restless master far out upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... independent thinking. Why, Jane, the only reason I had the supper at the Savoy was so that I could drive you home. I didn't see how I was ever going to get hold of you alone. You and Tuppence have been sticking together like Siamese twins. I guess another day of it would have driven me and Beresford stark staring mad!" ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... o'clock—only another hour of daylight, and then! What would happen if no help came within the next hour? Would they have to spend the night together—Norah and she? Out in that lonely path? Would they be found lying cold and stark when at last the searchers came with ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim when, having discovered a new set of facts, he undertakes to present them to the consideration of the ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... at his goggles with nervous hands from which he had forgotten to remove his gloves. "You've got to put a stop to this sort of thing. It can't go on. She must be crazy,—stark, raving crazy. You must not let ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... against excess; made himself for the most part a reasonable and sufficiently agreeable companion; and had no higher tastes, unless a collection of coins, well mounted and arranged and at times added to, may claim that title. He therefore considered Haviland stark mad in spending so much money and brains upon nonsense; and the subject made him testy when he reviewed his refusal to accept some arrangement by which they could share the local political ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... conferring many people had entered the room, although none had purchased the wares. Now there was stark silence and a concentrated fire of attention as Mrs. Black entered with a strange young woman. Mrs. Black looked doubtfully important. She, as a matter of fact, was far from sure of her wisdom in the course she was taking. She was even a little pale, and her lips moved nervously as she introduced ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... tells his story like an old man, past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions when "his old cap was new." Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives; but all the stark wickedness that actually gives the momentum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age and outlived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party man, he makes you a party man. None of the ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... mad—stark ravin' crazy," he snorts, returning to command. "She says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull over to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first! We wasted half an hour fussing over that dead duck down under, and now I'm expected to go rubbin' my back ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... that accompanied Colonel Monckton to the River St. John included several New England companies of Rangers under captains McCurdy, Brewer, Goreham and Stark, a detachment of artillery, the 2nd battalion of the Royal American Regiment[38] and the 35th regiment of light infantry. The troops embarked on board the transport ships "Isabella," "Wade," "Alexander the Second," "Viscount ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... doorway, stood the tardy bride, a figure as white and stark as pagan stone, and a look on her face like the awful, tranquil look of a sleep-walker. Neither did she pay any heed to us, but over our heads she met the eyes of the bridegroom. So for a long breath they confronted each other, steadily. Then ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... content.—So the physicians are let to work, who pinched him with pincers in the fleshy parts of his body, and twisted a bow-string about his head with great force, but no sign of life appearing in him, the physicians pronounced him stark dead, and then there was no more delay to be made; yet Mr. Welch begged of them once more, that they would but step into the next room for an hour or two, and leave him with the dead youth; and this they ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... his shoulders came brusquely in contact with one of them, which happened to be unfastened, and it swung open, revealing to his gaze two stark-white white boys, one of them holding an enormous pistol and both staring at him in stupor of ultimate horror. For, to the glassy eyes of Penrod and Sam, the stratagem of the young coloured man, thus dropping to earth, disclosed, with ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... around, not that his memory was at fault, but because he was perpetually dumbfounded by her genius. Originally, this living-room had been a dolorous cave with varnished yellow-pine woodwork, gas-logs, yellow wall-paper to induce toothache, and a stark chandelier with two anemic legs kicking out at vacancy. She had caused the Orpheum electrician to remove the chandelier; with her own hands, she had painted the woodwork a deep, rich cream-colour; she had ripped out the gas-logs and found what no one had ever suspected—a practicable ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... The very persons who talk so glibly about the "fluidity" and "evasiveness" of life are persons in whose own flesh the wedge-like granite of fate has lodged itself with crushing finality. Life has indeed been too rigid and too stark for them; and in place of seizing it in an embrace as formidable as its own, they go aside muttering, "life is evasive; life is fluid; life ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... as anthropologists knew from sad experience. Suppose a traveler came to a camp where he saw thousands of men and women dancing round the image of a young bull. Suppose that the dancers were all stark naked, that after a time they began to fight, and that at the end of their orgies there were three thousand corpses lying about weltering in their blood. Would not a casual traveler have described such savages as worse than the negroes ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... however, some checks to this downward tendency. We have seen that the intemperate suffer from a high rate of mortality, and the extremely profligate leave few offspring. The poorest classes crowd into towns, and it has been proved by Dr. Stark from the statistics of ten years in Scotland (21. 'Tenth Annual Report of Births, Deaths, etc., in Scotland,' 1867, p. xxix.), that at all ages the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, "and during the first five years of life the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... stood the Rydal bard—his face was full of woe. 'Now there thou liest, stiff and stark, who never feared a foe: A braver knight, or more renowned in tourney and in hall, Ne'er brought the upper gallery down ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... showers—tell me if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched.... On the field of Waterloo the blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland flowed in the same stream and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon this union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and hid themselves all night in the rushes. In the morning they took heart, emerged from their hiding-places, descended to Quebec, and went thence to Tadousac, whither Champlain accompanied them. Here the squaws, stark naked, swam out to the canoes to receive the heads of the dead Iroquois, and, hanging them from their necks, danced in triumph along the shore. One of the heads and a pair of arms were then bestowed on Champiain,—touching ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... there rode the disc of a full moon, but it was a moon weirdly different from any that Dixon had ever seen before. This moon was a deep and baleful green; was glowing with a stark malignant fire like that which lurks in the blazing heart of a giant emerald! Bathed in the glow of the intense green rays, the desolate mountain landscape shone with a new and ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... me. I've never known before what it was to be terrified. But when I saw today beginning to end, and to-night getting nearer and nearer ... I felt my finger-tips getting cold. And I knew it was fright ... stark fright. I'm not a fool, and I'm not hysterical ... but I've been sitting in my room looking at myself in the glass, trying to control myself, telling myself what are real things ... and what aren't. I don't know any longer. The day's over. The forest's all round us. Anything may happen.... ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... that he had not only been delirious, but stark staring mad, and expressed a very earnest hope that, now he had got his senses hauled taut again, he'd belay them an' make all fast for, if he didn't, it was his, Disco's opinion, that another breeze o' the same kind would blow ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... I had one power—one weapon, still left to me unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to be stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very cause you are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way—if it be of God— to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole truth told, isn't better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the hope that something may ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... not that gaunt Professor Noting his man; that stark Assessor Of faulty play in the bat's possessor Clapped for his foeman, We who had seen that figure splendid Guarding the stumps so well defended Wept and cheered when by craft was ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... body, saw a few drops of blood ooze from the wound, held his hand in front of Lorenzi's mouth—but the breath was stilled. A cold shiver passed through Casanova's frame. He rose and put on his cloak. Then, returning to the body, he glanced at the fallen youth, lying stark on the turf in incomparable beauty. The silence was broken by a soft rustling, as the morning breeze stirred ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... and the short of it is,' Mr. Nixon said at last, 'she's gone stark, staring mad, and we had to ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... a little unreasonable! Indeed, my dear friend, I do not think you a little unreasonable, but very nearly stark mad. What! quarrel with your mistress because she is not sorry that your wife is ill, and because she cannot sympathize in your grief for the loss of your son! Where, except perhaps in absurd novels, did you ever meet with ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... [to [4]] my Mistresss Toilet this Morning, for I am admitted when her Face is stark naked: She frowned, and cryed Pish when I said a thing that I stole; and I will be judged by you whether it was not very pretty. Madam, said I, you [shall [5]] forbear that Part of your Dress; it may be well in others, but ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that he was intently painting a picture of the corpse of a beautiful young lady—terribly oppressed by nervousness, and a fretful sense of incapacity most injurious to the success of his labours—when suddenly, O horror! he beheld the body move, then rise, in a frightful and unnatural manner, stark upright, and with opened lips, but rigidly-clenched teeth, utter shriek upon shriek as it waved its white arms, and tore its streaming hair; then, that his landlady, Mrs Farrell, came up to him, as he crouched weeping and trembling by, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... has been found almost abundant. On one occasion, during a three mile drive from town, six males were seen and heard singing along the roadside. Mr. H. K. Coale says that he saw a mocking bird in Stark county, Indiana, sixty miles southeast of Chicago, January 1, 1884; that Mr. Green Smith had met with it at Kensington Station, Illinois, and that several have been observed in the parks and door-yards ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... violent death of the rider in evidence. The locality offered no other suggestion, and it was but a brief interval before the way would be retraced by the awe-stricken observer, noting with a deep interest impossible hitherto all the environment: the stark chimney of the vanished house, monumental in the weed-grown waste; the dripping forest; the roof of the barn, sleek and shining, and with rain pouring down the slant of its clapboards and splashing from its eaves; the groups of horses hitched to ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... how nearly he had forever ended Girty's brutal career brought before Joe's mind the scene of the fight. He saw again Buzzard Jim's face, revolting, unlike anything human. There stretched Silvertip's dark figure, lying still and stark, and there was Kate's white form in its winding, crimson wreath of blood. Hauntingly her face returned, sad, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... beaux, are strangely constituted; and so it needed only this—the sudden stark brute jealousy of one male animal for another. That was the clumsy hand which now unlocked the dyke; and like a flood, tall and resistless, came the recollection of their far-off past and of its least dear trifle, of all the aspirations and absurdities and splendors of their common youth, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very good for him. I kept there with him all night; but, as soon as it was day, I beckoned to him to come with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes; at which he seemed very glad, for he was stark naked. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of settling a difference of opinion with the six-gun had long fallen into disuse, but Saguache was still close enough to the stark primeval emotions to wait with a keen interest for the crack of the revolver that would put a period to the quarrel between Soapy Stone and young Flandrau. It was known that Curly had refused to leave town, just as it was known that Stone and that other prison bird Blackwell were hanging about ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... limitations of an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... saddest fate of all To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall. Let me hear rather the imperious call, Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, And follow death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... leisurely by the light of pine splinters; for rural Honduras has not yet reached the candle stage of progress. For a half-real I bought thirty cigarettes of the size of a lead-pencil, made of the coarse leaves more fitted to cigars. The man and wife, and the child that had been stark naked ever since my arrival, at length rolled up together on a bundle of rags on the dank earth floor, the daughter of eighteen climbed a knotched stick into a cubbyhole under the roof, and when the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... to the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she? Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great, black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Cuchullin, With their horses and following, Should rush to her dwelling, And our prince[122] in his trim, They might vainly aspire Without rifle and fire To ruffle or nigh her, Her mantle to dim. Stark-footed, lively, Ever capering naively With motion alive, aye, And wax-white, in shine, When her startle betrays That the hounds are in chase, The same as the base Is the rocky decline— She puffs from her chest, And she ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Cliffs for a second time, we left the "Lady Franklin" and "Sophia," in a stark calm, to do their best. Fewer ships, the faster progress; and heartily did all cheer when, at midnight, we turned to the N.W., leaving the second division to do their work in Wolstenholme Sound. So ended the memorable 14th of August: ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... child, which I suppose she expected to see under a sheet that would have just revealed the stark little form, but the little thing was smiling ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... afterglow touched the broken rows of skyward-pointing tassels, but the valley below her lay shrouded in gloom. Night was creeping up the mountain side; she could see it, feel it in the horrible silence. All alone in that stark vastness of crags, disregarding those who might be "layin' out" for her, she put her hands to her mouth and called; then leaned forward, holding her breath and listening. There was not even an echo. So she turned wearily back to the cabin and tenderly covered that ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... most cadaverous specimens of the startling humor in which the Russians delight. Here you find frozen oxen, calves, sheep, rabbits, geese, ducks, and all manner of animals and birds, once animate with life, now stiff and stark in death. The oxen stand staring at you with their fixed eyes and gory carcasses; the calves are jumping or frisking in skinless innocence; the sheep ba-a at you with open mouths, or cast sheep's-eyes at the by-passers; the rabbits, having traveled hundreds of miles, are jumping, or running, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... stark silhouette, in the electronic "light" of the radar scope. Two perfect discs, joined by a fine filament. As we watched, their relative positions slowly shifted, one moving ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... light now fell full on her face. Had she deliberately challenged me to look into her secret mind if I could? Anything like the stark insensibility of that young girl to every refinement of feeling, to every becoming doubt of herself, to every customary timidity of her age and sex in the presence of a man who had not disguised his unfavorable opinion of her, I never met with in all ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... I walk barefooted," mumbled my brave companion; but receiving no reply he drew off his shoes and dropped them beside mine in the cluster of stark bushes which figure so prominently in the illustrations that I have just mentioned. Then he took out his revolver, and cocking it, stood waiting, while I gave a ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought of Queequeg—not four feet off—sitting there in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really wretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... aesthetic infinites, composed of all the forms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination fails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. The version which M. Benda gives us of infinite Being, limited to the mathematical dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without infinite Being: so that in "returning to ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... you may touch up the story. You will not want to leave it so stark and bare. "They grow in a little place just made for them to grow in. It's in here, the place is, in mothers," and you give a friendly pat against your side. Many children ask where the place is, and many think it is the stomach. Other children have said so. "The ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... tide had stripped the shore; And that foul shape I fancied so remote Lay stark below, just opposite next-door! Who would have said a cod's head could not float? No more my neighbour in his garden sits; My callers now regard the view with groans; For tides may roll and rot the fleshly bits, But what shall mortify those ageless bones? How ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... "I am stark-staring mad," he cried aloud, "and no one knows it but myself. God's worst curse has fallen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St. Gothard Road. The higher we went, the more wildly roared the storm. There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schoellenen the air rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns—the sole beacon of safety in this welter. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... very good, but pollen apparently equal-sized. I have just examined Hottonia, grand difference in pollen. Echium vulgare, a humbug, merely a case like Thymus. But I am almost stark staring mad over Lythrum (On another occasion he wrote (to Dr. Gray) with regard to Lythrum: "I must hold hard, otherwise I shall spend my life over dimorphism."); if I can prove what I fully believe, it is a grand case of TRIMORPHISM, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... branch, he swung down to where the leaping beast could almost reach him. The heavy club he carried gave him an advantage. With a whistling sweep, as the hyena leaped upward in its ravenous folly, came this huge club crashing against the thick skull, a blow so fair and stark and strong that the stunned beast fell backward upon the ground, and then, down, lightly as any monkey, dropped the cave man. The huge stone ax went crashing into the brain of the quivering brute, and that ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Bertrand made his plea and complaint to the emperor in the hearing of all, but they consider him an idle babbler because he says that he has seen the empress stark naked. All the town is stirred thereat; some, when they hear this news, esteem it mere folly, others advise and counsel the emperor to go to the tower. Great is the uproar and the tumult of the folk who set out after him. But they find nothing in the tower, ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Gog's bores, these old stumps are stark tired. Chave here roundabout for life conquired, Where any posting nags were to be hired, And can get none, would they were all vired![385] Cham come too late for Money, I hold a penny, Suitors to Fortune there are so many; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... not permit anything vague. A word stood out in its stark reality, howling "Illiterate!" at her. Her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... eyes. His features in profile were pure Greek, and on his low forehead there was a touch of gold. His particular followers or disciples had the silly expression of a mesmerist's subjects; they sat in the dust stark naked and unashamed, and looked ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine. One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... had no further time to waste in argument. Here were Jim Barlow and Monty Stark shaking either hand and bidding a hasty good-by, while Molly Breckenridge was fairly dancing up and down in her anxiety lest the lads should also be left on board, as Alfaretta was likely ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... Thetford was a Sunday, and I need not tell what a pleasure it was to me to hear again the old English services that once I had thought so long, as a boy will. And on that day, for the first time, it came to me that my man, Erling the viking, was a stark heathen, Odin's man. Truly he came to the church with me, and there he stood and stared at all that went on, quietly and reverently enough, but in such wise that I thought that he had somewhere seen the like before. So ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... deign to stoop, and kneel at the foot of the bush. Then the crisp, echoing report of Roscoe's rifle rang out, and on the instant the officer and the remaining soldier disappeared behind the leaf-covered hogshead. Tom was aware of the one German lying beside the bush, stark and motionless, and of Roscoe jerking his head and screwing up his mouth in a sort of spontaneous vexation. Then he looked suddenly at Tom and winked unmirthfully with a ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... poverty to appear, exceedingly popular. My Wednesday receptions became more brilliant than ever. Interesting strangers sought me out, in the hope that they, too, might attain to equal fortune through knowing me. Fraulein Ingeborg Stark, who afterwards married young Hans von Bronsart, put in an appearance among us, a vision of bewitching elegance, and played the piano, in which she was modestly assisted by Fraulein Aline Hund of Weimar. A highly gifted young French musician, Camille Saint-Saens, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... heart and brain, Feverishly seeking everywhere some sign To guide him, went ashore upon that isle, And lo, turning a rugged point of rock, He rubbed his eyes to find out if he dreamed, For there—a Crusoe's wonder, a miracle, A sign—before him stood on that lone strand Stark, with a stern arm pointing out his way And jangling still one withered skeleton, The grim black gallows where Magellan hanged His mutineers. Its base was white with bones Picked by the gulls, and crumbling o'er the sand ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... saw the reapers take their wages, each a bundle of wheat according to the work he had done—the most lovely sight. The graceful, half-naked, brown figures loaded with sheaves; some had earned so much that their mothers or wives had to help to carry it, and little fawn-like, stark-naked boys trudged off, so proud of their little bundles of wheat or of hummuz (a sort of vetch much eaten both green and roasted). The sakka (water-carrier), who has brought water for the men, gets a handful from each, and drives ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... been left by Zagonyi in charge of his train. The Prairie Scouts reported a loss of thirty-one out of one hundred and thirty: half of these belonged to the Irish Dragoons. In a neighboring field an Irishman was found stark and stiff, still clinging to the hilt of his sword, which was thrust through the body of a Rebel who lay beside him. Within a few feet a second Rebel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... married, en somebuddy give 'em er new broom. De 'oman she proud uv her nice, spankin' new broom en she lay hit on de bed fer de weddin' crowd ter see it, wid de udder things been give 'em. Fo' thee years go by her man wuz beatin' 'er, en not long atter dat she go plum stark crazy. She oughter ter know better'n ter lay dat broom on her bed. It sho' done brung her bad luck. Dey sent her off ter de crazy folks place, ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration
... her sapphire arc Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore; Above her, like a demon stark, The dark fire-mountain evermore Looming portentous, as of yore; Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves; Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines And olives, and the shattered shrines Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... dewdrop," when he ought to be seeking Mildred's presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically, electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has passed the night with Ottima, while her murdered husband lies stark ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... mad,' said the Colonel, 'perfectly stark mad. Tell him I shall dump my refuse on it, if I have to finance somebody to locate a mineral claim. What is the name ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark hair, was sewing a child's ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... nothing scholastic in his reasoning; nothing sacerdotal in his conclusions. We breathe with him the clear sharp air of mathematics; and his imagination, shaking itself free from all controversial pettifogging, sweeps off into the stark and naked spaces of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of course from the four New England colonies, commanded by men who were destined to rise to high positions during the war. There was Daniel Morgan of Virginia, with a splendid band of sharpshooters, and Israel Putnam of Connecticut, John Stark and John Sullivan of New Hampshire, Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, Henry Knox of Boston, Horatio Gates of Virginia, and Benedict Arnold and Charles Lee who later ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... French, for the Morgue is a favourite haunt with the irrepressible tourist doing Paris. Strangest of all, the murderer himself, the doer of the fell deed, comes here, to the very spot where his victim lies stark and reproachful, and stares at it spellbound, fascinated, filled more with remorse, perchance, than fear at the risk he runs. So common is this trait, that in mysterious murder cases the police of Paris keep a disguised officer among the crowd at the Morgue, and have ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... no time, Mr. Tietkens and I returned to the three fallen horses, taking with us a supply of water, and using the Fair Maid, Widge, Formby, and Darkie; we went as fast as the horses could go. On reaching the little cob we found him stark and stiff, his hide all shrivelled and wrinkled, mouth wide open, and lips drawn back to an extraordinary extent. Pushing on we arrived where Diamond and Pratt had fallen. They also were quite dead, and ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... exclaimed that admirable slop. With which he placed a