"Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... successfully wrestled with his raging desires until this moment, he is at length no longer able to resist the temptation of invading the sanctity of Nisida's sleeping-place. Already has he set his foot upon the very threshold of the little side-cabin, having traversed the spacious saloon, when a hand is laid upon his shoulder, and a voice behind him says in a low tone, "Your highness has forgotten the fate of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... back again?" cried she, in accents soft as milk, yet bitter as gall. "Why do you cross my threshold, you false witch, when there is nothing more to blight and blast? Did you think I should not know you, that you dared to come? I should know you among all the fair-faced ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... is Eve; the soft star lights him to his home; she meets him as his shadow falls on the threshold! she smiles, and their child, stretching forth its tender hands from its mother's ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and that the class could not allow such an act of treachery. Speug was so full of honest feeling that he saw Thomas John safely within the door, and, since he threatened an unreasonable delay, assisted him across the threshold from behind. There is no perfectly full and accurate account extant of what took place between twelve and one that day in the mathematical class-room, but what may be called contributions to history oozed out and were gratefully welcomed by ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of patronage abolished, and the popular right virtually secured; and, fearing lest his people might be led to abuse the important privilege conferred upon them, and calculating aright on the abiding influence of his own character among them, he gave charge on his deathbed to dig his grave in the threshold of the church, that they might regard him as a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might speak to them as they passed out and in. The inscription, which, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, is still perfectly legible, concludes ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... on the roof. On this account wild doves usually frequent towers, to which they may fly from the fields of their own accord, and return.[177] The other kind of pigeons is tamer and are wont to seek their food at the very threshold of a house. This kind is usually white in colour, the wild variety being mottled but without any white. From these two stocks a third or mixed variety has been developed for commercial profit and these are collected in the place which some call a peristereon (pigeon ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... At the threshold of the mill door my roommate and I encountered Mr. Norse. There was irony in the fates allotted us. She was eager to make money; I was indifferent. Mr. Norse felt her in his power; I felt him in mine. She was given a job at twenty-five cents a day and all she could make; I was ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... yonder,' said Nixon, 'how dared you take such a rascal as that across your threshold at such a time as this? If the squire should dream you have a thought of peaching—I am only speaking for your good, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the Residency well, which is about central, journeying either way. Without doubt many of the shells in the lagoon are dead. But why are they dead? Without doubt the living shells have a very different background set for imitation. But why are these so different? We are only on the threshold of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor—a pleasant walk from Market Square—is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door you step into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted courteously, waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the Wentworth mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though it is no longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gloves and a case of eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the "Bootjack Hotel," Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must out—that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated), he paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of delicious music that a well-known voice ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Masnavi i Ma'navi, deals with evolution and its corollary, reincarnation, stating that there is one way of remembering past existences, and that is by attaining to spiritual illumination, which is the crown of human evolution and brings the soul to the threshold of divinity. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... self-evident truth. Bunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what others might feel, but simply telling in plain unadorned language what he had felt. The experience was a very tremendous reality to him. Like Dante, if he had not actually been in hell, he had been on the very threshold of it; he had in very deed traversed "the Valley of the Shadow of Death," had heard its "hideous noises," and seen "the Hobgoblins of the Pit." He "spake what he knew and testified what he had seen." Every sentence breathes the most tremendous earnestness. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... door opened, and the chief made his appearance; he did not condescend, however, to cross the threshold, but leaned against the door post to prevent falling, being by some degrees more drunk than any of his people. A more finished picture of a savage cannot be conceived. He was a tall, broad shouldered man; with a prodigiously ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... monks, judged by nineteenth-century standards, were unobservant of natural beauties. They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like. The [Greek: pontion te kumaton anerithmon gelasma] is very rare. But the Greeks stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct. They did not, like the monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent and omnipresent, above all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine government. We ourselves having somewhat overstrained the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... four objects his eyes really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took everything comfortable ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... away again, and she pushed her way through the crowd and hurried down the Vicolo and into the house numbered thirteen. She was very breathless, being tightly laced and unused to so many stairs, and she stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold. She was glad to sit down on one of the chairs by the open window. The bare room no longer seemed conventual now that its unaccustomed air was stirred by the movement of her fan and tainted by the faint scent of her ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... on the rocky or the grassy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany, geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... remained motionless at the window for a few moments, when the door was again opened. The chief of police appeared on the threshold. