"Startlingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to reply with complete gravity and entire contempt that in a sense this is perfectly true. His thirst was for things as humble, as human, as laughable as that daily bread for which we cry to God. He had no particular plan of reform; or, when he had, it was startlingly petty and parochial compared with the deep, confused clamour of comradeship and insurrection that fills all his narrative. It would not be gravely unjust to him to compare him to his own heroine, Arabella Allen, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to interest her at last. Her lessons, too, were by no means distasteful. She had a great deal of quick wit and ready perception. Hitherto she had been taught anyhow, but now she was all keen to receive real instruction. Her intuitions were rapid indeed; she could come to startlingly quick conclusions, and as a rule her guesses were correct rather than otherwise. Kathleen had a passion for music; she had never been properly taught, but the soul of music was in her as much as it was in David Tennant. She had a beautiful melodious voice, which had, of course, not yet ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... vicarage and elsewhere, all over the land, those things were done which delight the heart of Englishmen at the merry season. Everybody shook hands with everybody else, everybody cried "Merry Christmas!" to his neighbour in the street, with an intonation as though he were saying something startlingly new and brilliant which had never been said before. Every labourer who had a new smock-frock put it on, and those who had none had at least a bit of new red worsted comforter about their throats and began the day by standing at their doors in the cold morning, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... pocketed; next, with a swelling heart, the wreck of the pasteboard cabinet, but no sign of the strange valise which had held it. The "Mercy" sign was gone from the cabinet, its place being supplied by a placard, larger, in a different handwriting, and startlingly more specific: ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... answered. So far, you may say, there is nothing which need particularly interest either of us. But I think you will be as much surprised as I was when I tell you that the description given by the people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave's appearance is most startlingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen's appearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the circumstances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I cannot describe to you—which ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... a bend of the chestnut avenue near the Park gates, I came upon a couple of familiar figures—familiar, that is to say, individually, but startlingly unfamiliar in conjunction. They were a young man and girl, Randall Holmes and Phyllis Gedge. Randall had concluded a distinguished undergraduate career at Oxford last summer. He was a man of birth, position, and, to a certain extent, of fortune. Phyllis Gedge was the daughter, the pretty ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... quite modern expressions to translate very old conditions of soul. The fact is, that these young men, Augustin's friends and Augustin himself, were startlingly like those of a generation already left behind, alas! who will probably keep in history the presumptuous name ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... as he fled, he felt he was no match for the swift-footed pursuers behind him, and the cry of murder, and the sound of clubs upon the banquette, and the sharp, quick watchman's rattle, fell on his ear more startlingly clear every moment. Suddenly he thought to dart down the first dark street, and at the next block double on his pursuers. But his design had been anticipated, and as he dashed at a headlong pace round the corner, he found himself face ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... 'Matty,' as she calls the one who lives in Milwaukee. It seemed so queer to hear her speak of Mrs. Langdon as 'Sue'! If you should see her once,—" turning to Bert, who sat beside her,—"you would appreciate it. She is almost a fierce-looking old lady, and she says the most startlingly frank things if she chooses. I don't believe any ordinary person could help being a little afraid of Mrs. Langdon, but Madam Kittredge seems to think her a delicious joke. But I started to tell about the present. You see, ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... great solitude is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings, And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, Within ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... informed. I have an announcement of my own to make. Listen!" He gave a command. Instantly, startlingly, in the fog-shrouded spaces of the valley rang out a salvo of gun fire. Many rifles spat. The sound rolled in long echoes along the gorge and was banged back by the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... amiss, as he saw the instant he unlocked the door and pulled it open, for the first lifting of the lantern made the cause of the darkness startlingly plain. The shallow glass globe which should have been in the centre of the ceiling had been smashed, ragged fragments of it still clinging to their fastenings, and the three electric bulbs had been removed bodily. A downward glance showed him that both these ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Grey probably felt that he knew very little more than before, when suddenly, most unexpectedly, to him at least, a face started out of that overhead darkness; a face so white, with every feature made so startlingly distinct by the strong light Sweetwater had thrown upon it, that it seemed the only thing in the world to the two men beneath. In another moment it had vanished, or rather the light ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the hospital. Andover had left word that he be allowed to see Pete. And again The Spider stood beside Pete's cot, gazing down upon a face startlingly white in contrast to his dark hair and black eyebrows—a face drawn, the cheeks pinched, and the lips bloodless. "You taking care of him?"—and The Spider turned to Doris. She nodded, wondering if this queer, almost deformed creature were "The ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... ceased, and lay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, though the train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a great truckload of kids, their legs tied, heaped one above the other, was startlingly like the crying of babies. We steamed upward through a narrow pass, the mountains crowding closer on either hand and seeming to grow lower as we rose higher among them. The landscape became less arid, half green, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... that all this play atmosphere may seem incongruous and unnecessary to teachers used to more conventional methods, but I feel sure that an actual experience of it would modify that point of view conclusively. The children of the schools where story-telling and "dramatising" were practised were startlingly better in reading, in attentiveness, and in general power of expression, than the pupils of like social conditions in the same grades of other cities which I visited soon after, and in which the more conventional methods were exclusively ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... in the parlors. The whole house was so silent in that waiting moment that the sound of sudden feet on the porch and the rough opening of the hall door were a startlingly ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... fortune to inspect the superb line of folding library-bedsteads which Professor Thorpe offers to the public at startlingly low figures, and we are surprised at the ingenuity and the learning apparent in these contrivances. The Essay bedstead is a particularly handsome piece of furniture, being made of polished mahogany, elaborately carved, and intricately embellished ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... something hardly human about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... as his voice rang out, startlingly loud because of the almost oppressive stillness, Mrs. Stevens appeared from beneath the flap of the canvas covering, and an expression of most intense disappointment passed over her face as she ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... baby as a present. Consolatory promise to give the next one. Indian visitors. Head-dresses. "Very tight and very short shirts". Indian mode of life. Their huts, food, cooking, utensils, manner of eating. Sabine-like invasion leaves to tribe but a few old squaws. "Startlingly unsophisticated state of almost entire nudity". Their filthy habits. Papooses fastened in framework of light wood. Indian modes of fishing. A handsome but shy young buck. Classic gracefulness of folds of white-sheet robe of Indian. Light and airy step of the Indians something superhuman. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... dressing-table upon which a tall candle stood in an equally tall candlestick. He was looking intently at his reflection in the looking-glass, as one who encounters and examines a stranger. In the glass his face looked red and ugly, and the tossed grey hair and heavy beard were made to appear startlingly unkempt. His mouth was open, and his eyes shaded by lowered lids. In a rather trembling voice he addressed Jenny ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the new West, at once startlingly and attractively true. * * * The heroine is a strange, sweet mixture of pride, wilfulness and lovable courage. The characters are superbly drawn; the atmosphere is convincing. There is about it a sweetness, a wholesomeness and a sturdiness that commends it to earnest, kindly and ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... The words were startlingly sufficient. From five years of painful experience, Mrs. Landis knew how Lem did it. And so on this evening, as she stood beside him in a corner of the ballroom after their first greetings, and looked as he did with ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... on patiently, glancing from time to time at the man who seemed to her to be older than the hills, startlingly, terribly old, and stopped only when, having lowered himself into his arm-chair, he seemed to have fallen asleep. Then, as usual, she laid the paper aside, eager to be up and doing, but sat on, fearful of moving. Her grandfather ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... her. With a flushing, joyful, but palpitating heart, she descended the stairs, and with a trembling hand knocked at the door. On entering, she was about to rush into her newly-found relative's arms, but, on casting her eyes around, she perceived her father and him standing side by side, so startlingly alike in feature, expression, and personal figure, that her heart, until then bounding with rapture, sank at once, and almost became still. The quick but delicate instincts of her nature took the alarm, and a sudden weakness seized her whole ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... unafraid, met the stern gaze of the captain with directness and respect; his lips and chin were firm in repose, but they might easily be the opposite if relaxed; his skin was so tanned and wind-bitten that the whites of his eyes were startlingly defined and vivid. He was not a tall man,—indeed, one would have been justified in suspecting him of being taller than he really was because of the more or less deceiving erectness with which he carried himself. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... and, hiding their faces in a fold of blanket, slunk silently away like dogs that have been whipped and told to go. Even Hagar drew back a pace, hardy as was her untamed spirit. She looked at Evadna clinging to his arm, her eyes wide and startlingly blue and horrified at all she had heard. She laughed then—did Hagar—and waddled after the others, her whole body seeming to radiate contentment with ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself—trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease—for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation—my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form—hourly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... distant din and thrill of something unthinkable on the horizon of the crowd, even beyond the castle. Next it was a wordless clamour startlingly close, and loud enough to be distinct if each word had not killed the other. Next came words of a terrible clearness, coming nearer, and next one man, rushing into the room and telling the news as briefly as such ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... proprietor. But I told him," he continues, "that I would not give up the country and the lazy reading of old folios for two thousand times two thousand pounds,—in short, that beyond L350 a year I considered money as a real evil." Startlingly liberal as this offer will appear to the journalist, it seems really to have been made. For, writing long afterwards to Mr. Nelson Coleridge, Mr. Stuart says: "Could Coleridge and I place ourselves thirty years back, and ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... would keep all of a piece till dawn, like a sort of gray dusk, heavy and impenetrable beneath the trees, but quite transparent on the heath and in the glades; and then it would become all silvery and trembling; the wet bracken would glisten faintly, high branches of beech trees would glow startlingly, each needle on top of the lofty firs would change to a tiny sword of fire—just as he had seen happen so often years ago, when as an undisciplined lad he lay out in the woods ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... no verse for a Sunday before Christmas; it was more fitted for a Lenten discourse! But Pastor Mueller's sermons were the only theatrical performances given at Guestrow, and the citizens revelled in the often startlingly emotional character of his exhortations; so that day they settled down as usual to listen to ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... who had not chosen her own name, or else had shown little taste in selection, compared with the others. But she was somehow different, rather subtly different, from them in all ways; not so elaborately refined, not so abnormally tall, not so startlingly picturesque. "One always thinks of the ark animals in a procession, poor dears—showing off their fur or their stripes or their spots or something—just ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... profound respect of the impartial thinker. Science has found evidence that known substance is not less a product of evolution than mind,—that all our so-called "elements" have been evolved out of "one primary undifferentiated form of matter." And this evidence is startlingly suggestive of some underlying truth in the Buddhist doctrine of emanation and illusion,—the evolution of all forms from the Formless, of all material phenomena from immaterial Unity,—and the ultimate return of all into ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... changed. A metallic hardness came into it, his words were vibrant with a strange excitement which he strove hard to conceal. It was still light enough for Captain Plum to see that the old man's black, beady eyes were startlingly ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... occupied. Like most persons of his calling, he was an ardent sportsman. The early hours of the morning he gave almost daily to a stroll with his gun; and the first evening I passed with him he invited me, in startlingly piebald phraseology, to accompany him on the morrow. "Be up by top dage," said he: "we will have chhoti haziri, and then a chal over the khets for some shikar" Why he did not prefer to say "gun-fire," "tea and toast," "run," "fields," and "game," probably he could not have told ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the dressmaker's verdict as she gazed at Harriet with admiring eyes. Harriet's gown was white satin. Her black hair and great dusky eyes looked darker from the contrast and her skin even more startlingly fair. ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... addressing all the girls, but his eyes were only for Betty. As for her, she suddenly had a startlingly clear mental picture of what her father would think were some one to tell him that his daughter and her chums had been seen at the "Point" with Percy Falconer and a ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... desired extra money. For a startlingly original ambition had awakened recently in his heart—namely, to pay off a little of the mortgage's ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... a very versatile pen and in most of the twenty-one pieces of Jetsam (MILLS AND BOON) which he has recovered from the waves of monthly magazines and elsewhere there is a certain amount of material for mirth. I do not however find him a startlingly original humorist, whether on the river Thames, where he seems to follow in the wake of Mr. JEROME K. JEROME, or in a Chelsea "pub," where his manners are reminiscent of the characters of Messrs. W. W. JACOBS and MORTON HOWARD. Again, in the story called "The First Marathon" (where, by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... dazzlingly white under its snow against a clear blue sky, with the sun flooding it with glory—Fujiyama. I was to see it again several times—for I went to Myanoshita for that purpose—but never again so startlingly and ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... little creature. I think I loved him from the moment I saw him shielding that poor, dying mother from her own folly. 'Course, mummy, course!' he repeated over and again. Then he looked at me with the eyes of my own dead baby. Both children were startlingly like the father. The look pleaded for mercy from me to them—John, the mother, and the little fellow himself. And I, who had vaguely meant to help the world some day, began—with them! Just for a little time after Elizabeth Thornton's death I became human, or perhaps inhuman. I resented the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... allowance must of course be made for the inevitable disillusionment of such a return. After the palaces of the bishops by whom he had been entertained in England, the mission stations must have appeared even startlingly humble. But the real grievance was the cessation of the trade in firearms. The King had approved of this trade: why should the missionaries object? Kendall in his new clerical attire seemed quite willing to play the part ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... Then startlingly, without the slightest warning, she pitched forward suddenly on her face and lay clutching into the turf—a little dust-colored wisp of a boyish figure sobbing its starved heart out against a ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... pace or two of the huddled figure, Stella stopped. He had not moved. It was evident that he was so rapt in meditation that her presence at that moment was no more to him than that of an insect crawling across his path. His eyes, red-rimmed, startlingly bright, still challenged the coming day. His whole expression was so grimly aloof, so sternly unsympathetic, that she hesitated to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... straggling hair, the drooping eyelid, the large, loose-lipped mouth, the long, thin, furrowed throat, the whole air of gentlemanly ferocity. But the other, a sketch of the head in profile, gives us more than that; gives us, in the lean, strong, aquiline head, startlingly, all that was abrupt, fiery, and essential in the genius of a rare and misunderstood poet. There never was a man less like the popular idea of him than the writer of The Angel in the House. Certainly an autocrat in the home, impatient, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... called "The Way of All Flesh," which he had just read. It is singular how that ruthless book makes its way across all frontiers. He also wanted to know about Gissing, a name new to him. And then a voice from the obscurity of the balcony came startlingly to me ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... as the comparative narrowness of the slip will let her, after they have cut the ropes holding her to the dock. Here, again, a model vessel in a built-up miniature slip supplied the means of obtaining a startlingly realistic effect. The scene lasted only a few seconds, so that little opportunity was given the spectator to see how it was worked, but the effect of the brief scene was ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however, with much composure. I am generally glad enough to fall back again, after these political interludes, upon Burns, toddy, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stood listening and straining their ears in the direction from which the sounds had come, but there was a faint whispering as of running water down below, a trickling gurgle, and then startlingly loud came the nasal quant of some ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... enough on the high seas of life; more swiftly still in the little bubbling back-water of the quadrangle; so that we see there, on a scale startlingly diminished, the flight of time and the succession of men. I looked for my name the other day in last year's case-book of the Speculative. Naturally enough I looked for it near the end; it was not there, nor yet in the next column, so that I began to think it had ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this sound came another. A muffled buzzing somewhere in the house—again! again! And then, startlingly clear from the room over the garage, the burglar alarm ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... delighted to see how much good her night's sleep had done her. She was fairly radiant; just as I had seen her at our first meeting and at the picnic. There was even a suggestion of colour in her cheeks, which, however, looked startlingly white in contrast with her black brows and scarlet lips. With her restored strength, there seemed to have come a tenderness even exceeding that which she had at first shown to her sick father. I could not but be moved by the loving ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... few intelligent and thinking individuals of the community who recognize that the departure from the standard type is in the direction of advancement and gain, rather than of retrogression and loss—a plus attribute, rather than a minus one. The illustration is startlingly true and in accordance with the facts of the case, as many thoughtful persons know only to well, and ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... examined the engine in a professional manner; they did everything but take it down; they tried in vain all known devices to conquer the recalcitrancy of engines; and when they had reached despair and fury George, startlingly visited by ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... I fancy you would, too," and rather startlingly Cousin Egbert seized her ladyship and kissed her heartily. Whereupon her ladyship kissed the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of this loyal support, the results obtained from Captain Jerry's wonderful plan had not been so startlingly successful as to warrant his feeling much elated. Ralph and Elsie were good friends and seemed to enjoy each other's society, but that was all that might be ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... many cares of her own. In the beginning, she had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in his welfare." This startlingly new and original remark gave Hannasyde something to think over for two years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four months. Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Garron, but, none the less, had several ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the number of about two thousand, were accoutred in blue cloth jackets, (which rarely have the owners' arms in the sleeve, but are worn as cloaks,) red waistcoats of startlingly crimson color, and blue small clothes, while conical black felt hats, adorned here and there with flowers, served for head-coverings. A large assemblage of children, dressed and undressed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... an expert swimmer. His excellent health and his physical alertness and endurance can alone explain the astonishing swiftness with which he moved about his vast realm and conducted innumerable campaigns in widely distant regions in startlingly rapid succession. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and re-echoing, now faint and indistinct, then clear and well-defined, to again die away in the distance, to once more approach nearer and nearer, louder and louder, until finally catching upon the sharp edge of some far-jutting crag, it shivered into a dozen, startlingly distinct peals of laughter, that seemed to my terrified senses like the shouts of demons, exulting at our temerity in venturing ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... of his having relished the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications: and really, in spite of her inferior flimsy girl's education, she could boast her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in commerce with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle for humour: she taught him at times to put away his contempt of the romantic; she had actually shown him, that his expressed contempt of it disguised a dread: as it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our swirling, airy guides down through a trail to another clearing planted with potatoes. On the farther side of this they stopped, hand in hand, at the woods' fringe, and awaited us in a startlingly sudden repose. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... there would have made their tongues eloquent for ever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it, and that wore the novelty all out; they got used to being bomb-shelled out of home and into the ground; the matter became commonplace. After that, the possibility of their ever being startlingly interesting in their talks about it was gone. What the man said was to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that chromatic sort of a morning when the canvas of the sailing-boats stands out startlingly white against the drizzly sky and the smoke from the stacks of the steamers takes on an accented coal-black, and, drooping, trails low in a murky wake. Rather a dull setting at this early hour; but not sufficiently dull to check the vivacity ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... culled his clippings from eighty current Negro periodicals, published from Massachusetts to Georgia, and ranging from the startlingly radical to the most hide-bound conservative type. He has used only articles written by Negroes in Negro publications, has sorted them and grouped them under ten heads, entitled respectively: The Colored Press, The ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... professional care brought it to another. I am left wondering how this denouement would have been affected if Avery had been, say, a dentist, or of any other calling than the one that so obviously loaded the dice in his favour. I repeat, however, a distinctly well-written and human story, almost startlingly topical too in one place, where Dr. Avery observes, "There's a lot of grippe in town, and it's a thing that isn't reported to the Health Department." The obvious inference being that it ought to be. Avery, you observe, had more practical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... no heed, to Maurice he murmured an absent greeting, and then, having called for beer and emptied his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to return whence he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent train of thought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly abrupt. Thus, after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his hands, he flung back in his seat with a sort of wildness, and began to stare fixedly at the ceiling. His face was one of those, which, as by a mystery, preserve the innocent ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... were kept with great care. They had partly been trimmed that day; and the evening dampness brought out the faint, solemn odour of the leaves, which I never have noticed since without thinking of that night. The roses were in bloom, and the snow-ball bushes were startlingly white, and there was a long border filled with lilies-of-the-valley. The other flowers of the season, were all there and in blossom; yet I could see none well but the white ones, which looked like bits of snow and ice in the summer ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... magnifying one's misfortunes in order to excite sympathy—an attribute so often seen in women, from char-woman to duchess. But Felicity was not destined to misfortune. Ridokanaki sometimes compared her to a ray of sunshine, and her sister to a moonbeam. The comparison, if not startlingly original, was fairly just. Felicity retorted by saying that the Greek was like a wax-candle burnt at both ends and in the middle, while Woodville resembled a carefully shaded electric light. She was anxious to know ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... quite pleasant to be the one who doesn't go!—The house, moreover, when her father was absent, always reminded Damaris of an empty shrine, a place which had lost its meaning and purpose. To-day, though windows and doors were wide open letting in a wealth of sunshine, it appeared startlingly lifeless and void. The maids seemed unusually quiet. She heard no movement on the staircase or in the rooms above. Neither gardener nor garden-boy was visible. She would have hailed the whirr of the mowing machine ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sexual evil appears in aggravated form in commercial prostitution, but is more prevalent as an irregularity among non-professionals. Sexual intercourse before marriage, or fornication, was not infrequent in colonial days, and in Europe is startlingly common; very frequently among the lower classes there is no marriage until a child is born. Sexual infidelity after marriage, or adultery, is the cause of the ruin of many homes. In the cities and among the well-to-do ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... in the window. No homely pungency of wood-smoke breathed welcome on the bitter air. The cabin looked startlingly deserted. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hunger and shame and desire. A hundred disillusioning revelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example when we were taking some people to the concentration camps it had been necessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, a startlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. Heavens! how it shocked me! I could give a score of such ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... to getting green roses with crimson leaves, and deep blue apple blossoms against a pure white sky, but when she finished one complete set of table china in fifty pieces, each cup and saucer with a flower on it, the result looked so startlingly like something from a medical museum, that she never dared give the set away. She lent it to the cook to eat her meals on. ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... reply and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear, so resonant, that all could ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... woman's sniff. All that I can say about Mrs. Tremain's dress is that it was of some dark material, brightly shot with threads of gold, and that she had looped in some way over her shoulders and around her waist a very startlingly coloured silken scarf, while over her hair was thrown a black lace arrangement that reached down nearly to her feet, giving her a half-Spanish appearance. A military-looking gentleman, at least ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... land of pagodas. These places of worship are the most striking feature of every landscape. Their bell-shaped domes, startlingly white, or so covered with gold-leaf as to shine resplendent in the sunlight, crown many a hilltop and constitute the chief beauty of the towns. The pagodas are usually solid structures of brick, with facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... whether Miss Mathewson could or could not dance the "Irish Washerwoman," or any other antic dance improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance was immediately and effectively produced. At the height of it, a door across the sitting-room, which commanded a strip of the bedroom beyond, opened cautiously and Zeke Crandall's eye glued itself to the aperture, an eye ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... world of action to which the man must return. The two poems are fully discussed in Poet-Lore, Volume VII, April, May, June-July. The poems are noteworthy for the fusion of human emotion and natural scenery and for the startlingly specific phrasing of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... between luscious melody and harsh discord,—a wild and curious medley of fantastic, minor suggestions in which the imaginative soul might discover hints of tears and folly, love and madness. To this uncertain yet voluptuous measure the glittering girl-dancer leaped forward with a startlingly beautiful abruptness,—and halting, as it were, on the boundary-line between the dome and the garden beyond, raised her rounded arms in a snowy arch above her head, and so for one brief instant, looked like an exquisite angel ready to soar upward ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... resumed Aramis, addressing himself to Fouquet, who listened to him with the most absorbed attention—"I forgot to mention a most remarkable circumstance respecting these twins, namely, that God had formed them so startlingly, so miraculously, like each other, that it would be utterly impossible to distinguish the one from the other. Their own mother would not be able ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... dangling gently, sensuously, the great cluster of scarlet roses that she held, now and again bringing them to where their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious, haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek—like blood upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. Lips, vivid red, were motionless, half parted in a little, inscrutable smile.... She was ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... sounded startlingly in my inner ear as I sat in meditation at my Mt. Washington headquarters. Traversing ten thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye, his message penetrated my being like a flash ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... first number of The Yellow Book and of the Savoy is the first volume of The Butterfly and on its fly-leaf is the inscription: "To Elizabeth Robins Pennell with L. Raven Hill's kind regards," no more startlingly original than Beardsley's inscriptions, but to me full of meaning and memories. I cannot look at it without seeing myself fluttering from one to another of the old Buckingham Street rooms, heavy ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of them, but they are not indigenous to Christianity. They have their parallels in other religions, some of them much older than the advent of Jesus. The beautiful legends surrounding the infancy of Gautama, for example, are startlingly similar to those contained in the first and third gospels. Like Jesus, the Buddhist messiah is stated to have been of royal descent and was born of a virgin mother. At his birth a supernatural radiance illuminated the whole district, and a troop of heavenly beings ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... satisfied even though I am exuberantly entertained. Something I miss. For weeks I wondered what single element I missed most. Out of the numberless associations of childhood and youth and eager manhood it is difficult to choose one that is missed more than another. Yet one day it came over me startlingly that I missed the apple-tree,—the apple-tree, the sheep, and ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... rolled startlingly loud in the lofty, echoing room. Moving to reply, the mechanician let fall a tool and the crash repeated itself sharply from every stone ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Pale as pale violets; that eye, where mind And matter met alike divine?—ah, no! May God that moment judge me when I do! O! she was fair; her nature once all spring And deadly beauty, like a maiden sword, Startlingly beautiful. I see her now! Wherever thou art thy soul is in my mind; Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain And peoples all its pictures with thyself; Gone, not forgotten; passed, not lost; thou wilt shine In heaven like a bright spot ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... oil painting of young James taken at the age of twelve, wearing a sailor suit and the surly expression of an active boy detained within walls while other boys were shouting in the park. Beside it was a water color of Janet at the age of two, even then startlingly like her grandmother. She had been Mrs. Oglethorpe's favorite descendant until the resemblance had become too accentuated ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that roll off the laps of the gods, after humanity has put its destinies there, sometimes are startlingly different from the expected fruits of victory. We fight a war for one thing, win the war and get quite another thing. The great war now waging began in a dispute over spheres of influence, market extensions, Places in the Sun and ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... which are, in the long run, more lasting as sources of happiness for a woman than mere beauty. It is a peculiarly significant fact that the great passions of history have not been inspired by very young or startlingly beautiful women, but by those ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... put, there is, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there seems to be, nothing startlingly new ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... "It is startlingly original," I said, and her bright and innocent smile showed her appreciation of the compliment. "How many have you ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... foolish inarticulate arraignment of destiny. In the confusion of his senses, he did not notice that she had altered, but the next day he remembered that her face looked smaller and more delicate, like a tinted egg-shell he had once seen, and that her eyes in consequence were wondrously, were almost startlingly, large. All that he was conscious of when he turned and rushed from her after that one look, was that the old agony of his loss had resurged ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... and AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was, therefore, more likely than most to have heard whatever theories were proposed by the various great political statesmen of Europe, whether they were churchmen or lawyers. Consequently, his schemes, as we might well expect, are startlingly advanced. ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... back of the enemy front trench, and then in along the line of the hollow, a constant procession of wounded moved slowly. It was easy to distinguish them, and even to pick out in most cases where they were wounded, because in the dusk the bandages of the first field dressing showed up startlingly white and clear on the shadowy forms against the shadowy background. Some, with the white patches on heads, arms, hands, and upper bodies, were walking; others, with the white on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on the parapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... join me until just as the train was crawling out of the station, for we had asked Brigit and Monny not to see us off, and they had been startlingly acquiescent. We had a two-berthed compartment together, and talked most of the night, in low voices; of the mountain; of the legends concerning it, and the papers of the dead Egyptologist Ferlini, which indirectly had brought Fenton into Monny Gilder's life, and given Brigit back to me. There was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... passed through the orchard she caught sight of the strange little person whom she had seen in chapel with a pile of prayer books beside her, and who always wore something startlingly blue, whether skirt, handkerchief or cloak. She had met her in the garden before, but she had hurried away, her eyes fixed on the ground. Mother Philippa had spoken of a Miss Dingle, a simple-minded person who had been sent by her family to the convent to be looked after by the nuns, and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... and in favour of bold measures, to support the Peace Party in every way. He was exactly a man after Prince Bismarck's own heart, prepared to go to any lengths to attain his object, and fully persuaded that the end justifies the means. His plan was startlingly simple and bold. Li Hung Chang, the only prominent advocate of peace, was to rebel, march on Peking with his Black Flag army, and establish a Government of his own. There is no doubt whatever that this scheme was formed and impressed on Li Hung Chang as the acme ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... tormentor? She did not look about to see the actuality of Pierre's silence. She thought that he had dropped the brand and was sitting near the table with his face hidden. How long the stillness of pain and fury and horror lasted there was no one to reckon. It was most startlingly broken by a voice. "Who screamed for help?" it said, and at the same instant a draught of icy air smote Joan. The door had opened with suddenness and violence. With difficulty she mastered her pain and turned ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... by the wall for a moment, looking over into the ravine and at the mountain flank opposite. Etna was startlingly clear to-day. She fancied that if a fly were to settle upon the snow on its summit she would be able to see it. The sea was like a mirror in which lay the reflection of the unclouded sky. It was not far to Africa. She watched ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly real ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... completely forgotten the trifling fiction, until it thus rather startlingly reappeared on his lips. She might easily have let it die naturally, had she chosen; but she could not choose. She had a whim to ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the direction ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... loud, bright, and alive. Plainly it did not stop when, somehow, it vanished once upon a time. There its vivid circulation moves, and the buses are so usual, the people so brisk and intent on their own concerns, the signs so startlingly familiar, that the man who is home again begins to doubt that he has been absent, that he has been dead. But his uniform must surely mean something, and its stains ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... no mistake about it; she is startlingly beautiful. Report had not said half enough. And, somehow or other, it appeared as if a travelling-costume was specially becoming to her. At least, it seemed so to the innocent youths who so first saw her. Had there been any women present their minds would have at once gone back ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... thing," he remarked aloud, the words sounding startlingly loud in the confinement of the copper helmet. "If I only had something to fasten the knife on the pole I could make a ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... There is something startlingly original in the treatment of the themes. The terrible realism leaves no doubt of the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... and that was the entire disappearance of two of the most beautiful of the little crystal cities that adorned the northward range. The gale of the night had wrought havoc, and the unsubstantiality of this dazzling kingdom of ice was made startlingly apparent by the evanishment of the delicate glassy architecture, and by those four white hills floating like ships under their courses and topsails out upon the flashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... poor selection," she apologized. "You see I'm not as familiar with po'try as you are, Mr. Dale." She turned the leaves in a confusion that increased as her groping vision stumbled continually on lines startlingly sentimental. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Lincoln! Give us a Man!" To the minds of many people Rosecrans had clearly demonstrated that he was "the Man," and it is possible that his subsequent acts were prompted by over-eagerness to end his already successful campaign with a startlingly brilliant feat of arms. At all events, he determined not to rest satisfied with having driven the Confederates from the field, but to capture or destroy ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... him at his own door. Lorelei's summons had evidently found the dancer dressed for anything except such a crisis, for Miss Demorest was arrayed in the very newest importation. The lower half of her figure was startlingly suggestive of the harem, while above the waist she was adorned like a Chinese princess. A tango cap of gold crowned her swirls of hair, and from it depended a string of tremendous beads, looped beneath her chin. She presented a futurist combination of colors, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... next interruption was the report of a gun, sounding startlingly distinct on the quiet air. That, so far as could be judged, came from near the spot whither ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a deep, solemn hush fell upon us, in which the deep, hoarse, tumbling roar of a whirl-pool at no great distance, and the gurgle and rush of the turbid river past the schooner's hull became almost startlingly audible. But as long as we were able to see them the lines of native warriors still stood, silent and motionless, guarding the whole river front of the town. As a matter of precaution, I now ordered the boarding nettings to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... his room from ordering the guard to pursue and recapture William Barnwell, the first thing he did was to seek for the paper he had left upon his table when the alarm of escape rang out so startlingly in the courtyard, the very paper that the young American had placed in his hands only a few moments before, and which Tobasco, the secret spy of the government, had secured during the confusion ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... him startlingly authoritative, but he had good sense to back him; and depressed as she was by the dampness, she was disposed to yield to reason if he continued to respect her independence. So she submitted outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... face, for the moment so startlingly like that of the dead girl he had loved that his senses were confused ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Manuel. He merely listened and smiled his startlingly sunny smile, and afterwards repeated Manuel's words almost verbatim to Jack. Later, he recounted as much as he considered politic to Don Andres himself, just to show how bitter Manuel had become and how unjust. Valencia, it must be admitted, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... He was interrupted. Startlingly upon their ears rang shriek on shriek. Mrs. Schofield, recognizing Margaret's voice, likewise shrieked, and Mr. Schofield uttered various sounds; but Penrod and Sam were incapable of doing anything vocally. All rushed from ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... ex-officer had sought employment, indoor or outdoor, congenial or uncongenial. The quest was vain. Once he had broached the matter haltingly to an influential acquaintance. The latter's reception of his distress had been so startlingly obnoxious that he would have died rather than repeat the venture. Then Smith of Dale's, Old Bond Street—Smith, who had cut his hair since he was a boy, and was his fast friend—had told him of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... had. Fortunately most of the young people were honestly striving to earn their living; they were sweetly, proudly unafraid, but when they relaxed and played they made Joan's eyes widen, until she discovered that they often dressed their ideas, as they did themselves, rather startlingly while adhering, privately, to a respectability that they refused ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... senorita," said he. It was so startlingly like an introduction that the cherubic brown man sprang up and bowed; and the girl, bending over the mazapan in her plate, let us see the very top coil on ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... flat-topped roof and the sweet clear air filled her lungs she felt as if reborn. With Navajo blankets, Kut-le had contrived an awning that not only made a bit of shade but precluded view from below. The rich tints of the blankets were startlingly picturesque against the yellow gray of the adobe. Rhoda, dropped luxuriantly to the heap of blankets and turned her face toward the mountain, many-colored and bare toward the base, deep-cloaked ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... broke through in a mountain snow- storm; and there her glory in a sunny southern day. An expression in this portrait proved clear insight into character; a face in that historical painting, by its vivid filial likeness, startlingly reminded you that genius gave it birth. These exceptions I loved: they ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... prickly leaves and rustled mournfully. With the exception of the riders and an occasional Gila monster, no life was discernible. Cacti of all shapes and sizes reared aloft their forbidding spines or spread out along the sand. All was dead, ghastly; all was oppressive, startlingly repellent in its sinister promise; all was the vastness ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... recognizable. To those not yet favored by a residence in this Northland I would say that I have written each tale with a well defined purpose. With truthfulness could each one have been more vividly, yes startlingly, told; but I have no wish to unduly disturb my readers. It has been my aim, however, to picture not only character, but also the vast and wonderful gold producing region, so plainly that even the young may better ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... ourselves." This old man did not know that one of Mr. Washington's most painstaking and efficient assistants, Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor of the Negro Year Book, devoted much of his time to keeping his chief provided with this startlingly accurate information about his people in every section ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... which has received within a fortnight of its initial large operations, within the first five weeks of a war which it had proudly imposed upon its enemies, the news of a victory more startlingly triumphant than its most extreme expectation of ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... both Neophyte and Initiate, as well as High-degree Master. Understanding this, one may imagine the disgust inspired in John by the amorous solicitations of Salome, which caused him to lose his life rather than to break the vows of his Order, as is so startlingly pictured in the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... such the position in the public eye that she had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Ford's room had not been entirely fruitless, although they had also added a startlingly new element to the mystery of the case. Who was the person who had attacked him from the closet? Was it the woman who had just left the house? He did not think so. Nor was it Miss Ford herself. There had been something uncanny about the whole experience; ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... book in its nest, and gone quickly back to her chair. The entrance of the servant at that moment, to announce Edwin Clayhanger, seemed to her startlingly dramatic. "What," she thought, "I am just reading that and he comes!... He hasn't been here for ages, and, on the very night ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... no less pleasant than before, but Caroline felt dismissed. The vague impression of that first, odd moment became startlingly vivid again. But even now she could not be sure that it was not all imagination—the effect of her own self-consciousness, after what had passed between herself ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... every excursion on foot and horseback, but even moderate feats of mountaineering, such as are now expected of the quietest English lady-tourists by their husbands and brothers, were then deemed startlingly eccentric, and got her into fresh trouble ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... peacefully. How quickly those fateful hours of battle had passed! I started for the point where our line had formed, expecting to dispose of my prisoner there, and then sleep all night. As we passed along, the dead lay scattered here and there as they fell. There was something startlingly solemn in those motionless forms, the stony eyes staring ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... the immediate surroundings, and she wished childishly that they could ride so for ever through eternity. The night was brilliant. The stars blazed against the inky blackness of the sky, and the light of the full moon was startlingly clear and white. The discordant yelling of a pack of hunting jackals came from a little distance, breaking the perfect stillness. The men were riding in unusual silence, though a low exclamation or the subdued ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... she knotted it on her head, instead of letting it stream in ragged, unkempt ends over her shoulders. A loose lock of hair over Mollie's low forehead covered the ugly scar that was her one disfigurement. She was so startlingly lovely that her stupid step-mother stared at her in a kind of bewildered amazement. Mollie was pale and worn, and painfully thin, yet nothing could spoil the wonderful color of her hair and eyes, nor take away the peculiar grace of her figure. Her expression was dull and ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... new green leaves on the little bush by the door-stone; they gleamed startlingly light in the dusk. A new moon hung beside the stalwart white chimney—all the house was a mouse-colored shadow against the darkening sky. The living-room windows showed as orange squares cut cheerfully from the night. Through the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... this endowment, she speedily demonstrated her peculiar fitness for this new mission. Her eloquence and inspiration charmed the multitude from a thousand rostrums. Her work in this new field was so startlingly brilliant, important and successful as to attract the attention of the whole civilized world; affording a remarkable object lesson which demonstrated her possession, as the mouth-piece of inspiration, of a wonderful ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... something about you," she said shyly. "Remember that I have dined with your friends. I could not help seeing that they were good people, especially that delightful old man, the Judge. He looked startlingly like my dear father. I saw how they all honored and loved you. And then what you have done for me, and the way that you treated an utterly defenceless stranger, were equal to years of mere acquaintance. I feel that I know a great ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... tidbit. Others would come from the outside, and they, too, were mostly old women. They always wanted to pat Keith, and he objected passionately to all of them. His especial aversion was a gaunt old woman with a big hooked nose and a pair of startlingly large, sad-looking eyes. She always smiled, and her smile was hopelessly out of keeping with the rest of her face. The very sight of her made Keith forget all his manners. Time and again his mother rebuked him and tried to bring him around by telling the old woman's story—a story of wonderful ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... imprisonment. In short, no fewer than fifteen impostors have been enumerated; all of whom pretended to be the wretched young prince, returned from exile after escaping from the Temple. The latest claimant is the subject of the present notice; and so startlingly do some of the circumstances of his career coincide with the short history of the son of Louis XVI., that many well-informed persons really believe he was the person he ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... made with simple gravity, was startlingly mysterious to Deronda. Were the peculiarities of this man really associated with any sort of mental alienation, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of weakness combined with daring that drew her to him. She could not tell. She only knew, as she walked among the shy roses, that the casual touch of his hand—a hand, too, that was very like a girl's—had communicated to her quite a startlingly strong emotion. Alas! the motherly feeling seemed to have had its little day, and to have been swept off the stage on which her mental drama was being acted. It had played a principal part, but now an understudy appeared, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... moment Blake did not answer. The three of them were silent as they stared about them with eyes that were dazed by the startlingly unfamiliar aspect of every detail ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... to open contact. The tape sent a series of cardinal numbers—one to five. Then an addition table, from one plus one to five plus five. Then a multiplication table up to five times five. It was not startlingly intellectual information to be sent out in tiny clicks ranging up and down the radio spectrum. But ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... turned just below the crest of the hill on which they stood. And suddenly a bugle sounded, startlingly near. The two scouts had been so occupied in watching the country for miles about that they had given no heed to what might be going on close by. And so now while they stood in amazement and dismay, German soldiers began to appear over the hilltop, and in ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... remarked, "thirty miles"). But in his eyes, he continued—a tone of bored, weary conviction replacing his previous voluble delivery—the gentleman was already "in the similitude of a corpse." "What? What do you say?" I asked. He assumed a startlingly ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from behind. "Already like the body of one deported," he explained, with the insufferably conceited air of his kind after what they imagine a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... this manor stood bent, his fingers wrestling with the stubbornness of a rusted buckle, when he heard at his back, low of tone but startlingly staccato in its quality of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the valleys, has been startlingly confirmed! Mountain wolves have been seen in Blue Cement Ridge, and our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Ephraim Baker, yesterday encountered a half-starved cub entering his premises in search of food. Mr. Baker is of the opinion that the mother ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... light again and it picked out of the darkness another face, a long oval face with startlingly red lips and dark oval eyes which glowed as with an internal flame. As the face became visible, the red lips drew back, exposing strong white teeth and the words were ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... a brief lull in the commotion outside, he heard a slight sound, near and startlingly distinct like that of a rat in a partition. Then in the blackness of the room, a gray streak appeared, slowly widening. The door into the secret passage had opened, and the starlight from the loophole beyond now showed a dusky silhouette. Renwick felt Marishka's arm clutch ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... that a community of scientists would educate for technical intelligence, maybe breed for it too. And being a group picked for high I. Q. to begin with, they might make startlingly fast progress. You could easily imagine such folk, unimpeded by the boobs, creating a wonder world in ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... deceived others or grossly deceived himself. I do not know the East; nor do I like what I know. I am quite ready to believe that when Lord Curzon went out he found a very false atmosphere. I only say it must have been something startlingly and chokingly false if it was falser than that English atmosphere from which he came. The English Parliament actually cares for everything except veracity. The public-school man is kind, courageous, polite, clean, companionable; but, in the most awful sense of the words, the truth ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... daughter to refuse a baronet? And yet his heart had beaten with a fear that turned him dizzy and sick as he asked it; for she had shrunk away for one instant, frightened by his fiery wooing, and the sweet face had grown suddenly and startlingly pale. Is it not the rule that all maidens shall blush when their lovers ask the question ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... him, and which we have already admitted. Ecstatic praise and groundless detraction go hand in hand, bewildering to any one not possessed of the key to the mystery of the art of blowing hot and cold, which Mr. Froude so startlingly exemplifies. As it is our purpose to make what he says concerning this Colony the crucial test of his veracity as a writer of travels, [54] and also of the value of his judgments respecting men and things, we shall ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Carelessly restoring the piece of blotting-paper to the book from which I had taken it, I made a bow and withdrew toward the door. He seemed to be thinking, and the deep furrows which I am sure had been lacking from his brow a week previous, became startlingly visible. Finally he observed: ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... table, in the sudden flood of light, two men stood looking at each other curiously. They were so startlingly alike, in height and carriage and every feature, that there was something weird and unpleasant ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... would rise to his feet as soon as the door was closed. The picture became startlingly real to John Gaspar. Sinclair would slip out that window, no doubt, and circle around toward the horse shed. There he would wait until his prisoner came out on Meg, and then without warning would come a shot, and there would be an end of Sinclair's trouble with his prisoner. Gaspar could ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand |
