"Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less capable than he got jobs he should have had. Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep it at bay than Neville. Neville had no personal achievements; she had only her love for Rodney, Gerda ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... establish himself in any business I would always give the advice to take a subordinate position for a year in a similar business already established. This will give him what is called 'colonial experience,' for want of which many an able man fails at the threshold. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... remained to him, before a long, perhaps a lasting separation from his dear wife and baby, and thinking to pass these with them he hurried thence by the most unfrequented route, but had hardly crossed the threshold when Delia, weeping bitterly, implored him to make good his escape, as Master Tom had already sent the officers to look for him. With a last, fond embrace and a tear, which, falling upon that cradled babe, meant present sorrow, but no less future hope, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... only the younger members of the household who were struggling with mystery that night, however. Before they had been reading many minutes, there came a discreet tap at the door and Hotchkiss appeared upon the threshold. Oliver was wondering what a boy unused to butlers was supposed to say or do on the occasion of such a visit, and even Janet, better at guessing the etiquette of such matters, seemed at a loss. And so also was Hotchkiss, as it presently began ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Fear, And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts Waken to worship Him who giveth joys 30 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... accustomed to serve this rite we forbid to enter any private house, or under the pretence of friendship to cross the threshold of another, under the penalty established against them if they contemn the law.(96) But those of you who regard this rite, approach the public altars and shrines and celebrate the solemnities of your custom; for we do not indeed prohibit the duties ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... writing is coarse and ill-kempt; for which reason I have made no mention of thy name, nor of my own; and this is of set purpose lest if this poor letter fall at any time into the hands of another, he might be offended on the very threshold and so not care to go ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... Francis, Lord Jeffrey began in 1791, at a club, where he read an essay on ballads which so much interested the future critic that he sought an introduction to its author, and the acquaintance thus begun between these two young men, both of whom unconsciously stood on the threshold of great careers, ripened into friendship. This happened before Scott was called to the bar in 1792. It was two years afterwards that he produced a poem which took by surprise a literary friend, Miss Cranstoun, and caused ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... stationary: all the world is a continual process of coming into existence and passing away. It is on the universality of this process that birth (jati) depends. But on what does the endless becoming itself depend? We seem here on the threshold of the deepest problems but the answer, though of wide consequences, brings us back to the strictly human and didactic sphere. Existence depends on Upadana. This word means literally grasping or clinging to and should be so translated ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... thus have counted for the best of holidays. My physical wellbeing was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain. I call him friend, here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead. At first I was too much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, too much puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by his small vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the doorway, Estein entered the abode of Andreas the hermit. Lit only by a small window and the gleam of a driftwood fire, the rude apartment was dusky and dim; yet there seemed nothing there that should make the sea-king pause at the threshold. Was it but a smoke wreath that he saw, and did the wind rise with a sudden gust out of the stillness of the evening? It seemed to him a face that appeared and then vanished, and a far- off voice that whispered a warning ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... will tell you," he said; "you have wooed a Tresilyan like a yeoman's daughter." The homicide wrote in his confession of all this that, as he laid the head gently down, a smile came upon the lips before they set. Was it that the parting spirit—standing on the threshold of Eternity, and almost within the light of the grand secret—fathomed the earth-worm's miserable vanity, and could not refrain ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... ten days old when they opened their eyes, but more than three weeks passed before they were allowed beyond the threshold of their home. Then, one starlight night, their mother, having returned from hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Chateaubriand in the later days was possibly the most ideal and noble in the history of French women. He never failed to make his appearance in the afternoon at the abbaye, driven in a carriage to her threshold, where he was placed in an armchair and wheeled to a corner by her fireplace. On one of those visits, he asked her to marry him—he being seventy-nine, she seventy-one—and bear his illustrious name. "Why should we marry at our age?" Mme. Recamier replied. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. Certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his attic room on any pretext. If he caught one pointing for his aerie, he would block the way and bid her sternly begone. She seldom tarried long, for Barney was not a pleasing object when he was in an ugly mood. As the years passed, and cobweb and dirt accumulated in ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... full of coolness and mystery, the Tritons seemed to be playing with sea monsters, while from far away I thought I heard the lamentable voice of Ariadne weeping for Theseus. Ah no, they are not dead, the beautiful, fair gods. Here, in the temple of Aphrodite, on the threshold of Italy, I will lift up my heart. Though the songs we made are dead and the dances forgotten, though the statues are broken, the temples destroyed, still in my heart there is a song and in my blood a murmur as of dancing, and I will carve new statues and rebuild the temples every day. For I have ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... across the threshold, the skirts of his dripping overcoat flapping about his knees and the water pouring from the brim of his hat. He carried the ruin of what had been an umbrella in his hand. It had been blown inside out, and was now but a crumpled tangle of wet fabric and bent and bristling ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... talk of culture and civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported, are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now that Japan is ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the ransom out of my own coffers. I am not over fond of paying two millions of piastres, or even half, for one whose shadow never fell upon my threshold. And yet I must do it: do it for my father-in-law, the Sheikh of the Recha-bites, whose peace I made with Mehemet Ali, for whom I gained the guardianship of the Mecca caravan through the Syrian desert for five years, who has twelve thousand camels which he made by that ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... instant some one knocked at the door. "Come in," said Franz. A servant, wearing a livery of considerable style and richness, appeared at the threshold, and, placing two cards in the landlord's hands, who forthwith presented them to the two young men, he said, "Please to deliver these, from the Count of Monte Cristo to Viscomte Albert de Morcerf and M. Franz ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... almost in the middle of the largest room, which opened by long windows into an adroitly tangled rose garden where a small fountain purred amongst blue lilies, there was a quantity of music. The whole house was strongly scented with flowers. Dion was greeted at its threshold by a ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold with him. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... that moment, Isabel had not suspected that she would be obliged to see him alone. She was furious with Aunt Francesca for thus betraying her, but no retreat was possible. The nurse smilingly ushered her in, passed her almost on the threshold, and went out, quietly closing ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though, at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions. He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he might have been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest; and from this it was but a moderate step in advance to say that he was trodden on. Upon which basis many other ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth which they had gathered when they very little thought of it from the mountain-peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had traveled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... course, seeking how she might play some sharping trick upon town. She walked from street to street, till she came to an alley swept and watered and marble-paved, where she saw a vaulted gateway, with a threshold of alabaster, and a Moorish porter standing at the door, which was of sandalwood plated with brass and furnished with a ring of silver for knocker. Now this house belonged to the Chief of the Caliph's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... time, walking about as usual, wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts; they had had no new experiences, and, what was worse, they were not only unconscious of any that she might have had, but were profoundly indifferent; and to Beth, on the threshold of life, all eager interest in everything, caring greatly to know, and ready to sympathise, this vision of the self-centred with shrivelled hearts was terrible; it gave her the sensation of being the one living thing that could feel in a world of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... blessed, who had done so much to contribute to the triumph of this day, wanting to its complete realization of all that such a day should have been. The Duchess of Kent was already on a visit to her nephew, standing on the old threshold—once so well known to her—ready to help to welcome her daughter, prepared to show her the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, Prince ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... momentous things for her graduation, a little soberness came into the parsonage life. The girls were certainly growing up. Prudence had been married a long, long time. Fairy was being graduated from college, her school-days were over, and life was just across the threshold—its big black door just slightly ajar waiting for her to press it back and catch a glimpse of what lay beyond, yes, there was a rosy tinge showing faintly through like the light of the early sun shining through the night-fog, but the door ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... and the tallish young man stood on the threshold again, this time social and affable. His distraitness, oddly enough, had all gone. He greeted the two in the smoking-room as though he had seen them for the first time that evening; expressed his pleasure at being in their company; inquired after their healths and late pursuits; pressed cigarettes ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the earlier part of the journey, contrasted with the delay in Caesarea at the threshold of his goal, is explained by supposing that at the beginning Paul's one wish had been to get to Jerusalem in time for the Feast, and that at Caesarea he found that, thanks to his earlier haste and his good passages, he had a margin to spare. He did not wish to get to the Holy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... times blazed with intolerable fervor, or again the heat broke in savage storms of thunder, hail and rain. All the elements, all the circumstances seemed in league to warn them back before it was too late, for indeed they were not yet more than on the threshold of the Plains. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He was leaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had often seen her husband lean when he was talking to her on a summer evening. Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely. Supposing he were in need, and pleaded ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... home at length, to be met upon the threshold by Blake. In her exhaustion she almost ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... effort, mastered the two most important educational tasks in life. He has learned to speak and has acquired the greater part of his working vocabulary. In other words, although he has never been across the threshold of a school, his education is well advanced for ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... toward the door, winking very fast and clearing his throat. At the threshold he beckoned to his wife. But she had already ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway, around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open. Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Williams, Sam's mother, opened the door of the room and stood upon the threshold. The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased instantly, and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell upon them. "Boys, you weren't ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and private there are symptoms of an approaching failure of the motive power which has hitherto sustained men both in self- sacrificing effort and in courageous protest against wrong, though as yet we are only at the threshold of the great change, and established sentiment long survives, in the masses, that which originally gave it birth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second Empire remained at peace, it might have gone on forever; and in the history of this country the connection between political ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... passed through the crazily splintered doorway and had paused on the threshold of the improvised hospital, as the reek of iodoform and of carbolic smote upon his sensitive nostrils. In front of him was the stone-paved vestibule. Beyond was the interior of the shattered church, lined now ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... precision. I must therefore rely on the evidence of my sight alone, evidence, for that matter, which is amply sufficient in the present instance. Compared with his mate, the Mantis-hunting Tachytes is likewise a pigmy. We are quite astonished to see him pestering his giantess on the threshold of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... to light a fire at the entrance of the cavern," said the reporter, "and no wild beasts will dare to cross the threshold." ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... look! Garlanding me in shady spots The Forget-me-nots Are blue as the summer sky: Who so lovely as I? My King-cups of gold Shine from the shade of the alders old, Stars of the stream!— At the water-rat's threshold they gleam. From below The Frog-bit spreads me its blossoms of snow, And in masses The Willow-herb, the flags, and the grasses, Reeds, rushes, and sedges, Flower and fringe and feather my edges. To be beautiful is not ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... me—let us, if we may, 665 Great mourners both, bid sorrow sleep awhile. There is no profit of our sighs and tears; For thus, exempt from care themselves, the Gods Ordain man's miserable race to mourn. Fast by the threshold of Jove's courts are placed 660 Two casks, one stored with evil, one with good, From which the God dispenses as he wills. For whom the glorious Thunderer mingles both, He leads a life checker'd with good and ill Alternate; but to whom he gives unmixt 665 The ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... permitted to cross the threshold of the chiefs' palace. They could do no more than crawl on hands and knees to the door. In spite of the many changes infused into Hawaiian institutions, the kauwa families remain branded with a stigma, in the opinion ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... him. The wonder of it is summed up in our Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are hesitating on the threshold of the Holy ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... door was flung open with a jerk and in much haste; my landlady came sailing in. She came straight over to the middle of the room, she did not even pause on the threshold. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of the firm for several generations. He was prepared to greet a seedy-looking and degenerate individual, looking older than his years. Instead, he found himself extending his hand to one of the best turned out and handsomest men who had ever crossed the threshold of his not very inviting office. For a moment he stared at his visitor, speechless. Then certain points of familiarity—the well-shaped nose, the rather deep-set grey eyes—presented themselves. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... black thought just born in his mind might be strangled, and the shadow driven out of his heart. But his prayer had not been granted. And he knew he had not deserved that it should be. Towards dawn he went back into his house again, and on the threshold, just as a pallor glimmered up as if out of the grass at his feet, he heard the cry again. And he knew that it came ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... two vigorous, proud peoples that know each other too little. Let us know each other better and we shall have put an end to misunderstandings. The present moment is especially propitious for saying this, because we are upon the threshold of great events in this western world of ours. In my own country the progress of development has reached a point of transition. In the fifty years, from 1850 to 1900, we received on our shores nearly twenty million ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... thee well," continued the frantic man, "and I have seen thee pause upon the threshold of the holy house of God, and kneel in mockery upon the steps before it: but thou hast never dared to enter it. Thou knewest well that the devil thou servest would have torn thee in pieces hadst thou done it. Ha! do I catch thee there?