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More "Bombshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taught not to a few scholars here and there in musty libraries, but proclaimed in the vernacular to the whole populace with all the energy and enthusiasm of a recent convert and a master of language! Had a bombshell been exploded among the fossilized professors it ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... has fortunately found a record in the diary of a British officer posted there when the news of Washington's coming fell like a bombshell in their camp. It is given word ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake's name was a household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at Society, should actually have shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the blood shed was not blue, but ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Miss Crawford, decidedly ladylike—which the other is not, however pleasant a companion. I should as soon think of falling in love with a handsome bombshell, as with her. No knowing when she might explode. Now if I had met Miss Crawford at Newport two years ago, who knows but affairs might have been different? Heigho!" And so Walter Harding went on to his business; while Tom Leslie, the member of the party who ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... as if a bombshell had exploded in the court. Even his Honour was aghast, and I am sure the lady next to me only recovered from the shock of the surprise in order to wonder whether she need put off her dinner ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... This moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... A bombshell exploding in the room could not have astonished them as did my answer. I realized to the full the probable result, but my spirit was high, and I felt the utter uselessness of prolonging the interview. Sooner or later the same ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... scored a propaganda bombshell!" he reported. "In a news announcement released less than half an hour ago, they stated that their Navy has ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... its operation, was issued which cancelled the original monetary conditions of service for Officers and non-commissioned Officers, and increased the rates of pay to which their respective ranks entitled them. This order was only less effective than a bombshell in crushing a dignity already injured; and the gusto with which the Colonel and the Civil Commissioner were relegated to Connaught ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... had exploded his bombshell by asking Squire Richard for his daughter's hand, the lover ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Dipsaceus (Teasel Gourd), Cucumis Dudaim (Balloon Gourd), Cucumis Erinaceus (Hedgehog Gourd), Cucumis Grossularoides (Gooseberry Gourd), Cucumis Perennis, Cucurbita Argyrosperma, Cucurbita Melopepo, Cyclanthera Explodens (Bombshell Gourd), Cyclanthera Pedata, Eopepon Aurantiacum, Eopepon Vitifolius, Lagenaria Clavata (Club Gourd), Lagenaria Enormis, Lagenaria Leucantha Depressa, Lagenaria Leucantha Longissima, Lagenaria Plate de Corse, Lagenaria Poire a Poudre, Lagenaria Siphon, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... into my head that it would be 'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts upon ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Iron King's marriage was told by Sylvan. Had a bombshell fallen and exploded among the servants, they could not have been more shocked. There was a simultaneous exclamation of surprise and dismay, and then ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and doubting capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in Grenoble with exultation, and the troops that were to have been led against him have, together with their chieftain, Charles de Labedoyere, gone over ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head as if struck by a bombshell. The closing passage of that memorable speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some deep premeditation. It is well known now that Mr. Webster afterwards pruned, amended and decorated it until ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... one had heard a word about it. There had been talk of his going to Canada, and much chaff upon that subject—so ridiculous, Tancred emigrating! But of a prospective bride the most gossip-loving busybody at White's had never heard! It fell like a bombshell. And Lady Highford, as she read the news, clenched her pointed teeth, and gave a little squeal like ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... take his word for it, and begin where I left off at Bretton Woods, only hurrying on, perhaps, a little faster than I should if there were no bombshell to explode later. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... that Madelinette should partake. In another hour from their arrival they were on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses and gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake o' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Boiscoran, he had kept close in his house; and he had just made up his mind not to leave the house that day, when some one rang his bell furiously. A moment later Dr. Seignebos fell into the room like a bombshell. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and her tendency not to get ruffled. She had been his good angel, domestically speaking, and, indeed, in every way, since they had first begun to keep house together, and it had rather amused him to let fall such a bombshell as the contents of his telegram upon the regularity of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... spotting himself as a Southerner as surely as if he'd had the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forehead. We followed him down a short hall into a room furnished, with a couple of couches, an easy-chair, several small but delightful tables, and a piano. Here was the music. A blond bombshell was drumming box chords on the ivories, and grouped around her on side chairs were four young men, playing with her. It was jazz, if that's what you call the quiet racket that comes out of a wooden recorder, a very large pottery ocharina that hooted like a gallon jug, a steel guitar and a pair ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of our American delegation, when another bombshell was thrown among us—nothing less than the question whether the Pope is to be allowed to become one of the signatory powers; and this question has now taken a very acute form. Italy is, of course, utterly opposed to it, and Great Britain will not ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... This was the bombshell which had disturbed Carleton Roberts' complacency, bared his own soul to his horrified view, and revealed to him the weakness of his moral nature which he had hitherto considered strong. For his first impulse was one of recoil, not only from the secret marriage which shut him off from these ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... aggressively.] Well, I seem to have accidentally dropped a bombshell among you! Will any lady or gentleman kindly oblige with some particulars——? [To OTTOLINE, who checks him with an imperious gesture—changing his tone.] ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... refute, simply because the world doesn't stop long enough to hear two sides of a story unless they are given pretty closely together. Now Edith is counting on us to put the peeping-Tom Rodneys and the charitable Carneys to rout with our own little bombshell. They're saying nasty things about all of us. They're calling you a vile thing for stealing your sister's husband, and they're calling me a dog for what I'm doing. No telling what they'll be saying if we don't step into the breach as soon as it is opened. We can't afford to wait, no ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... days, they reached Fontainebleau, July 11. No one expected them and no preparations had been made for their reception. Their departure from Turin had been so recent, and it resembled a flight. The Emperor did not wish to be recognized on the way, and burst into Fontainebleau like a bombshell. The palace porter was an old servant, named Guillot, who had been Napoleon's cook in Egypt. "Well," the Emperor said to him, "you must go back to your old business and cook us some supper." Fortunately the porter had in his sideboard some mutton-chops ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Things have changed since then, and the so-called Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively, and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, both those belonging to the Legations and the dozens of missionary ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... A blond bombshell slithered down the bar and ground herself against my leg. "Wanna buy me a drink, honey?" she gasped. I smuggled a lift and slipped all four of her garters off the tops of her hose. A funny, stricken ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for the cultivated varieties of hickory nuts and walnuts that I know you are all working for. Foreign parasites are always dangerous. This chestnut blight fungus comes into any such scheme as that like a bombshell. When it comes to an introduced parasite like that we can not tell what will happen. I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... Spink, the first Earthman to reach and return from New Mu in a flying saucer, threw a hydroactive bombshell into the meeting of the leading cosmogonists at the University of Cincinnatus today. The amazing Spink, uninvited, crashed this august body of scientists and laughed at a statement made by Professor Apsox Zalpha as to the origin of Earth and ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... the bill and reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon the members ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the bombshell. It was Big Tom who cast it, figuratively speaking, among the supper plates. He had come scuffing his way in, his look roving and suspicious—if not a little apprehensive. But what he had to say he had saved, as was his habit, for meal time. "Sa-a-ay!" ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Bombshell number two, and a worse one than the first. For the moment Jim's head swam. If he had been asked just then in so many words where he had been at that time, it is likely that he would have admitted everything. By some miracle the Head ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... after the document that made Nathan Matthews supreme boss of Boston Gas was conveyed to him, there came an explosion. Like the premature bursting of a bombshell at a Fourth of July celebration, the transaction "leaked," and the press announced in sable head-lines that Mayor Matthews had sold out, that Addicks was on top, and that Rogers and "Standard Oil" would surely be found beneath ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... The bombshell came at the end of the third week. It came in the form of a message crouched in the flamboyant phraseology beloved of the Communist fraternity. It was conveyed by a small youth some ten years of age, as though its authors were fearful lest ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to throw a kind of bombshell friendship into the camp of her prejudices, Miss Phyllis," he said with his mouth twitching with a laugh, as if he didn't know whether we would like it ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... view; but, after all, a gun is a gun and a garrison a garrison; and to allow an implacable and formidable enemy to possess herself of either, within range of our fire-sides, when we can prevent it, is what we should call courting the presence of a bombshell on our borders, that may at any moment be thrown into ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... Jimmie Dale's lips set firmly under his mask. There was a way to save the man. It was something he had never intended to do again—but it was worth the price—to save this man. It would be like a bombshell exploded in the underworld; it would arouse the police to infuriated activity; it would stir New York to its depths—but, after all, it could not touch Smarlinghue. It would only instill the belief that somehow Larry the Bat had escaped from the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... bombshell had fallen in the room, a greater sensation could not have been produced. Every individual arose from the table, and the Colonel, striding up ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun. One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery. Shells ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... was a regular bombshell," she concluded after she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's room, and breathlessly related ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... him out early one morning and, while the sleepy millionaire was rubbing his eyes and still dodging the bombshell that a dream anarchist had hurled from the pinnacle of a bedpost, urged him in excited, confidential tones to take time by the forelock and prepare for possible breach of promise suits. Brewster sat on the edge of the bed and listened to diabolical stories of how conscienceless ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... time on the Fourth with the exception of my ankle, which was somewhat dislocated because my foot stepped on an infant bombshell which same exploded for ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... the first letter which has fallen like a bombshell into Littlefield," Sir Richard reminded him quietly; and Anstice flushed ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the grey eyes kindled and the kindliness in them grew yet more kindly, though the soft embroideries in the delicate lawn were ruffled by a quicker breath, the natural perversity of her sex must needs answer perversely, and Ursula de Vesc blew up his siege trench with a bombshell. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... home along the railway lines, half a dozen of the railwaymen pressed around Radek, and almost fought with each other as to who should walk next to him. And Radek entirely happy, delighted at his success in giving them a bombshell instead of a bouquet, with one stout fellow on one arm, another on the other, two or three more listening in front and behind, continued rubbing it into them until we reached our wagon, when, after a general handshaking, they disappeared into ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... fell on the letter, which, had it contained a bombshell, could scarce have wrought more damage in so short a space of time. Tearing it across and across, he flung it into the fire, and derived a gloomy satisfaction from watching it burn. But though paper and ink were reduced to ashes, neither fire nor steel ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... a market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Report, the bursting of this bombshell in that massed convention of trained Christians created no astonishment, since it caused no remark, and the business of the convention went tranquilly on, thereafter, as if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Had a bombshell burst over my head the effect could have been no greater. Cold perspiration began to ooze out on my forehead. In a flash I saw the significance of the entire situation. That was why Norris had been so insistent that ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... harness of the carpenter-shop when, in the middle of July, the news struck down in our quiet community like a bombshell that France had declared war on Prussia; also that Denmark was expected to join her forces to those of her old ally and take revenge for the great robbery of 1864. I dropped my tools the moment I heard it, and flew rather than ran to the company's office to demand my time; thence to our ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... If a bombshell had suddenly exploded, some of the girls could not have been more surprised. Dilys Fenton stared at Maude as if marvelling at her amazing impudence, Hetty Hancock flushed pink with annoyance, and Meg Gordon's eyes sought the face of her idol. A few of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... two following Devereau's unsatisfactory laconism nothing developed. And then a bombshell exploded. Hughie Gay made a statement. He took oath, solemn oath (and cheap, too, for it cost Dunham but two hundred dollars), that he had sold out. Blair had realized that he was no champion; he had feared even him, Gay. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... surprises you, madame," he began; "and I must confess that—hum!—it does not surprise me less than it does you. But extraordinary circumstances require exceptional action. On any other occasion, I would not fall upon you like a bombshell. But we had no time to waste in ceremonious formalities. I will, therefore, ask your leave to introduce myself: I ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... honest motive, they'd not be hidden in the first place and they'd have taken their cure to the Medical Center in the second. Well, I had a bit of something listed against them, so I decided to let my bombshell drop. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... chaff me about my whims. Well, I've got a whim now, and I'll have my way as usual. I am going to see you to-morrow, and if you won't see me under my conditions in London, I shall call at Woking in the evening. Oh my goodness, what a bombshell! But you know that I am always as good as my ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the hour she was setting down this first result of her instinct's warning against the danger signal she had seen in Hiram Ranger's manner, he was delivering a bombshell. He had led in the family prayers as usual and had just laid the Bible on the center-table in the back parlor after they rose from their knees. With his hands resting on the cover of the huge volume he looked at his son. There was a sacrificial expression ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... mystery about these accounts which I have never been able to solve. The total is always, on the face of it, monstrous and not to be endured; but when you call your Boy up and prepare to discharge the bombshell of your indignation, he merely inquires in an unagitated tone of voice which item you find fault with, and you become painfully aware that you have not a leg to stand on. In the first place, most of the items are too minute to allow of much retrenchment. You can ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... "that sermon was a perfect bombshell; and, mark my words, it will either blow the doctor out of his pulpit, or some of the first-class saints out of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... at once so caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of Nopolis. Groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. Every one awaited, with heartfelt anxiety, the reply of the dignified Smith. Next ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... silence fell on the little group crouched among the boulders. Bob's statement that he had to go back through the fire zone—to Houck—had fallen among them like a mental bombshell. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... brother of mine," he explained. "He's going to try to marry a girl he has only known twenty-four hours—a girl we never heard of. And I'm on my way to stop it!—the young fool!—and I'll stop it if I have to drag him home by the heels! Here's the telegram we got late this afternoon—a regular bombshell." He drew the yellow bit of paper from his ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... will believe him. Yet he is dangerous, and if he denounces us in the Duma it will come as a bombshell. I called upon Anna Vyrubova early this morning, and she has gone to the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... main suit was pending. Old suits were revived and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... plot exploded in thousand pieces. Mustn't be honeymoon couple. Heroine radiant young girl, eighteen, hair red as Circe's, eyes of new-born angel, comes like bombshell into hero's life. Not good simile, bombshell. Query, hero. Would she fall in love with man of B. N.'s type? I see another type more probable, but don't ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of all this, fell, like a bombshell, the intelligence of his engagement with Maggie Browne; a good sweet little girl enough, but without fortune or connection—without, as far as Mr. Buxton knew, the least power, or capability, or spirit, with which to help Frank on in his career to eminence in the land! He resolved to consider ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of rain splashed, and exploded like a miniature watery bombshell, against the windowpane. Martha looked up. Then she became aware of a faint tinkling in the room below. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a bombshell—though Uncle Stanley little guessed it—"I think the position calls for some one younger than I am. Besides, my name is Cutler, whereas for eight generations this concern has been ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Association, asking me if the rumour was true. I had just arranged with them to put you up for the East Connor division of Down at the general election and everything was looking rosy. Then this confounded stinkpot of a bombshell burst in our midst. That outrageous brat of Beresford's ought to be soundly whipped. I always said so and it turns out now that ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... about enough of this thing," continued the rough visitor. "You insist on keeping the whelp here, when you know he is a bombshell in your path and mine. Why don't you send him to sea, and let him ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... soul! She had a vague idea of 'bearing testimony' as her father would have borne it in like circumstances. But she turned very pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She looked like a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The veteran rancher had thrown a veritable bombshell into camp. Delton—the man lying asleep upstairs—the head of the smugglers! Two thousand dollars' reward! Why, all they had to do was to tie him up and carry him to town—over to the deputy's house. Capturing the smuggling king the first ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... of the Council staggered to their feet. The coming of the King was like a bombshell thrown amongst them. They were met in secret conclave, a proceeding to the last degree unconstitutional. They were receiving, too, an emissary from a foreign country which amounted to high treason. Doxis was perhaps ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... least. In this frightful crisis, he was only conscious of one fact—that just as he raised his hand to strike Madame Lia d'Argeles, his mother, a big, burly individual had burst into the room, like a bombshell, caught him by the throat, forced him upon his knees, and compelled him to ask the lady's pardon. He, Wilkie, to be humiliated in this style! He would never endure that. This was an affront he could not swallow, one of those insults that cry out for vengeance and for blood. "Ah! the great ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... to testify to the geology of the Tecolote; but Cummins and Ford produced others as eminent who testified to the opposite effect. So the battle raged until the wearied judge limited the profitless discussion to one more day, and then Cummins and Ford launched their bombshell. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... a moment to try and regain the command of my faculties. But it was as if a bombshell had exploded inside my skull, scattering all my wits to the four winds of heaven. Only the conviction of failure remained, attended ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... birds, it is fond of building in holes, and will generally obtain them ready-made if possible. Burroughs has said of the wren that it "will build in anything that has a hole in it, from an old boot to a bombshell." In similar whim our little solitary hornet has been known to favor nail-holes, hollow reeds, straws, the barrels of a pistol, holes in kegs, worm-holes in wood, and spools, to which we may ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... said Carmichael derisively. "Why, nothing short of a bombshell would cause a riot among ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... to a fresh interest, and with fast-beating heart I await my father's answer. It comes as a bombshell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... see what had been happening in this country in those fateful years before the bombshell of war exploded in ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... another diplomatic bombshell burst in Europe. Darnborough came to and fro to Bracondale half a dozen times in the course of four or five days. Once he arrived by special train from Paddington in the middle of the night. Many serious conferences did he have with ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... Then the bombshell fell. A strange voice suddenly intervened, a voice whose American accent seemed more marked than usual. The four men turned their heads. Selingman sprang to his feet. Mr. Grex's face was marble in its whiteness. Monsieur Douaille, ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... McLagan's bombshell in their midst was only the beginning; a mere herald of what was to follow. Excitement after excitement ran riot, until the public mind was dazed, and the only thing that remained clear to it was that crime and fortune ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... made it, it would go down to posterity as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait given away as a scientific worthy with Nature, and things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along. And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things these scientific people have ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... pushed forward, we heard among the hills a loud crashing report like the bursting of a bombshell. What could it mean? We knew there were some shells along with the howitzers. Were our comrades attacked by Indians, and was it one of the cannon they had fired upon them? No; that could not be. There was but one report, and I knew that the discharge ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... which was never seen before; as indeed he should be, for his sire Highflyer, as all the world knows, was bought up by a great Hunter-river horse-breeder from the Duke of C——; while his dam, Larkspur, had for grandsire the great Bombshell himself. What more would you have than that, unless you would like to drive Veno in your dog-cart? However, it so happened that, soon after the Irishman's visit, Sam went away on a journey, and came back riding a new horse; ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... circumstances, was perturbed throughout its viscera, both public and domestic. Cooks, shopkeepers, street passengers, told the news from door to door; thence it rose to the upper regions. Soon the words: "Mademoiselle Cormon has returned!" burst like a bombshell into all households. At that moment Jacquelin was descending from his wooden seat (polished by a process unknown to cabinet-makers), on which he perched in front of the carriole. He opened the great green gate, round at the top, and closed in sign of mourning; for during Mademoiselle Cormon's absence ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been 'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three railway statements which had been expected to be much better ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... atmosphere, a large ball of fire appeared suddenly at the extremity of the horizontal parent branch, as thick as a man's wrist, and surrounded with black smoke. This ball, after turning round and round for a few seconds, burst like a bombshell, and with so much noise that the explosion was distinctly audible above the general FRACAS. A sulphurous smoke filled the air, and complete silence reigned till the voice of Tom ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... promises a heavy storm he will complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bombshell,—a picture of native ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... before the poor girl's eyes, and so keep her in constant suspense between gratitude and apprehension, to such an extent as to make her a friend at court, interested, as an accomplice, in trying to make his fortune, while she was making her own. As far as concerned the day when the bombshell of the past should burst, if ever there were any occasion, Saint-Aignan promised himself that he would by that time have taken all possible precautions, and would pretend an entire ignorance of the matter to the king; ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... out of there, a-roar like a bombshell. I rode down to Dent; we rode down to the place and did—what there was to be done. Miller I never wanted to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... geology of the Tecolote; but Cummins and Ford produced others as eminent who testified to the opposite effect. So the battle raged until the wearied judge limited the profitless discussion to one more day, and then Cummins and Ford launched their bombshell. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... midst of all this, fell, like a bombshell, the intelligence of his engagement with Maggie Browne; a good sweet little girl enough, but without fortune or connection—without, as far as Mr. Buxton knew, the least power, or capability, or spirit, ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Dale's lips set firmly under his mask. There was a way to save the man. It was something he had never intended to do again—but it was worth the price—to save this man. It would be like a bombshell exploded in the underworld; it would arouse the police to infuriated activity; it would stir New York to its depths—but, after all, it could not touch Smarlinghue. It would only instill the belief that somehow Larry the Bat had escaped from the tenement fire; it would only mean a ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... his bombshell. "Nope. Water. Plain, ordinary aitch-two-oh. See those little vents at the side? They exhaust oxygen and helium. It burns about four hundred milligrams of water ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... moment to try and regain the command of my faculties. But it was as if a bombshell had exploded inside my skull, scattering all my wits to the four winds of heaven. Only the conviction of failure remained, attended ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Scott The Absent-Minded Beggar Rudyard Kipling For the Empire F. Harald Williams Wanted—a Cromwell F. Harald Williams England's Ironsides F. Harald Williams The Three Cherry-Stones Anonymous The Midshipman's Funeral Darley Dale Ladysmith F. Harald Williams The Six-inch Gun "The Bombshell" St. Patrick's Day F. Harald Williams The Hero of Omdurman F. Harald Williams Boot and Saddle F. Harald Williams The Midnight Charge Clement Scott Mafeking—"Adsum!" A. Frewen Aylward The Fight at Rorke's Drift Emily Pfeiffer Relieved! (At Mafeking) "Daily Express" How Sam Hodge Won the V.C. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them, perhaps, with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the appre- hensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, and the "Intransi- geant" and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... hearty laugh is a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... obtrusive in her piety. Very early in the book I took it into my head that it would be 'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... ter hap'n nex'?" groaned Chunk, as he disappeared toward the mansion. He burst like a bombshell into the kitchen, a small building in the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... widened as did those of the rest of the company. But Blanchard, even under the impact of such a bombshell had the presence of mind to glance at his watch. Immediately he snapped on the loudspeaker. The voice ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... Castilian bull-fights left their stain Of blood upon the soil of this New Spain; Here, where old live-oaks, spared till we condemn. Still wait within this city named for them— We celebrate, with bombshell and with rhyme Our noisiest Day of Days of yearly time! O bare Antonio's hills that rim our sky— Antonio's hills, that used to know July As but a time of sleep beneath the sun— Such days of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... announcement of Lord Tancred's engagement! No one had heard a word about it. There had been talk of his going to Canada, and much chaff upon that subject—so ridiculous, Tancred emigrating! But of a prospective bride the most gossip-loving busybody at White's had never heard! It fell like a bombshell. And Lady Highford, as she read the news, clenched her pointed teeth, and gave a little squeal ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... quiet time on the Fourth with the exception of my ankle, which was somewhat dislocated because my foot stepped on an infant bombshell which same exploded ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... charge, and it blew all to pieces. I'll know better next time. There are lots more chunks of meat, and we'll soon have a feast. I'll make another bombshell." ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... leaving the captain about as comfortable with this piece of intelligence as he would have been with a bombshell suddenly pitched into ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... for the final conference and the signatures, Austria intervened and announced her opposition. Then suddenly followed the bombshell of the ultimatum to Servia, timed at the precise moment to stop the signing of this ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... to my taste were the houses, which to me seemed immense, and which, fronting two streets, and embracing a citizen-world within their large court- yards, built round with lofty walls, are like large castles, nay, even half-cities. In one of these strange places I quartered myself; namely, in the Bombshell Tavern (/Feuerkugel/), between the Old and the New Newmarket (/Neumarkt/). A couple of pleasant rooms looking out upon a court-yard, which, on account of the thoroughfare, was not without animation, were occupied by the bookseller Fleischer during the fair, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... monetary conditions of service for Officers and non-commissioned Officers, and increased the rates of pay to which their respective ranks entitled them. This order was only less effective than a bombshell in crushing a dignity already injured; and the gusto with which the Colonel and the Civil Commissioner were relegated to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... final pretty speech—silence seems imminent—when suddenly Lady Monkton flings into it a bombshell that explodes, and carries away with it all fear of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... don't know how scared I'd be of a German bombshell," he said, "but I'm everlastin' sure I wouldn't run from it for fear of runnin' towards it, and that's how I felt about that jug. . . . Yes, yes, yes. I did so . . . I'm much obliged to you, Al. I shan't forget it—no, no. I cal'late you can trot along home now, if you want to. I'm pretty ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... ask Ralph Conway to come and stay for a time with me." The announcement was a simple one, but it fell like a bombshell in the midst of the party at breakfast at Penfold Hall. The party consisted only of the speaker, Herbert Penfold, and his two sisters. The latter both exclaimed "Herbert!" in a tone of shocked surprise. Mr. Penfold was evidently prepared for disapprobation; ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the most casual and innocent way; he hadn't the faintest notion in the world that what he had said was like a bombshell bursting beneath the structure of Mr. Cumshaw's composure. He was intelligent enough to realise that it was more than probable that Cumshaw possessed knowledge of that almost forgotten episode which was not shared with anyone else, but he had not the least ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... in the harness of the carpenter-shop when, in the middle of July, the news struck down in our quiet community like a bombshell that France had declared war on Prussia; also that Denmark was expected to join her forces to those of her old ally and take revenge for the great robbery of 1864. I dropped my tools the moment I heard it, and flew rather than ran to the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... "scare." Suppressed: because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been "boosted" beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three railway ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... senseless cruelty and waste—particularly when it's dangerous. Docked Lani are the height of stupidity. Just because someone wants a pet that is an exact duplicate of a human being is no reason to risk a court action. Those Lani, and a few others whose tails have been docked, could be a legal bombshell if they ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... certainly very sorry that I was the innocent cause of such an upheaval," Col. Baker said, in the half serious, half mocking, tone that was becoming especially trying to Flossy. "It seems that I unwittingly burst a bombshell when I overturned those cards. I hadn't an idea of it. Miss Flossy, what can I do to atone for making you so uneasy? I assure you it was really pure benevolence on my part. What can ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... picked up there now, and it could be ascertained that it did service in that famous battle, it would be an object of no small interest, at least to the antiquary; but in regard to this treatise of Luther, we know full well that Rome felt its visitation as something more terrible than a bombshell exploding beneath the dome of St. Peter's. Under the authority of Peter himself it demolished the very foundations of the throne upon which his pretended successors were seated, and gave a most effective impulse to the ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... know what answer I expected. I flung the announcement like a bombshell and was ready for almost any sort ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sententiously, "that sermon was a perfect bombshell; and, mark my words, it will either blow the doctor out of his pulpit, or some of the first-class ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... had been happening in this country in those fateful years before the bombshell of war exploded ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... now believe that Mr. Klutchem had run away. Fitz, who up to this time had enjoyed every turn in the discussion, and who had listened to Yancey with a face like a stone god, his knees shaking with laughter, now threw another bombshell almost as disastrous ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately. He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... kind of bombshell friendship into the camp of her prejudices, Miss Phyllis," he said with his mouth twitching with a laugh, as if he didn't know whether we would ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... good women who wrote and published this declaration, fancying that they were throwing a bombshell into the gathered crowds of American (male) citizens, are very much in earnest, doubtless, and are entitled—we have platform authority for saying it—to "respectful consideration"; but their movement ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... resound as he struck the floor with his spurred heels. Every thing around him seemed to vibrate; the very curtains waved like trees in a storm. At length the pent-up rage found vent, and burst forth like a bombshell which explodes, "Comedian, say you? Ah, ha! I am he that will play you comedies to make you weep like women and children. Comedian, indeed! But you are greatly mistaken if you think you can play off on me, with impunity, your cool-blooded insolence. Comedian! Where is my theatre, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... during the last hundred years, to go no further back. The end of the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell. In its lurid blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of military and administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless vividness. And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the day that the glorified French ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... When Mr. Noble's bombshell fell, in Senator Dilworthy's camp, the statesman was disconcerted for a moment. For a moment; that was all. The next moment he was calmly up and doing. From the centre of our country to its circumference, nothing ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... was quiet save the scratching of pens through the room. Yet Old Dut, expert reader of pupils' eyes and glances, presently cast a bombshell by declaring in ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... the same instant something was thrown into the tent, like a bombshell, passing the table, knocking over the candle, and ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... doctor and she thought a good deal of this catch they were making in the person of Ernest Le Breton. Poor souls, they little knew what sort of social qualities they were letting themselves in for. A firebrand or a bombshell would really have been a less remarkable guest to drop down straight into the prim and proper orthodox ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... since then, and the so-called Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively, and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a sound, save now and then a terrific volley from the cloud batteries now fast approaching. By nine o'clock little puffs of wind began to steal through the woods and tease and toy with our fire. Shortly after, an enormous electric bombshell exploded in the treetops over our heads, and the ball was fairly opened. Then followed three hours, with only two brief intermissions, of as lively elemental music and as copious an outpouring of rain as it was ever my lot to witness. It was a regular meteorological carnival, and the revelers ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the main suit was pending. Old suits were revived and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought in ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Nicky Easton, poising the bombshell with its appalling threat, had murmured a sardonic "Well?" Davidge would probably have smiled, shrugged, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... from fear of international complications and of alienating its Socialist supporters, who, of course, opposed all idea of territorial expansion, refused to do anything. Then the Franco-German Morocco bombshell burst, and Agadir made the Italian people realize that the question of Tripoli called for immediate solution. The whole of the rest of Mediterranean Africa was about to be partitioned among the Powers, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... wren among birds, it is fond of building in holes, and will generally obtain them ready-made if possible. Burroughs has said of the wren that it "will build in anything that has a hole in it, from an old boot to a bombshell." In similar whim our little solitary hornet has been known to favor nail-holes, hollow reeds, straws, the barrels of a pistol, holes in kegs, worm-holes in wood, and spools, to which we ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... (Serpent Gourd), Cucumis Dipsaceus (Teasel Gourd), Cucumis Dudaim (Balloon Gourd), Cucumis Erinaceus (Hedgehog Gourd), Cucumis Grossularoides (Gooseberry Gourd), Cucumis Perennis, Cucurbita Argyrosperma, Cucurbita Melopepo, Cyclanthera Explodens (Bombshell Gourd), Cyclanthera Pedata, Eopepon Aurantiacum, Eopepon Vitifolius, Lagenaria Clavata (Club Gourd), Lagenaria Enormis, Lagenaria Leucantha Depressa, Lagenaria Leucantha Longissima, Lagenaria Plate de Corse, Lagenaria ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... being overheard? Don't be silly. It had to come as a bombshell. I had to establish myself as a liar—the prize liar of them all, but I had to tell the sort of lie that they simply could not cope with. Something that would throw them into such utter confusion that they wouldn't dare convict me." He grinned impishly at Meyerhoff. "The paradox ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... ride. 'Twas all a sort of constant changin' sameness. I remember passin' a blurred life-savin' station, with three—or maybe thirty—blurred men jumpin' and laughin' and hollerin'. I found out afterwards that they'd been on the lookout for the bombshell for half an hour. Billings had told around town what he was goin' to do to me, and some kind friend had telephoned it to the station. So the life-savers was full of anticipations. I hope they were satisfied. I hadn't rehearsed my part of the show none, but I feel what the parson ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... young life cut short had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake's name was a household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at Society, should actually have shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... ardent pleadings, was yielding to the extent of letting Foxy's family sit with him in relays and cheer him as much as they liked, when Grandmother dropped her bombshell. At least, that was what John called it when they talked it over afterwards. Joy always spoke of it as "the time Grandmother said ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... King's marriage was told by Sylvan. Had a bombshell fallen and exploded among the servants, they could not have been more shocked. There was a simultaneous exclamation of surprise and dismay, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sufficiently familiar with the old plan to know how this new system would upset the entire political machine of his State. That folio of document was a bombshell. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... after Josiah had exploded his bombshell by asking Squire Richard for his daughter's hand, the lover was forbidden ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... flushed, and she was a prey to the burning desire of shaming the wicked woman, and overwhelming her with such opprobriums as Jew, scoundrel, infamous one. She suddenly became aware of all that went on in that house. First the jealousy, then the news of the marriage of Luis falling like a bombshell, then the miserable revenge wreaked on the child for the forsaking of the father. She well knew the spiteful nature of the Valencian. But what good would it do to insult her at that moment? It would only make a great scene, and she would be sent from the house. In spite of her ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... stumps and cutting through boughs. The hoary, bearded bison trembled in his mossy lair and bristled up his long shaggy mane; he half rose, resting on his forelegs, and, shaking his beard, he gazed in amazement at the sparks suddenly glittering amid the brushwood: this was a stray bombshell that twirled and whirled and hissed, and at last broke with a roar like thunder; the bison for the first time in his life was terrified and fled to take refuge in ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of the early fifteenth century, in ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1st Stolypin threw a bombshell into the Duma by accusing the Social Democrats of having conspired to form a military plot for the overthrow of the government of Nicholas II. Evidence to this effect had been furnished to the Police Department ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... now closing in, and soon darkness reigned around, the prevailing gloom being only broken by the fiery path of some bombshell winging its parabolic flight through the air, or the long tongue of fire darting forth from the mouth of a stray cannon; while, in the sky above, the lurid smoke-clouds of burning houses joined with the shades of night in casting a pall over the scene of hideous carnage which the bright ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... instant before she had stood erect and smiling! With exclamations of alarm and distress we lifted and bore her within the room and laid her tenderly down upon the nearest sofa. At that moment a deafening, terrific thunder-clap—one only—as if a huge bombshell had burst in the air, shook the ground under our feet; and then with a swish and swirl of long pent-up and suddenly-released wrath, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... military point of view; but, after all, a gun is a gun and a garrison a garrison; and to allow an implacable and formidable enemy to possess herself of either, within range of our fire-sides, when we can prevent it, is what we should call courting the presence of a bombshell on our borders, that may at any moment be thrown into ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... surprised when, later on, just before they thought of breaking up the meeting, William got the floor on the question of a personal privilege, and threw a bombshell into the camp. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... had known of this bombshell in the air, and had trembled with that remnant of hope which is founded only upon desire; all the Court as well as all Paris waited in a dejected sadness to see what would happen. People whispered to each ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as if he'd had the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forehead. We followed him down a short hall into a room furnished, with a couple of couches, an easy-chair, several small but delightful tables, and a piano. Here was the music. A blond bombshell was drumming box chords on the ivories, and grouped around her on side chairs were four young men, playing with her. It was jazz, if that's what you call the quiet racket that comes out of a wooden recorder, a very large ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had about enough of this thing," continued the rough visitor. "You insist on keeping the whelp here, when you know he is a bombshell in your path and mine. Why don't you send him to sea, ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... inward effect, Miss Durant could discover no outward evidence that Swot's bombshell had moved Dr. Armstrong a particle more than her less pointed attempts to bring to him a realisation that he was behaving in a manner displeasing to her. When she entered the ward the next morning, the doctor was again there, ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... her tendency not to get ruffled. She had been his good angel, domestically speaking, and, indeed, in every way, since they had first begun to keep house together, and it had rather amused him to let fall such a bombshell as the contents of his telegram upon the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... return from Boiscoran, he had kept close in his house; and he had just made up his mind not to leave the house that day, when some one rang his bell furiously. A moment later Dr. Seignebos fell into the room like a bombshell. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and his wife started as if the house had been shaken by an exploding bombshell. Both turned as pale as death, looked fearfully at each other, and clutched tightly at the edges of ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... Senator told me that he was at a dinner party in Sir John Macdonald's house in Ottawa, when a telegram was delivered to the Premier at the table. He read it and put it under his plate. Nothing could be gained by throwing that bombshell in the midst of his guests. But in a few minutes, as the friends were saying good-night, Sir John came to the door with the Senator and said, "Mac, there's the very mischief to pay in the North-West." The wire had communicated the news ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that Dorothy had suddenly disappeared and was believed to have been kidnapped, fell upon the Traynor home with the crushing force of a bombshell. At first Helen refused to credit the report. It seemed impossible that any new suffering was to be inflicted upon her after what she had already endured. White faced, her whole being shaken by emotion, she read and re-read her aunt's letter, telling of the child's mysterious disappearance, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the young bird sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and when the old one returned and called, it came out from the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert White saw and describes in his letters was picked up in a field, unable to ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... (cyanogen), resembling neither father nor mother in its actions and powers, to the confusion of all preconceived ideas, when Gay-Lussac, a Frenchman, introduced it to the world, where it fell like a bombshell upon the theory of chemical combinations. This impertinent fellow, combining with hydrogen in his turn, produces prussic acid, the most frightful of poisons; one drop of which placed on the tongue of a horse strikes it dead as if ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... have strangled him. After the intoxicating drink he had swallowed Fumichon did not know what he was talking about any longer, and his apoplectic face was on the point of bursting like a bombshell. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... elected president; Mrs. Gerrit Smith, Mrs. E.C. Delavan, Antoinette L. Brown and nine others, vice-presidents; Susan B. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer, secretaries. In accepting the presidency, Mrs. Stanton made a powerful speech, certain parts of which acted as a bombshell not only at this meeting, but in press, pulpit and society. The two points ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... wondering why he told her. 'I had a grandfather, who made a will. He had a fancy to wrap up a bombshell in the will. Now—the shell ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... still absent on the Angers expedition when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell among his accomplices; and the dates of his return and arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457, which would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Guardian became the great organ of public opinion on the liberal side in Upper Canada. It can, therefore, be well understood how at such a time, when the supremacy of party was the question of the hour, the publication of Dr. Ryerson's "impressions"—candid and moderate as they were—fell like a bombshell amongst those in Canada who had set up as political idols such men as Hume and Roebuck in England. To dethrone such idols was of itself bad enough; but that was not the head and front of Dr. Ryerson's offending. What gave such mortal offence was that Dr. Ryerson saw any good whatever ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... You will be Prime Minister," flashed out Miss Greeby, at which there was a general laugh. Then Garvington threw a bombshell. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Carmichael derisively. "Why, nothing short of a bombshell would cause a riot among ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... the very height of this struggle of the electric forces of the atmosphere, a large ball of fire appeared suddenly at the extremity of the horizontal parent branch, as thick as a man's wrist, and surrounded with black smoke. This ball, after turning round and round for a few seconds, burst like a bombshell, and with so much noise that the explosion was distinctly audible above the general FRACAS. A sulphurous smoke filled the air, and complete silence reigned till the voice of Tom Austin ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... gained, and all the world will have to admit it; now let us think what we may put into our bulletin to tell the people HOW we have gained it. For ten years past Bonaparte has issued such high- sounding accounts of his victories that I always felt in my anger as though my heart were a bombshell ready to burst. Well, this time, let us also draw up such a bulletin of victory, and show that we have learned something. Let us proclaim that we have conquered, and draw up the document as soon as we ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... colonel declined the invitation on account of his dear boy. Mr. Lamb intimated that he had business with Miss Du Plessis on Crown Land matters, as the department wished to get back into its possession the land owned by her. This was a bombshell in the camp. Miss Du Plessis declined to have any conference on the subject, referring the civil servant to her uncle, to Squire Carruthers, and to her solicitor, Mr. Coristine. The lawyer was disposed ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
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