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... which found no expression in speech. He stooped down and fondly kissed his children and then opening the door, with satchel in hand, he darted out, only looking back when his wife called to him, as she stood with her three little ones on the threshold— ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... ten minutes' walk in the country brings one to real primitive woods. The town has not yet overflowed its limits like the great Northern commercial capitals, and Nature, wild and unkempt, comes up to its very threshold, and even in many ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one financier, then to the other, he stood there on the threshold, awaiting his masters' pleasure. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... it to a fact well recognized in Avonsbridge, as in most University towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall as for a college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold of a High Street tradesman. The same cause, she concluded, made them absent from her wedding; and when Dr. Grey had said simply, "I shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... on a mission of mercy, paused on the threshold, and regarded the two unfortunates with a sympathy akin to awe. Bud Stucky moved his head uneasily, and essayed to speak, but the sound died away in his throat. He made another effort. His lips moved feebly; his voice had an ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... had been enacted here, how many deadly shots had sped from out the holes, what crowds of excited townsfolk had gathered in the church, what grave words of exhortation and of blessing had been spoken from the altar or the threshold by anxious prelate, robed and mitred for the Mass of Supplication to a God of Battles, an humble funeral appeared,—a priest, a peasant bearing a black wooden Cross with the name of the deceased painted on it, a rope-bound coffin carried by hot and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... this Jehuda arrived near the Holy City. He was by her side at last, by the side of his beloved. Then, legend tells us, through a gate an Arab horseman dashed forth: he raised his spear, and slew the poet, who fell at the threshold of his dear Jerusalem, with a song ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... George, taking the letter from Frank's hand, and putting it with the others carefully away in his pocket. "Do you wonder, then, that I am sorrowful, cut off as I am from all my relatives, with strict orders never to cross the threshold of my father's house again, not even if I am dying for want of food? You have, doubtless, heard of the malignity displayed by the rebel leaders toward any Southerner who dares to differ with them ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... the threshold of the hall, She "Thomas!" cried, with many a sob; And thrice on Bobtail did she call, Exclaiming, sweetly,—"Bob! ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... hackneyed, battered, old conventional newspaper gibberish had in it the breath of life. I believed it. At that moment, on the threshold of new experiences, I took the words on trust. Perhaps, for once, the things I had read in books had not eluded me! Perhaps the old gentleman in the flannel nightgown really was a potential African despot. In the midst of my reflections ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... their representatives can hold in check the Imperial policy in the Reichstag—openly expressed their sympathy for Leo XIII, for the "noble exile at Rome, who is compelled, from the day of his elevation to the Papacy, to pledge himself never to cross the threshold of the Vatican alive." When William II is compelled hereafter to make concessions to the Centre in the Reichstag, his allies, the Italians, will be well advised to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... patrons like to thee, Brave Porter! poets ne'er will wanting be: Fabius and Cotta, Lentulus, all live In thee, thou man of men! who here do'st give Not only subject-matter for our wit, But likewise oil of maintenance to it: For which, before thy threshold, we'll lay down Our thyrse for sceptre, and our bays for crown. For, to say truth, all garlands are thy due: The laurel, myrtle, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... our story, and as suddenly, as unexpectedly, disappears. Indeed, had it not been that the person concerned was Chichikov, and not some youth of twenty summers—a hussar or a student or, in general, a man standing on the threshold of life—what thoughts would not have sprung to birth, and stirred and spoken, within him; for what a length of time would he not have stood entranced as he stared into the distance and forgot alike his journey, the business still to be done, the possibility ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... seemed stiller, as we circumspectly passed through the gate; and Harold hung back shamefaced, as if we were crossing the threshold of some private chamber, and ghosts of old days were hustling past us. Flowers there were, everywhere; but they drooped and sprawled in an overgrowth hinting at indifference; the scent of heliotrope possessed the place, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... a resigned shrug of his shoulders; Gervase looked round at him ere he crossed the threshold of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... cordially welcomed to speak on all Christian and philanthropic themes. Where her influence is most broadly felt, she has not been taken out of the ordinary life that she was meant to share and to sway. It was from the great denominations that she first crossed the threshold of home to carry home love and principle to foreign countries. In missions she has served in every conceivable form of public benevolence, side by side with man. Real reforms work from within. If the time comes when the other branches of the Christian Church ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... in a public house, that stood on the north side of the church, not a vestige of which now remains, but no one would go to the church for the parish books. The landlady had the courage to go but no sooner had she crossed the threshold than the Evil Spirit blew the light out; she got a light again, but this also was blown out. Instead of returning for another light, she went straight to the coffer in the dark, and brought the books to the house, and that without ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the teeth, the hollow and spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was not so mean as to send a child to do what the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... tone brought the official's wits back with a jump and he made for the exit, only to be stopped at the threshold by a sandy-haired ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... attempted to penetrate by the clue of chemical experiment the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic life, without being aware that chemistry must needs be at its extreme limits, when it has approached the threshold of a higher power? Its own transgressions, however, and the failure of its enterprises will become the means of defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard against the opposite error of rejecting its aid altogether as analogy, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seen anything so horrible as the sight that greeted her when she pushed the door wide open, and stood on the threshold of the crofter's home. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... by a majestic live-oak which shaded the front, and within a few yards of the river, stood a small white house. It was built of adoles, and contained only three rooms. Instead of reaching these by a broad flight, one step from the threshold placed you on the ground. The floor was uncovered, and, as usual, of cement. In one corner of the front apartment stood a sideboard, covered with glass of various kinds, and a few handsome pieces ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... single animals he joyed, One cat, and eke one dog, his bounty fed; The first the cate-devouring mice destroyed, Thieves heard the last, and from his threshold fled: All in the sunbeams basked the lazy cat, Her mottled length in couchant posture laid; On one accustomed chair while Pompey sat, And loud he barked should Puss his right invade. The human pair oft ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the letter, and what did she answer?" asked the prince, springing up almost as he passed the threshold. ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... shelter them as he ascended, as much as possible, from the light of the fire, which was now blazing with great brilliancy: "nine human corpses,—father and mother, grandam and children,—sleep under the threshold at the door; and there are not many, white men or Injuns, that will, of their free will, step over the bosoms of the poor murdered creatures, after nightfall; and, the more especially, because there are them that believe they rise at midnight, and roam ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... as we came into the hall presently, they thought us the most goodly company that had ever crossed its threshold; and that is likely, for at our head were Havelok and Goldberga. Raven was a mighty warrior to look on as he came next, grave and silent, with far-seeing grey eyes that were full of watching, as it were, from his long seafaring, and yet had the seaman's ready smile in them. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... the threshold he turned abruptly and looked back. His forehead was furrowed like a corduroy road and the one rampant question in his mind at the moment seemed to be mired hopelessly between his ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... other's pain came before him as a force which had interfered with the evolution of his ego. It is likewise with all such events of his former life. On his re-entrance into physical life these hindrances to his evolution confront the ego anew. As, on the threshold of death, a sort of memory-picture arose before the human ego, so there now arises a vision of the life approaching. Again he sees a picture, this time showing all the obstacles which he has to clear away, if he is to advance in evolution. And what he thus ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region while we are yet on its threshold. I resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... benefactor must at last relax him into thankfulness. These thoughts encouraged Raymond, as he stood at the door of the highest room of the house. After trying vainly to enter the other apartments, he perceived just within the threshold of this one, a pair of small Turkish slippers; the door was ajar, but all was silent within. It was probable that the inmate was absent, but secure that he had found the right person, our adventurous Protector was tempted to enter, to leave a purse on the table, and silently depart. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... pulled me swiftly into a porch which gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us, and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... mothers, and wives and children. St. Augustine says to the devotee: "Fly to the desert, and though your wife put her arms around your neck, tear her hands away; she is a temptation of the devil. Though your father and mother throw their bodies athwart your threshold, step over them; and though your children pursue and with weeping eyes beseech you to return, listen not. It is the temptation of the evil one. Fly to the desert and save your soul." Think of such a soul being worth ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... mounted my horse for the first time since I had been taken ill in November, and had scarcely left Moorundi when I met my good friends Mr. Charles Campbell and Mr. A. Hardy in a carriage to convey me to Adelaide. I reached my home at midnight on the 19th of January, and, on crossing its threshold, raised my wife from the floor on which she had fallen, and heard the carriage of my ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... front had found her boy's half-charred body left tied to a tree by Rebel scouts: this girl was the grandchild of Naylor, a man of seventy,—the Federal soldiers were fired at from his house one day,—the next, the old man stood dumb upon its threshold; in this world, he never would call to God for vengeance. Palmer knew these things were true. Yet Dode should not for this sink to low notions about the war. She did: she talked plain Saxon of it, and what it made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... Gerald. She paused an instant. Not a servant in the house! whom was she to summon? A vague idea seized her of running into the street and catching hold of the first passer, when at the moment the door opened, and Mr. Halloway appeared on the threshold. ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... averted her face when he addressed her, made no reply; but after he had departed from the threshold, her eyes followed him, and the tears slowly forced ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! Come ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... each is contradicted the next hour. I was there t'other day to visit one of them, and one of the most agreeable, Alexander Albani. I had the opportunity of two cardinals making their entry: upon that occasion the gate is unlocked, and their eminences come to talk to their acquaintance over the threshold. I have received great civilities from him I named to you, and I wish he were out, that I might receive greater: a friend of his does the honours of Rome for him; but you know that it is unpleasant to visit by proxy. Cardinal Delei, the object of the Corsini faction, is dying; the hot weather ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the shadow of a doorway until the policeman should pass out of sight and hearing, and cautiously stepping over the debris that encumbered the threshold of the burnt house, Gorman peeped into the room, where the light told him that some one kept watch. Great was his satisfaction and grim his smile when he saw that a stalwart fireman sat there apparently asleep. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... small response to feelings such as these in the great world, for we have not been looking much toward what is above us, nor discriminating from meaner things those which approach to heroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics, and polemics, when we would approach the threshold of elevated meditation—when we dwell on the illustrious names of the past, and tread over the stones which they trod. I never wandered along the banks of the sedgy Cam, at that lone, twilight hour, when the dimness of external objects tends most to concentrate ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... reached for the knob. Thus he stood for another long minute, and then with a sudden gesture he straightened his giant frame, threw back his mighty shoulders and, with fearless head held high, swung back the door and stepped across the threshold into the room which held for him the dearest memories and associations of his life. No change of expression crossed his grim and stern-set features as he strode across the room and stood beside the little couch and the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hour or two. He set off along the shore in the direction of Fort Mason, the old red-brick fort at the entrance to the Golden Gate. At this point in the Presidio Government reservation the land is solitary. Wilbur followed the line of the beach to the old fort; and there, on the very threshold of the Western world, at the very outpost of civilization, sat down in the lee of the crumbling fortification, and scene by scene reviewed the extraordinary events ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is exceedingly difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a short period of fellowship, abandon him—even on the very threshold of the temple—to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of Art for Art, itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far off. It has ceased to be a cry, and is heard ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... threshold, graved by skill, With characters and wondrous signs, upturned A virtuous stone, where, underneath the sill, Pots, with perpetual fire and secret, burned. The enchanter breaks them; and at once the hill To an inhospitable rock is turned. Nor wall nor tower on any side ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... assassin, Thurtell, and treasure up the leaves and twigs of the hedge and shrubs in the fatal garden as valuable relics—nay, thronged the minor theatres to see the very roan horse and yellow gig in which the body was transported from one place to another. I have not stept over the threshold to-day, so very stupid have ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to accumulate upon his memory. And when, not many months after the outward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lull, and while I wondered, the door flew suddenly open and I saw Mrs. Ocumpaugh standing on the threshold, pallid and stricken, looking back at the picture made by the other two as Mrs. Carew, fallen on her knees by the bedside, held to her breast ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... that he addressed them. He was always their playmate and boon companion, whether they were toddling infants taking their first faltering steps, or growing schoolboys, or youths standing at the threshold of life. Their games were his games, their joys those of his own heart. He was ready to romp with them in the old barn at Sagamore Hill, play "tickley" at bedtime, join in their pillow fights, or play hide-and-seek with them, either at Sagamore Hill or in the White House. He was the ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... door, and there was Bruno lying across the threshold, as if waiting to be admitted; he came in at Harry's call, but not with his usual bound; he seemed to understand that if his old master had been saved, his master's friend was lost. The noble creature ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... six years pretty nearly everybody worth knowing crossed the Roosevelts' threshold, and they themselves quickly took their place in Washington society. Roosevelt's humor, his charm, his intensity, his approachableness, attracted even those who rejected his politics and his party. Bright ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... across the table at CLARA. Then she drops her spoon and fork and takes up her fan, using it violently whilst GEORGE slowly gets up and opens the door. LORD LOVEL is seen standing on the threshold. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Doctor Tio-King, his Cornaro under his arm; Fulk Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett, mingling their teeth and hair, figuratively, be it understood; Sir Francis Trevellyan, motionless and silent, intractable and stiff, smoking his cigar on the threshold; Faruskiar, accompanied by Ghangir; Russian, Turkoman, Chinese travelers—in all from sixty to eighty persons. Every one had in his turn to present himself at the table, which was occupied by two Celestials in uniform; a functionary ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... I said as we crossed the threshold of the police-station, "I don't believe Sir Digby was either an ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her—of herself standing before another man who blocked the sky, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... respectable!" She flung this over her shoulder as she stalked away, and it may be that the tears came when there were none to see them, but hers was a resolute mind, and though she continued to be friendly with Tommy and Elspeth out of doors she never again crossed their threshold. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... seat, embosomed in a leafy park, some five miles from the city. At present it was undergoing alterations and repairs, so that it might be a more perfect residence when the future Lady Brace crossed its threshold as a bride. Consequently the greater part of the house was in confusion, and given over to painters, plasterers, and such-like upsetting people. Harry, however, had decided to live in his own particular rooms, so that he might see that everything was carried out in accordance with Lucy's wish, and ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... stood upon the threshold brooding, D'Arnot had entered the cabin. Many comforts he saw that had been left behind. He recognized numerous articles from the cruiser—a camp oven, some kitchen utensils, a rifle and many rounds of ammunition, canned foods, blankets, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... accusers the accused seem entitled to acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man could cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in a contest for the first magistracy of the republic; and whom he described, long after the fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accomplished hypocrite, by whom he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scarcely know what to make of him; except that he seems to have quite conceit enough of himself. Every other sentence is a contradiction of what the last speaker advanced. This is the first time he ever ventured to cross his father's threshold, and yet he talks as familiarly of kingdoms, governments, nations, manners, and other high sounding phrases, as if he had been secretary of state to king Minos, had ridden upon the white elephant, and studied under the Dalai Lama! He is the Great Mogul of politicians! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was mysteriously blissful—and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... the door against the rest of the seals, and was again in pursuit; but Nab in the meantime had reached the far end, bumped against the unfastened door and was scuttling across the outer threshold. Father ran after him, only to see his body floundering from one rock to another and to hear its happy splash in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... threshold he seemed too uncertain of his footing to cross the soft-lit room alone. And Milo supported him to the bed. Gavin slumped heavily upon the side of it, his aching head in his hands. Then, as if with much effort, he lay down, burying his ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... orderly and well-appointed home to return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate, was a little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, and experienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold and entered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut the door there even against the solicitations of nature and against the weariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late autumn days, and yet not lifeless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... suspended by a rope which was knotted round his ankles, and which, passing over a hook in a beam, had been made fast to a ring in the floor. The struggles of this unhappy man had caused the rope to whirl round, so that he was spinning in front of the blaze like a joint of meat. Across the threshold lay a woman, the one whose cries had attracted us, but her rigid face and twisted body showed that our aid had come too late to save her from the fate which she had seen impending. Close by her two swarthy dragoons in the glaring red coats ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... death-dealing deity, delighting in blood, whom she was warned to fear, and from whom she did accordingly shrink with such holy horror that, when she went to church, she tried to think of anything but Him. This was how it happened that church, instead of being the threshold of the next world to her mind, became the centre of this, where she made many interesting observations of men and manners; for in spite of her backwardness in the schoolroom, Beth's intellect advanced with a bound at this ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Historical Society desired it, any Member of Parliament could procure them the whole stock, Lords and Commons, a wheelbarrowful or more, with no cost but the carriage. Every Member has the right to demand a copy, and few do it, few will let such a mass cross their door-threshold! This of Bowdoin's is a platitude of some magnitude.—Adieu, dear Emerson. Rest not, haste not; you ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of an hour, he strolled downstairs into the billiard room. He stood on the threshold for a moment, when a familiar voice struck his ear. His heart beat rapidly with excitement, for he recognized it as the voice of Abner Blodgett. He glanced eagerly about to find him, but he could see no one resembling the young man from the country ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... am not violating that Hippocratic vow which protects the relations of patient and adviser; for, as I dropped my friend's wasted hand and stepped to the threshold, he repeated a request he had often ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... principally fortitude, and greatness of soul, and patience, it will not stop short at sight of the executioner; and when all other virtues proceed calmly to the torture, that one will never halt, as I said, on the outside and threshold of the prison; for what can be baser, what can carry a worse appearance, than to be left alone, separated from those beautiful attendants? Not, however, that this is by any means possible; for neither can the virtues hold together without happiness, nor happiness without the virtues; so that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the threshold of one of the most striking and formidable of economic facts, the regular alternation of periods of good and bad trade, each very widespread, if not world-wide, in its range, each comprising certain regular phases of acceleration and decay, and ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... are now on the threshold of Damerghou, and do not know yet what route they will take from this country to Kanou; whether by Tesaoua or Zinder. Even En-Noor seems quite undecided what he ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... home and their neighbours entered with them, and ate and drank, and gave them good wishes and gay songs, and the old priest blessed them with a father's tenderness upon their threshold; and the fiddle of Georges sent gladdest dance-music flying through the open casements, across the road, up the hill, far away to ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... I heard the water, as it were, gurgling in. My first idea was, "We are snagged;" then, remembering how slight the concussion had been, I calmed my fears and turned over on my side, determined to bottle off a little more sleep if possible. Scarce had the thought crossed the threshold of my mind, when men with hasty steps rushed into the saloon, banging frantically at the cabin-doors, and the piercing cry was heard—"Turn out! turn out!—we're sinking!" Passengers flew from their beds, and opened their doors to get what scanty light the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Superintendent had blessed, who had done so much to contribute to the triumph of this day, wanting to its complete realization of all that such a day should have been. The Duchess of Kent was already on a visit to her nephew, standing on the old threshold—once so well known to her—ready to help to welcome her daughter, prepared to show her the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the north Lister could watch the boldest operator ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... upon the threshold going out Into the night. The mists of old misdeeds crowd all ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... just on the threshold of an exciting voyage, in which he had painted to himself plenty of sport and adventure, ending in the discovery of his uncle and the men who had been his companions. All had gone wrong, and he felt that they would have to accept ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... impressed, that seemed to have been very recently left. Again they appeared upon a narrow-pointed stoop that ran beneath the windows of a small room in an angle of the building, and from which there was a door slightly ajar, with the same dewy footprint broken on the threshold. Within this room there was a sound as of some one moving softly, yet with impatience, to and fro—once a white hand clasped itself on the door, and a beautiful face, flushed and agitated, glanced through the opening and disappeared. Then followed an interval of silence, save that the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... there would be lodged objection that she dare not disregard—her uncle's will. One other girl there was, that night at Frayne, who marked her going and sought to follow and was recalled, restrained at the very threshold by the sound of a beloved voice softly, in the Sioux tongue, calling her name. One other girl there was who knew not of her going, who shrank from thought of meeting her at any time,—in any place,—and yet was destined to an encounter ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... attentively, you will be wise. Stand in the assembly of the elders, And whoever is wise, stick close to him. Be willing to listen to every discourse, And let no illuminating proverbs escape you. If you see a man of insight, hasten to him, And let your foot wear out his threshold. Let your mind dwell upon the law of the Most High, And meditate continually on his commands. Thus he will enlighten your mind, And teach you ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... that when Miss Hobbs appeared at the threshold of the door she heaved a deep sigh, and it was this that startled her lover; but as he had his head in a stooping position, and was busy brushing his coat, the sound seemed to him to come from the farther end of the room, which was obscured in darkness. He was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... . strange . . . it is past belief." Then he asked, roughly: "Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?" He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: "Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk them in good causes; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside: The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend: This door will open at a touch ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... immense apartment, apparently a ball-room; but at present it was quite unoccupied. There were green velvet benches all around it, and a great polished floor stretched away, shining in the light of chandeliers adorned with innumerable glass drops. Miss Vivian stood a moment on the threshold; then she passed in, and they stopped in the middle of the place, facing each other, and with their figures reflected as if they had been standing on a sheet of ice. There was no one in the room; they ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... have arrived. Presently there would be time for its instructions to be acted on as well. And at this moment I realized, as I had not fully realized before, all that it would mean to me of humiliation and defeat to fail ignominiously on the threshold of my adventure. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his foot across the threshold, she stretched out her ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... her no sound, but Jessie knew that some one had opened the door and was standing on the threshold watching her. She turned her head. Her self-invited ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... been received. Was he dead? Had he abandoned the effort, or was he continuing his journey along the route agreed upon? And would he appear on Saturday, the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine in the evening, on the threshold of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... government agree that, because this case involves a challenge to the constitutionality of the conditions that Congress has set on state actors' receipt of federal funds, the Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), supplies the proper threshold analytic framework. The constitutional source of Congress's spending power is Article I, Sec. 8, cl. 1, which provides that "Congress shall have Power . . . to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... was, alas! too plain: For neither had they leisure to disguise it, Nor could she silence the loud cries of travail. Soon as I saw it, "Oh shame, shame!" I cried, And rush'd away in tears and agony, O'erwhelm'd with horror at a stroke so grievous. The mother follows me, and at the threshold Falls on her knees before me all in tears. This touch'd me to the soul. And certainly 'Tis in the very nature of our minds, To rise and fall according to our fortunes. Thus she address'd me.— "Oh, my Pamphilus, The cause of her removal ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... repose, after the chase, or the battle, or the feast, the menaces of the prelate began to stir in his guilty soul,—aided, perhaps, by the reproaches or the advice of his wife or his concubine; he hesitated to violate the sanctuary lest he should fall dead with a broken neck on the threshold; if he had been carried away by his passions, and committed murder or robbery, he repented and made reparation, sometimes a hundred-fold. The cloister offered a refuge to those who fled aghast from the world and sought meditation and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... of the house presented a strange contrast to the outside. When one crossed the threshold, he found himself surrounded with all the comforts of civilization. There were fine carpets on the floors, oil paintings on the walls, and easy chairs, sofas, and musical instruments in abundance. The room the boys occupied was the only one in which could be found any ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... himself to establish wherever he was responsible. One of Gordon's first resolutions had been that his part of the Soudan should cease to be a drain, like the rest, on the Cairo Exchequer. He determined that he at least would pay his way, and on the threshold of his undertaking he had insisted, and carried in the teeth of powerful opposition his resolution, that the accounts of the Equatorial Province should be kept distinct from those of the Soudan. The employment of black soldiers was very economical as well as efficient, and contributed ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the Threshold he has already enter'd; Now through the Fire I'll follow him: But; oh some unknown Pow'r detains my Steps. I'll try again; I cannot stir. Shall he rejoice before my Eyes? No, no; Melissa, it ought to be thy Care To see thy self and me, on ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... in hours of fear Or grovelling thought to find a refuge here, Or through the aisles of Westminster to roam, Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam Melts if it cross the threshold—where the wreath Of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into a song, and began waltzing round the room. Barely had she passed the open window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in, stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the singing house he used to lie in the passage and peep over the threshold. Now and then a man would take him by the nose and lift him into the house and make him carry out a jar of water. It was so large and heavy that he had to take hold of it with both hands and his teeth. Because he was so often lifted ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... rubbish you toss in the tide. On outgoing billows it drifts from your sight, But back on the incoming waves it may ride And land at your threshold again before night. Be careful what rubbish ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a moment's warning, my vision was enlarged and an unusual light flashed upon me. Quickly I cast my wondering eyes all about me and saw that I was standing at the very threshold of a great door. It was of such imposing dimensions and so magnificently constructed that only the architects of Heaven could ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... delay. Where was Mr. Bangs? He was told, to his great delight, that the detective was in town, and would report at four o'clock. It was now half-past three. Putting up his horse at the hotel, the lawyer partook of a hasty meal at a restaurant, and returned in time to meet Bangs on the very threshold. "Whet ere you doing here, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... days that followed, neither burly flesh-and-blood Doctor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped noisily over the threshold or slid ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... then stopped to look back at the girl who had followed a few steps from the threshold. Her eyes held their expression of uncertainty whether to sparkle or to cloud, and he read the arrested question on her lips. "If there are any saddle-horses," he answered, "I will have them here before that two-forty-five freight arrives, but," and he smiled, "I am not ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... it now appears you need my help. Go to then: you come to me, and you say, 'SHYLOCK, we would have moneys'—you say so; You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... they arrived, with Hermes at their side, By Jove commission'd, as their friend and guide. But when the mirth-inspiring dames stepp'd o'er The sacred threshold of great Shakspeare's door, The heav'nly guests, who came to laugh with me, Oppress'd with grief, wept with Melpomene; Bow'd pensive o'er the Bard of Nature's tomb, Dropt a sad tear, then left me to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... and now sat at her window looking out to amuse herself, but with a special intent to see and waylay that pale child on her repassing the house. She saw the little black hood reappear, and started to open the door, just in time to see Nettie fall down at her threshold. As instantly two willing arms were put under her, and lifted up the child and bore her into the house. Then Madame took off her hood, touched her lips with brandy and her brow with cologne water, and chafed her hands. She had lain Nettie ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... of sadness settled on the household after his departure, and scarcely less than Louisa's was Irene's silent grief. The confinement grew doubly irksome when his voice and step had passed from the threshold, and she looked forward impatiently to her release. The sprain proved more serious than she at first imagined, and the summer vacation set in before she was able to walk with ease. Mr. Huntingdon had been apprised ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... now turned toward the parents, whom he presented with an awl and a little tobacco, and having thus secured their good-will, continued to smoke his pipe, and watch the salmon. While thus seated near the threshold, an urchin of the family approached the door, but catching a sight of the strange guest, ran off screaming with terror and ensconced himself behind the long straw at the back ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... entrance into the world, and in death, the last to be given up; yet, strange to say, its nature and constitution have only become partially understood within the past century, and even now scientific knowledge can only be regarded as on the threshold of the subject." ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the threshold of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the Canada jay, which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and in reply Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was everywhere to be heard, but ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... shareholders at General Meetings. The Poet, however, was long and painfully accustomed to combat with enraged editors and lost no time in assuming the offensive, demanding indignantly in a high head-voice, before the Iron King had crossed his own threshold, why no quarters had been found for him and how much longer any one imagined that he would put up with the indignity of being bandied from ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... days and nights during all the remainder of February. The shocks, though diminished in strength, almost nightly roused us from our rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by two, by three they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with faithful guides, by whose aid I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... barn, the moment I set my foot over the threshold, my terrors of murder and of her having expired all returned. After a short pause, I called with a trembling voice, 'Mary! Are you alive?' and my heart bounded with joy to hear ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... marked event in the history of the Crawford family, in the crossing by Richard of the threshold of the outer door, for the first time in so many weeks. He was weak, faint and feeble, but the racking pains of his disease seemed hourly to leave him more completely. He had no more thought of leaving the house, however, than of flying, until the tempter appeared in the shape of his brother. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... knock fell on the door. "Is the doctor here?" said a voice which I recognised at once. Barraclough opened the door and Holgate stood on the threshold. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... together with an effort. The sight of the two new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the restaurant, seemed for the moment to have drawn every scrap of colour from his cheeks. Nevertheless, his recovery was ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... threshold he called out "Giorgio!" in an undertone. Nobody answered. He stepped in. "Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . ." In the impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped forward ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... on him, he and she both smiling at each other more; then she looked on me, still smiling with greater liberty than at first, made a pirouette, went away and closed the door, beyond the threshold of which she had ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was, had apparently no idea of doing anything of the sort. I heard the latch lifted, and the tall bulky form of a man filled the threshold. With him came the wind, playing havoc about my room, sending papers and ornaments flying around in wild confusion. He closed the door quickly with a little imprecation. I heard the scratching of a match, saw it carefully shielded in the hollow of the man's hand. Then it burned clearly, ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the moment Mr. Ultra V. Ray reached the threshold of freedom he was tripped up, pounced upon, and beaten until he ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... but so have dozens of people whom you know—his present reputation is excellent, I say. And yet, because some twenty years ago, when you were a child, he held one opinion and your father held another, you are interdicted from crossing his threshold! If you can shake hands with him here, you can take his hand in his own house. Is not ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... went up stairs to open the door, and found to his astonishment Midwinter waiting alone on the threshold, and looking (in the servant's opinion) miserably ill. He asked for a light, and, saying he wanted nothing else, withdrew at once to his room. The footman went back to his fellow-servants, and reported that something had certainly happened to his ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... writer's soul. It served one purpose, since it provided Madge with at least a staff of silver with which to beat the wolf from the door. The wild beast bayed and threatened, but it never actually crossed the threshold. The discredited man kept himself alive by scraps of anonymous journalism, until a half-chance suggestion of fortune bore him away to the United States as a member of a theatrical company of no great merit, which clung together through desperately ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Boujan, having seen that her feet were set upon the threshold of day, went out of the door and ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the threshold of a door nailed fast, Three kittens sat; each kitten looked aghast. I, passing swift and inattentive by, At the three kittens cast a careless eye; Not much concerned to know what they did there; Not deeming kittens worth a poet's care. But presently, a loud and furious hiss ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the indignant host and his staff, and standing upon the threshold looked at the riot within. The long room was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the smoke of powder, through which the many torches burned yellow. Upon the great table wine had been spilt, and dripped to swell a red pool upon the floor. Underneath the table, still ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... my room at last through a tortuous maze of gaping workmen and sickening flowers, three startled girls jumped up to catch me as I staggered across the threshold. I did not faint, I did not cry out. I just sat huddled on the floor rocking myself to and fro, and mumbling, as through a mouthful of sawdust: "Dolly Leonard is dead. Dolly Leonard is dead. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... chance, the destiny of a lifetime approaches through the conventional door of everyday life—steals up, lays the hand that none can resist on the handle of some door which opens of itself into a new, a wider world. Before one is aware of it, perhaps, one's feet have crossed the threshold into the Land of the New Outlook, and "old ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that he ought to refuse; it was late. But Madeleine answered for him. "Of course. Come along, Maurice," and he crossed the threshold ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... voice. And then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a quick step outside, and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instant he was out in the hall, before the doctor's foot was over the threshold. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outside, and a terrible howl that seemed to shake the little cottage to its foundations. Then—ah! think of it, madame—the door—this door against which you lean—was burst open, and out of the darkness a great wolf came bounding in, and paused for a minute on the threshold. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye. Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... required hours to gather. Nor is the exercise of a privilege necessary to establish its worth: the title to be present belonged to the whole people, and Britons esteem and acknowledge a real treasure in a right. An open threshold, although rarely darkened by guests, is the pledge that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... message of courtesy, sent by the Doge himself, had been stayed on the threshold of his own ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Meige and Feindel were, in a way, on the threshold of this theory when they said that tic, like the other psychoneuroses, is due to some congenital anomaly, an arrest or defect in the development of cortical or subcortical association paths—unrecognized ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... untrained sensual imagination and gross materialistic theory. When the fleshly prison walls of the mind fall, its first inheritance is a stupendous freedom. The narrow limits that caged it here are gone, and it lives in an ethereal sphere with no impeding bounds. Leaving its natal threshold of earth and the lazar house of time, its home is immensity, and its lease is eternity. Even in our present state, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... two hours should so soon be slipped away; but coming to know, that he had remained in that place beyond four hours, he went out with Andrew, to go to the palace of the viceroy. He had scarcely set his foot over the threshold, when he seemed to be ravished in spirit once again. After he had made some turns, without well knowing whither he went, he returned as night was beginning to come on, and said to his attendant, "My son, we will take another time to see the governor; it is the will of God, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... December set in with uncommon severity of cold, and checked its progress. Oh! the exquisite delight with which I left my hard and burning bed and close apartment, the scenes of all my sufferings, for the first time! With a prayer of thankfulness on my lips, I crossed the threshold of the humble dwelling, and once more slowly mounted the steep hill ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... under Maddy's hair by this time, and when the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops, while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get along with it better if he treated ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... of the gate; The gate that was iron'd within and without, Where an army in battle array had march'd out. The lady sank, belike through pain, And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate: Then the lady rose again, And moved, as ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,—Rand. If you want anything, you're to call me. I am just outside." Still no answer came from the silent cabin. He pushed open the door gently, hesitated, and stepped over the threshold. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... course of the combat, Heathcote made a mighty onslaught and caught his enemy round the body and wrestled a fall with him on the threshold of the "Sociable" door, it so happened that the door, not being securely latched, gave way beneath the weight of the two combatants, and swinging suddenly open, precipitated them both on to the floor of the apartment, just as the Club was proceeding ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed |
