Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Passer-by   Listen
noun
Passer-by, passerby  n.  One who passes by, especially casually or by chance; one not directly involved in some action; a passer.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Passer-by" Quotes from Famous Books



... and after asking a passer-by took a tram-car that carried him through the southern quarter of the town into a wide road, lined by well-built stone houses. Standing in small, neat gardens, they ran back to the open country, with a ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... Aquilian law. Masters became personally liable for certain wrongs committed by their slaves with their knowledge, where previously they were only bound to surrender the slave. /2/ If a pack-mule threw off his burden upon a passer-by because he had been improperly overloaded, or a dog which might have been restrained escaped from his master and bit any one, the old noxal action, as it was called, gave way to an action under the new law to enforce a general personal liability. /3/ Still later, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... and, what was more to the point, that he would die without telling where he had found gold. Sothern ministered to him day and night, letting no one in, having his own meals sent here, sitting by the bunk or at the doorstep, smoking. When a passer-by asked, "How's he gettin' along?" Sothern's answer was ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... a kind of momentary likeness to her child's, and following that figure with never-wearying perseverance, till some light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her daughter's. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, "You don't know a poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?" and when ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell

... poor persons, who did not care how uncomfortably they lived, to seek out some distant hollow, or the farthest and most hidden side of a hillock, and there build themselves such a low, small hut, as should escape the notice of any passer-by, should they chance to go that way. Little by little, making low fences which looked like the surrounding gorse bushes, they enclosed small portions of the waste land, or, as it is called, encroached upon the common; and if they were able to keep their encroachment ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... little farther on in the same street he stepped over the body of a handsome young woman, distinguished by the length and beauty of her hair. To obtain her bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands; afterwards—but God knows how long afterwards—a passer-by, more pitiful than his fellows, had put her out of her misery with a spit, which still remained ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... arrived. To delay longer would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance free—more than free—welcome, as if all were household friends—to every passer-by, whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window. This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter. Then—as if the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... know not who it was." "By Allah," said the eunuch, "thou liest, for there is none awake here but thou! So needs must thou know him." "By Allah," replied the stoker, "I tell thee the truth! It must have been some passer-by who recited the verses and disturbed me and aroused me, may God requite him!" Quoth the eunuch, "If thou happen upon him, point him out to me and I will lay hands on him and bring him to the door of my lady's litter; or do ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... One passer-by repeated it to another, and friend shouted to friend across the street. "Have you heard the news?" was the almost invariable question when people accosted one another, and at least one "Thank God!" was contained ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... rarely passer-by is seen; But—it might be with twenty years between, Or haply less—at unfixed interval There would a semblance be of festival. A Seneschal and usher would appear, And troops of servants many baskets bear. Then ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Elysees, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden—as "The Avenue." Its pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... soft, white draperies, her face made an attractive picture for the passer-by. Mrs. McAlister's girlhood had passed; a certain girlishness, however, would never pass, and her clear blue eyes had all the life and fire they had shown when, as Bess Holden she had been the leader in most ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... before me like the Finger of God, Whose Body might have been concealed below among the crowd of human bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that reason, with them. And so even to-day in any large provincial town, or in a quarter of Paris which I do not know well, if a passer-by who is 'putting me on the right road' shews me from afar, as a point to aim at, some belfry of a hospital, or a convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap at the corner of the street which I am to take, my memory ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... on the street her step was so light on the pavement that she was rather like a rose petal blown fluttering along by soft vagrant puffs of spring air. Under her flopping hat her eyes and lips and cheeks were so happy that more than one passer-by turned head over shoulder ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau

... sooner on her feet than she flew to the window and flung back the latch, with the intention of calling the first passer-by. At that moment a policeman came walking along the pavement. She leant out. But the brisk evening air, striking her face, calmed her. She thought of the scandal, of the judicial investigation, of the cross-examination, of her son. O Heaven! What could she ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... Bitters, Mr. Goff," said the clerk, hastily, as a passer-by was drawn into the store by ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... Fleet Street the passer-by cannot fail to be attracted by the picturesque, timbered house which faces Chancery Lane. This unique survival of the past, which has been carefully restored within recent years, has often been described ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... Puss passer-by, within this simple tomb Lies one whose life fell Atropos hath shred; The happiest cat on earth hath heard her doom, And sleeps for ever in a marble bed. Alas! what long delicious days I've seen! O cats ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... came up the street, and they saw that it contained the Marquis of Ribaldo, his daughter, and her duenna. They followed a short distance behind it until it entered the courtyard of a stately mansion, which they learnt on inquiry from a passer-by belonged to the Duke of Sottomayor. The streets were already crowded with people in holiday attire, the church bells were ringing, and flags and decorations of all kinds waved along the route that ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... preside over wealth and commercial prosperity. In the houses of the poor it is nearly always placed in the room facing the street; and Matsue shopkeepers usually erect it in their shops—so that the passer-by or the customer can tell at a glance in what deities the occupant puts his trust. There are many regulations concerning it. It may be placed to face south or east, but should not face west, and under no possible circumstances should it be suffered to face north or north-west. One explanation ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... to inquire what kind of patties were inviting the passer-by on Mr Altham's counter. They were a very large variety: oyster, crab, lobster, anchovy, and all kinds of fish; sausage-rolls, jelly, liver, galantine, and every sort of meat; ginger, honey, cream, fruit; cheese-cakes, almond and lemon; little open tarts called bry tarts, made of literal cheese, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... by a mass of shapeless walls, of mud hovels, gray and dusty looking as the soil, together with some fragments of turreted walls, in whose shelter about a thousand humble huts raised their miserable adobe fronts, like anaemic and hungry faces demanding an alms from the passer-by. A shallow river surrounded the town, like a girdle of tin, refreshing, in its course, several gardens, the only vegetation that cheered the eye. People were going into and coming out of the town, on horseback and on foot, and the human ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... itself? And so men did not die in Egypt; they were assassinated. The murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. But often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... his guests—young Wainwright—leaping down the stairs. He looked up with a surprised question. But Stephen ran past him, across the office, without heed. He gained the door, rushed down the steps, and shouted. The boys ceased playing, a passer-by came to a stop, out of the saloon opposite stepped Miguel. Miguel hastened across, drawing his hand over his mouth as he ran. Stephen opened ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate for himself They ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... was silent, and sat in a somewhat bent attitude as though he were desirous of attracting no attention, yet his eyes were keen as the coach went forward at a jogging pace, and if any passer-by seemed to show any interest in the conveyance he was quick to ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... prices, are multiplying rapidly and taking the bread from the mouth of the poor hawker. But the snake-charmer seems safe from that kind of competition. It is difficult to forecast a time when a broad signboard in Rampart Row will invite the passer-by to visit Mr. Nagshett's world-renowned Serpent Tamasha, Mungoose and Cobra Fight, Mango-tree Illusion, etc. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the artillery at Toulon, when in fact he was in Marseilles as a mere passer-by on his journey to Nice, and in Toulon as a temporary adjunct to the army of Carteaux, having been made an active participant partly through accident, partly by the good will of personal friends. In the same way he also ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... tired a little, so they sat and dangled their feet and watched the tiny scalloped blue wavelets dance in the current. A passer-by stopped ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... letters need be forwarded, for he would be constantly moving, but Mrs. McCunn at the Neuk Hydropathic would be kept informed of his whereabouts. Presently he stood on his doorstep, a stocky figure in ancient tweeds, with a bulging pack slung on his arm, and a stout hazel stick in his hand. A passer-by would have remarked an elderly shopkeeper bent apparently on a day in the country, a common little man on a prosaic errand. But the passer-by would have been wrong, for he could not see into the heart. The plump citizen was the eternal pilgrim; he was Jason, Ulysses, Eric the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... at the General Election of 1832, and my father loved to describe him as he appeared riding in Hyde Park on a grey Arabian mare, "with his hat, narrow-brimmed, high up on the centre of his head, sustained by a crop of thick, curly hair," while a passer-by said: "That's Gladstone. He is to make his maiden speech to-night. It will be worth hearing." The annual rencounter took place on the 21st of July, 1886. After dinner, Gladstone drew me into a window and said: ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Tom. This is also out of the question. The interment of Brimstone Billy was the first which had taken place for four years; and his is the only grave which bears the trace of recent digging. It is alone on the north bank; and the inhabitants shun it after night fall. As each passer-by during the day throws a stone upon it, it will soon be marked by a large cairn. The graveyard, with a ruined stone chapel still standing in its midst, is on the south side. You may send down a committee to investigate the matter as soon as you please. There can be no ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw

... but his remembrance of the limited resources of the town made him somewhat doubtful. The small windows on each side gave him scarcely enough light, but he did not open the door, fearing the curiosity of a chance passer-by. One cannot be too careful in maturing ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... been to Anderson's yet?"—"No."—"Well, then, I want you to attend to that Business of the Stone to-morrow. Don't forget the Size—Four Feet by Eighteen Inches; and nothing but the Name and Date. The Time's come at last. There's no Place for me but the Cold Grave, where the Pensive Passer-by may drop a Tear over the Mournful Fate of Jack ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... On wings of mercy would my spirit speed. And each should know, before his journey's end, That in the other dwelt a loving friend. From zoo and jungle, and from cage and stall, I would translate each inarticulate call, Each pleading look, each frenzied act and cry, And tell the story to each passer-by; And of a spirit's privilege possessed, Pursue indifference to its couch of rest, And whisper in its ear until in awe It woke and knew God's all-embracing law Of Universal ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... din that we desired to get rid of. We had traveled in search of verdant meadows, brawling streams and sweet-scented woods. We could not find solace and relaxation in sitting at the windows of our respectable inn to watch every passer-by on the dusty boulevard below, in spending half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... jump down, when again the sound of a footstep checked and terrified him. If it were coming up from the village, the passer-by would of course see him. If it were coming from the school, the same result would be fatal to him. The only hope was, that it was a retreating step of some one who had passed while his attention was drawn off by the noise of those who ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... to working together, and they trotted along in fine style, causing many a passer-by to stop and gaze at the team and the gay load of young people in admiration. The horses were well equipped with bells, and each of the youths had provided himself with a good-sized horn, so that noise was not lacking as they dashed along past the stores ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... the Abruzzi cloak, without the barrel-organ, without the monkey. My first impulse was to go up to him, but an uneasy feeling of I do not know what held me back; I felt that I blushed and I did not move from my place. Every now and then a passer-by stopped for a moment and made as if to search his pockets, but I did not see a single copper fall into the old man's hat. The place became gradually deserted, and one beggar after another trotted off with his ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... own shoulders. It was not, therefore, until the evening before the wedding that the Hodskiss family arrived in force, filling Aunt Jane's small dwelling to its utmost capacity. The swelling figure of the contractor, standing beside the tiny porch, compelled the passer-by to think of the doll's house in which the dwarf resides during fair-time, ringing his own bell out of his own first-floor window. The countess and Lord C—- were staying with her ladyship's sister, the Hon. Mrs. J—-, at G—- Hall, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... great elms that fringed the Sussex lane a girl sat musing; on its side in the grass at her feet a bicycle, its back wheel deflated. She sat on the grassy bank with her hat in her lap, quite content to wait until the first passer-by with a repairing outfit in his pocket ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... infrequent passer-by had paused long enough to look into Aunt Deborah's gray eyes beneath the cherry-trimmed bonnet, he would have seen therein the eagerness that made their owner scorn the sofa-pillows. It sparkled and beamed, now on this side, now on that, as she spied blue gentians blossoming in a ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... of New York" was taken on a Standard Orthonon plate, about 9:30 A.M., with a twenty minute exposure. Instead of a lens, the photographer used a piece of black paper pierced with a pin. A wise passer-by who knew a thing or two about photography noticed the absence of the lens. "How do you think you are going to take a picture without a lens?" he asked. "With a pin-hole," she replied. He watched her with pitying interest. "She thinks she is taking a picture," he said to ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America

... and of the noblemen and gentlemen who had rallied to his cause, was yet quiet when compared with London. The booths along the main streets were filled with goods, and at these the apprentices shouted loudly to all passer-by, "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack?" Here was a mercer exhibiting dark cloths to a grave-looking citizen; there an armorer was showing the temper of his wares to an officer. Citizens' wives were shopping and gossiping; groups of men, in high steeple hats and ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... of course, to every passer-by, as it is the pride of the profession to lead the etiquette of the country; and, passing remarks upon the badness of the fences, the staunchness of the barns, and the coziness of the dwellings, soon leave the cultivated ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... buried in this now waste spot. No traces remain of the old meeting-house save the cellar and the narrow stone steps, sadly leading nowhere, which once were pressed by the feet of the children of the Pilgrims, but now are trodden only by the curious and infrequent passer-by, or the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... fight, or a struggle between some half drunken men, draws a crowd on the street and brings the police to the spot. At other times there is a rush of human beings and a wild cry of "stop thief," and the throng sweeps rapidly down the side-walk overturning street stands, and knocking the unwary passer-by off his feet, in its mad chase after some unseen thief. Beggars line the side-walk, many of them professing the most hopeless blindness, but with eyes keen enough to tell the difference between the coins tossed into their hats. The "Bowery Bands," as the little ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... woman. There was no word spoken. Together the two lifted Garrison's unconscious form, carried it quickly to the shrubbery, fumbled about it for a minute or two, struck a match that was shielded from the view of any possible passer-by, and then, still in silence, hastily quitted the park and vanished in one of the glistening side streets, where the rain was ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... Tressady kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that specially appealed to him; nor was he likely to attract Maxwell. Nevertheless, he could have wished their ten minutes' talk to last interminably, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... transact his business with the king at the Louvre. But, unknown to him, two of us always went a little ahead, while two followed closely in the rear. We carefully avoided drawing attention to ourselves, but our eyes sought every passer-by and examined every window where ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... fifteenth century. It is almost permissible to infer that the street contained, in addition to the regular inns, an assortment of open counters, where the commodities on sale were cried aloud for the benefit of the passer-by; ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And through it all, the mob runs and pitilessly mows down with sword and knife as it goes, and plunders and sacks ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... triangular "Square" could remember, and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They now overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing so much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenant for the old house from the stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great "stream" through the square; the stream passed a furlong and more away, beyond the intricacy of tenements ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... courage to undeceive him. I met nothing further on my way worthy of record, save and except a sheep's trotter, dropped by the old pensioner in one of his zig-zaggings to the extreme left; but having no particular use for the trotter at the time and in the circumstances, I left it to benefit the next passer-by. I finished my journey of eighteen miles in capital style, and was within five minutes' walk of Fochabers when the horn of the mail-guard was sounding up the street. And, entering the village, I found the vehicle standing opposite the inn door, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... with the sad music of the water. Ah, it calls me out into the dusk. In the lonely lane there is no passer-by, the wind is up, the ripples are rampant ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore

... he reminded her simply. "If I answer you as an outsider, a passer-by—mind, though, one who thinks about men and women—I should say try one of her lesser sins, one of the sins that leaves you clean. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lift their heads to the skies, and all the old stone walls and hedgerows are covered with trailing vines and blooming flowers. The air is rich with song of birds, sweet with perfume, and the blossoms gaily shower their petals on the passer-by. Overhead, white, billowy clouds float lazily over their background of ethereal blue. Cool June breezes fan the cheek. Distant knolls are dotted with flocks of sheep whose bells tinkle dreamily; and drowsy hum ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... friend—passed quickly enough. He was not at all ashamed of his country-made clothes as he watched the whirl of carriages in Piccadilly, or lounged under the elms at Hyde Park, with his beautiful silver-white and lemon-colored collie attracting the admiration of every passer-by. Nor had he waited for the permission of Lieutenant Ogilvie to make his entrance into, at least, one little corner of society. He was recognized in St. James's Street one morning by a noble lady whom he had met once or twice at Inverness; and she, having stopped her carriage, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... our lively Western cities. Soon after I had set up an office, I had a trifling experience which may serve to point a moral in this direction. I had placed a lamp behind the glass in the entry to indicate to the passer-by where relief from all curable infirmities was to be sought and found. Its brilliancy attracted the attention of a devious youth, who dashed his fist through the glass and upset my modest luminary. All he got by his vivacious assault was ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... see, O passer-by The thirty thousand men of Thessaly, Slain by the Aetolians and the Latin band, That came with Titus from Italia's land: Alas for mighty Macedon! that day, Swift as a roe, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... story; scouts were carrying about aeger dinners; pastry-cook boys were bringing in desserts; shabby fellows with Blenheim puppies were loitering under Canterbury Gate. Many stared, but no one knew him. He hurried up Oriel Lane; suddenly a start and a low bow from a passer-by; who could it be? it was a superannuated shoeblack of his college, to whom he had sometimes given a stray shilling. He gained the High Street, and turned down towards the Angel. What was approaching? the vision of a proctor. ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... Wardour-street by this time, looking at the dimly-lighted shops where brokers' ware of more or less value, old oak carvings, doubtful pictures, and rusted armour loomed duskily upon the passer-by. At the corner of Queen Anne's Court he paused, and peered ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... a gate marked "private," there stands a shed wherein the storks are kept warm in winter, behind wooden bars; and between these bars stork-heads have a way of dropping at the toes of the favoured passer-by, like to action of a row ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... small houses, few of which were less than a century old. The streets were narrow and crooked, mostly named after bygone admirals or forgotten sea-fights; the romantic and picturesque quarter of a great naval port to the casual glance of a passer-by, but heartbreaking to any except the most courageous resident on account of its overcrowded and tumbledown condition. Yet it lacked the dreariness of an East End slum, for the sea winds blew down the narrowest streets and alleys, sailors and soldiers ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... He would have to learn the ways of the nobility, their manners and their customs. And he would have to find a disguise which would allow him to move about the land. Serfs were too likely to be questioned by the first passer-by who noticed them. Serfs belonged on ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... the second's being so. If there has not been any watchfulness, it is not at all likely that there will be much steadfastness. Just as with a man going along a crowded pavement, a little touch from a passer-by will throw him off his balance, whereas if he had known it was coming, and had adjusted his poise rightly, he would have stood against thrice as violent a shock, so, in order that we may stand fast, we must watch. A sudden assault will be a great deal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... siege or battle challenges the wandering eye, Never breach of warlike onset holds the curious passer-by; ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... which is dissatisfied with mere hypotheses, which loses itself amidst this historical soil where generations rise one above the other, and hesitates between the fifteen or twenty restorations of the Forum that have been planned on paper, each of them as plausible as the other. But to the mere passer-by, who is not a professional scholar and has not recently re-perused the history of Rome, the details have no significance. All he sees on this searched and scoured spot is a city's cemetery where old exhumed stones are whitening, and whence rises the intense ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... on the Vesper Club!" shouted a belated passer-by. The crowd swarmed around from Broadway, as if it were ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... belated worshipper, who intended to take part in the procession. He alighted hurriedly from his horse, and tied it to the brass knob of a street-door, and then walked close up to the procession. However, he did not join it, but stood still and contemplated every passer-by with prying eyes. Now he seemed to have found him whom he sought, for a smile illuminated his sunburnt face, and he advanced directly toward Father Haspinger, who was singing again: "Have mercy upon our valor, and grant us war!" But on perceiving the young lad who was approaching ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... the hungry fed, some sort of shelter provided, the next step was to prepare for the resumption of business and the reconstruction of the city. Within ten days from the first outbreak of flames the soldiers had begun to impress the passer-by into the service of throwing bricks and other debris out of the street in order to remove the stuff from the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... have seen another light,—that which came from Dolly's windows. She had been hard to suit about her arrangements; she would not have candles lit, for she did not wish an illumination that might make the interior visible to a chance passer-by; and yet she would not have the shutters shut, for the master of the house coming home must read his welcome from afar in rays of greeting from the windows. So she made up the fires and left the curtains ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... a delightful place, especially of an evening, when its drowsy alcoves were kindled with the brightness of lamps shining on the rows of volumes. Many a passer-by would stumble down the steps from the street in sheer curiosity; others, familiar visitors, dropped in with the same comfortable emotion that a man feels on entering his club. Roger's custom was to sit at his desk in the rear, puffing his pipe and reading; though ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... excellent Carlo Dati"). It represents Morus as very ill in Florence and thinking himself dying. Should he die in Florence and be buried there, he would have a poetic inscription over his grave to the effect that while alive he also had cultivated the Muses, and begging the passer-by to remember his name ("Qui legis haec obiter, Morique morique memento"). How kind Dati had been to him—Dati, "than whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses, the ornament ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Watkins were the talk of the neighborhood, and many a passer-by looked curiously up at the bright windows and clean white curtains, between which in summer time bloomed the loveliest flowers, and the earliest snow-drops and crocuses in spring, in the hope of seeing two fair faces which had rather ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Beast," stood a more modest structure. Brown, unpainted, unclapboarded, it stood by the wayside. Its log walls were stuccoed with mud, and in the wide mouth of the doorway was the brawny housewife, bare-armed, peering from beneath a slatternly red sun-bonnet, while over the doorway the passer-by read the letters in red chalk upon a ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell

... which they swore had been carrying "stiff-uns" [14] all night, and "could not go not none at all". Nor were they far wrong; for the horse, after scrambling a hundred yards or two, gradually relaxed into something between a walk and a trot, while the driver kept soliciting every passer-by to "ride," much to our sportsmen's chagrin, who conceived they were to have the "go" all to themselves. Remonstrance was vain, and he crammed in a master chimney-sweep, Major Ballenger the licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, of Streatham (a customer of Jorrocks), ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... which have ejected the original owners and themselves taken possession. They have a strikingly saucy look, and possess the advantage of being able to turn their heads right around while the body remains immovable. Being of an inquisitive nature, they stare at every passer-by, and if the traveller quietly walks around them he will smile at the grotesque power they have of turning their head. When a young horse is especially slow in learning the use of the reins, I have known the cowboy ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... and unkempt, make a pretence of keeping the crossings clean; who first sweep, and then hold out a small palm for the penny, dodging the horses' hoofs, and just escaping by a hair's breadth the wheels of truck or omnibus in their attempts to secure the coin, if some pitiful passer-by stops at ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... a circuit of the principal part of the town, which is soon accomplished, for it offers nothing externally to arrest the passer-by for a moment: the streets are narrow, irregular, and ill-paved; the houses as dirty as the smoke of bituminous coal can make them, and, though substantially built, are in general wholly ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... worts, which still festoon the forest, but the export has almost ceased from Ceylon. Along with these the trunks of the larger trees are profusely covered with other delicate creepers, chiefly Convolvuli and Ipomoeas; and the pitcher-plant (Nepenthes distillatoria) lures the passer-by to halt and conjecture the probable uses of the curious mechanism, by means of which it distils a quantity of limpid fluid into the vegetable vases at the extremity of its leaves. The Orchideae suspend their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... showed a blank closed stone exterior to the passer-by, like an old grey secretive face. As they approached it Colwyn, with a slight movement of his head, drew his companion's attention to the upper windows which belonged to Nepcote's flat. The ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... now a passer-by hands her a penny; Just see her bright glance twinkle over to Benny, The little hunchback sitting there on the curb-stone, Close up to the lamp-post, that he may disturb none. His crutches beside ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... him out of earshot at the critical moment when he was about to disclose the elusive identity. The Lady Who? Jerton could scarcely run after a total stranger, break into his conversation, and ask him for information concerning a chance passer-by. Besides, it was desirable that he should keep up the appearance of looking after the luggage. In a minute or two, however, the important personage, the man who knew, came strolling back alone. Jerton summoned up all his courage ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... windows. A strong breeze came from the gorge, and the trees which lined the one stony street all leaned away from the mountain. Rupert had never been in the place before, but he had heard of Windtown. Was there a hotel? he asked a passer-by. No; but they took lodgers at Smith's, up the hill. At Smith's he, therefore, put up his horse and secured supper and bed. Until late at night he walked up and down Windtown's one street, and even climbed ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... proportion his clamorous petitions to the length of the ascent. {56} The old soldier in 'Gil Blas' stood by the wayside with a carbine laid across two sticks, and solicited, or rather enforced, the alms of the passer-by, by an appeal to his fears no less than to his pity. The readers of the old drama will recall to mind the shifts and devices of the 'Jovial Beggars;'—how easily a wooden leg was slipped off and turned into a bludgeon; how inscrutable were the disguises, and how copious and expressive ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... child came into the world, the father had the right to reject it. In this case it was laid outside the house where it died from neglect, unless a passer-by took it and brought it up as a slave. In this custom Athens followed all the Greeks. It was especially the girls that were exposed to death. "A son," says a writer of comedy, "is always raised even if the parents are in the last stage of misery; a daughter is exposed ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... hearing of the case. Day after day she waited and watched for some tidings from her husband starting at every unusual sound, growing almost faint at the opening and shutting of a door, and even imagining she saw a familiar form as she sat at her window and eagerly scanned every passer-by. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... signboards, street corners, and familiar buildings you may laugh at the country boy who is afraid to go to a big city because he may get lost, but he knows what being lost means at home and he fails to realize when he is in a city how easy it is to ask the nearest policeman or passer-by the way home. Most city boys will be lost in the woods within five minutes after they leave their camp or tent. If you have no confidence in yourself and if you are in a wilderness like the North woods, do not venture very far from ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... theater. He was astonished at this, for she was not playing in the new piece. Why then should she have told him this falsehood, and what could she be doing at the Varietes that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the count unconsciously left the paperweights and found himself in front of a glass case full of toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of pocketbooks and cigar cases, all of which had the same blue swallow stamped on one corner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In the early ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... his work and prospects at Cloon, of the long drives over the "mountainy roads," and the often imaginary ailments of the patients who demanded his attendance, and their proneness when really ill to take the advice of priest or passer-by on sanitary matters rather than his own. "But I'll get out of it, I hope, some day," he said, looking at Louise; "when I get a few more paying patients and the infirmary, I can give up ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... thick fence of living box-wood, closely interlaced with the honeysuckle and the common rose, screened a few plots of rarer flowers, a small circular fountain, and a rustic arbour, both from the sea breezes and the eyes of any passer-by, to which the open and unsheltered portion of the garden was exposed. When I passed through the opening cut in the fence, I was somewhat surprised at not immediately seeing Isora. Perhaps she was in the arbour. I approached the arbour trembling. What was my astonishment ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... down the stream there were certain eyes that saw him from the banks of the river, and when he landed and fell, faint and helpless, Baldassarre's hands closed on his throat; and next evening a passer-by found ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... the time of the reformation of LUTHER in the sixteenth century, and with no other epoch. The great truths then promulgated, of which "justification by faith" was the cardinal one, electrified the whole world, as the loud roaring of a lion would startle the passer-by. These were immediately responded to by the multitudinous errors of the Anabaptists and others, who thought to set up the kingdom of GOD in this world, and before the resurrection, by putting to death the ungodly and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... he remained quite still, and Margery grew impatient. She discerned the track of his feet in the dewy grass, forming a line from the house steps, which announced that he was an inhabitant and not a chance passer-by. At last ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy

... drowned all conversation in the moving way and roared "hats" at the passer-by, while far down the street and up, other batteries counselled the public to "walk down for Suzannah," and queried, "Why don't you buy the girl ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... early in the season, there had been great rains, and the water might still be higher than usual. Seeing neither hillside nor meadows, nor river, but a heath, level and white as a mantle of snow, Germain stopped, looked about for a house, and waited for a passer-by, but could find nothing to set him right. Then he retraced his steps and reentered the wood. But the mist thickened yet more, the moon was completely hidden, the roads were execrable, and the quagmires deep. Twice the gray ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... like not hired mourning. It seemeth but noise. Here I will stay and let my tears drop where they will not be counted by the passer-by." ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... Procter Sailor's Song from "Death's Jest Book" Thomas Lovell Beddoes "A Life on the Ocean Wave" Epes Sargent Tacking Ship off Shore Walter Mitchell In Our Boat Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Poor Jack Charles Dibdin "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" Emma Hart Willard Outward John G. Neihardt A Passer-by Robert Bridges Off Riviere du Loup Duncan Campbell Scott Christmas at Sea Robert Louis Stevenson The Port o' Heart's Desire John S. McGroarty On the Quay John Joy Bell The Forging of the Anchor Samuel Ferguson Drifting Thomas Buchanan Read "How's My Boy" Sydney ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... body was not only visible but audible, and that not merely to the casual passer-by, but also to the material body which had for the moment parted with one of its vital constituents ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... place of refuge. She found it in a clump of trees and bushes growing by the roadside; and creeping in amongst them, our Madelon's slim little figure was very well concealed amongst the shadows from any passer-by. Eight o'clock had struck as she left the convent. "I will wait till nine," she resolved. "An hour will not be very long, and it will be quite dark by that time." And so she did wait, with the most determined impatient patience, through ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... upon the religious, beat him and abused him in no measured terms, and took from him his poor cloak. Francis asked to have the cloak back, alleging mildly, that what had been taken had done no injury to the vineyard; and that good feeling required that this assistance should be given to a passer-by who needed it. But, not having succeeded in procuring its restoration, he went to the proprietor of the vineyard, from whom he had no difficulty in getting it back, after having told him what had happened. He then conversed with him on heavenly ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the searching blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in one direction—watching—watching; ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... time dawn was advancing over Paris, and the streets were beginning to fill with early workers. He inquired from a passer-by the most likely locality in which he could find a cab, and the man civilly conducted him to the Rue de Rivoli. Thence he was not long in reaching the Grand Hotel, where he found the astonished cocher of his first vehicle still safeguarding his bag and arguing fiercely ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... steps to be let down, he jumped on the sidewalk, and, running ahead of his servants, knocked at the door of Miss Brandon's house. It was by no means one of those modern structures which attract the eye of the passer-by by a ridiculous and conspicuous splendor. Looking at it from the street, you would have taken it for the modest house of a retired grocer, who was living in it upon his savings at the rate of two or three thousand a year. It is true, that from the street, you could see ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... below. In a few days men could go the length of a regiment without being exposed in the least, crawling along the tunnels all dug with bayonets, knives, and a few wornout shovels. At some of these angles the passer-by would be exposed, and in going from one opening to another, only taking the fraction of a second to accomplish, a bullet would come whizzing from some unseen source, either to the right or left. As soon as one of these openings under a ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... expiring within the sacred precincts. One sees poor pilgrims, sinking under illness and hunger, dragging their weary bodies along the colonnade; and when they no longer have the strength to stretch out a hand to the passer-by, they place a little jar beside the mat upon which they are laid, to receive what charity may bestow upon them. As they feel the last moment approach, they cover themselves with their ragged clothes, and very often a day passes before it is ascertained ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... hills and far away. Every now and then he would stop a passer-by and ask him if he ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston

... a passer-by and did not hear the remark. Frankie had been paying better attention. She smiled and looked into his ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... the ancient olive-trees are gnarled and massive, the foliage soft and tremulous. The corner that George has chosen for us is raised above the road by a kind of terrace, so that it is not too easily accessible to the curious passer-by. Across the road we see a gray stone wall, and above it the roof of the Anglican Bishop's house, and the schools, from which a sound of shrill young voices shouting in play or chanting in unison rises at intervals through the day. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... languages; while during most days of the week there was a constant succession of gay assemblies, banquets, dances and nuptial parties, while music, singing, and cheerful sounds might be heard by the passer-by in every street. What a fearful change was in a few short years to be wrought in this state of things! Shrieks of agony, cries of despair, hideous, brutal slaughter, blood flowing down the doorsteps of every house, flames bursting forth from ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... to Elspeth, so they sat down by the roadside and cried with their arms round each other, and any passer-by could look who had the heart. But when night came, and they were in their garret bed, Tommy was once more seeking to comfort Elspeth with arguments he disbelieved, and again he succeeded. As usual, too, the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie



Words linked to "Passer-by" :   passer, passerby, pedestrian, walker



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org