warning hand upon the brawler's collarband. We simply hate to tell the rest. No subject here for flippant jest. The mere remembrance of the tale has made our ink turn deadly pale. Let us be brief. Some demon sent stark madness on the well-dressed gent. He gave the constable a punch just where the latter kept his lunch. The constable said 'Well! Well! Well!' and marched him to a dungeon cell. At Vine Street Station out it came—Lord Belpher was the culprit's ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... came to his senses the gray mystery of dawn was passing through the silent forest aisles; the beeches, pallid, stark, loomed motionless on every side; the pale veil of sky-fog hung festooned from tree to tree. There was a sense of breathless waiting in the shadowy woods—no sound, no stir, nothing of life ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... were fast freezing. A few moments he hung, hoping for a lull in the fury of the blizzard, but lull there was none, only that choking, blinding, terrifying Thing that clutched and tore at him. His heart sank within him. This, then, was to be the end of him. A vision of his own body, stark and stiff, lying under a mound of drifting snow, swiftly passed before his mind. He threw it off wrathfully. "Not yet! Not just yet!" he shouted in defiance into the face of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... to his grave." Nevertheless, his fiery nature kept him for a time with the Americans, and at the very outset he showed his independent spirit, having characteristically refused to "wait for proper orders." From New Hampshire came Stark, the hero of the frontier wars. And from all the towns came the militia leaders, who, gathering their companies into regiments, began the loose organization and crude subordination which should make of the crowd ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... bear to contemplate at length, while from the first I found myself physically unable to face the ferocious gaze of those implacable eyes. But Raffles only laughed at my squeamishness, and flung a dust-sheet over man and chair; and the stark outline drove me from ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Salamis and Attica we have space to deploy all our ships, while the Barbarians will be crowded by numbers. And if we once retreat?—Let Adeimantus and the rest prate about—'The wall, the wall across the Isthmus! The king can never storm it.' Nor will he try to, unless his councillors are turned stark mad. Will he not have command of the sea? can he not land his army behind the wall, wherever he wills? Have I not dinned that argument in those doltish Peloponnesians' ears until I have grown hoarse? Earth and gods! suffer me rather ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Cossack, displaying the letter he had brought from the Count's rooms. "Nothing more. Your wife has succeeded very well. He is quite mad now. I found him last night, helpless, in a sort of fit, stiff and stark on the floor of his room. And this was in his pocket. Read it, Herr Fischelowitz. Read it, by all means. I suppose your wife does not mind your reading the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... shook his head. "'Pailidula, nudula, rigida,"' he completed the quatrain. "'Ghostpale, stark, and rigid.' He's got a grisly imagination, that pin-operator. I shouldn't care to have ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... memorial meeting for Henry B. Blackwell, with addresses by Edwin D. Mead, Julia Ward Howe, the Rev. Charles G. Ames, Professor Sumichrast, Moses H. Gulesian, Francis J. Garrison, James H. Stark of the Victorian Club, Meyer Bloomfield and Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows. Mr. Blackwell was called by Mrs. Catt "one of the world's most heroic men." He was the only man of large abilities who devoted his life to securing equal rights for women. In his ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... times when storms subside Through which thou oarest Life's ill-fitted bark, Dreams rise, from sounds of lapping of the tide, To veil the daylight stark, Its anguish and ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... now the other side of that awful cloud which darkens the horizon of the South—the brute beast mob-vengeance that follows swiftly upon the heels of the unpardonable sin. There must be justice. But what was happening now wasn't justice. It was stark barbarism let loose. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... hour he returned, riding one horse and leading the other, and found that Gerrard had risen and was looking at the bodies of the three men, which lay stark and stiff under the now bright starlight. Tommy's face wore an expression of supreme satisfaction as he ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... quite still, though his face and throat were washed with rain; quite still, with a frightful, lifelike gaze of exultation under his brows, with parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered—quite still and harmless now; dead and stark. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... time pass through any part of the city, lest some one should say, 'See, where goes that fool!' The syndics and others forming the assembly remained confounded, first, by the difficult methods proposed by the other masters, and next by that of Filippo, which appeared to them stark nonsense. He appeared to them to render the enterprise impossible by his two propositions—first, by that of making the cupola double, whereby the great weight to be sustained would be rendered altogether unmanageable, and next by the proposal of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... He was stark mad. There was no question of it. For a moment I stood irresolute. Then I lifted him to his feet and patted ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke |
