"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... He felt absently for his pipe, filled and lighted it and went out to sit on the doorstep in gloomy meditation ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... day being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The birds that sing ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... None of his enemies of the Green Forest dared come so near to Farmer Brown's house, and the only one he had to watch out for at all was Black Pussy. By this time he wasn't afraid of her; not a bit. In fact, he rather enjoyed teasing her and getting her to chase him. When she was dozing on the doorstep he liked to steal very close, wake her with a sharp bark, and then race for the nearest tree, and there scold her to his heart's content. He had made friends with Mrs. Brown and with Farmer Brown, and he even felt almost friends ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... Jacobus. I haunted his home. He was perpetually finding me there of an afternoon when he popped in for a moment from the "store." The sound of my voice talking to his Alice greeted him on his doorstep; and when he returned for good in the evening, ten to one he would hear it still going on in the verandah. I just nodded to him; he would sit down heavily and gently, and watch with a sort of approving anxiety my efforts to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... next day even Mr. Doty was convinced. After his customary visit to the Cross-roads, he returned to his family wearing a bewildered expression. It became a sheepish expression when his wife confronted him on the doorstep. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... men to take him across the sidewalk and place him with his back to the wall, near where the dead woman lay, stretched across her doorstep. His boyish face had lost nothing of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... invited had entered Sir Robert Cunninghame's Wallace boldly followed them; and Archie sat down on a doorstep nearly opposite. Presently he saw two figures which he recognized riding up the street, followed, as the others had been by four armed retainers. They were Sir John Kerr and his son. Archie rose at once, and turned down at a side ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... a doorstep, nursing a little, bald, brown-headed baby, dropped a gay handkerchief over her bared bosom but nodded and smiled at the captain of the Seamew with right good fellowship. He knew all these people, and most of them, the young women at least, admired Tunis; but he was too self-centered and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would she walk to her own doorstep, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... to-morrow," Clay replied, "I will thrash you for your impertinence. The only reason I don't do it now is because you are on my doorstep. You had better not meet me tomorrow, or at any other time. And I have no leisure to fight ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... flung away from him angrily, and went upstairs. And old Jamie waited. He dared not smoke his pipe in the parlor, nor even on the doorstep (which was a pleasant place; there was a little park, with trees, in front), for Mercedes thought it ungenteel. The present incongruity of this regard for appearances never struck Jamie, and he waited there. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... were ever alert when gold was in sight or a full glass to be drained. Ask them, ask John, whom I saw skulking behind his cousins at the garden fence that day, what it was they saw as I drew rein under the great tree which shadowed their father's doorstep. ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... know, I think, that I would willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage—an idyl of blissful poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities and petty deprivations and squalid ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to the printed sheet. "Your paper says 2370 veniremen were called into court. That's what money can do. If he'd been some poor devil charged with stealing a bottle of milk from the doorstep, how long would ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... himself behind his elbow that he might not be noticed—appearing as if he were waiting for some one. Women passed by, strong-faced and business-like; men came up and passed, talking in twos or threes. He even watched for some while a couple of children who sat gravely together on a doorstep. (That reminded him of the meeting of to-morrow, when certain educational matters had to be finally decided; he remembered the proposed curriculum, sketched out in some papers that he had to study this evening—an exceedingly sound ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... fashion, on top of her head. And then their illustrious visitor, used as of course she was to ceremony in social matters, would not know whether this was the maid, or her hostess; and Mrs. Marshall would frankly show her surprise at seeing a richly dressed stranger on the doorstep, and would perhaps think she had made a mistake in the house; and Mrs. Fiske would not know whether to hand over the cards she held ready in her whitely gloved fingers—in the interval between the clanging shut of the gate and the tinkle of the doorbell Sylvia endured a sick reaction against ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... advanced, careful not to step on any of the tracks until he reached the doorstep, where it could ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... the road were littered with straw, and the straw straggled into the shop, and heaped itself at the open side door. One large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... upon the doorstep of the Battersea lodgings; caught the last train to Paltley Hill; and as he walked home from the station the scented hedges murmured to him ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... and occasionally a glass of beer. Every week he put a dollar and a half in a little iron bank against a rainy day. His room was a bare corner in the topmost loft of the mill. To this he would ascend after sitting alone on the doorstep of the mill in this lonely, foresaken neighborhood, until nine o'clock of an evening; and here, amid the odor of machinery wafted up from the floor below, by the light of a single tallow candle, he would conclude his solitary day, reading his German paper, folding ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... him outside to the doorstep. I pointed out the poor homes of the village, ruined, reduced to dust. Everywhere were the dwellings of the entire region, with their furniture lying ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the front doorstep wi'. It'll ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... her a surprise," he whispered to Sue. "We'll make believe it's Valentine's Day or Hallowe'en, and we'll leave the things on her doorstep, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... belief that they might have whistled for their money until the crack of doom if it had not been that their claims chimed in with Imperial policy. It may have been wicked of us to take Egypt, but if so let us lay the blame on the right doorstep and not abuse the poor bondholder and financier who only wanted their money and were used as a stalking horse by the Machiavellis of Downing Street. Mr Brailsford's own account of the matter, indeed, shows very clearly that policy, and not finance, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly back and forth through the stillness and drew us unconsciously together; and so it happened that he stood upon the doorstep and pulled ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... the actual need of some soul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply an instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great city, and there is a gloom of evening and vapor over the sky. I see the child is bending over the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and as I ponder I become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... dressed in a bright pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs. Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and 'a ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... that afternoon she met old Lord Groome on the doorstep, just coming to call on her, and hesitated a moment between asking him in or allowing him to accompany her as far as Mrs. Beale's, but decided on the latter because she would get rid of him so much the sooner. Her attitude toward him, however, was kindly and tolerant ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Second Lieutenant Courtenay, he, after collecting himself, his cycle, and his scattered wits from the ditch and conscientiously cursing the road, the dark, and the wet, duly turned to bless the luck that had brought about an accident right at the doorstep of a section of the Motor Transport. There were about ten massive lorries drawn up close to the side of the road under the poplars, and Courtenay made a direct line for one from which a chink of light showed under the tarpaulin and sounds of revelry issued from a melodeon ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... his coffee and as his heavy boots clumped noisily across the rough wooden floor he ventured to look again timidly at the very pretty young lady who sat beside the stove. Her friendly nod and smile sent him stumbling clumsily out over the doorstep with reddened face and a huge grin ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... their good clothes and solemn faces, and finally, as they stood on the parson's doorstep, two of the captain's own deckhands saw him, and straightway drank themselves into a state of beastly intoxication in trying to decide what the captain could want ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... is in itself a career: it blesses those that call and those that receive. The visitors who used day by day to go and see Lady Gore used to congratulate themselves as they stood on her doorstep on the knowledge that they would find her within, and glad—or so each one individually thought—to see them. She was an attractive person, certainly, as she lay on her sofa. Her hair had turned white prematurely early, it enhanced the effect of the delicate faded colouring ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... without another word, and lurched past the assistant, who flattened himself against a bookshelf to give him room. Jim followed him through the shop; saw him cross the doorstep and turn away down the pavement to the left; stared in his wake until the darkness and the traffic swallowed him; and returned, softly ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... for yourself that anyone going out through that open window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the dark I nearly fell over a dead man who was lying there. I ran back for ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... close to the purring waves that in storms their spray splashed over its very doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily on the front door. This producing no result, she marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer. Miss Rosetta tried the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... side by side with my friend the shepherd, and thereby felt much elated. This was a man who had dwelt all his days in the wilds and was familiar with torrents as with his own doorstep. Now and then a swimming dog would bark feebly as he was washed against us, and flatter his fool's heart that he was aiding the work. And so we wrought on, till by midday I was dead-beat, and could scarce stagger ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... to Colonel Tom, "did you leave that there child sucking that there bottle on the doorstep of a blacksmith's house next to his shop at the edge of a little country town about twenty miles northeast of Galesburg wrapped up in that there ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... in a totally integrated unit. The situation was not without its note of irony, for the purpose of the plan was not to abolish the racial discrimination that critics were constantly laying at the Army's doorstep. In fact, Army leaders, seriously dedicated to the separate but equal principle, were convinced the Gillem Board policy had already eliminated discrimination. Nor was the plan designed to carry out the President's order or prompted by the Secretary of Defense. ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... his shadow withdrawn from the doorstep, and he had his business with Honeycutt. He left the door wide open so that no one might come suddenly upon them and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... placidly. "She shouldn't have been so silly as to think any real person was dead. She might have known all the servants would have been howling on the doorstep then!" ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Romanes rode down to call, on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony grey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed; Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view- holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hole-and-corner scandal had coupled Rachel Minchin's name; it was to be a final utterance in yet another respect, and one of no slight or private significance, as the sequel will show. Within a minute or two of its delivery, Rachel was on her own doorstep for the last time, deftly and gently turning the latchkey, while the birds sang to frenzy in a neighboring garden, and the early sun glanced fierily from the brass knocker and letter-box. Another moment and the door had been ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads. With the opening of a transcontinental line the vast El Dorado of the West was laid practically at the doorstep of Eastern capital. Not only did American pioneers turn definitely toward the West, but foreign emigrants bent their steps in vast numbers in that direction, and capital in steadily increasing amounts made its way there. Towns sprang up everywhere and soon ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... fished for an invitation by stating that I would go down to the corner and wait in a public-house. And down to the corner I went, but, it being church time, the "pub" was closed. A miserable drizzle was falling, and, in lieu of better, I took a seat on a neighbourly doorstep and waited. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... descend, we come upon a group of little children seated about a doorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting oranges into little bits, and playing "party," as children do on the other side of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the skinny hand ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... at the McIntyre residence for the fifth time, and wondered what had become of the faithful Grimes; the butler was usually the soul of promptness, and to keep a caller waiting on the doorstep would, in his category, rank as the height of impropriety. As Kent again raised his hand toward the bell, the door swung open suddenly and Barbara beckoned ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... evening a man stopped at our gate. I was standing on the doorstep breaking sticks. He looked over the top bar of the gate and called to me to know if Mother Barberin lived there. I shouted yes and told him to come in. He pushed open the old gate and came slowly up to the house. I had never seen ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... down the drive. Looking back, waving their caps, the boys carried away a memory of a brave little figure, erect, smiling and lonely on the doorstep. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... do things to him to make him act crazy, and we'll tell her that he's dangerous, and then you can tell him, says he, that she's turned witch, and is doin' them things to him; ''cause a man that has got his first wife buried in front of his doorstep is fool enough to believe most ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... heard the wheels of a light buckboard, and Dawee's familiar "Ho!" to his pony. He alighted upon the bare ground in front of our house. Tying his pony to one of the projecting corner logs of the low-roofed cottage, he stepped upon the wooden doorstep. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... life we can be certain sure of is death, ain't it? But I never did feel any call to be cockin' my eye at death just because I knew it had to come. When it do come I hope there'll be grace given to meet it handsome, and go with it like I'm glad, but I ain't a-goin' to be sittin' on the doorstep lookin' out for it. I'm not hankerin' after heaven yet. There's a long time to stay there. Funny how many people is willin' to be separated from their loved ones, and how they put off joinin' of 'em ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... to Cleveland the Republican candidate did not, during the campaign, leave Canton, though from his doorstep he spoke to visiting hordes. His opponent, in the course of the most remarkable campaigning tour ever made by a candidate, preached free coinage to millions. The immense number of his addresses; their effectiveness, notwithstanding the slender preparation possible for most ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... silent dawn, shadowed in a lonely archway or on an abandoned doorstep the wet, bedraggled body of a hapless moth is sometimes found, her iridescent wings flattened in the mud. Then for a brief moment a cry of protest, or scorn, or pity goes up. The passers-by raise their hands in anger, draw their ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... very doorstep. "Hallo!" said he. "What's wrong? . . . Looks as if you were suddenly reduced to selling newspapers. I'm not buying any, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... certainty was plain to her. She knew she was dying, and a quiet place to die in and a little love to help her over the hard hour seemed to be all she could expect now; the thought of Janet and Christina was her last hope. Thus it was that Janet found her trembling and weeping on her doorstep; thus it was she heard that pitiful plaint, "Take me in, Janet! ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... back to her tasks in the tiny kitchen with a dull, hopeless air. She had just set a pail of soapy water on the back doorstep, preparatory to scrubbing the porch floor, for Susan insisted that this must be done once a week, no matter how clean it might be, when Polly's voice reached her. It was raised in uttering that shocking phrase which her mistress had forbidden, and which Polly refused to unlearn. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and the footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle, watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should be. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... De la Place, the commandant of the fort, to immediately surrender, in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. Around the door are gathered the soldiers of Allen. De la Place and his wife stand upon the doorstep, partially dressed, and, with looks of astonishment, inquire by what authority he demands the surrender of the fort. The number of figures in this picture is twelve. Ten of them represent American soldiers, and are dressed in ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... good-morrow. She never so much as turned a head in his direction. She tolerated his presence and that was all. But wherever she went he shadowed her. He was not obtrusive, but was content to keep at heel, and to be permitted to admire. I have seen him sit for half an hour on a doorstep, a canine monument of patience, waiting for her to come out, and I have seen her travel about the Place in apparently purposeless zigzags and circles for the mere pride and vanity of knowing how closely he would follow her ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... not be too tired on Friday morning, Owen insisted on her leaving the ball-room at two o'clock, and their last words, as he left her on her doorstep, were that she would go to Dulwich before she went to rehearsal. But in the warmth of her bed, not occupied long enough to restore to the body the strength of which a ball-room had robbed it, her ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... all drew up. Quentyns was driving a high dog-cart. He sprang to the ground and ran into the midst of the crowd. Then for the first time he realized what had happened. His young wife, looking as if she were dead, was lying in Lady Malvern's arms. Lady Malvern was seated on a doorstep. Some men were hastily coming forward ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... us two pails of water behind the street-door. "Voila de l'eau pour vous debarbouiller," says she. And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a third member of the Brunell household whom Morrow had observed frequently seated upon the doorstep, or on one of the lower window sills—a small, scraggly black kitten, with stiff outstanding fur, and an absurdly belligerent attitude whenever a dog chanced to pass through the lane. It waited in the doorway each night for ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... hands against the wall and oaken chair, she at last found it and thrust it open, the night without was moonless and starless and stormy, and in its unillumined blackness she saw no trace of the little girl. She went out on to the doorstep and listened, but there was no sound. The wind was high; the perfume of the stocks and wallflowers was strong; far away the sound of the river rushing through the sedges was audible in the intense stillness, an owl hooted, a nightjar sent forth its sweet, ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... On the doorstep a shrill whistle sounded: Nogam calling Karslake's taxi. Victor heard the vehicle roll in and stand panting at the curb, then the slam of its door, the diminishing rumble ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... send the rich man to hell as if it were a matter of course? No crimes or vices are alleged. It must be that a life given over to sumptuous living and indifferent to the want and misery of a fellow-man at the doorstep seemed to Jesus a deeply immoral and sinful life. Jesus exerted all his energies to bring men close together in love. But wealth divides. It creates semi-human relations between social classes, so that a small dole seems to be a full discharge ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... and frightened the women into running for safety to the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... The wife from the window hath seen, and rushed; He hath reached the step, but the blood hath gushed; He hath crawled to the step of his own house-door, But his head hath dropped: he will crawl no more. Clasp Wife, and kiss, and lift the head, Harrington lies at his doorstep dead. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... two or three more sorry-looking houses and finally paused before the gate of the home of Madame's little pupil. The bare grassless yard was filled with old boxes and rubbish. A big lumbering lad of about fourteen sprawled over the doorstep playing with a string. He looked up with vacant eyes, and clutched at the visitors' skirts, muttering and jabbering ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... a letter which he bore when found at Nuernberg one afternoon in 1828, he was born in 1812, left on the doorstep of a Hungarian peasant's hut, adopted by him, and reared in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the doorstep while the driver wound the motor handle. I waited with a sinking heart for the rest ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... along, throwing off company after company, at the streets where they billeted. The battalion dwindled down slowly; my party came to a halt, and the order "Dismiss!" was given, and we went to our billets. The Jersey youth came with me to my doorstep. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... vague feeling of blame for the condition of his family, and shrank from being seen of men's eyes; every one they met must know they had not a place to lay their heads! The world was like a sea before them—a prospect of ceaseless motion through the night, with the hope of an occasional rest on a doorstep or the edge of the curb-stone when the policeman's back was turned. They set out to go nowhither—to tramp on and on. Is it any wonder—does it imply wickedness beyond that lack of trust in God which is at the root of all wickedness, if the thought of ending ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... heard the clang of iron on the doorstep, and looking out, saw that Addison had returned and thrown down the pipe-tongs. "You're a good one!" he exclaimed, catching sight of my woodpile. "Gram and those girls will make a saint of you right off. Splitting kindlings is the royal road to all their good graces. It means a doughnut, or a ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the owner of the yacht proposed, spending half of his money in the purchase of such dainties as Master West fancied, and then, in order to see if they had been cheated, as Bartholomew proposed, they sat down on a doorstep to test ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... bones!" he said—"Not much good to myself or to any one else! You'd better bundle me out on the doorstep!" ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a little, but Diana murmured, "Oho!... Dutch Willie! ready to be on the doorstep, of course, in spite of the hullabaloo you've been causing in the country, unrestrained ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the fortunate! sitting upon the golden doorstep to the kingdom of love! Let him surmise and guess all that concerns Cupid, for he has obtained the inspiration, the genial sympathy," exclaimed Bagger. "Yes," he continued, "just like the Doge of Venice, but not as aristocratic! ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... face, and as the maid bounces out, the cook, seeking a victim, grabs away the gingerbread from the butcher's boy. And that still hungry juvenile slams the door as he leaves and kicks the slumbering cat off the back doorstep. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... of the beneficent contributions of science to the well-being of mankind that were now too familiar for discussion. He had heard a good deal of this particular discovery as applied to men. No doubt Dinwiddie and Osborne would soon be appearing as gay young sparks on her doorstep. It might be the greatest discovery of all time, but it certainly would work both ways. While its economic value might be indisputable, and even, as she had suggested, its spiritual, it would be hard on the merely young. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... recalls another, quite in the same line. One day a gentleman walking down a street observed a little boy seated on a doorstep. Going up to him, he said, "Well, my little chap, how is it you are sitting outside on the doorstep, when I see through the window all the other young folks inside playing games and having a good time? Why aren't you inside joining in the fun?" ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read every word of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further; but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... few old shoes and have a plate of cold rice pudding on the doorstep," I went on. "It's going to afford me a bunch of keen delight to soak you in the midriff with a rusty patent leather and then push a few rice fritters in under your coat collar, ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... that Sunday night, Tatiana had said no word, nor had she moved from her doorstep: it was only when they brought back the dripping body to the village that she stirred, and when she saw it she laughed a dreadful laugh, and the spirit went from her ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... on his doorstep, derided the action of the Glasgow Corporation. No amount of water, he told our representative, could have the least effect in making our modern cities less beastly than they were. For his part, however, he was taking no risks. He had that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... the street door after Fyne, but remained on the doorstep for a while, looking up and down the street in the spirit of independent expectation like a man who is again his own master. Mrs. Fyne hearing her husband return came out of the room where the girl ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the doorstep, and the hinges of the door were deep in rust. No friendly light gleamed at night from the lattice, a beacon to the wayfarer or a message of cheer to the disheartened, since the little house was alone. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... to take her to the opera one night—Drayton had the habit of dropping in for an act or two and then disappearing—but on her own doorstep she tossed off her carriage wrap and sent Martin back ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality; above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven, because the beings who pass ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... walls, or gossiping languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel; but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry, the prevailing characteristic of the few groups of the lowest orders of the people ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in front of the massive safe seemed to lear at him with a bleared eye like that of a toper, who, having spent the night in convivial company, found himself, most unaccountably, on his own doorstep in the gray dawn. ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... charmin'est infants as ever I heerd tell on, includin' them as was kivered over by the robin-redbreasts arter they'd committed sooicide with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere little Tony. He's alvays a playin' vith a quart pot, that boy is! To see him a settin' down on the doorstep pretending to drink out of it, and fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking a bit of firevood, and sayin', "Now I'm grandfather," - to see him a doin' that at two year old is better than any play as wos ever wrote. "Now I'm grandfather!" ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... his carriage in charge, and was soon driving homeward with his sister. No one of the party noticed a young negro, with a handkerchief bound around his head, who followed them until the carriage turned into the gate and swept up the wide drive that led to Warwick's doorstep. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... defiance, went, in Mary Grace's supposed extremity, to the Burmingtons' shop-door, and shouted: 'Peace be to this house,' intending to offer his ministrations, but that Ann, who was in one of her tantrums, positively hounded him from the doorstep and down the garden, in her passionate nonconformity. Mary Grace, however, recovered, and soon became, not merely Miss Marks' inseparable friend, but my Father's spiritual factotum. He found it irksome to visit the 'saints' from house to house, and Mary Grace Burmington gladly ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Thorpe went on, "because he had so much to say about his poverty. To hear him talk, you'd think the bailiffs were sitting on his doorstep. That doesn't prevent his having fast horses, and servants all over the place, and about the best shooting I've seen in the South of England. As luck would have it, I was in wonderful form. God! how I knocked ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... on the next night that Jim, from his perch on the back fence, saw the checkered trousers and tall hat on his own doorstep. Bob, on the grass below, could not see, so Jim held his breath while the door opened and his father admitted Danny O'Flannigan to ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... tell you, girl, I'm mad in love with you, and I'll sit on your doorstep all night 'til you agree ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... not even understand that this was necessary. And learned critics continue to investigate and extol this puzzling production, which reminds one of the famous stone with an inscription which Pickwick found near a cottage doorstep, and which divided the scientific ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... sharply at them for several minutes. In his face one could see the strong play of his thoughts. Afterwards he turned away from them, sat down on the doorstep of the Chinese house and for a long time was buried in thought. Then he rose, walked over to them and, with an evident show of decisiveness in his movements, touched all the prisoners on the shoulder ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... "Hot-foot Hannibal," there figures a conjure doll with pepper feet. Those pepper feet I regarded as peculiarly my own, a purely original creation. I heard, only the other day, in North Carolina, of the consternation struck to the heart of a certain dark individual, upon finding upon his doorstep a rabbit's foot—a good omen in itself perhaps—to which a malign influence had been imparted by tying to one end of it, in the form of a cross, two ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... had better get rid of the smoke, and the organ pipes, both: leave them, and the Gothic windows, and the painted glass, to the property man; give up your carburetted hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus at the doorstep. For there is a true Church wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of cases like his—the case of a man who had committed a murder, who confessed his guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there had never been a case like it in the world. What a good figure Stell would have ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... into our street, arter passing it three times, and the first thing I saw was my missus standing on the doorstep 'aving a few words with the lady next door. Then she 'appened to look up and see us, just as that silly woman was ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... warnings; not by word or sign would she interfere. Let be, let be, it should be fate—it should be no doing of hers. Nellie gave up the struggle at last and taking up her favourite position on the doorstep, with her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees, stared out moodily across the plains, seeking in her brain some way to help. It was not possible to go near them by daylight, the risk of detection was too great, she must wait till it was dark. ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... from that officer, who was searchlighting areas for want of something to do, with an implication of profound purpose. He decided on loneliness and a walk exactly the length of a cigar, throwing its last effort to burn his fingers away on his doorstep. He carried the animation of his thoughts on his face upstairs to bed with him, for it lasted through a meditation at an open window, through a chorus of cats about their private affairs, and the usual controversy about the hour among all the town-clocks, which ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... nothing in it which makes it incongruous with the richest or the plainest tables. It is not overcrowded by the addition of roast goose and plum-pudding; it is not harmed by the addition of herring and potatoes. Nay, it can give flavor and richness to broken bits of stale bread served on a doorstep ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... carried forth, it is hard for the bearers to resist the entreaties from many a doorstep for "one flower, one single flower." Of the thankfulness with which they are received when they reach their destination, we might tell countless instances, and of conversions through the messages they ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... and mixing up families that otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well without a church as with one. But the girl listened listlessly and unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said. Going out of the room she sat for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient wistfulness. But there was no sign of the young doctor's coming back and it was a relief when David came up the river bank. He reminded her that she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters' house, and she arose ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... left the lighted room and stood on the doorstep, Donald pointed to the darkness. "There iss no star, and you will be remembering what John saw when the door opened and Judas went out. 'It wass night'—oh yes, it iss night for me, but it will be ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... and Rover stopped to drink some water out of a mud-puddle. How hungry and thirsty he was! He ran on for miles and miles. At last he saw a cottage with smoke coming out of the chimney. High hills were all around it, and a thick, dark wood was not far away. On the doorstep were two little children. When they saw the ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... sit where he was, I went to open it, and found on the doorstep a half-grown boy in sea-clothes. He had no sooner seen me than he began to dance some steps of the sea-hornpipe (which I had never before heard of far less seen), snapping his fingers in the air and footing it right cleverly. For all that, he was blue with the cold; and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... event and shew the perfectly cheerful contented young commercial clerk running somewhat too fast to catch the bus one morning, and feeling dazed all day long over the office work, and going home in a sort of dimness, and then at his very doorstep, recovering as it were, his ancestral consciousness. I think it was the sight of his wife and the tones of her voice that suddenly announced to him with the sound of a trumpet that he had nothing ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... up the road that led behind the trees, and presently saw Juanita's cottage. A little grey stone house, low-roofed, standing at the very edge of a piece of woodland, and some little distance back from the road. Daisy saw the old woman sitting on her doorstep. A grassy slope stretched down from the house to the road. The sun shone up against the ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... the door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the doorstep. No one? At his feet lay a bundle, from which sounded a wailing cry. He picked it up, looked up and down a vacant street, closed the door, and came back to ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... protected, but she saw children dashed against trees, and her neighbors struck down and scalped before she could plead for them. And little good pleading would have done. An Indian seized Paul. His father and the old servant lay dead across the doorstep. His mother would not let him go. The Indian dragged her on her knees and struck her on the head. Madame Jordan ran out at the risk of being scalped herself, and got the poor girl into her cabin. The Indian came back for Madeleine's scalp. Madeleine did not see him. She never seemed ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... slipped and scrambled along the pavement. Kribbedy, krabbledy, plump! down he sat on a neighbor's doorstep; ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... that question to the Abbe de Baliviere, who answered them in the firmest tone, and with the most cavalier air, that they were far enough from Versailles, and that we had got rid of all such bad people. At the following stage the postilion got on the doorstep and said to the Duchess, "Madame, there are some good people left in the world: I recognised you all at Sens." They gave the worthy fellow ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to find myself in a cellar, but instead discovered that we were in a small square court with the mist of the night about us again. On a doorstep facing us stood a duplicate of the lamp upon the box upstairs. Evidently this was designed to indicate the portals of the Joy-Shop, for Fletcher pushed open the door, whose threshold accommodated the lamp, and the light of the place beyond shone out ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... bare boards were the others, some with heads pillowed on their swags, and every man about as drunk as his neighbour. Yankee Jack lay across the door of the barmaid's bedroom, with one arm bent under his head, the other lying limp on the doorstep, his handsome face turned out to the bright moonlight. The "family" were sound asleep in the detached cottage, and Alice—the only capable person on the premises—was left to put out the lamps and "shut up" for the night. She extinguished the light in the bar, came out, locked the door, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... there; he always is when it is a bright day like this. He sits in an old chair on that broad doorstep in front of his house, and leans on a big, thick stick ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... devoted to Minx, the cat, and really kind if anybody had a headache or toothache, but quite without any sense of discrimination: she would show a traveling hawker into the drawing-room, and leave the clergyman standing on the doorstep, took the best serviettes to wipe the china, scoured the silver with Monkey Brand Soap, and systematically bespattered the kitchen tablecloth with ink. Her love of music was a terrible trial to the medical student of the family on Saturday ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... children, prompt and resourceful as the children of the backwoods have need to be, had loosed the cattle from the stanchions and got them out in time. Neighbours, hurrying up in response to the flaming summons, had found the children watching the blaze enthusiastically from the doorstep, as if it had been arranged for their amusement. Seeing matters so much better than they might have been, Dave was struck with a new apprehension, because Mandy had not returned. It was hardly conceivable that she had failed to see the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... husband. She would have married Tom Mullins if it hadn't been for the kid, and lived in Cardigan Street like her pals. Her thoughts travelled back to Packard's and the Road. She remembered with intense longing the group at the corner, the drunken rows, and the nightly gossip on the doorstep. That was life for her. She had been like a fish out of water ever since she left it. She thought with singular bitterness of Jonah's attempts to introduce her to the wives of the men he met in business, women who knew not Cardigan Street, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... is subject. It is revenge which prompts the unhappy daughter-in-law to throw herself down a well, consoled by the thought of the trouble, if not ruin, she is bringing on her persecutors. Revenge, too, leads a man to commit suicide on the doorstep of some one who has done him an injury, for he well knows what it means to be entangled in the net which the law throws over any one on whose premises a dead body may thus be found. There was once ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... stood on the solid stone doorstep of Master Benjamin Hardy, important ship owner, merchant and financier. The whimsical fancy that so often turned his troubles and hardships into little things seized Robert again. He adjusted carefully his somewhat bedraggled clothing, set the sword and pistols in his belt at a rakish ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with fine large windows and handsome moldings round them—probably portions of the spoils of the ancient erection. A wide portico, supported on stone pillars, stood in front of the chief entrance, and carriages might drive under its shelter to set down the occupants at the doorstep. An air of gloom seemed to hang about it, owing to the huge trees which grew pretty ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... fixed on the doorstep, following me with their regards, and I believed I saw a tear in the left eye of each. What fidelity! I smiled in a sort of indulgent and baronial manner, but I felt touched by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Posy were deposited on their own doorstep, and the big red car flew across the street to give Delight ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the corner of the little, frame school-house and was not disappointed. The schoolma'am was sitting unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... grime of the Flats, a woman sat on the doorstep of a wretched house. Her rounded shoulders slouched wearily—her tired hands were folded in her lap. She stared with dull, listless eyes at the squalid homes of her neighbors across the street. The Interpreter had described the woman to Helen—"a girl with fine ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... a worker and very, very neat. He meant to have his home looking just as fine as he could make it. He brought up some clean yellow sand from deep down in the ground and sprinkled it smoothly over his doorstep. ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... bounding a little space of unpaved ground, rather higher than the lane, there are a few old brick cottages, of very mean and dirty appearance. At the doors of some of the cottages squalid, untidy women were lounging; some of them sitting upon the doorstep, with their elbows on their knees, smoking, and looking stolidly miserable. We were now getting near where the cholera made such havoc during its last visit,—a pestilent jungle, where disease is always prowling about, "seeking whom it can ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... considered so exorbitant that but little encouragement was given him. From here he went to the home of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, where he arrived foot-sore and weary. After ringing the bell, he sat upon the doorstep weeping. Here Mr. Beecher found him and, taking him into ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... hundred cats,' said Anthea, 'besides the cow—and it would have to be a different-sized basket for her; and then I don't know how you'd carry it, and you'd never find a doorstep big enough to put it on. Except ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... hesitating on the doorstep, the door opened, and the Duchessa came forth—tall, sumptuous, in white, with a wonderful black-plumed hat, and a wonderful white-frilled sunshade. She was followed by a young girl—a pretty, dark-complexioned girl, of fourteen, fifteen perhaps, with pleasant brown eyes (that lucent ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... in the possession of Mrs. Hogan, and she left her waggon and charged the latter, who fled in terror, bolting all her doors and throwing up a barricade in the passage. But the stranger was not to be foiled: she sat down on the doorstep and proclaimed the house under siege, announcing her intention to remain until she had wreaked her vengeance on Mrs. Hogan, and offering meanwhile to fight any four women ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... the house; on the doorstep I heard M. Lambercier laughing, laughing, as I supposed, at me. Ashamed to face his laughter, I was hesitating to open the door, when I heard Miss Lambercier, who was anxious about me, tell the maid to get the lantern, and M. Lambercier got ready to come and look for me, escorted by my gallant ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had formerly made below the pulpit and on the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were always put for them. And that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage doorstep, looking fatter than ever in her blue calico dress. She was turning her head to smile at Desiree, who was coming up from the yard, laughing noisily. Then they both vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted with all these revived memories, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... a house into trimness and good order; for as it had been long for sale, of course there was any amount of little repairs that had been left to amuse the leisure hours of the purchaser. Here a doorstep had given way, and needed replacing; there a shutter hung loose, and wanted a hinge; abundance of glass needed setting; and as to painting and papering, there was no end to that. Then my wife wanted a door cut here, to ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... examining the exterior of the houses, stopping now and then to look at a garden or a well-kept house, or trying to get a peep into some room. Mr and Mrs Clinton criticised as they went along, comparing the window curtains, blaming a door in want of paint, praising a well-whitened doorstep.... ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... efficiency carried out in warfare but in looting—for it seems that everything we possessed was systematically classified as good, bad or indifferent—the former and the latter being carefully packed into huge army supply carts, which for five long days stood backed up against our doorstep, leaving only ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... the loving letters they wrote in reply, and Mary remained under the impression that they had cast her off. So when, one bright Sunday morning, old Miss Thornton found a poor woman sitting on the doorstep, Mary rose, prepared to ask forgiveness. Her aunt rushed forward wildly, and hugged her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I looked out of the narrow window. I saw stretching out before me a bare and dull steppe; on one side there stood some huts. Some fowls were wandering down the street. An old woman, standing on a doorstep, holding in her hand a trough, was calling to some pigs, the pigs replying ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... and exclaimed, "Of all lying rascals, I think the reporters for this paper are the greatest. Now, for instance, three or four nights since, a gang of villains assaulted one of my tenants—a coloured man—upon his own doorstep, and nearly killed him, and that, too, without the slightest provocation; they then set fire to the house, which was half consumed before it could be extinguished; and it is here stated that the coloured ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... the mother say? So the little child went into the next room and began to pray. The door was open, and the mother could hear every word. "O God, you have come and taken away father, and mamma has got no money, and the landlord will turn us out because we can't pay, and we will have to sit on the doorstep, and mamma will catch cold. Give us a little home." Then she waited, as if for an answer, and then added, "Won't you, please, God?" She came out of that room quite happy, expecting a house to be given them. The mother felt reproved. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody |
