"Postman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came that night was ushered in somewhat prosaically, not by the sound of a foeman's horn being wound in the distance, but by the postman's knock. There was only one letter, but that was an important looking one addressed to Rendel, in a big, square envelope with an official signature in the corner. It was, however, marked "private and confidential," and was not written in an official capacity. Rendel as he looked at it, saw ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... take an interest in the affairs of others. The fact has been amply demonstrated by innumerable postmasters and postmistresses who have profited from their contact with the communities' correspondence. That the postman, too, is likely to be well informed is shown in a quotation by Punch of a local letter-carrier's apology to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the letters which had been so long delayed. Barbier and David, walking together one bitter evening towards Barbier's lodgings, silent, with hanging heads, met the postman on Barbier's steps, who held out a packet. The Frenchman took it with a cry; the two rushed upstairs and fell upon the letters and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... absorbingly interesting to both—unsatisfactory talks at best, since none can minister to a mind diseased. One day a letter came which changed the current of life at Bourhill. How often is such an unpretending missive, borne by the postman's careless hand, fraught with stupendous issues? It came in a plain, square envelope, bearing the Glasgow post-mark, and the words 'Royal Infirmary' on the flap. Gladys opened it, as she did most things now, with but a languid interest, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... rolled a million years ago, and our spirits catch a contagion from the elements. Our step on the boards recovers its buoyancy. We are rocked to rest at night by a gentle movement which soothes you into the dreamless sleep of childhood, and we wake with the certainty that we are beyond the reach of the postman. We are shut off, in a Catholic retreat, from the worries and anxieties ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... there read its confirmation in the long columns of advertisements of "Boarders wanted," which adorn that sheet. Or, better still, let him insert an advertisement in the aforesaid Herald, applying for board, and he will find himself in receipt of a mail next morning that will tax the postman's utmost capacity. The boarding-houses of New York are a feature, and not the pleasantest one, of the great city. How many there are, is not known, but in some localities they cover both sides of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... morning I caught Andrew doing up a big, flat parcel for the postman. He looked so sheepish I just had ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... leave the field: that very evening an aged man, in green spectacles, was inquiring about the postal arrangements to Vizard Court; and next day he might have been seen, in a back street of Taddington, talking to the village postman, and afterward drinking with him. It was Poikilus groping ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... before the admiring public;—all these come in by mail or express, covered with postage-stamps of so much more cost than the value of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's knock as if it were that of the other visitor whose naked knuckles ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... branches of human knowledge he remained at the lowest grade; for he could with difficulty be made to write his name, and he had not the slightest idea of arithmetic. Thus, for example:—once, when he had to pay the postman six kreuzers for a letter, and Madame Freudenberger gave him the money in two silver pieces, he positively refused to take them and carry them down, affirming that two pieces were not enough; and, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... who spoke. There was a brittle, intensely Gallic intonation about the query with its upward inflection, reminding one somehow of a postman's ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of strength and turned about. Off in the distance he saw the mounted postman jogging on his way toward the village and he dashed ahead! Bob, with his smouldering puppy nature coming unexpectedly to his help, scampered on, crazily barking and yelping as he had never permitted himself to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... in the middle of July, he was coming out of his hall-door, when the postman handed him two letters, one of which was directed to his sister. Suspecting the party from whom it came, and that a knowledge of its contents might lead to some discovery useful to him in frustrating the writer's designs, he opened ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... walked with them, and never without obtaining either instruction or amusement. When we had reached the highest ground, from which a splendid view was revealed of the Rouergue country.—a crumpled map of bare hills and deep dark gorges—the postman pointed out to me the village of Roquecesaire (Caesar's Rock), on a hill to the south, and told me a queer story of a battle between its inhabitants and those of an adjacent village. The quarrel, strange to say, arose over a statue of the Virgin, which was erected not long since ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the baby hastened Till he reached the office door. "I'se a letter, Mr. Postman; Is there ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... way in this, and many other things? He provided a sumptuous tea, and added a fresh salad to it from the greengrocer's next door; but though he and Dolly waited and watched till long after the child's bed-time, taking occasional snatches of bread and butter, still Susan did not arrive. At length a postman entered the little shop with a noise which made Oliver's heart beat violently, and tossed a letter down upon the counter. He carried it to the door, where there was still light enough to read it, and saw that it ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... on along the path, every step of which was haunted by the form of Lily. He reached the garden gate of Grasmere, lifted the latch, and entered. As he did so, a man, touching his hat, rushed beside, and advanced before him,—the village postman. Kenelm drew back, allowing the man to pass to the door, and as he thus drew back, he caught a side view of lighted windows looking on the lawn,—the windows of the pleasant drawing-room in which he had first heard Lily speak of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... off directly, with her long hair streaming in the wind, when her mother called to her to put something on; and she came back, snatched her garden-hat and holland cape from their peg, and flew away again. Yes, the old postman was standing gossiping with Mrs. Giles at her garden gate, just as Mr. Cunningham had foreseen. When Jessie breathlessly inquired if there were any letters for the Rectory, the old man answered composedly, ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the traveller paid no heed and pursued his road ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... by the postman and the foreign postmark—a dozen words on a card, but she read them several times, and put the card in her pocket to show to Laetitia Wilson. She was pretty sure to be there. And so she was, and by ten o'clock had seen the card and exhausted its contents. And by five-minutes-past Sally was impending ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... class wore a curious solemn look. But what surprised me most of all was to see at the end of the room, on the seats which were usually empty, a number of the village elders seated and silent like the rest of us; old Hansor with his cocked hat, the former mayor, the old postman, and a lot of other people. Everybody looked melancholy; and Hansor had brought an old spelling book, ragged at the edges, which he held wide open on his knees, with his big ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... subtle reasoning, to get at the secret of all this exuberance, this perennial flow of high spirits; indeed, one had only to watch the letter box at Number 204, Clarges Street, to get at the bottom of it instantly; for twice a week the postman dropped into it a letter addressed in an undoubtedly feminine "hand" to Captain Horatio Burbage, and invariably ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... his head. Mail day always held possibilities, however improbable, an expectation unknown to those to whom the sound of the postman's knock comes in the ordinary course of events. Riffle appeared round the corner of the stoep. Had you seen him anywhere but in Africa, you would have vowed he was a good-looking Italian. A Cape coloured boy he was truly, and that, mark you, is a ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... an overgrown spear of wheat, a phenomenon Kitty took as a matter of course. So we Britishers had to do the same, no matter how we felt, to show that we were as brave as Americans. In the midst of the storm the postman's ring sounded reassuringly, as if to say that we were not cut off from earth; and a calm maid, used to hanging on insectlike by her antennae to the top grain on the wheat stalk, quietly presented a silver tray with letters to ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Progressive Puzzles. Tit For Tat. Eye-guessing. The Prince Of Wales. Commerce. Laugh A Little. Location. Fashion Notes. Stray Syllables. Quaker Meeting. Magic Music. Patchwork Illustrations. Biography. Orchestra. Who Is My Next-door Neighbor? Fire. The Months. Bell Buff. Postman. Spooney Fun. Cities. Going To China. A Penny For Your Thoughts. Misquoted Quotations. Literary Salad. Broken Quotations. Parcel Delivery. Who Are They? Swaps. Talking Shop. Sight Unseen. A Study In Zoology. Auction Sale The Genteel ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... day to watch anxiously for the arrival of the postman, and on the sixth morning after Edward's departure, Emily received from him the ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... story told to a group of French peasants one evening, in a barn, by Goguelat, the village postman, who had served under Napoleon in a regiment ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for him—that is but natural, and does us honor besides—yet one is vexed, for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is nothing—any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the first Empire, entered the Guard in 1812; was decorated by Napoleon on the battlefield of Valontina; returned during the Restoration to the village of Isere, of which Benassis was mayor, and became postman. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... you at last, Mother Peyton," said the well-known voice of the postman, breaking in upon her just at this moment. "That boy of yours don't write home as often ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... day my hopes would go up, for it's my nature to be cheerful. The postman would knock at the door, and my heart would go head over heels with excitement, and it would be a circular, or a bill wanting payment. Another time he would not come at all, and that was worse, for one went on ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... laws of sequence, our correspondence should have been brought to a standstill. I calculated, however, that when the postman delivered my phantom communication next morning Phyllis would not remain ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... "From Parsons, the postman, he drives the mail-cart, you know, sir, from Longhampton. This morning, just after six, he was coming through the Chase, the wood beyond the heath, when two men slipped out o' the trees before him and made a dash at the horse's head. There was hardly light enough ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... go beyond that corner, but he could look and see what was coming, and perhaps he could see the postman ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... "She knows the postman collects at six o'clock. Well, I s'pose she is hiding somewhere, reading a book. Won't I give it to her when I catch her! For she said she'd come out here, right after her ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... the letter from Barbara's hand. On the outside was written—the energetic ancient form of our mild direction "To be delivered immediately"—a rather startling address to the postman. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... another, passing as wretched days and more wretched nights do pass somehow; and June had taken its place. In all this long, long time, no letter had come for Rose. How she watched and waited for it; how she had strained her eyes day after day to catch sight of the postman; how her heart leaped up and throbbed when she saw him approach, and sank down in her breast like lead as he went by, only those can know who have watched and waited like her. A sickening sense of despair stole over her at last. They had forgotten ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... occasionally: but, although there are doubtless many acute minds in power, and many great men in public situations, yet the majority of the people of intellect and of wealth in the United States keep aloof whilst this order of things remains: for, from the penny-postman and the city scavenger to the very President himself, the qualification ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Unconsciously Helen repeated the words aloud; then she smiled bitterly as she applied them to herself. Youth?—she was twenty-five. Love?—the grocer? the milkman? the floorwalker? oh, yes, and there was the postman. Laughter?—she could not remember when she had seen anything funny—really funny enough to ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... was almost as brief as if she had done so. That same evening he robbed a mounted postman of his mail-bags—having first ascertained that the postman was unarmed. And here Hudson came to the end of his tether. The postman gave the alarm, and the robber was arrested in Newcastle the following day, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... was striking eight, and the postman was going his rounds through the Boundaries. Formerly, nothing so common as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that exclusive place. The Boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a fool's cap of vast dimensions, and advised to hide, not my "diminished head," but my horrible disgrace, from all beholders, I took the earliest opportunity of dancing down the carriage-drive to meet the postman, a great friend of mine, and attract his observation and admiration to my "helmet," which I called aloud upon all wayfarers also to contemplate, until removed from an elevated bank I had selected for this public exhibition of myself ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... characteristics are the keeper's despair; though, to be sure, he has staunch lieutenants in his under-keepers; and towards the end of the day he can always count on two sympathising allies in the postman and the policeman. These two never fail to come out in the afternoon to join the beaters. It is amusing to watch the demeanour of the beaters in the policeman's presence. Some of them, it is possible, have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... had been in for the competitive examination, and had now ridden over to Barnstaple to forestall the country postman and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... disobedience extremely dangerous. Cecilia quite understood that she was being watched. No letters had yet come from Bob, and she knew that her stepmother had been hovering near the letter-box whenever the postman had called. Mrs. Rainham had accompanied them on their walk the day before; a remark of Avice's revealed that she meant to do ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... snowy Caucasian peaks. I should much have liked to get as far as Erzeroum, in the heart of Asia Minor. But as time failed me I contented myself with travelling at full speed for one day, along the road leading thither, with the Tartar or postman who carried the mails, so as to obtain some idea of the country. When I say road I speak figuratively. It was not even a path. It was a mere track across the woods and rocks and ravines of that mountainous region, but along that track ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... advice, and place his "affections upon a worthier object than Caroline Dalton;" and, thought he to himself, she shall at last see that I have found one; nor shall wild Tom, my graceless nephew, who lives upon my fortune, ever more touch one penny of it. The postman rapped, and in a few minutes his housekeeper appeared with many apologies for bringing to him her own newspaper, but perhaps in it he might be able to find the names of some of the new novels that he wished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... refused hand-over-head, in that way. Besides, my note was so respectable, and respectful, it surely required and demanded something more of an answer, methinks, from a person of birth or education, than the single bald word 'mis-sent,' like the postman! Surely, Miss Hanley, now, putting your friendship apart, candidly you must think as I do? And, whether or no, at least you will be so obliging to do me the favour to find out from Lady Davenant if she really made the reply with ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... many personalities that struck one's imagination during this August battle, the majority were simply of the rank and file, whose pluck and unselfishness were incomparable. Of most I have forgotten the very names. There was a postman from Bradford, who was forty-seven years old and had thirteen children. I remember his telling me of South African experiences. He fell. Most of our men were far younger. Many were mere boys, whose days in the Camel Corps at Khartum had been their ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of Satan. The only thing he had ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... discovered before General Schuyler or Troup had sorted his mail. As the entire Schuyler family were now in his house, and his new son was piercingly discontented with his lot, he took refuge in his chambers in Garden Street, until Betsey was able to restore peace and happiness to his home. The postman had orders to bring his mail-bag thither, and it was on the second morning of his exile that the perfume of violets caused him to make a hasty journey through ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of any kind that Gabrielle had received. The postman from Oughterard did not visit Roscarna twenty times in the year, and since his arrival was something of an event, entailing a meal and endless gossip with Biddy Joyce, Sir Jocelyn soon became aware of his daughter's correspondence. He questioned ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... letters, father? I heard the postman's knock." As she spoke, Rose looked rather anxiously at her frowning parent. "Good news, I hope—the English ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... by surrendering up her charms to a captain's coxswain. She informed him that her father might be said to have been royally connected, being a king's messenger (and so, indeed, he might be considered, having been a twopenny postman), and that her mother had long scores against the first nobles in the land (she was a milk-woman), and that she had dry-nursed a young baronet, and was now, not merely a ladies' maid, but a lady's ladies' maid. All this important and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... rumours of the war come to us like far-off echoes from another world. The only sensation of our day is when, just after darkness has fallen, the sound of a whistle in the tiny street of thatched cottages announces that the postman ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Accordingly, wherever he goes, he finds out some cotter or small farmer who is his cousin. I wish you could see him walking into his cousins' curds and cream, and into their dairies generally! Yesterday morning, between eight and nine, I was sitting writing at the open window, when the postman came to the inn (which at Loch Earn Head is the post-office) for the letters. He is going away, when Fletcher, who has been writing somewhere below-stairs, rushes out, and cries, 'Halloa there! Is that the Post?' 'Yes!' somebody answers. 'Call him back!' says Fletcher: 'Just sit down till ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Press. When the paper containing the verses came, the young poet read the lines over and over again, almost too dazed to recognize them as his own. This contribution was followed by another made to the same paper. By this time the editor's interest had been so much aroused that, learning from the postman of the author's whereabouts, he traveled to Haverhill to visit him. This editor was no other than William Lloyd Garrison, who later became famous as a leader of the cause of abolition. He urged strongly that the boy's education be continued. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of Epsom salts; We snatch the cup and lift to drain it dry,— Its central dimple holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! —The door-bell jingles,—enter Richard Fox, And takes this ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tears from a Stoic!—As for me, some twelve or thirteen New Religions, heavy Packets, most of them unfranked, having arrived here from various parts of the world, in a space of six calendar months, I have instructed my invaluable friend the Stamped Postman to introduce no more of them, if the charge exceed ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Just at breakfast-time the postman brought the letter, and the youngest girl running out on to the gravel brought it ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... thrown out of the current of life, drifts into his place in the back-water, and the parliament is ready for business. They see Gabriel Carnine totter by, chasing after pennies to add to his little pile. The bell tinkles, and the postman brings a letter. McHurdie opens it and says, as he ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... ginerals wid a goold watch an' a shiny hat. An' whin he wint into a shop, sure they niver axed him to show the color av his money at all, but the man 'ud say, 'God save ye! Sure ye can pay whin ye plaze, an' I'll sind it be the postman whin he goes by.' An' the ould King 'ud say, 'Oh, I wont throuble ye. Bedad, I'll carry it,' an' aff the blessed ould King 'ud go, wid his bundles undher his arm, an' the crown on his head, as happy as a widdy wid a ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... much, I had done with the young person, for the time being," he continued, glibly; "and I felt that my next business would be at Hilton House. Here I presented myself in the character of a twopenny postman; but here I found the servants foreign, and so uncommonly close that they might as well have been so many marble monuments, for any good that was to be got out of them. Failing the servants, I fell back upon the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Brigade will constitute an agency capable of being utilised to any extent for the distribution of parcels newspapers, &c. When once you have your reliable man who will call at every house with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal Corps of Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the letters from the postman, and carried the morning paper up to Mr. Morris's study, and I always put away the clean clothes. After they were mended, Mrs. Morris folded each article and gave it to me, mentioning the name of the owner, so that I ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... at the window, while the hours of the morning wore on, until the postman came. Before the servant could take the letter bag she was in the hall to receive it. Was it possible to hope that the bag had brought tidings of Anne? She sorted the letters; and lighted suddenly on a letter to herself. It bore the Kirkandrew ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... time mails were dispatched monthly to England, and semi-weekly between Quebec and Montreal, or Halifax. At Baie des Chaleurs the visits of the postman must, we conclude, have been few and far between, as they were only favored with a mail ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... do they keep back his letter? I know he must have written to me long ago; and I cannot go to him until I get the letter! and he will wonder why I am not coming. Morning after morning I listen for the postman—I can hear him in the street from house to house—and they all get their letters, but I don't get this one that is worth all the world to me. And I never neglected anything that he said; and I was always very obedient to him; and he will wonder now that I don't go to him, and perhaps ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... I waited upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... your voice is strong, the sound will carry for a quarter of a mile—but then you feel a sting as though after a slap. If only you had kept your regal silence! One day the postman who crosses the fjeld once a month came on me just as I ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... first thing on our morning's program is a long walk, say to the park, and back. It is such a glorious day we mustn't waste a moment of it, and we have all laughed so much we certainly need some exercise. Miss Summers looks positively worn out with mirth. By the time we get back, the postman and expressman may have visited us again, and I am sure the minutes will pass more quickly for each of us impatient children if we are busy doing something. My box from home isn't here yet, and I am as eager as you are to see what my nieces ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... I know it's nothing to boast of even on earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, parish ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and collars of her mistress, which she wore a few nights ago at a ball), and returns with something heavy in it, for the arm is extended in carrying it, and the stranger disappears. She still lingers, she is expecting some one. It is the postman, he gives her three or four letters, one of which is for herself. She reads it approvingly, and then carefully puts it into her bosom, but that won't retain it no how she can fix it, so she shifts it to her ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... interrupted Oscar smiling, "I only use the name Melmoth to spare the blushes of the postman, to preserve his modesty," and he laughed in the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Doctor from his landlady and the boy at' Child's." There is another allusion to the house in the Spectator. "Sometimes I"—the writer is Addison—"smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room." Apart from such decided lay patrons as Addison, Child's could also claim a large constituency among the medical and ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... succeeding window inquiry. In time the boxes would go, but the habit of dropping in for your own noonday mail on the way home to dinner was deep-rooted, and undoubtedly you got it earlier. Moreover, it takes time to engender confidence in a postman when he is drawn from your midst, and when you know perfectly well that he would otherwise be driving the mere watering-cart, or delivering the mere ice, as he was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in generous measure the "certain jolly humors" which R.L.S. says we voyage to find. He throws off flashes of imaginative felicity—as where he says of canes, "They are the light to blind men." Where he describes Mr. Oliver Herford "listing to starboard, like a postman." Where he says of the English who use colloquially phrases known to us only in great literature—"There are primroses in their speech." And where he begins his "Memoirs of a Manuscript," "I was born ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down himself from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not to see each other in the two weeks that followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner, sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon, far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinee and tea ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed—to resume—) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early on my list; and when once I get to it, three weeks should see the last ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... constant, although an unwilling guest at all these entertainments. He would fain have refused Mrs. Barton's hospitalities, but so pressing was she that this seemed impossible. There were times when he started at the postman's knock as at the sound of a Land Leaguer's rifle. Too frequently his worst fears were realized. 'Mon cher Marquis, it will give us much pleasure if you will dine with us to-morrow night at half-past seven.' 'Dear Mrs. Barton, I regret extremely that I am engaged for to-morrow ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... in my dreams the eye-glass of a certain attache at a certain embassy—an eye-glass that was a standing indignity to all on whom it looked; and my next most disagreeable remembrance is of a bracing, Republican postman in the city of San Francisco. I lived in that city among working folk, and what my neighbours accepted at the postman's hands—nay, what I took from him myself—it is still distasteful to recall. The bourgeois, residing in the upper parts of society, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them till we met face to face-perhaps never. But, as it is, when friends leave, we expect a message from their hearts soon, to solace our own. How we watch, and how we hope! What a welcome rap is the postman's! With what eagerness we loosen the seal; with what pleasure we read, from date to signature, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... sitting at the open window of her bedroom, which commanded an extensive view of the terraces. A pile of letters lay on the table beside her, for she had just finished reading her mail. The postman came late to the castle on Sundays and she had not been able to do this until luncheon ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... disseminated among delighted, dirty, juveniles; whilst the boys seem chagrined at notices for "the extinction of abuses," or "suppression of Christmas-boxes;" which seems only to make them the more pertinacious at Victoria Villa: for an irregular dustman has chalked the post, and the Postman vowed to mark Mr. Brown; the Turncock is turned off; the Waits have to "wait a little longer;" and the Beadle, who declared Mr. Brown no generous churchwarden, has, withal, found enough alcohol to make him stupid before night—causing that dignitary to cry ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... was saying," Rowles went on, "he comes here every August and September, and letters come by the bushel with Q.C. on them; and young Walker—the postman, you know—would just as soon he staid in London. But before August and after September Mrs. Rowles has a tidy little sitting-room and bed-room, if so be as you know anyone would be likely ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... direction to his heart. Oh, how interminably long did the short days of December and January appear! There was one bright hour for me, among all my hours,—it was when I heard from my room the step, the voice, and the rattle of the postman, who was distributing the letters in the neighborhood. As soon as I heard him I opened my window; I saw him coming up the street, with his hands full of letters, which he distributed to all the maid-servants, and waited at each door till he received the postage. How I cursed the slowness ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... suddenly, inspiration seemed to fail him. He could not write a line, could not even think of a subject; and, for a whole day, he felt something nearly akin to dismay. If his ideas ran out as quickly as this his prospects were small indeed; and when the postman brought back two of his manuscripts, with printed slips conveying the editor's thanks and regrets, he began to curse his own folly ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... subject. Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice- lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than any ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the sharp, rapid knock of the postman sounded in his ears. His heart leaped up, and then suddenly sank with suffocating fear, for the dark mood of despair was on him—could it be another returned manuscript? He had only one now in the hands of a publisher; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... own. But he was very good-natured, and when we were alone I let him be uncle to the dolls. When we spent the day with Maud Mary, however, we never let him play with the baby-house; but we allowed him to be the postman and the baker, and people of that sort, who knock and ring, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wallet, into which, through an opening, letters and other articles were placed, the postmen receiving a fee of a penny on every letter, and a halfpenny on every newspaper. This was a personal fee to the men over and above the ordinary postage. To warn the public of the postman's approach each man carried a large bell, which he rang vigorously as he went his rounds. These men, besides taking up letters for the public, called also at the receiving offices for any letters left for them upon ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... every comet that has come back upon predicted time—not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse about it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's periodicities tomorrow—was advertised for all it was worth. It's the way reputations are worked up for fortune-tellers by the faithful. The comets that didn't come back—omitted or explained. Or Encke's ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... dares come out and fight in the open, for he knows that public sentiment is against him. The people understand—to what an extent is shown in a report of a Tenement House Committee in the city of Yonkers, which the postman put on my table this minute. The committee was organized "to prevent the danger to Yonkers of incurring the same evils that have fallen so heavily upon New York and have cost that city millions of money and thousands of lives." It ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... upon the table. Jacob was helping himself to jam; the postman was talking to Rebecca in the kitchen; there was a bee humming at the yellow flower which nodded at the open window. They were all alive, that is to say, while poor Mr. Floyd was becoming Principal ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... archdeacon also, in spite of the sanctity of the day. Indeed the archdeacon had been very stoutly anti-sabbatarial when the question of stopping the Sunday post to Plumstead had been mooted in the village, giving those who on that occasion were the special friends of the postman to understand that he considered them to be numbskulls, and little better than idiots. The postman, finding the parson to be against him, had seen that there was no chance for him, and had allowed the matter to drop. Mrs Arabin's letter was long and eager, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... which she sent up to the Manor, post haste, as soon as it arrived. The telegraph-boy who conveyed it, got sixpence for himself as a reward for the extra speed he had put on in running all the way from the village to the house, thereby outstripping the postman, who being rotund in figure was somewhat heavily labouring up in the same direction with the last delivery of letters for the day. Miss Vancourt's correspondents were generally very numerous,—but on this occasion there was only ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... not said a word on the subject, but I am very sure he would be overjoyed to have her come back. Every day when the postman arrives I believe he looks for a letter from her, and he shows that he feels it when he finds none. He is good-natured, and pleasant, but he is not as cheerful as when ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... snow. It was a bright, beautiful day—blue sky and a not too pale winter sun. Not a vehicle of any kind had ventured out. In the middle of the road were footprints deep in the snow where evidently the keepers and some workmen had passed. Nothing and no one had arrived from outside, neither postman, butcher, nor baker. The chef was in a wild state; but I assured him we could get on with eggs and game, of which there was always a provision for one ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... cathedrals and public buildings and city squares, where monuments to soldiers were as common as daisies in a summer field. Suddenly, on a certain morning, I came upon a little plot of grass and trees, near the great postoffice in St. Botolph's, Aldergate, which is called the "Postman's Park," and at one end of it saw the little open gallery, erected in 1887 by the great painter, George F. Watts, with its forty-eight tablets placed in commemoration of certain heroes and heroines who died unknown in the endeavor to save the lives of others. Here ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... favourite pursuit of all classes, and the postman is probably the only man who leaves letters for the vulgar pursuit of lucre! Even the vanity of servant-maids has undergone a change—they now study ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... should have been enabled to expect him, if it were only for an hour or two, before his arrival. A communication would doubtless have been made from the Home Office to some one at Folking, and as that would be sent out by the foot-postman it would not be received before ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... each sex, who is accustomed to attend them, is now habited in black. Thus a round of mourning is kept up by the courtiers of Europe, not by means of any sympathetic beating of the heart, but at the sound, as it were, of the postman's horn. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson |
