"Anecdote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... story of a man who was hanged for murdering another man, whom he afterwards met in one of the Spanish colonies of South America. I shall not here interrupt the tale of the Perrys by explaining how a hanged man met a murdered man, but the anecdote proves that to inflict capital punishment for murder without proof that murder has been committed is not only an illegal but an injudicious proceeding. Probably it was assumed that Harrison, if alive, would have given signs of life in the course ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... An anecdote worthy to be recorded happened at the brick house at the Eutaw. Capt. Laurence Manning, since adjutant general in this state, marched at the head of the legion infantry to batter down the door of the house. Intent on this single object, and relying confidently on his men, he advanced ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... darkness. The question, "Are there few that be saved?" will suggest itself to our minds; may the answer fix upon our conscience, "STRIVE to enter in." It is very probable that it was in preaching upon this text, Bunyan was assailed with a want of charity. The anecdote is thus narrated by Mr. Doe in The Struggler:—"As Mr. Bunyan was preaching in a barn, and showing the fewness of those that should be saved, there stood one of the learned to take advantage of his words; and having done preaching, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... This anecdote is good, so far as it shows the folly of an unwillingness to deny ourselves in small matters, in any circumstances. And yet punctuality, even at meals, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related in Dunlap's History of the Arts of Designs—a most entertaining book to the general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The following anecdote will give some idea of the rapidity with which they work. A house in New York expected a synopsis of commercial news by the steamer from Liverpool. A swift boat was sent down to wait for the steamer at the quarantine ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... standard by which to judge qualifications for success, the same nobleman answered that an oyster shell found on the Akashi shore is the best type of a man qualified to succeed, for the shell has been deprived of all its angles by the beating of the waves. Of Hidetada himself there is told an anecdote which shows him to have been remarkably free from superstition. A comet made its appearance and was regarded with anxiety by the astrologists of Kyoto, who associated its advent with certain misfortune. Hidetada ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... boons whereby we shall excel all men." Thereat Bharadwaja said, "O my son, as thou hast obtained the objects of thy desire, thou wilt be proud. And when thou art puffed up with pride and hast also become uncharitable, destruction will soon overtake thee. O my son, there is a current anecdote narrated by the gods. In ancient times, O son, there lived a sage named Valadhi, possessed of great energy. And in grief for the death of a child, he practised the severest penances to have a child that should be immortal. ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... from the office of Horace F. Clark, his son-in-law, $6,000,000 in greenbacks as a part of his share of the profits, and he had $20,000,000 more in new stock." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts": 103. Croffut in a footnote tells this anecdote: "When the Commodore's portrait first appeared on the bonds of the Central, a holder of some called one day and said: 'Commodore, glad to see your face on them bonds. It's worth ten per cent. It gives everybody ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... excellent walker and mountain-climber. He once walked up to London from Cambridge; I have climbed mountains with him, and he was very agile, quick, surefooted, and entirely intrepid. Let me interpolate a little anecdote of an accident at Pontresina, which might have been serious. Hugh and I, with a practised Alpine climber, Dr. Leith, left Pontresina early one morning to climb a rock-peak. We were in a light carriage with a guide and porter. The young horse which drew us, as we were rattling ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tradition says he was "levitated." The writer now leaves classical antiquity behind him—he does not repeat a saying of Plotinus, the mystic of Alexandria, who lived in the third century of our era. The best known anecdote of him is that his disciples asked him if he were not sometimes levitated, and he laughed, and said, "No; but he was no fool who persuaded you of this." Instead of Plotinus, we are referred to a mass of Jewish and anti-Christian apocryphal traditions, which ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... as a foil—of course, only to yourself, privately. He had great abilities; and though I widely differed with him in his views of history—which I, being of the science school, thought should be different from an anecdote book, yet I admit the great merits of his work, and especially of his essays. But I much objected to his running away from our death-struggle in 1834, though his defence was that his sisters would have to go out in the world as milliners if he stayed ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Young relates an interesting anecdote connected with this alphabet, which occurred when he was a missionary in the North-West. During Lord Dufferin's visit there he conversed with Mr. Young in regard to the Indians in these distant regions, and expressed ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... from the beginning of," etc. Driver, however, thinks (Comm. on Dan., p. xviii.) that the chap. xiii. position (before Bel and the Dragon) was perhaps its original place. "The fact that it contains an anecdote of Daniel's youth might readily have led to its subsequent transference to the beginning of ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... earnestly desire it, we know of but one certain course, which is best explained in a brief anecdote. An English gentleman, who was in all the agonies of a rough and tedious passage from Folkestone to Boulogne, was especially irritated by the aggravating nonchalance of a fellow-passenger, who perpetrated all manner of bilious feats, in eating, drinking, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... jurisdiction of all matters growing out of infractions of the "Articles of War" and of all the civil and criminal affairs of the tribe as well. There was no appeal from its judgments and its sentences were summarily executed. An anecdote will illustrate something of its practice: In the campaign of 1876, after the affair at Little Big Horn, Grey Eagle, a Hunkpapa headman of good family and with a good military record, was charged with stealing a horse from another warrior of the Sioux forces. He denied the charge but the ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... to find that the same anecdote which formed the Induction to the original "Taming of a Shrew", and which, from a comic point of view, Shakespeare so wonderfully developed in his own comedy, Calderon invested with such solemn and sublime dignity in "La Vida es Sueno". He found it, as Senor ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... but the vague report that, when "Young found himself independent and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality that he afterward became," and the perhaps apocryphal anecdote, that Tindal, the atheist, confessed himself embarrassed by the originality of Young's arguments. Both the report and the anecdote, however, are borne out by indirect evidence. As to the latter, Young has left us sufficient proof that he was fond of arguing on the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... greater part of the great canvas is painted in. But to bring it into touch with human life, and to make good its claim to the high places of philosophy, we must go yet farther and study Life itself, and what men call the Soul. So grows the great conception. We begin with trivial anecdote, with the things that fisherman, huntsman, peasant know; the sciences of zoology, anatomy, physiology take shape before our very eyes; and by evening we sit humbly at the feet of the great teacher of Life itself, the historian of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the anecdote with a chuckle which died out as he saw her eyes widen with horror. Five years ago? she was thinking, he must have been hardly more than a boy. How many other chapters as violent as this were ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... NOTE.—Each Story, Anecdote, &c., when sent to the Editor, must be certified by a Parent, Teacher, or other responsible person, as being both ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... A curious anecdote is related in connection with these military reforms. When Babek, the new paymaster, was about to hold his first review, he issued an order that all persons belonging to the army then present in the capital should appear before him on a certain day. The troops came; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... characters, I am irresistibly reminded of an anecdote illustrating their nature. A friend of mine who had employed a rather ignorant fellow to guide him through some ruins in England, was astonished, as he entered a gloomy dungeon, at the sudden remark, in the hollow voice of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Reader thinks it won't do. "Yes it will," I urge—"it will lighten it up. Who wants statistics without anecdote? Now for an anecdote; and I knock one off, sur le champ, about the engine-driver, the stoker, and several other persons, all on the look-out for promotion, informing me of their being Paddington men of considerable political influence at home. The Cautious Captain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the "Natural History of Barbadoes," relates an anecdote which gives a good idea of the nature of this monster: "In the reign of Queen Anne a merchant ship from England arrived at Barbadoes; some of the crew, ignorant of the danger of doing so, were bathing in the sea, when a large shark suddenly appeared swimming ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... recent and completely harmless anecdote about the despatch-runner from Diamond Town who got ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... mainly upon the cereals, in which rice plays so prominent a part. The Greenlander's fare, on the contrary, consists almost entirely of oils and fats; indeed, on this point Sir Anthony Carlisle relates the following anecdote:—"The most Northern races of mankind," says he, "were found to be unacquainted with the taste of sweets, and their infants made wry faces and sputtered out sugar with disgust, but the little urchins grinned with ecstasy ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... which, when duly studied and well handled, is the power of the actor and the story-teller, had never so completely bewitched me. Nor was I alone under the influence of its spell; we all spent a delightful evening. The conversation had drifted into anecdote, and brought out in its rushing course some curious confessions, several portraits, and a thousand follies, which make this enchanting improvisation impossible to record; still, by setting these things down ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Thoughts and feelings in connection with it. Preaches in public under peculiar circumstances. Introduced to his future father- in-law's family. Visits their house. Reception. Description of his future wife and sisters. Anecdote. Commences business. Visits the States to buy tools. Takes Niagara in his way. Scenery above Lewiston. First sight of Rapids. Of the Falls. Song ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul, you always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren't the British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go out for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the Nilghai comes up this evening can I ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the greater power of Rome as compared with that of Persia, by exhibiting the large and highly finished gold coin of the Roman Emperor in contrast with the small and inelegant silver money of the Shah. This story would, however, appear to be traditional, as Pliny relates a somewhat similar anecdote of the ambassadors from Ceylon in the reign of Claudius, and of the profound respect excited in their minds by the sight ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... castle. You and I know that he was killed by the magic sword; yet somehow a strange legend grew up around his death. And ever afterwards in that country, when one man told his neighbour a more than ordinarily humorous anecdote, the latter would cry, in between the gusts of merriment, "Don't! You'll make me die of laughter!" And then he would pull himself together, and add ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Galileo (1632), by Galiani (1770), by Leopardi (1825), and by a host of lesser writers. In our own day, the French have returned to the original application of dialogue, and the inventions of "Gyp," of Henri Lavedan and of others, in which a mundane anecdote is wittily and maliciously told in conversation, would probably present a close analogy to the lost mimes of the early Sicilian poets, if we could meet with them. This kind of dialogue has been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... data in the first part of the chapter are given by Rowe as facts. Thus he states positively that Shakespeare attended a free school, from which he was withdrawn owing to "the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of assistance at home." He repeats the deer-stealing anecdote, with further detail. As to his acting, Rowe reports, "Tho' I have inquir'd, I could never meet with any further account of him this way than that the top of his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet." He corroborates the general contemporary opinion of Shakespeare's ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... France at this period. Moliere experienced the inconveniences resulting from this circumstance, even after his splendid literary career had given him undoubted claims to consideration. Most of our readers no doubt, are acquainted with the anecdote of Belloc, an agreeable poet of the court, who, on hearing one of the servants in the royal household refuse to aid the author of the Tartuffe in making the king's bed, courteously requested "the poet to accept his services for that purpose." Madame Campan's anecdote ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... anecdote was frequently related by Mr. Boyse. The countess one day came into the bed chamber of her youngest daughter, then about 13 years old, while she was dressing at her toilet. The countess observing the assiduity with which the young ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... died and was buried. According to others, before returning to Teos, he accompanied Simonides to the court of Echecrates, a Thessalian dynast of the house of the Aleuadae. Lucian mentions Anacreon amongst his instances of the longevity of eminent men, as having completed eighty-five years. If an anecdote given by Pliny (Nat. Hist. vii. 7) is to be trusted, he was choked at last by a grape-stone, but the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits, which makes it somewhat apocryphal. Anacreon was for a long time popular at Athens, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... become aware that the woman was holding something back. The signs in her discourse are not to be mistaken. I taxed her with this. She denied it. Then she said that, even if she was holding back something, it was nothing to rave about. Just an anecdote that this here talk about fighting characters had reminded her of. She wouldn't of thought of it even now if Ben Steptoe hadn't told her last spring why he didn't lick his Cousin Ed that last time. And this here Ed Steptoe was the only honest ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... wonderful rusty-coloured hair. The girl's attitude of detachment and concentration held the physician's approving glance, but the wave of hair under the white cap and against the smooth, clear skin lingered in the memory of the man long after he forgot Moffatt's amusing anecdote. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young gentlemen of my own age, seated on similar stones, with extraordinary accounts of my own adventures and those of the corps, with an occasional anecdote extracted from the story-books of Hickathrift and Wight Wallace, pretending to be conning the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is supposed, and not without foundation, to be connected with this Abbey. "Hark to Rover," the name of the house where the key is kept, was, a century ago, a retired inn or pot-house, and the haunt of many a desperate highwayman and poacher. The anecdote is so well known, that it is scarcely necessary to relate it. It, however, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... paradise could be happy when missing some near relative or dear friend whom they were thus forced to suppose in hell. He replied, God will either cause believers to forget such persons or else to rest in expectation of their coming. The anecdote shows affectingly that the same yearning heart and curiosity are possessed by Moslem and Christian. A still more impressive case in point is furnished by a picture in a Buddhist temple in China. The painting represents the story of the priest Lo Puh, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... spent many years of loving care in polishing his manuscript, often carrying it to court with him, where it was one day mislaid, but—luckily for future generations of epicures—was afterward recovered. The book is a charming badinage, a bizarre ragout of gastronomic precepts and spicy anecdote, doubly piquant for its prevailing tone of mock seriousness ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... cause. The charge of vagrancy was very inclusive, and a man could skirt very near the edge of felony and still manage to achieve a nominal punishment. He told all this simply, naturally, naively—as if he were entertaining an acquaintance with a drawing-room anecdote. When he ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Hissar, and not Jillalabad, was the true haven for the army. In resisting this final gleam of hope for the army, both General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton heartily concurred; and they concurred then first and then last. This also, this almost incredible fact, should be added to the anecdote—General Elphinstone, when hard pressed by the general wishes on this point, pleaded as a last reason for his obstinacy—that a particular article, essential to the army, was wanting in the Bala Hillar. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... horse-dealer of the name of Budgett, certainly in exile at Boulogne owing to a standing difference with the bankruptcy laws of his country, was alive still. But Arthur was very fond of himself, and once in the mood of self-pity, he could invent pathetic anecdote after pathetic anecdote of his privations which would have touched the heart of a hardened grandmother, much more of a susceptible girl. She fell into the way of calling him "King ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... of the witnesses mentions this (Trial, vol. iii, p. 103). Cf. the anecdote of the Sire de Boissy related by P. Sala in his collection, Les hardiesses des grands rois et empereurs ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... by the recollection of an anecdote in Madame de Genlis, which seemed to lend itself to eighteenth-century treatment. It was therefore somewhat depressing, not long after they were written, to find that the subject had already been annexed in the Tatler ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Hoodie," reiterated the heroine of this remarkable anecdote, quite restored to good humour by finding herself looked upon as a ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... strangely enough, Catherine's morals. Every one knows the anecdote of the soldier who was roasting a goose in the courtyard of the chateau de Tours during the conference between Catherine and Henri IV., singing, as he did so, a song in which the queen was grossly insulted. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and kill the man; but Catherine stopped ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the sceptical mind. True reminiscences are naturally somewhat cloudy in outline, hanging loose together with gaps and interruptions; whereas these are all coherent, clear-cut, and written in a style that gives superior polish and setting to every scene and anecdote. That they are compiled upon a solid substratum of truth need not be questioned; nevertheless some of them seem to differ only in degree from the realistic novel of the very latest type, such as Zola's Debacle, which contains a very ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... seemed highly delighted with this anecdote, but, for my own part, I felt feverish to the tips of my claws, as I thought of the miserable creature who had usurped the place I wished to fill, and who might be the means of my having to fall back after all ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... mansion-house, the property of a gentleman named Corbin, was placed at his disposal—he had declined the offer of rooms in the house itself lest he should trespass on the convenience of its inmates; and to show the peculiar constitution of the Confederate army, an anecdote recorded by his biographers is worth quoting. After his first interview with Mrs. Corbin, he passed out to the gate, where a cavalry orderly who had accompanied him was holding his horse. "Do you approve of your accommodation, General?" asked the courier. "Yes, sir, I have decided ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... an English inn, and having the quiet and completeness, neatness and elegance, that have made the English tavern a classic type of comfort. It seems this house with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be apocryphal, but which certainly would not be discordant with the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady finished her patriarchal days serenely, and when she was dying, begged that the order of her house ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human beings. There are several things that make this mode of art unique. One of the most conspicuous is that it is the art in which the conquests ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Belle every word of it; he was simplicity itself in such things; he didn't seem to have any idea of the game. He was wholly oblivious of the little cloud which his anecdote left on her. It was a little cloud, but many little clouds can make a canopy of gloom and beget a storm. Then came the words. It was at one of the church evenings in the parsonage—a regular affair, but not soaring to the glorious heights of a sociable—that the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not a mere compilation of stories. Its main object is to illustrate truth and character. No anecdote has been admitted but such as could be turned to this account; and if suited to this purpose, the question has not been asked whether it was new or old. But nearly every one has been entirely rewritten, presented in a new dress, and made to bear ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... a vast collection of engravings and photographs. His plan with Carter was to show him some engraving presenting a fact or anecdote. First he would put under his eyes a cruel or unjust action. He would point out the signs of suffering in one of the figures. Carter would understand this because he saw it. Then Mr. Eden would excite his sympathy. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... This anecdote, I trust, will have some weight with those who may have lent an ear to any of those vague calumnies from which no naval commander can secure his good name, who knowing the paramount necessity of regularity ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... time that the men were dismissed from parade every enlisted man in barracks appeared to have heard a lot about Lieutenant Ferrers. Every man was either telling or listening to some anecdote about the new young officer, and roars of laughter rang on all sides, for Algy Ferrers, during the brief afternoon, had managed, in spite of Prescott, to make a whole lot of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... his official life, beginning in June 1809, and continuing with a short interruption till the death of Perceval, when it ceased till 1819; after which it was maintained to a later period than Mr. Phipps thinks it proper to publish it. This diary consists of gossip, anecdote, on dits, and confidential communications made to Mr. Ward on various occasions and at critical times, together with his own observations and reflections on affairs, or remarks on characters. As he was much in the confidence of Perceval, saw a good deal of the Duke of Wellington, (Master-General ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... act of heroism the following anecdote has been told me:—Three American soldiers called at her log house at Queenston to ask for water. One of them said, 'You have a nice place here, missis, when we come for good to this country we'll ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... anecdote and leisure ended. There was thrust into my hands a typewritten-sheet and I caught the next thing on wheels out to Corozal for my first investigation. It was one of the most commonplace cases on the Zone. Two residents ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... but, you see, it is quite impossible. One can't light the candles till after four o'clock, and before that time it is so dark here in the entresol that you can't see anybody." (I should have prefaced this anecdote by saying, for the benefit of those readers who have never been in Paris, that the entresol is a low story just over the shops, and that the Rue de Rivoli is one of the noisiest streets in the city.)—"But Feuillet has leased the third and fourth floors: why don't you receive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... impending. He was the true life of the party; a little despotic, perhaps, determined to be chief in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from moment to moment proving indisputably his right of leadership. His was the wittiest word, the pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessly active, after his manner, he multiplied himself to wait on all; but oh! I saw which was his favourite. I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom he folded carefully from the night air, whom he tended, watched, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was troubled with a conscience—even with one unusually poignant. An anecdote from his twentieth year depicts this feature of the man. He and Narramore were walking one night in a very poor part of Birmingham, and for some reason they chanced to pause by a shop-window—a small window, lighted with one gas-jet, and laid out with a miserable handful of paltry ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... The last anecdote is quite popular, and is found in a number of popular stories, as well as in the Cento Novelle Antiche[1]. A very amusing version is from Venice (Widter-Wolf, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***, at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. *** would take no immediate notice, but, after supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... archpatrons thereof.' This amusing document, contains some fifty or sixty veritable accounts of balls of fire that fell into churchyards and upset the sporters, and sporters that quarrelled, and upset one another, and so forth: and among them is one anecdote containing an example of a rather different kind, which I cannot resist the temptation of quoting, as strongly illustrative of the fact, that this blinking of the question has not even ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... motives, and not mere obedience to custom. More than one modern writer has expressed a fraternal affection for Addison, and it is justified by the kindly humour which breathes through his 'Essays.' But what anecdote of that most decorous and successful person touches our hearts or has the heroic ring of Johnson's wrestlings with adverse fortune? Addison showed how a Christian could die—when his life has run smoothly through pleasant places, secretaryships ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... is this anecdote of the origin of his famous tune "Northfield," which may indicate something of his temper and religious habit. During his travels as a singing-school teacher he stopped at a tavern in the town of Northfield and ordered ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... which is generally distinguished by some uncommon traits of character) people of genius—save that she had for a school companion and playfellow the late Lord Brougham, the distinguished statesman; she was remarkable also for her power of mimicry. An amusing anecdote of this rather dangerous gift is the following: Her brothers and sisters returned home from a ball, very hungry, and entered her room, where they supposed she lay asleep, and, while discussing the events of the evening and the repast they had procured by stealth (unknown ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... This anecdote is from Heckewelder. In his account of the Indian Nations, he describes an Indian hunter as addressing a bear in nearly these words. "I was present," he says, "at the delivery of this curious invective; when the hunter had despatched the bear, I asked him how he thought that poor animal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... M. Barreau, who was delighted to hear that anecdote. "That's what it is to be in a great nobleman's service. But parvenus are parvenus, what do ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and very characteristic anecdote of this period deserves mention. In a letter to Hippel, dated "Plock, 3rd October, 1803," Hoffmann writes, "My uncle in Berlin will never do much more to recommend me, for he has become 'a grave man,' as Mercutio says in Shakespeare;[7] he died on the night of 24-25th September ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... indeed, Sir," said Walter, who was young enough in the world to be surprised at this eulogy; "but is still agreeable and fond of anecdote. He told me of his race with you ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... [1] An anecdote of her has been preserved which proves how very general was the impression the grace and beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire made upon men in every station of society. On one occasion of her being present on the racecourse at Newmarket, a burly ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Many an anecdote of his career might she relate; for his character, under the pressure of this trial, which was as searching and severe a test of her faith as of his, seemed to illustrate itself in manifold heroic ways, all now of the highest significance. With more majesty and grandeur his character ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... This anecdote was not altogether to Audrey's taste. She walked to a shelf where Ted had put some bronzes, looked at them with a decided air of criticism, and arranged them differently. Having asserted her ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... been mentioned in the text. Doubtless there are others equally worthy, but with the material I have had at my disposal it has been impossible to do due justice to all. There does exist a wealth of incident and anecdote which should be exploited but which, for obvious reasons, has not been available to me, and although I have made a general appeal to all ex-members to contribute to this record, a perfectly natural diffidence has ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... lived to an advanced age, that his sympathy was so great with every thing that was capable of feeling pain, that he resolved, toward the close of his life, to eat no animal food. He also relates the following singular anecdote of him. Upon coming into his brother's house, one day, when the family were dining upon poultry, he was asked by his brother's wife to sit down and dine with them. What! said he, would you have me eat ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Rocco in Heaven. The central picture of the roof, in the inner room. From the well-known anecdote respecting the production of this picture, whether in all its details true or not, we may at least gather that having been painted in competition with Paul Veronese and other powerful painters of the day, it was probably ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and Westmacott he remained. Now Sir Felix, though not a very old man, has a rambling habit of speech, and tends in public discourse to forget alike the thread of his argument and the lapse of time. Conceive then our delight on his announcing that he would confine himself to a brief anecdote. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Marquis adjourned to the "Grand Promenade," where the sultanas see the world, unseen themselves, in their carriages. "Though," as he writes, "I never had an opportunity of verifying any thing like Miss Pardoe's anecdote of the 'sentries being ordered to face about when presenting arms,' rather than be permitted to gaze on the tempting and forbidden fruit; but, on the contrary, witnessed soldiers escorting all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... companions once more, who again fired; but the bullet, instead of entering the skull, glanced round it. He fell senseless to the ground, and was thrown into a dry creek; he, however, recovered, and long survived these adventures.[171] The high authority on which this anecdote rests, is quite necessary to suppress the question of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... dwell old Daddy Darwin and Jack March, the little workhouse boy. A delightful anecdote is told about the pigeons, of whom Jack says, "I love them tumblers as if they ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... the highest privileges and most cherished incidents of my life. I found him kind and benignant in the domestic circle, revered and beloved by all around him, agreeably social, without ostentation; delighting in anecdote and adventures, without assumption; his domestic arrangements harmonious and systematic. His servants seemed to watch his eye, and to anticipate his every wish; hence a look was equivalent to a command. His servant Billy, the faithful ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the coarse and slanderous Tallement respected so much that he refrained from casting a single sneer at it. The story of Pelisson's imprisonment in the Bastile is known to the whole world by the anecdote ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... one of the purposes of these stories to make the mind of the pupil familiar with some of the leading figures in the history of our country by means of personal anecdote. Some of the stories are those that every American child ought to know, because they have become a kind of national folklore. Such, for example, are "Putnam and the Wolf" and the story of "Franklin's Whistle." ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... settles acquire some modicum of virtue. Similarly Mr. Greeven remarks: [239] "Sweepers by no means endorse the humble opinion entertained with respect to them; for they allude to castes such as Kunbis and Chamars as petty (chhota), while a common anecdote is related to the effect that a Lalbegi, when asked whether Muhammadans could obtain salvation, replied: 'I never heard of it, but perhaps they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of the rowdiest characters we ever had in the hospital was totally blind. The blind men's wards are notoriously amongst the least sedate. I offer no explanation. I simply state the fact. I will fortify it by an anecdote. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... to the eyes. The Sergeant gazed intently at him for a minute or so, then stood at attention, gave the military salute, and said, "God bless you, sir." He then walked off and was seen no more. In recounting this anecdote, Mr. H. F. Dickens agreed with me that, reading between the lines, one can almost fancy some lingering reminiscences similar to those in the early ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... subject Doering gives an anecdote, which may perhaps be worth translating. 'One of Schiller's teachers surprised him on one occasion reciting a scene from the Robbers, before some of his intimate companions. At the words, which Franz von Moor addresses to Moser: Ha, what! thou knowest none greater? Think again! Death, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... ever heard the anecdote about the artist of Dusseldorf and the jealous courtiers. This is it. It seems there was once a very famous artist who lived in the little town of Dusseldorf. He did such fine work that the Elector, Prince Johann Wilhelm, ordered ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... Kircher relates the following anecdote, with a full belief of its truth: He had a friend who was zealously and perseveringly devoted to the study of alchemy. At one time, while he was intent upon his operations, a gentleman entered his laboratory, and kindly ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... now within about twenty English miles of ULM. Nothing particular occurred, either by way of anecdote or of scenery, till within almost the immediate approach, or descent to that city—the last in the Suabian territories, and which is separated from Bavaria by the river Danube. I caught the first glance of that celebrated river (here of comparatively trifling width) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... haunted with brave dreams of what might be accomplished in the lecture-room,—so free and so unpretending a platform,—a Delos not yet made fast. I imagine an eloquence of infinite variety, rich as conversation can be, with anecdote, joke, tragedy, epics and pindarics, argument and confession." So writes ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of weddings everywhere that the faithful domestics who have loved the bride from childhood are expected to assist by their presence at the ceremony, each wearing a wedding favor made by the fair hand of the bride herself. An amusing anecdote is told of a Yorkshire coachman, who, newly arrived in America, was to drive the bride to church. Not knowing him, particularly as he was a new addition to the force, the bride sent him his favor by the hands of her maid. But ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... finding he could not read, conceived a contempt for the commander who was even less informed than his soldiers. This he did not wholly conceal, and Pizarro aware of the cause of it, neither forgot nor forgave it.43 The anecdote is reported not on the highest authority. It may be true; but it is unnecessary to look for the motives of Pizarro's conduct in personal pique, when so many proofs are to be discerned of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... it has been my luck to meet among old soldiers the twenty-seven hundred and forty-sixth man who can tell a story well. Ben Tillye is one of them, and here is an anecdote I heard from him, which is rather interesting, and which may even ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... servant of the house. Here they lived many years, unknown to any of the neighbouring villagers, otherwise than by the appellation of the 'Ladies of the Vale.' No persuasions could ever get them from this retreat. A lady from Ireland told the collector of these articles the following anecdote relative to these female friends:—An Irish nobleman (Lord Fingal) happening to be travelling in the neighbourhood of Llangollen Vale, and having heard much of Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby, felt a desire to see ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... much like the cork leg in the comic song did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being asked by his captain ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... cautioned her companion not to mention to any one the aid which she had given to the young poet, and Lady Paget promised scrupulous secrecy. It is to be supposed that she made a mental reservation in favour of Leicester, to whom her ladyship transmitted without delay an anecdote so little calculated to give ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the hands of France: that, if any such peace was made, the queen was betrayed, and the people ruined: that in less than three years she would be murdered, and the fires would blaze again in Smithfield. This prelate lived to see his prognostic disappointed; therefore he might have suppressed this anecdote of his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... anecdote about a boatman who wears a fur coat. Well, boatmen do, no doubt, now and then wear such coats. There is nothing new ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann |
