"Roomful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her fears and doubts returned. To sing to a whole roomful of people—she had never done it in her life. It would be as bad as that nightmare fancy which used to haunt her, of being dragged forward to find the ten thousand eyes of a crowded theater all focused upon her, a sensation almost as horrible ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... different families, arrived in our midst on different days and did not chance to meet each other at first. At school they happened to be put, away from their compatriots, in the same room. Eugene is eight and Pierre seven. It was, you may well guess, pretty lonely work for a small Belgian in a roomful of Scotch boys, but both bore up bravely. The subject, as I understand, was simple addition (which knows no frontiers and looks the same in any language), and there is no whispering or secret conversation in our school, I ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... example, told him that he had refused a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them out?" Here you have ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... free at last! For a moment, dazed by the sudden release, the bird battered his splendid head against the ceiling, then, before the roomful of travelers realized what had happened, he was out in the open, spreading his ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... with fresh evidence of the popular ignorance, even among students of music, in regard to the outward form and inner grace of what is conceded to be the most popular of all arts. In a roomful of professed music lovers a definition of counterpoint was recently called for, and no one present could give an intelligent answer. This led to a discussion of musical questions which resulted in the disclosure that not ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... volunteered to entertain a roomful of patients of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, and made up a very successful little monologue show, entirely humorous. The audience in the main gave symptoms of being slightly bored, but one highly intelligent ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... his fingers through his hair, which was short, and his eyes wandered wildly round the roomful ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... one of their doctors, and came to know him. Later he took charge of a dressing station near St. George. Here one day the Germans made a sudden sortie, drove back the Fusiliers for a few minutes, and killed the Red Cross roomful, bayoneting the wounded men. The Fusiliers shortly won back their position, found their favorite doctor dead, and in a fury wiped out the Germans who had murdered him and his patients, saving one man alive. They sent him back to the ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... soil in His Highness' dominions has determined to beat record and to go regular mucker. Crops tenfold ordinary capacity are springing from the ground everywhere." One has seen a conjurer produce half a roomful of paper flowers from a hat, or even from an even less promising receptacle, but no conjurer was in it with that interpreter, who from two sulky monosyllabic grunts evolved a perfect garland of choice Oriental flowers of speech. It reminded me of the process known ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... thought or precept. His influence has been mainly by isolated ideas of more or less truth and value. It is impossible here to analyze his work. Such is the mixed tissue of his woof that the captive princess who was set to sort a roomful of birds' feathers had scarcely a harder task than one who should try to separate and classify his threads, some priceless and steady, some rotten, false, misleading. Morals, manners, religion, political economy, are mixed with art in every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... messenger-boys and a couple of traveling-men had had the benefit of it. Ferguson, reporting at that open door, was bidden curtly to come in and sit down. "I'll see you presently," she said, and burst out into the large office. Instantly the roomful of people, lounging about waiting their turn, came to attention. She rushed in among them like a gale, whirling away the straws and chaff before her, and leaving only the things that were worth while. She snapped a yellow envelope from a boy's hand, and even while she ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... shrinks from violence," said Jessie. "I suppose men ARE braver—in a way—than women. It seems to me-I can't imagine—how one could bring oneself to face a roomful of rough characters, pick out the bravest, and give him an exemplary thrashing. I quail at the idea. I thought only Ouida's guardsmen did things ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... "I have got a roomful if you want to see them," said The traveller; "but I don't see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and ends. I like homely and native things about me when I am ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... was a rich man's residence, in the front yard of which there stood a marble statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you all know Miss Spinacher, don't you, ladies ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... my sword I struck down his polluting hand; and grasping Dejah Thoris round the waist, I swung her behind me as, with my back against the draperies of the dais, I faced the tyrant of the north and his roomful ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... use of it, and keep herself out of the way as much as she can; and so she has done since. She says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to her to hear the relation; and that she had told it to a roomful of people at the time. Several particular gentlemen have had the story from ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... country—and this is no very unreasonable application of the word—then this Irish-speaking peasantry has a better claim to the title than can be shown by most bodies of men. I have heard the existence of an Irish literature denied by a roomful of prosperous educated gentlemen; and, within a week, I have heard, in the same county, the classics of that literature recited by an Irish peasant who could neither write nor read. On which part should the stigma of ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... he shot his angry questions, like bullets, from the fireside. "Haven't they done anything yet, eh? How much longer do you reckon that roomful of old women will gabble in Richmond? Why, we might as well put a flock of sheep to decide ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... had quite made up his mind that sooner or later he would take a coward's revenge for the slights he had been made to endure at her hands. But that he should have been flouted in the presence of a whole roomful of people, that he should have been deliberately left for another man, was a different matter altogether. His first impulse when Jeanne left him, was to walk out of the house and have nothing more to say to the Princess or Jeanne herself. The world was full of girls ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... known—longer even than that memorable one in which a strolling trio of Italian musicians had been specially contracted with to begin playing in the school-yard the moment the boys came down. Finally, however, the bell rang half past ten, and the whole roomful hurried down stairs, but not before Mr. Morton had called Joe Appleby, the largest boy in school, and formally introduced Paul Grayson, with the expressed wish that he should make his new companion feel at home ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ran a little thick, as I may say, from my pen. For, although the young man bore a very fair character, and there was no special cause for doubting his discretion, I considered him altogether too good-looking, in the first place, to be let loose in a roomful of young girls. I didn't want him to fall in love just then—and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they most assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with him, why, there was no telling what gratitude and natural ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... forgeron of Chevancourt who used to sing this, or something very like it, upon a table—entirely for the benefit of les deux americains, who would subsequently render "Eats uh lonje wae to Tee-pear-raer-ee," wholly for the gratification of a roomful of what Mr. Anderson liked to call "them bastards," alias "dirty" Frenchmen, alias les poilus, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and milk at the school, too, but Esther and her brothers and sisters never took either, for fear of being thought in want of them. The superiority of a class-mate is hard to bear, and a high-spirited child will not easily acknowledge starvation in presence of a roomful of purse-proud urchins, some of them able to spend a farthing a day on pure luxuries. Moses Ansell would have been grieved had he known his children were refusing the bread he could not give them. Trade was slack in the sweating dens, and Moses, who had always lived from hand to mouth, had latterly ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this celebration should be. An Exposition was clearly out of the question, and even a school-fair was voted troublesome. Some of the younger members favored a dance, but this was objected to, because of the absurdity of a roomful of women waltzing and treading the light, fantastic German by themselves. It would seem, said the Baroness Contaletto, like a burlesque of merriment; and so the dance fell through. A service of song, a tea-drum, a cream-cornet, and a pound-party ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... thump, thump as she and her mother went in at the teachers' gate, and up the stairs and into the principal's office. And thump, thump some more when she saw the whole roomful of strange boys and girls and thump, thump some more when her turn came and she was sent (fortunately with her mother along) to the first grade room—number 104. The room was full of children, hundreds, Mary Jane thought there must be, though the teacher told ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... She is attired in the classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing her forward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although you do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girls and dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on the child's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality of embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than a minute she ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... conscious of the excitement her appearance aroused. Her color deepened as for a second she felt herself the object of the silent gaze of this roomful of people. She did not lose her self-possession, however, and in another moment Charlotte was at her side, and Miss Virginia had recovered her ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... possession of a rich fund of humor. He was funny without intending to be, and this not only made him a diverting companion but ensured him a welcome everywhere. With the straightest of faces, he would say funny things in so ludicrous a manner that a roomful of people would go into convulsions. He laughed with them, not realizing they were laughing at him, but ever preening himself on being a very witty and clever person indeed. His greatest fault was inordinate vanity. He had the highest opinion of his own capacity, and he could ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... looked about the roomful of people and tossed out his hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case. But why shouldn't you and I have a seance, to let a garrulous old fellow talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... kiss her, maybe he would not care for the trouble of holding her for a while. At any rate Daisy submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... to invite the Burwells, but they do look so countryfied! like little old women cut short after they were made. And I don't believe either of them has a party dress to her name. They would be a pair of sights in a roomful of ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... I do not see the connection between a roomful of furniture and a pig-pen, but Carol's wit is ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... judicious; she omitted the ghosts and goblins that would have haunted our dreams; although I was now and then visited by a nightmare-consciousness of being a bewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such as turning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or else lose my head. But she blended the humorous with the romantic in her selections, so that we usually dropped to sleep in good spirits, if not ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... anything. They can vote, these women. More than once the deep-laid plans of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful of women looking on. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... attendance, and spoke of the deep interest manifested. After tea she sat with us in the parlor for some time and then, kissing M. good-night, omitted Hatty and the boys (a most unusual thing), remarking, as she left for her chamber, "Well, I'm not going to kiss all this roomful." ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... who witnessed will long remember. In this machine, the barrel was fitted with a crank, and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if the phonograph ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... interrupted by a hush in the room— such a cold, uncomfortable hush as comes over a roomful of happy, romping children when a grave-faced elder comes amongst them. The chatting and the laughter died away. The sound of the rustling cards and of the clicking counters had ceased in the other rooms. Everyone, men ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But the life he had chosen brought Paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had constantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he was charged. He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next. One day he had to speak in the synagogue of the Jews, another among a crowd of Athenian philosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far from the seats of culture. But he could ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... grander things than that there; there's carpets on the floor, an' a piano to play on, an' a whole roomful o' books! Losh!" he exclaimed, "I'd like to get my hands on them ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... West's. If he is doctor to the parish, he need not be purveyor; but you may just as well speak to a post as speak to Jan. What do you suppose he did the other day? Those improvident Kellys had their one roomful of things taken from them by their landlord. Jan went there—the woman's ill with a bad breast, or something—and found her lying on the bare boards; nothing to cover her, not a saucepan left to boil a drop of water. Off he comes here at the pace of a steam engine, got ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... voice, bowed my head in prayer, and it seemed as though the Lord put the words in my mouth. I told that roomful of people of my past life and how God saved and had blessed me for four years. We had a grand meeting and a number were saved that night, and, above all, I received one of the ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... a roomful of books and letters from great people that her ancestors collected. Why, Father says that she would be very rich if she'd sell the papers she has, but she will not part with a thing! Mother says she just lives ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... reception-roomful of patients rushed through more expeditiously than was Doctor Emory's the moment the door had closed upon the two policemen who brought up Daughtry's rear. And before he went to his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his machine and down into the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful. No princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity than Sojourner her audience. She stood among them, calm and erect, as one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... remembering my wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... a real godsend to our neighborhood, especially at the merry-makings; for she could make fun for a roomful, and tell us what they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... men. ROSALIND had been disappointed in man after man as individuals, but she had great faith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented qualities that she felt and despised in herself—incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice, and petty dishonesty. She once told a roomful of her mother's friends that the only excuse for women was the necessity for a disturbing element among men. She danced exceptionally well, drew cleverly but hastily, and had a startling facility with words, which she ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of 211th Street. Well, sir, when you blow in there you'll see a roomful of curios. I'm not exactly a connoisseur, but I know enough to tell Japanese work from Chinese. This was made by a Jap. And that reminds me. You said last night that Wong Li Fu put you off your balance by a jiu jitsu trick and handed that husky detective some, too. Very few Chinks have ever ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... quiet, the tap of the man's feet upon the steps was audible long before he reached the waiting roomful. Every eye fastened itself upon the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was white and her eyes were flaming. She dominated the roomful of girls like a little Napoleon. The change in her startled them. Hitherto they had always looked on her as rather an unusually quiet girl. She had always made herself unobtrusively pleasant to them all. They all liked her. But they had ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... transportation and per diem would cost more than the whole business was worth.—and the judge advocate was wishing himself well out of it when, on a sunny Friday morning, the third day of the court, the president rapped for order and the big roomful of spectators was hushed to respectful silence. The defense had made its first request, that the principal witness for the prosecution, Nevins, should be present, and there he sat, nervous and fidgety, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... often enough, I cannot keep my fingers off it and find it hard to resist the temptation to throw a couple of shillings away and take it home. If shillings had not been wanted for bread and cheese I should have had a roomful of copies by now. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... because I love the people, and to talk with them and live with them part of every week keeps one's mind clear as to what one wants, and why. Well,"—her voice showed that she smiled,—"will you come? My old maid shall give you coffee, and you shall meet a roomful of tailors and shirtmakers. You shall see what people look like in the flesh—not on paper—after working fourteen hours at a stretch, in a room where you and I ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aren't strong enough to kill them. We dwelt in a far more delicate dimension than this one and all was in proportion. That was our difficulty when we came here. We could find no entities weak enough to take possession of until we came upon this roomful ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... neighbourhood. Not one amongst them seems to have suggested that a sum of 30,000l. was to be gained by taking the Prince prisoner. So complete was Donald's confidence in their honesty that he did not hesitate to say to a roomful of armed militiamen, 'He has only two companions with him, and when I am there I make a third, and yet let me tell you, gentlemen, that if Seaforth himself were here he durst not put a hand to the Prince's breast.' Donald doubtless looked pretty formidable as he said these words; at any ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... insignificance on their mildly sloping or aristocratically beaked faces, hung together in a visible closeness of tradition, dress, attitude and manner, as different as possible from the loose aggregation of a roomful of his own countrymen. Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known what "society" meant; nor understood that, in an organized and inherited system, it exists full-fledged where two or three ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... whole roomful of chocolate creams do you consider a waste?" exclaimed Carrie. "Why, we shall be envied of all our neighbors; and, Mamma, you have been sighing over our expenses, and wishing that Jimmy and I could support you. Do not you ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... honor given him by the English people were very gratifying to the aged professor. He was always at his best when talking, and so brilliant and easy was his wit that had not politeness forbidden he could have entertained a roomful of people during a whole evening. This fact as well as his literary achievements ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as to reasonableness: when the hour for closing comes, our customers bein' gathered for social purposes, it seems abrupt to fire 'em all out when the clock strikes. Now, when a policeman comes along after hours an' finds one of us with a roomful of customers discussin' public questions, we don't want to turn up ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... fall to the position of a Labour Serf was the end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had died he had plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only the beginning. Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. And now in a roomful of machine minders he was to learn a wider lesson, to make the acquaintance of another factor in life, a factor as elemental as the loss of things dear to us, more elemental even ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... from the mirror and the butler has pulled back the portieres leading into the drawing room. I follow my wife's composed figure as she sweeps toward our much-beplumed hostess and find myself in a roomful of heterogeneous people, most of whom I have never seen before and whose personal appearance is ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... naturally unwilling to put themselves in an equivocal position. The writer well remembers that in the Mabel Parker case, where the defendant, a young and pretty woman, had boasted of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was impossible, when her trial was called, to find more than one of them who would testify—and he had practically to be dragged to the witness chair. In point of fact, if reporters made a practice of being witnesses it would probably hurt their ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... convention, and after their return Miss Willard wrote: "... As for you, our leader of leaders, I wish I could transfer to your brain all the loving thoughts and words of our trio toward you. As you stood before that roomful of people, so straight and tall and masterful, with that fine senatorial head and face, on which the strength and heroism of your character are so plainly marked, I thought, 'There is one of the century's foremost figures; there is the woman who has been faithful ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Such a roomful of pretty girls! Youth and health and picturesque dressing make almost any one pretty. Miss Laura looked fine, but she paused to say, "Oh, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... And all the roomful stared in mingled astonishment and glee when old Edouard Dubois, the taciturn and little-liked sheepman from the "Limestone Rim," led Essie Tisdale out upon the floor to complete ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... take you a piece if you want me," she said. "It's so hard to talk when there's a roomful, isn't it? I thought maybe ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Wedderburn, the once retiring Wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window, playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five of them. Now, Hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls, but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond him. Coming up the staircase his feelings for Wedderburn had been generous, a certain admiration ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... later the old round of dissipation had apparently set in. "I am now tied down neck and heels by engagements every night this week, or most joyfully would have trod the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard Street. I am quite well, but exhausted with a roomful of company every morning till dinner." A little later, and this momentary flash of health had died out; and we find him writing what was his last letter to his daughter, full, evidently, of uneasy forebodings as to his approaching end. He speaks of "this vile influenza—be ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... handkerchief and mopped his face nervously. "The question is what do we do now, chums? A roomful ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... one paid any attention to him, toddled in and climbed into Marie's lap. He sat there sucking his fingers and looking out at the roomful ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... black, curly head and silken-clad shoulders of the newcomer with some curiosity. The subdued ripple of astonishment that had passed over the roomful of girls told her that here was no ordinary pupil. Mignon's expensive frock of dark green Georgette crepe, elaborately trimmed, also pointed to affluence. Mary reasoned that she must be known to the others. A stranger would not have created such a buzz of comment. Then, she remembered ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor.... Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... she would have preferred not to have her private business shouted out before a roomful of women. But she put a good face ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... stop long, dear creatur'. I'm 'most seventy-six year old," and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement in her honest wrinkled face. "I said right out to Is'iah, before a roomful o' the neighbors, that I expected it of him to git me home an' bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn my livin', if 'twas so I could, till then. He'd made sly talk, you see, about my electin' to leave ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and marvelling, and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... which came to her, she said, with a sheet about her. After she had undergone a deal of Teaze, from the Annoyance of the Spectre, she gave a violent snatch at the sheet, that was upon it; wherefrom she tore a corner, which in her hand immediately became Visible to a Roomful of Spectators; a palpable Corner of a Sheet. Her Father, who was now holding her, catch'd that he might keep what his Daughter had so strangely siezed, but the unseen Spectre had like to have pull'd his hand off, by endeavouring ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... through him, Emile, that she had in the first place joined the league of conspirators, and this was one of the results. Sobrenski's judgment had been more far-seeing than his own. One girl in a roomful of fanatics, (he was one himself, but that did not make any difference,) would naturally stand a very poor chance if she was ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... was proven by his conduct during the time in which it was liable to public comment. Until night he was not seen, and then he came in at a late hour and, walking in silence through the roomful of watchers, shut himself up in an inner chamber and remained ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... apparently, for in all respects they resembled each other so closely; three or four boys, too, from Jack of fourteen to little hop-o'-my-thumb Chris of six. There they were all together in the large empty playroom at Landell's Manor, dancing, jumping, shouting, as only a roomful of perfectly healthy children, under the influence of some unusual and delightful excitement, can dance, ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... of his customer for the ensuing winter. It is not easy for a man to part with four horses, seven or eight saddles, an establishment of bridles, horsesheets, spurs, rollers, and bandages, a pet groom, a roomful of top boots, and leather breeches beyond the power of counting. This is a wealth which it is easy to increase, but of which it is very difficult ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... point—exactly what this was confused a vast roomful of newspapermen—the Senator invented a race of creatures called androids. These androids, it seems, look exactly like Tom Smith down the block except that they'd just as soon ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... hands. Therefore, be careful what you write. You cannot tell what use your correspondent may make of it. Your friend may be trustworthy, but careless; some one may be dishonest enough to read it; it may be lost. It is a good plan to write nothing you would not be willing to have read before a roomful of people who know that ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... clerks. There is a roomful of them just over the Secretary's office, and he says they distract him with their noise of moving of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... her like struggling through a large wood. Oh! how she shivered with the cold. She came at last to the door of a field-mouse, who had a little den under the corn-stubble. There dwelt the field-mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor little Tiny stood before the door just like a little beggar-girl, and begged for a small piece of barley-corn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... presentation her mother had urged her not to forget, since Katy, being a stranger, should be made to feel at home as quickly as possible. Chicken Little hated introducing people and had been dreading the ordeal, but kindly Mrs. Jenkins took Katy by the hand and presented her to the whole roomful at one ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... which is but a part of the general decay of democracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality. I remember that a roomful of Socialists literally laughed when I told them that there were no two nobler words in all poetry than Public House. They thought it was a joke. Why they should think it a joke, since they want to make all houses ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the devil for a listener, if the old saying is true. Yet still, I felt a keener poignancy in her sequestration. Her beauty had even greater claim to regard than his eloquence. She was a woman who could have commanded a whole roomful with it, and no one would have wanted a word from her. She could only have been entirely herself in society, where, and in spite of everything that can be said against it, we can each, if we will, be more natural than out of it. The reason that most of us are not natural in it is that we want to ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did Fownes call you ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... why one man keeps pigs and another bees, why one man plants petunias and another roses, why the many can get along with maples when elms and beeches are to be had, why one man will exchange a roomful of man-fired porcelain for one bowl of sunlit alabaster. No chance anywhere. We call unto ourselves that which corresponds to our own key and tempo; and so long as we live, there is a continual re-adjustment without, the more unerringly to meet ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... I was going to Tsarskoye Selo. "I, too," said Baklanov, suddenly. "And I-and I-" The whole roomful decided on the spot to go to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... subconsciously on a number of laboriously accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished stones, the sifted debris of Swiss palafittes, a few pithecoid jawbones, some painted rocks from Salamanca, produces a fairly definite picture of the earliest essentially human being ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... the leader of the seamen. They wanted to know everything that had been done to him, and who had done it, and how and when and where and why. Peter had a sense of the dramatic, and enjoyed being the center of attention and admiration, even tho it was from a roomful of criminal "Reds." So he told all the picturesque details of how Guffey had twisted his wrist and shut him in a dungeon; the memory of the pain was still poignant, and came out of him now, with a realism that would ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... after all!" To talk to those people about the South—if they could have guessed how little he cared to do it! He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connexion with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters. To be quiet about the Southern land, not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her wounds and her memories, not prating in the market-place either of her ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... standing in the doorway and looking in at the roomful of beds. "I don't mane it for unkindness, Pat, but sure and the way you've got 'em made up they look jist loike pigs' nests with covers over 'em. There, that's better," she commented when Pat had obediently made all the beds over again under her instructions. "You can't larn all there ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... laughing at me; 'get away with you!' 'They won't hurt you, my little Rebecca,' said I, stroking her cheeks. 'What's that to you, old sorcerer?' said the little toad; 'if I were to scream, the whole roomful would come to my aid.' 'Don't be so contradictious, my child,' said I; 'be a good girl, fill another bottle, and bring it out here. One must do something for one's friends in bad times.' Then she snatched the bottle out of my hand, telling me to wait, and ran off with her basket. After a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... know, if it hadn't been for Dean Daniel's watch, no trace of them would have been found. Last night the watch disappeared, and this morning the Dean notified the police. An hour later, Madoc bagged them all! Ha! Ha! Ha!" The entire roomful burst out laughing, and I trembled with shame, indignation, and fear ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... for a piece of wood, and the dog crept out with his tail between his legs. Stasiek was left again to his restlessness, alone in a roomful of people. Even his mother was now struck by his miserable face and gave him a piece of bread to comfort him. He bit off a mouthful, but could not swallow it and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... uncle's portrait over the sideboard, looked from one to another of the strange faces and then began to laugh too, since it seemed to be the proper thing to do. He had one of those delightful, hearty laughs that ring out in a whole roomful of voices. When Mrs. Gray heard it she stopped short, patting her nephew on the cheek; for he was sitting beside her now in a place ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower |
