"Tale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tale told him once by a survivor of a trading ship Judd the Kite had destroyed. It wasn't a nice tale. The Kite, so the report ran, was diabolically ingenious with a long peeling knife, and could improvise with it for hours. Friday pursued the tack of ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... his keeping he might recover wealth and position and by quite honest means. At his suggestion she then assumed a variety of attitudes; she stood as Hebe, offering nectar to the gods—as Nausicae, listening to the tale of Odysseus—and as Sappho, singing to her lyre. The girl was delighted at all this, and when Medius, who kept close to her, tried to persuade her to perform in a similar manner in the magical representations at the house of Posidonius, before a select company ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... old tale to-night, telling it with a little more verve even than usual. She ended at ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... for the Chinese Empire. In this editorial Clemens endeavored to pay something of his debt to the noble statesman. He reviewed Burlingame's astonishing career—the career which had closed at forty-seven, and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt lovingly on his hero's nobility of character. At the close ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... see that ship out there on our port-quarter, sir?" hailed one of the men from the forecastle, interrupting Master Freddy in his tale. ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... have a story,—for most assuredly I must drink,—I have no objection to give you a leaf from my early reminiscences; and in compliment to Sparks there, my tale shall be of love." ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... together by Fairmilehead in jocund humour, and "smiled to ither" all the way home, with the two recovered ones before them. So far, so good; but intelligence may be abused. The dog, as he is by little man's inferior in mind, is only by little his superior in virtue; and John had another collie tale of quite a different complexion. At the foot of the moss behind Kirk Yetton (Caer Ketton, wise men say) there is a scrog of low wood and a pool with a dam for washing sheep. John was one day lying under a bush in the scrog, when he was aware ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Morrison got this book, and read it aloud for the amusement of her father and lover, Carboys had persuaded Van Nant to spend the evening with them. Apparently he enjoyed himself, too, for he laughed as boisterously as any of them over the farcical tale, and would not go home until he had heard the end of it. When it was finished, Miss Morrison tells me, Carboys, after laughing fit to split his sides over the predicament of the hero of the book, cried out: 'By George! I wish some ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... their shoes blacked gratis by Kumodini Babu's muchis (leather-dressers). His bailiff put up with their vagaries, until the shopkeepers came in a body to say that unless they were stopped, the market would be entirely deserted. The luckless Zemindar was staggered by the tale of oppression. He paid for every article extorted by the police, but strictly forbade the vendors to give any further credit. The Sub-Inspector was deeply incensed in finding this source of illicit profit cut off, and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... tempted to think that malt liquor was a primary and bread a secondary necessity to them; it must cost them most of the two, at any rate. And generally they are as particular about the quality as the quantity, and complain if it is not of "good body," as well as full tale. In many cases the farmer furnishes it to them; sometimes brewing it himself, but more frequently buying it already made. Occasionally a farmer "commutes" with his men; allowing a certain sum of money weekly ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... thing," said Ermengarde in a passion, "My wickedness, indeed! Who else would call an innocent drive wickedness? Oh, yes; she let out the whole story to Miss Nelson, and now she wants to come round me with this letter, after her horrid tell-tale way. Little monkey! Horrid, ugly little thing, too. Tell-tale-tit, your tongue shall be slit. No, no, Miss Marjorie; you need not suppose that this note blinds me! I know what you've done to me, and I'll never forgive you—never, as long ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a model camp, is bleak and dreary and isolated. At the outset cases of typhus occurred there, and in a neat, secluded corner of the camp long lines of wooden crosses tell the tale of sadness. The first cross marked a Russian from far-away Vilna, the next a Tommy from London. East had met West in the bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to them slept a soldier from some obscure village ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... in Poetry is to be preserv'd with more care than probability, especially in Pastoral. Now for a Shepherd to be relating an Accident of Concern, and to dwell on a Description of Place or Person for four or five Lines in the midst, does it not look as if 'twere only Verses written, and not a Tale actually told by the Swain, since in such a Case 'tis natural to hast to the main Point, and not to dwell so particularly ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... about it at first—being of the sturdy type that makes light of a cold. But when Cash began to cough with that hoarse, racking sound that tells the tale of laboring lungs, Bud began to feel guiltily that he ought to do ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the stars; the movable web is then rotated until it bisects the other, and then the angle between the webs is recorded. Double stars are thus measured, first in distance, and second, their position. After this, if any movement of the stars takes place, the tell tale micrometer at once ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... sing in twining duet. In a warm hue of light the horns sound a weird tale. It is taken up by teasing chorus of lighter voices. In the growing volume sounds a clear, almost martial call ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... in obtaining, at least, an examination into my crimes or my innocence; and this claim I now make. See these celebrated men, Sir, explain to them the circumstances of my situation, tell them the plain tale, and that it is towards them, though so distant, that my looks are directed; your own name will give you an introduction, and the cause you undertake will ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... backwards and forwards over the space of his allotted limits, and laughing with ludicrous regularity and complacency at every jest that he happened to make in the course of his ill-rewarded narrative. He little thought, as he continued to proceed in his tale that its commencement had been welcomed by an unseen hearer, with emotions widely different from those which had dictated the observations of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... a scarlet shawl and ponderous gold jewels, used once to emerge from a tent beside the Dyke inn and allot husbands fair or dark. She was an astute reader of her fellows, with an eye too searching to be deceived by the removal of tell-tale rings. A lucky shot in respect to a future ducal husband of a young lady now a duchess, of the accuracy of which she was careful to remind you, increased her reputation tenfold in recent years. Her name is ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Fairy Tale of Life is done, The horns of Fairyland cease blowing, The Gods have left us one by one, And the last Poets, too, are going! Ended is all the mirth and song, Fled are the merry Music-makers; And what remains? The Dismal ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... looked curious and intent on the disclosures being made, except the hostess, Mrs. Dawes, who smiled intelligence with her eyes, and knowingly pursed up her mouth until Mrs. Goodenough had finished her tale. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... particle. The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he yields, for his young friend's enlightenment, to the charming admonition of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him AS a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could desire. The remarks to which he thus gives ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a certain awe, and believe in him for his miracles as we believe in our own memory for its arts. A bard's mechanical and ritualistic habits usually put all judgment on his own part to sleep; while the sanctity attributed to the tale, as it becomes automatically more impressive, precludes tinkering with it intentionally. Especially the allegories and marvels with which early history is adorned are not ordinarily invented with malice prepense. They are rather discovered in the mind, like a foundling, between ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... of morals and law, and sat at the door of his tent to dispense justice to all comers, like the Cadi of a Mahometan Village. His judicial methods and punishments also reminded one strongly of the primitive judicature of Oriental lands. The wronged one came before him and told his tale: he had his blouse, or his quart cup, or his shoes, or his watch, or his money stolen during the night. The suspected one was also summoned, confronted with his accuser, and sharply interrogated. Hill would revolve the stories ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a speaking acquaintance with their own country enriched their anticipation of an introduction to the British Isles. How they made their polite American bow and how they were received on the other side is a tale of ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... sit down; but you must each of you relate to me your adventures, or some story that you have heard." The cauzee and the fisherman, having recovered from their confusion, obeyed the commands of the sultan, and being seated, the latter related the following tale. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... which she sent to the Shaykh al-Islam and other great officers of state, telling them what had passed and saying to them, "Choose you out a King to rule over you." And this is all that hath come down to us of the Story of Judar and his Brethren.[FN311] But I have also heard, O King, a tale ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... her heart in love's delight And let the whole world see; Alas! one day, away, away, Sped truant Bumble Bee; 'Twas then the red rose turned to white - So was the tale told me. ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... anchor in the roads of Buenos Aires till the afternoon of the 23rd, almost exactly at the same time as the Chief landed at Buenos Aires. When I went ashore next morning and met Mr. P. Christophersen, he was in great good-humour. "This is just like a fairy tale," he said; and it could not be denied that it was an amusing coincidence. The Chief, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... that not long ago, during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic pagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He is everything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... came into possession of the estates and title, and certainly he entered upon them without any reproach as to his conduct towards his uncle, who died blessing him. And now my tale is ended, and I wish my ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... onslaught yet were a many slain and hurt or ever they came to the piles aforesaid. Then saw they death before them and heeded it nought, but tore up the piles and dashed through them, and fell in on those valiant footmen. Short is the tale to tell: wheresoever a sword or spear of the Goths was upraised there were three upon him, and saith Toti of the Beamings, who was hurt and crawled away and yet lives, that on Heriulf there were six at first and then more; and he took no thought of shielding himself, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... we have learnt a tale of other years, Of kings and warrior Danes, a wondrous tale, How aethelings bore them in the brunt of war." ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... in a tearing hurry at that moment. One of her dogs had strayed, and she was beating the town to find him; but she paused to listen to his tale. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... in these long and comprehensive addresses The General told how he found the work of his life. He was never so impressive as at this stage. And the tale in its intensity was ever new. His language was nervous, intense, almost Biblical, his figure suggestive of a patriarch's in a tragedy. 'Sixty years ago—sixty years ago—sixty years ago,' each time with ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... him the red and yellow covered tale. "The Cracksman's Spoil, or Young Sleuth's Double Artifice" ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... was on his way to the houseboat Tom Curtis lay awake on his camp cot thinking of Madge and of what he could do to disprove the cruel story that Flora Harris had told. Of course, it must be false. Yet the girl would hardly have dared to tell such a tale unless a grain of truth had been hidden in it somewhere. Poor Madge! Tom wondered how her proud, passionate spirit would bear up under the shadow of ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Sherwood home and talked excitedly about it in the big kitchen. Some advised an utter disregard of the law. Others were evidently minded to increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicious tale-bearing. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... civilization, finally to be wakened to happiness by the courage and daring of English sailors, who, though not Princes nor even knights in title, were as noble and as bold as any hero of a fairy-tale. ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet, so joyous, like Helen's own loveliness—to hear it was an ecstasy. We were listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on human ears—unless the tale of ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... "The Idle Man," was addressing a more limited public. Percival had just before published a small volume of poems; Halleck's "Fanny" had recently appeared; and so had a small duodecimo volume by Bryant, containing "The Ages," and half a dozen smaller poems. Miss Sedgwick's "New England Tale" was published about the same time. But a large proportion of those who are now regarded as our ablest writers were as yet unknown, or just beginning to give sign of what they were. Dr. Channing was already distinguished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... caused by torpor and debility of the whole frame, especially of the womb. It is generally produced by scanty or by improper food, by the want of air and of exercise, and by too close application within doors. Here we have the same tale over again—close application within doors, and the want of fresh air and of exercise. When will the eyes of a mother he opened, to this important subject?—the most important that can engage ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... ruined cottages in this barren valley, several fellows rushed out upon us, laid hold of our horses' reins, and commenced rummaging my luggage. I expected nothing but an order to dismount, and already saw my little property lost. They talked with my guide, who told them the tale which I had imposed upon him—that I was a poor pilgrim, and that the English consuls or missionaries paid all my travelling expenses. My dress, the smallness of my baggage, and being alone, agreed perfectly with this; they believed him, and my silent supplicative ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... might lead to an indiscreet avowal of the passion which consumed him, and place him in the power of his fair enslaver. He hovered around her path, and at church disturbed her devotions by never removing his eyes from her face; but the tale of his love remained untold, and was scarcely acknowledged ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to Johnson, repeating, at the same time, what Mrs. Williams had said. His answer was, 'It is true, Sir, that she wrote it before she was acquainted with me; but she has not told you that I wrote it all over again, except two lines.'[78] 'The Fountains,'[dagger] a beautiful little Fairy tale in prose, written with exquisite simplicity, is one of Johnson's productions; and I cannot with-hold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of being the authour of that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... horses. [1]When the men of Erin saw that,[1] they surrounded Cethern on every side [2]and made him a victim of spears and lances,[2] so that he fell at their hands in the strait wherein he was. Wherefore 'Cethern's Strait-Fight and the Bloody Wounds of Cethern' [3]is the name of this tale.[3] ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... world's work and pain. Rest is not for those who flee away from life's difficulties, but for those who face them. 'Take my yoke ... and ye shall find rest.' It were not well for our own sakes that we had wings. It were not well for us to be able to avoid the burden-bearing and the tale of tired days, for God has hidden the secret of our rest in the heart of our toiling. They who come unto the City of God come there not by the easy flight of a dove, but by the long, ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... here the patient efforts of this Government to promote peace and welfare among these Republics, efforts which are fully appreciated by the majority of them who are loyal to their true interests. It would be no less unnecessary to rehearse here the sad tale of unspeakable barbarities and oppression alleged to have been committed by the Zelaya Government. Recently two Americans were put to death by order of President Zelaya himself. They were reported to have been regularly commissioned officers in the organized forces of a revolution ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... are wanted to "point a moral and adorn a tale,"' said the old woman (who, for a fairy, was particularly well-read). 'There, run along home, do, and scatter your ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... tall by half a head. I perceived the truth at once. He had made free with the contents of my pockets, in which I had left a few gold pieces, and for his character's sake he could not afford to admit my identity. The landlord plainly mistrusted my tale, now that he had heard the evidence of the stableman, and began to assume a very different tone, and to talk cavalierly of a reference to a magistrate. This reminded me of the letter in my pocket, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... night. Others arrive from England thirsting for all sorts of things that no sane man ever wants to have anything to do with, and are kept doing a bomb course and a machine-gun course on alternate days for eight months. There is a tale told of one such who, when he was finally sent to the trenches, was returned as hopeless after three days because he would do nothing except sit beside a machine gun trying to fill the belt with grenades. There is no sadder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Magazines. Many others agree with the Baron, who wishes to recommend "Saint or Satan" in The Argosy; The story of an "Old Beau," which might have been advantageously abbreviated in Scribner; an odd tale entitled, "The Phantom Portrait," in the Cornhill; which leaves the reader in doubt as to whether he has been egregiously "sold" or not; and, above all, the short and interesting—too short and most interesting—paper on THACKERAY, in Harper's Monthly, with fac-similes of some of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... In some instances these changes are owing to the blending of the myth with traditions of facts, forming a quasi-historical narrative, the saga; in others, elaborated by a poetic fancy and enriched by the imagination, it becomes a fairy tale, the maerchen. Again, the myth being a product of creative thought, existing in words only, as language changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... secrets of their prison house, They could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... for Magistrates made its appearance, a thin quarto, charmingly printed in two kinds of type. This contained twenty lives—Haslewood, the only critic who has described this edition, says nineteen, but he overlooked Ferrers' tale of "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester"—and was the work, so Baldwin tells us, of ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... born again, or will the world content itself henceforth by following the ways opened by the bold creators of the ancient ages? We know not. But whatever may be the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will not be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew its youth, the tale of his life will cause ceaseless tears, his sufferings will soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that among the sons of men, there is none born ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... present, in striking language, to the reason and the heart. Where his story leads him to some individual, or presents some incident which raises our smiles, it is recorded with a naive humour, the more effective from its simplicity; where he finds himself called on to tell some tale of misfortune or wo—and how often must he do so when the history of the gentle and peaceful natives of the Antilles is his subject—the reader is at a loss whether most to admire the beauty of the picture he paints, or the deep pathos which ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... cheek was hollow, and sunk, and wan, And his lips were thin and blue; The unearthly look of that dying man, As his tale of horror he thus began, Sent a chill ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the Cainites, but not even any one of Adam's progeny underwent a change. Therefore Noah was compelled to witness the destruction of brothers, sisters, relatives and kindred without number, and all these made a mock of the pious old man and of his message as an old woman's tale. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... from the slopes the same endless stream of people leaving Paris. They knew that the Germans were near, and report brought them yet nearer. The tale of the monster guns had traveled fast, and the shells might be falling among them at any moment. Aeroplanes dotted the skies, but they paid little attention to them. They still thought of war under the old conditions, and to the great mass of the ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with sunshine, had fled, where, where, I could not tell!" Here the speaker's voice trailed off and came to a stop. Then he turned to the group about him, saying, half questioningly, half apologetically, "I fear to tire you with this so long tale. After all, I suppose it is interesting only ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... resorts, and the trappers and old hunters passed a lively three or four months every year, indulging in the amusements I have referred to. They were also wonderful story-tellers, and around their camp-fires many a tale of terrible adventure with Indians and vicious animals ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... The tale was now told. The men retreated to their canoes, and reached the fort unmolested about eleven o'clock at night. The next morning a party of the citizens and soldiers volunteered to go to Lee's Place, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... them in these favoured climes; and they, at any rate, being on the very best terms with all sections of the community in which their lot is cast, have a common cause as fellow-sufferers under the regime of Mr. Froude's official "birds of passage." The agitation in Trinidad tells its own tale. There is not a single black man—though there should have been many—among the leaders of the movement for Reform. Nevertheless the honourable [156] and truthful author of "The English in the West Indies," in order to invent a plausible pretext for his sinister ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Tale with a perusal, will probably anticipate in the Preface, the so-often-framed apology, that it was not written with an intention of being published. Yet stale as the assurance may be, it is ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... fireplace in the twilight, and that once, as she came up the cellar stairs, something followed her and laid a cold hand on her shoulder; but as she was a nervous, hysterical person, and moreover was known to be somewhat given to exaggeration, no one paid much attention to her tale. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... his Highness. The danger of a Royalist rising vanished before a host of addresses from the counties. Great news too came from abroad, where victory in Flanders, and the cession of Dunkirk in June, set the seal on Cromwell's glory. But the fever crept steadily on, and his looks told the tale of death to the Quaker, Fox, who met him riding in Hampton Court Park. "Before I came to him," he says, "as he rode at the head of his Life Guards, I saw and felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... under our orders, and boiling the kettle to brew some punch. We were a very jolly party. Several of us had not met since we used to assemble on board my prize at New York in the winter, and we had had a good deal of knocking about since then. Many a tale was told, and many a jovial song and not a few sentimental ditties were sung, echoed by the seamen who sat grouped about. Thus hour after hour passed by, and we felt no inclination to lie down. I dare ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... did not wait to hear the end of this harangue. They well knew that no tale of theirs could stand for a moment before the witness of a man respected as Master Cale the perruquier. Fearful lest the watch, who had let go their hold of Tom, should in turn lay hands on them, they fled helter-skelter, but as they went they breathed out threats of being even with ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... courser Ranild cried: For thus the tale was told to me— "To visit the rich Greve I will ride, Though banish'd from the ...
— The Songs of Ranild • Anonymous
... write, my hand shakes so.) Poor Hibbert was an exceedingly clever fellow, and a great traveller, and one of the most beautiful draughtsmen you could meet with any where. They are all three a terrible loss to our corps. I will tell you the mournful tale as it happened. We arrived here on the 25th. I breakfasted on Tuesday with them at mess, which was the last time I ever saw them alive: they were in exceedingly high spirits. The success of an enterprise the day before appears to have determined them to go upon another expedition on this ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... spoken of contain none of those petrified remains of vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe. They simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived from the primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into strata in seas of vast depth. The absence from these rocks of all traces of vegetable ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... measures to prevent its being suspected by others. He purposely sent his guards to search along the cliff in the opposite direction while he went to Jerrold's room and thence back to remove the tell-tale ladder. Should he tell any one until he had confronted Jerrold with the evidences of his guilt, and, wringing from him his resignation, send him far from the post before handing it in? Time and again he wished Frank Armitage were here. The youngest captain in the regiment, Armitage had been ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... caught by the Toorkmans, and on their way to Bokhara. When the Englishmen saw these poor captives, they uttered a sorrowful cry, and the Persians began to weep. One of the travellers stopped his camel to listen to their sad tale; and he heard that a few weeks before, while working in the fields, they had been seized and carried off. They were hungry and thirsty; for the Toorkmans cruelly starve their slaves, in order that they may be too weak to run away. The traveller ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... The whole transaction makes a melancholy episode in the history of modern Europe. We have made such use of it as is permitted to fiction, neither neglecting the leading and known facts of the event, nor adhering to the minuter circumstances more closely than the connection of our tale demanded. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reasoned with him for what seemed a long time before he would consent to tell me the whole story. And when it was told there was nothing new or novel in it. The old tale of an honest man who had not meant to go wrong, but, tempted by one of those wiles of the devil, an "inside tip" on the stock market, had bought heavily on margins, expecting to clear a handsome profit in a short time. The stock was Louisville and Transcontinental and the struggle for its control ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... light-hearted prince who won his bride by breaking Shiva's bow. Sita, faithful to the husband who rejects her, has made a long, character-forming journey since the day when she left her father's palace, a youthful bride. Herein lies the unique beauty of the tale of Rama, that it unites romantic love and moral conflict with a splendid story of wild adventure. No wonder that the Hindus, connoisseurs of story-telling, have loved the tale of Rama's deeds better ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... of the roadstead, lay an American line-of-battle ship, her lofty sides flashing brightly in the moonlight, and her frowning batteries turned menacingly toward the old castle, telling a plain bold tale of our country's power and glory, and making my heart proud within me that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... if I can get hold of them." The next night the Empress entered, as the Emperor was retiring, and his Majesty said to her in my presence, "It is very bad to impute falsehood to poor Monsieur Constant; he is not the man to make up such a tale as that you told me." The Empress, seated on the edge of the bed, began to laugh, and put her pretty little hand over her husband's mouth; and, as it was a matter concerning myself, I withdrew. For a few ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... independent ground for thinking them so: when all but one are spurious, overwhelming evidence is required of the genuineness of the one: when they are all similar in style or motive, like witnesses who agree in the same tale, they stand or fall together. But no one, not even Mr. Grote, would maintain that all the Epistles of Plato are genuine, and very few critics think that more than one of them is so. And they are clearly all written ...
— Charmides • Plato
... hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... demanded, that does not owe at least part of its misery to the claims of Catholicism? What is it but Catholicism that lies at the heart of the divided allegiance of France, of the miseries of Portugal, and of the dissensions of Italy? Look back through history and you will find the same tale everywhere. What was it that disturbed the politics of England so often from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and tore her in two in the sixteenth, but the determined resistance of an adolescent nation to the tyranny of Rome? What lay behind the religious wars of Europe, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... one of the simplest cases. The subject is a girl of eighteen, called Josephine. She lives at Voiron, in the department of Isere. By means of downward passes she is brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Josephine can no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still. Josephine no longer answers except by signs: she is not yet born. 'She is floating in darkness.' They persist; the sleep ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... treaty, however, was broken off, and the Cardinal Des Ursins returned to Pope Martin at Avignon. It is painful to read the account of the siege of Rouen; misery in all its shapes is painted there.[176] Indeed, if the accounts we have received be true, so complicated a tale of wretchedness is scarcely upon record. But the details can give no satisfaction; they would only harrow up the feelings, without supplying any facts essential to the history of those months of (p. 230) human suffering. Henry was resolved neither to burn the town, nor to take it by storm; but ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... short-lived indeed. Nay; you are not accused, and shall not excuse yourself. You were right,—always right. When you had failed to win one woman your heart with a true natural spring went to another. And so entire had been the cure, that you went to the first woman with the tale of your love ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... recollecting that the cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson Morth, "than whom," as the tablet to his memory relates, "none was better to castigate the manners of the age." He was a burly, hard-riding ruffian, and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben in Launceston streets is ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an' pretty soon he began to want to hit the trail for home. I helped him out of town an' started him back for camp, where, I reckon, his old lady was waitin' to give him fits for forgettin' the calico and beads." The captain paused as if his tale ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... A tale-bearer came to the President with a plot against him and the government, which was a cock-and-bull without any adherence, and all superficial. Lincoln heard him out, but ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Seems you turned off at a wagontrail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and arranged themselves into a circle, pliant as osiers before the father of Pantagruel who unfolded to them the following tale, in words the illustrious eloquence of which it is impossible to equal. But since this tale has only been verbally handed down to us, the author will be pardoned if he write after ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... take its place with glory on the scene of the world, and resume, among the great nations, the rank to which nature, destiny, and its own position call it." This was for Venice; for the French Directory Bonaparte had a very different tale. "I had several motives," he wrote (May 19), "in concluding the treaty:—to enter the city without difficulty; to have the arsenal and all else in our possession, in order to take from it whatever we needed, under pretext of the secret articles; ... to evade ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... world. They are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale. Your success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don't ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen, but come and see me some day and give me a specimen of ...
— The American • Henry James
... story, Mabel, and one your father, the Sergeant, can tell much better than I; for he was present, while I was off on a distant scouting. Jasper is not good at a story, I will own that; I have heard him questioned about this affair, and he never made a good tale of it, although every body knows it was a good thing. The Scud had near fallen into the hands of the French and the Mingos, when Jasper saved her, in a way which none but a quick-witted mind and a bold heart would have attempted. The Sergeant will tell the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... his camel, and the creature collapsed, all neck and legs, upon the ground. The young Arab sprang off its back, and, seizing its nose-ring, he beat it savagely with the flat of his sword to make it stand up. But the dim, glazing eye told its own tale, and in desert warfare the death of the beast is the death of the rider. The Baggara glared round like a lion at bay, his dark eyes flashing murderously from under his red turban. A crimson spot, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fifteen years since—well, even while I tell the tale, I, the exhausted orator, the Minister dried up by the friction of public business, I still feel a surging in my heart and the hot blood about my diaphragm. At the end of an hour I passed once more; ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... in the corner with the eyes starting from his head, "get you back to your gentle-hearted people and make it clear to them why the lady Merapi cannot companion you, taking with you that carrion to prove your tale. Tell them that if they send more men to molest your niece a like fate awaits them, but that now as before I do not turn my back upon them because of the deeds of a few madmen or evil-doers, as I have given them proof to-day. Ana, make ready, since soon I leave for Memphis. See that ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... is the absurd dilettanteism and presumption of the man. He writes a tale as if he were giving dignity to romance; he applauds an artist as Dives might have thrown crumbs to Lazarus; vain to the last degree of all that he wrote or said, he was yet too fine a gentleman to be called author; if there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... robber nor a murderer in intention. I wanted to get my own money, withheld from me against my expressed desire—that was all. I do not say this to extenuate my crime, but to let you know the exact truth. I cannot dwell upon this part of the dreadful tale. You know already that the thieves murdered Sir Lemuel Levison in his chamber. It seems that he had not gone to bed, but had fallen asleep in his chair. He woke and discovered them. He was instantly about to give the alarm, when he was knocked senseless ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... reached England. With the backing and assistance of the Mission Board, Doctor Grenfell and Captain Trevize of the Albert arranged a speaking tour for the purpose of exciting interest in the Labrador work. Men and women were moved by the tale of their experiences and the suffering and needs of the fishermen and liveres. Gifts were made and sufficient funds subscribed to purchase necessary supplies and hospital equipment, and a fine rowboat was donated to ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads. Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three spinning- women..." [Footnote: The beginning of one of the best known ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... I received, relative to the occupation of Joe Smith, as a treasure-finder, will probably remind the reader of the character of Dousterswivel, in Walter Scott's tale of the Antiquary. One could almost imagine that either Walter Scott had borrowed from Joe, or that Joe had ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... be a mummy or ashes." "Many who are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee, and neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else." What has become of all great and famous men, and all they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale, or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always introduced ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... than could attach to its merely amusing features. It was obvious that in these legends were preserved the fragments of the beliefs of the ancient folk. "The mythology of one period," remarked Sir Walter Scott, "would appear to pass into the romance of the next century, and that into the nursery tale of the subsequent ages." "Fiction," said Sir John Malcolm, "resolves itself into its primitive elements, as, by the slow and unceasing action of the wind and rain, the solid granite is crumbled into sand. The creations embodied ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... posts that descended to the water's edge," pursued Jocelyne, her eyes sparkling and her cheek now flushed with the animation of her tale. "Alayn aided me, although unwillingly, with cord and linen. I reached the mill—the boat. The miller rowed me to the shore. I knew I could not approach the king; but I bethought me of you, madam—for they say—they say, you love him well." At these words Jocelyne ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... had written a paper of her too just complaints against her husband, and written it in plain and very pungent English. Pepys, in an agony lest the world should come to see it, brutally seizes and destroys the tell-tale document; and then—you disbelieve your eyes—down goes the whole story with unsparing truth and in the cruellest detail. It seems he has no design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps a ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Certain tell-tale indentations, visible where the cover fitted into the lock, showed that it had once been forced open. The lock had been hampered on some former occasion; and the key remained so fast fixed in it that it could neither be turned nor drawn out. In her newly-aroused ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... have been playing here; the latter with well- deserved and extraordinary success in Gluck's "Orpheus" and "Iphigenia in Aulis" (in Wagner's translation and arrangement). This evening the "Sleeping Beauty" (a fairy-tale epic), by Joachim Raff, will be given. According to my opinion, this is Raff's ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... out and round about And you'll discover never A tale so free from every doubt - All probable, possible shadow of doubt ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... I hope the following tale is not true, though my authority is good. In this very captaincy, within these twenty years, an Indian tribe had been so troublesome, that the Capitam Mor resolved to get rid of it. It was attacked, but defended itself so bravely, that the Portuguese ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... dreaded that, above all men, Hastings should be made aware of the guilty secret which the philosopher and his child could tell. If Hastings gave his name and rank to Sibyll, how powerful a weight would the tale of a witness now so ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imagination or no, and unmask all impersonations of it, and this chiefly with respect to art, for in literature the faculty takes a thousand forms, according to the matter it has to treat, and becomes like the princess of the Arabian tale, sword, eagle, or fire, according to the war it wages, sometimes piercing, sometimes soaring, sometimes illumining, retaining no image of itself, except its supernatural power, so that I shall content ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them sick or into retreating. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... parteth noght withal, Bot kepth it, as a servant schal: And thus, thogh that he multeplie His gold, withoute tresorie He is, for man is noght amended With gold, bot if it be despended To mannes us; wherof I rede A tale, and tak therof good hiede, Of that befell be olde tyde, As telleth ous the clerk Ovide. 140 Bachus, which is the god of wyn, Acordant unto his divin A Prest, the which Cillenus hihte, He hadde, and fell so that be ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... His correspondents showed an artless pride in the recital. It was becoming their only claim to consideration that they knew Florence Fenacre. Her dazzling life reflected a sort of glory upon themselves, and their letters ran endlessly on the same theme. It was all a modern fairy tale, and they fairly bubbled with satisfaction to think that they knew the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... her and her mother such signal service, and it was a glorious occasion when Jack led to the altar the bride he had won in such a strange and weird manner. We could write more, but we believe we have told the whole tale as concerns facts, and comments we ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... overflowing stream Sweeps us away; our life's a dream; An empty tale; a morning flower Cut down and wither'd in ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... indeed, she did carry it mighty high and artificial, wherever respect and humility were to be commanded. But it was pretty to see how she would unbend and become her natural self where her heart was touched by some tender sentiment. How she would empty her pockets to give to any one with a piteous tale, how she would get from her horse to pluck wild-flowers by the roadside, and how, one day, overtaking a poor woman carrying a child painfully on her back, she must have the little one up on her lap and carry it till we reached the hamlet ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Night,' first into the French by Galland, about 1705, and presently into various English versions, exerted an immediate influence on French, German, and English romance. The pseudo-Oriental or semi-Oriental tale of home-manufacture sprang into existence right and left with the publishers of London and Paris, and in German centres of letters. Hope's 'Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek,' Lewis's 'The Monk,' the German Hauff's admirable 'Stories of the Caravan, the Inn, and the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with us, and being a reasonable distance from headquarters, we have been spared a great deal of the "messing about" which seems to be the special fate of the Imperial Yeomen. When you get your British Yeomen home again, many a tale of incompetent officers and needless hardships will be retailed, unless I am much in error. Here is apparently a small fact, which may help to show why the Yeoman has often fared worse than his regular brother. The quartermaster-sergeant of a certain I.Y. company I know of, is, like ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... was some time before Mrs. Rooney could comprehend him—for his interjectional laughter at the capital joke it was, that she should be the last to know it, and that he should have the luck to tell it, sometimes broke the thread of his story—and then his collateral observations so disfigured the tale, that its incomprehensibility became very much increased, until at last Mrs. Rooney was driven to push ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... suppliant, fawning, on the other; who shall study the child's natural bent, in order to direct his studies to the point he is most likely to excel in; and to preserve the respect due to his own character from every one, he must not be a busy body in the family, a whisperer, a tale-bearer, but of a benevolent turn of mind, ready to compose differences; who shall avoid, of all things, that foppishness of dress and appearance, which distinguishes the petit-maitres, and French ushers (that I ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... a strange, random humor, and that had I got a "Mind your own business" sort of answer, it was no more than such unasked-for meddling might expect. I am glad with all my heart at what you tell me about the success of the tale. But we really will not wait so long for ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Murdie Cameron and others of his set proceeded to congratulate old Donald, in their own way, upon his son's achievement, and with all the more fervor that they perceived that it moved the solemn Peter to righteous wrath. From one and another the tale came forth with embellishments, till Donald Finch was reduced to such a state of voiceless rage and humiliation that when, at the sound of the opening psalm the congregation moved into the church for the Gaelic service, the old man departed ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... was a lie;" but General Auger, the president of the court, told him that he had nothing to say, and bade him sit down, which he did with cursing in great excitement. I some- times spent two or three hours in listening to the tale of the heartless cruelties that unprincipled wretch had committed. One woman, whose son died in that prison, was listening one afternoon. She stood in the corridor, and as he passed with his guards for the ambulance, which was to ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Penitent (l703), Rowe gave expression to the first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share"; therefore he offers "a melancholy tale of private woes". In his prologue, Lillo repeats this idea, but in his dedication he shows himself primarily concerned with the second tendency. Specifically challenging those "who deny the lawfulness of the stage", ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... entreaties requested to be admitted into the city as Romans. When they were admitted, however (since no suspicion existed to hinder their admission), and were questioned as to the plans of the enemy, they varied in their tale: and in consequence they were put to the torture, and having formally confessed what they had undertaken to do, they ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... because well-nigh Disuse in him forgetfulness had wrought, In Latin he composed his history; A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraught With matter of delight, and food for thought. And if he could in Merlin's glass have seen By whom his tomes to speak our tongue were taught, The old man would have felt as pleased, I ween, As when he won the ear of that ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... loft, by candle-light, Sturgeon sat midway in some long and wheezy tale, to which the padre and his wife listened with true forbearance. Greetings over, the stodgy annalist continued. The story was forgotten as soon as ended; talk languished; and even by the quaking light of the candles, it was plain that the silence was no mere waiting solemnity ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... spread in the American army that the British bayoneted General Mercer after he gave up his sword. But he said to Major Lewis, who inquired about it: "The tale which you have heard, George, is untrue. My death is owing to myself. I was on foot endeavoring to rally my men, who had given way before the superior discipline of the enemy, when I was brought to the ground by a blow from a musket. At the same moment the enemy ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Heimert played a leading role in the little world of the barracks. The wives of the non-commissioned officers listened more or less dubiously to the romantic tale of her origin, and envied her the all-powerful money at her disposal. For not only did she give one pure coffee from the bean,—no chicory mixture,—but she was also extremely fashionable in her attire, rustling about ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... comfort and solace and joyance of life, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies; the Depopulator of palaces and the Garnerer of graveyards. And men also relate the tale of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... a tale of the Arabian Thousand and One Nights, and though full of nonsense, it amuses by its lightheartedness ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... thoughtlessly said the most unexpected, the funniest, the most astonishing things. In that mind, all the parts of which seemed dissimilar, like rags of all kinds and of every color, not sewn, but merely tacked together, there appeared to be as much imagination as in a fairy tale, a good deal of coarseness, indecency, impudence and of the unexpected, and as much breeziness and landscapes as in a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... horrified at the result of their thoughtlessness. Then they dismounted and bore the boy to the roadside again and placed him under the shade of a tree. His blood shone upon the leaves, and his sallow, shrunken face told a pitiful tale ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... tale to tell about transport and munitions. Outside the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where Southern cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta and Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had many places, each with ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... neglecting the unities of an epic, is like that of a general history, rambling and desultory, or like the transformations of a fairy tale, as it is: his descriptions are gorgeous, his verse exceedingly melodious, and his management of it very graceful. The Gerusalemme Liberata of Tasso appeared while he was writing the Faery Queene, and he imitated ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... out of the door, Away was all his care! And on he put his good clothing, The other he left there. He went him forth full merry singing As men have told in tale, His Lady met him at the gate At home in Verysdale. "Welcome, my Lord!" said his Lady, "Sir, lost is all your good?" "Be merry, Dame!" said the Knight, "And pray for ROBIN HOOD! That ever his soul be in bliss; He helped ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... am I set to mark When shall stream up the glow of signal-flame, The bale-fire bright, and tell its Trojan tale— Troy town is ta'en: such issue holds in hope She in whose woman's breast beats heart ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... with this tale, and some others by the same author, then a very young beginner, that he wrote asking her to contribute a serial story of ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... sleeping infants out of the baskets, and cared not how the enraged mothers lacerated their faces in return. The scenes of horror changed so quickly, that you could not dwell more than half a minute upon any of them. The tenderest heart became torpid and insensible. One tale of woe followed on the heels of another,—"Such a person too has been plundered!—Such an one's house has been set on fire!—This man is cut in pieces; that has been transfixed with the bayonet!—Those poor creatures are seeking their children!"—These ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... and dirtiest week of the whole year, the only interest being the scraps of gossip which kept coming in, and from which we pieced together the disastrous tale of the second battle of Gaza. One could also ride up to the top of Raspberry Hill or Im Seirat and see something for oneself, but usually any movement of troops was invisible owing to ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... fire into the advancing enemy told its tale, and many saddles were emptied, but they were now nearly at close quarters. Helmar and his men clubbed ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... should tell the tale," Albert said, "for indeed I know but little about it from the time I saw you lowered over the wall. Things went well with us for a time; we were joined by more men, and were strong enough to divide ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... proud spirit, Philip,—thy strength of mind. If anyone could bear the load of such a dreadful tale, thou couldst. My brain, alas! was far too weak for it; and I see it is my duty ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The conqueror was very hard to please. He read in his travelling carriage, and after skimming a few pages would throw a volume that bored him out of the window into the highway. He might have been tracked by his trail of romances, as was Hop-o'-my-Thumb, in the fairy tale, by the white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who ministered to a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, was at his wit's end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of the year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he refused, with imperial scorn, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... vaguely wrong about the wondrous fitness of Ruef's plan. Mary Godwin Shelley's tale of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... found her, a stranger, wandering lonely in the green, and she, being sick of heart and brain, spake wild words of a great wrong, vainly done and suffered, and of an abiding remorse. And when I had nursed her into health she told me a wondrous tale. So, lord Beltane, do I know that in her hands thy happiness ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... over her at once, so that I understood all that she had told me. The sleepless night may have made it worse, but the look that came into her eyes, and the looseness of the fibres not only of her tell-tale wet mouth, but of every muscle of her face was startling and piteous to see. She saw my look and laughed, but her laugh was equally piteous to hear, and when she spoke again her voice had changed too, and was equally piteous. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not wish that. These particulars are much too dreadful to relate—much too horrible for the ear of a lady. It requires strong nerves and an iron heart to listen to such a tale ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... fond of telling; it had been a little romance in the ordinary routine of hotel life, and one in which, when she had duly set forth M. Linders' heartlessness and her own exertions, she felt that she must shine in an exceptionally favourable light; and indeed it was so pitiful a tale the her hearers could not but share the indignation and compassion she felt and expressed when she spoke of cette pauvre dame, who so young and so beautiful had been left alone to give birth to her infant, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... here. Pure poetry is the perfection of prose, or prose idealized. "It is a dream drawn from the infinite, and portrayed to mortal sense." It takes a great mind, a great genius to weave into a gossamer web, complete and perfect in every part, a story, a tale, an idea, which alike charms the mind, enthralls the sense, and enchains the spirit. Poetry is the perfection of language. It is not a mere mechanical contrivance of words, but a glorious picture in which the outward execution is lost ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... town yesterday morning, and did not return till seven o'clock; in the meantime affairs were materially altered. I met Duncannon riding with a face as long as the pictures of Hudibras, which at once told the tale of baffled hopes. Melbourne's negotiation had failed entirely. 'Jack,'[9] who was backed at even against the field the night before in the House of Commons, would have nothing to say to it. I have not yet heard in detail the circumstances of this failure, but it ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... hoops, and began to drop them into the sockets placed for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous work; but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell the tale. They were not hoops, they were demons. First they would not fit into their sockets at all, and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and hammer at them with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out that they ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Pickthank had told his tale, the Judge directed his speech to the prisoner at the bar, saying, Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... play 'Nuts.' Each one puts a certain number into a cap, but to win the game one has to be very quick and sharp: it is really quite exciting. What we like best is when the old lady sits amongst us and reads us a tale from a book, or some of the papers sent her from abroad. The stories are very tantalizing, for they always leave off at the most interesting part, and then we may have to wait a week or two before we get the ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... seventeenth year, when she was no longer in the mood for such horse-play, it was Jim who brought the practice to an end. At the table Jim leaned back in his chair, stroked his red bristly beard, now rapidly graying, looked out of a window over Clara's head, and told a tale concerning an attempt at suicide on the part of a young man in love with Clara. He said the young man, a clerk in a Bidwell store, had taken a pair of trousers from a shelf, tied one leg about his neck and the other to a bracket in the wall. Then ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... word was intelligible to the lookers-on, but all the same the scene told its own tale. Punch's lips parted, his face turned white, and he lay back helpless, with his fingers clenched, while Pen's chest began to heave and he stood there irresolute, breathing hard as if he had been running, knowing ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... man, and which now-a-days we take readily enough, without comment, is yet the growth of comparatively modern times, the development within a few centuries of a new faculty. The Greek never solaced his leisure with the latest tale of a gifted Charicles or Aristarchus, and the grave Roman would have been as much startled by a 'new novel' as by the apparition of a steam engine. The famous Minerva press was the first mighty wellspring whence gushed the broad and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatcheff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gogol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... The little ravine lay in purple shadow, but on the crest of the opposite hill he saw one tall pine standing up erect and grand and all ablaze where it caught the last gleam of the dying sun, a pine tree with golden needles like the one in the fairy tale. Duncan's heart, always in keen sympathy with Nature, thrilled at the sight. It seemed to him the bright promise of a new and greater day. He turned and saw Donald ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... picture of "Mary of Scotland, giving her infant to the Care of Lord Mar," Palgrave wrote: "This work is finely painted, and tells its tale with clearness." Among her numerous works are: "The Poet Hogg's First Love"; "Chatterton," the poet, in the Muniment Room, Bristol; "Lady Jane Grey refusing the Crown of England"; "Antwerp Market"; "Queen Mary of Scots' ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... turned naturally to Cherry, who listened to his tale of repeated failure with furrowed brows, pondering the matter as seriously as if the responsibility had ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... walk the night; And, for the day, confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier |
