|
|
|
More "Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to "A" and "H" in Fig. 12. The tone "B" in the same Figure is made up of lines which are thin at the ends and big in the middle, fitting into each other irregularly, and imparting a texture somewhat different from that obtained by the abrupt ending of the strokes of "A." This method is also employed by Brennan, and is a very effective one. A good example of the use of this character of line (unknitted, however) is the drawing by Mr. Leslie Willson, Fig. 16. The irregular line "C" has good possibilities ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... subsequently turned out, at my own. Since, however, the world-famous trial of Sala v. Furniss I have looked carefully over all the pictures in my Royal Academy, with a view to throwing some light upon the critic's abrupt departure. I remain, nevertheless, in the dark, for the most rigid scrutiny has failed to reveal to me one single feature in the show, not even a Grecian nose, or a foot with six toes, which could have jarred upon the refined taste of the most sensitive of journalists. I shall return ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... so abrupt," she said. "You must remember that this is all coming quite as a surprise to him. You want to lead up ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... but was with Jesus the normal path for all who desired perfection. When the young man went away sorrowing, Jesus moralized on it, saying: "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven:" which again shows, that an abrupt renunciation of wealth was to be the general and ordinary method of entering the kingdom. Hereupon, when the disciples asked: "Lo! we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" Jesus, instead of rebuking their self-righteousness, promised them ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... grand entry to a degree which left Honey Tone thankful for the mule-stealing charge that had landed him safe in the jail and out of the clutches of his wife and Cuspidora Lee. He enjoyed sanctuary in jail for two months and then, threatened with an embarrassing and abrupt release, he concentrated on a hurried mental incubation. Hard pressed, he sought to hatch from the bad egg of circumstance some new enterprise which would take him away, sudden and safe, from where his ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... of mortar, in order to render them warm and comfortable. Around them, for defence, two redoubts were erected and an intrenchment, drawn with a ditch six feet wide and three or four feet deep. His left was covered by the Schuylkill, and his rear, for the most part, by an abrupt precipice; but his right was somewhat accessible, and the centre of his front was weak, notwithstanding his intrenchments. There was, however, no cause for fear: Howe was in snug winter-quarters, and had no disposition to move till the flowers of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his usual abrupt action he put the letter in his inner pocket and proceeded to hurry his business as much as possible that he might take an earlier boat than the one he had set. And he finally succeeded by dint of working night as well as day, and leaving several important ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... our horses to a walk to ascend an abrupt ridge. When we gained the top a vast stretch of the Northwest spread away to the east and north. Piegan lifted his eyes from the ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... world was brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thraldom of improved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected the manner ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my remarks to an abrupt conclusion, gentlemen," he said anxiously; "something is seriously wrong in the village, and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was not the wood cracking with the frost; it was not snow sliding from the slates outside. It was something that simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded particularly loud just outside his door; and it came with the abrupt suddenness of a report. It made him think of all the air in the rooms and halls and passages being withdrawn by immense suction, as though a gigantic dome had been dropped over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And just after it he heard, unmistakably, the long ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the eyes of her sisters, and feeling depressed by the abrupt silence, Gail sought to make the sun shine again by remarking, "I am thankful for so many things, I hardly know which to put first; but I think I will call it friends. That will include ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... reminding him of the wild scenes in his native country. Almost close to the building was a noble cascade, formed by the river rushing over the rocks which it encountered in its course; and beyond the woods on the opposite bank arose abrupt declivities, overtopped by the lofty summits of the distant mountains. John had laid his plan, and meant to have put it into execution, when, on the very morning of the day he intended to have made the attempt, Mr. Murray complained of being very ill. This was a severe blow to John: he had ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... a trifle previous with a gun himse'f, an' while the Mexican is mighty abrupt, he gets none the best of Billy. Which the outcome is the Mexican's shot plumb dead in his moccasins, while Billy takes a small crease on his cheek, the same not bein' deadly. ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were very frequent, the changes often very abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a time. The Dutchman was conceived before Rienzi was finished; Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin were slowly shaping themselves in his imagination while he scored ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... sudden appearance put an abrupt termination to Miss Cotton's gossip, but the story did not end there. Jessie concluded for the time, that, though a minister, Mr. Egerton must be something of a flirt, and as Donald was now repentant she soon found no time to bestow ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Toiling up the grade in the dust, I met a good old-fashioned four-horse Concord stage, which from all appearances might have been in action ever since the days of Bret Harte. At last I felt I was in touch with the Sierras. The driver even honored my bow with an abrupt "Howdy!" which from such a magnate, I took to be a ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... his steps on the turf that bordered the lane. A little before him stood an old peasant woman, with whom Lily, on the opposite side of the garden pale, was conversing. Mr. Emlyn did not at first see what Kenelm saw; turning round rather to gaze on his companion, surprised by his abrupt halt and silence. The girl put a small basket into the old woman's hand, who then dropped a low curtsy, and uttered low a "God bless you." Low though it was, Kenelm overheard it, and said abstractedly to Mr. Emlyn, "Is there a greater ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two people were driving: a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall, the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though the day was perfectly still, the canvas ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... and persuade—by vulgar coarseness and intemperance you disgust and nauseate. To say that a political paper of the very same sentiments, and principles would be innocent, written in a calm and delicate style which would be criminal, written in an abrupt, vehement and passionate manner, is to remove guilt from the thought and conception and substance of a writing, and impute it to the medium only of the thought, the mere expression. So that upon such a rule and principle of decision, if I were to heap violent and gross ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... The abrupt spring to his feet brought down the camp stool, cigar, easel and all, but not the foot, for the rest of the apparition was caught and hidden by the clustering young shoots of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... into the black Pullman near the rear of the long train, glided through the narrow alley way between the smoking-room and the side of the car, just missing a head on collision with a stout party coming out of the sleeper. The latter was about to express a haughty indignation at Jim's abrupt approach, but that worthy gave him no chance, as he dashed for section No. 9 at the end of the car. Here he snatched from his valise his belt and revolver and fastened them with rapid precision around his waist, and then with a heavy ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... an abrupt laugh. "On the whole, I like you even better than I did—but it's a question now for a drumhead and a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... succession. His feet were always "used to save his head" (contrary to our grandmothers' teachings). When he made the usual attempt to fly through the window on his first outing in the room, he went feet first against it, and thus saved himself a bumped head. His movements were abrupt in the extreme, and always so unexpected that he frequently threw the whole feathered family into a panic, apparently without the least intention of doing so. Standing beside the cage of another bird, he would wheel quickly and face the other way, absolutely nothing ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... to an abrupt end, and he gave emphasis to his words by a prolonged expectoration. Jacky, her eyes sparkling with anger, was ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... over every approach; of a deepening of the atmosphere of his reverence, which yet as it deepened grew more diaphanous. And when now the episode of angelic visitation was over, with his usual wisdom he understood the wrench her abrupt departure must have given his whole being, and allowed him plenty of time to recover himself from it. Once he came upon him weeping: not with faintest overshadowing did he rebuke him, not with farthest hint suggest weakness in his tears. He went up to him, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... countenance peering in the doorway they one and all give utterance to little screams of dismay, and dart like frightened fawns into an adjoining room. When the men appear, to see what is up, they show no signs of resentment at my abrupt intrusion, but one of them follows the women into the room, and loud, angry words seem to indicate that they are being soundly berated for allowing themselves to be thus caught. This does not prevent the women from reappearing the next ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... physical types. Certain tribes whom we place in the Turanian group have all the distinctive characteristics of the white races. Others are hardly to be distinguished from the yellow nations. Between these two extremes there are numerous varieties which carry us, without any abrupt transition, from the most perfect European to the most complete Chinese type.[39] In the Aryan family the ties of blood are perceptible even between the most divergent branches. By a comparative study ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... from seven to thirteen hooks each. They are all too small and all too many; better calculated to scratch and tear, than to catch and hold, Three hooks are enough at the end of any line and better than more. These should be fined or honed to a perfect point and the abrupt part of the barb filed down one-half. All hooks, as usually made, have twice as much barb as they should have; and the sharp bend of the barb prevents the entering of the hook in hard bony structures, wherefore the fish only stays hooked so ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... vivid alertness that stirred my envy and also my annoyance. I felt utterly useless. He ordered me on to my wagon in a manner that, in my present half-sleepy, half-surly mood seemed to me abominably abrupt. Trenchard climbed up, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... a scene to abide long with a man—a horrible nightmare, never to be forgotten. Above us, protected somewhat by the abrupt curve of the wide staircase, crouched the women. Two were sobbing, their heads buried in their hands, but Maria and Mrs. Brennan sat white of face and dry-eyed. I caught one quick glance at the fair face I loved,—my sweet lady of the North,—thinking, indeed, it might prove ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... don't mind, I think I'd rather you'd just talk." Then he rose with one of his abrupt movements, "I'd better look in again now. The ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the advocates of the development-theory do not state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... write in the greatest hurry, which may make my letter a little abrupt; but, as I said before, I have no wish to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a flash. Ned's mount had whirled and was away like a shot. But the guide was after him with even greater speed. The chase came to an abrupt ending some few rods farther on, when Kris Kringle's lariat squirmed out, bringing the fleeing pony to the ground with its ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... to bring this to pass, as these Memoirs have run thro' the general History of the Feuds and unhappy Breaches between the Solunarian Church and the Crolian Dissenters in the World of the Moon, it would seem an imperfect and abrupt Relation, if I should not tell you how, and by what Method, tho' long hid from their Eyes, the Crolians came to understand their own Interest ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... noting that if he kept to the eastward side he would have to deflect a trifle to that direction, Devers inclined to his right, and ten minutes later found it swinging around in front of him, already broad and deep and obliquely crossing his path. Either he must dismount and lead down the abrupt declivity and up the opposite bank, or, keeping along the bluff, follow the windings of the ravine. One wrong step had led with him to another. There is a fatality about such things that besets the truest of men and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Elijah was ever before the mind of the growing youth, as his model and inspiration. He found himself perpetually asking, How did Elijah act, and what would he do here and now? And there is little doubt that his choice of the lonely wilderness, of the rough mantle of camel's hair, of the abrupt and arousing form of address, was suggested by that village of Thisbe in the land of Gilead, and those personal characteristics which were so familiar ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... trail anew upon turf, now soft and springy from the rain, and, refreshed by the long night's sleep in the bark shelter, he went rapidly. Eight or ten miles beyond the camp the trail made an abrupt curve to the eastward. Perhaps they were coming to some large river of which the Indian scouts knew and the turn was made in order to reach a ford, but he followed it another hour and there was no river. The nature of the country also indicated that no great stream could be ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Mr. Tollmidge's formidable assertions relating to herself for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end. She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them, among other papers that had not been arranged since Lord ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... write poetry; but he supposed he could, for he never tried. Mr Cherfeuil would have thought any man a fool that did not perceive at once that he, Cherfeuil, was born a great poet. Shall I carry, after the manner of Plutarch, the comparison any further? No; let us bring it to an abrupt conclusion, by saying, in a few words, that Mr Root was English, Mr Cherfeuil French; that the one had a large school, and the other a little one and that both were immeasurably great men in their own estimation—though not universally so in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... profanely. But he was in no mood to find fault with his companion, and they got on very well together to the end of their brief journey. The young scapegrace was glad, indeed, that it was brief, for his self-control was fast leaving him, and having bowed a rather abrupt farewell to the doctor, he was not long in reaching one of his haunts, from which during the evening, and quite late into the night, came repeated peals of laughter, that grew more boisterous and discordant as that synonyme of mental and moral anarchy, the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... otherwise Moses of the Jews, was not, as is popularly supposed, a foundling of the Jews, or a protege of the Egyptian princess, but a full fledged prince, son of Pharaoh the mighty. This abrupt over-throw of the tradition of ages is like all disillusions, distasteful, but even the most superficial study of Egyptian customs and laws of that time will serve to impress us with the verity of this opinion. The law of caste was most rigidly and cruelly adhered to, and though all the pleadings ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give you time," he said. "It was very abrupt to come home and speak to you all at once. I'll not allude to it ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... This abrupt and impolitic, not to say ungracious and unsoldier-like proceeding, has been justified by the necessity of the moment. There were no magazines in the Highlands, in which an unusual scarcity prevailed. The Lowlanders, more especially, must have starved in a country ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... effects of even slight injuries on certain people. I have known a trivial wound to make a brave man suddenly timid and tremulous for months, or to disorder remote organs and functions in a fashion hard to understand. In the same way, a moral wound for which we are not prepared may bring about abrupt and prolonged consequences, from which the most robust health does not always protect us; and which is in proportion disastrous if the person on whom it falls is by temperament excitable or nervous. I have over and ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... Unadilla found the Indians fully determined for the British cause, and came to an abrupt termination, beneath darkened skies, amid a hubbub of Mohawk war-whoops and the rattle of a sudden hailstorm that swooped down upon the assemblage. Herkimer marched his ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... His eyes were fixed upon the door. He turned away with a shudder. Bright had entered. In his hand he was carrying two gas masks. He came over to the side of the couch, and, looking down at Julian, lifted his hand, and felt his pulse. Then, with an abrupt movement, he handed one of the ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in contact with the enemy opposite Brandenburg, where he crossed; but it made the stand at Corydon Junction, where the road runs between two abrupt hills, across which Colonel Lewis Jordan threw up some light intrenchments. Morgan's advance attempted to ride over these "rail-piles" rough-shod, but lost some twenty troopers unhorsed. They brought up their reserve and artillery, flanked, and finally surrounded Colonel Jordan, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... year, and then to have gone to Paris to copy pictures at the Louvre. He mentions a particular copy that he made of a celebrated picture by one of the Italian masters, for which a Hungarian nobleman paid him well. His three years' absence was brought to an abrupt termination by news of his father's illness. He returned to Norwich in time to stand by that father's bedside when he died. The elder Borrow died, as we have seen, in February 1824. The little home in King's Court was kept on for the mother, and as John was making money ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... there is not whither in the earth any one having sent naval equipment, or to Lycia, or to the thirsty site of Hammon's temple, can redeem the unhappy woman's life, for abrupt fate approaches, and I know not to whom of those that sacrifice at the hearths of the Gods I can go. But only if the son of Phoebus were viewing with his eyes this light, could she come, having left the darksome habitations and ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... vault, smoke-coloured and opaque, seemed to curve away to the ghostly horizons on either side where the far-away hills raised sharp shapes as if cut in paper. Carmel was before him; at least he thought it was that—a bull head and shoulders thrusting itself forward and ending in an abrupt descent, and beyond that again the glimmering sky. There were no clouds, no outlines to break the huge, smooth, dusky dome beneath the centre of which this house-roof seemed poised. Across the parapet, as he glanced to the right before descending the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... in mid-Rome seek Rome And can find nothing in mid-Rome of Rome, Behold this mass of walls, these abrupt rocks, Where the vast theatre lies overwhelmed. Here, here is Rome! Look how the very corpse Of greatness still imperiously breathes threats! The world she conquered, strove herself to conquer, Conquered ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... which we were leaving behind us. Viewed from this side, the Riesengebirgen offer a much bolder and grander outline than when looked at from Bohemia. Here, the mountains, instead of forming the back-ground and termination to numerous lesser ranges, spring, sheer and abrupt, out of the plain, and when loaded, as they happened to be to-day, with a bank of white clouds, which obscured none of their features, but seemed to nestle on the snow along their summits, the effect is altogether so sublime as to defy either pen or pencil to describe it. It was not without ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... and on one wheel, and, I was prepared to swear, on no wheels. A couple of times, with the wings retracted, we actually jetted into the air and jumped over vehicles in front of us, landing again with bone-shaking jolts. Then we made an abrupt turn and shot in under a concrete arch, and a big door banged shut behind us, and we stopped, in the middle of a wide patio, the front of the car a few inches short of a fountain. Four or five people, in diplomatic ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... "Oh, you darling! the very thing! Won't that pup"—an abrupt and convulsive cough subsided brilliantly into, "that pet of a Berta be pleased! I'll take ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... box, where there was a table with ices, champagne, etc. Madame de MacMahon came up to me, saying: "Madame Waddington, Sa Majeste demande les nouvelles de M. Waddington," upon which His Majesty planted himself directly in front of me, so close that he almost touched me, and asked in a quick, abrupt manner, as if he were firing off a shot: "Ou est votre mari?" (neither Madame, nor M. Waddington, nor any of the terms that are usually adopted in polite society). "A Berlin, Sire." "Pourquoi a Berlin?" "Comme plenipotentiaire ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... friendly reception of all, from Mr. Raymount to little Saffy, who had the rare charm of being shy without being rude. If not genial, his manners were yet friendly, and his carriage if not graceful was easy; both were apt to be abrupt where he was familiar. It was a kind of company bearing he had, but dashed with indifference, except where he desired to commend himself. He shook hands with little Saffy as respectfully as with her mother, but with neither altogether respectfully; ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... manner, which was an abrupt challenge to all comers, Lidgerwood acknowledged a growing liking for the chief clerk. Under the crabbed and gloomy crust of the man the superintendent fancied he could discover a certain savage loyalty. But under the loyalty there was a deeper depth—of misery, ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... but still resolute, went toward him. Serge seemed nervous and somewhat abrupt in manner. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sweet little maiden left instead—thinking about other things and people instead of herself, and full of affection and warmth. The improvement that the half year's discipline had made in her bearing and manners was visible now; her uncouth abrupt ways were softened, though still she felt that the naturally gentle and graceful Sylvia would have made a ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Alpinist made a terrible grimace, and the abrupt manner in which he seized the bottle standing near him might have made one fear he was about to cleave the already cracked head of the diplomatist Not so! It was only to offer wine to his pretty neighbour, who did not hear him, being absorbed by a semi-whispered conversation in a soft and lively ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... possessed with an error, 'tis, like the devil, not to be cast out but with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last though it has nothing but rubbish to defend. It is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to anything it lays hold on. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the Sun-beings worked in those harmonies. Thus this part of man was given its form by the spiritual sounds of the universe; and at the same time the alternation between the clearer state of consciousness during the Sun period, and the duller one, was not so abrupt as was that between the waking state and that of absolutely dreamless sleep in contemporary man. The picture-consciousness was not so clear as the present waking consciousness; but on the other hand, the other consciousness ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... to be one of those rare exceptions, my dear boy, I can promise you that—Upon my soul!" with an abrupt change of both tone and manner, "I really believe it IS ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... had 'spepsia," was the abrupt remark of the small person as her plate of drum-sticks was removed and the pudding appeared, accompanied by ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... of God!" she gasped in a long-drawn, quivering sigh as she bent a dishevelled head over the little one, and, between intervals of silence, fell to uttering soft, abrupt exclamations. Then, opening her ineffably beautiful blue eyes, the hallowed eyes of a mother, she raised them towards the azure heavens, while in their depths there was coming and going a flame of joy and gratitude. Lastly, lifting a languid hand, she with a slow movement made the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... abrupt geniality about him. His tortoise-rimmed glasses gave him an oddly owlish look, like a small boy taking liberties with ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... to the examination of the Lucky Chance mine, it was considered best for a while to pursue very nearly the same line of conduct that had been followed for the last ten days, carefully avoiding any abrupt change which might attract attention. All necessary data had now been secured, and Houston felt that he could better afford to remain quiet for a brief time and reconnoiter the situation, than by any hasty move to excite further ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... a very abrupt King," said Pon, "so it was the least I could expect. Up to that time I had not thought of loving Princess Gloria, but realizing it would be impolite not to return her love, I did so. We met at evening, now and then, and she told me the King wanted her to marry a rich courtier named ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... this abrupt request, and answered her on the spur of the moment: "Good words I neither give nor receive. I simply open my eyes and keep silence, and then I can at once both hear and see, even when no sound is uttered. Now, while I am looking at you, it is ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... Darwinians will frequently find laws put forward to establish facts: whereas other men of science prefer to have facts establish laws). When, therefore, as Quatrefages remarks, the transition between the types which Haeckel has incorporated into his genealogical tree, appears too abrupt, he often betakes himself to ontogeny and describes the embryo in the corresponding interval of development. This description he inserts in his genealogical mosaic, by virtue of the "Law ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... spiritual states of individuals then present, and sometimes to believe it necessary to describe such states, and to add such advice as these may seem to require. Now these states being frequently different from each other, the description of them, in consequence of an abrupt transition from one to the other, may sometimes occasion an apparent inconsistency in their discourses on such occasions. The Quakers, however, consider all such discourses, or those in which states are described, as among the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... signed off and his image faded from the teleceiver screen, Astro and Roger numbly complied with Newton's abrupt orders, bringing the ship to a dead stop in space and opening the starboard air lock. Then the two cadets sat in the main deck of the small scout and waited, their faces showing their concern. Neither felt like talking. They were so confused that they didn't know what to say. ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... establish an independent paper in Des Vaches. He felt that there was not fight enough in him for the work, even if he had not taken that strong disgust for public life which included the place and its people. He wanted to get away, to get far away, and with the abrupt and total change in his humour he reverted to a period in his life when journalism and politics and the ambition of Congress were ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... of the field a fine-looking youth was driving a magnificent team of four pairs of young oxen, through whose somber coats glanced a ruddy, glow-like name. They had the short, curry heads that belong to the wild bull, the same large, fierce eyes and jerky movements; they worked in an abrupt, nervous way that showed how they still rebelled against the yoke and goad, and trembled with anger as they obeyed the authority so recently imposed. They were what is called "newly yoked" oxen. The man who drove ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... you will easily pardon an abrupt conclusion. I believe, by this time, you are ready to fear I would ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... were on their feet and gazing to northeast, that far down the valley a horseman was speeding like the wind, that little puffs of smoke were rising from the crests of the grand landmark of the range and floating into the blue of the heavens. Both started to their feet at the abrupt announcement. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procured Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... As abrupt in his conclusion as in his commencement and progress, he jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when one might have supposed him in ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... speaker was abrupt, "I was afraid! I saw pictures, I heard things— I couldn't sleep For the Beast that was abroad— Fear! That's what ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... far from easy, and as she descended the dark steep stairs she came to an abrupt decision. Something was wrong and despite the hirelings of Starr Wiley ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... by. Again, in view of the threats of an abrupt termination of the colloquy, the Huguenot ministers petitioned Charles to give them a patient hearing; reminding him of the distance they had come—some of their number even from foreign lands, relying on his royal word for a friendly interview with ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... with his had touched upon the hidden rifles, and the abrupt digression was no digression to her, reached by the span ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... then he would make you repeat in a very loud tone what he had heard perfectly well before. However, he was really deaf in a slight degree. At other times he would overwhelm you with such rapid and abrupt interrogatories, that you had not time to understand him, and were compelled to give your answers in confusion. He used then to laugh at your embarrassment; and when he had driven you out of your presence of mind and confidence, he amused himself ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice. Not to fall upon the main too sudden, but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion. To use at once upon entrance given of speech, though abrupt, to compose and draw in myself. To free myself at once from payt. (?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... knowledge of any other, does not confess to it. As for Sheridan, his corps was scattered over a wide area, its duty to guard the left flank and all the trains, and he was not present in person when Custer put an abrupt stop to Rosser's impetuous advance. It is now known that he was so hampered by interference from army headquarters that his plans miscarried, and the relations between himself and his immediate superior became so strained that the ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... a higher key; others will be lower. Some will have lengthened vowel sound, and will be more continuous or sustained, so that groups of successive words seem to run on one unbroken tone; others will be abrupt and irregular. Some will be rapid, some slow; some light, others weighty; some affected by long pauses, others by no pause, and some will be done in a dry, matter-of- fact, or precise, or commonplace, or familiar manner, others will be touched with feeling, colored ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... every least detail. It was about six P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and take the fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the rhythmic pulse, during the measure allotted to the cadence-chord, that the desired dual impression,—that of cadential interruption without actual cessation,—is secured. It is like rounding off a corner that might otherwise be too angular or abrupt. ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... under the warm sun; it is a delight wholly physical,—pure sensation. A quick taking of the breath, the escape of a sigh, inarticulate and uncritical, are the only expression we can find at that instant for what we feel: as when an abrupt turn of the road spreads out before us a landscape of which we had not dreamed, or we enter for the first time the presence of the Apollo Belvedere. We know simply that we are pleased. But after nerves have ceased to tingle so acutely, we begin to think; and we ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... proprieties, and then Wilbraham Hall rang with the laughter of a joke which the next day had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel Prockter had vanished. In that laughter his career as a singer reached an abrupt and final conclusion. The concert also came to an end. And the collection, by which the divine always terminated these proceedings, was the largest in the history ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... with an abrupt movement and bent over the lamp to light his pipe. "They told you the truth," he said, with a certain reluctance, his face hidden by a cloud of smoke. "Pourtant, I ride with you to-night." There was a note of brusque finality ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... great mistake, Mrs. Davis. People do him injustice. He has one of the kindest, warmest hearts I ever knew, though sometimes he is rather abrupt in his manner. If you prefer it, however, I will see your doctor. Good-bye; I ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... essay. It is literally a rock-ladder, and is the only locality in the wide sweep of the Cirque affording the means of ascent. The rugged strata, which are here vertical, serve as steps in which one can insert the toes and fingers; but as the guidebook truly says: 'It is as abrupt as the ascent of a ladder; and wide spaces of smooth rock often intervene without any notch or projection offering a foothold. To those who cannot look down a sheer precipice many hundred feet deep without a tendency to giddiness, there is danger in this escalade, as well as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:— "Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, "I found my ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... all right now!" she said, with an abrupt return to the boyish, prosaic air that he found utterly adorable. "I have exploded. I'm hungry. Let's go back and make supper. It's your turn to talk. Tell me how you got here in advance of us, you wonderful man! And Mary——!" She stopped short and ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... she ran down to tell the cook, and the two women with the coachman came up into the hall and listened to the dispute which was still raging. They all agreed that only two voices were to be heard, those of Barclay and of his wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and abrupt, so that none of them were audible to the listeners. The lady's, on the other hand, were most bitter, and when she raised her voice could be plainly heard. 'You coward!' she repeated over and over again. 'What can be done now? What can be done now? Give me ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mrs. Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, "I think, Lady Thrum, it is quite time for us to retire." Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's was the cause of this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs to the drawing-room, Lady Thrum took occasion to say, "My dear, in the course of your profession you will have to submit to many such familiarities on the part of persons of low breeding, such as I fear Mr. Slang is. But let me caution you against ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... children, the confidant of her affection and ambition, has passed from life into immortality, and lies below, dumb, cold murdered. The feeling of sympathy for Mrs. Lincoln is as wide-spread as the regret for the chief magistrate. Whatever indiscretions she may have committed in the abrupt transition from plainness to power are now forgiven and forgotten. She and her sons are the property of the nation associated with its truest glories and its worst bereavement. By and by the guests drop in, hat in hand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape; and some ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... for the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. There was only a single consoling thought. At least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. With an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although her voice ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... splendour of leafage it will be in the summer! Those four on the right are chestnuts, and those far away, lying between us and the imperial downs, are elms; through that vista you can see the grand line, the abrupt hollows, and the bit of chalk road cut zig-zag out of the steep side. Then why the anomaly of Italian urns and pilasters; why not red Elizabethan gables ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... with nervous excitement Jane leaned out the window to listen and watch. She could hear the running feet of both men just around the corner. What was happening? The running feet came to an abrupt stop. There was a half-smothered cry, a sharp thud, like a body striking the pavement, and then came silence. Puzzled, vaguely alarmed, a hundred questions came pouring into her brain and lingered there disturbingly. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... reported to the Secretary of War, and was received with a cordiality that went far to remove from my mind the impression I had got from others, that Mr. Stanton was abrupt and unpleasant to approach. Both on this occasion and later, he was as affable as could be expected of a man driven with incessant and importunate duties of state. In the intervals of my constant visits to the railway offices (for getting ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... incident. Many men would have concealed their disquietude by an affectation of sudden appetite, or by bullying the waiter, or by abrupt departure from the scene. I did neither. I felt I had a right to be confused, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... fellow man as he ploughed the deep, under the black flag of piracy, with the motto of "Rob, Kill, and Burn." After adjusting the rope, a signal was given. The body dropped heavily, and the harsh abrupt shock must have instantly deprived him of sensation, as there was no voluntary action of the hands afterwards. Thus terminated his career of crime in a foreign land without one friend to recognize or cheer him, or a single ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... whom? Who are these that Vaucelas says he dare not name? Can you suggest another than..." He paused, shrinking in horror from completing the utterance of his thought. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he went on, "... ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... somewhat abrupt summons, Miss Duncan," she said, motioning her to a chair, "but something has occurred which renders it imperative that I should speak collectively to ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... she was good at tennis and swimming and geometry; she had small patience with poetry and sentiment. But within the athletic and straightforward flapper Forbes thought he saw the fluttering of deeper womanhood; the maiden soul erecting a barrier of abrupt common sense about itself to conceal the shy and sensitive feelings that were beginning to blossom. Such at any rate was Kenneth Forbes's psycho-analysis, and he developed his chapter toward a climax where Kathleen ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... shock (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... surface, which at times struck out sparks and flame from their heavier footprints as they passed. Their boots crackled and scorched beneath them; their shreds of clothing were on fire; their breathing became more difficult, until, providentially, they fell upon an abrupt, fissure-like depression of the soil, which the fire had leaped, and into which they blindly plunged and rolled together. A moment of relief and coolness followed, as they crept along the fissure, filled with damp ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... side of the valley were abrupt, and frequently obtruded themselves in rocky prominences into its bosom, lessening the width to half the usual dimensions. One of these projections was but a short distance in the rear of the squadron ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... met us; he was in a cotton suit walking about among his flowers and enjoying the evening. He was a man of about fifty, short, strong, brown, and abrupt. Though it was already evening and one could see little, we knew well enough that his eyes were steady and dark. For he had the attitude and carriage of those men who invigorate France. His self-confidence was evident in his sturdy legs and his arms ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... dropp'd the leg, from her slack hand released: The mingled fluids from the base redound; The vase reclining floats the floor around! Smiles dew'd with tears the pleasing strife express'd Of grief, and joy, alternate in her breast. Her fluttering words in melting murmurs died; At length abrupt—"My son!—my ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... position. At this western end the island descended gently into the water, and the shoal which it formed extended for miles away. It was this shoal that caused the long rollers that came over them so vehemently, and in such marked contrast with the more abrupt waves of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... compliment played no insignificant part. To Brant, as he marked the heightened color flushing her fair cheeks, the experience brought back fond memories of his last cadet ball at the Point, and he hesitated to break the mystic spell with abrupt questioning. Curiosity, however, finally ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... we were not strangers at all. I suppose it is what they call mesmerism. He had that soft, delightful way of speaking, and gentle mannerism. There was nothing abrupt or new about him. He seemed, somehow, to become part of the life of any one in whom he chose to interest himself in the slightest. And he talked so delightfully, Arnold. I cannot tell you how kind he ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... His manner was abrupt, his voice curt. Conniston felt a trifle ill at ease under the man's piercing gaze, which seemed to be ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Randal. "Let me give you a caution. I have just informed you that Madame di Negra will have, what you suspected not before, a fortune suitable to her birth; any abrupt change in your manner at present might induce her to believe that you were influenced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... away, and get my own living, if you please," was Christie's abrupt beginning, as they sat round ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Then, without abrupt change, he talked of Austria's late woes. Had he but commanded his country's ships at Lissa! Could he but have risked his life at Sadowa! And moreover, he was still needed over there. But in some quick recollection a moisture dimmed the blue eyes. He drew from ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... led inland towards abrupt hills, which looked like a wall of darkness. It was lit by the round street lamps, the luminous globules with Chinese letters on them which had pleased Geoffrey first at Nagasaki. The road entered a gorge between two precipices, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... table finishing a bowl of punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short, purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and gobbling utterance. This was my Lord Windermoor. In his companion Nance beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing his own hair. Her glance but lighted on him, and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Abrupt and unprefaced as her speech was, it scarcely produced the effect she had expected it would. Her charge neither flinched nor reddened. He laid a weak, rough hand upon her dress with a feebly pleading touch. "Dunnot yo' turn agen me," he whispered: ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... periods of writing; but upon this basis more or less of change is continually supervening. So that he has various distinct styles, corresponding to his different stages of ripeness in his work. These variations, to be sure, are nowise abrupt: the transition from one to another is gradual and insensible, proceeding by growth, not by leaps: but still, after an interval of six or seven years, the difference becomes clearly marked. It will suffice ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... contracts sold at twenty-two and one-quarter cents—a new high price record, that was not exceeded for thirty-two years, when twenty-four and sixty-five hundredths cents were paid for July contracts in June, 1919. After reaching twenty-two and one-quarter cents, prices suffered an abrupt reversal. Ten days later the closing price for December was twenty-one and four-tenth cents. Then the real crash began. On Saturday, June 11, the panic started with another claim of cable trouble; and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... intended to have continued this commentary there can be no doubt, not only from the abrupt termination of his labours, and the blank paper following the manuscript, but from an observation he makes on the sabbath—the sabbath of years, the jubilee, &c., "of all which, more in their place, IF GOD PERMIT." See ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thicket which overhung the road. How often, as a cloud obscured for an instant the moon's light, and threw a transitory shade across the path, did her heart bound with the thought that her watching was at an end! It was he whom she had seen start from the abrupt rock! They were the folds of his tartan that darkened the white cliff! But the moon again rolled through her train of clouds and threw her light around. Where then was her Wallace? Alas! it was ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... letter in a series (and the series often includes as many as six or eight) should be simply a reminder. Drastic measures should not be taken until they are necessary, and at no time should the letters become abrupt or insulting. In the first place, it is ungentlemanly to write such letters, in the second it antagonizes the debtor, and if he gets angry enough he feels that it is hardly an obligation to pay the money; ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Goneril's eyes. Was it so hard to grow old? This doubt made her voice loudest of all in the chorus of mutual praise and thanks which covered the song's abrupt finale. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... This turns and breaks the furrow slice. The degree to which the mouldboard pulverizes depends on the steepness of its slant upward and the abruptness of its curve sidewise. The steeper it is and the more abrupt the curve, the greater is its pulverizing power. A steep, abrupt mouldboard is adapted to light soils and to the heavier soils when they are comparatively dry. This kind of a plow is apt to puddle a clay ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been so unremitting, could apply himself now to nothing. His world had been brought to an abrupt end, and he was awkward at making a new beginning. I believe that they all three were reading novels before one o'clock. Lady Glencora and Alice had determined that they would not leave the house throughout the day. "Nothing ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... who travels through the Armorican peninsula experiences a change of the most abrupt description, as soon as he leaves behind the district most closely bordering upon the continent, in which the cheerful but commonplace type of face of Normandy and Maine is continually in evidence, and passes into the true Brittany, that which merits its name by language ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Gustave still lingering by the outer door. "You will pardon me, Monsieur," he said to the Vicomte, "but in fact I feel so uneasy, so unhappy. Has she—? You see, you see that there is danger to her health, perhaps to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture between us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... make a brave man suddenly timid and tremulous for months, or to disorder remote organs and functions in a fashion hard to understand. In the same way, a moral wound for which we are not prepared may bring about abrupt and prolonged consequences, from which the most robust health does not always protect us; and which is in proportion disastrous if the person on whom it falls is by temperament excitable or nervous. I have over and over seen such shocks cause lasting nervousness. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... take a wife?" said Montagu Blake, very loudly, as though he had hit the target right in the bull's-eye. He so spoke as to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. Mr Whittlestaff immediately looked conscious. He was a man who, on such an occasion, could not look otherwise than conscious. And the five girls, with all of whom the question of the loves of John Gordon ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Gentiles of every description. Think of his dealing with the Syrophoenician woman. She was a Canaanite of the old race, and, though at first he seemed to turn her away, yet ultimately he gave her all she asked and more: and even his apparently abrupt treatment of her in the beginning, if I read the history aright, was meant to be an exposure and condemnation of the feelings commonly cherished toward those of her nation by the Jews of his day. No doubt ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... amusement in witnessing the unwilling surrender of her mother to even Senator Shattuc, him of the political beard. As for Senator Burleigh, she would yield to his magnetism and power of compelling interest in himself, while pronouncing his manners too abrupt and his personality too "Western." And if he admired intelligently the old lace which she always wore at her throat and wrists and on her pretty head, she would confess that there might be ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Before he could answer, we hastened to add: "By-the-way, what a fine, old-fashioned, gentlemanly word accost is! People used to accost one another a great deal in polite literature. 'Seeing her embarrassment from his abrupt and vigorous stare, he thus accosted her.' Or, 'Embarrassed by his fixed and penetrating regard, she timidly accosted him.' It seems to us that we remember a great many passages like these. Why has the word gone out? It was ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat showed against ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... breathed the Captain. He put down the statuette gingerly on the table, hesitated, then turned its face away from them. With abrupt animation he swung to Paresi. "Hey! You didn't say it looked like Johnny. ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael. Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... another dog barks in the distance, the house dog answers in a peculiar manner. He gives a few growls, stops, seems to listen, begins again, very often getting answers; and, after two or three interruptions, he terminates his barking with abrupt yelps, loud at the beginning and long drawn out, and gradually dying away. This ending of his cries is habitually accompanied by his raising his head and throwing it back. I have often, when within the house, on hearing the watch dog ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... more brutal, more abrupt. Both intensely nervous, both highly individualised, their characters conflicted with the intensity of two real and opposing forces. A tragic aspect of it all was that it was due to Terry's teaching that Marie attained to the highly individualised character which was destined to rebel ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... began to retrace his steps through the winding arches, thinking with some satisfaction as he went, what a romantic incident he would have to relate to Lorimer and his other friends, when a sudden glare of light illumined the passage, and he was brought to an abrupt standstill by the sound of a wild "Halloo!" The light vanished; it reappeared. It vanished again, and again appeared, flinging a strong flare upon the shell-worked walls as it approached. Again the fierce "Halloo!" resounded through the hollow cavities ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... that there were other questions which Holmes would have wished to put, but the nobleman's abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sulph'rous torrents. There, nor law Of motion, nor eternal Order reigns; But anarchy instead, and wild uproar, And ruinous tumult. Now with lightning speed Th' accursed sphere, with all its flames, flies up Into the void abrupt, and with its roar, With groans commixt, and shrieks, and boundless yells, Astounds the nearest stars: calm now and slow, With dreadful peace the universal waves Of sulphur roll, and pour a mightier flood On those ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the kind," laughed her husband. "He's middle-sized and as blond as your cousin Joe, only he's got a long yellow moustache, and has a quick, abrupt way of talking. He isn't at all fancy-looking; you'd take him for an energetic business man or a doctor, if you didn't know him. So you see, Joan, this correct little wife of mine has been a ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... over the two parties had given way to that of silent but intense hostility. The prowling movement of the native with the spear as he slipped into the wood, the sudden advance of Jared Long, whose face became like a thunder-cloud, when every hope of a friendly termination vanished, and the abrupt halt of the bowman, showed that all parties had thrown off the cloak of good will and become ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... remained after the girl's abrupt departure, to see that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected with the Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the sentimental relationship which arose from his father having been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard, with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed, speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... We cut corners on two wheels, and on one wheel, and, I was prepared to swear, on no wheels. A couple of times, with the wings retracted, we actually jetted into the air and jumped over vehicles in front of us, landing again with bone-shaking jolts. Then we made an abrupt turn and shot in under a concrete arch, and a big door banged shut behind us, and we stopped, in the middle of a wide patio, the front of the car a few inches short of a fountain. Four or five people, in diplomatic ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... the work was finished (B. C. 480), the winter was past, and at the dawn of returning spring, Xerxes led his armament from Sardis to Abydos. As the multitude commenced their march, it is said that the sun was suddenly overcast, and an abrupt and utter darkness crept over the face of heaven. The magi were solemnly consulted at the omen; and they foretold, that by the retirement of the sun, the tutelary divinity of the Greeks, was denoted the withdrawal of the protection ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which never fails to attract the attention — He and Mr Bramble discoursed, and even disputed, on different subjects in war, policy, the belles lettres, law, and metaphysics; and sometimes they were warmed into such altercation as seemed to threaten an abrupt dissolution of their society; but Mr Bramble set a guard over his own irascibility, the more vigilantly as the officer was his guest; and when, in spite of all his efforts, he began to wax warm, the other prudently cooled in the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... had been gazing alternately at the dead man and vaguely about the room, looked startled at the abrupt question. ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... latok, already described, is a heavy sword. It has a head, sometimes carved as an ornament, so that it cannot slip from the hand. At about one-third of its length from this head, it bends at an abrupt angle of about thirty-five degrees, and it makes a ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Farnwood Dell, and Olive's conscience began to accuse her of having left her mother for so many hours. Therefore her adieux and thanks to Mr. Gwynne were somewhat abrupt. Mechanically she invited him in, and, to her ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the marvel of the tale. How he moved hence, you saw him and must know; Without a friend to lead the way, himself Guiding us all. So having reached the abrupt Earth-rooted Threshold with its brazen stairs, He paused at one of the converging paths, Hard by the rocky basin which records The pact of Theseus and Peirithous. Betwixt that rift and the Thorician rock, The hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb, Midway he sat and loosed his beggar's weeds; ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... that direct, almost abrupt manner that becomes a Magistrate for Surrey and Chairman of the Consolidated Bank. "Why not? Are you to have monopoly of this simple interjection? Are you to appropriate all the O's in the alphabet? Is not a Clerk at the Table a man and a brother, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... dawned, says Mr. Cumming, I left my shooting-hole, and proceeded to inspect the spoor of my wounded rhinoceros. After following it for some distance I came to an abrupt hillock, and fancying that from the summit a good view might be obtained of the surrounding country, I left my followers to seek the spoor, while I ascended. I did not raise my eyes from the ground until I had reached the highest pinnacle of rock. I then looked east, and to my inexpressible ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Zwaartzkopjesfontein camp turns an abrupt face eastwards, but on the westward side the plateau slopes almost imperceptibly to the plain, which is, in its immediate neighbourhood, thickly sown with kopjes. Down this slope the cavalry were galloping, about two miles in advance of ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... intellect. The modern world was brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thraldom of improved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... problem of their future one not too easy to solve. Mr. Carlyle, among others, has grappled with it. His brow has long been beaded with the sweat of this great wrestling; and if he seem to some of us a little abrupt and peculiar in his movements, we must at least do him the justice to remember that he, after the manner of ancient Jacob, is struggling with the angel of England's destiny. Mr. Mill, too, with an earnestness less passionate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... it but the abrupt military explosion when he gave his orders now—no argument, no underlying sympathy. He was no longer herding a flock of frightened children. He was ordering trained, grown men, and he knew it and they knew it. The orders ripped out, like the crack ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyana's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyegin is present, being urged thereto by Lensky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened between him and Tatyana, and innocently scheming to bring them together, place him opposite her at dinner. Angered by this, he revenges himself on the wholly innocent Lensky, by flirting ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... observed Mrs. Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of the Roadside, is ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the opposite quarter. Here, all was inland, and rural. It is true, the new Bridewell had been erected in that quarter, and there was also a new gaol, both facing the common; and the king's troops had barracks in their rear; but high, abrupt, conical hills, with low marshy land, orchards and meadows, gave to all that portion of the island a peculiarly novel and somewhat picturesque character. Many of the hills in that quarter, and indeed all over the widest part of the island, are now surmounted by country-houses, as some were then, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... forty years between Washington's first inauguration and Jackson's the total number of removals from office was 74, and out of this number 5 were defaulters. During the first year of Jackson's administration the number of changes made in the civil service was about 2,000. [34] Such was the abrupt inauguration upon a national scale of the so-called "spoils system." The phrase originated with W. L. Marcy, of New York, who in a speech in the senate in 1831 declared that "to the victors belong the spoils." The man who said this of course did not realize that he ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... edge before us flowed at right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and private dwellings, trailing ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Haven't we behaved white to this woman? Have you done anything, you stupid old Dutchman," cried Brown, collaring his partner with abrupt violence, "that would drive her out of the camp ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... His abrupt, incredible recovery had been the first open manifestation of the way it worked. Not that she had tried it on him first. Before she dared do that once she had proved it on herself twenty times. She had proved it up ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... but some of them are still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Malwa. The sandstone hills around Gwalior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Malwa generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to return to the cable office about midnight and await the reply to his cablegram. He had proceeded but a few blocks from the cable office, however, before a disturbing thought struck him with such force as to bring him to an abrupt pause. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of confinement I passed in practising a forbidding frown, a smile of condescension, a slight salutation, and an abrupt departure; and in four mornings was able to turn upon my heel, with so much levity and sprightliness, that I made no doubt of discouraging all publick attempts upon my dignity. I therefore issued forth in my new coat, with a resolution ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... with the air of one not accustomed to taking account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... said to consist of a mass of mountains, the highest points of which rise in a central ridge. Cliffs varying in height from 100 to 2000 feet form the coast boundary of the island. On the north they are the highest and most abrupt, while on the south they are lower and more accessible. The central mountains branch down to the sea in ridges parted by deep ravines, in some places full of dark forests, adding to their gloomy grandeur. The towns are generally situated in the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Job forgets all he wanted to say, all he thought he would say if he could but see him. The close of the poem is grandly abrupt. He had meant to order his cause before him; he had longed to see him that he might speak and defend himself, imagining God as well as his righteous friends wrongfully accusing him; but his speech is gone from him; he has not a word ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... we had our hammocks the sandbank was steep and abrupt, and the river very still and deep; there the Indian pricked a stick into the sand. It was two feet long, and on its extremity was fixed the machine: it hung suspended about a foot from the water, and the end of the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... behind in the glittering desolation of sunshine. On each side of her, low down, the growth of somber twisted mangroves covered the semi-liquid banks; and Massy continued in his old tone, with an abrupt start, as if his speech had been ground out of him, like the tune of a music-box, by turning ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... it with apprehension; I feared it might uncover my body to the eyes of the enemy; but on coming opposite, my fears were allayed: the slope was abrupt, and the high ground screened me as before. There would be no danger in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... month of September 1792 whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous death-defiance of twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast; all of black on one side, all of bright on the other. France crowding to the frontiers to defend itself from foreign despots, to town halls to defend itself from aristocrats, an insurrectionary improvised Commune of Paris ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... through those shadowy serried groves, and she should steal unperceived in view of the house, the beloved lake, perhaps even once more catch a passing glimpse of the owner. She resolved, she glided on; she gained the beech-grove, when, by the abrupt wind of the banks, Darrell and Alban came suddenly on the very spot. The flutter of her robe, as she turned to retreat, caught Alban's eye; the reader comprehends with what wily intent, conceived on ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... We cantered on ahead of the party, regardless of the assurance of our unwilling men that the natives were not to be trusted, and we soon arrived beneath the shade of a cluster of most superb trees. The village was within a quarter of a mile, situated at the very base of the abrupt mountain; the natives seeing us alone had no fear, and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... covered her husband's abrupt departure, for Godfrey had gone straight to the door, unable to ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... compact body. In quarter column, therefore, the Brigade advanced and approached the foot of the hill. I have noticed several times that when you get rather close to the hill the rise comes to look more gradual and the ridge itself does not stand up in the abrupt and salient way that it does from a distance. Whether it was this, or simply that the darkness of the night hid the outline, at any rate the column approached the hill and the trench which runs at the foot of the hill much too closely before the order to extend was given. When it was given it ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... on her lightest word; the children, dazed and terrified, ate and exercised at her command; his own boy, a strange hard look in his furtive eyes, followed her like a dog, and Aunt Lucia submitted with unprecedented meekness to an abrupt curtailment of her interview with Clarice. He himself went into the bedroom for a moment, half uncertain of the reality of the experience. It was absurd to remember that he might never see her, ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... to dash against it in foam; for century after century have the never-ceasing currents of the Pentland chafed against its steep sides, or eddied over its rough crest; and yet still does it remain unwasted and unworn,—its abrupt wall retaining all its former steepness, and every angular jutting all the original sharpness of edge. As we advance the scenery becomes wilder and more broken: here an irregular wall of rock projects from the crags towards the sea; there a ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupt tone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to the quick, I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to the French and English ambassadors accordingly, complaining of the abrupt and peremptory tone of the States' reply, the suggestion of conferences for truce, in place of fruitless peace negotiations, was made at once, and of course favourably received. It was soon afterwards laid before the States-General. To this end, in truth, Richardot ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... awkward, child," observed Mrs. Chatterton to Polly on her knees, "and abrupt. Move the sponge more slowly; there, that ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... swift turn, Hosea proclaims the impending judgment, setting himself and the people as if already in the future. He hears the first peal of the storm, and echoes it in that abrupt 'now.' The first burst of the judgment shatters dreams of innocence, and the cowering wretches see their sin by the lurid light. That discovery awaits every man whose heart has been 'divided.' To the gazers and to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... moment of their abrupt parting at the Beach, Carlisle had not set eyes upon Mr. Canning, though he was known to have lingered as a house-guest all through the following week. The circumstance had surprised her considerably at the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... them, as a reminder not to keep their captors waiting. With their shoulders bunched for abrupt action, and their guns in hand, the two men walked to the trap-door of the ship. They threw the heavy bolts, drew a deep breath—and flung open the door to charge unexpectedly toward the thickest mass of ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... of action and passion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot," etc.—with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise upon at leisure, "under the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sight, kicked up his heels in derision but finally came to an abrupt halt in front of Ned, and stood with ears pitched forward and forelegs braced back, evidently very ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and hunt pig. I set out across the base of the point, nearly due south—whereas I had been working along the coast to the north of the cove. On my right the slope of the mountain rose steeply, and as I approached the south shore the rise of the peak became more abrupt, and great jutting crags leaned out over the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... said Fern Fenwick slowly, "will you pardon me for asking you some very abrupt questions, or what may seem such ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs on the north. The bridle-path, along which he was moving, crossed it just where it was opening and became level, so as to present no abrupt descent and ascent at the place where the path was lowest. On the left every vestige of the ravine soon ceased, and a free passage extended ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... tints of green. The river winds through it in doubling curves, and looks from the height like a line of silver laid in loops on an enamelled surface. To the east and the west rise the river terraces, higher and higher, becoming, at last, lofty and abrupt ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... so pointed, so abrupt, and Isabel's self-consciousness, moreover, so great, that she betrayed lamentable confusion, and the earl had no further need to ask. Pity stole into his hard eyes as they fixed themselves ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... but a rascally one. While the philosophers, however, were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of Mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This Mob (a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... discovered the incompatibility of their temperaments. But he loved her passionately and jealously. One day I heard loud words between them, from which I gathered unintentionally that something had aroused his jealousy. She replied with laughter and taunts to his threats. The quarrel ended with her abrupt departure from the room and from ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... fifty miles in diameter; its vast smooth interior being divided into seven distinct zones running east and west. There is no central mountain or other obvious internal sign of former volcanic activity, but its irregular wall rises into abrupt towers, and is marked ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... the games of the circus; but, early on the morning of the third day, Julian marched to occupy the narrow pass of Succi, in the defiles of Mount Haemus; which, almost in the midway between Sirmium and Constantinople, separates the provinces of Thrace and Dacia, by an abrupt descent towards the former, and a gentle declivity on the side of the latter. The defence of this important post was intrusted to the brave Nevitta; who, as well as the generals of the Italian division, successfully ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... hat forward over his eyes, and went to sit on the veranda and look at the landscape while he waited. It was one of the loveliest landscapes in the mountains; the river flowed at the foot of an abrupt slope from the road before the hotel, stealing into and out of the valley, and the mountains, gray in the farther distance, were draped with folds of cloud hanging upon their flanks and tops. But Lander was tired of nearly all kinds of views and prospects, though he put' up with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... years I have been permitted to labour in her fold, and for this I rejoice. But," he added, with emphasis, "I long ago came to the resolve that if ever the Church asked me to go to the West Indies, or to any other Mission field, I would be careful about sending back an abrupt refusal." ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... drama of this kind, all the events, (and interest), take place in the minds of the actors ... somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing—they will find some fault with this, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... evident to Roddy that to herself and to her friends he was a discredited person, he had smiled patiently. His good humor had appeared unassailable. But now his eyes snapped indignantly. He pressed his lips together and made Inez an abrupt bow. ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... made their way to the seaboard with the promptitude that he had looked for; the reason of this being, he supposed, that the few addresses she had made had not been lectures, announced in advance, to which tickets had been sold, but incidents, of abrupt occurrence, of certain multitudinous meetings, where there had been other performers better known to fame. They had brought in no money; they had been delivered only for the good of the cause. If it could only be known that she spoke for nothing, that might deepen the reverberation; the only trouble ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... for apology, Conly; but you must see the necessity for our abrupt departure. Good evening to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... said with an abrupt bow, before Mildred had a chance to speak, "you have come to New York to take singing lessons—to prepare yourself for the stage. And you wish a comfortable place to live and to work." He extended his gloved hand, shook hers frigidly, dropped ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... a thousand fountains that can cast The tortured waters to the distant heavens; Yet let me choose some pine-topped precipice Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream, Like Anio, tumbling roars; or some black heath Where straggling stands the mournful juniper, Or yew ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... except what I overheard," I declared. "Colonel Ray was, I believe, responsible for Lord Blenavon's abrupt departure, and I would rather that your information came ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not know exactly what to think of such an abrupt ending to the roadway, and sat down behind a large rock to meditate. As he sat there a voice within the cliff said, "Open the door," and a door in the cliff opened itself. A man richly dressed came out, followed by several others, whom he told that they ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... the chairs as gray rectangles, she heard his step on the porch; heard him at the furnace: the rattle of shaking the grate, the slow grinding removal of ashes, the shovel thrust into the coal-bin, the abrupt clatter of the coal as it flew into the fire-box, the fussy regulation of drafts—the daily sounds of a Gopher Prairie life, now first appealing to her as something brave and enduring, many-colored and free. She visioned the fire-box: flames turned ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Lackarago, a small village standing upon the ridge of hills that separates Kasson from Kaarta. The following morning they left Lackarago, and soon perceived, towards the south-east, the mountains of Fooladoo. Proceeding with great difficulty down a stony and abrupt precipice, they continued their way in a dry bed of a river, where the trees, meeting over head, made the place dark and cool. About ten o'clock they reached the sandy plains of Kaarta, and at noon came to a watering place, where a few strings of beads purchased as much milk and corn meal as they ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... before a bargain could be struck. They wasted time ascertaining who I was, and only hinted at good things—not the usual watches and rings, they said, but really things worth their weight in pure gold. Then one man tempted me deliberately with an abrupt movement which reminded me of the way the sellers of obscene playing-cards in Paris disclose to the unsuspecting stranger their wares. He drew from his tunic a little wooden box, opened it quickly, and laid bare a most exquisite Louis XV. gold belt-buckle, set in diamonds and rubies, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... bank. Like magic his blanket had left his limbs and painted body naked, except for the breech-clout. Balwin's tardy bullet threw earth over the squaw, who went flapping and screeching down the river. Balwin and Powell ran to the edge, which dropped six abrupt feet of clay to a trail, then shelved into the swift little stream. The red figure was making up the trail to the foot-bridge that led to the Indian houses, and both officers fired. The man continued his limber flight, and ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... only interrupted by great illnesses, and the stream of conduct, by great passions. Our tastes and inclinations may change, but this change, though it may be sudden enough, is rendered less abrupt by our habits. The skilful artist, in a good colour scheme, contrives so to mingle and blend his tints that the transitions are imperceptible; and certain colour washes are spread over the whole ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... him to go away in the middle of his instructions. I think he was feverish that night. Every now and then he spoke so rapidly that I could hardly follow him. Then there were pauses in which he seemed lost, and abrupt changes of subject, as if he could hardly control the order of his thoughts. And in all the evident strain and anxiety to say everything that he wished to say to me appeared that morbid fancy of its being "the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... stage. The same literary qualities mark all his writings. De Quincey, of course, condemns Hazlitt, as he does Lamb, for a want of 'continuity.' 'No man can be eloquent,' he says, 'whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and nonsequacious.' But then De Quincey will hardly allow that any man is eloquent except Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and Thomas De Quincey. Hazlitt certainly does not belong to their school; nor, on the other hand, has he the plain homespun force ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... alluded to which mark the ancient limits of the sea, there are other abrupt terminations of rocks of various kinds which resemble sea-cliffs, but which have in reality been due to subaerial denudation. These have been called "escarpments," a term which it is useful to confine to the outcrop of particular formations having a scarped outline, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... he moved across the room to Penelope's chair he continued: "You, I know, Miss Brand, love the sunshine and the out-of-doors." He hesitated a moment and then went on, pouring out his words with a sort of abrupt eagerness: ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... like that of Montmorency? This new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediate attendants, the Duc de Bar and the Comte de Clermont,(1) always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from St. Denis with orders from the King. These orders were abrupt and peremptory—to turn back. Jeanne and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and Paris at their feet! There must have burst forth a storm of remonstrance and appeal. We cannot tell how long the indignant parley lasted; the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the subject that has the smallest pretensions to system, and that is fanciful, involved, irregular, abrupt, and obscure, is PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMS. Even admitting the plan of that work to be in itself excellent; although it may be a General History, so far as it extends, it certainly is in no respect a Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. In a very large proportion of that curious work, it is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... blue eyes and a large crow-beaked nose gave him an air that was the more threatening because his eyes were placed too close together. But his large lips, the outline of his face, and the easy good-humor of his manner soon showed that his nature was a kindly one. Abrupt in speech and decided in tone, he impressed Oscar immensely by the force of his penetration, inspired, no doubt, by the affection which he felt for the boy. Trained by his mother to magnify the steward, Oscar had ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... and as Captain Truck afterwards declared, handsomely done too, though it was a little abrupt, and caused Eve to hesitate ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a person to come to one's house and get sick, only to have an excuse for not returning to it. Your departure is so abrupt, that I don't know but I may expect to find that Mrs. Jane Truebridge, whom you commend so much, and call Mrs. Mary, will prove Mrs. Hannah. Mrs. Clive is still more disappointed: she had proposed to play at quadrille with you from dinner till supper, and to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Monsieur Bernheim failed in this instance, I could not but admire his skill. After using every means of persuasion, insinuation and coaxing, he suddenly took up an imperative tone, and in a sharp, abrupt voice that did not admit a refusal, said: 'I tell you you can walk; get up.' 'Very well,' replied the old follow; 'I must if you insist upon it.' And he got out of bed. No sooner, however, had his foot touched the floor than he screamed even louder than before. Monsieur ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... state that it took us ten days to cover as many miles. At length we trekked over a stony nek about five hundred yards in width. To the right of us was a stony eminence and to our left, its sheer brown cliffs of rock rising like the walls of some cyclopean fortress, the strange, abrupt mount of Isandhlwana, which reminded me of a huge lion crouching above the hill-encircled plain beyond. At the foot of this isolated mount, whereof the aspect somehow filled me with alarm, we camped on the night of January 21, taking ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without abrupt breaks. We need not wonder, therefore, that gradations between species and varieties should occur; the more so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the naturalist collocates species are far from being always ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... equally unsatisfactory," she answered. "I cannot imagine Elmhurst belonging to either, Silas." Then she added, with an abrupt change of manner: "You must go to New York ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... unbroken through the isthmus. This, however, is not the case. The northern Cordillera breaks into detached mountains on the eastern side of the province of Vevagna, which are of considerable height, extremely abrupt and rugged, and frequently exhibit an almost perpendicular face of bare rock. To these succeed numerous conical mountains, rising out of savannahs or plains, and seldom exceeding from 300 to 500 feet in height. Finally, between Chagre on the Atlantic side, and Chorrera on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... retracted in its socket, and often after several attacks because of actual shrinkage (atrophy). The upper eyelid, in place of presenting a uniform, continuous arch, has, about one-third from its inner angle, an abrupt bend, caused by the contraction of the levator muscle. The front of the iris has exchanged some of its dark, clear brilliancy for a lusterless yellow, and the depth of the eye presents more or less of the greenish-yellow shade. The pupil remains a little contracted, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... sounded somewhat profanely. But he was in no mood to find fault with his companion, and they got on very well together to the end of their brief journey. The young scapegrace was glad, indeed, that it was brief, for his self-control was fast leaving him, and having bowed a rather abrupt farewell to the doctor, he was not long in reaching one of his haunts, from which during the evening, and quite late into the night, came repeated peals of laughter, that grew more boisterous and discordant as that synonyme ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... at twenty-eight and realize them at thirty years of age. He was a little man, less than five feet two inches in height. At this time he was extremely thin, but his striking features, quick, searching eye, abrupt, animated gestures and rapid speech, incorrect as it was, made a deep impression upon those who came in contact with him. He possessed in a supreme degree two qualities that are ordinarily incompatible. He was a ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... him." An abrupt movement on Persis' part had unthreaded her needle. She bent close to the lamp, vainly trying to insert the unsteady end of the thread into the opening it had ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the Round Tower stands may or may not be pre-historic. The slopes of the hill were inhabited, like nearly all our English sites, by the Romans, and by the savages before and after the Romans; but the welter of the Saxon dark ages did not use this abrupt elevation for a stronghold. What military reasoning led William of Falaise to discern it at once and there to ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt horrible certainty froze her—the certainty that she was not alone. There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near her—something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... fixing his eyes on the end of the central passage, he called out abruptly, "I see a man!" Every one looked to that point,—"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says, Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of "Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written out,—only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly when writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered—they came ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and drawn, by the abrupt cessation of its motor's pulsing, to the automobile on his right. He lifted his chin sharply, narrowing his eyes, whistled low; and thereafter had ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the Byzantine court had not permitted Belisarius to achieve the conquest of Italy; and his abrupt departure revived the courage of the Goths, [6] who respected his genius, his virtue, and even the laudable motive which had urged the servant of Justinian to deceive and reject them. They had lost their king, (an inconsiderable loss,) their capital, their treasures, the provinces ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... complaints against the Prussians. The country in the environs of this place is exceedingly diversified, and it presents the first mountain scenery we have yet met with. The banks of the Meuse hereabouts present either an abrupt precipice or coteaux covered with vines gently sloping to the water's edge. Namur is distant thirty-four miles from Brussels, and there is water conveyance on the Meuse from ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... aloof smile. Somewhere was the impression of a gentlewoman. She did not mean to be abrupt. She ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... 540 leagues long, and varying from 3 to 20 leagues in breadth, stretches along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is intersected by chains of small hillocks, which, extending westward from the Cordilleras, gradually diminish in height, and either become blended with the plain, or form abrupt promontories, which project into the sea. Between the river Loa, which marks the southern frontier of the Peruvian coast, and the Tumbez, on the northern boundary, fifty-nine rivers, great and small, pass through the line of coast. Proceeding from the avalanches of the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out to her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his, while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank and friendly and ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Alboni's kindness of heart, occurred on the eve of her departure for Italy, whither she was called by family reasons. Her leave-taking was so abrupt that she had almost forgotten her promise to sing in Paris on a certain date for the annual benefit of Filippo Galli, a superannuated musician. The suspense and anxiety of the unfortunate Filippo were to be more easily imagined than described when, asked if Alboni would sing, he could not answer ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... day on the abrupt edge of a little hill in a Southern Japanese city. There, in a great tree hanging out over the edge, had hung the bell that called together the faithful retainers of the lord of the province, when they were needed. There, nearly thirty years ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... time in finding his place in the open book, and then went on. Again he misunderstood her, for though he could not remember saying anything he regretted, he fancied she had brought the conversation to a somewhat abrupt close. He read on, feeling very uncomfortable, and longing for one of those explanations that are impossible between acquaintances and emotional between lovers. He felt also that if he ever spoke out and told her he loved her it would be in some such situation as the present. Margaret let her needlework ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... have been mistaken and took up the broken thread once more, or tried to, but he had hopelessly lost the place in his manuscript, and the only clue that offered was a quotation of a poem about the devil; to be sure, the connection was somewhat abrupt, but he clutched it with his eye gratefully and began reading ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... intemperance you disgust and nauseate. To say that a political paper of the very same sentiments, and principles would be innocent, written in a calm and delicate style which would be criminal, written in an abrupt, vehement and passionate manner, is to remove guilt from the thought and conception and substance of a writing, and impute it to the medium only of the thought, the mere expression. So that upon such a rule and principle of decision, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... the cliff that sloped down to within less than a hundred yards of the place where we sat. It ended in an abrupt precipice of some sixty or seventy feet in height above the plain. The animals, on reaching the level of this spur, ran along it until they had arrived at its end. Seeing the precipice they suddenly stopped, as if to reconnoitre it; and we had now a full ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... mind, unless we are acquainted with the times in which he lived. The trammels of statecraft and priestcraft had been suddenly removed from religion, and men were left to form their own opinions as to rites and ceremonies. In this state of abrupt liberty, some wild enthusiasts ran into singular errors; and Bunyan's first work on "Gospel Truths" was published to correct them. Then followed that alarm to thoughtless souls—"A Few Sighs from Hell"; and, in 1659, as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... mass by the Father Superior, made up his weekly rations. The water in his jug was changed every day. He rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to do him homage saw him sometimes kneeling all day long at prayer without looking round. If he addressed them, he was brief, abrupt, strange, and almost always rude. On very rare occasions, however, he would talk to visitors, but for the most part he would utter some one strange saying which was a complete riddle, and no entreaties would ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was author of several botanical works, principally on Algae.—(From a Memoir published in 1869.)) is a good hit against my talking so much of the insensibly fine gradations; and certainly it has astonished me that I should be pelted with the fact, that I had not allowed abrupt and great enough variations under nature. It would take a good deal more evidence to make me admit that forms have often changed ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... than the synagogical modes on which it bases itself, the Semitic pomp and color that inform it. There are moments when one hears in this music the harsh and haughty accents of the Hebrew tongue, sees the abrupt gestures of the Hebrew soul, feels the titanic burst of energy that created the race and carried it intact across lands and times, out of the eternal Egypt, through the eternal Red Sea. There are moments when this music makes one feel as though ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... rough, I instantly made up my mind to a serious accident. As well as the velocity of the horse would allow me, however, I kept him on the side, rough as it was, for about a quarter of a mile pretty steadily, expecting, however, to upset every minute; when all at once I saw before me an abrupt, narrow, deep gully into which the wheels on one side were just upon the point of going down. It flashed across me in an instant that, if I could throw the horse down into the ditch, the wheels of the wagon might, perhaps, rest equipoised ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... flash. Ned's mount had whirled and was away like a shot. But the guide was after him with even greater speed. The chase came to an abrupt ending some few rods farther on, when Kris Kringle's lariat squirmed out, bringing the fleeing pony to the ground with its ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... rather abrupt, at least much more so than the lovers of fervid poetry could wish, especially as the termination is with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... been good training, but said there was no comparison in the rapids. We would have a river ten times as great as in Lodore to contend with; and in numerous places, for short distances, the descent was as abrupt as anything we had seen on the Green. Wolverton was personally acquainted with a number of the men who had made the river trip, and, with the one exception of Major Powell's expeditions, had met all the parties who had successfully navigated its waters. This ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... was a fine, big lass." He looked from Mary to the picture of an older woman that hung above the mantel. "That'll be your mother, I'm thinkin'." Then, with abrupt change, "When did you leave the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... think fate is as much responsible for that as yourself?" she questioned, smiling as they passed at a good clip the turn which was to have taken them over the pretty Bald Hill drive. Sam had not even thought to apologize for the abrupt change in their program, because she could certainly see the opportunity which had offered itself, and how imperative it was to embrace it. The thing needed ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... provinces of Europe, shaken by an intellectual tempest of physical discovery, disturbed by an abrupt and undigested enlargement in the material world, in physical science, and in the knowledge of antiquity, was to be offered a fruit of which each might taste if it would, but the taste of which would lead, if it were acquired, to evils ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... which I only mention to dispose of. At its close he wrote and added to the narrative a 'Note' of nearly a thousand words; and in the time required for the penning of that addition, he could have brought the story to—perhaps an abrupt, but still, an artistic close. No. Then did Poe not complete 'The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym' because his imagination failed him—failed to supply material of such a quality as his refined and faultless taste demanded? If so, then why did he begin it? ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life continued to be hers. But long before her mind was prepared for any such influences, early in the third year after her father's death, certain events occurred, which brought this period of her history to an abrupt close. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... homes" have so little judgment in the matter of departure that experience never serves them in good stead. They are nervous and vacillating when they should be neither; they linger and know not how to get themselves gracefully away, and usually succeed in making an abrupt exit. They know the right moment at which to leave, but fail to put this knowledge into practice. "Almost think it is time to go now," or "I wonder whether I ought to say good-bye or wait until ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Panjab Plain.—The passage from the highlands to the plains is as a rule abrupt, and the contrast between the two is extraordinary. This is true without qualification of the tract between the Jamna and the Jhelam. It is equally true of British districts west of the Jhelam ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... listen, as it were to the deepening dumbness of all existing things,—and to conquer the strange sensations that were overcoming him, he proceeded at a more rapid pace,—but in two or three minutes came again to an abrupt halt. For there in front of him, right across his path, lay the fallen pillar which, according to Heliobas, marked the boundary to the field he sought! Another glance at his map decided the position ... he had reached his journey's end at last! What ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and though no mention has been made of the particular lines employed, their distinctive character may readily be inferred from the kind of motion given to the eye in the descriptions we have attempted. In the rapid, abrupt, contrasted, whirling movement in the one, we have an exposition of an irregular combination of curves and angles; while the simple combination of the parabola and the serpentine will account for all the imperceptible ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... great Kings of Finance counting over the debts of whole nations in penny-pieces, and you have at once a picture of what, until a few years ago, was our intellectual condition. How nobly Demosthenic our table-talk will be!—how grandly abrupt ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... shun whatever is sharp and abrupt. He loves to prolong emotion, and lingers in his honeyed sensations like a bee in the translucent cup of a lily. So entirely are beauty and delight in it the native element of Spenser, that, whenever in the "Faery Queen" you come suddenly on the moral, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... stenographers turning in disgust from the contemplation of the flamboyant and sticky puree on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to hope in her heart that Gaspard's illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to eke out the ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... course of a phenomenon more truthfully than can be done by a line that zigzags along the exact measurements; because it is less influenced by temporary and extraordinary causes that may obscure the operation of those that are being investigated. On the other hand, the abrupt deviations of a punctilious zigzag may have their own logical value, as will appear ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... of the dike, however, for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... deepened and the darkness increased, I realized that to attempt the descent of the slope above camp would be folly, for it was as steep as a house roof, and covered with loose bowlders. Besides it had many abrupt cliffs fifty to a hundred feet high. There was only one thing to do—camp here, for the night. But I was on an exposed shoulder of the mountain, above timberline, and it would be impossible to live through the night without ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... with no obstacle. I tried to recognise my way by the form of the tunnel, by the projections of certain rocks, by the disposition of the fractures. But no particular sign appeared, and I soon saw that this gallery could not bring me back to the turning point. It came to an abrupt end. I struck against an impenetrable wall, and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... most artistic touch in the parable is its abrupt close. We do not know whether the elder son yielded to the entreaty of his father or not. It was an appeal to the Pharisees; would they accept the grace of God and further his plans for the salvation of ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as political instability, a top-heavy civil service, and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. The development of the oil sector led rapid economic growth between 1970 and 1985. Growth came to an abrupt halt in 1986, precipitated by steep declines in the prices of major exports: coffee, cocoa, and petroleum. Export earnings were cut by almost one-third, and inefficiencies in fiscal management were exposed. In 1990-93, with support from the IMF and World Bank, the government began to introduce reforms ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... the two places would finally become the center of business. It, however, was soon perceivable that the advantage of water privileges, stone, and access to both, was greatly in favor of Rochester. At Carthage the Genesee is narrow and its banks steep and abrupt, rising in many places three hundred feet above the bed of the river, which of course render the privileges and business on it far less easy of access for building purposes. I may have occasion to speak hereafter of the expensive and magnificent bridge at Carthage, which was the ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... given in Fig. 23. The shaft is cylindrical and terminates in a conical point at one end and in a very narrow, abrupt, cutting edge at the other. The whole surface is polished. The material is the same ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... fellows of the street ... Curious, he should feel sad for a man who was smiling on a street corner. Tiredness. The man was cursing the snow good-humoredly. Suddenly the pipe was lighted and the man seemed to have forgotten it. His eyes gleamed for an instant across Hazlitt's face, and with an abrupt nod of recognition the man passed on. Walking swiftly, bent forward, vanishing behind a ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... case, it should be borne in mind that with low velocities the tendency is for drops of entrained water to settle to the bottom of the pipe, and to be temporarily broken up into spray whenever an abrupt bend or other disturbance ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... youth tried to insinuate a package into Flint's lap, but was met with an abrupt demand to remove it with haste. His successor, bearing a load of New York afternoon papers, fared better. Flint selected an "Evening Post," and, leaning back in his corner, strove to find oblivion from the wriggling of the small child in front, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... extreme western point is the bold and rugged promontory of Achill Head, and the northwestern and south-western coasts consist of ranges of magnificent cliffs, reaching a height of 800 ft. in the cliffs of Minaun, near the village of Keel on the south. The seaward slope of Croaghaun is abrupt and in parts precipitous, and its jagged flanks, together with the serrated ridge of the Head and the view over the broken coast-line and islands of the counties Mayo and Galway, attract many visitors to the island during summer. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Violet objects very much to these abrupt separations. This week, too, I was shooting at Saxthorpe, and I had also several other engagements of a pleasant nature. Besides, I have reached that age when I find it disconcerting to be called out of bed in the middle of the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper-table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he was in subjection. The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him excited him tremendously. After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... particularly unpleasant to a high-minded nation like the French—at the very moment when the Egyptian affair and the balance of Europe had been settled in this abrupt way—to find out all of a sudden that the Pasha of Egypt was their dearest friend and ally. They had suffered in the person of their friend; and though, seeing that the dispute was ended, and the territory out of his hand, they could not hope ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... dived into it by a small foot-path, as if to explore its recesses, and one of them returning in a few minutes, said something to his companions, who instantly raised their burden and bore him, with great attention and care, down the narrow and abrupt descent. Notwithstanding their precautions, however, Waverley's person came more than once into contact, rudely enough, with the projecting stumps and branches which overhung ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... alone in a state coach, all glass and gold, to which pages clung wherever they could find footing. He was splendidly attired, and wore a Spanish hat with drooping feathers. As he moved slowly through the crowd, he bowed to the right and left, not in the hasty, abrupt way which is generally attributed to him, but in a calm, dignified, though absent manner. His face was one not to be forgotten. I saw it repeatedly; but whenever I bring it up, it comes before me, not as it appeared from the window of the Tuileries, or when riding among his troops, or when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... again and again her gesture as she bent to Mr Shushions; and the straightening of her spine as she left the garden-porch on the night of his visit to the Orgreaves... Yet he did not like her. Her sudden departure, however, was a disappointment; it was certainly too abrupt... Probably very characteristic of her... Strange day! He had been suspected of theft. He had stood up to his father. He had remained away from the shop. And his father's only retort was to give him a rise of half a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Isa had was a sudden shock of surprise. She was not so much astonished at the revelation of Charlton's feeling as at the discovery of her own. With Albert's abrupt going away, all her heart and hope seemed to be going too. She had believed her interest in Charlton to be disinterested until this moment. It was not until he proposed going away entirely that she came to understand how completely that interest had ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... admiration; but suddenly, in this moment of deep and pious emotion, a cold, an icy chill, seemed to shiver and play like the breath of death over his features, and the hot blood, like liquid metal, rushed madly through his veins; he gave a light, short cough; with a quick, abrupt movement, he released himself from the arms of the king. Withdrawing a few steps, he turned away, and pressed his handkerchief ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... convince you that if the same material furnishes all these, it must be very plastic. As a limitation we ought to note that this almost plastic material cannot be suddenly and violently dealt with—that is to say, with the exception of some sorts of arches, you cannot form any abrupt or startling feature in brickwork, and you are especially limited as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis. The bridge stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising, unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch and abrupt descents. One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up, before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up the stream. Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the Tochty ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... of "The True Relation" were omitted is possible. There is internal evidence of this in the abrupt manner in which it opens, and in the absence of allusions to the discords during the voyage and on the arrival. Captain Smith was not the man to pass over such questions in silence, as his subsequent ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leads down a gentle incline for a mile, when it reaches the head of Trail Creek, and follows down that stream a distance of ten miles into the Big Hole basin. It crosses the creek probably fifty times, and the banks being abrupt, and the road obstructed in many places by down timber, the progress of the command ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... maybe, in his lofty mind; he felt his power now, felt strong enough to be short and abrupt with folk. The others had certainly done their best to take him down a peg; they imagined they were dealing with a man in need of money, and threw out hints of some fifteen or twenty thousand—ay, children. They did not know Geissler. And now here ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... replied the small Line: "I am the Monarch of the world. But thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of Lineland?" Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in any way startled or molested his Royal Highness; and describing myself as a stranger I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions. But I had the ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head approvingly, "that what Yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone, "where her breakfast, her ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... candelabra, going about with his accustomed noiseless step. I felt a cold chill creep down my spine as he passed behind me on these errands. His transition from the rôle of conspirator to that of my flawless servant was almost too abrupt. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... deacon's greatest ambition was to win. But now, with victory perched on his horse-collar, success his at last, he thought of the widow, and he did care. He cared so much that he almost threw his horse off his feet by the abrupt turn he gave him, and back down the pike he flew as if a legion of squires were ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... lacking in interest; his ideas though crude were not common, and their talk had lasted long enough for him to discern many original turns of speech in Paul's incorrect Greek, altogether lacking in construction, but betraying constantly an abrupt vigour of thought. He was therefore disappointed when Paul, dropping suddenly the story of the apostolic mission, which he had received from the apostles, who themselves had received it from the Lord Jesus Christ, began ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... 2483. These abrupt cries of the child, if they do not proceed from thirst, which a little water will relieve, not unfrequently occur from some unequal pressure, a fold or twist in the "roller," or some constriction round the tender body. If this is suspected, the mother must not be content with merely ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... an interest in the conversion of the Jews, and often spoke at public meetings on behalf of the Church Missionary Society; and in one year he travelled a thousand miles on behalf of the "London Association in aid of Moravian Missions." In manner he was rough and abrupt; at heart he was gentle as a woman. He was a strict disciplinarian, a keen questioner, and an unflinching demander of a Christian walk. Not one jot or tittle would he allow his people to yield to the loose ways of the world. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... seemed as if the abrupt departure of her lover was in some sense a relief to Etta Sydney Bamborough. For, while he, lover-like, was grave and earnest during the small remainder of the evening, she continued to be sprightly and ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the sudden change of nature which such introduction would bring about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change, in the effects, has already been shown; but we will further point out that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... held good in Shere Ali's case," Ralston went on; and there came a change in Linforth's voice. It grew rather stern, rather abrupt. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... extinct volcanic crater, caved in, on one side, leaving a half-circle of steep, wave-eaten cliffs, within which the water is calm, unless the storm happens to be coming from the East. This island, uninhabited save by the keepers of the lighthouse, has not a trace of beach. The abrupt, precipitous walls of lava are too bare to feed a tree, so hot is the sun in summer, so heavy is the air with salt. At their base are piles of pebbles that the storm-surf has rolled on high, with a mixture of flotsam ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... generations, he yet died five years before his allotted time. The intention was to let him live to be one hundred and eighty years old, the same age as Isaac's at his death, but on account of Esau God brought his life to an abrupt close. For some time Esau had been pursuing his evil inclinations in secret. Finally he dropped his mask, and on the day of Abraham's death he was guilty of five crimes: he ravished a betrothed maiden, committed ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... near the bold sweep of the highway that led into the village, there was an abrupt hill, crested with a ledge of rocks, which formed a platform high above the road—and back of that the forest crowded up like an army in rich uniform—checked in battle array upon ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Tullia de via recta in hortos, for tu, etc., and ad te postridie. This may not be right, but no other suggestions as to the meaning of these abrupt clauses have been made which are in the least convincing. We must suppose that Atticus has asked Tullia to stay with him and his wife Pilia, and Cicero is ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... converse, this could not be altered without danger of injuring or destroying some beauty or other. The blank verse has this advantage, that its tone may be elevated or lowered; it admits of approximation to the familiar style of conversation, and never forms such an abrupt contrast as that, for example, between plain prose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in holding back his big card and scoring against them all was the feeling that Mary Thorne would be the one to suffer most. He would be putting an abrupt finish to Lynch's game, whatever that was, but his action would also involve the girl in deep and bitter humiliation, if not something worse. Moreover, he was not quite ready to stop Lynch's scheming. He wanted to find out first what it was all about, and he felt he had a better chance ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... scarcely an exception, they are severely simple and square. But there is a certain grandeur in the masses of white marble, which is everywhere lavishly employed, and the Capitol stands right well—alone, on the crest of a low, abrupt slope, with nothing to intercept the view from its terraces, seaward, and up the valley of the Potomac. The effect will probably be better when wind and weather shall have slightly toned down the sheen of the fresh-hewn stones, so dazzling now as ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Kingsley, with all his literary gifts, was never quite in the first rank in anything, he came nearest to being a poet of mark. Some of his ballads almost touch the high-water mark of true ballad poetry, with its abrupt fierce blows of tragedy and pathos, its simple touches of primitive rude speech, its reserve of force, its unspoken mysteries. At any rate, Kingsley's best ballads have no superior in the ballads of the Victorian era in lilt, in massiveness of stroke, in strange unexpected turns. The Weird Lady ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the knight was forced to dismount and leave his horse tied to a tree-stem. They knew they were on the right track: for they could see the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay and mingled with them the cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently the path became still more abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the cloven foot-prints that the thieves were carrying the pigs. Now and then a long mark in the clay showed that a pig had slipped down, and been dragged along for a little way. They had journeyed thus for about twenty ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... relieved that she took this view of his abrupt utterances. He thought the incident was ended. He was mistaken; Elsie was able to recall each word subsequently. At the moment she was recording impressions with uncomprehending accuracy, but her mind ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... of this, Mr Standish! You are speaking the language of the wicked, and it is offensive to me; if you value my regard at all, do not strive to lessen it—you have been plain and abrupt with me, let me be the same with you—I can never be more to you than I am at this moment— all the devotion and love you offer me is no temptation, I may tell you though, it most likely will yet flatter a worthier girl than ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... discourse was as abrupt as her entrance into the room. "O dear ma'am!" says she, "what doth your la'ship think? To be sure I am frightened out of my wits; and yet I thought it my duty to tell your la'ship, though perhaps it may make you angry, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... previous topic was so abrupt and barefaced that the lover stared for a moment, then tried not to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... On an abrupt hill in the middle of an enormous green meadow a Castle stood, just as Richard had predicted. It was To Let, and was not looking its best. Some man of enterprise, taking advantage of its forlorn condition, had glued an advertisement ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... They have the air of something useful. One would imagine they were intended to be cooked and eaten in cheap restaurants. We experience no lifting of the heart at sight of them. We should be surprised to hear the abrupt ecstasy of a wren issuing from among their leaves. And yet it is hardly a week since, walking in a Sussex lane, I saw a long procession of cow's parsley on the top of a high bank silhouetted against the twilight sky. There seemed never to have been more exquisite ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... until, at long last, the diligence drew up in the straggling street of Tolosa. We halted here for dinner, and resumed our journey with a fresh team at an enlivening speed, until about two miles outside the town we came to an abrupt stop. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... manner stopped the voluble lady more effectually than words could have done, and a rather abrupt turn was given to the conversation. But Graeme could not forget it. Not that she believed in the truth of what Mrs Gridley had hinted at, yet she could not help being annoyed at it. It was rather foolish, she thought, for Arthur ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... yet his bones were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of low stature. His clothes were expensive and made after the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. His features, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... slowly down stairs, swayed by a conflict of emotions. Had I indeed gone too far, been too stern and abrupt? Still it was surely better to err in this direction than to exhibit weakness, and it was only between these two that I had any choice remaining. What lay between us and our own lines was uncertain—possibly Confederate pickets, surely bands of stragglers, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... you married, Peggy, yes or no? Tell me at once, before I let you go!" Abrupt he spoke, and gave her arm a swing, But the same moment felt the wedding ring, And stood confus'd.—She wip'd th' empassion'd tear, "I am, I am; but is my father here?" Herbert stood by, and sharing with his bride, That perturbation which ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... things would have taken with Madelon, had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life continued to be hers. But long before her mind was prepared for any such influences, early in the third year after her father's death, certain events occurred, which brought this period of her history to an abrupt close. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... chief was an entirely different type from any of the scientists whom he had met in the Bureau. In the first place, he was a gem expert by profession, and consequently, more of a mineralogist than biologist. Tall, powerfully built, black-bearded, and abrupt, he gave an impression of volcanic force, and at the same time of great keenness. A scientist of remarkable discernment, he possessed with all his broad views a marvelous capacity for detail, and Colin soon learned that the somewhat slipshod methods of a college laboratory ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... anything in sight that looked like a back door. The nearest approach to it was a cigar store. So I went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to pay for any information I might get and leave the dealer a fair profit. Well, I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to Daly's Theatre, so I started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to Castle Garden. When I got to the real question, and he said he would show me the way, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... species of every other island. This peculiarity consists, first, in the upper wings being generally more elongate and falcate; and secondly, in the costa or anterior margin being much more curved, and in most instances exhibiting near the base an abrupt bend or elbow, which in some species is very conspicuous. This peculiarity is visible, not only when the Celebesian species are compared with their small-sized allies of Java and Borneo, but also, and in an almost equal degree, when ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to it. The deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild and shy. Starkey Manor-House itself stood on a projection or peninsula of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of the Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and green depths of fern, out of which a grey giant of an ancient forest-tree would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... but food there was none, so I had made up my mind to lie down, famished as I was. Just then I came across some sleeping men, who to my joy turned out to be Dighton Probyn and the officers of the 2nd Punjab Cavalry, who were magnanimous enough to forgive the abrupt interruption to their slumbers, and to supply me with some cold mutton, bread, and a bottle of beer. Never was man more grateful for a meal, and never was a meal more thoroughly enjoyed. I lay down beside my friends and was soon fast asleep, in spite of the bitter ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... them immediately, for his first look of bewilderment was followed quickly by one of fear, and with an abrupt motion he ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... of the hill they took a careful survey of the situation. The elevation was in the very center of the island. Down toward the other islands the slope was more abrupt than it was in the direction from ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... be one of those rare exceptions, my dear boy, I can promise you that—Upon my soul!" with an abrupt change of both tone and manner, "I really believe it ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... without seeing her, and live in the hope of a visit. All the time I was strongly tempted to throw myself at her feet, and tell her of my despair. I knew that she would not be insensible to it, and that she would at least express her pity; but her severity and the abrupt manner of her departure recalled me to my senses; I trembled lest I should lose her, and I would rather die than ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... John's harbour is a mere sally-port in that castle wall. It is an abrupt opening, and is entered through the high and commanding posts of Signal and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... recovered, she wished to spend a fortnight at Dearport, beginning with a retreat that was held there. Remembering her old career there, and the abrupt close of her novitiate, she felt and spoke as if she was to be received as in penitence, but to the Sisters who surrounded her it was more as if they were receiving ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a few minutes. It was impossible for me to accept the abrupt conclusion of the adventure, and, in spite of myself, I mused with some melancholy on the sad fate of certain men who appear and disappear in this world like the grass of the field, without leaving the least ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Mr. Griswold, in a very abrupt way.—"Are you ready to go back, Miss Polly? for I've got to go down to the Centre again with a load ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... be apparent to the moral philosopher, no less than to the student of history, that at the time of the appearance of Christianity, a crisis took place in the development of humanity which may be not unfitly described as the commencement of Spiritual Life. The change was not abrupt. It had been preceded and heralded by the increasing spirituality of the Hebrew religion, especially in the teachings of the prophets, by the spiritualization of Greek philosophy, and perhaps by the sublimation of Roman duty; but it was critical and decided. So much is admitted even by those ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of Black Duncan's stories fled for Gilian before this presence like mist before a morning wind. So healthy, so ruddy, so abrupt, she was so much in the actual world that for him to be dreaming of others ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Deign his presence this very night. Nishioka Shintaro[u] spoke in no hypocrisy. The O'Kage Sama now was longing for the rightful substitution. His nest well feathered, he would seek safer quarters with the softer charms of O'Han. On Shu[u]zen's abrupt gesture and refusal he took his departure, almost betraying his own disgruntlement. Comical was his despairing gesture as he took his way to the bed of ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the only place or thing I remember during this transit was a huge bluff or crag, rising abruptly from a river-side, and looking, in connection with its vicinity to the Highlands, just such a site as would be taken for the foundation of a castle. On inquiry it turned out that this abrupt and double-headed hill (for it has two summits, with a cleft between) is the site of Dumbarton Castle, for ages one of the strongest fortresses in Scotland, and still kept up as a garrisoned place. At the distance and point of view at which we passed ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... taken a little flat in Fifty-eighth Street. Seems a little abrupt, but she didn't want to be alone, and she hates hotels. We felt ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dark expanse towards the peak a long, low whistle, ending in an abrupt high note, had sounded. For a moment there was no repetition. The invisible foe was signalling for reply. From whom could answer be ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... King rose from the supper-table, he well-nigh fell backward when Fagon, coming forward, cried in great trouble that all was lost. It may be imagined what terror seized all the company at this abrupt passage from perfect security to hopeless despair. The King, scarcely master of himself, at once began to go towards the apartment of Monseigneur, and repelled very stiffly the indiscreet eagerness of some courtiers who wished ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... descendant of demons, sounded very like an address of worship to the arch-fiend himself. He weighed within himself whether, on hearing such blasphemy in the very desert where Satan had stood rebuked for demanding homage, taking an abrupt leave of the Saracen was sufficient to testify his abhorrence; or whether he was not rather constrained by his vow as a Crusader to defy the infidel to combat on the spot, and leave him food for the beasts of the wilderness, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... tell him he was being rude and forgetting that he spoke to a lady," said Ernest Travers. "One makes every allowance for a father's sufferings; but they should not take the form of abrupt and harsh speech to a sympathetic fellow-creature—nay, to anyone, let alone a woman. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... reflections, Trirodov did not hear the noise of the departing carriage; the unexpected call of the dark-faced, fascinating visitor, with his flaming speech and his fiery eyes, stirred his memory like a midday dream, like an abrupt hallucination. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... vexed, too, that from all she could learn of this connection it was not that brilliant, graceful, worldly liaison which she would have welcomed, but a sort of Wertherish, desperate passion, so she was told, which might well lead him into imprudence. She had not seen him since his abrupt departure from Moscow, and she sent her elder son to bid ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... just above the shadow lines, giving a ghostly appearance to the hills. "Now look this way," said Nora, and they turned about. Away to the west in a flood of silvery light the prairie climbed by abrupt steps, mounting ever higher over broken rocky points and rocky ledges, over bluffs of poplar and dark masses of pine and spruce, up to the grey, bare sides of the mighty mountains, up to their snow peaks gleaming elusive, translucent, faintly discernible against the blue of the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... at the heart of her content. An abrupt horrible certainty froze her—the certainty that she was not alone. There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near her—something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... campaign often drags, the ending is usually abrupt. With the defeat and flight of Abdullah, Mahdism became a thing of the past. True, there were several minor engagements fought later against isolated recalcitrant bodies of dervishes who were too loyal to their old leaders. But these affairs in no way affected the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... said with abrupt irrelevance, "you've changed. You usen't to be like that before. You're different ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... A curious tightening at her heart oppressed her as she thought that this elegant, self-possessed, exquisitely attired creature was actually her "mother!"—and she could have cried out with the pain which was so hard to bear. Suddenly Lady Blythe came to an abrupt standstill. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... come up close to the house,' said the doctor, as they reached the crest. He pointed to some tall chimneys on the eastern slope, which sank quite gradually to the neighbouring German Ocean, but ended in an abrupt ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the chain, is Larhune (a Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel, beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the land. To the northward, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... almost abrupt. "I'll repeat it to you, Ferrers, and you can write it down for yourself. Get a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... hesitation, Renardet made a movement for the purpose of seizing the letter and snatching it away from him. This abrupt action convinced Mederic that some important secret was at stake and made him resolve to do his ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... are narrow little streams, but deep, with abrupt banks, and bordered by heavily wooded and marshy bottoms—at the time we were there—and difficult to cross except where bridged. The country about was generally heavily timbered, but with occasional clearings. It was a much better country to conduct a defensive ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... into the A.B.C. shop, but he had made no remark all the time that the young girl was munching her scone and butter. She was just busy thinking how rude he was not even to have said "Good morning," when an abrupt remark from him caused her ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... in the room I could not have been more startled than I was by the abrupt utterance of such language in a planter's house, in his very presence, and by his slave. The Colonel, however, expressed no surprise and no disapprobation. It was evidently ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... might be indulged in, upon this abrupt termination to the tailor's most formidable resolution; but, for our own part, we will prefer going on with the narrative, leaving the reader at liberty to solve the mystery as he pleases. In the mean time, we say this much—let those who cannot make it out, carry it to their tailor; ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... 'History of Greece.' "Plutarch gives this interchange of brief questions, between Agesilaus and Epameinondas, which is in substance the same as that given by Pausanias, and has every appearance of being true. But he introduces it in a very bold and abrupt way, such as cannot be conformable to the reality. To raise a question about the right of Sparta to govern Laconia was a most daring novelty. A courageous and patriotic Theban might venture upon it as a retort against those Spartans who questioned the right of Thebes to her presidency ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... acutely realized sense of opposites, than in the former mode. They register less completely, it seems to me, because the departure is too sudden in the rhythmus of the artist. The art of Davies is the art of a melodious curved line. Therefore the sudden angularity is abrupt to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... been gradually rising all the way from St. Clare's Well; and, when we left Trevethey Stone, we still continued to ascend, proceeding along the tram-way leading to the Caraton Mine. Soon the scene presented another abrupt and extraordinary change. We had been walking hitherto amid almost invariable silence and solitude; but now, with each succeeding minute, strange, mingled, unintermitting noises began to grow louder and louder around us. We followed a sharp ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... system has been applied for bringing to an abrupt standstill runaway horses, harnessed to vehicles; but knowing the effect of a sudden stoppage under such circumstances, we believe that the remedy would prove worse than the disease, since the coachman and vehicle, in obedience to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... shadow, and the gloom of the dense forests and of the deep ravines was so profound, that we might have persuaded ourselves that night had fallen, had we not heard the cheerful notes of unseen birds that were nestling among the tree-tops. After two hours of ascent, the slope of the mountain became more abrupt and decided, the ravines shallower, and the intervening ridges less elevated. The forest, too, became more open, and the trees smaller and less encumbered with vines, and between them we could catch occasional ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... in a piteous grunt. A second time the call rose and fell. On the third repetition it broke off, as usual, in an abrupt roar, which seemed to strike the tops of the giant trees, and boom ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... that of Mexico, are others as broad and as fertile, all of which are watered by the Rio Lerma. The trip hither from the national capital leads us through some of the grandest scenery in the country, as well as taking us over some of the most abrupt ascents in Mexico. The districts through which the road passes nearest to the city are mostly given up to the cultivation of the pulque-producing maguey. These plantations are of great extent, being ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Or art though panting in this summer noon Upon the lowest step before the hall, Drawing a slice of watermelon, long As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips (Like one who plays Pan's pipe), and letting drop The sable seeds from all their separate cells, And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt, Redder than coral ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... "help"; in fact, its absurdity convulsed them. The man laughed loudly; the cook buried her ebony face in her apron; the second girl bent double with mirth. Here was a quaint gentleman, indeed, and a great joker. But the gentleman was not joking. On the contrary, he brought this levity to an abrupt end, then, gravely, ceremoniously, he seated the trio. They sobered quickly enough at this; they became, in fact, as funereal as three crows; but their astonishment at what followed was no greater than ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... are considerably elevated above the level of the sea, and are of the richest description. The veins are visible on the abrupt face of the cliff, which borders the harbour, and are worked by adits or openings, which serve both to carry off the water and to wheel away the coals. The quantity procured in this easy manner is very ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... tones that softly rise, And in a fine accordance close; That waken no abrupt surprise, Nor leave ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... careless began to observe, and make remarks, and ask questions concerning him; and some even proceeded to inquire of him regarding the state of his health. His answers to all interrogatives now became so brief and abrupt, that but few ventured to address him the second time. Whatever the cause of his present gloomy state of mind, it was evidently not the ordinary one—at least not wholly that—for never before had Ella (who was in the habit, since their acquaintance, of observing ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... From those abrupt and perilous rocks, The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recall'd the Name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remember'd, too, the very day On which ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... of the gale made it impossible for anybody to talk, and Mark was left wondering whether the ship had actually struck or not. The wind drummed in his ears, the flying grit and gravel and spray stung his face; but he struggled on hoping that this midnight walk would not come to an abrupt end by his grandfather's declining to go any farther. Above the drumming of the wind the roar of the sea became more audible every moment; the spume was thicker; the end of the valley, ordinarily the meeting-place of sand and grass and small streams with their yellow ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... darkness of the atmosphere as suddenly gave place to a vivid yellow light, a change which caused the skipper to spring to his feet and rush out on deck without even the pretence of an apology to his passengers for so abrupt a movement. On reaching the deck his first glance was to the eastward, the direction from which the light emanated, and he then saw that the heavy veil of black cloud—which now completely overspread the heavens—was in that ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... windpipe—so," (shewing me practically how to garotte). While at this interesting experiment we heard a voice cry, "Cheese it, cheese it, Harry! there's the 'Screw' looking at you!" which warned us that the prison warder was also taking notes, and my lesson for that day came to a rather abrupt conclusion. ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... of these papers thus brought the visit to Pomeroy Court to an abrupt termination. The place had now become intolerable to Zillah. In her impatience she was eager to leave, and her one thought now was to apply to Lord Chetwynde for a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... abide long with a man—a horrible nightmare, never to be forgotten. Above us, protected somewhat by the abrupt curve of the wide staircase, crouched the women. Two were sobbing, their heads buried in their hands, but Maria and Mrs. Brennan sat white of face and dry-eyed. I caught one quick glance at the fair face I loved,—my sweet lady of the North,—thinking, indeed, it might prove the last on earth, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... ripening Christians any more successfully than maize, the season there being short; and on our first visit it was said to contain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accurate census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who sometimes made abrupt remarks in trying situations, was not included in this census; but he was the disciple of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I have heard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one Sunday, after a noble sermon of Robertson's had been read in the cathedral stillness of the forest. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ranges, or, dome like, capping their summits,—all this afforded data for comparison with his past experience, and with the knowledge he had accumulated upon like phenomena in other regions. Here, as in the Alps, the abrupt line, where the rounded and worn surfaces of the mountains (moutonnees, as the Swiss say) yield to their sharply cut, jagged crests, showed him the ancient and highest line reached by the glacial action. The ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... the angry blood darkened his cheeks. Boston wriggled uneasily on his seat, and cleared his throat as though about to speak. But, at the instant, Lynch's booming voice came into the foc'sle, calling the watch on deck, and putting an abrupt end ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... to their successors, our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover, removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it did not disfigure the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... replied, easily; "I quite enjoyed it. I must ask your pardon for coming to you in this abrupt way, but Carlton gave me a letter to you, and I've lost it." Carlton was the managing editor, and vague expectations of a summons to the office ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never been known to say ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... argued with the other half a few years ago! Are all who called the Chinese slaves to be sued by all who didn't? Am I prosecuted for a terminology . . . enough, you know the rest. Go on with the passage and you will see the luck continues. Abrupt, brief, and perhaps abbreviated as my platform answer was, it really does contain all the safeguards against imputing cruelty or human crime to poor Lever. It defines slavery as the imposition of the master's private morality; as in the matter of the pubs. It ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... delight at another period, was hailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased at the notion of a gossip with her sister-in-law regarding the late Lady Crawley, the funeral arrangements pending, and Sir Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rate, it was certain that Crewne was absent from Hardhack, and it was evident that he had decided who was to be the lady of the cottage, so the season of festivity was brought to an abrupt close, and the digestions of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... were weighed on board the man-o'-war; but accompanied on the merchant-vessels by the never-failing song, with its frequent abrupt conclusion, without which merchantman Jack finds it impossible to carry on a ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... paper," said Roland. He was aware that this was an abrupt way of approaching the subject, but, after all, he did want to buy the paper, so why not ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... was probably sorry for his momentary loss of self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered with the abrupt phrase: ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... B—— led me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis has given an account of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... as he gripped for very life. The sail emptied and the gaff swung amid-ships. The halyards slackened, and, though it all happened very quickly, I could see them sag beneath the weight of his body. Then the gag swung to the side with an abrupt swiftness, the great sail boomed like a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against the canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became instantly taut. It was the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... will easily pardon an abrupt conclusion. I believe, by this time, you are ready to fear I would ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... parents, both of whom were now dead, were only dim figures in his memory. He had mourned them when an aircraft accident had taken both of them when he was only eleven, but he found himself wondering if it had been the loss of loved ones that had caused his emotional upset or simply the abrupt vanishing of a kind of security he had ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... town is limited; but if we ascend a little to the plateau swept by a perpetual breeze, which stands above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. On the west stretch the fine outlines of Carmel, terminating in an abrupt spur which seems to run down sheer to the sea. Next, one sees the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal period; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to which is attached the graceful or terrible ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... but there was dismissal in the abrupt way that he swivelled around to his desk and bent his head ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... farmer, frugal and industrious in his habits, and, what is rare amongst most men of his class, addicted to neither drink nor quarrelling. He lived at the skirt of a mountain, which ran up in long successive undulations, until it ended in a dark, abrupt peak, very perpendicular on one side, and always, except on a bright day, capped with clouds. Before his door lay a hard plain, covered only with a kind of bent, and studded with round gray rocks, protruding somewhat above its surface. Through this plain, over a craggy channel, ran a mountain ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... peculiarity of mind or character are reflected in the style. It may be gay, humorous, serious, sad, melancholy, according to the state of the writer's feelings. It may be colloquial or stately, concise or diffuse, plain or florid, flowing or abrupt, feeble or energetic, natural or affected, commonplace or epigrammatic,—as varied, in fact, as the character and mental constitution of the writers. But every writer has a prevailing style; and it is an interesting study to determine the nature of his ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... narrow trail which threaded its way over a yawning chasm. He moved slowly, shuffling one foot ahead and dragging the other after it. In this way he had gone perhaps one hundred feet when the path seemed to come to an abrupt end. His foot dangled over nothing. He almost lost his balance. When he recovered himself, he was so weak and dizzy that it was with difficulty he clung to the rock. In a moment he was able to think. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... rigid rules. Miss KELSTON writes extremely well, if a trifle too gloomily for my personal taste, but she cannot afford to ignore the laws of construction and hurl her big situation at the reader with an abrupt "Take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... clauses of the treaty of Washington, in pursuance of the joint resolution of March 3, 1883, must have resulted in the abrupt cessation on the 1st of July of this year, in the midst of their ventures, of the operations of citizens of the United States engaged in fishing in British American waters but for a diplomatic understanding reached with Her Majesty's Government ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... secured, that the leading files of the army, unencumbered by their baggage, might venture to cross it. A short time sufficed to place several hundred men on the other bank. But here a new difficulty, not less formidable than that of the river, presented itself to the troops. The ground rose up with an abrupt, almost precipitous, swell from the river-side, till, in the highest peaks, it reached an elevation of several thousand feet. This steep ascent, though not to its full height, indeed, was now to be surmounted. The difficulties of the ground, broken up into fearful chasms ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... had an abrupt voice, suggestive of temper, and the haughty bearing which is the chief attraction of Englishmen for American women. His face was as well chiselled as the average of his kind, but lacked the national ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... a deep breath and settled his arms on the desk in front of him, leaning on them for support. He wished Fenwick wasn't so abrupt ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... its adult condition, the animal undergoes a succession of changes in the gradual course of its growth, uninterrupted, however, by any such abrupt transition as that by which it began its life as a free animal. The lobes are gradually obliterated, so that the margin becomes almost an unbroken circle. The eight eyes were, as I have said, at the bottom of depressions in the centre of the several lobes; but, by the equalizing of the marginal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... glad to jog on as uninterruptedly as he can. The grounds of Oakfield slope down to the water—and beautiful grounds they are—a line of rich meadows, shaded with stately trees, and divided into numerous portions by invisible wires, stretches for several miles along the banks; and the abrupt elevation, bounding this level sweep of grass and stream, affords an admirable site for two or three of the moderate-sized and tasteful villas that seem the characteristics of this vicinity. On pursuing our way through field and fell towards the suspension bridge over the river, we saw, emerging ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... nether garments and silk stockings fitted a leg which might have been envied by a porter, and his breadth of shoulder was extreme. He had a slouch, probably contracted by long poring over the desk; and his address was as abrupt as his appearance was unpolished. His forehead was large and bald, eye small and brilliant, and his cheeks had dropped down so as to increase the width of his lower jaw. Deep, yet not harsh, lines were imprinted on ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... walked back to Melrose on the east side of the Tweed. Lost the footpath, and for two hours clambered up and down the precipitous cliffs that rise high and abrupt from the river. In many places the zig-zag path was cut into the rock, hardly a foot in breadth, overhanging a precipice which a person of weak nerves could hardly face with composure. At last got out of these dark fastnesses and ascended a range of lofty hills where I ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... with every turn of the river; he knew that just below Clameran was an abrupt turning, and relied upon the eddy formed thereby, to sweep him in ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... were appointed to us by the director of the hunt, and some of us had a stiffish climb before reaching the spot indicated. At a right angle to this valley there protrudes one of those characteristic limestone ridges; it terminates in an abrupt precipice or declivity above the stream. My place was some half-way up, a good position; for while I could see the course of the stream, I could command a fair ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... Wooster from Montreal with reinforcements rid Arnold, however, of all responsibility. Soon afterward the scheme of capturing Quebec and inducing the Canadas to join the cause of the United Colonies, came to an abrupt end. But in his desire to effect this purpose Arnold had identified himself with such lovers of their country as Washington, Schuyler, and Montgomery. And if the gallant Montgomery had then survived and Arnold had been ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which the spherical bullet was rammed down until it expanded and filled the grooves. The objection in this case was that the deformed bullet had an erratic flight. The Brunswick rifle, introduced into the British army in the reign of William ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a primitive existence to the progress of many centuries had been a severe shock to them. In the same way that an abrupt change from profound darkness to the most dazzling light, or from the temperature of the pole to that of the equator, inevitably produces grave disorders in the organism if it does not actually prove fatal, so the turning of a savage into ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... outburst of passion in this stanza, where both the rhythm and the ponderous Latin words, together with the abrupt transition from the third to the fourth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... as to going. She had on a pretty walking dress which he had not seen before, and a hat with the rim struck sharply upward behind, and her masses of dense, dull black hair pulled up and fastened somewhere on the top of her head. Her eyes shyly sparkled under the abrupt descent of the hat-brim ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... passing through a lovely country of hill and dale and rushing stream. The hills were abrupt, with broken chasms for watercourses, and deep little valleys full of trees. But now and then they came to a larger valley, with a fine river, whose level banks and the adjacent meadows were dotted all over with red and white kine, ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... otherwise the same as of old. Cunning and stupidity, distrust and obstinacy, joined with unscrupulous greed, still marked his loutish attempts to overreach. Indeed, his surly temper would have brought the conference to an abrupt end but for the interference of the girl at the inn. She had written the letter for him, and seemed to take an interest in his fate which it is hardly likely that he deserved. She acted as mediator, and the artist was all the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... this with an abrupt stiffening of necks. Isaac Dorn, who had been airing himself on the veranda, relieved a tension by appearing in the doorway and moving quietly toward an unoccupied chair. Anna reached her hand to the old man's and held it kindly. Miss Dillingham, surveying the stretch of hose which had been honored ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... proceed with this abrupt logic: they love to bargain with necessity. M. Dupin (session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 10, 1843) expresses the opinion that, "though competition may be useful within the nation, it must be ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... as she replied: "No, nothing serious, I should say. A bit of a cold, I fancy; and for a fortnight he has been more nervous than usual. The changes in the weather have been so great and so abrupt that they have worn upon his nerves. He is getting very uneasy again. Now, after spending the winter, and when spring is almost at hand, I believe that if he could make up his mind where to go he would ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... heavy trees, made an abrupt turning, and he saw before him the Mainstairs village—one straggling street of wretched houses, mostly thatched, and built of "clay-lump," whitewashed. In a county of prosperous farming, and good landlords, where cottages had been largely rebuilt during the preceding ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the fan had brought me to an abrupt halt. I resented having the thing thrust at me in the ecstatic mood in which I had left the house, but the visit of the German-speaking stranger was serious, and Antoine knew that his story had startled me. He told me further that the man had carefully outlined to Elsie ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... valley, I must describe with a map the curious features of the road that lay before me into Switzerland. I was standing on the summit of that knot of hills which rise up from every side to form the Ballon d'Alsace, and make an abrupt ending to the Vosges. Before me, southward and eastward, was a great plain with the fortress of Belfort in the midst of it. This plain is called by soldiers 'the Gap of Belfort', and is the only break in the hill frontier that ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... a tender and timid respect distinguished the behaviour of the count towards Julia, who, contented with the certainty of being loved, resolved to conceal her sentiments till an explanation of his abrupt departure from Mazzini, and subsequent absence, should have dissipated the shadow of mystery which hung over this part of his conduct. She observed that the marchioness pursued her with steady and constant ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... when he is once possessed with an error, 'tis, like the devil, not to be cast out but with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last though it has nothing but rubbish to defend. It is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to anything it lays hold on. His skull ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... servitors ready to gratify his slightest desire; the poor beggar at his gates had neither companions nor attendants except the dogs, which like himself waited for the refuse from the rich man's table. Such is the picture of the two in life. An abrupt change of scene brings into view the same two on the far side of the veil that hangs between the here and the hereafter. Lazarus died; no mention is made of his funeral; his festering body was probably thrown into a pauper's grave; but angels bore his immortal spirit into Paradise, the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... proved to be an abrupt, ill-mannered, dapper business man; purse-proud, I should call him, as there was every reason he should be, for he had earned his own fortune. He was doubtless equally proud of his new title, which he was trying to live up to, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... something admirable and magnificent, an island of glass, full of fiery sparklings and ruby and emerald beams, a shape of crystal cut by the hand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices. Instead of which, the island of ice, on which lay the hull of the ship, was of a dead, unpolished whiteness, abrupt at the extremities, about a hundred and twenty feet tall at its loftiest point, not more picturesque than a rock covered with snow, and interesting only to my mind because of the distance it had measured, and because of the fancies it raised in one of the white, silent, and stirless ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... plastic. As a limitation we ought to note that this almost plastic material cannot be suddenly and violently dealt with—that is to say, with the exception of some sorts of arches, you cannot form any abrupt or startling feature in brickwork, and you are especially limited as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... contained before. Immediately after the union of these two rivers the Tigris enters another mountainous territory formed of sandstone. The gentle curves of the broad and shallow river are transformed into the sharp criss-cross angles of a ravine. The banks are abrupt, often vertical on both sides; and on top of some steep, rocky slopes your eye may discover groves of dark-green palms, and in their shadows the settlements of tribes of Kurds, who in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... An abrupt ascent, long and steep, formed a pleasant change to the monotony of the rugged plain. Up this 'berg' our ponies wound their way zigzag between the rough boulders of rock which strewed the path. At the top we met several men with their train of ponies, waiting for us to pass them, the path being ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... means the 'Cold Country.' I found that there was a route which exactly fitted Marco's conditions, as at Sarbizan the Sardu plateau terminates in a high pass of 9200 feet, from which there is a most abrupt descent to the plain of Jiruft, Komadin being about 35 miles, or two days' journey from the top of the pass. Starting from Kerman, the stages would be as follows:—I. Jupar (small town); 2. Bahramjird (large village); 3. Gudar (village); ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... were placed far apart so that they should not mask the view, and that was wise, for it was a fine view. It is rugged country in that part of Westchester County—like a choppy sea: all broken, twisted ridges, and abrupt little hills, and piled-up boulders, and hollow, cup-like depressions among them. The Grey house sat, as it were, upon the lip of a cup, and from the southward terrace you looked across a mile or two of hollow bottom, with a little lake at your feet, to sloping pastures where there were cattle ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... curious how, in any such grouping, certain combinations come about. Neither Jarvis Burnside nor Donald Ferry seemed to make any abrupt moves, and there certainly was a moment when it might have seemed the natural thing that Jarvis should grasp Uncle Timothy's hand, Ferry seize upon Bob's. But so it did not ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... (what seems to us so peculiarly important) close logical connexion, and the intellectual symmetry of doctrines.... The necessity of confuting gainsayers, at times forced one of the greatest of CHRIST'S inspired servants, St. Paul, to prosecute continuous argument; yet even with him, how abrupt are the transitions, how intricate the connexion, how much is conveyed by assumptions such as Inspiration alone can make, without any violation of the canons of reasoning,—FOR WITH IT ALONE ASSERTION IS ARGUMENT.... ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... out his watch with an abrupt movement. "When did you say the British Museum man was coming?" ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... still. His lackeys also had stopped their horses, which stood pawing and snorting at a respectful distance. It was an awkward moment for me. I could not stand there trying to persuade a perfectly serene man to fight. So with an abrupt pull of the rein I started my horse, mechanically applied the spur, and galloped off. A few minutes later I was out of sight of this singularly self-controlled gentleman, who resented my description of the Duke of Guise. I was annoyed for ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... each other's eyes the several objects of beauty which his rising glance betrayed. Sometimes we sat beneath a tree, while she hurriedly sketched a clump of woods, the winding turn of the shore, its occasional crescent form or abrupt headland, as they severally appeared in a new light, and at a happy moment of time, beneath our vision. The songs of pleasant birds allured us on; the sweet scent of pines and myrtle refreshed us; and a gay, wholesome, hearty spirit ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Mr. Norman Maugans, always grew temperamental when he played Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," and always relieved its monotonous cadence with passionate accelerations and abrupt retardations. That made ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... lime; what a splendour of leafage it will be in the summer! Those four on the right are chestnuts, and those far away, lying between us and the imperial downs, are elms; through that vista you can see the grand line, the abrupt hollows, and the bit of chalk road cut zig-zag out of the steep side. Then why the anomaly of Italian urns and pilasters; why not red ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle. He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a roll of the head, and a flourish not ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... there is no inharmonious prelude to the last quietude and desertion of the grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more restful and easy, until sleep ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable than ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Clark himself appeared, and in a particularly happy frame of mind. For an hour the delighted senior and myself sat laughing at the fellow's quaint conceits and witty sayings, the conversation at last breaking up with an abrupt proposition from Mr. Clark that I remain in the city overnight and accompany him to the theater, an invitation I rather eagerly accepted. Mr. Clark, thanking me, and pivoting himself around on his high stool, with a mechanical "Good afternoon!" ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... subject upon him; on scanning his sunburnt features there was a look of care upon them that was not usual. When the bright look my little surprise called forth had faded away, he appeared grave and harassed, and his tone, for the first time, was a little abrupt. I felt sure something had gone wrong in the affairs of ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... hospitality. Night was now falling, when they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way through a pastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt than those which Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy sides, at once upon the river. They had no pretensions to magnificence of height, or to romantic shapes, nor did their smooth swelling slopes exhibit either rocks or woods. Yet the view was wild, solitary, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... in front of the statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces; but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts of both the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... scientists discovered quickly that stimulation of the 112 part of the unit was in fact producing random patterns of plasmoid motion throughout the entire base, while an electrical prod at 113 brought everything to an abrupt stop again. After a few hours of this, 112 suddenly extruded a section of its material, which detached itself and moved off slowly under its own power through half the station, trailed with great excitement by Mantelish and ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which cleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope and enthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. There is no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two independent hymns bound together in error. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... not separated from them by so great a distance as that which intervenes between them and the main-land, there stretches beneath the water another Reef, abrupt, like the first, on its seaward side, but sloping gently toward the inner Reef, and divided from it by a channel. This outer Reef and channel are, however, in a much less advanced state than the preceding ones; only here and there a sand-flat large enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... him an attitude of his own. While the others follow passively in a close file, he, the captain, tosses himself about and with an abrupt movement flings the front of his body hither and thither. As he marches ahead he seems to be seeking his way. Does he in point of fact explore the country? Does he choose the most practicable places? Or are his hesitations merely the result of the absence of a guiding ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... plateau, some 19,000 feet above the sea-level, is defined with remarkable clearness in the direction from which we viewed it. The forests appeared to hide, though they do not of course actually approach, its lower edge. On one side and to the rear it is shut in by precipices so abrupt that the snow fails to cling to them, while on the remaining side it is separated by a deep, wide cleft from the western portion of the range. Here for centuries were visible the relics of an exploring party, which reached this plateau and never returned. Attempts have, since the steering ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... native language, the same degree of propriety is not maintained under the disadvantage of an incompetent acquaintance with English. Instead of the khana tear hi, 'dinner is ready,' they will very unintentionally substitute an abrupt summons. I was much amused one day, when, being rather late at my toilette, a servant made his appearance at the door of my apartment, just as I was quitting it, and said, "You come to dinner." He had been sent to tell me that it ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... could have been lost, Macaulay would have restored every line with complete exactness. Sydney Smith said of him: "There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as on great; he is like a book in breeches." His style has been called "abrupt, pointed, and oratorical." He is fond of the arts of surprise— of antithesis— and of epigram. Sentences like these ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... little tables. Here Merrihew saw a tavern such as he had often conjured up while reading his Dumas; sausages and hams and bacons and garlic and cheeses and dried vegetables hanging from the ceiling, abrupt passages, rough tables and common chairs and strange dishes; oil, oil, oil, even on the top of his coffee-cup, and magnums of red and white Chianti. Hillard informed him that this was the most famous Bohemian place in the city, the rendezvous of artists, sculptors, writers, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... he did not think fit to purchase our countenance and good-will by restoring the four which he had sent away. As Mr Banks and the other gentlemen treated him with a coolness and reserve which did not at all tend to restore his peace or good-humour, his stay was short, and his departure abrupt. Mr Monkhouse, the surgeon, went the next morning in order to effect a reconciliation, by persuading him to bring down the nails, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... How could you!" she cried and reined Diogenes to abrupt standstill. "Go and pick ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... short distance ahead, and that the marsh-bed widened to a banked ravine. The buffalo could not have been found in a better place; for there was a fine slope from the upper land to our game. We at once ascended the embankment and coursed cautiously along the cliff's summit. Suddenly we rounded an abrupt headland and gained full view of the buffalo. The flag was lowered, stopping the march, and up rose our captain in his stirrups to survey the herd. A light mist screened us and a deep growth of the leathery grass, common to marsh lands, half hid a multitude ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... on a rock, with cliffs, either perpendicular and abrupt towards the river, or with broken craggs, whose jutting prominences, having a little soil, have been planted with orange and fig trees. A fissure in this rock, of great depth, surrounds the city on three sides, and at the bottom of the fissure the river rushes along with impetuous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... species have suddenly given birth, through quite unexplained means, to new and totally different forms. But, as I have attempted to show, weighty evidence can be opposed to the admission of great and abrupt modifications. Under a scientific point of view, and as leading to further investigation, but little advantage is gained by believing that new forms are suddenly developed in an inexplicable manner from old and widely different forms, over the old belief in the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Gulmore household were in some respects primitive. Though it was not yet seven o'clock two negro girls were clearing away the breakfast things under the minute supervision of their mistress, an angular, sharp-faced woman with a reedy voice, and nervously abrupt movements. Near the table sat a girl of nineteen absorbed in a book. In an easy-chair by the open bay-window a man with a cigar in his mouth was reading a newspaper. Jonathan Byrne Gulmore, as he always signed himself, was about fifty years of age; his heavy frame was muscular, and ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... incisive and sensible if it was needed; but he was never either contradictory or severe or improving. He would sometimes pull himself up and say: "Here, we must be business-like," but he was never reproachful or grieved or shocked by what we said to him. He could be decisive, stern, abrupt, if it was really needed. But his most pungent reproofs were inflicted by a blank silence, which was one of the most appalling things to encounter. He generally began to speak again a few moments later, on a totally different ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lighted up these bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring—whose source was hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders—dripping silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered spectrally ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... apparent was this toward the last, that even the most careless began to observe, and make remarks, and ask questions concerning him; and some even proceeded to inquire of him regarding the state of his health. His answers to all interrogatives now became so brief and abrupt, that but few ventured to address him the second time. Whatever the cause of his present gloomy state of mind, it was evidently not the ordinary one—at least not wholly that—for never before had Ella (who was in the habit, since ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... remarkable merit. Elbert Hubbard, a professional advertiser and writer of considerable popularity in certain circles, relates in an interesting way the history of his most widely known literary effort. Mr. Hubbard's prose style is direct and pointed, though rather abrupt and barren. "The Midnight Extra", by Dora M. Hepner, is a humorous short story of unusual merit, leading from a well created atmosphere of terror to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... below turned round the bend. What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis. The bridge stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising, unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch and abrupt descents. One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up, before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up the stream. Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the Tochty left nestling in ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... in no mood to find fault with his companion, and they got on very well together to the end of their brief journey. The young scapegrace was glad, indeed, that it was brief, for his self-control was fast leaving him, and having bowed a rather abrupt farewell to the doctor, he was not long in reaching one of his haunts, from which during the evening, and quite late into the night, came repeated peals of laughter, that grew more boisterous and discordant as that synonyme of mental and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... that Orsino was not in love with Madame d'Aranjuez, and he himself appreciated the fact with a sense of disappointment. He was amazed at his own coldness and at the indifference with which he had submitted to what amounted to a most abrupt dismissal. He even went so far as to believe that Maria Consuelo had repulsed him designedly in the hope of kindling a more sincere passion. In that case she had been egregiously mistaken, he thought. He felt a curiosity to see her again before she left Rome, but it was nothing ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... raise. His spirits and temper were liable to strange fluctuations. In the midst of that excited gaiety, to which, until lately, he had been so long a stranger, would sometimes intervene paroxysms of the blackest despair, all the ghastlier for the contrast, and with a suddenness so abrupt and overwhelming, that one might have fancied him crossed by the shadow of some terrific apparition. Sometimes for a whole day, or even more, he would withdraw himself from the society of his family, and, in morose and moody solitude, take ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... so much about that," said the optimistic Bones, and took a short cut through the wood, knowing that the grounds made an abrupt turn where they skirted ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nearest her own age and nearest her heart had been killed at the opening of the war. Arthur and she were very good friends, but not altogether congenial. She was rather afraid of him—of his critical temper, and his abrupt intolerant way, with people or opinions he disliked. Beryl was quite aware of his effect on Pamela Mannering, and it made her anxious. For she saw little chance for Pamela. Before the war, Arthur in London had been very much sought ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enemies, of whom either the brilliancy of his achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of controversy seem to have made him a great many, have risen up, or rather seated themselves, and written him down—well, an individual who strains the truth. Indeed, only this morning one of these inquired, in a letter to the press, alluding to some adventurous traveller ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... lumber." Then, with one of the abrupt changes of topic, characteristic of the man, the Supervisor turned to the question of intended improvements in that part of the forest where Wilbur was to be. He showed himself to be aware that the lad's appointment as Guard was not merely a temporary affair, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... refuse?" He was in an irritable humour, and this irritation showed in his face, in his movements, in the short, abrupt sound of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... he brought an action against Michael Angelo for having called his style stupid and antiquated. In the celebrated phrase cast at him by the blunt and scornful master of a new art-mystery[224], we discern the abrupt line of division between time-honoured tradition and the maniera moderna of the full Renaissance. The old Titans had to yield their place before the new Olympian deities of Italian painting. There is something pathetic in the retirement of the grey-haired Perugino from Rome, to ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the questions that were trembling on Mrs. Hastings' lips and hungering in Dora's eyes concerning the nature and extent of Pliny's injuries, which fact led Theodore to be very much alarmed, and yet he was totally unprepared for the abrupt answer which he received when he first found a chance to ask the question ...
— Three People • Pansy
... loved her passionately and jealously. One day I heard loud words between them, from which I gathered unintentionally that something had aroused his jealousy. She replied with laughter and taunts to his threats. The quarrel ended with her abrupt departure from the ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... peacock shades of blue and green silk executed in chain stitch. When found, the needle was still sticking in one of the flowers, and many were traced ready for work. The traced lines appear to have been made with India ink and were very clear and delicate. What caused the abrupt interruption of the old quilt no one can tell. It is possible that the great terror of 1793 caused the patient maker to flee from ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... that she wanted to explain how she had spent her time, and she told him in abrupt, haughty words, that having to buy some furniture in a shop a long distance off, very far off, in the Rue de Rennes, she had met Limousin at past seven o'clock on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and that then she had gone with him to have something to eat in a restaurant, as she did ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Drum's gruff voice could be heard in rebuke; almost as quickly the practised riders could be seen closing the outer leg and rein. Another moment and the little line was trotting almost boot to boot. Then as they neared the point where the slope became abrupt, Graham's right hand, palm forward, went straight aloft, a gesture instantly repeated by the sergeant, and in two seconds more the horses, panting a little with excitement, were pawing the turf, and Drum's voice, low and compelling, ordered, "Count fours!" The next moment the odd numbers darted ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... and after lighting a fresh cigar, stretched himself at full length upon the grass which grew on the river's bank, allowing his horse to graze at will. Just behind him rose the abrupt wall of the canon some thirty or forty feet in height which, at this hour of the morning, cast a deep shadow over the spot where he lay and halfway across the river in front of him. It was just the sort of place ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... determined to speak to Mrs Hawthorne that very same day, for until it was over she felt she should not have a moment's comfort. She had brooded over it so constantly, and held so many imaginary conversations about it, that she had become highly nervous, and was odder in manner and more abrupt in speech than ever. As she sat at tea with Mrs Hawthorne, she answered all her inquiries about Nearminster strangely at random, for she was saying to herself over and over again, "It is my duty; I ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... a burrow, pushing his load in front of him. The side generally selected for this attempt was the one nearest your head as you lay; and often the first intimation you had that the performance had begun was the abrupt descent on to your face of beetle and load. Neither the fall nor the subsequent profanity discouraged him in the least; on the contrary, it spurred him to greater efforts. The next attempt would land him an inch or two higher up, when down he would come again. I used to have the most ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... thirty-seven dead behind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back, must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found it a very formidable stronghold. The pa was on the summit of an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a razor-backed ridge in the rear. In front three lines of earthwork rose one above another, the highest fourteen feet high, aided and connected by the usual rifle-pits and covered way. Most of Ropata's men refused to follow him against such ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor. Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience. The valley became wider and the hills less abrupt, while the villages had an air of irregularity more pleasing than the military precision on the Amoor. I saw many dwellings on which decay's effacing fingers were busy. The telegraph posts were fixed above Gorbitza, but the wires ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... are made in the next letter respecting Ireland are of infinite value in enabling us to estimate correctly the events that afterwards took place in that country under Lord Fitzwilliam's government, and the circumstances which led to its abrupt termination. Two important facts are authenticated in this communication: the first, that Lord Fitzwilliam, before he assumed the government, and even before his appointment to it was advanced so far as the removal of his predecessor, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, and of the objective, order; and indeed it is no small part of the purpose of this little history to set forth her struggle. What seemed paramount in this abrupt enlargement of Mr. Wentworth's sympathies and those of his daughters was an extension of the field of possible mistakes; and the doctrine, as it may almost be called, of the oppressive gravity of mistakes was one of the most cherished ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... of vision of the lost—delivered in short abrupt sentences—the form of the speaker drawn rigidly up meanwhile to its full height, the long arm outstretched. The utterance had very little of the lurid materialism, the grotesque horror of the ordinary ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... embarrassed, but still resolute, went toward him. Serge seemed nervous and somewhat abrupt in manner. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Majesty," ventured Triboulet, "has heard all, your Majesty will not blame—us!" And he glanced malevolently toward the duke's Jester, who, upon the king's abrupt entrance, had descended from ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... resemblance to the city of Og. Originally it was all underground, but in process of time it effervesced, bubbled out of its holes, and is now but half troglodyte. The heights that form the Northern declivity of the valley of the Loir come to an abrupt end here, and have been sawn through by a small stream creating a natural fosse, isolating the hill of Troo that is attached to the plateau only on the North. The hill rises steeply from the river to a crest occupied by a Romanesque ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... metaphysical analogies, in accordance with which his work has unhappily been arranged. Though these had been as carefully, as they are crudely, considered, it had still been no light error of judgment to thrust them with dogmatism so abrupt into the forefront of a work whose purpose is assuredly as much to win to the truth as to demonstrate it. The writer has apparently forgotten that of the men to whom he must primarily look for the working out of his anticipations, the most part are of limited knowledge and inveterate habit, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... footways had not been cleared of snow, but paths had been beaten by the impact of many feet, and Peggy found walking not at all difficult. As she turned into Fourth Street she was astonished to encounter Sheriff Will. He returned her courteous greeting with an abrupt bow, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... weight, the author of "The Amateur Detective" at first seemed nonplussed; but quickly changed his expression to one of abrupt intelligence. ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... measured the hazards. The Clytie was fairly in mid-lake, with plenty of sea room to leeward. There was an intervening island to shut off the down-lake view, but though its forested bluffs and abrupt headland were uncomfortably close at hand, a bit of skilful manoeuvring would put it to windward. Beyond the island he could see the breeze-blown smoke trail of the summer-resort hotel's steam launch evidently making for its home port ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... indispensable. In the course of this vehement and angry declamation, he spoke of publishing his correspondence with the officers of government, together with a narrative of his proceedings; and said that, although the existing causes would warrant an abrupt departure, his regard for the people of America would induce him to remain here, amidst the insults and disgusts that he daily suffered in his official character from the public officers, until the meeting of congress; and if that body should agree in the opinions ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... great, flat, low-lying stretches of southern Long Island and New Jersey; the abrupt bluffs of Long Island's northern coast by the shore of the Sound; the various watery arms that encircle the American metropolis, permitting ships to sail in every direction; the majestic Hudson leading straight north through a wonderful ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... that an easy billet had been found for him as a recruiting officer in New York City. Believing the woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for his comfort only succeeded in bringing on a relapse. But the day following there came another cablegram. It put an abrupt end to his mutiny, and brought him and the War ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... The cause of the abrupt termination of Miss Clegg's speech was a sudden crashing back of the house, followed by a rush and a swish at the side. The friendly visitor made one jump for the window, took one look out, and was off and away. The door slammed before Mrs. Lathrop got her mouth open to ask what ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... going to be all right now," he said cheerily. "I should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your position if your course, while perfectly excusable under the circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess," he added laughing, "I was a little apprehensive ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... quarrels became more brutal, more abrupt. Both intensely nervous, both highly individualised, their characters conflicted with the intensity of two real and opposing forces. A tragic aspect of it all was that it was due to Terry's teaching that Marie attained to the highly individualised character which ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... he to the father and mother, who had rushed in at this blessed announcement, 'but she has been too abrupt. Her cousin and herself are wonderful little women in times of trial and danger; but neither of them are ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... feet, exquisitely shaped, are expressive of high breeding. His expensive, handsome clothes are disordered and dusty, and bulging with books. When he speaks, it is in a strident peacock voice, and there is an abrupt clumsiness in his gestures, especially in drawing-rooms, where he is ill at ease, liable to trip in the carpet and upset furniture. Complete absence of self-consciousness, perfect disinterestedness, are evident in every tone; it is clear that he is an aristocrat, but it is also clear ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... slow, and the first incidents of his return to the management of public affairs were rather startling, in view of the abrupt manner with which he resumed the direction of executive policy. During his illness the Cabinet had met from time to time and in a fashion had carried on the routine work of the executive department. Had it not done so, ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... more attentive at that instant to our conduct in a life that was past, or to come, than to a decorous regulation of the present, according to the established usages of society, in that fleeting moment of eternal duration styled the nineteenth century. With abrupt dexterity he caught hold of the child. The mother, who might well fear that it was about to be thrown over the parapet of the bridge into the sedgy waters below, held it ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... endeavors according to his lights to attain the desired effect, but he is seldom successful. Most frequently he is handicapped by his plot, which is not designed to produce a successful climax. If he has escaped that danger he is liable to ruin a possible good climax by too abrupt an introduction. His nearest approach to success is what may be called a "false" or "technical" climax, in the use of which he is very skillful—too skillful, indeed, for his own good. This false climax is produced by breaking off the narrative abruptly the moment the suspense ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... the fissures in the rocks. Behind the olives, and intermixed with them, are orchards of orange and lemon trees, bending under the weight of their beautiful fruit. Trees and tall shrubs hang over the edges of the abrupt banks, which enclose the tiny creeks and bays bordered with diminutive sandy beaches, or with long ledges of marble rocks, dipping gradually down into the deep-blue water, carpeted in some places with the thin flat siliceous leaves of the Posidonia ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... than about thirty miles an hour, the antelope are perfectly safe unless they happen to be caught off their guard. To prevent just this, the gazelles usually keep well out on the open plains and avoid rocks or abrupt hills which would furnish cover for a wolf. Of course, they often go into the rolling ground, but it is usually where the slopes are gradual and where they have sufficient space ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... we never hear of him again, and yet, in the single phrase, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel," Jesus stamps him with a special character and welcomes him with a peculiar confidence. How is it that there is given to him this abrupt {13} commendation? Why does Jesus say that he shows more faith than Israel itself? It was, of course, because of the man's attitude of mind. He comes to Jesus just as a soldier comes to his superior officer. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... much among modern needlewomen: an artist in floss should not want her work to look like a gradated wash of colour. The Italians of the 16th and 17th centuries (see Illustration 49) were not afraid of rather abrupt transition in the shades of colour ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... chanting those immortal anthems which had come down from blessed saints and martyrs, when the messenger of the Emperor presented himself before the assembled hierarchy of Rome, and with insolent demeanor and abrupt speech delivered the sentence of the German council." He was left unharmed by the indignant pontiff; but the next day ascending his throne, and in presence of the dignitaries of his Church, thus invoked the assistance of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... to pass, as these Memoirs have run thro' the general History of the Feuds and unhappy Breaches between the Solunarian Church and the Crolian Dissenters in the World of the Moon, it would seem an imperfect and abrupt Relation, if I should not tell you how, and by what Method, tho' long hid from their Eyes, the Crolians came to understand their own Interest ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... pallid youth with long black hair and a fair white brow projectin' out like a double dormer on a cement bungalow. He seems to be tryin' to drape a fish net across the top of an alcove accordin' to three diff'rent sets of directions; but leaves off abrupt when I ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
