"Narrator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all persons living in solitude who are afflicted with an ever present and ever renewed grief, he related to the marquis at length the following narrative, which is here condensed, and relieved of the many digressions made by both the narrator ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... ghosts displays considerable literary knowledge, though the anecdote at the end is rather ancient for use today. We last heard it about ten years ago, with a Scotchman instead of a negro preacher as the narrator, and with the word "miracle" instead of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... continued presence of a London cad in the person of a Cumberland man in the latter's native village has been seen in his more recent work. It is worth notice that even in this portion of his story the narrator shows no remotest sign of a disposition to crane at any of the numerous fences which lie before him. He takes them all in his stride, and the reader goes with him, willy-nilly, protesting perhaps, but helplessly whirled along in the author's grip. This faculty ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... of life; and even where it may be thought that prejudice has had something to do with the picture, still the subject lives, and is not a mere bundle of contradictory or even of superficially compatible characteristics. Secondly, Clarendon is at his best an incomparable narrator. Many of his battles, though related with apparent coolness, and without the slightest attempt to be picturesque, may rank as works of art with his portraits, just as the portraits and battle pieces of a great painter may rank together. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of them can at all compare in splendor and beauty to St. Petersburg. It is a city of palaces, and palaces of the most gorgeous character. The display of wealth in the palaces and churches is so great that the simple truth told about them would incur to the narrator the suspicion of romancing. England boasts of her regalia in the Tower, her crown jewels, her Kohinoor diamond, etc. I can assure you that they fade into insignificance, as a rush-light before the sun, when brought before the wealth in jewels and gold ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... whether he should halt, now that summer was on the wane, or snatch under the walls of Moscow the triumph which Vilna, Vitepsk, and Smolensk had promised and denied. It is stated by that melodramatic narrator, Count Philip Segur, that on entering Vitepsk, the Emperor exclaimed: "The campaign of 1812 is ended, that of 1813 will do the rest." But the whole of Napoleon's "Correspondence" refutes the anecdote. Besides, it was not Napoleon's habit to go into winter quarters in July, or to rest ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Lord have mercy on her and guide me, the narrator of these incidents, in His ways, so that when the last bell will be rung to summon me before Him I need not hesitate but answer joyfully: I am ready, I ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... incidents of my childhood so perfectly as, by hearing them repeated, I since have been: but I knew enough of them to be persuaded the discourse that I had heard could relate only to me. I paused. I gazed. My eyes were riveted upon the narrator. At length I exclaimed—'What I have just heard, sir, has excited very strange ideas. They seem almost impossible: and yet I am persuaded they are true. Pardon a question which I cannot refrain to ask. Surely I cannot be ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his conduct. It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective. With ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... brothers, of whom the writer alone survived, quarrelled over money matters about eight years before the murder of the fifth baronet. The youngest, Charles, had entangled himself in a disastrous speculation in the city, and bitterly reproached Alan and David (the narrator) because they would ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... dramatic style. This ruse, so to call it, serves a double purpose; it hangs the glamour of distance over the pages, and it puts the reader in direct communication, as it were, with the characters in the book. The narrator is garrulous, and often far from artistic with his scenes and incidents; but it is Caskoden doing all this, not Mr. Charles Major, and we never think of bringing him to task! Undoubtedly it is good art to do just what Mr. Major ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... The narrator of this sad tale, has touchingly described in no exaggerated terms the sufferings of the wretched crowd who were exposed for nearly three days and nights to the worst of physical and mental evils—hunger, thirst, cold, and nakedness—in ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... The tale, which is very wittily told, and contains some fine serious lines on the lion, is supposed to be related by Peter Ronsard, in the position of on-looker and moraliser; and the character of the narrator, after the poet's manner, is brought out by many cunning little touches. The poem is written almost throughout in double rhymes, in the metre and much in the manner of the Pacchiarotto of thirty years later. It is worth noticing that in the lines spoken ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... himself. He maundered and wandered, and stopped, and went on, and lost one thread and took up another, and got into a perfect maze. And while he was thus entangled, a servant came in and brought him a note, and put it in his hand. The unhappy narrator received it with a sapient nod, but was too polite, or else too stupid, to open it, so closed his fingers on it, and went maundering on till his story trickled into the sand of the desert, and somehow ceased; for it could not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of Komag-Nils' stories, and wanted to show us that where he came from, down at Doenoe near Ranen, in Helgeland, there were as many and as wonderful stories and boats, as with us in Nordland. The narrator was a little, quick-speaking fellow, who sat the whole time rocking backwards and forwards, and fidgetting upon the bench, while he talked. With his sharp nose, and round, reddish little eyes, he resembled a restless sea-bird on a rock. Every now and then ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... Atlantic is now too common an event to stay, even for a moment, the pen of a narrator. From Boston, Horace—no longer Sir Horace—wrote ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... maniac before him," said the sexton, rising, in the excitement of the moment, and assuming the attitude he described; "and then," continued he, in a hollow voice, "at that moment came the thunder and the flash, and the guilty woman fell dead upon the floor!" The countenance of the narrator expressed all ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... markets of the world. Upon the victory of that day all these contending interests, this vast alternative in the future, swayed and trembled. Out, then, upon that vulgar craving of those who comprehend neither the vast truths of life nor the grandeur of ideal art, and who ask from poet or narrator the poor and petty morality of "Poetical Justice,"—a justice existing not in our work-day world; a justice existing not in the sombre page of history; a justice existing not in the loftier conceptions of men whose genius has grappled with the enigmas which ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of her extravagant inventions. But repeatedly as he said this to himself, he could not believe it for a moment; a strange shudder passed through him; unable to utter a word, he stared at the beautiful narrator with an immovable gaze. Undine shook her head sorrowfully, drew a deep sigh, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... another told exactly and at length how he had seen the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man's hand; it could not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah's had been accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... grey fox returned and whistled very uncannily, and on the third night he did it again. And on the following morning a man came and asked the Indian to help him to bury the neighbour who had died during the night. They went to the house of the dead man, and "then," the narrator concluded, "I knew that the grey fox had said the truth, for the grey fox never ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... career. 5. My boys were as yet untouched by the atmosphere of the school. 6. Even in winter the windows were always wide open. 7. It is for you especially (use the word "intention") that I have composed this little tale. 8. Remember that I do not want you to speak in this way. 9. The narrator stopped short with one hand in the air. 10. Do you not miss your friend a good deal? 11. The college was divided into three departments: the Senior School, the Middle School and the Junior School. 12. As for him, he might smile at me as much as he liked, I could not like him. ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... him with an opportunity to increase his glory. His victories over them obtained for him the honours of a second triumph, and restored peace to his kingdom. Now, Emily, I again resign the office of narrator to you. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their dramatic simplicity ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... story, but my friend, after exhausting his powers of speech and metaphor, was fain to wind up his tale with a most lame and impotent conclusion. I now give it to the reader, not from a wish to punish him as I was punished, but because from the prolixity of the narrator he necessarily most minutely described scenes and customs, which, though they had nothing on earth to do with the "Dragon's Mouth," may prove interesting to the reader, as illustrating the peculiarities of the people amongst ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... Commons, finding it necessary to destroy the validity of some of his own acts, brought forward Sir John D'Oyly. He was brought forward before us, not as a witness in his own person for the defence of Mr. Hastings, but as a narrator who had been employed by Mr. Hastings as a member of that Council which, as you have heard, drew up his defence. My Lords, you have already seen the public agency of this business, you have heard read the public letter sent to the Nabob: there you see the ostensible part of the transaction. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... addicted to lying, relating a story to another, which made him stare, "Did you never hear that before?" said the narrator. "No," says the other: ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... one of the porches of his church with mosaic, in smalt, marbles, and gold; animal and human forms were introduced in the ornament. But this may not have been work actually executed on the spot, for another narrator tells us that Suger brought home from Italy, on one of his journeys, a mosaic, which was placed over the door at St. Denis; as it is no longer in its position, it is not easy to ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... also; the treasure must still be on Formentera. Who could find it? The rustic audience trembled with emotion, never doubting the existence of such treasure because of the respect inspired in them by the age of the narrator. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the Baldr story given in the almost worthless saga of Hromund Gripsson in support of a theory. In it "Bildr" is killed by Hromund, who has the sword Mistilteinn. It must be patent to any one that this is a perverted version of a story which the narrator no longer understood. ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... me of Mr. Calhoun and his doings?" he asked presently. "He is lucky in having so perfect a narrator of his histories—yet so unexpected ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had himself introduced Delancey at the house where Acme resided. Whether her charms really tempted the friend to endeavour to supplant George, or whether he considered the latter's attentions to the young Greek to be without definite object, and undertaken in a spirit of indifference, the narrator could not explain; but it was not long before Delancey considered himself as a principal in the transaction. Acme, whose knowledge of the world was slight, and whose previous seclusion from society, had rendered ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... resentment against him as this young creature's husband." Here is another, less dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him when he was at Bonchurch. "The idea of my being brought up by my mother (me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once took notice of when I was a little child, and who lives in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... giving them the history of the discreditable ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He stopped him ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... at the picture conjured up by this vivid description, and it was a full minute before the narrator could ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... fellow townsman, Sim Jeffreys, whining and groaning to beat the band," continued the narrator. "It seems that he had got caught in a trap, and expected to be frozen to death to-night, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... homes. This was evidenced by the remark of a small boy who, at the end of a story relating the necessary sequence of activities common to the countless thousands of heroic mothers, washing and ironing the family linen, waggishly shook his finger at the narrator, and with a beaming smile, said: "Now you know that it is my Ma and Tootsie you are telling about!" John had not discovered the fact that the story which reflected the daily service of his beloved mother reflected equally well the service of thousands of other mothers. He saw only the ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... discover their origin. It is evident that the narratives of the no-compromise party of the right or the left can have but slender value where controverted points are concerned; whence the conclusion that the authority of a narrator may vary from page to page, or even ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... referring to this event, the two young men listened with unmistakable interest. It had taken place on the same road which they had just followed, and the narrator, the wine merchant of Bordeaux, had been one of the principal actors in the scene on the highroad. Those who seemed the most curious to hear the details were the travellers in the diligence which had just arrived and was soon to depart. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... She also continued to invent "novels" for Romanzo's benefit, and many a half-hour the two spent in the carriage house—Aileen aglow with the enthusiasm of narration, and Romanzo intent upon listening, charmed both with the tale and the narrator. In these invented novels, there was always a faithful prince returning after long years of wandering to the faithful princess. This was her one ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... a suitable pause, to collect hearers or whet their expectations, begins his story. It is a picturesque sight—of the Arab with his wild and graceful gestures, and his auditory, hushed into deep and child-like attention, seated at the edge of the rushing tide, while the narrator moves from side to side, and each accent of his distinct and musical voice is heard throughout the Cafe. The building directly opposite is another house, of a similar kind in every respect There are a few small Cafes, more select as to company, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... narrative appears in a recent number of The American Magazine, a respectable periodical in the United States. It comes, it will be observed, from the narrator of the 'Last Conversation of a Somnambule,' published in The Record of the 29th of November. In extracting this case the Morning Post of Monday last, takes what it considers the safe side, by remarking—'For our own parts we do not believe it; and there are several ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... time units were reorganised, all batteries were increased to six guns, and there was plenty of work to keep everyone busy. The narrator of these rambling notes, after a period of two years' service with the Brigade, here transferred his allegiance to the sister howitzer battery of the Division, known as "The Grey Battery," from the fact that all the horses were of that colour. Sentiment ran strong for his "old love" and ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... narrator, and was in every way a wideawake woman, about thirty-seven years of age. Among other questions they were asked if they could read, etc. "Read," said Ann. "I would like to see anybody (slave) that could read our way; ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... many Indians in reference to these details," says the narrator, an Augustin monk writing in 1554, "and they have all confirmed them as eye-witnesses" (Lettre sur les Superstitions du Perou, p. 106, ed. Ternaux-Compans. This ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... hill?" said my narrator, pointing in the direction of a hill skirting some corn-fields before us; "there, close to that clump of elm-trees, stood Eric Rensel's cottage. Descending that hill, I met Thora, returning homewards, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the complete and sudden change of place. The wanderer, as I will hereafter call the narrator of the parable, sees himself immediately transported from the place near the lion's den to the top of a wall, and does not know how he has come there. Later he comes down just as suddenly. And in still other parts of the story there occurs just as rapid changes of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Caucasus, and told me much about the landowners; about their amusements, and the way they treated the peasantry. His stories were interesting, and had a beauty of their own; but they produced on my mind a most unfavorable impression of the narrator himself. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... had their place in this universal comedy. The passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral. La Fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the Nile of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... him, in a very desponding mood." His visitor urged him to bethink himself of publishing something, and Hawthorne replied by calling his attention to the small popularity his published productions had yet acquired, and declaring that he had done nothing and had no spirit for doing anything. The narrator of the incident urged upon him the necessity of a more hopeful view of his situation, and proceeded to take leave. He had not reached the street, however, when Hawthorne hurried to overtake him, and, placing a roll of MS. in his hand, bade him take it ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening pages, before sitting down to tell his story. He does not intend to frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within the range of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... were attending one of these frolics at Fort Myers and everything went well until one of the number became intoxicated, terrorizing the Negroes with bullying, and fighting anyone with whom he could "pick" a quarrel. "Big Charlie" an uncle of the narrator was present and when the red man challenged him to a fight made a quick end of him by breaking ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... night, amidst the din of waves and storms, he hears wild shrieks upon the air, and by him float huge forms, dim and mysterious, from which fancy is prone to build strange phantoms; and oft from aged sailors he gathers legends and wondrous tales suited to his calling; whilst the narrator's mysterious tone and earnest voice and manner attest how firmly he ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... lips thousands and thousands of his countrymen had hung entranced. He was, what is less generally remembered now, perhaps the ablest and most accomplished diplomatist ever in the public service of the United States. Jared Sparks was a profound student of history, somewhat dull as a narrator, but of unerring historic judgment. I suppose he would be placed by all our writers of history with great unanimity at the head of American historic investigators. James Walker was a great preacher and a profound thinker. In the judgment of his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the birthplace of Anaxagoras, a citizen of no mean city in the history of philosophy, who is the narrator of the dialogue, describes himself as meeting Adeimantus and Glaucon in the Agora at Athens. 'Welcome, Cephalus: can we do anything for you in Athens?' 'Why, yes: I came to ask a favour of you. First, tell me your half-brother's ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... member—averred to him that she had seen a ghost. She was 'sitting with an old gentleman, who was engaged in reading the newspaper; and she saw the figure of a woman advance behind him and look over his shoulder. The narrator then called to the old gentleman to look around. He did so rather pettishly, and said, "Well, what do you want me to look round for?" The figure either vanished or went out of the room, and he resumed the reading of his newspaper. Again the narrator ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... pocket," he commanded, and Mike obeyed. Mary Ann, fresh from her journey, began at once to give a spirited account of her daughter's best room and general equipment for housekeeping, but she suddenly became aware that the tale was of secondary interest. When the narrator stopped for breath there was a polite murmur of admiration, but her husband boldly repeated his question. "Where's Nora?" he insisted, and the Quins looked at each ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... narrator, with a covert smile at Tinkler's unnecessary scribbling, 'was apparently sorry to see an old friend in a homeless and penniless condition, for to help him on in the world he gave him the sum of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... that you in America would take him to heart. He is a tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable freedom from any thought of after-benefit—even from the desire that we should read ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... bottle, man!" said I, thrusting the brandy-bottle into his hand—but stop, I'm telling too much,' muttered the narrator, startled at the look I turned upon him. 'But no matter,' he recklessly added, and thus continued his relation: 'In his desperate eagerness, he seized the bottle and sucked away, till he suddenly dropped from his chair, disappearing under the table ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... "The narrator of this fact is now absent from the United States, and I do not feel at ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the Monitoriale adversus Italogalliam, which some take to be Hotoman himself, has this Passage relating to the Francogallia: "Quomodo potest aliquis ei succensere qui est tantum relator & narrator facti? Francogallista enim tantum narrationi & relationi simplici vacat, quod si aliena dicta delerentur, charta ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... an artist, and by that of fortune and of education to a worldly man and a traveller. The abstract speculations of the metaphysician would not have sufficed for him, nor would the continuous and simple creation of the narrator who narrates to amuse himself, nor would the ardor of the semi-animal of the man-of-pleasure who abandons himself to the frenzy of vice. He invented for himself, partly from instinct, partly from method, a compromise between his contradictory tendencies, which he formulated in a fashion slightly ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... narrator. "Well, ma'am, I went into the kitchens, the larder, the pantries, the cellars, and all sorts of places, and still no cook! Do you know, she really was nowhere! Actually, ma'am, the cook ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... occasion Mr. Bessel has several times repeated this statement—to myself among other people—varying the details as the narrator of real experiences always does, but never by any chance contradicting himself in any particular. And the statement he makes is in substance ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... teller, as a concession to Occidental standards. Whatever substitutions I have been able to detect I have removed. In practically every case, not only to show that these are bona fide native stories, but also to indicate their geographical distribution, I have given the name of the narrator, his native town, and his province. In many cases I have given, in addition, the source of his information. I am firmly convinced that all the tales recorded here represent genuine Filipino tradition so ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... assert that every object in the inscriptions and papyrus-rolls means this or that. It is therefore very possible that in many of the Egyptian inscriptions which have come down to us a great deal is told of the stones found here on the Elgon, whilst we, misled by the great value which the narrator ascribes to the said stones, think that some precious stone now highly valued was referred to, and that generations of Egyptian slaves have spent their lives here in cruel toil, in order to procure for their masters an object of luxury which we to-day carelessly kick aside when it accidentally ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... soft contralto voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as per foregoing bald description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of these chronicles, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his trade. On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa." Being cross-examined and asked what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he replied that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a manuscript, containing an "Account of the Earl of Rochester, Captain Kendall, and the Narrator's Journey to Salisbury with King James, Monday, Nov. 19. to ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... a true poetic gift, but his talents were little effectual. From the West humorous poetry was produced by Francis Bret Harte (1839-1902), born in Albany, in The Heathen Chinee (1870) and similar verse, but he is better remembered as the artistic narrator of western mining life in his numerous stories and novels. Verse of a similar kind also first brought into literary notice John Hay (1838-1905), in Pike County Ballads (1871), who also wrote in prose; but his reputation was rather won ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... other, without ever having said or thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... plot for a book!" she sighed ecstatically when the narrator had finished. "And what a picture for one of the characters!" She fell to studying Peace with a ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Charity founded by the will of Richard Watts in 1579, to give lodging and entertainment for one night, and fourpence each, to "six poor travellers, not being rogues or proctors". It furnished the theme to the Christmas cycle of stories, The Seven Poor Travellers, the narrator, who treats the waifs and strays harboured one Christmas eve at the Charity to roast turkey, plum pudding, and "wassail", bringing up the number to seven, "being", as he says, "a traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... anecdotes are probably false, (a thing that hereafter I shall have much pleasure in making out to the angry reader's satisfaction,) but to a dead certainty those anecdotes, in particular, which bear marks in their construction that a rhetorical effect of art had been contemplated by the narrator, —we may take for granted, that the current stories ascribing modern wars (French and English) to accidents the most inconsiderable, are false even in a literal sense; but at all events they are so when valued philosophically, and brought out into their circumstantial ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... reader has already learned, without the absolute intervention of the author as narrator, the incidents occurring to Rienzi in the interval between his acquittal at Avignon and his return to Rome. As the impression made by Nina upon the softer and better nature of Albornoz died away, he naturally began to consider his guest—as the profound politicians ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The supposed narrator, Pamphylax, gives in these bracketed verses, on the authority of an imagined Theotypas, a doctrine John was wont to teach, of the trinal unity of man— the third "person" of which unity, "what Is", being man's essential, absolute ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... I give it to you as near as may be in Mr. Grass's own words. The old gentleman, his father, I knew well when I was a boy; his residence was next to my father's for several years in Kingston. He was a genuine sample of an honest, plain, loyal German. The narrator was about eleven years old at the time he migrated with his father and the company of Loyalists from New York to 'Frontenac,' and therefore had a distinct recollection of all the incidents he relates. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... had a very bad attack of brain fever,' says she, 'and I feel its effects sometimes yet, but that will soon pass away,' says she, 'and I'll be as right as ever again,' I did not mind this," continued the narrator addressing Guy confidentially, "for the worst of them sometimes talk as sensible as you or me, but, for all that, I hoped in my heart 'twas the truth, and I kept on coming to see her, and talking common sense to her, like I would to you or any other ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... concerned. Impromptu meetings were held at every house in turn to discuss the coming event, and the latest bits of information regarding it were retailed with embellishments proportionate to the imagination of the accidental narrator. Not a soul in Joppa but knew every proposed feature of the entertainment better than the hosts themselves. The old people said it would be damp and rheumatic and would certainly be the death of them. The young people said it would be divine, and quite worth ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... had never seen, (for she was the self-same sister that had been locked in the great old fashioned sleigh-box, when she was taken away, never to behold her mother's face again this side the spirit-land, and Michael, the narrator, was the brother who had shared her fate,) Isabella thought, 'D-h! here she was; we met; and was I not, at the time, struck with the peculiar feeling of her hand-the bony hardness so just like mine? and yet I could not know she was my ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... representation of the ideas of sorcery and magic which for centuries were entertained in this part of the world. They have indeed one obvious defect, which it is proper the reader should keep constantly in mind. The mythology and groundwork of the whole is Persian: but the narrator is for the most part a Mahometan. Of consequence the ancient Fire-worshippers, though they contribute the entire materials, and are therefore solely entitled to our gratitude and deference for the abundant supply they ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Great Bell."—The story of Ko-Ngai is one of the collection entitled Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, or "A Hundred Examples of Filial Piety." It is very simply told by the Chinese narrator. The scholarly French consul, P. Dabry de Thiersant, translated and published in 1877 a portion of the book, including the legend of the Bell. His translation is enriched with a number of Chinese drawings; and there is a quaint little picture of Ko-Ngai leaping ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... of Amru has more than once been the scene of the same sublime spectacle; even within the lifetime and before the eyes of the narrator of this tale have Moslems, Christians, and Jews united there in one pious prayer, which must have been acceptable indeed in the ears of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... himself, to have his sympathies enlisted in behalf of what is pure, honorable, and praiseworthy, and to have his indignation excited against what is low, ignoble, and unworthy. The true fabulist, therefore, discharges a most important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue. In this consists the superiority of the Fable over the Tale or the Parable. The fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet, under a merry guise, to ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... again he was so prolix in it that Joseph, wishing John to decide on the strict matter of it, and not to be lost in details, some of which were true and some of which were false and all confused in Philip's telling, interrupted the narrator, saying that he would give all the money that was strictly his, but his father's he couldn't give nor his partner's. We've many camels, he said, in common, and how are these to be divided? Nor is it right, it seems ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... became a little stronger she made him tell her about the battles he was in. Mr. Mills had come to tell her that he had killed the man who killed Ad. Darby was not a good narrator, however, and what he had to tell was told in a few words. The old woman revived under it, however, and her eyes had ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... The narrator turned, saw a woman near and, not being a common person nor a coarse workman but a clever salesman and a householder, lowered his voice for the rest of the tale. During it the other man ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of course it was too much!" echoed the veracious narrator. "But who could help it? Couldn't have so many dead men, you know, without plenty of blood! At one time there were so many of our fellows lying in a long win-row near the top of the hill, that when the rebels made an advance we punched holes through the wall ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Bat's recital contained nothing that might not have been posted in eminent respectability on a church warden's door. Like fresh fruit passed through a mouldy cellar, the facts came from the medium of the narrator with the unclean contagion of cellar mould. The next narrator would not pass on the facts. He would pass on ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... some narrator's voice was explaining and showing the course of the ship on a chart, and just where it ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... of the "tub" had been duly performed, and the freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard upon the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose at my ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... I used to hear the Uncle Remus stories from the lips of one of our old family servants, a negro to whom I was devotedly attached. These stories were narrated to me in the negro dialect with such perfect naturalness and racial gusto that I often secretly wondered if the narrator were not Uncle Remus himself in disguise. I was thus cunningly prepared, "coached" shall I say, for the maturer charms of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. With Uncle Remus and Mark Twain as my preceptors, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... The light, lithe body of the soldier could glide over the roof with the silent swiftness of a cat "on the rampage;" the same animal, shod with walnut-shells, suggests itself as an apt, though irreverent comparison for the priestly fugitive. To use the narrator's own words—occasionally more forcible ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... curing sheds, in the houses and cottages, nothing else was talked about; and stories and reminiscences innumerable were brought out, chiefly to prove that Malcolm had always appeared likely to turn out somebody, the narrator not seldom modestly hinting at a glimmering foresight on his own part of what had now been at length revealed to the world. His friends were jubilant as revellers. For Meg Partan, she ran from house to house like a maniac, laughing and crying. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero of the Boer War, who looks at this one from the tragic angle of an invalid chair, is, apart from a habit of petulant and not very profound grousing at Governments in The Daily Rail manner, a sport ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... essay in imaginative realism; ruthlessly candid and self-revealing, but free from that tiresome obsession of the ultra-realists that everything that has ever happened is equally important in retrospect. The narrator, Vanya Gombarov, a Russian Jew, discourses reflectively and detachedly, as it were from behind a mask, to an English artist friend about his early childhood in his own land and the dismal adventures of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Here the narrator rang off. A wild stampede and a frantic sending-off of messengers took place at the other end of the telephone. Nearly all the workers on either side had disappeared to their various club-rooms and public-house bars to await the declaration of the poll, but enough local information ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... was that the doctor himself remained awake when such a powerful narcotic was administered, the narrator did not lose his presence of mind nor his absence of conscience, and said the doctor had, during the operation, held his nose tight with his two fingers. The doctor had since been offered thousands of tomans for the precious bottle, but would ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... ornamented with abundant quotations from the Persian poets, with whose compositions the orator seemed familiar. The retinue of the physician, such excepted as were necessarily detained in attendance on the camels, thronged up to the narrator, and pressed as close as deference for their master permitted, to enjoy the delight which the inhabitants of the East have ever derived from ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... between Elijah and the prophets of Baal and the victory of Daniel over the jealous presidents and princes of Darius. In "The First Christmas Tree," as in many others of these stories, a third person is the narrator. But the hero may tell his own adventures. "I did this. I did that. Thus I felt at the conclusion." Instances are Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and Stevenson's "Kidnapped." But whether in the first or third person, the story holds us by ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... When she goes abroad she rides in a mortar, which she urges on with a pestle, while she sweeps away the traces of her flight with a broom. She is closely connected with the Snake in different forms; in many stories, indeed, the leading part has been ascribed by one narrator to a Snake and by another to a Baba Yaga. She possesses the usual magic apparatus by which enchantresses work their wonders; the Day and the Night (according to the following story) are among her servants, the entire animal world lies at her disposal. On the whole she is the most ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... and occasion, ready to imitate on every opportunity —listen with fair attention. They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale, possibly by its wording, and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator. They hear an old story, one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live. This is of some slight value, though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school. The story has no special ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Jackson's Narrative, in Capt. J. E. Erskine's Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London, 1853), pp. 475-477. The narrator, John Jackson, was an English seaman who resided alone among the Fijians for nearly two years and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Sir Robert and Lady Sale paid the Queen a visit at Windsor, while Miss Liddell was maid-of-honour in waiting. The lively narrator of the events of these days describes Lady Sale, as tall, thin, and rather plain, but with a good countenance, while Sir Robert was stout. Lady Sale told these wondering listeners, in a palace that she started ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Henry, upon that occasion, to appear in unison with the text of the Immortal Bard, "dressed" the part in a most elaborate "neck-or-nothing tile." Upon being expostulated with by the manager, he triumphantly referred to the description of the chivalrous Prince in which the narrator ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that he was rich, he must forget that he was a father." His child was taken, clothed in rags, beaten and spurned. Obedience compelled the father to look upon his child wasting with pain and grief, but such was his love for Christ, says the narrator, that his heart was rigid and immovable. He was then told to throw the boy into the river, but was stopped in the act ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... and bygone times. In the seventeenth century criticism made idols of its ancient models; it acknowledged no serious imperfections in them; it set them up as exemplars for the present and all future times to copy. Let the genial Epicurean henceforth write like Horace, let the epic narrator imitate the supreme elegance of Virgil,—that was the conspicuous idea, the conspicuous error, of seventeenth-century criticism. It overlooked the differences between one age and another. Conversely, when it brought Roman patricians and Greek oligarchs on to the stage, it ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the narrator, the latter undoubtedly the author himself, is a strange being. Like the guide of Gil Bias on his adventures, he is called a demon, and he glares and emits smoke and fire. But he proves amenable to argument, and quotes the story of the washerwoman, to show how it was that he became ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... jumps up with the pain, and rushes out with the bench on his back, telling his companions that "Myself" has done it. He dies miserably, and the dog, fox, rat, and wolf bury him under the dung of a white mare. "Since this," adds the narrator, "there has been no devil more." There is a very similar story from Swedish Lappmark, in which the man who outwits and blinds a giant tells him that ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... daughter's apparent love for it. He gave his opinion of Hungerford and of Holway, the latter's friend. When John asked questions which implied a belief that the situation was not really as bad as the narrator thought it, Captain Dan, growing warmer and more anxious to justify himself, proceeded to make his statements stronger. He quoted instances to prove their truth. Serena was crazy on the subjects of Chapter and ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the progress of the fighting. The boys were holding splendidly, indeed were gradually eating into the enemy front. They brought weird stories of his comrades, incidents pathetic, humorous, heroic, according to the temperament of the narrator. But from more than one source came tales of Knight's machine gun section to which McCuaig was attached. Knight himself had been killed soon after entering the line, and about his men conflicting tales were told: they ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator. But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... another boy named Sexton, were now left awaiting their fate: the former, the narrator of this melancholy tale, thus describes ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Harold, Canto II. stanza xlix. line 6, and note 21, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 130, 181. It is a hard matter to piece together the "fragments" which make up the rest of the poem. Apparently the question, "How name ye?" is put by the fisherman, the narrator of the first part of the Fragment, and answered by a monk of the fraternity, with whom the Giaour has been pleased to "abide" during the past six years, under conditions and after a fashion of which the monk disapproves. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... seen in the interior; they were only three feet high, and had horns growing out of their heads; they lived in a large town and had plenty of food. The Makololo pooh-poohed this story, and roundly told the narrator that he was telling a downright lie. "We come from the interior," cried out a tall fellow, measuring some six feet four, "are we dwarfs? have we horns on our heads?" and thus they laughed the fellow to scorn. But ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... wisdom and knowledge had spread all round the country, and it naturally brought him visitors, with their doubts, and fears, and cases of conscience. Among these a singular instance is recorded in the Life of Badman. 'When I was in prison,' says the narrator, 'there came a woman to me that was under a great deal of trouble. So I asked her, she being a stranger to me, what she had to say to me? She said she was afraid she should be damned. I asked her the cause of those fears. She told me that she had, some time ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the golden key,'" continued the narrator, "'thou shalt return forthwith to thy palace, and the same night, when the Vetala Angi has eaten and drunk his fill, thou shalt in his presence lay the key upon the palm of thy left hand, thus—'" (here the Babu quietly took up a key hanging from ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the narrator, in cheerful tones, as one larking with history, "between a king of England and his rebels. He was in the thick of ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... cavalrymen slackened their gait and both turned their backs. The Russians and Poles, at this terrible moment, recognized each other as brothers, and rather than spill fraternal blood, they extricated themselves from a combat as if it were a crime. That is the version of an eyewitness and narrator, a ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... an account of a visit paid at will, which is reported at first hand in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." The narrator, Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make an experiment of ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... Listen to him and you shall afterward rejoin the spirit, which you must now leave behind. She is accepted and will be ever here, as young and as happy as she was when I first called her from the land of snows." When this voice ceased, the narrator awoke. It was all the fabric of a dream, and he was still in the bitter land of snows, and hunger, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spoken ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... matter over, it was objected that such a story might offend peaceable folk, because it must deal too much with blood and gunpowder. Mr Kingston, although famed as a narrator of sea-fights, was a lover of peace, and he said that his story would not encourage the war spirit. Those who cared chiefly to read about battles might turn to the pages of "British Naval History." ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... recorded his unlucky tumble into a fountain at Versailles, when attempting a feat of agility in presence of the fair Hornecks. Water was destined to be equally baneful to him on the present occasion. "Some difference of opinion," says the fair narrator, "having arisen with Lord Harrington respecting the depth of a pond, the poet remarked that it was not so deep, but that, if anything valuable was to be found at the bottom, he would not hesitate to pick it up. His lordship, after some banter, threw in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... particularly in his short stories, he is at his best in his portrayals of the simple sturdy seamen and countryfolk of his native region, which are often refreshingly arch in manner. Hagaln, who is a talented narrator, frequently succeeds in catching the living speech and characteristic mode of expression of his characters. The Fox Skin (Tfuskinni) first appeared in 1923, in one of his collections of short stories (Strandbar).—He has also been successful as a recorder and editor ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... world the record of what, looked at as an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found its ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... to consider some facts which, while they are rather in the domain of the grave recorder of historical events, than in that of the narrator of personal experiences, are yet essential to the comprehension of the scenes in which Surrey and Francesca took such ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... were streaming down David's cheeks. He had snatched up and was kissing the precious bits of metal the narrator ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... lower than that of the Emperor of the New Rome. He sent the names of the Consuls whom he had appointed to Constantinople, an act which might be represented as a mere piece of formal courtesy, or as a request for their ratification, according to the point of view of the narrator. With a similar show of courtesy, or submission, the accession of Theodoric's descendants to the throne was, when the occasion arose, notified to the then reigning Emperor. And there were many limitations which the good sense and statesmanlike feeling of the Ostrogothic ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... was intended as a sarcasm against his own story, so he left the room in indignation, and sent his friend, according to the old plan, to demand satisfaction or an apology from the gentleman, who had, he thought, insulted him. The narrator of the skate story coolly replied, "Weel, sir, gin yer freend will tak' a few feet aff the length o' his tiger, we'll see what can be dune about the breadth o' the skate." He was too cautious to commit himself to a rash or decided course of conduct. When the tiger was shortened, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... together with particulars of the attacks upon Secretary Seward and his son Frederick a half-hour later than the attack upon the President, is furnished in the contemporaneous record of Secretary Welles, a singularly cool observer and clear narrator. "I had retired to bed about half-past ten on the evening of the 14th of April," writes Mr. Welles, "and was just getting asleep when Mrs. Welles, my wife, said some one was at our door.... I arose ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne |
