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More "Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, "Damn—damn—!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with Lily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the threshold into the house—which always shone with immaculate neatness and ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the pillow. Together they got the carriage into the hall—Lily fumbling all the while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... eyes and an unchecked sigh—as if the very hopelessness of the comparison brought with it a certain pain. As to much of the life of the Quartier about him, he shrank from it as he would from a pestilence. Certain men never crossed his threshold—never dared. ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... upon me as the door closed. There in the threshold stood the manservant whom they called Oliphant, erect as a sentry on guard. The sight reminded me of what I had once seen at Basle when by chance a Rhenish Grand Duke had shared the inn with me. Of a sudden a dozen clues linked together—the crowned notepaper, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Know thou first, I lov'd the maid I married; never man Sighed truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee We have a power on foot; and I had purpose Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn, Or lose mine arm for't: thou hast beat me out Twelve several times, and I have nightly since Dreamt of encounters ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... nothing of it. If Fillmore had taken the trouble to come in a taxi-cab, obviously to call upon her, why had he abandoned the idea at her very threshold? She was still speculating on this mystery when the telephone-bell rang, and her brother's voice spoke huskily in ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... threshold of the century the history of which he so prominently helped to shape, on October 26, 1800, at Parchim in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. On his father's side he descended from a family of the North German gentry which had come to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... burst open, and David Dodd stood on the threshold, looking terrible. He seemed black and white with anger and anxiety. Making a great effort to control his agitation, he said, "I have changed my mind, sir; I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... started for a little walk. He was quite happy if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with you?" Then he would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town. He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines, according to the weather. Occasionally ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the country, and ten minutes' walk in the country brings one to real primitive woods. The town has not yet overflowed its limits like the great Northern commercial capitals, and Nature, wild and unkempt, comes up to its very threshold, and even in many places ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... been done, it must not be forgotten that we have scarcely advanced beyond the threshold, and that it is only by numerous and frequently repeated experiments that it is possible to arrive at satisfactory results. Agricultural inquiries are liable to peculiar fallacies due to the perturbing influence ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... reduce to their primitive gases its deadening influences on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate for the honour of your—and my—independent vote and interest. I will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its lips. I will not ask how it comes that those personal altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of Shakespeare's Touchstone—the retort courteous—the quip modest— the reply churlish—the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... huz pore thortless leds baw a gent on the Dily Chrornicle, lidy. (Rankin returns. Drinkwater immediately withdraws, stopping the missionary for a moment near the threshold to say, touching his forelock) Awll eng abaht within ile, gavner, hin kice aw should be wornted. (He goes into ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... appearance now. Then it had been all ablaze with lights and merry with laughter and music. Now it was lit by but a pair of candles over the hearth and, the glow of a dying fire. Overhead the high roof glimmered into darkness, and the gorgeous furniture was no more than dimness. I stopped short on the threshold, bewildered at the gloom, thinking that the chamber was empty; then I saw that a woman had raised herself from the great couch on which the King had lolled with his little dogs last Sunday night, and was staring at me ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... over the whole city, and passing thirty pastry cook's shops, without daring to enter any one of them. In the first place, it was necessary there should be only one person in the shop, and that person's physiognomy must be so encouraging as to give me confidence to pass the threshold; but when once the dear little cake was procured, and I shut up in my chamber with that and a bottle of wine, taken cautiously from the bottom of a cupboard, how much did I enjoy drinking my wine, and reading ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... postliminium. This term is derived from 'limen' and 'post,' which explains why we say that the person who has been captured by the enemy and has come back into our territories has returned by postliminium: for just as the threshold forms the boundary of a house, so the ancients represented the boundaries of the empire as a threshold; and this is also the origin of the term 'limes, signifying a kind of end and limit. Thus postliminium means that the captive returns by the same threshold at which he was ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfils its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite. Therefore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, for through it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, and that he is at ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... never set foot in Mr Bickers's house before, and experienced a curious sensation as he crossed the threshold of his enemy's citadel. Suppose Mr Bickers should return and find ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... paced the room several times, one of the fishermen arose and extinguished the light, and when all was still, I went to the door that had been fastened after the master fisherman, drew the bolt without disturbing any one, and went out. At the threshold of the door I found an axe which I took in my hand, walked around the hut several times, but could not discover the object of my search. I at length found his blanket tucked up among the thatch under the eaves of the hut, and immediately re-entered the room to tell my companions I was ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... measure, he having "changed his opinion on the subject," on the motion of Mr. S. O'Brien, the debate was adjourned. The debate continued by adjournment up to February 28th, before any division or amendment took place: the opposition wishing to stop it on the very threshold. On the last night of the debate the house was addressed by Mr. Cobden, who complained that extraneous matter had been introduced into the discussion to a greater extent than had ever been introduced previously into any corn-law debate. The two main topics, he said, on which it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in mad impatience, and was over the threshold before the doctor's peremptory call ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... the room-door, which I opened, and peered into the passage, nearly faint with horror lest some leering, shapeless thing should greet me upon the threshold. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... man, though not quite in the secret of the universe. He vaulted over the counter, and opened the door with such a ringing of its appended bell as made heavy-hearted Clare turn before he heard his voice. The long spare white figure appeared on the threshold, framed ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Bouille: an electric thunder-chain; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his hand—for wise purposes! Brave Bouille has done what man could; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons: it waits but for the new Korff Berline; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say, these fierce Troopers; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Marion Sanford went slowly up the stairs and to her room. Mrs. Stannard listened until she heard her close the door, then hastened down the row in pursuit of Mr. Blake. Ray waved his hand to her as he stepped inside the threshold, and Blake, fuming with fury, came back ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... that, as Eve and her mother loitered over luncheon, the door again softly opened, and they saw Luigi standing erect on the threshold, and holding with both hands above the brightly bronzed face a tall, slender, white jar of ancient and exquisite shape, carefully painted, and having a glass suspended within, lest any water it might receive should penetrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative debt relief in 2005. Kigali's high defense expenditures have caused tension between the government and international donors and lending agencies. Rwanda obtained debt relief from the IMF and World Bank in 2006. Rwanda also received Millennium Challenge Account Threshold status in 2006. Energy shortages, instability in neighboring states, and lack of adequate transportation linkages to other countries continue ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... this sketch of the "Threshold of India," a mere glance at the military history of the country will suffice. In fact, only so far as it may have a bearing upon the present, has reference to the past any place in ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... heard of them often, but only once did I ever see any of them before. That was when some of us one night paid a visit to a man who sat much alone, and was said to think a great deal. We saw two of those sitting in the room with him, and he was as pale as they were. We could not cross the threshold, but shivered and shook, and felt ready to melt away. Is not your ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... venerated mansion close behind us forever. Even thus did they close ages ago upon him, the light and honor of that ancient house, who, leaving it in the glow of health, in the pride of manly beauty, in the aspirations of a high but not a haughty spirit, was destined never to cross that paternal threshold more. The blessings that went with him have mouldered on the lips that pronounced them; the tears that mourned his fall have dried upon the lids from which they streamed; all who knew and loved, all who watched and wept for Sir Philip Sydney are silent in the dust to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... against"—began Alvarez, but at that moment the door was opened and Lieutenant Diego Bernal appeared upon the threshold. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in full swing when the deputy entered; scores of lithe dark men and their black-eyed partners were whirling in the fervid Spanish waltz; but as he crossed the threshold a discordant note arose: disturbance broke out in a corner of the hall; a woman screamed; a knife-blade flashed. Clark shoved his way through the crowd and reached the fight in time to disarm a ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... that she should be shaken by a doubt of her own identity; and having reached her room she paused upon the threshold and looked around as if to satisfy herself by all those silent witnesses which made it truth. There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim blesses himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded ways of the world. This thought blesses the man of business, as he turns from his day's care, and crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as the slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody understands him here. Everybody is well content that he should take his ease in his own way. Such is the case in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... men of faith to seek the grounds of reassurance in a science of their own; in a method of experiment, of observation, of hypothesis checked by known facts. It is impossible for me to do more than glance across the threshold of this subject. But it is necessary to say that the method is in an elementary stage of revival. The imposing success that belongs to natural science is absent: we fall short of the unchallengeable unanimity of the Biologists ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... within his soul. Then the actual comparative darkness of the carriage obscured it and he found himself again conscious of the scent of roses, the sheen of satin and soft velvet, and his heart was beating madly. He had stumbled over the unsuspected threshold, surprised the hidden temple of his own heart, and this, inopportunely, prematurely, and, to his everlasting confusion, in the presence ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Coupled with a sturdy uprightness of carriage, this raised him at a bound above the pallid habitues of ballroom and pavement. It was, perhaps, only natural that Millicent Chyne should have noted this man as soon as he crossed the threshold. He was as remarkable as some free and dignified denizen of the forest in the midst of domestic animals. She mentally put him down for a waltz, and before five minutes had elapsed he was bowing before her while a mutual friend murmured his name. One does not know how young ladies manage ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... more knocking, and more, but none of it reached Mona's brain. She was flying with the heroine, and enjoying hairbreadth escapes, while running away from her wicked guardian, when her bedroom door was flung open, and Millie Higgins—not the wicked guardian—appeared on the threshold. ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... you all right?" queried Doctor Hilary stepping across the threshold. He appeared totally oblivious of the fact that Antony's presence made the success of George's search ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... such a being as Buddha, the son of Suddhodana, king of Kapilavastu, has been doubted. But what can never be doubted is this, that Buddhism, such as we find it in Russia[67] and Sweden[68] on the very threshold of European civilisation, in the north of Asia, in Mongolia, Tatary, China, Tibet, Nepal, Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon, had its origin in India. Doctrines similar to those of Buddha existed in that country long before his time. We can trace them like meandering roots below the surface long before ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... quarrels? You may be served-I know you don't love an invasion-nay, that even passes my taste; it will make too much party. In short, the lady dowager Prudence begins to step a little over the threshold of that discretion which she has always hitherto so sanctimoniously observed. She is suspected of strange whims; so strange, as neither to like more German subsidies or more German matches. A strong ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... reached the studio door just as a shower of knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by a huge black hat with a hearse-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a tall and willowy youth, with—so far as could be seen through the chinks of the hat—a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular deficiency of chin. He ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, built of brick and stone, with the marks of arched doors and windows where a subsequent generation had shut up the lights, or the accesses which the original builders had opened. Humble as these ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gold—they are in the air, and only waiting to be precipitated. I stand ready to be amused, and that same afternoon the Evening Post aims a blow at the Tammany 'Tiger' over the shoulder of Mr. Edward M. Shepard; I am in the mood adventurous, and instantly the shadow of a prodigy falls across my threshold; yea, though I live on upper West End Avenue. Do you remember this?" and he held ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... milk-pail. She ran off as fast as she could to her master, the parson, and said, "Sir, sir, the cow is talking!" But the parson said, "Woman, thou art surely mad!" However, he went with her into the cow-house to see what was the matter. Scarcely had they set their feet on the threshold when Thumbling called out, "Don't bring me any more hay!" Then the parson himself was frightened; and thinking the cow was surely bewitched, ordered that she should be killed directly. So the cow was killed, and the part in which ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... they sleep out of doors. Mothers of families sit about their doors and spin, or walk volubly up and down with other slatternly matrons, armed with spindle and distaff while their raven- haired daughters, lounging near the threshold, chase the covert insects that haunt the tangles of the children's locks. Within doors shines the bare bald head of the grandmother, who never ceases talking ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... since then many have been swallowed up by the sea. St. Mael evangelized sixty of them. Then in his granite trough he ascended the river Auray. And after sailing for three hours he landed before a Roman house. A thin column of smoke went up from the roof. The holy man crossed the threshold on which there was a mosaic representing a dog with its hind legs outstretched and its lips drawn back. He was welcomed by an old couple, Marcus Combabus and Valeria Moerens, who lived there on the products ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... tube now honoured by kissing the lips of your highness shall have poured out in ecstasy the incense of another bowl of the fragrant weed, the slippers of the kessehgou will be left at the threshold of the palace. Be chesm, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... On the threshold of summer, Nature proffers us this her virgin fruit; more rich and sumptuous are to follow, but the wild delicacy and fillip of the strawberry are never repeated,—that keen feathered edge greets the tongue in ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... furnishes the best illustration of this law. Every literature has to go through these four stages, but nowhere have they been passed with such regularity as in Russia. Accordingly we have in due order of time Pushkin the singer, Gogol the protester, Turgenef the warrior, who on the very threshold of his literary career vows the oath of a Hannibal not to rest until serfdom and autocracy are abolished, and lastly we have ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... anything yet conceived by the human mind;—something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of the voices in Brockden Brown's novel of Wieland is awful; so is the picture of the Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer's Zanoni; but," he added, shaking his head gloomily, "there is something more horrible still ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... places the heroine of his tale in a petit reduit pres le Strand, "with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the fair-haired Southern woman looked, and if her eye dimmed and her pale lip quivered there was nobody to see. And after a little while she went into the house, slowly, head held high, black skirt lifted, just clearing the threshold of her ancestors. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the habit of frequently going to look down in the wheel chamber or pit, and one day, as I stepped on to the threshold, my feet glided from under me, and, but for my activity in catching at and hanging by the iron bar that crossed the way I ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... west of the bema. To the east of these compartments stands what was the original eastern wall of the church, and in it, in the north aisle, a large doorway retaining its architrave and cornice, is still found. Of the corresponding doorway in the south aisle only the threshold is left. These doorways must have communicated with the outer world to the east of the church, like the doorways which occupy a similar position in the Studion (p. 53). The northern compartment had an opening, which is still surmounted by architrave and cornice, also in its north ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... opportunity to escape. I sent the papers by one of the waiters. Madame was a little too anxious to cross-examine me. I began checking some counterfoils at the desk, but before I had been there five minutes the door of the inner room was opened, and Mr. Hirsch appeared upon the threshold. He caught my eye and beckoned to me solemnly. I crossed the room, ascended the steps, and found myself in what the waiters called the club-room. Mr. Hirsch carefully closed the door ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forgetting how tenderness is almost ever a part of such peculiar manliness of character; "yes, sit we here under this spacious elm, and think that our youth has come back to us once more. For verily, m'amie, nothing in life has ever been so fair to me as those days when we stood hand in hand on its threshold, and talked, boy-bridegroom and child-bride as we were, of the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." Not merely—not dwell in it for ever, but not even enter it, not even get through the very gate, and cross the very threshold, of it. The merely assenting, merely respectable, even the so-called religious and orthodox life will not let you into the kingdom of heaven, either in this life or the life to come. No. That requires the noble life, the pure life, the just life, the gentle life, the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... she open'd straight, All in the middle of the gate; The gate that was iron'd within and without, Where an army in battle array had march'd out. The lady sank, belike through pain, And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate: Then the lady rose again, And moved, as she ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... length she appeared on the threshold of the apartment, bringing with her the traveling bag and looking wonderfully the better for her ninety minutes of complete repose and privacy, the relief he experienced was so intense that he remained transfixed ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... woman hitherto as maiden and wife. She now approaches the sacred threshold of maternity. She is with child. In no period of her life is she the subject of an interest so profound and general. The young virgin and the new wife have pleased by their grace, spirit, and beauty. The pregnant wife ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... assured her that the Ehrichs were old friends and not the kind of people who say one thing and mean another. "They will never permit us to go to the hotel—I know them." With that she consented, and fifteen minutes later Louis and Henriette met us at their threshold and took Zulime to their hearts, as though they had ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in rare exalted or peculiar moments, but these are in costume and bathed in color. Shutting and opening many doors, balked at one vestibule and traversing another, suddenly you surprise the lord or mistress of the mansion, or from some threshold you silently observe their secret passion, which is unconscious of the daylight, and is caught in all its frankness. You come upon people, and not upon pictures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... The gate gave readily to Lanyard's pull. The knob of the small door turned silently. He stepped across the threshold, and shut himself into an unlighted hall, thoughtfully apeing the negligence of the servant and leaving the door barely on the latch by way of provision ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... submissive to what might occur. He felt himself the victim of circumstances over which he himself had no control. Gazing at the partly opened door, he waited for whatever adventure might next befall him. Once again the footsteps paused, this time at the very threshold, and then the door was slowly pushed ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... corner of the sign; and indeed the night was such as might well have caused that suicidal fowl to abandon all thoughts of self-incremation, and submit to an unprecedented death by drowning), there was no idle officer, or lounging waiter upon the threshold. Military and civilians were all snug in their quarters that night; and the inn, except for the 'Aldermen' in the back parlour, was doing no business. The door was nearly closed, and only let out a tall, narrow slice ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... life as naturally as they went into a university or into the hunting field. In the case of the younger Fox and of the younger Pitt the political direction was conspicuously inevitable from the beginning. The paths of both lay plain from the threshold of the nursery to the threshold of St. Stephen's. The lad who was the chosen companion of his father at an age when his contemporaries had only abandoned a horn-book to grapple with Corderius, the boy who learned the principles of elocution and the essence of debate from the lips of the Great Commoner, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... fought on the threshold of Greenfield senior's study, in which many were wounded on both sides, and in the midst of which Oliver arrived on the scene, kicking right and left, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the church, in fact, was the devil's own; That its architect (Being long "suspect") Had confessed to the Bishop that he had wrecked Not only his OWN soul, but had lost The VERY FIRST CHRISTIAN SOUL that crossed The sacred threshold: and all, in fine, For that very beautiful design Of the wonderful choir They were pleased to admire. And really, he must be allowed to say— To speak in a purely business way— That, taking the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Colonel," and then ushered him to the door. For a moment Colonel Culpepper stood at the bottom of the stairs, partly hesitating to go into the windy street, and partly trying to think of some way in which he could get the subject on his mind before his daughter in the right way. Then as he stood on the threshold with his nose in the storm, he recalled General Ward's discourse about the different worlds, and he thought of Molly's world of lovers' madness, and that brought up his own youth and its day-dreams, and Molly flew out of his mind and her mother ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... leave England, and turning my face toward America, in the spring of 1847, I was met, on the threshold, with something which painfully reminded me of the kind of life which awaited me in my native land. For the first time in the many months spent abroad, I was met with proscription on account of my color. A few weeks before departing from England, while in London, I was careful to purchase ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... were overwhelming. They fell in heaps, with many of their foes underneath them. The few who remained to the last retreated fighting, step by step, each man towards his own dwelling, where he fell dead on its threshold. Swart himself, with a few of the bravest, had driven back that part of the enemy's line which they attacked. Thus they were separated for a time from their less successful comrades, and it was not till the smoke ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... an hour I had been indolently watching this amphibious scene, when the landlord entering my room said, that the Russian Prince, G——n, wished to speak to me on some business; and the information was scarcely communicated, when I perceived his Highness standing at the threshold of my door. With the attention due to his rank, I instantly begged he would do me the honour to walk in; and, after we had sufficiently bowed to each other, and that I had prevailed on my guest to sit down, I gravely requested him, as I stood before him, to be ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... faded blue eyes were gazing past me, hopelessly sad, supremely mournful. What the deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily. The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet with dread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. The man might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... said, haughtily, as she stepped lightly out, and ran up the broad marble steps of the mansion, where, heedless of her stainless and delicate gloves, she seized the bell-knob, and rung violently. During the few moments she waited for admission, her foot, clad in white satin, beat the threshold with a light, but restless motion. Her brocade-robe about which costly laces hung in gossamer clouds, rustled down in rich folds to the marble floor of the vestibule, while with every pulsation ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... open for the CHIEF OF STAFF who is about to go out when suddenly in the doorway appears a young man of thirty, pale, dark, timid. He hesitates on the threshold. ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... with closed door, at the press, I feeling very desolate to know that the whole house was empty, and that were I to open the parlour door, there would meet me no merry note of singing from a sweet voice within—while we worked thus, I say, there came a rustling at the threshold, and presently a piece of paper was thrust under the door. By the dim rush light we took and read ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Gateman said it to a hawker bringing lobsters from the strand, and that got no leave to cross the threshold by reason of the oath given out by the King. The half of the kingdom she will get, they were telling me, and the king living, and the whole of it after he ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... I seed from the first that you was piney-like," she said, standing tray in hand on the threshold of the little parlour, her fresh, highly-coloured face smiling kindly upon the pale girl. "I always do say that I pities ladies when they has anything on their minds; sitting about, same as you do now, with nothing to take them off theirselves. A body like me that has to ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the dread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves—I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless shadow! Besides: Lilian—Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Sunday, however, he dined with the old publisher, who was soon to retire to Brighton, and was commissioned to compile six volumes of "Celebrated Trials," etc., "from the earliest records to the year 1825." What a caprice of Fate that the young aspirant should, on the very threshold of his adult career, be thrown into these coulisses of criminal biography! That a taste already keen to search out the birds of prey that haunt the fringe of decorous society, should be immersed, as it were, in a stream of criminal records! Old songs of Denmark, ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... suddenly, as unexpectedly, disappears. Indeed, had it not been that the person concerned was Chichikov, and not some youth of twenty summers—a hussar or a student or, in general, a man standing on the threshold of life—what thoughts would not have sprung to birth, and stirred and spoken, within him; for what a length of time would he not have stood entranced as he stared into the distance and forgot alike his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that, as we came into the hall presently, they thought us the most goodly company that had ever crossed its threshold; and that is likely, for at our head were Havelok and Goldberga. Raven was a mighty warrior to look on as he came next, grave and silent, with far-seeing grey eyes that were full of watching, as it were, from his long seafaring, ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... counterfeit, was shocked at seeing himself lauded in three-inch black characters on a flaring red ground, and driven in desperation to explain that while his gratitude was unbounded, he did not want an admiring crowd collected on his threshold. So, much to the disappointment of his servants, who in China feel that their master's glory reflects upon themselves, the announcement ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... sole, or sandal, of this form, continued in Palestine to be the universal out-of-doors protection for the feet, up to the Christian-era; and it served for both sexes alike. It was not, however, worn within doors. At the threshold of the inner apartments the sandals were laid aside; and visitors from a distance were presented with a vessel of water to cleanse the feet from the soiling of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... he deserves for his eminent qualities of loyalty, virtue, and good faith. I am longing to see you, and beg you to hasten your return, resolved not to allow me to be without the benefit of your advice. I am on the threshold, as it were, of a second life. Already certain persons who defended me in my absence begin to nurse a secret grudge at me now that I am here, and to make no secret of their jealousy. ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... restrained from access to the temple, by reason of the pollution of murder; yea, as Philo the Jew witnesseth (in his book of the Offerers of Sacrifices), whosoever were found unworthy and wicked, were by edict forbidden to approach the holy threshold. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls almost over James' doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of cheese, lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... enacted here, how many deadly shots had sped from out the holes, what crowds of excited townsfolk had gathered in the church, what grave words of exhortation and of blessing had been spoken from the altar or the threshold by anxious prelate, robed and mitred for the Mass of Supplication to a God of Battles, an humble funeral appeared,—a priest, a peasant bearing a black wooden Cross with the name of the deceased painted on it, a rope-bound coffin carried by hot and sorrowing women, and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... in one window and in another, and vanished, and soon the door opened and there appeared two people on the threshold, clearly visible in the light of a strong incandescent ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious and winning inflections; we have legible countenances, like an open book; things that cannot be said look eloquently through the eyes; and the soul, not locked into the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the threshold with appealing signals. Groans and tears, looks and gestures, a flush or a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of the heart, and speak more directly to the hearts of others. The message flies by ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But once on the threshold of the pavilion itself, it was for him to show the coward. Turning, he made me a gesture; one I did not understand; and seeing that I did not understand it, he said, after a fearful ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... leaden feet, he moved toward the door. Gropingly his hand reached for the knob. Thus he stood for another long minute, and then with a sudden gesture he straightened his giant frame, threw back his mighty shoulders and, with fearless head held high, swung back the door and stepped across the threshold into the room which held for him the dearest memories and associations of his life. No change of expression crossed his grim and stern-set features as he strode across the room and stood beside the little couch and the inanimate form which lay face downward upon it; the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... personal graces are most valued, when a good presence is a blank check on the Bank of Fortune, with Nature's signature at the bottom, he found himself made hideous by this fearful-looking counterfeit of a limb. It announced him at the threshold he reached with beating heart by a thump more energetic than the palpitation in his breast. It identified him as far as the eye of jealousy could see his moving figure. The "peg" became intolerable, and he unstrapped it and threw himself on the tender mercies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... had grown quiet, each waiting for the other to move, and, hearing a step in the hall, I looked toward the door, which was partly open, then went forward, thinking a belated guest might be coming in. The door opened wider and Selwyn stood on its threshold. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... her reply was cut short by the noisy opening of the outer door. Amherst seemed to hear the sound with relief. "There's Duplain," he said, going into the passage; but on the threshold he encountered, not the young Alsatian overseer who boarded with them, but a small boy who said breathlessly: "Mr. Truscomb wants you to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... kiss is not recorded, there being no account extant of the ceremonial and etiquette of Olympus. Whatever it was, doubtless it was rigidly enforced; for the Thunderer, it would seem, had a Bastile, or lock-up, with iron doors and a brazen threshold specially provided for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... were great shambling parodies of humanity, long-armed, short-legged, twice as heavy as men, with close-set reddish eyes and heavy bone-crushing jaws. They may have been incredibly debased humans, or perhaps beasts on the very threshold of manhood. From what he had seen of conditions on this planet, Kalvar Dard suspected the latter to be the case. In a million or so years, they might evolve into something like humanity. Already, the Hairy ones had learned the use of fire, and of chipped crude stone implements—mostly heavy triangular ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... there. "That wicked,"—or rather "THE LAWLESS ONE," (ho anomos, as he is called in 2 Thess. ii. 8,)—must be bound, hand and foot, somewhere in his career of lawlessness; and in these Sermons the threshold of the Bible has been chosen as the place for the conflict. My life for his life. I will slay or be slain on the very portal of Holy Scripture. With the young, you begin at the beginning,—"the Creed, the LORD'S Prayer, the Ten Commandments;" and they must be further ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... step, Godolphin re-entered the threshold of his cottage-home. He passed into a small chamber, which was yet the largest in his house. The poor and scanty furniture scattered around; the old, tuneless, broken harpsichord; the worn and tattered carpet; the tenantless birdcage in the recess by the window; the bookshelves, containing ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little Sally Pendleton, as you used to sign the merry letters you wrote to me?" asked Miss Rogers, stopping short in some remark she was making to Louisa, and gazing hard at the slender, girlish figure that had just appeared on the threshold. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... the homes which were their own, without a lord. We exchanged the last salutations. The wooden soles of their shoes clattered upon the stone threshold of the door. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... accompanied by numerous princes. And the prince halted in the woods of Kamyaka. And in that secluded place, he found the beautiful Draupadi, the beloved and celebrated wife of the Pandavas, standing at the threshold of the hermitage. And she looked grand in the superb beauty of her form, and seemed to shed a lustre on the woodland around, like lightning illuminating masses of dark clouds. And they who saw her asked themselves, 'Is this an Apsara, or a daughter of the gods, or a celestial phantom?' And with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Hollingsworth book-bindery were astonished at the door being flung suddenly open and seeing the handsome young man whom they had known as the street-car conductor and Nadine Holt's lover standing on the threshold. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... several other rooms, at the doors of which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the volubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace, when we stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a cannon-shot was heard, and a cry of general satisfaction followed it. It was the signal that the procession had crossed the threshold of the church. In the same moment a charge of carabineers swept off the people who were obstructing the middle of the street, the regiments of the line opened floodgates for the overflowing crowd, and soon nothing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... made myself as near smart as possible and flew for the smartest tea-room on Michigan Avenue. If I could stay me with Orange Pekoe and comfort me with toasted crumpets and English marmalade—But just as I was blithely footing it across the threshold the S.F. rose up behind me like a genie from a bottle ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Divine Being as one so jealous for His own rights and honor that He would have the human heart a void, so that he might reign there supremely. So all that terrible night he stood smitten and astonished on a threshold he could ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Brandon stopped at the threshold and stared intently at the captive hexans. Goggling green eyes glaring venomously, they were lying quiet, but tense; mighty muscles ready to burst into berserk activity should the attention of a guard waver for a ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... line at this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the "trap" down upon the little phaeton. There was a lock and a crash; a wheel was off the phaeton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road, a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering away through the scared Corner Village, with ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... hall, the august Senators, each in his seat. Let your minds be like that, with reverent thoughts clustering on every side; and when wild passions, and animal desires, and low, mean contemplations dare to cross the threshold, they will be awed into silence and stillness. 'Whatsoever things are august . . . think on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the threshold of all this, it is again and again to be asked, What of the Idle Aristocracy? Again and again, What shall we say of the Idle Aristocracy, the Owners of the Soil of England; whose recognised function is that of handsomely consuming the rents of England, shooting the partridges ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... her voice evidently affected the young man also. He came, hurrying, and when he had entered stayed upon the threshold, warm-hued with work and bringing with him the odor of the soil. His brown eyes went from one of them to the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... from the threshold, graved by skill, With characters and wondrous signs, upturned A virtuous stone, where, underneath the sill, Pots, with perpetual fire and secret, burned. The enchanter breaks them; and at once the hill To an inhospitable rock is turned. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... light came from within and made scant war on the lurking darkness without. Lee's ears were greeted with the crazy whine of an old accordion, and with men's voices lifted in laughter. He shoved the swing door open with his shoulder, Carson pushed the other half back, and the two stood on the threshold, their ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... feet short and four feet narrow, with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been steadily recovering from the banality of their examination; and it was with a genuine and never-to-be-forgotten thrill that I remarked, as I crossed what might have been the threshold: "Mais, on est ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... loaf of bread, and they set out for the great gloomy wood. When they reached it they saw in front of them, in the thickest of the trees, a queer little hut, and when they looked into it, there lay the witch, with her head on the threshold of the door, with one foot in one corner and the other in the other corner, and her knees cocked up, almost touching ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... time and thought you can give to it," the girl said, enthusiastically. "I can't imagine anything grander than to stand at the threshold of the world ready to enter the battle of life, to struggle with the obstacles and to conquer them. Think, Allen—just think of what you have before you, while we girls never get any such ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... before the door of the Davis room. Wesley raised the latch. It was an old-fashioned fastening. Number Two was directed to stand at the threshold while Wesley and Jones ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... opened, the student set foot across the threshold, and uttered a cry of surprise. Instead of the garrote, instead of racks and torturers, he beheld a gorgeous saloon, brilliantly lighted up with a profusion of wax tapers. Five or six men of distinguished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you would have thought that he had been brought by the self-same little old hag! I smiled at that, greeted him cordially, and asked him what he was doing ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... answer in father's most genial rumble. Then I heard him call loudly for Dabney, and when Sallie descended with my bundle, that contained a complete telegraphic outfit for Luella May which showed a decided leaning to tennis style, she met Dabney on the front threshold with a rough parcel from which I saw a shirt sleeve and a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... still again. The new-comer was evidently waiting for a reply. After a pause, the steps drew nearer—now they were already in the hall; and now the tall, slender form of a Prussian officer, with a bandaged head and arm, appeared on the threshold of the room. When he beheld the immovable body on the floor, his pale face expressed surprise ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them. Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual constitution projects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then, if ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing which civilization has begotten after its own kind and named ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... there came a terrible storm. In the far end of the cave Gudwall and the other were nearly swept away by a huge wave which rushed in to devour them. No longer content with pausing on the threshold, the sea swept through their whole house, dashing away their little store of books and furniture, a most unneighborly thing to do. It tried to drag the two men from the corner where they clung to the rough rock. Choked and gasping they escaped this time, ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... nothing but exclaim, "Who would have thought it!" "Who, indeed!" was the reply, in various tones of sympathy, envy, and surprise. Poor Mrs. Howard, to the day of her death, never suffered another portionless beauty to enter her doors while even the shadow of an eldest son rested on its threshold. Mrs. Myles was of course in an ecstacy of delight; her prophecy was fulfilled. Helen, her Helen, was the honourable wife of a doubly honourable man. What triumphant glances did she cast over the railings of the communion-table at Mr. Stokes—with what an air she marched down ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... as he reached the threshold of the door, and saw, to his left, a group of Huns about a gun that seemed to have jammed. And not all the Huns were alive, either, showing that the fire of the attacking party had done part of ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... made an awkward bow at nothing in particular before going out. Mr. Van Torp followed them at some distance towards the outer door, judging that as they had forced their way in they could probably find their way out. He did not even go to the outer threshold, for the last of the three shut the ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... formal visit but called repeatedly upon his people, as their spiritual or temporal needs seemed to require. He timed his visits for the most part when the family were assembled for the noonday meal. He would enter the living room or stand at the threshold and chat in a friendly manner with the members of the household. Although invited to partake of of their hospitality he never accepted the least refreshment, not even a drink of water. He talked with them about their every day life, ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... finds faith and hope in the poem, also, and so can see the sunlight suffusing the clouds of the mother's grief. Thus she enters into the feeling of motherhood and so shares the life of all the mothers whose children are her pupils. In every page she reads she crosses anew the threshold of life and gains a knowledge of its joys, its sorrows, its triumphs, or its defeats. In short, she reads with the spirit and not merely with the mind, and thus catches the spiritual meaning of what she reads. She can feel as well as think and so can emotionalize ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... not even pretty, Isabelle said, but there was a strange fascination about her earnest face, and the wonderful grey eyes possessed a charm that was all their own. She had graduated with honors. Now she stood upon the threshold of the unknown, holding her life in ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... spectacle was sufficiently painful to make it natural for old friends to stay away. Doors and windows stood wide. The sofa and tea-table where the wisest and best from all parts of the world had held converse were turned out to be examined and bid for. Anybody who chose passed the sacred threshold; the auctioneer's hammer was heard on the terrace; and the hospitable parlor and kitchen were crowded with people swallowing tea in the intervals of their business. One farmer rode six-and-thirty miles that morning to carry home something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... popular man—one that didn't grudge the "bit and sup," and never turned his back upon friend or foe. Loud and hearty were the cheers of the delighted tenantry, as the three sons of their beloved landlord passed the threshold. The appearance of the "stranger" was received with no such demonstrations of welcome; on the contrary, there was a sullen silence, soon after broken by suppressed and angry murmurs. These were somewhat appeased by one of the sons introducing his "cousin," and endeavouring to joke the peasants into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to the threshold of our own religious history, and shall endeavour to answer, in substance at least, the queries with which we commenced the present inquiry. It was certainly an extraordinary period of our national religious history, in which ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... Nora. "I am home again. Mother can't expect me to dress." She rushed past her cousin. She was too excited to have any sympathy then with English Molly. She ran up to her own room, and stood with a sense of dismay on the threshold. It had always been a beautiful room, with its noble proportions and its splendid view; and it was now ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... man invited me to go with him to his house; at the gate of which his friends met him with many expressions of joy, shaking hands with him, embracing him, and singing and dancing before him. As soon as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being considered as the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the right, facing the window, a glass door surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and a yet graver, occasion of regret was that we must stop short on the threshold, without crossing it, of the nineteenth-century literature of France. With so many shining names seen just ahead of us, beacon-like, to invite our advance, we felt it as a real self-denial to stay our steps at that point. We hope still to deal with Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... causans, the secondary or apparent physical cause and the primary or spiritual cause, without which the secondary cause could not exist; and so we shall get a new standpoint of clear knowledge and certain power by stepping over the threshold of the mechanical and entering ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... his cabin and fainted upon its threshold; while a third lay weltering in his gore some ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... not until this permission has been given by some one, dares the savage cross the threshold to do ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... screamed out loud like a person as he went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade - and the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... commenced in January, 1846, the intellectual power of Mr. Adams, and the extent and accuracy of his acquaintance with the facts connected with that subject, were preeminently manifested. Though conscious, being then in his seventy-eighth year, that he stood on the threshold of human life, he sought no relaxation from duty, no exemption from its performance. To counteract the effect of a nervous tremor, to which he was constitutionally subject, he used for many years an instrument to steady his hand when writing, on the ivory label of which ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... interrupted by the opening of the door. Andy Gilgallon stood on the threshold and looked in with amazement. He had not expected to find the lady and the ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... about her feet. They came to the house, and passed through the sunny porch, where their mother, Metaneira, was [87] sitting against one of the pillars of the roof, having a young child in her bosom. They ran up to her; but Demeter crossed the threshold, and, as she passed through, her head rose and touched the roof, and her presence filled the doorway with a ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... refreshments; were pleasantly accosted by him, and told he belonged to Company G, of Colonel M.'s Michigan volunteers; had been sick and was out on furlough at the house of a friend. One of them, a social kind of fellow, lingered on the threshold, amused at the badinage passing between the soldier and the ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... at the beginning of a new and important era in my life. Although upon the threshold of manhood, I had, until the relation with my master was sundered, only dim perceptions of the responsibilities of a more independent position. I longed to cast off the chains of servitude, because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... He was rather a splendid figure now that he had sloughed all disguises and was on the threshold of his triumph. Even through the fog in which my brain worked it was forced upon me that here was a man born to play a big part. He had a jowl like a Roman king on a coin, and scornful eyes that were ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... in the morning she showed a bright, almost a happy face. It was long, long since she had enjoyed such a night's rest, so undisturbed with unwelcome thoughts on the threshold of sleep and on awaking. Her life was perhaps wrecked, but the thought of that did not press upon her; for the present she must enjoy her freedom. It was like a recovery of girlhood. There are few married women who would not, sooner or later, accept with joy the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... de Camors, the elder, returned to his home bent on suicide, his son, passing up the Avenue Maillot, was stopped by Lescande on the threshold of his villa. ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... an antique door and porch, narrow windows with the smallest diamond panes, and has been called since its first stone was laid, the Vicarage. Forget the village, courteous reader, and cross with me the hospitable threshold, for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... buoys and strainers and safes and bibbs and tuckers we are to adopt? If I should consume midnight oil during a full four years' course at a college for plumbers I should still find myself just upon the threshold of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... and landed, beating down the other's guard. Dreer staggered back, ducking his head, and Penny shot a long arm around in a swinging blow that caught the other under his ear and Dreer's knees doubled up under him and he sprawled on the threshold of ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... if struck by lightning, remained the prince upon the threshold; behind him were seen the astonished faces of his generals, who, on tiptoe, stretched their necks to gaze, over each other's shoulders, upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... said Toinette to the first; and he went away with a friendly nod. But to Doggie she said, "Entrez, monsieur." And monsieur carried the two crocks over the threshold and Toinette shut the door behind him. And there, sitting over some needlework in a corner of the kitchen by a lamp, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was necessary for passing the title into other hands. This theory had an affinity to that of the Common Law, which made the prince the suzerain, and rendered him the heir of all escheated estates. But Mark's humility, not to say his justice, met this doctrine on the threshold. He admitted the sovereignty and its right, but placed it in the body of the colony, instead of in himself. As the party most interested took this view of the case, they who were disposed to regard ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Arthur Wellesley as one of the aide-de-camps to Lord Buckingham, alluded to in a recent letter from Lord Mornington, suffered an interruption on the threshold from a proposal made by Sir George Yonge, then Secretary at War, for reducing the gentlemen holding those appointments to half-pay. Lord Mornington, who was still in England, resented the proposal indignantly, and brought the affair under the notice of the ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... managed to hook my heel over the note and get it out of sight, M'Clare has paused for an answer and I have to dredge my Sub-threshold memories for— ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... [Celebrated as a Scottish lawyer.] Meanwhile, I have written myself out of my melancholy and blue devils, merely by prosing about them; so I will now converse half an hour with Roan Robin in his stall—the rascal knows me already, and snickers whenever I cross the threshold of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Come near and nearer from below— One effort more—thank Heaven! 'tis past, They've gained the topmost steep at last. And now they touch the temple's walls. Now HAFED sees the Fire divine— When, lo!—his weak, worn comrade falls Dead on the threshold of the shrine. "Alas, brave soul, too quickly fled! "And must I leave thee withering here, "The sport of every ruffian's tread, "The mark for every coward's spear? "No, by yon altar's sacred beams!" He cries and with a strength that seems Not of this world uplifts the frame Of the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea. Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, —who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,—and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... through which all energy percolates. One side of the triangle represents anabolism, or the process of building up, and the other katabolism, the process of breaking down, and at the Apex is the Mystical "Terror of the Threshold," the "Ainsoph" (vide frontispiece), which introduced sacrificial death to the Physical, as an adaptation in the evolution of, and for the good of, the Human race. With the death of the Physical, the rending of the Veil, as we have seen in View ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... successfully wrestled with his raging desires until this moment, he is at length no longer able to resist the temptation of invading the sanctity of Nisida's sleeping-place. Already has he set his foot upon the very threshold of the little side-cabin, having traversed the spacious saloon, when a hand is laid upon his shoulder, and a voice behind him says in a low tone, "Your highness has forgotten the fate of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... back again?" cried she, in accents soft as milk, yet bitter as gall. "Why do you cross my threshold, you false witch, when there is nothing more to blight and blast? Did you think I should not know you, that you dared to come? I should know you among all the fair-faced ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... is Eve; the soft star lights him to his home; she meets him as his shadow falls on the threshold! she smiles, and their child, stretching forth its tender hands from its mother's ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and that the class could not allow such an act of treachery. Speug was so full of honest feeling that he saw Thomas John safely within the door, and, since he threatened an unreasonable delay, assisted him across the threshold from behind. There is no perfectly full and accurate account extant of what took place between twelve and one that day in the mathematical class-room, but what may be called contributions to history oozed out and were gratefully welcomed by ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of patronage abolished, and the popular right virtually secured; and, fearing lest his people might be led to abuse the important privilege conferred upon them, and calculating aright on the abiding influence of his own character among them, he gave charge on his deathbed to dig his grave in the threshold of the church, that they might regard him as a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might speak to them as they passed out and in. The inscription, which, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, is still perfectly legible, concludes ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... on the roof. On this account wild doves usually frequent towers, to which they may fly from the fields of their own accord, and return.[177] The other kind of pigeons is tamer and are wont to seek their food at the very threshold of a house. This kind is usually white in colour, the wild variety being mottled but without any white. From these two stocks a third or mixed variety has been developed for commercial profit and these are collected in the place which some call a peristereon (pigeon ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr. Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could make; I was ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... yonder,' said Nixon, 'how dared you take such a rascal as that across your threshold at such a time as this? If the squire should dream you have a thought of peaching—I am only speaking for your good, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the Residency well, which is about central, journeying either way. Without doubt many of the shells in the lagoon are dead. But why are they dead? Without doubt the living shells have a very different background set for imitation. But why are these so different? We are only on the threshold of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor—a pleasant walk from Market Square—is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door you step into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted courteously, waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the Wentworth mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though it is no longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gloves and a case of eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the "Bootjack Hotel," Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must out—that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated), he paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of delicious music that a well-known voice ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Masnavi i Ma'navi, deals with evolution and its corollary, reincarnation, stating that there is one way of remembering past existences, and that is by attaining to spiritual illumination, which is the crown of human evolution and brings the soul to the threshold of divinity. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... self-evident truth. Bunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what others might feel, but simply telling in plain unadorned language what he had felt. The experience was a very tremendous reality to him. Like Dante, if he had not actually been in hell, he had been on the very threshold of it; he had in very deed traversed "the Valley of the Shadow of Death," had heard its "hideous noises," and seen "the Hobgoblins of the Pit." He "spake what he knew and testified what he had seen." Every sentence breathes the most tremendous earnestness. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... door opened, and the chief made his appearance; he did not condescend, however, to cross the threshold, but leaned against the door post to prevent falling, being by some degrees more drunk than any of his people. A more finished picture of a savage cannot be conceived. He was a tall, broad shouldered man; with a prodigiously ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... monks, judged by nineteenth-century standards, were unobservant of natural beauties. They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like. The [Greek: pontion te kumaton anerithmon gelasma] is very rare. But the Greeks stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct. They did not, like the monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent and omnipresent, above all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine government. We ourselves having somewhat overstrained the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... four objects his eyes really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took everything comfortable ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... away again, and she pushed her way through the crowd and hurried down the Vicolo and into the house numbered thirteen. She was very breathless, being tightly laced and unused to so many stairs, and she stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold. She was glad to sit down on one of the chairs by the open window. The bare room no longer seemed conventual now that its unaccustomed air was stirred by the movement of her fan and tainted by the faint scent of her ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... on the rocky or the grassy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany, geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... remained motionless at the window for a few moments, when the door was again opened. The chief of police appeared on the threshold. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... which found no expression in speech. He stooped down and fondly kissed his children and then opening the door, with satchel in hand, he darted out, only looking back when his wife called to him, as she stood with her three little ones on the threshold— ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... ten minutes' walk in the country brings one to real primitive woods. The town has not yet overflowed its limits like the great Northern commercial capitals, and Nature, wild and unkempt, comes up to its very threshold, and even in many ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one financier, then to the other, he stood there on the threshold, awaiting his masters' pleasure. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... it to a fact well recognized in Avonsbridge, as in most University towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall as for a college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold of a High Street tradesman. The same cause, she concluded, made them absent from her wedding; and when Dr. Grey had said simply, "I shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... on a mission of mercy, paused on the threshold, and regarded the two unfortunates with a sympathy akin to awe. Bud Stucky moved his head uneasily, and essayed to speak, but the sound died away in his throat. He made another effort. His lips moved feebly; his voice had an ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... had been enacted here, how many deadly shots had sped from out the holes, what crowds of excited townsfolk had gathered in the church, what grave words of exhortation and of blessing had been spoken from the altar or the threshold by anxious prelate, robed and mitred for the Mass of Supplication to a God of Battles, an humble funeral appeared,—a priest, a peasant bearing a black wooden Cross with the name of the deceased painted on it, a rope-bound coffin carried by hot and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... this Jehuda arrived near the Holy City. He was by her side at last, by the side of his beloved. Then, legend tells us, through a gate an Arab horseman dashed forth: he raised his spear, and slew the poet, who fell at the threshold of his dear Jerusalem, with a song ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... George, taking the letter from Frank's hand, and putting it with the others carefully away in his pocket. "Do you wonder, then, that I am sorrowful, cut off as I am from all my relatives, with strict orders never to cross the threshold of my father's house again, not even if I am dying for want of food? You have, doubtless, heard of the malignity displayed by the rebel leaders toward any Southerner who dares to differ with them ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... hackneyed, battered, old conventional newspaper gibberish had in it the breath of life. I believed it. At that moment, on the threshold of new experiences, I took the words on trust. Perhaps, for once, the things I had read in books had not eluded me! Perhaps the old gentleman in the flannel nightgown really was a potential African despot. In the midst of my reflections ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... their representatives can hold in check the Imperial policy in the Reichstag—openly expressed their sympathy for Leo XIII, for the "noble exile at Rome, who is compelled, from the day of his elevation to the Papacy, to pledge himself never to cross the threshold of the Vatican alive." When William II is compelled hereafter to make concessions to the Centre in the Reichstag, his allies, the Italians, will be well advised to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... patrons like to thee, Brave Porter! poets ne'er will wanting be: Fabius and Cotta, Lentulus, all live In thee, thou man of men! who here do'st give Not only subject-matter for our wit, But likewise oil of maintenance to it: For which, before thy threshold, we'll lay down Our thyrse for sceptre, and our bays for crown. For, to say truth, all garlands are thy due: The laurel, myrtle, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... our story, and as suddenly, as unexpectedly, disappears. Indeed, had it not been that the person concerned was Chichikov, and not some youth of twenty summers—a hussar or a student or, in general, a man standing on the threshold of life—what thoughts would not have sprung to birth, and stirred and spoken, within him; for what a length of time would he not have stood entranced as he stared into the distance and forgot alike his journey, the business still to be done, the possibility ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... seemed stiller, as we circumspectly passed through the gate; and Harold hung back shamefaced, as if we were crossing the threshold of some private chamber, and ghosts of old days were hustling past us. Flowers there were, everywhere; but they drooped and sprawled in an overgrowth hinting at indifference; the scent of heliotrope possessed the place, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... a resigned shrug of his shoulders; Gervase looked round at him ere he crossed the threshold of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... cordially welcomed to speak on all Christian and philanthropic themes. Where her influence is most broadly felt, she has not been taken out of the ordinary life that she was meant to share and to sway. It was from the great denominations that she first crossed the threshold of home to carry home love and principle to foreign countries. In missions she has served in every conceivable form of public benevolence, side by side with man. Real reforms work from within. If the time comes when the other branches of the Christian Church ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... in a public house, that stood on the north side of the church, not a vestige of which now remains, but no one would go to the church for the parish books. The landlady had the courage to go but no sooner had she crossed the threshold than the Evil Spirit blew the light out; she got a light again, but this also was blown out. Instead of returning for another light, she went straight to the coffer in the dark, and brought the books to the house, and that without ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the teeth, the hollow and spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was not so mean as to send a child to do what the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... tone brought the official's wits back with a jump and he made for the exit, only to be stopped at the threshold by a sandy-haired ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... attempted to penetrate by the clue of chemical experiment the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic life, without being aware that chemistry must needs be at its extreme limits, when it has approached the threshold of a higher power? Its own transgressions, however, and the failure of its enterprises will become the means of defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard against the opposite error of rejecting its aid altogether as analogy, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seen anything so horrible as the sight that greeted her when she pushed the door wide open, and stood on the threshold of the crofter's home. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... by a majestic live-oak which shaded the front, and within a few yards of the river, stood a small white house. It was built of adoles, and contained only three rooms. Instead of reaching these by a broad flight, one step from the threshold placed you on the ground. The floor was uncovered, and, as usual, of cement. In one corner of the front apartment stood a sideboard, covered with glass of various kinds, and a few handsome pieces ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... single animals he joyed, One cat, and eke one dog, his bounty fed; The first the cate-devouring mice destroyed, Thieves heard the last, and from his threshold fled: All in the sunbeams basked the lazy cat, Her mottled length in couchant posture laid; On one accustomed chair while Pompey sat, And loud he barked should Puss his right invade. The human pair oft ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the letter, and what did she answer?" asked the prince, springing up almost as he passed the threshold. ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... shelter them as he ascended, as much as possible, from the light of the fire, which was now blazing with great brilliancy: "nine human corpses,—father and mother, grandam and children,—sleep under the threshold at the door; and there are not many, white men or Injuns, that will, of their free will, step over the bosoms of the poor murdered creatures, after nightfall; and, the more especially, because there are them that believe they rise at midnight, and roam ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... as we came into the hall presently, they thought us the most goodly company that had ever crossed its threshold; and that is likely, for at our head were Havelok and Goldberga. Raven was a mighty warrior to look on as he came next, grave and silent, with far-seeing grey eyes that were full of watching, as it were, from his long seafaring, and yet had the seaman's ready smile in them. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... other's pain came before him as a force which had interfered with the evolution of his ego. It is likewise with all such events of his former life. On his re-entrance into physical life these hindrances to his evolution confront the ego anew. As, on the threshold of death, a sort of memory-picture arose before the human ego, so there now arises a vision of the life approaching. Again he sees a picture, this time showing all the obstacles which he has to clear away, if he is to advance in evolution. And what he thus ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region while we are yet on its threshold. I resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... benefactor must at last relax him into thankfulness. These thoughts encouraged Raymond, as he stood at the door of the highest room of the house. After trying vainly to enter the other apartments, he perceived just within the threshold of this one, a pair of small Turkish slippers; the door was ajar, but all was silent within. It was probable that the inmate was absent, but secure that he had found the right person, our adventurous Protector was tempted to enter, to leave a purse on the table, and silently depart. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... pulled me swiftly into a porch which gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us, and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... mothers, and wives and children. St. Augustine says to the devotee: "Fly to the desert, and though your wife put her arms around your neck, tear her hands away; she is a temptation of the devil. Though your father and mother throw their bodies athwart your threshold, step over them; and though your children pursue and with weeping eyes beseech you to return, listen not. It is the temptation of the evil one. Fly to the desert and save your soul." Think of such a soul being worth ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... mounted my horse for the first time since I had been taken ill in November, and had scarcely left Moorundi when I met my good friends Mr. Charles Campbell and Mr. A. Hardy in a carriage to convey me to Adelaide. I reached my home at midnight on the 19th of January, and, on crossing its threshold, raised my wife from the floor on which she had fallen, and heard the carriage of my ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... front had found her boy's half-charred body left tied to a tree by Rebel scouts: this girl was the grandchild of Naylor, a man of seventy,—the Federal soldiers were fired at from his house one day,—the next, the old man stood dumb upon its threshold; in this world, he never would call to God for vengeance. Palmer knew these things were true. Yet Dode should not for this sink to low notions about the war. She did: she talked plain Saxon of it, and what it made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... Gerald. She paused an instant. Not a servant in the house! whom was she to summon? A vague idea seized her of running into the street and catching hold of the first passer, when at the moment the door opened, and Mr. Halloway appeared on the threshold. ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... averted her face when he addressed her, made no reply; but after he had departed from the threshold, her eyes followed him, and the tears slowly forced ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! Come ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... each is contradicted the next hour. I was there t'other day to visit one of them, and one of the most agreeable, Alexander Albani. I had the opportunity of two cardinals making their entry: upon that occasion the gate is unlocked, and their eminences come to talk to their acquaintance over the threshold. I have received great civilities from him I named to you, and I wish he were out, that I might receive greater: a friend of his does the honours of Rome for him; but you know that it is unpleasant to visit by proxy. Cardinal Delei, the object of the Corsini faction, is dying; the hot weather ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the shadow of a doorway until the policeman should pass out of sight and hearing, and cautiously stepping over the debris that encumbered the threshold of the burnt house, Gorman peeped into the room, where the light told him that some one kept watch. Great was his satisfaction and grim his smile when he saw that a stalwart fireman sat there apparently asleep. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... small response to feelings such as these in the great world, for we have not been looking much toward what is above us, nor discriminating from meaner things those which approach to heroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics, and polemics, when we would approach the threshold of elevated meditation—when we dwell on the illustrious names of the past, and tread over the stones which they trod. I never wandered along the banks of the sedgy Cam, at that lone, twilight hour, when the dimness of external objects tends most to concentrate ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... reached for the knob. Thus he stood for another long minute, and then with a sudden gesture he straightened his giant frame, threw back his mighty shoulders and, with fearless head held high, swung back the door and stepped across the threshold into the room which held for him the dearest memories and associations of his life. No change of expression crossed his grim and stern-set features as he strode across the room and stood beside the little couch and the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hour or two. He set off along the shore in the direction of Fort Mason, the old red-brick fort at the entrance to the Golden Gate. At this point in the Presidio Government reservation the land is solitary. Wilbur followed the line of the beach to the old fort; and there, on the very threshold of the Western world, at the very outpost of civilization, sat down in the lee of the crumbling fortification, and scene by scene reviewed the extraordinary events ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is exceedingly difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a short period of fellowship, abandon him—even on the very threshold of the temple—to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of Art for Art, itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far off. It has ceased to be a cry, and is heard ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... assassin, Thurtell, and treasure up the leaves and twigs of the hedge and shrubs in the fatal garden as valuable relics—nay, thronged the minor theatres to see the very roan horse and yellow gig in which the body was transported from one place to another. I have not stept over the threshold to-day, so very stupid have ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to accumulate upon his memory. And when, not many months after the outward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lull, and while I wondered, the door flew suddenly open and I saw Mrs. Ocumpaugh standing on the threshold, pallid and stricken, looking back at the picture made by the other two as Mrs. Carew, fallen on her knees by the bedside, held to her breast ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... that he addressed them. He was always their playmate and boon companion, whether they were toddling infants taking their first faltering steps, or growing schoolboys, or youths standing at the threshold of life. Their games were his games, their joys those of his own heart. He was ready to romp with them in the old barn at Sagamore Hill, play "tickley" at bedtime, join in their pillow fights, or play hide-and-seek with them, either at Sagamore Hill or in the White House. He was the ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... door, and there was Bruno lying across the threshold, as if waiting to be admitted; he came in at Harry's call, but not with his usual bound; he seemed to understand that if his old master had been saved, his master's friend was lost. The noble creature ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... six years pretty nearly everybody worth knowing crossed the Roosevelts' threshold, and they themselves quickly took their place in Washington society. Roosevelt's humor, his charm, his intensity, his approachableness, attracted even those who rejected his politics and his party. Bright ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... across the table at CLARA. Then she drops her spoon and fork and takes up her fan, using it violently whilst GEORGE slowly gets up and opens the door. LORD LOVEL is seen standing on the threshold. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Doctor Tio-King, his Cornaro under his arm; Fulk Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett, mingling their teeth and hair, figuratively, be it understood; Sir Francis Trevellyan, motionless and silent, intractable and stiff, smoking his cigar on the threshold; Faruskiar, accompanied by Ghangir; Russian, Turkoman, Chinese travelers—in all from sixty to eighty persons. Every one had in his turn to present himself at the table, which was occupied by two Celestials in uniform; a functionary ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... I said as we crossed the threshold of the police-station, "I don't believe Sir Digby was either an ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her—of herself standing before another man who blocked the sky, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... respectable!" She flung this over her shoulder as she stalked away, and it may be that the tears came when there were none to see them, but hers was a resolute mind, and though she continued to be friendly with Tommy and Elspeth out of doors she never again crossed their threshold. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... seat, embosomed in a leafy park, some five miles from the city. At present it was undergoing alterations and repairs, so that it might be a more perfect residence when the future Lady Brace crossed its threshold as a bride. Consequently the greater part of the house was in confusion, and given over to painters, plasterers, and such-like upsetting people. Harry, however, had decided to live in his own particular rooms, so that he might see that everything was carried out in accordance with Lucy's wish, and ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... stood upon the threshold brooding, D'Arnot had entered the cabin. Many comforts he saw that had been left behind. He recognized numerous articles from the cruiser—a camp oven, some kitchen utensils, a rifle and many rounds of ammunition, canned foods, blankets, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... accusers the accused seem entitled to acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man could cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in a contest for the first magistracy of the republic; and whom he described, long after the fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accomplished hypocrite, by whom he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scarcely know what to make of him; except that he seems to have quite conceit enough of himself. Every other sentence is a contradiction of what the last speaker advanced. This is the first time he ever ventured to cross his father's threshold, and yet he talks as familiarly of kingdoms, governments, nations, manners, and other high sounding phrases, as if he had been secretary of state to king Minos, had ridden upon the white elephant, and studied under the Dalai Lama! He is the Great Mogul of politicians! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was mysteriously blissful—and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... the door against the rest of the seals, and was again in pursuit; but Nab in the meantime had reached the far end, bumped against the unfastened door and was scuttling across the outer threshold. Father ran after him, only to see his body floundering from one rock to another and to hear its happy splash in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... orderly and well-appointed home to return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate, was a little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, and experienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold and entered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut the door there even against the solicitations of nature and against the weariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late autumn days, and yet not lifeless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... suspended by a rope which was knotted round his ankles, and which, passing over a hook in a beam, had been made fast to a ring in the floor. The struggles of this unhappy man had caused the rope to whirl round, so that he was spinning in front of the blaze like a joint of meat. Across the threshold lay a woman, the one whose cries had attracted us, but her rigid face and twisted body showed that our aid had come too late to save her from the fate which she had seen impending. Close by her two swarthy dragoons in the glaring red coats ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... death-dealing deity, delighting in blood, whom she was warned to fear, and from whom she did accordingly shrink with such holy horror that, when she went to church, she tried to think of anything but Him. This was how it happened that church, instead of being the threshold of the next world to her mind, became the centre of this, where she made many interesting observations of men and manners; for in spite of her backwardness in the schoolroom, Beth's intellect advanced with a bound at this ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Historical Society desired it, any Member of Parliament could procure them the whole stock, Lords and Commons, a wheelbarrowful or more, with no cost but the carriage. Every Member has the right to demand a copy, and few do it, few will let such a mass cross their door-threshold! This of Bowdoin's is a platitude of some magnitude.—Adieu, dear Emerson. Rest not, haste not; you ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of an hour, he strolled downstairs into the billiard room. He stood on the threshold for a moment, when a familiar voice struck his ear. His heart beat rapidly with excitement, for he recognized it as the voice of Abner Blodgett. He glanced eagerly about to find him, but he could see no one resembling the young man from the country ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... am not violating that Hippocratic vow which protects the relations of patient and adviser; for, as I dropped my friend's wasted hand and stepped to the threshold, he repeated a request he had often ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... principally fortitude, and greatness of soul, and patience, it will not stop short at sight of the executioner; and when all other virtues proceed calmly to the torture, that one will never halt, as I said, on the outside and threshold of the prison; for what can be baser, what can carry a worse appearance, than to be left alone, separated from those beautiful attendants? Not, however, that this is by any means possible; for neither can the virtues hold together without happiness, nor happiness without the virtues; so that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... are now on the threshold of Damerghou, and do not know yet what route they will take from this country to Kanou; whether by Tesaoua or Zinder. Even En-Noor seems quite undecided what he ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... home and their neighbours entered with them, and ate and drank, and gave them good wishes and gay songs, and the old priest blessed them with a father's tenderness upon their threshold; and the fiddle of Georges sent gladdest dance-music flying through the open casements, across the road, up the hill, far away to ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... I heard the water, as it were, gurgling in. My first idea was, "We are snagged;" then, remembering how slight the concussion had been, I calmed my fears and turned over on my side, determined to bottle off a little more sleep if possible. Scarce had the thought crossed the threshold of my mind, when men with hasty steps rushed into the saloon, banging frantically at the cabin-doors, and the piercing cry was heard—"Turn out! turn out!—we're sinking!" Passengers flew from their beds, and opened their doors to get what scanty light the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Superintendent had blessed, who had done so much to contribute to the triumph of this day, wanting to its complete realization of all that such a day should have been. The Duchess of Kent was already on a visit to her nephew, standing on the old threshold—once so well known to her—ready to help to welcome her daughter, prepared to show her the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the north Lister could watch the boldest operator ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... upon the threshold going out Into the night. The mists of old misdeeds crowd all ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... just on the threshold of an exciting voyage, in which he had painted to himself plenty of sport and adventure, ending in the discovery of his uncle and the men who had been his companions. All had gone wrong, and he felt that they would have to accept ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... impressed, that seemed to have been very recently left. Again they appeared upon a narrow-pointed stoop that ran beneath the windows of a small room in an angle of the building, and from which there was a door slightly ajar, with the same dewy footprint broken on the threshold. Within this room there was a sound as of some one moving softly, yet with impatience, to and fro—once a white hand clasped itself on the door, and a beautiful face, flushed and agitated, glanced through the opening and disappeared. Then followed an interval of silence, save that the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... there would be lodged objection that she dare not disregard—her uncle's will. One other girl there was, that night at Frayne, who marked her going and sought to follow and was recalled, restrained at the very threshold by the sound of a beloved voice softly, in the Sioux tongue, calling her name. One other girl there was who knew not of her going, who shrank from thought of meeting her at any time,—in any place,—and yet was destined to an encounter ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... attentively, you will be wise. Stand in the assembly of the elders, And whoever is wise, stick close to him. Be willing to listen to every discourse, And let no illuminating proverbs escape you. If you see a man of insight, hasten to him, And let your foot wear out his threshold. Let your mind dwell upon the law of the Most High, And meditate continually on his commands. Thus he will enlighten your mind, And teach you ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... that when Miss Hobbs appeared at the threshold of the door she heaved a deep sigh, and it was this that startled her lover; but as he had his head in a stooping position, and was busy brushing his coat, the sound seemed to him to come from the farther end of the room, which was obscured in darkness. He was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... . strange . . . it is past belief." Then he asked, roughly: "Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?" He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: "Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk them in good causes; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside: The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend: This door will open at a touch ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... immense apartment, apparently a ball-room; but at present it was quite unoccupied. There were green velvet benches all around it, and a great polished floor stretched away, shining in the light of chandeliers adorned with innumerable glass drops. Miss Vivian stood a moment on the threshold; then she passed in, and they stopped in the middle of the place, facing each other, and with their figures reflected as if they had been standing on a sheet of ice. There was no one in the room; they ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... have arrived. Presently there would be time for its instructions to be acted on as well. And at this moment I realized, as I had not fully realized before, all that it would mean to me of humiliation and defeat to fail ignominiously on the threshold of my adventure. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his foot across the threshold, she stretched out her ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... her no sound, but Jessie knew that some one had opened the door and was standing on the threshold watching her. She turned her head. Her self-invited ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... been received. Was he dead? Had he abandoned the effort, or was he continuing his journey along the route agreed upon? And would he appear on Saturday, the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine in the evening, on the threshold of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... government agree that, because this case involves a challenge to the constitutionality of the conditions that Congress has set on state actors' receipt of federal funds, the Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), supplies the proper threshold analytic framework. The constitutional source of Congress's spending power is Article I, Sec. 8, cl. 1, which provides that "Congress shall have Power . . . to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... was, alas! too plain: For neither had they leisure to disguise it, Nor could she silence the loud cries of travail. Soon as I saw it, "Oh shame, shame!" I cried, And rush'd away in tears and agony, O'erwhelm'd with horror at a stroke so grievous. The mother follows me, and at the threshold Falls on her knees before me all in tears. This touch'd me to the soul. And certainly 'Tis in the very nature of our minds, To rise and fall according to our fortunes. Thus she address'd me.— "Oh, my Pamphilus, The cause of her removal ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... repose, after the chase, or the battle, or the feast, the menaces of the prelate began to stir in his guilty soul,—aided, perhaps, by the reproaches or the advice of his wife or his concubine; he hesitated to violate the sanctuary lest he should fall dead with a broken neck on the threshold; if he had been carried away by his passions, and committed murder or robbery, he repented and made reparation, sometimes a hundred-fold. The cloister offered a refuge to those who fled aghast from the world and sought meditation and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... of the house presented a strange contrast to the outside. When one crossed the threshold, he found himself surrounded with all the comforts of civilization. There were fine carpets on the floors, oil paintings on the walls, and easy chairs, sofas, and musical instruments in abundance. The room the boys occupied was the only one in which could be found any ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... himself to establish wherever he was responsible. One of Gordon's first resolutions had been that his part of the Soudan should cease to be a drain, like the rest, on the Cairo Exchequer. He determined that he at least would pay his way, and on the threshold of his undertaking he had insisted, and carried in the teeth of powerful opposition his resolution, that the accounts of the Equatorial Province should be kept distinct from those of the Soudan. The employment of black soldiers was very economical as well as efficient, and contributed ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the Threshold he has already enter'd; Now through the Fire I'll follow him: But; oh some unknown Pow'r detains my Steps. I'll try again; I cannot stir. Shall he rejoice before my Eyes? No, no; Melissa, it ought to be thy Care To see thy self and me, on ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... in hours of fear Or grovelling thought to find a refuge here, Or through the aisles of Westminster to roam, Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam Melts if it cross the threshold—where the wreath Of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into a song, and began waltzing round the room. Barely had she passed the open window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in, stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the singing house he used to lie in the passage and peep over the threshold. Now and then a man would take him by the nose and lift him into the house and make him carry out a jar of water. It was so large and heavy that he had to take hold of it with both hands and his teeth. Because he was so often lifted ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... rubbish you toss in the tide. On outgoing billows it drifts from your sight, But back on the incoming waves it may ride And land at your threshold again before night. Be careful what rubbish ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a moment's warning, my vision was enlarged and an unusual light flashed upon me. Quickly I cast my wondering eyes all about me and saw that I was standing at the very threshold of a great door. It was of such imposing dimensions and so magnificently constructed that only the architects of Heaven could ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... delay. Where was Mr. Bangs? He was told, to his great delight, that the detective was in town, and would report at four o'clock. It was now half-past three. Putting up his horse at the hotel, the lawyer partook of a hasty meal at a restaurant, and returned in time to meet Bangs on the very threshold. "Whet ere you doing here, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... days that followed, neither burly flesh-and-blood Doctor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped noisily over the threshold or slid ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... then stopped to look back at the girl who had followed a few steps from the threshold. Her eyes held their expression of uncertainty whether to sparkle or to cloud, and he read the arrested question on her lips. "If there are any saddle-horses," he answered, "I will have them here before that two-forty-five freight arrives, but," and he smiled, "I am not ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... it now appears you need my help. Go to then: you come to me, and you say, 'SHYLOCK, we would have moneys'—you say so; You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... they arrived, with Hermes at their side, By Jove commission'd, as their friend and guide. But when the mirth-inspiring dames stepp'd o'er The sacred threshold of great Shakspeare's door, The heav'nly guests, who came to laugh with me, Oppress'd with grief, wept with Melpomene; Bow'd pensive o'er the Bard of Nature's tomb, Dropt a sad tear, then left me to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... and now sat at her window looking out to amuse herself, but with a special intent to see and waylay that pale child on her repassing the house. She saw the little black hood reappear, and started to open the door, just in time to see Nettie fall down at her threshold. As instantly two willing arms were put under her, and lifted up the child and bore her into the house. Then Madame took off her hood, touched her lips with brandy and her brow with cologne water, and chafed her hands. She had lain Nettie ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... of sadness settled on the household after his departure, and scarcely less than Louisa's was Irene's silent grief. The confinement grew doubly irksome when his voice and step had passed from the threshold, and she looked forward impatiently to her release. The sprain proved more serious than she at first imagined, and the summer vacation set in before she was able to walk with ease. Mr. Huntingdon had been apprised ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... now turned toward the parents, whom he presented with an awl and a little tobacco, and having thus secured their good-will, continued to smoke his pipe, and watch the salmon. While thus seated near the threshold, an urchin of the family approached the door, but catching a sight of the strange guest, ran off screaming with terror and ensconced himself behind the long straw at the back ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... entrance into the world, and in death, the last to be given up; yet, strange to say, its nature and constitution have only become partially understood within the past century, and even now scientific knowledge can only be regarded as on the threshold of the subject." ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the threshold of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the Canada jay, which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and in reply Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was everywhere to be heard, but ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... shareholders at General Meetings. The Poet, however, was long and painfully accustomed to combat with enraged editors and lost no time in assuming the offensive, demanding indignantly in a high head-voice, before the Iron King had crossed his own threshold, why no quarters had been found for him and how much longer any one imagined that he would put up with the indignity of being bandied from ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... days and nights during all the remainder of February. The shocks, though diminished in strength, almost nightly roused us from our rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by two, by three they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with faithful guides, by whose aid I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... barn, the moment I set my foot over the threshold, my terrors of murder and of her having expired all returned. After a short pause, I called with a trembling voice, 'Mary! Are you alive?' and my heart bounded with joy to hear ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... marked event in the history of the Crawford family, in the crossing by Richard of the threshold of the outer door, for the first time in so many weeks. He was weak, faint and feeble, but the racking pains of his disease seemed hourly to leave him more completely. He had no more thought of leaving the house, however, than of flying, until the tempter appeared in the shape of his brother. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... knock fell on the door. "Is the doctor here?" said a voice which I recognised at once. Barraclough opened the door and Holgate stood on the threshold. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... together with an effort. The sight of the two new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the restaurant, seemed for the moment to have drawn every scrap of colour from his cheeks. Nevertheless, his recovery was ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... on him, he and she both smiling at each other more; then she looked on me, still smiling with greater liberty than at first, made a pirouette, went away and closed the door, beyond the threshold of which she had ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was, had apparently no idea of doing anything of the sort. I heard the latch lifted, and the tall bulky form of a man filled the threshold. With him came the wind, playing havoc about my room, sending papers and ornaments flying around in wild confusion. He closed the door quickly with a little imprecation. I heard the scratching of a match, saw it carefully shielded in the hollow of the man's hand. Then it burned clearly, ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the moment Mr. Ultra V. Ray reached the threshold of freedom he was tripped up, pounced upon, and beaten until he ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... but so have dozens of people whom you know—his present reputation is excellent, I say. And yet, because some twenty years ago, when you were a child, he held one opinion and your father held another, you are interdicted from crossing his threshold! If you can shake hands with him here, you can take his hand in his own house. Is not ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... went up stairs to open the door, and found to his astonishment Midwinter waiting alone on the threshold, and looking (in the servant's opinion) miserably ill. He asked for a light, and, saying he wanted nothing else, withdrew at once to his room. The footman went back to his fellow-servants, and reported that something had certainly happened to his ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... writer's soul. It served one purpose, since it provided Madge with at least a staff of silver with which to beat the wolf from the door. The wild beast bayed and threatened, but it never actually crossed the threshold. The discredited man kept himself alive by scraps of anonymous journalism, until a half-chance suggestion of fortune bore him away to the United States as a member of a theatrical company of no great merit, which clung together through desperately ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Boujan, having seen that her feet were set upon the threshold of day, went out of the door and ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the indignant host and his staff, and standing upon the threshold looked at the riot within. The long room was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the smoke of powder, through which the many torches burned yellow. Upon the great table wine had been spilt, and dripped to swell a red pool upon the floor. Underneath the table, still ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... my room at last through a tortuous maze of gaping workmen and sickening flowers, three startled girls jumped up to catch me as I staggered across the threshold. I did not faint, I did not cry out. I just sat huddled on the floor rocking myself to and fro, and mumbling, as through a mouthful of sawdust: "Dolly Leonard is dead. Dolly Leonard is dead. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... chance, the destiny of a lifetime approaches through the conventional door of everyday life—steals up, lays the hand that none can resist on the handle of some door which opens of itself into a new, a wider world. Before one is aware of it, perhaps, one's feet have crossed the threshold into the Land of the New Outlook, and "old ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that he ought to refuse; it was late. But Madeleine answered for him. "Of course. Come along, Maurice," and he crossed the threshold ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... voice. And then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a quick step outside, and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instant he was out in the hall, before the doctor's foot was over the threshold. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outside, and a terrible howl that seemed to shake the little cottage to its foundations. Then—ah! think of it, madame—the door—this door against which you lean—was burst open, and out of the darkness a great wolf came bounding in, and paused for a minute on the threshold. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye. Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... required hours to gather. Nor is the exercise of a privilege necessary to establish its worth: the title to be present belonged to the whole people, and Britons esteem and acknowledge a real treasure in a right. An open threshold, although rarely darkened by guests, is the pledge that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... message of courtesy, sent by the Doge himself, had been stayed on the threshold of his own ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Meige and Feindel were, in a way, on the threshold of this theory when they said that tic, like the other psychoneuroses, is due to some congenital anomaly, an arrest or defect in the development of cortical or subcortical association paths—unrecognized ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... untrained sensual imagination and gross materialistic theory. When the fleshly prison walls of the mind fall, its first inheritance is a stupendous freedom. The narrow limits that caged it here are gone, and it lives in an ethereal sphere with no impeding bounds. Leaving its natal threshold of earth and the lazar house of time, its home is immensity, and its lease is eternity. Even in our present state, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... two hours should so soon be slipped away; but coming to know, that he had remained in that place beyond four hours, he went out with Andrew, to go to the palace of the viceroy. He had scarcely set his foot over the threshold, when he seemed to be ravished in spirit once again. After he had made some turns, without well knowing whither he went, he returned as night was beginning to come on, and said to his attendant, "My son, we will take another time to see the governor; it is the will of God, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... December set in with uncommon severity of cold, and checked its progress. Oh! the exquisite delight with which I left my hard and burning bed and close apartment, the scenes of all my sufferings, for the first time! With a prayer of thankfulness on my lips, I crossed the threshold of the humble dwelling, and once more slowly mounted the steep hill ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... under Maddy's hair by this time, and when the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops, while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get along with it better if he treated ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... of the gate; The gate that was iron'd within and without, Where an army in battle array had march'd out. The lady sank, belike through pain, And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate: Then the lady rose again, And moved, as ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,—Rand. If you want anything, you're to call me. I am just outside." Still no answer came from the silent cabin. He pushed open the door gently, hesitated, and stepped over the threshold. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... course of the combat, Heathcote made a mighty onslaught and caught his enemy round the body and wrestled a fall with him on the threshold of the "Sociable" door, it so happened that the door, not being securely latched, gave way beneath the weight of the two combatants, and swinging suddenly open, precipitated them both on to the floor of the apartment, just as the Club was proceeding ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
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