"Grinning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet long. It was beautifully ornamented with open work and decorated with fringes of black feathers. The smaller ones generally had poles. Occasionally two pirogues were joined together. The fishing-boats were ornamented at the prow and the poop by the face of a grinning man with hideous features, lolling tongue and eyes made of white shells. Two pirogues were often coupled, and the very smallest carried only the poles needed to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... fellow immediately dragged him in and began patting his hair down as if it was a wig, you know. We made puns on each other's names, and whistled and sang, and oh! carried on like sixty. One man with a black beard laughed at us ready to kill himself, and a brakeman on the back platform was grinning ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... have painted thyself, no doubt," answered the Varangian, upon reflection, "and thy blackness, therefore, may be only apparent; but I think thy old friend himself could hardly have presented these grinning lips, with the white teeth and flattened nose, so much to the life, unless that peculiarity of Nubian physiognomy, as they call it, had accurately and really an existence; and to save thee some trouble, my dark friend, I will tell thee, that though thou speakest to an uneducated Varangian, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... inch. Just hauled up there taking two-thirds of the road, and started to light his pipe. I was in a hurry to get along, and thought I could just squeeze by; but I made a mistake, and my wagon got upset in the ditch. He went on, grinning at my trouble, and never offering to raise a hand to help ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... She simply ignored Mary's discouraging red-skin stolidity, and assumed that they were sisters under their skins. She pretended that it was necessary for them to take sides against Stonor in order to keep the man in his place. It was not long before Mary was grinning broadly. Finally at some low-voiced sally of Clare's she laughed outright. Stonor had never heard her laugh before. Thereafter she was Clare's. Realizing that the wonderful white girl really wished to make friends, Mary offered her a doglike devotion that ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... looked up into a grinning face behind a huge club that was swinging downward. He threw up his arm to break the force of the blow, but the club fell too swiftly; the enormous weight of it crashed down on his skull, and he knew ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... was grinning maliciously. "Were you looking for Lieutenant Lawton?" he inquired. "He was here a few minutes ago. He has gone back to his home. I can look him up for you if you are really anxious ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... of them? Hi, where are you, Corp? Here he comes, grinning, in his spleet new uniform, to demand our tickets of us. He is now the railway porter. Since Tommy left Thrums "steam" had arrived in it, and Corp had by nature such a gift for giving luggage the twist which breaks everything ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... wish you had called me rascal,' said Mordicai, grinning a horrible smile; and taking up the bond deliberately, returned it to Mr. Berryl. 'This paper is worth nothing to ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... band was in full swing. There was lilt and rhythm to the melody produced by the grinning blacks, and not a free arm or foot or shoulder or head of any of them but did not sway in time to their ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... the gentlemen cast away their hats and sat down, all grinning cheerfully, and all with eyes irresistibly fixed upon the dainties, which proved too much for the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... between his efforts to preserve his clerical solemnity and to make himself agreeable. His formal manner of pursing up his face into smiles, for this purpose, had produced a regular set of small wrinkles, folds, and plies, that inevitably reminded those who were not accustomed to him of the grinning of an ape; for he was so fearful of derogating from his dignity that it was impossible for his smile to take ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... humour, the lower and more simple it becomes, the complexity being more that of the senses than of intellect. It may be said there is always some appeal to both, but not in any equal proportions, and there is manifestly a great difference between the humour of a plough-boy grinning through a horse-collar, and of a sage observing that "when the poor man makes the rich a present, he is unkind to him." Caricature drawings produce little effect upon educated people, unless assisted by a description ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sentence and a half, Edwardes hopped out of his chair, glared at me and said he wanted to hear no more. He then kicked me out of the room, and what I want to know is the reason why he did it; and if you two fellows can tell me that instead of grinning like two Chinese idols, you will be of some use." The recital of my ill-treatment had made me annoyed with both ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour of latakia ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as nefer vas," replied the grinning Nick, banging himself down on the back of the struggling Herbert, until the latter began to cry and ask the boys to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... gentleman to see you, miss," said the Badger, thrusting a grey and grinning visage ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... players not at all; her hot reprehending eyes were on the girl in the blue dress. She did not observe that she herself was dancing opposite Andy, while Pendrilla Lusk dragged with drooping head in the line across from the amiably grinning Doss Provine. Finding herself suddenly in the lead and successful, Huldah began to preen her feathers a bit. She withdrew a hand from the girl on her right to arrange the small string of blue glass beads around ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... the room burst open and slammed closed. Tom and Astro whirled to see their missing unit mate lounging against the doorframe, grinning broadly. ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... much in six years. His face was worse than mine; he hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their best for him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he drew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows, thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn; but he backed away to let us enter, and ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... home yet, Chow," Tom cautioned, grinning but still tense with worry. "Glad you said that, though. It reminds me that the first job on our hands is to build a new ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... said Pete, grinning, although he felt far from all right. He realized that he rather owed Mrs. Bailey something in the way of an expression of gratitude for her interest. "I—you, you sure can make the best pie ever ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the day before and were dining there. As we went out to go and meet the batteries and lead them to the waggon lines, there was a shout of recognition, and "Swiffy" and the little American doctor ran up, grinning and rather shamefaced. "We thought of posting you as deserters," I said with pretended seriousness, "not having seen you since the afternoon of the 23rd." It was now the 26th. They narrated a long and somewhat sheepish ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... night, waking or in my sleep, the same thoughts recurred and the same images retained possession of my brain. I had ever before me the old dark murky rooms—the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly silent air—the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone—the dust and rust and worm that lives in wood—and alone in the midst of all this lumber and decay and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle slumber, smiling through her light and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... has sung in the morning shall never sing in the evening," said the monster grinning. With that, drawing the bow to his ear upon the side farthest from his heart, he put an arrow before it, and, letting it fly, the bird fell dead upon the earth beneath the tree. The Indians, upon seeing this exploit, shouted ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... washerwoman, who comes full sail down the streets, a basket on her head and one of Mrs. Fantail's wonderful gowns swelling on each arm. As we were going to the Schloss-Garten I caught a sight of the rogue's grinning face yesterday, close at little Gretel's ear under her basket; but spying out his mother advancing, he dashed down a bystreet, and when we came up with her, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dogcart and horse under a judgment; the disturbance this caused collected a tiny crowd, gaping and grinning, and brought Phoebe's white face and eyes swollen with ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... quarters the rouged cheekbones, the wrinkles, the fine lines on each side of the vivid lips, astounded him. He was being received graciously, with a smile which made him think of a grinning skull. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... up one hand in a gesture that any woman would have understood and hated. It acted powerfully upon Beauty Stanton. Neale believed she was importuning him. To him her look, whisper, touch had meant only the same as to these coarse human animals gaping and grinning as they listened. The sweetest and best and most exalted moment she had ever known was being made bitter as gall, sickening, hateful. She must speak openly, she ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... ever been seen in Vondervotteimittiss. His countenance was of a dark snuff-color, and he had a long hooked nose, pea eyes, a wide mouth, and an excellent set of teeth, which latter he seemed anxious of displaying, as he was grinning from ear to ear. What with mustachios and whiskers, there was none of the rest of his face to be seen. His head was uncovered, and his hair neatly done up in papillotes. His dress was a tight-fitting swallow-tailed black coat ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... should say the bodies had been laid close together, and a thin coat of earth thrown over them. As the bodies decayed, the crust fell in exposing in part the skeletons. Some of our men extracted teeth from the grinning skulls as they lay thus exposed to view. On the field of 1862 from one mound a hand stuck out. The flesh instead of rotting off had dried down, and there it was like a piece of dirty marble. Such sights are not refreshing to men going forward in search of a new battlefield. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... robes and skins and blankets and boxes, in foul-smelling, vermin-infested wigwams. It was fruitless. I only recall the lowering face of the big squaw looking over my shoulder at every turn, with heavy brows contracted and gashed lips grinning an evil, malicious challenge. I thought she kept her hands uncomfortably near the ivory handle in the agate belt; but Larocque, good fellow, never took his beady eyes off those same hands and kept a ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... functions of destruction, on the other hand, as an affirmative or constructive work, the long treatise of Van Dale is most unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a hollow sound ringing in the ear, of malicious laughter from gnomes and imps grinning over the weaknesses of man—his paralytic facility in believing—his fraudulent villany in abusing this facility—but in no point accounting for those real effects of diffusive social benefits from the Oracle machinery, which must arrest the attention of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... an absolute stranger. He looked like an oafish clod, even viewed objectively, and Forrester was making no efforts in that direction. He had one arm around Gerda's waist and he was grinning up at her, and, sideways, at Forrester with a look that made them co-conspirators in what was certainly planned to be Gerda's seduction. Forrester didn't like the idea. As a matter of fact, he hated it more than ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... journey from India, where Leila's letter had overtaken her, and the feverish halt in her apartment in Florence, where she had had to stop and gather up her possessions for a fresh start—there it had stood grinning at her with a new balefillness which seemed to say: "Oh, but you've got to look at me now, because I'm not only your own ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... in one corner; and sang most atrociously. All about the green carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of people: talking to each other: staring at the Pope through eye-glasses; defrauding one another, in moments of partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of pillars: and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of friars (Frances-cani, or Cappuccini, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and having their humility ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... very edge of Colonel Witham's porch. The colonel, startled from sweet repose by the combined noise of whistles, buzzing of machines, shouts of the five riders and the yelping of his frightened dog, awoke with a gasp and a momentary shudder of alarm. He was enlightened, if not pacified, by a row of grinning faces. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... The Ancient Mariner Coleridge says: "I took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from my companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction, till we found a little puddle ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... saves itself backache and elbow grease. Personally, I think they would not have worked at all, if Macartney had not put the fear of death in them. I caught him at it, and though I did not hear what he said in that competent low voice of his, there was no more lounging around and grinning from our new men. But the trouble among the old men kept on till we had none of them left except the four in the mill. It did not concern me particularly, except that I had to work on odd jobs that should not have concerned me either, and I did not think much about ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... grinning, and the schooner was soon threading her way in the darkness down the river, the skipper listening somewhat nervously for the first ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... forth to dance in the riot of the hour. And so each shadow found its partner in a ray of firelight, and there they danced. They danced about the tangled front of the big bison's head which hung upon the wall. They crossed the grinning skull of the gray wolf. They softened the eyes of the antelope's head, and made dark lines behind the long-tined antlers of the elk and of the deer. They brought forth to view in alternate eclipse ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... office after a little delay. The two men shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare enjoyment—he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but broken age and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... found his tongue as Wayne disappeared into his bedroom. "Led, him come back some more. Led, him boss now!" He stood grinning in slant eyed cunning at the closed door. "Garth him all same go bye-bye now, maybeso?" He pondered the question, with his evil featured head cocked to one side. Then his grin became more profoundly Chinese, more radiantly joyful. "All same hell pop ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd, Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... a grinning smile, as he put himself, with his arms akimbo, before the queen—" yes, with this woman and with me, her husband, little Capet is to remain, and I tell you he shall receive a royal education. We shall teach him to forget the past, and only to remember that he is a child ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Beside him stood the fugitive!—grinning weakly. Boden beheld a tottering and ghastly figure. Distress—mortal fatigue—breathed from the haggard emaciation of face and limbs. Round the shoulders was folded a sack, from which the dregs of some red dipping mixture it had once contained had dripped over the youth's chest and legs, his ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... echoes and the dry resonant air of Eastern plains,—names wherein sounded the clash of Bellona's armor, and the harsh stir of palm-boughs rustled by a hot wind of the desert, and vibrant with the dying clangor of gongs, and shouts of worshipping crowds reverberating through horrid temples of grinning and ghastly idols, wet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... less brightly coloured, to him when they are pleased, and to other persons as a sort of greeting. He took pains to cure a Macacus rhesus, which he had kept for five years, of this indecorous habit, and at last succeeded. These monkeys are particularly apt to act in this manner, grinning at the same time, when first introduced to a new monkey, but often also to their old monkey friends; and after this mutual display they begin to play together. The young mandrill ceased spontaneously after a time to act in this manner towards his master, von Fischer, but continued to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... comes alone, he continued, it always has evil for an escort. Behind the sweet form of the angel, the grinning face of Satan. He is coming upstairs and knocks ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... over some one with a kodak suggested "a group": we struck a collective attitude on one of the hotel terraces, and just as the camera was being aimed at us the Colonel turned and drew into the foreground a little grinning pock-marked soldier. "He's just been decorated—he's got to be in the group." A general exclamation of assent from the other officers, and a protest from the hero: "Me? Why, my ugly mug will smash the plate!" But ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... he, when on entering, he beheld Carl grinning at him from across the room. "You might have put me ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... her tortured face; the red-chopped, hanging-lipped hedge priest gabbling from a book, his back almost turned that he might not see her attitude and struggles; the horrible, unsexed women; the flat-faced villain, Simon, grinning by the hearth; Ramiro, cynical, mocking, triumphant, and yet somewhat anxious, his one bright eye fixed in mingled contempt and amusement upon him, Adrian—those were its outlines. There was something else also that caught and oppressed his sense, a sound which at ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... her harvest ripen, her herd increase. ... a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told ... For the long long canker of peace is over and done: And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, names The blood-red blossom of war with a heart ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... but now you're grown So wise t'invent new Follies of your own: Their slavish Imitations you disdain; A Pox of Fops that purchase Fame with Pain: You're no such Fools as first to mount a Wall, Or for your King and Country venture all. With such like grinning Honour 'twas perchance, Your dull Forefathers first did conquer France. Whilst they have sent us, in Revenge for these, Their Women, Wine, Religion, and Disease. Yet for Religion, it's not much will down, In this ungirt, unblest, and mutinous Town. Nay, I dare swear, not ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... lawless, and savage. If he happens to be in good humour with them, he makes them ridiculous. His son, Mr. Townsend Trench, who did the illustrations for the work, pictures the peasantry as gorillas, always flourishing shillelaghs, and grinning horribly. With rare exceptions, they appear as an inferior race, while the ruling class, and the Trenches in particular, appear throughout the book as demigods, 'lords of the creation,' formed by nature ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... with an old tie-wig, which I had the day before purchased of an antiquated Chelsea pensioner for half-a-crown. The other company, though in doleful dumps for the loss of the coriander seed, could not forbear grinning at the merry metamorphis, for our Quaker now looked more like a devil than saint. As companions in distress ever alleviate its weight, they invited him with a general laugh into their leathern convenience again, wished us a goodnight, and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... early hour. Long before the slightest hint of dawn showed in the sky the lamps were lighted in the corridors, maids were scuttling about, bringing in breakfast, and Jones, the gardener, assisted by his eldest boy, a sturdy grinning urchin of twelve, was beginning the process of carrying down piles of hand-bags and hold-alls, and stacking them on a cart which was waiting in the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... was opened and the squire's bride entered the room, you can imagine there was laughing and tittering and grinning enough. ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... everything appeared from the views I had snatched through the telescope while yet on the Earth. I could not see the "Man in the Moon," whose grinning face had so often looked down upon me, but from my first point of observation everything looked as if life had never existed there and, consequently, I was about to conclude that no human beings inhabit the Moon. This theory ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... driver, was one of those queer creatures one sometimes meets in Italy. At first I took him to be of feeble intellect, for when I spoke to him or merely looked at him, he shut up his eyes, showed his teeth and covered his face all over with grinning wrinkles; but on knowing him better, I found he was really extremely intelligent and perfectly good. He was about sixteen, but would have passed for twenty. His general appearance was grey, the actual colour of his face, hands and clothes being ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... was to me a strange and suggestive scene—the bald, beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the upturned faces below him, while the bony skeleton at his side swayed in the wind, and the grinning skulls below, made grotesque faces, as if laughing at the gullibility of the people. Behind him loomed up the massive Palazzo Vecchio, with its high tower, sharply cut, and set with deep machicolations; to the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... supper, with lights kindled: "Only I cannot dress, you know," her Highness had said; "I never do, except for the Queen-Mother's parties;"—and rang for her maids. So that you are led out to the Anteroom, and go grinning about, till a new and still more charming deshabille be completed, and her Most Serene Highness can receive you again: "Now Messieurs! Pshaw, one is always stupid, no ESPRIT at all except by candlelight!"—After ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... stepped Irish Fallon, closely followed by Bill, the sight of whose blood-stained face attracted grinning attention. The two men passed the length of the room to the wash-bench, where a few loiterers still splashed noisily at ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to run extended from the cave to the bluff overhanging the river. He looked the length of the double row of grinning women and children—the active agents in what was to come. Back of the women and children were warriors and old men, their faces relaxed into holiday expressions. Toward the river end of the gauntlet were stationed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... at a row of what seemed to be grinning steel mouths, barred with innumerable black teeth, and half concealed by a projecting ledge at the bottom of the wall opposite the entrance, and as I looked I was thrilled by the sight of faint curls of smoke ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... figure, saddle and bridle on arm, threaded its way through the crowd round the weighing enclosure—a little space fenced off by barbed wire. Presently they saw him coming back grinning. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... catch his spear, trusting in Allah that my horse would stand the shock. But the prospect of success was small, because I could see nothing clearly, till suddenly the thunder of the hoof-beats ceased, and I beheld the knight within ten yards of me, grinning and saluting me with lance erect, his horse flung back upon ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... for position, and the half sabre went home just below his ribs. He dropped bleeding in the dust at the second that Alwa and Mahommed Gunga each saw an opportunity and rushed in, to rein back face to face, grinning in each other's faces, their horses' breasts pressed tight against the charger that Jaimihr rode. The horse screamed as the shock crushed the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... disappointments, Papa came home to dinner one day, exclaiming, in great glee: 'I've found old Joe! A messenger came with a letter to me, and when I looked up to give my answer, there stood a tall, grizzled fellow, as straight as a ramrod, grinning from ear to ear, with his hand to his temple, saluting me in regular style. "Don't you remember Joe Collins, Colonel? Awful glad to see you, sir," said he. And then it all came back, and we had a good talk, and I found out that the poor old boy was down on his luck, and almost ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... the man, grinning, "'bout a fool an' his money. The house is a hunker; but w'at's the use of a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... a far different object from mere courtesy; for no sooner did he see the Queen fairly engaged in conversation with Sussex and Hunsdon, behind whose back stood Sir Nicholas Blount, grinning from ear to ear at each word which was spoken, than, making a sign to Tressilian, who, according to appointment, watched his motions at a little distance, he extricated himself from the press, and walking towards the Chase, made his way through the crowds of ordinary spectators, who, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... grinning, realised that there was still time for repentance, and bundled forth to ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... to be cleaned and varnished, and placed it on a chest of drawers in his chamber, immediately opposite his bed; where I have seen it, grinning most dismally. It was an object of great awe and horror to the superstitious housemaids; and Scott used to amuse himself with their apprehensions. Sometimes, in changing his dress, he would leave his neck-cloth coiled round it like ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the words of his own play coming from the older man's mouth. The horrible fascination of the scene held him entranced. He saw the creations of his mind pass in review before him, as a man might look upon the face of his double grinning at him from behind a door in the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... to call me 'Corky,' didn't I?" He glared at his big brother. "How can you stand there grinning like an imbecile with ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Then silent. Our meditations were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Narayan Singh in the door of the compartment, grinning full of news. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... by little, been forced by his own past and his own hopes into a course that at times was hateful to him. Ten thousand men, far worse than he, walk the streets of every big city and sleep snug o' nights with no grinning Conscience-Skull to break their rest. A thousand well-meaning, harmless sons of dominating and domineering parents are forced, as was he, into by-roads as hateful to them. To be cast by Fate to enact the Villain, when one has not ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... loaded on donkeys, and will soon find its way to Tschelga and Gondar; here some fat Nubian girls, redolent with rancid castor-oil flowing from their woolly heads down their necks and shoulders, issue grinning from a Frank's store, holding in their hands red and yellow kerchiefs, the long-desired object of their dreams. The whole scene is lively; good-humour prevails; and though the noise is fearful, the bargaining being long and clamorous, and every one is armed with lance or club, still, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... grinning monkey have been saying to him?" Simon asked himself. "Licking the dust off his boots somehow, for that is what he likes, the parvenu! They are like cats, those La Marinieres! they always know how to please everybody, and to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... was as precious an imp as any Topsy ever was. Her tricks were endless and her innocence of them amazing. When sent out to bring in eggs she would take them from nests where hens were hatching, and embryo chickens would be served up at breakfast, while Reeney stood by grinning to see them opened; but when accused she was imperturbable. "Laws, Mis' L., I nebber done bin nigh dem hens. Mis' Annie, you can go count dem dere eggs." That when counted they were found minus the number she had brought had no effect on her stolid denial. H. has plenty to do finishing ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the foam flew from his grinning lips, advanced until they were almost in contact with the soldier's face—"Brudder!" he cried, as he felt his triumph, and twined his arms still more tightly around Roland's frame, "Long-knife nothing! ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... his story, and said that his dress was a very strange one for a Federal Colonel, that rebels often wore blue clothes, but they had never heard of their officers wearing gray. The prisoners, who knew him, and never doubted that he would be now captured in his turn, listened, grinning, to the conversation, but said nothing. He suddenly pretended to grow angry, said that he would bring his regiment to convince them who he was, and galloped away. Quirk followed him. Before an effort could be made to stop them, they leaped their horses over the fence, and struck, at full speed, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... for us," the coxswain said grinning; "and—my! How he did do the skipper over getting away. He's a cunning old fox, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... calling attention to traitorous garters and wrinkled stockings. Tommy Downey had forgotten what his mother had told him about being sure to put his ears inside his cap and those two appendages, burned and already blistered by the hot May sun, stood out in solemn grandeur from his small, round, grinning face. The school teachers were keeping anxious eyes on their particular broods and insisting that the eager feet keep solemn step ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... at ease, he leveled the revolver, grinning with the mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table. The guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz. He caught at his throat and staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall. When ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... said the other, grinning. "I have private reasons for believing her cargo consists mainly ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... suffered everything from the war and the interdiction of commerce in which it had been most actively engaged, preceding the event. Multitudes were absolutely ruined, and the gaunt wolf stood grinning at almost every other threshold. Among the memorials of that great struggle, it may be as well to mention the rusted cannon planted for posts at the corners of certain of the streets, the breech sunk in the ground and a bomb-shell ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... which art he taught me a little. Often I would help him to grind his colours, and he instructed me in the laying of them on paper or vellum, with white of egg, and in fixing and burnishing the gold, and in drawing flowers, and figures, and strange beasts and devils, such as we see grinning from the walls of the cathedral. In the French language, too, he learned me, for he had been taught at the great University of Paris; and in Avignon had seen the Pope himself, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... mouldering!—Why have I brains and nerves and sensibilities?—Oh that I were in the poisonous desert, where I might gulp mephitic winds and drop dead; or in a moment be buried in tornados of burning sand! Would that my scull were grinning there, and blanching; rather than as it is consciously parching, scorched by fires ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... machine drew nearer they saw that it was painted green, and, a moment later, Noddy Nixon had brought his auto to a stop, and was grinning at them. ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... religion,' said a tall negro in a red turban, grinning with his white teeth; 'they have none in my country; but if I had heard of your God before, Calidas, I would ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... life-in-death statue mountains in Egypt with their narrow fixed eyes and hands on their rocky limbs, nor one Romanesque facade with its porphyry mosaic of indefinable monsters, nor one Gothic moulding of rigid saints and grinning goblins, for ten Parthenons; and, I believe, I could show some rational ground for this seeming barbarity if this were the place to do so, but at present I can only ask the reader to compare the effect of the so-called ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and singing at the top of his voice. The sound seemed to bring John Jay back to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his eyesight clearer. As he slid down from the hay and walked along beside George, he noticed for the first time ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... great internal whirring, some one tapped lightly on the door. Bat himself answered the knock. His body shut off sight of whoever stood outside. I could just catch the murmur of a subdued voice. After a few seconds of listening Bat nodded vigorously, and closed the door. He came back to his chair grinning pleasantly, and handed me a little package. I tore it open and found, wrapped tightly about three twenty-dollar gold pieces, an unsigned ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... other creatures." At these words the whole of the assembly [of animals] protested. "And I!" said the Eagle, with a loud voice, as he alighted on a rock. "Corcorico!" chanted the Cock. The Monkey was scratching himself and admiring his grinning phiz in the water, which served him for a looking-glass. Then the Buzzard was beside himself [with rage]. And the Cuckoo was wailing. The Ass rolled over and over, crying: "Heehaw! how ugly Man is!" The Elephant stamped about with his heavy feet, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... me, beat me hard. She laughed, and I laughed; but the more I laughed the harder she thumped, till the sharp edges of the leaves left almost a sting, while the strong healthy Saima beat me harder and harder, dipping the leaves into hot water continually, and grinning cheerily all the time. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... recognized one less robust than himself, he gave a shout of delight and with a rush dragged him from his saddle in an affectionate embrace, while the captain, his eyes dancing with pleasure, was wringing the hand of a widely-grinning little darky who had dismounted from the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the billows, with airy gesture dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving us a theatrical salute. The infant mate was grinning like a gargoyle. They were both delightfully unconscious, apparently, of any event having transpired, during the afternoon's pleasuring, which could possibly tinge the moment of parting with the hues ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... spot at which the tragedy occurred is down a narrow, winding, country lane. While we made our way along it we heard the rattle of a carriage coming towards us and stood aside to let it pass. As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... named it, with a thinly-disguised contempt for her own work, "A Sentimental Comedy." The ground of this conception of the artificiality of comedy is a profound pessimism. Life in the eyes of these mournful buffoons is itself an utterly tragic thing; comedy must be as hollow as a grinning mask. It is a refuge from the world, and not even, properly speaking, a part of it. Their wit is a thin sheet of shining ice over the eternal waters ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... he want you to write the Thanksgiving sermon," said Felix, grinning. "But, General, I have really an invite for you. I forgot to write the note before I leave home, and so you must, 'scuse the want of style. I have the honor to ask you, General, to take your dinner, on that glorious day, with Miss ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Come, bid us God-speed!' He led the way from the panelled room to the house door, before which stood a chaise de poste with six horses, which the three postillions restrained with difficulty. Dressed in his fine new coat, the peasant servant of Neuhaus stood grinning in the background. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... sparsely feathered wings. One discovery, made there on a summer day, has not, I fancy, been duplicated in another New England town. On six of the larger tombstones are carved, below the grass level, a row of tiny imps, grinning faces and humanized animals. Whose was the hand that wrought? The Tivertonians know nothing about it. They say there was a certain old Veasey who, some eighty odd years ago, used to steal into the graveyard with his tools, and there, for love, scrape the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... meanwhile has sighted an East-Indiaman, and given chase). "Well, soon as we'd overhauled her, our 'Jolly Roger' we flew, We opened our dummy deadlights, and the guns gleamed grinning through. And, panther-like, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... Jack Carleton whirled on his heel and found the broad, grinning face of one of the warriors almost against his own. Holding the rifle back, as if expecting an attempt to recover it, the savage thrust his head forward, with a tantalizing expression overspreading his ugly ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... dear, indirectly. That was on Saturday afternoon. Next morning we breakfasted under a thundercloud with Egerton grinning inside his skin, and looking like 'Won't you catch it, that's all!' at me out of the corner of his eye. That was bad enough, without one's married sister up from the country taking one aside to say that she wasn't going to interfere, and calling one to witness that she had said nothing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Seeing that it was quite useless to expect this densely impenetrable personage to give me any help in relieving the suffering creature at our feet, I told her to request the housekeeper's attendance with my compliments. She went out exactly as she had come in, grinning from ear to ear. As the door closed on her she said to herself softly, "It's Baxter's doings and Baxter's ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy. Boys started in and out of their places, playing at puss in the corner with other boys; there were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and before his eyes; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother, everything belonging to him that they should ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... I haven't got it!" declared Jimmie, still grinning. "But I saw it when it disappeared and I know where ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and bunting. She was empty, however, except for a man washing down the deck. The band had gone and her glory had departed. There was a boy in a small boat rowing around the steamer, and staring at her. I seemed to remember his round, red face and when he put down an oar, and waved his hand, grinning and showing where his front teeth ought to have been, I recollected him instantly. He was the boy who had driven the horse-car from Squid Cove yesterday afternoon. Now, he let his boat ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed it—"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady Digby smiled for the first time since her lord had died, and when the grinning cook bore in the platter, she beat upon the table with ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... up at the bedroom window, scampered up the salon shutter, crouched on the top, and, with one leap, was through the bedroom window. When I rushed upstairs—to see if he had hurt himself, I suppose,—he was sitting on the foot of the bed, and I think he was grinning. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... pony and cart, a motor boat and a sloop yacht," Archie replied, grinning. "I 'low," he drawled, with a sly drooping of his eyelids, "that they're worth more than a thousand dollars. Eh, father? What ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... fire around him, though, as he kept hidden in the little suburban hotel, where his smuggling confederates had found him a safe refuge as their chief. The grinning head steward had helped him smuggle his unsuspected booty on shore, and, while Fritz Braun gazed moodily out of the windows of the old hostelry, he planned his ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... hold mortal strife; I do detest my life, And with lamenting cries Peace to my soul to bring Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise: —But he, grim grinning King, Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... candle-end and a tattered book. When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score of corpses that were lying directly on the stone floor in regular rows—extended, yellow, with faces distorted by pre-mortal convulsions, with skulls split open, with clots of blood on their faces, with grinning teeth. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... lantern projecting here and there from the angle of a wall, or by the flare of an oil-lamp under a shrine, that Odo, leaning eagerly out, could only now and then catch a sculptured palace-window, the grinning mask on the keystone of an archway, or the gleaming yellowish facade of a church inlaid with marbles. Once or twice an uncurtained window showed a group of men drinking about a wineshop table, or an artisan bending over his work by the light of a tallow ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... live in that hideous gloom in which their single lamp, for she dared burn no more lest the oil should give out, seemed but as one star to the whole night, ah! who that had not endured it could know what it meant? There the sick man, yonder the grinning skeletons, around the blackness and the silence, and beyond these again a miserable death, or Jacob Meyer. But of him Benita saw nothing, though once or twice she thought that she heard his voice raving outside the wall which they ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... pack horses, some wretched old women leading them, and two or three children clinging to their backs. Here were mules or ponies covered from head to tail with gaudy trappings, and mounted by some gay young squaw, grinning bashfulness and pleasure as the Meneaska looked at her. Boys with miniature bows and arrows were wandering over the plains, little naked children were running along on foot, and numberless dogs were scampering among the feet ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... said Long Jim, grinning. "Fact is, thar ain't a beauty among us. I don't mind mud so much, but I don't like it when it's black an' slimy. How fur do you reckon this flooded ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that sense absurd from the grave baby to the grinning skull; everything practical is a practical joke. But throughout Shaw's comedies, curiously enough, there is a certain kicking against this great doom of laughter. For instance, it is the first duty of a man who is in love to make a fool of himself; but Shaw's heroes always seem ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... remonstrance. The soldier had fallen back on to the seat, and was grinning inanely; the drovers were ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... them off to plunge them in the bath. After undergoing this disagreeable process for some time till they were almost drowned, they with difficulty scrambled out, and made their way below. The first mate stood by grinning as he saw the youngsters undergoing this ordeal. Owen made no resistance, nor did he cry out; but as soon as possible he got away to his berth, to cleanse himself from the filth with which he had been covered. Some of the other lads and young men resisted lustily, and suffered ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... he had brought the gun along from the bed with him and was holding it without having been in the least aware of the fact. Grinning twistedly at the old and pointless precaution, he shoved the gun into his trousers pocket, brought out matches, a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and began to smoke. Very considerate of them to see to it he wouldn't run out of minor conveniences ... like leaving ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz |
