"Roomful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... short of 211th Street. Well, sir, when you blow in there you'll see a roomful of curios. I'm not exactly a connoisseur, but I know enough to tell Japanese work from Chinese. This was made by a Jap. And that reminds me. You said last night that Wong Li Fu put you off your balance by a jiu jitsu trick and ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... tell me I was not fit to be head of the house, you needn't have done it before a roomful of fags. How do you think I can keep order in the house if you do ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon him. The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth, but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in the terrific intensity of my rage. Springing upward, I struck him full in the face as he turned at my warning cry and then as he drew his short-sword I drew mine and sprang up again upon his breast, hooking one leg over the butt of his pistol and grasping one of his huge tusks with my left ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... roomful of pupils, many of them young men and women, there was during those winters, thirty-five or forty each day! In late years there are never more than five or six. The fountains of population are drying up more rapidly than are ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston, giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that grows swarms with ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... conscious that tense stillness reigned in the county court room. Some man standing behind the back benches shuffled his feet and cleared his throat with an offensive "hem." The roomful of people looked back angrily. The attorney had pencilled a line on a scrap of paper and shoved it across in front of the coroner. Through the open windows, Eleanor could see that a great concourse of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... private use of it, and keep herself out of the way as much as she can; and so she has done since. She says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to her to hear the relation; and that she had told it to a roomful of people at the time. Several particular gentlemen have had the story from ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... performer volunteered to entertain a roomful of patients of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, and made up a very successful little monologue show, entirely humorous. The audience in the main gave symptoms of being slightly bored, but one highly intelligent ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... but neither then, nor a little later when she and Calderwell drove hurriedly away from the house, did Billy once remember that Miss Marguerite Winthrop was coming to call that afternoon to see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw and a roomful of Billy pictures. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... people about the South—if they could have guessed how little he cared to do it! He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connexion with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters. To be quiet about the Southern land, not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her wounds and her memories, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... the world in it. Surely, twelve Simla seasons ought to have taught you that you can't focus anything in India; and a salon, to be any good at all, must be permanent. In two seasons your roomful would be scattered all over Asia. We are only little bits of dirt on the hillsides here one day and blown down the road the next. We have lost the art of talking at least our men have. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... they entered the fight at Melle in October, 1914, our corps worked with one of their doctors, and came to know him. Later he took charge of a dressing station near St. George. Here one day the Germans made a sudden sortie, drove back the Fusiliers for a few minutes, and killed the Red Cross roomful, bayoneting the wounded men. The Fusiliers shortly won back their position, found their favorite doctor dead, and in a fury wiped out the Germans who had murdered him and his patients, saving one man alive. They sent him back to the enemy's lines ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... he did not call upon to bask with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh he had; not a loud guffaw that splits your tympanum and crushes merriment flat, but an irrepressible, helpless, irresistible infectious laugh, in which his whole body became involved. I have seen a whole roomful of strangers rolling on their chairs without in the least knowing why, while JOHNNIE, with his head thrown back, his jolly face puckered into a thousand wrinkles of hearty delight, and his hands pressed to his sides, was shouting with laughter at some joke ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... "What! A whole roomful of chocolate creams do you consider a waste?" exclaimed Carrie. "Why, we shall be envied of all our neighbors; and, Mamma, you have been sighing over our expenses, and wishing that Jimmy and I could support you. Do not you see that we can make our fortune ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... dramatists responsible for the effect? Arthur Symons says of her in the latter play, "A great actress, who is also a great intelligence, is seen accepting it, for its purpose, with contempt, as a thing to exercise her technical skill upon." One reads of Mrs. Siddone that she could move a roomful of people to tears merely by repeating the word "hippopotamus" with varying stress. Should we thank the behemoth for ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... as the last barrier of defence that stands between her and the strange new world. She is attired in the classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing her forward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although you do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girls and dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on the child's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality of embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than a minute she ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... through him, Emile, that she had in the first place joined the league of conspirators, and this was one of the results. Sobrenski's judgment had been more far-seeing than his own. One girl in a roomful of fanatics, (he was one himself, but that did not make any difference,) would naturally stand a very poor chance if she was foolish enough to ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... performances on a roomful of small boys and girls was not conducive to good order. It was only with difficulty that the young master could hear lessons or induce his pupils to study. Old Zack was the center of attraction for ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... front yard of which there stood a marble statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you all know Miss Spinacher, don't you, ladies ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... away from the mirror and the butler has pulled back the portieres leading into the drawing room. I follow my wife's composed figure as she sweeps toward our much-beplumed hostess and find myself in a roomful of heterogeneous people, most of whom I have never seen before and whose personal ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... down Dr. Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful. No princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity than Sojourner her audience. She stood among them, calm and erect, as one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in the desert. I presented one after another to her, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... does not correct me. I have to find them out, when I repeat them before others. When I made that silly blunder about the brazen serpent, you so kindly put me right. Michael would have smiled and let it pass as not worth correcting; then I should have repeated it before a roomful of people, and wondered why they looked amused! Ah, but what do I care for people, or the world! It is my true place beside Michael I want to win. I want to 'grow up unto him in all things.' Yes, I know that is a text. I am famous for misquotations, or rather, misapplications. But it expresses my ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... cannot have done with it. And the fact will ever remain that you are incapable of supplying it yourself, with all your talents and your divine common sense. You are an extremely wise and good man, but you cannot ravish the senses of a roomful of people by merely walking downstairs, by merely throwing a shawl over your shoulders, by a curious depression in the corner of one cheek. This gift of grace is not yours. Wise as you are, you will be still wiser if you do not treat it disdainfully. It is among the supreme ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... usually judicious; she omitted the ghosts and goblins that would have haunted our dreams; although I was now and then visited by a nightmare-consciousness of being a bewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such as turning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or else lose my head. But she blended the humorous with the romantic in her selections, so that we usually dropped to sleep in good spirits, if not with ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... portiere, disclosing her to her waiting guests. She had no choice but to precede him, doubtless framing an excuse for Nina's absence. If so, she need not have troubled, for Giovanni spoke in her stead, and with such distinct enunciation that the whole roomful heard: ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... however, be under an obligation to pay a sum of, say, L10 or L20, the hire of two oxen or six or eight coolies becomes an absolute necessity, for a sum which takes no room in one's letter-case if in Bank of England notes, occupies a roomful of hard and heavy metal in the country of the Morning Calm. Great trouble has been and is continually experienced in the kingdom owing to the lack of gold and silver coins; but to the Corean mind to make coins out of gold and to let them go out of the country ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... not know what got into me and possessed me. I have never been able to account for what I said and did, because I am naturally a truthful person and hate all deceit. It seemed to me that I simply could not say "No" to Wilhelmina before that whole roomful of women. It was TOO humiliating. I suppose all the prickles and stings and slurs I had endured for fifteen years on account of never having had a lover had what the new doctor calls "a cumulative effect" and came to a head ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... picturesque era, and wide latitude is allowed in the choice of what is becoming. But big hats, big sleeves, very stand-out skirts and a general fashion-plate air do not do for every woman, and she who has her gown made on the simplest possible lines will create more sensation in a roomful of very much gotten-up women than if she ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able to raise its head beneath the weight of shame and foreboding were those when he passed the windows of Red Cross Depots and caught sight of a roomful of good and noble women feverishly at work on bandages; when he read of the keen and splendid training voluntarily undergone by the far-sighted men who were making Plattsburg the nucleus of an officers' training corps, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... None of the roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Gordon, for example, told him that he had refused a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... naturally unwilling to put themselves in an equivocal position. The writer well remembers that in the Mabel Parker case, where the defendant, a young and pretty woman, had boasted of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was impossible, when her trial was called, to find more than one of them who would testify—and he had practically to be dragged to the witness chair. In point of fact, if reporters made a practice of being witnesses it would probably hurt ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... that doesn't matter. Fancy your remembering my wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... was white and her eyes were flaming. She dominated the roomful of girls like a little Napoleon. The change in her startled them. Hitherto they had always looked on her as rather an unusually quiet girl. She had always made herself unobtrusively pleasant to them all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of possessing this militant ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... thing except most cordial good-will and the tender happiness of a bride; but her heart was fighting like a knight in a tournament for rescue of one beset, and she was inwardly saying: "If she dares to refuse speak to her now, I'll expose her before this whole roomful of people." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... She thought these were good enough to lend. She had no toys or dolls except of home manufacture, but her rag baby and set of broken dishes afforded just as much happiness as children nowadays get from a roomful ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... has been much alone, and he has lived. He sees inside. 'The great books of the world are little books,' he said recently, 'books that a pocket or a haversack will hold. You don't realize what they have given you, until you sit down in a roomful of ordinary books and see how tame and common the quantities are.' And it's true. Look at the big men of few books. They learned to look inside of books they had! He knows the Bible, and the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... England. The warm welcome and high honor given him by the English people were very gratifying to the aged professor. He was always at his best when talking, and so brilliant and easy was his wit that had not politeness forbidden he could have entertained a roomful of people during a whole evening. This fact as well as his literary achievements ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... life." "Do you know, if it hadn't been for Dean Daniel's watch, no trace of them would have been found. Last night the watch disappeared, and this morning the Dean notified the police. An hour later, Madoc bagged them all! Ha! Ha! Ha!" The entire roomful burst out laughing, and I trembled with shame, indignation, and fear ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... her. After she had undergone a deal of Teaze, from the Annoyance of the Spectre, she gave a violent snatch at the sheet, that was upon it; wherefrom she tore a corner, which in her hand immediately became Visible to a Roomful of Spectators; a palpable Corner of a Sheet. Her Father, who was now holding her, catch'd that he might keep what his Daughter had so strangely siezed, but the unseen Spectre had like to have pull'd his hand off, by endeavouring to wrest it from him; however he still held it, and ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... however, very difficult to remember a number of good and laughable ones, so we will give a list of some, which will be quite sufficient to puzzle a roomful of little folk ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... square, in the frame house then, as now, owned and occupied by Edward C. Younger, a Colored man, as his dwelling, on Eleventh Street, near New York Avenue. With but two or three girls to open the school, she soon had a roomful, and to secure larger accommodation, moved, after a couple of months, to a house on F Street, north, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, west, near the houses then occupied by William T. Carroll and Charles ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... before, as soon as she had re-entered hurriedly the glowing lodge asprawl upon the hill, the impulse had first come to her—a swift and almost blind desire to turn and escape, if only for a little while, from the roomful of chatter and laughter and bright-eyed badinage loosed upon her immediately after the unmasking, by Dexter Allison's perfectly cadenced announcement of his daughter's engagement. All in a breath the huge room ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... or heeded her. It seemed for an instant as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor.... Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to make his point—exactly what this was confused a vast roomful of newspapermen—the Senator invented a race of creatures called androids. These androids, it seems, look exactly like Tom Smith down the block except that they'd just as soon cut ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... Supper in a Protestant church. All things have their outer senses, and these outer senses have to be learned one at a time by being flashed through with inner ones. Except to people who have tried it, nothing could be more grotesque than kissing, as a form of human expression. A reception—a roomful of people shouting at each other three inches away—is comical enough. So is handshaking. Looked at from the outside, what could be more unimpressive than the spectacle of the greatest dignitary of the United States ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... other at first. At school they happened to be put, away from their compatriots, in the same room. Eugene is eight and Pierre seven. It was, you may well guess, pretty lonely work for a small Belgian in a roomful of Scotch boys, but both bore up bravely. The subject, as I understand, was simple addition (which knows no frontiers and looks the same in any language), and there is no whispering or secret conversation in our school, I can tell you. There ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... there. He was as hot as pepper in a minute. Wanted to fight any one who mentioned the matter. He'll have his hands full if he fights all who are talking about him and Ferdy's old flame. I heard half a roomful buzzing about it at Mrs. Nailor's. But it was none of my affair. If he wants to fight about another man's wife, let him. It's not the best ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... shrinks from violence," said Jessie. "I suppose men ARE braver—in a way—than women. It seems to me-I can't imagine—how one could bring oneself to face a roomful of rough characters, pick out the bravest, and give him an exemplary thrashing. I quail at the idea. I thought only Ouida's guardsmen did things ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... cannot keep my fingers off it and find it hard to resist the temptation to throw a couple of shillings away and take it home. If shillings had not been wanted for bread and cheese I should have had a roomful of copies ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Therefore, be careful what you write. You cannot tell what use your correspondent may make of it. Your friend may be trustworthy, but careless; some one may be dishonest enough to read it; it may be lost. It is a good plan to write nothing you would not be willing to have read before a roomful of people who know that ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... you think of your husband as a society man? A howling success, eh? He's been sitting for one quarter of an hour by the side of old Mrs. Gillis. And a whole roomful of devoted patients, past and future, looking daggers at him because he ignores them. How's that for business policy, eh? Can't you bring him to ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... of wood, and the dog crept out with his tail between his legs. Stasiek was left again to his restlessness, alone in a roomful of people. Even his mother was now struck by his miserable face and gave him a piece of bread to comfort him. He bit off a mouthful, but could not swallow it ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... two elder, twins apparently, for in all respects they resembled each other so closely; three or four boys, too, from Jack of fourteen to little hop-o'-my-thumb Chris of six. There they were all together in the large empty playroom at Landell's Manor, dancing, jumping, shouting, as only a roomful of perfectly healthy children, under the influence of some unusual and delightful excitement, can ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... to Hensey and called on Jack Innes and Amy told the story of their adventures to a roomful of fellows who utterly refused to believe a word of it until Clint had subscribed to the main facts and the watch and scarfpin had been passed around. You could scarcely have blamed them for their incredulity, either, for the ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... I was going to Tsarskoye Selo. "I, too," said Baklanov, suddenly. "And I-and I-" The whole roomful decided on the spot to go to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... A hopeless separation had arisen, the angel seemed inaccessible and the beast sought his own wild paths. My thoughts would suffer no desecration of Emmy's sacredness. But the fatherly lesson had startled up in me a seething swarm of thoughts as difficult to direct or drive away as a roomful of flies. I could scarcely keep them off the one white lily in my chamber, what wonder then that the stinking carrion brought from the nocturnal London parks ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... world imagined in our hypothesis is not connected with the present material universe by any such "invisible bonds" as would allow Bacon and Addison to come to Boston and write the silliest twaddle in the most ungrammatical English before a roomful of people who have never learned how to test what they are pleased to call the "evidence of their senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to exclude all intercourse whatever between the unseen world of spirit unconditioned by matter and the present ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... investigations were made of women in office, laws relating to women, suffrage and labor legislation, women's war record, an infinite variety of subjects. Thousands of newspaper clippings were tabulated and a roomful of carefully labelled files testified to the unremitting work of the bureau. Twenty State libraries and some others were supplied during the year with the books issued by the National Suffrage Publishing Company and its pamphlets ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... men at the ind av the day. I made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an', wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid Vulmea. I wint away, walkin' thick an' heavy, but not so thick an' heavy that any wan cud ha' tuk me. Sure and thrue, there was a kyartridge gone from my pouch an' lyin' snug in my rifle. I was hot ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... rich fund of humor. He was funny without intending to be, and this not only made him a diverting companion but ensured him a welcome everywhere. With the straightest of faces, he would say funny things in so ludicrous a manner that a roomful of people would go into convulsions. He laughed with them, not realizing they were laughing at him, but ever preening himself on being a very witty and clever person indeed. His greatest fault was inordinate vanity. He had the highest opinion of his own capacity, and he could ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... but not in a hurry. You start out after him now, and you wouldn't last as long as a short drink in a roomful of drunkards. Didn't you hear about ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... to stop long, dear creatur'. I'm 'most seventy-six year old," and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement in her honest wrinkled face. "I said right out to Is'iah, before a roomful o' the neighbors, that I expected it of him to git me home an' bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn my livin', if 'twas so I could, till then. He'd made sly talk, you see, about my electin' to leave the farm and go 'long some o' my own folks; but"—and she whispered ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a "smart" Boston ball is one—no matter where—which has a roomful of people who deport themselves abominably, who greet each other by waving their arms aloft, who dance like Apaches or jiggling music-box figures, and who scarcely suggest an assemblage ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had died he had plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only the beginning. Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. And now in a roomful of machine minders he was to learn a wider lesson, to make the acquaintance of another factor in life, a factor as elemental as the loss of things dear to us, more elemental ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... to the platform, displacing temporarily one of the twins, to make a space where she might step. Having restored him safely, she turned to the people. There was a smile in her eyes that was contagious. The whole roomful of people smiled back at her, and in that moment she established ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... couple of traveling-men had had the benefit of it. Ferguson, reporting at that open door, was bidden curtly to come in and sit down. "I'll see you presently," she said, and burst out into the large office. Instantly the roomful of people, lounging about waiting their turn, came to attention. She rushed in among them like a gale, whirling away the straws and chaff before her, and leaving only the things that were worth while. She snapped ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... be made to feel at home as quickly as possible. Chicken Little hated introducing people and had been dreading the ordeal, but kindly Mrs. Jenkins took Katy by the hand and presented her to the whole roomful ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... own set—among men of the same class or profession as themselves. But the life he had chosen brought Paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had constantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he was charged. He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next. One day he had to speak in the synagogue of the Jews, another among a crowd of Athenian philosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far from the seats of culture. But he could adapt himself ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... Chevancourt who used to sing this, or something very like it, upon a table—entirely for the benefit of les deux americains, who would subsequently render "Eats uh lonje wae to Tee-pear-raer-ee," wholly for the gratification of a roomful of what Mr. Anderson liked to call "them bastards," alias "dirty" Frenchmen, alias les poilus, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... don't say anything. They don't have to say anything. They can vote, these women. More than once the deep-laid plans of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful of women ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... Thompson concluded, she looked over the roomful of girls who sat watching her with serious faces. Which one of them was guilty? Time alone ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... "I have got a roomful if you want to see them," said The traveller; "but I don't see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and ends. I like homely and native things about me when I am ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Henri said, as the two of them returned and descended the stairs to join the Bretons. "I'd sooner kill a roomful of Germans than that one Frenchman should be hurt. And here, all that we've done is to reverse the numbers. Come along, Jules, and let's get out of the fort and back to an ambulance! My head's splitting, and we shall both want rest before we can take a further part ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... altogether qualified. But the motherliness which is in every true woman's heart, warded off this danger. As one remarked, "I have a great deal of the milk of human kindness in my nature, but its streams flow toward the roomful of children to be injured by an incompetent teacher, rather than toward that teacher, however needy he may be. If his claims rest on his needs rather than his merits, let the poormaster attend to his wants, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of sympathy! You stood by and watched me flounder without making a effort to help. It's not at all pleasant to be snubbed before a roomful of strangers. You might easily have remarked that it was a fine day, or that the train was punctual. Anything is better than ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... After tea she sat with us in the parlor for some time and then, kissing M. good-night, omitted Hatty and the boys (a most unusual thing), remarking, as she left for her chamber, "Well, I'm not going to kiss all this roomful." ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... on a number of laboriously accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished stones, the sifted debris of Swiss palafittes, a few pithecoid jawbones, some painted rocks from Salamanca, produces a fairly definite picture of the earliest essentially human being on earth: ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... police and betting news, or borrow all the newest novels—even this novel which I am writing, should the Library Sub-Committee of the Town Council (an austerely moral body) allow it to pass. In the Venables Library the books are mostly mellowed by age, even when naughtiest (it contains a whole roomful of Restoration Plays, an unmatched collection), and no newspapers are admitted, unless you count the monthly and quarterly reviews, of which The Hibbert Journal is the newest-fangled. By consequence the Venables Library, though open to all men without ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dan Barry," said one of the men, shaking his head. "He won't be thick-headed. Remember, I seen him work in Elkhead, when he slipped through the hands of a roomful of us." ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... intermezzo, or when the old principles of operatic construction waked into life again as in the confession of the hero-lover. Here, moreover, there comes into the score an element of novelty, for the confession is extorted from Lorris while a virtuoso is entertaining a drawing-roomful of people with a set pianoforte solo. As for the rest of the opera, it seems sadly deficient in melody beautiful either in itself or as an expression of passion. "Andrea Chenier" has more to commend it. To start with, there ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... at Dunraven! It surpassed all the other Dunraven Christmases on record; everybody said so. And at last, when no one could possibly eat more, all the merry roomful, young and old, must have a holly sprig fastened to the coat, or gown, or apron, and the procession was formed to march back to the hall; and Mr. Jack Loughead's stereopticon flashed out the most beautiful pictures, that ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... our conversation was interrupted by a hush in the room— such a cold, uncomfortable hush as comes over a roomful of happy, romping children when a grave-faced elder comes amongst them. The chatting and the laughter died away. The sound of the rustling cards and of the clicking counters had ceased in the other rooms. Everyone, men and ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... man who could take a whole roomful of warm, vital people, sitting right next to him, pulsing and glowing in their joys and their sins, and with one single heroic motion of an imperious hand drop them softly and lovingly over into Fatuity and Oblivion in five minutes and leave them ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... general murmur of assent, but it was as impossible to obey as it would have been to keep feathers still in a gale, and one irresistible impulse carried the whole roomful into the hall to behold Aunt Plenty beautifully illustrating her own theory of composure by waving the tidy wildly, rushing into Dr. Alec's arms, and laughing and crying with a hysterical abandonment which even Aunt ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... that I yearn to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel. I—I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that marries them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man couldn't but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months and months and months when I never had to do anything by a clock—and—and ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... stand up for your husband. I hope you will always stand up for all your husbands. [He rises and goes to the hearth, where he stands complacently with his back to the fireplace, beaming at them all as at a roomful of children]. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... was led home to a capital supper of his own, and as soon as that was over he was rigged out in his Sunday clothes,—red silk neck-tie and all,—and invited to tell the story of his adventures to a roomful of admiring neighbors. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... accustomed to consider his five hundred volumes a wonderful library; but here were thousands—as old, as musty, as neglected, as dilapidated, therefore as certainly full of wonder and discovery, as man or boy could wish.—Oh the treasures of a house that has been growing for ages! I leave a whole roomful of lethal weapons, to descend three steps into six roomfuls of books—each 'the precious life-blood of a master-spirit'—for as yet in my eyes all books were worthy! Which did I love best? Old swords or old books? I could ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... would have preferred not to have her private business shouted out before a roomful of women. But she put a good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... A roomful of girls of various sizes and complexions, all very much intent upon their work, and no one thinking just at that moment of a traveled fairy daughter, to adopt and love as her own, sent by a beneficent and tender-hearted northern "Fay." I doubt if Susie ever before saw so many "little women" laboring ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... Daisy submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself, and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... things than that there; there's carpets on the floor, an' a piano to play on, an' a whole roomful o' books! Losh!" he exclaimed, "I'd like to get my hands on them ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... perform even before the other boys and girls at rehearsal had always brought a preliminary nerve tension which she had tried to conceal. This, however, was nothing compared with her dread of the great night when she thought of facing a whole roomful of people; but now, strange to say, all her tremors died away. She found it less difficult to recite before the crowd than at rehearsal; she forgot herself in the joy of her lines. That she recited even better, if anything, than when her Uncle had overheard ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... was proven by his conduct during the time in which it was liable to public comment. Until night he was not seen, and then he came in at a late hour and, walking in silence through the roomful of watchers, shut himself up in an inner ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and per diem would cost more than the whole business was worth.—and the judge advocate was wishing himself well out of it when, on a sunny Friday morning, the third day of the court, the president rapped for order and the big roomful of spectators was hushed to respectful silence. The defense had made its first request, that the principal witness for the prosecution, Nevins, should be present, and there he sat, nervous and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Take another example—a roomful of guests in full dress, being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, it is a rabble—even ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... taverns, which is but a part of the general decay of democracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality. I remember that a roomful of Socialists literally laughed when I told them that there were no two nobler words in all poetry than Public House. They thought it was a joke. Why they should think it a joke, since they want to make all houses public houses, I cannot imagine. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... with letters to and from him—one of the best by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace Greeley, Channing, &c.—one from Thoreau himself, most quaint and interesting. (No doubt I seem'd very stupid to the roomful of company, taking hardly any part in the conversation; but I had "my own pail to milk in," as the Swiss proverb puts it.) My seat and the relative arrangement were such that, without being rude, or anything of the kind, I could just look squarely at E., which I did a good part of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman |