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... thoughtful, was pacing the room, with her hands clasped behind her head,—a favorite attitude of hers when she was in any perplexity. She stopped short as Nan regarded her with some astonishment from the threshold. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and she recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would bring back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was not to be decided in that short and easy way,—by perfect renunciation at the very threshold of her youth. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... lay between them on the table; he wondered when she would see them. She lingered tentatively on the threshold, with the air of leaving his explanation on his hands. She was not the kind of woman who could be counted on to fortify an excuse by ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... waiting here At the threshold of her bower; Winds are lifting far and near The sweets of every flower, All the stars are out in state, Music breathes in every stir, All of nature seems to wait For a glimpse of her. Tell her I ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade - and the thirst of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I spoke, Artur swung open the small circular door. A great ethon flashlight, of a type still to be seen in our larger museums, stood just inside the threshold, and aided by its beams, ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... returned to the ground-floor rooms. It was the hour for his afternoon nap. He walked to the guard-room at the end of the suite. But he had no sooner placed his foot on the threshold than ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... the children of the Lord. Wind, wind! the peaceful reel must still go round; Wind, wind! the thread of life will soon be wound. The worker has no dread of growing old; First, years of toil, and then the age of gold! For lo! he hopes to bear his flag unfurled Beyond the threshold ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the cabin door, he discovered a negro lying on the deck, as close as he could get to the threshold. The man attempted to spring to his feet, but the officer seized him by the hair of the head, and pulled ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... a terrible sight. Pale with fear they stood on the threshold of the kitchen not daring to move—to enter. Their hearts were in their mouths. A ghost stood there in front of them—Yollande—and Germaine fell at Mother Etienne's feet in utter consternation. Yollande? Yes, Yollande, but what a Yollande! Heavens! Yollande plucked, literally plucked! ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... thee—the door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling from within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light—and the brethren of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its chosen. Shall they hold back their hand when thou art even on the threshold?" ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Shylock and Portia live captivates and subdues them, until like the Samaritans they say, "Now we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know." That is the only use of authority in a vital, realm. It can lead us up to the threshold of a great experience where we must enter, each man for himself, and that service to the spiritual life is ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the door of the royal chamber opened, and Lady Jane, daughter of Earl Douglas, and first maid of honor to the queen, made her appearance on the threshold. Both bishops regarded her in breathless silence. It was a serious, a solemn moment, the deep importance of which was very well comprehended by ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... bedridden—came out of the cabins, asked questions and stared in wonder at the lady in the hammock. The skipper answered a few of their questions and waved them out of the way. They fell back in staring groups. The skipper ran ahead of the litter to his own house and met Mother Nolan on the threshold. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Ernst, far more anxious about his invalid, helpless wife than his imperilled wares, soon reached his own door. His companion crossed the threshold close behind him, sullen, deeply incensed, and determined to order his son to choose between his love and favour and the daughter of this unfriendly man, whom only a sudden accident had prevented ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... creatures of flesh and blood—lessened the dread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves—I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless shadow! Besides: Lilian—Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the march of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... done with them," she said, "and done with fine dressing, and becoming colors." Her voice shook, and Hannah, seeing that she was completely unnerved, succeeded in persuading her to go up to her own room. On the threshold she paused. ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... across the wide heath and seen that there was no one coming, and that the hounds by the doorway were fast asleep in the sun, and the very pigeons on the roof had all got their heads under their wings, he ventured to step across the threshold into the bay window, and begin to open his pack and display all his fine things, taking care to set them out in the sunshine, which, made them ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... one of these paroxysms the door opened, and Arthur stood upon the threshold transfixed with surprise. To see Peggy laughing was no uncommon circumstance, but it was a different matter where Miss Rollo was concerned. During the months which he had spent beneath her father's roof, Arthur had been sorry for the girl who was left to her own devices ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... pretty Dorothy to the great house and sent her trotting into the library, saying "grandpa" as she ran; and of how the little girl had been lifted outside the house by a servant, who had civilly stated the orders he had received, never to allow any one from the author's house to "cross the threshold" of that ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... disciples in general, and in his effort to reach the throne, needed the assistance of Umako in particular. In short, he was building the edifice of a great reform, and to have pitted himself, at the age of nineteen, against the mature strength of the o-omi would have been to perish on the threshold of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... necessary to have a passport in Finland as in Russia. But whereas in Russia a passport is demanded at once, almost before one has crossed the threshold of an hotel, one can stay in a Finnish town for three days without having to prove one's identity; any longer stay in a hotel or private house often necessitates the passport being sent to the police. It is a most extraordinary ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... not let him come into the flat. "I'm too sleepy," she declared. She stood before him on the inner side of her threshold, with a faint smile on her face that was as pale as magnolia flowers, and her eyelids drooping heavily; she put out a lazy hand against his chest and warded off his entry. When she sent him away, he felt on fire, from the last ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... arrived. Presently there would be time for its instructions to be acted on as well. And at this moment I realized, as I had not fully realized before, all that it would mean to me of humiliation and defeat to fail ignominiously on the threshold ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Richard, driven desperate. "I have been on the threshold of it, but somehow I couldn't lay hands on just the words. Dorothy knows I love her!" he repeated as though to himself. "It would be ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them. Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual constitution projects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then, if ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing which civilization has begotten after its own kind and named "trade" is ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... guise To know her foe, and dread him evermore. The town mouse fled, she knew whither to go; The other had no shift, but wonders sore, Fear'd of her life! At home she wished her tho'; And to the door, alas! as she did skip (The heaven it would, lo, and eke her chance was so) At the threshold her sill foot did trip; And ere she might recover it again, The traitor Cat had caught her by the hip And made her there against her will remain, That had forgot her poor surety and rest, For seeming wealth, wherein she ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... on a sudden, out of the distance blared the bugle that hangs at the gate; Loud the barbican leaped on its hinges; and the hollow porch and the vacant hall And the roof of the long resounding corridor echoed the advent of unknown feet, The feet of a stranger approaching the threshold step by step irresistibly: Till opened yonder door and through it strode to this Table the Virgin Knight— Strode and stood ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... northern coast. But a sad accident turned their rejoicing into mourning. Charles Stansmore accidentally slipped on a rock when out shooting, and his gun going off, he was shot through the heart and died instantly. His friend Carnegie speaks most highly of him, and his sudden death on the threshold of success was a sad blow to the company. Stansmore was the third explorer to lose his life from ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the Church grew till it numbered hundreds of souls, and thousands more hovered on its threshold. From dawn to dark Owen toiled, preaching, exhorting, confessing, gathering in his harvest; and from dark to midnight he pored over his translation of the Scriptures, teaching Nodwengo and a few others how to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... water. He took a step forward and groped his way into a little porch smelling horribly of mustiness and damp. As he did so, he heard a whirr behind him and the car began to glide off. Desmond shouted after the chauffeur. Now that he stood on the very threshold of his adventure, he wanted to cling desperately to this last link with his old self. But the chauffeur did not or would not hear, and presently the sound of the engine died away, leaving Desmond to the darkness, the sad splashing of distant water ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... drove men of faith to seek the grounds of reassurance in a science of their own; in a method of experiment, of observation, of hypothesis checked by known facts. It is impossible for me to do more than glance across the threshold of this subject. But it is necessary to say that the method is in an elementary stage of revival. The imposing success that belongs to natural science is absent: we fall short of the unchallengeable unanimity of the Biologists on ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dear, kind friend, don't give way in this fashion. You have stood manfully by me through every step of the road; don't desert me on the threshold of—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sensation floats in the dim outer regions of consciousness as a vague feeling, the real nature and history of which are unknown. This remark applies not only to the undefined bodily sensations that are always oscillating about the threshold of obscure consciousness, but to the higher sensations connected with the special organs of perception. The student in optics soon makes the startling discovery that his field of vision has all through his life been haunted with weird shapes ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Challenge Magazine, "then when the mob comes, whether with torch or with gun, let us stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord." "Protect your home," said the gentle Christian Recorder, "protect your wife and children, with your life if necessary. If a man crosses your threshold after you and your family, the law allows you to protect your home even if you have to kill the intruder." Perhaps nothing, however, better summed up the new spirit than the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... this vow against Fortune the wanderer came to the door of his friend, and lo! there sat Fortune, waiting on the threshold, whilst ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... at home by her mother or by her virtuous, bigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps have never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded by chaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit they were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, even the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met with, here and there in the world, like woodland ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... trim, clean-shaven, hard-featured young man in naval uniform was standing upon the threshold. He bowed to Esther. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... (OOF) or transactions by the official sector whose main objective is other than development-motivated or whose grant element is below the 25% threshold for ODA. OOF transactions include official export credits (such as Eximbank credits), official equity and portfolio investment, and debt reorganization by the official sector that does not meet ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... people gathered in the singing house he used to lie in the passage and peep over the threshold. Now and then a man would take him by the nose and lift him into the house and make him carry out a jar of water. It was so large and heavy that he had to take hold of it with both hands and his teeth. Because he was so often lifted by his nose, ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... century, with pointed arched doorway and window lights separated by slender columns with foliated capitals carved by no clumsy rustic workman. The boy who accompanied me had the key. As I entered I was met on the threshold by the fragrant odour of the tobacco-plant; I perceived that the mediaeval house was used for drying tobacco-leaves—a purpose that could never have been in the imagination of the original owner, for those stones were laid together long before the herb, now so precious to ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to omit his prayers in his eagerness for his porridge, but the sight of his grandfather induced him to change his mind. He knelt reverently down, and was so found when his mother came in. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and silently beckoned the good mistress of the house forward to share in the sight. But neither of the women knew how near the boy's prayers came to being entirely omitted that morning. And what is more, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... counted on much assistance from Ledantec, nor, indeed, had she much belief in him now; but she yet hoped he might help her to obtain revenge. Whatever it cost her, Rupert Gascoigne must pay the penalty of thwarting her when she seemed on the very threshold of success. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... On passing the threshold it is proper to say, "Bismillah, i.e., in the name of God;" not to do so would be looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... her father's house. From the day that she went over its threshold, she never came out until she was carried out in her coffin three years ago. Not a soul outside of her own family ever saw her again. I went to see her, but Janet told me she wouldn't see me. It was foolish of Margaret to act so. She hadn't done anything ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... other accents than {those which} the case itself prompted. When I perceived {this}: "O disgraceful conduct!" I exclaimed, and instantly hurried away from the spot in tears, overwhelmed by such an incredible and shocking circumstance. Her mother followed me; just as I got to the threshold, she threw herself on her knees: I felt compassion for her. Assuredly it is the fact, in my opinion, just as matters befall us all, so are we elated or depressed. At once she began to address me in these words: "O my {dear} Pamphilus, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... cold of December bit them at the threshold. Opposite lay the Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns, the sunlight hard against their boles. More sunlight lay cold and glittering down the length of the most facaded avenue in the world and on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... little exploring expedition been accompanied by colonists experienced in Indian ways, or had they chosen to make use of Indian scouts, disaster might have been averted. As it was, almost on the threshold of their journey they were ambushed, and cut off by the Redskins. Robson, Davers, and two of the men were speedily picked off by the concealed enemy, or were killed in the final rush of the painted, yelling savages. The little force was scattered to the winds. One or ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... He stopped at the threshold for a while, looking hither and thither; and then he suddenly unlocked it and went in, closing and locking it behind him. The room was as dark as night, but Anthony going softly, his hands before ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson |
