"Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... finger, peered over the green silk curtain out into the darkening street. A young man, tall and rather thin, in a blue suit and wide gray-felt hat, was walking slowly and with a slight limp up the cross street, evidently ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... do, but it was still more dangerous to stumble into some object and make a noise. He darted forward, circuiting a workbench, a stool, a small hand forge. Again the flashlight gleamed. Against the side wall, near the rear, was another workbench, with a sort of coarse canvas curtain hanging part way down in front of it, evidently to protect such things as might be stored away beneath it from dust, and Jimmie Dale sprang for it, whipped back the canvas, and crawled underneath. He was not an instant too soon. As the canvas fell back ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... light reflected from a hundred windows flashed and blazed in wondrous glory, until the city seemed a dream of unearthly splendor and fairy loveliness, in which the people moved in wonder and in awe. Only for a moment it lasted. A heavy cloud curtain was drawn hurriedly across the west as though the scene in its marvelous beauty was too sacred for the gaze of men whose souls were dwarfed by baser visions. For an instant a single star gleamed above the curtain in the soft green of the upper sky; then it too vanished, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... she knew so well that she never thought about them except when, as indeed often happened, she had nothing else to think about. Most of the provincial populations received her annual visits with enthusiasm. Among them she found herself more excitingly applauded before the curtain, her authority more despotic behind it, her expenses smaller, and her gains greater than in London, for which she accordingly cared as little as London cared for her. As she grew older she made more money and spent less. When she ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family—a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt—took the money. This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... with it on. I can at least keep my face clean." She raised the curtain and took a liberal bite of the apple—so nonchalantly that I ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... in justice. An old woman full of lamentation, led us to the sick couch, where lay a creature, beautiful in shape as a houri. The Frank physician was desired by the old woman to feel her pulse through the curtain, but he laughed at her beard (for she had no small one), and drew aside the curtains and took hold of a hand so small and so delicate, that it were only fit to feed the Prophet himself near the throne of the angel Gabriel, with the immortal pilau prepared for true believers. Her ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in his ears, and the murderous combat brought a restlessness that pleased him. But human nature is strange—passing strange. At intervals he was mild and gentle. Standing upon the battlefield, when night had drawn her silvery curtain over the ghastly and hideous spectacle, when the booming shot and frightful discord—the shriek, the groan, the shout, and ceaseless rush of angered men were passed away, he had looked round upon the cold and bloody scene, and wept—his sternness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors together with some of the old ones. I do not name them to you, because to-morrow's Gazette will do it full as well ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... people care to encounter. . . . One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper's own Gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over which his lamp burns red behind the curtain, as if the building were a ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... fair lady, for the false, The fickle love's rememberance, What though another claim the waltz— The curtain soon will ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned him loose to ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at once. He was afraid, too, that some slight ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... arrangement of the chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the scenery, some black spots seemed as if dancing, strange silhouettes of the visitors in their dress clothes, standing out clearly against the yellow background like the shadows ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... still burning. He thought it was Phoebe, the maid, going to bed; and with no very gracious feelings towards her for having deprived him of his own night's rest, he was wishing that she might have the toothache or something else to keep her awake, when suddenly through the white window curtain he perceived a broad light in the room—it increased every moment—and he saw the figure of a female rush past it, and attempt to open the window—the drawing of the curtains showed him that the room was on fire. A moment's thought, and he ran for the ladder ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth with words like these—"I do not fear, my soul does not fear"; and at the same time I found the strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows—tore aside the curtain—flung open the shutters; my first thought was—LIGHT.—And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror. There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in the deserted slumberous street. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... said Maurice, thoughtfully. He was thinking of Mademoiselle of the Veil and her prophecy of ravens. "I don't know that I shall be able. It is my opinion that your part in the affair is only a curtain-raiser to graver things. Every one of importance in town goes about with an air of expectancy. I never saw anything like it. It is the king, the archbishop and the chancellor against two hundred thousand. You're a soldier; ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... imaginative fervour as "a psalm," "a fairy-tale," and "an aurora borealis." They none of them ever agreed as to the dress she wore that evening; but Eliza Thick, who was perhaps the most observant, declared that it looked like a chintz curtain. I think it must have had small sprigs of flowers printed on it. Her eyes, exclaimed the broken-hearted gas-man, were like "a twilight with only two stars." Perhaps he meant a street with ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... the new theatre, in my time, made the greatest noise; in which his curtain, when it was still quite new, had certainly an uncommonly charming effect. Oeser had taken the Muses out of the clouds, upon which they usually hover on such occasions, and set them upon the earth. The statues ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... with that wonderful presence of mind she was destined to preserve in the most difficult crises of her future life, thrust the young man against the carved back of her bed, and concealed him completely beneath the ample curtain: she then signed to Cancha to go forward and meet the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Rosemary hung up a calico curtain across the one bedroom, so that Annie-Many-Ponies might have a corner to call her own. She stayed; and Luck rewrote two reels of his scenario so that there should be a place in it for a beautiful Indian girl who rode like a whirlwind and did not know the meaning of fear, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... I thought it vast in extent; though Herman Mordaunt assured me it was no great things, in that point of view, as compared with most of the playhouses at home. But the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful expectation; an expectation, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... lift the curtain From the antedating ages and uncertain When what is was not, and tides of pristine being Beat on shores forgot, and ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... we watched him—Hubba sitting on the table's edge, and I standing by him—a leathern curtain that went across a door at the upper end of the hall was pulled aside, and a lady came into the place. Stately and tall, with wondrous black hair, was this maiden, and I knew that this must be that Osritha of whom the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... like Ambition to distinguish himself in a noisy manner, partly by Vociferation or talking loud, and partly by his bodily Agility. This was a very lusty Fellow, but withal a sort of Beau, who getting into one of the Side-boxes on the Stage before the Curtain drew, was disposed to shew the whole Audience his Activity by leaping over the Spikes; he pass'd from thence to one of the entering Doors, where he took Snuff with a tolerable good Grace, display'd his fine Cloaths, made two ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... through all the corridors and halls of the temple, and the god and Ramses had returned to the chamber of repose, the curtain concealing the sacred boat slipped apart and the beautiful child ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... his people. "It is well." And with a reverent inclination of his head, he walked away. Margarita, still dawdling surlily over her work in Father Salvierderra's room, heard Alessandro's voice, and running to discover to whom he was speaking, caught these last, words. Peering from behind a curtain, she saw the look with which he said them; saw also the expression on ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his chair. He supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him; what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the decks next morning he was ready to ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... hysterics. Kitty tore off the scribbles, not the least sign of laughter in her eyes, and sought the window-seat in the living-room. There was one word which stood out strangely alien: haberdasher. Why that word? Was it a corner of the curtain she had been striving to look behind? Had Thomas been a haberdasher prior to his stewardship? And was ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... stopped him. In the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look that always a little frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's eyes did not look straight ahead but wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing. Something like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between the man and all the rest of the world. "I want you to come with me," he said briefly, and his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky. "We have something important to do today. You may bring the bag ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... played the opening bars of the martial music. With the first notes the vast audience rose. I looked up at the row of wounded leaning heavily against the rail, their eyes fixed and staring on the curtain. I noticed the officers in the boxes, their eyes glistening. I heard a convulsive catch in the throats of persons about me. Then ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... they might affirm this relationship as often as they wished: the only thing that was interesting him just at that time was a certain knee that was seeking his under the table, transmitting its gentle warmth through a double curtain of silk. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... scarcely move my arms, convinced as I was that I was in my death agony, and somewhat afraid, I must admit, at having succeeded in playing such a nasty trick on Perrin. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the close of the piece and I got up quickly to answer to the call and bow to the audience without languor, without fainting, feeling strong enough to go through my part again if it ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared before the curtain—the applause rose up ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... is to support the infantry. It does this in three ways: 1st, By firing at the hostile infantry. 2d, By putting out of action the hostile artillery so that it cannot fire at the infantry. 3d, By demolishing the obstacles in front of the enemy's works. It smothers the enemy with a curtain of fire, so that the infantry can move forward without ruinous losses. Cooeperation with the infantry is essential. If the infantry is defeated the artillery covers its withdrawal; if the infantry is successful the artillery moves forward and assists in reaping the full reward ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... He drew aside the curtain of the shibrayah gingerly, as if he expected a trick mechanism that might explode a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... her for the beautiful Tree," shouted the children, craning their necks away from the portrait to get a glimpse of the curtain-veiled Tree in the other room. "Please can't we have ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... curtain stopped short these discussions, which displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity. But some laid the blame on the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly blown up the fire of religious ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... scriptural meaning of the word. Indeed, it is marvelous how any man who is familiar with his Bible, and knows that the Scriptures usually describe the sky by metaphors conveying the very opposite ideas to those of solidity or permanence—as, "stretched out like a curtain," "spread abroad like a tent to dwell in," "folded up like a vesture," and the like—should allow himself to be imposed on by the impudent falsehood of Voltaire, that the Bible teaches us that the sky is a solid metallic or ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Quality Street. Now and again ladies pass in their pattens, a maid perhaps protecting them with an umbrella, for flakes of snow are falling discreetly. Gentlemen in the street are an event; but, see, just as we raise the curtain, there goes the recruiting sergeant to remind us that we are in the period of the Napoleonic wars. If he were to look in at the window of the blue and white room all the ladies there assembled would draw themselves up; they know him for a rude fellow who smiles at the approach of maiden ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... own generation—the acts of contemporary patriots—now claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page, and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been dealing, and which we feel we have inadequately described. We have spoken of the men whose speeches from the dock are on record, but we still linger over the history of the events in which they shared, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... dinner-waggons, and a frame against the wall from which, by means of clips, churchwarden pipes depended stem downwards; and by each clip was a label bearing a name. On the table stood an enormous jar of tobacco. A number of ill-washed glasses decorated the dinner-waggons. There was not a curtain, not a blind, not a picture. The further end of the room away from the door contained a huge fireplace, and on the wooden mantelpiece ticked a ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Doctor. 'God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she CAN laugh, and then say, with the French wit, "The farce is ended; draw the curtain."' ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... the backward swing of the chair, overturned and quenched. The splintering of glass mingled its small sound with an ominous thud in the thick darkness. It was the end of all things; the falling of an impenetrable curtain over a horror half sensed, yet all the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... or pierced by oily, writhing dykes that blazed with metallic scintillations. Anon came some yawning cleft or an assemblage of dizzy rock-needles, fused into whimsical tints and attitudes, spiky, distorted, over-toppling; then a bold tufa rampart, immaculate in its beauty, stainless as a curtain of silk. And as the boat moved on he looked into horrid dells which the rains had torn out of the loose scoriae. Gaping wounds, they wore the bright hues of corruption. Their flanks were blotched with a livid nitrous efflorescence, with flaring sulphur, unhealthy verdure ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... season of peace, Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron-step slow moving, while the night Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed In letting fall the curtain of repose On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day; Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid, Like homely-featured night, of clustering gems, A star or two just twinkling on thy brow ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. "I'll tell you next time." But when the next time came he only said he'd tell her later on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the next scene in that drama of death was to be the last; and, judging from his experience of the one already played, he felt keenly apprehensive as to the result. He had been fully aware, before the curtain fell upon the first act, that his life could then have been taken; and, conscious of a certain inferiority to his antagonist, he now felt cowed, and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... who cannot be brought to believe that an English gentleman will pursue a course of policy, as the governor of a colony, which the Queen of England has too much good sense to assume, even if she could do it, in the United Kingdom. Indeed, if a glance is taken behind the curtain, English statesmen will be noticed to have been liberal and well inclined towards the colonists, and have only erred when purposely misled by those whom they had appointed to places of which it was and is a ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, upon a soft black curtain. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... struggle in the hollow. The curtain of vines was torn, the boughs of a sumach bent and broken, the fallen leaves groun underfoot. In one place there was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and great mountains, and the glorious colour effects which prevail in spring and autumn, would fascinate the least imaginative; partly mysterious, with the Great Barrier knocking at your door, and the smoke of Erebus by day and the curtain of Aurora by night; partly the associations of the place—the old hut, the old landmarks, so familiar to those who know the history of the Discovery Expedition, the stakes in the snow, the holes for which ice was dug to water the ship, Vince's ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... with respect to their being before the earth, or any visible creature. "In the beginning God created the heavens" (Gen 1:1), &c. Neither do I think that the heavens were made of that confused chaos that afterwards we read of. It is said, he stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and with his hand he hath spanned the heavens (Psa 104:2; Isa 40:22; 48:13).; intimating, that they were not taken out of that formless heap, but were immediately formed by his power. Besides, the Holy Ghost, treating of the creating of heaven and earth, he only saith, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an open carriage, for I would rather have been assassinated at once than have lived in the constant fear of being so. I afterwards made a descent on the Isle of Capri, which succeeded. I attempted one against Sicily, and am curtain it would have also been successful had the Emperor fulfilled his promise of sending the Toulon fleet to second my operations; but he issued contrary orders: he enacted Mazarin, and unshed me to play the part ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... become larger, and at last merge into the ciliary or accommodation muscle of the eye. The circular space thus left in front by the termination of the choroid is occupied by the iris, a thin, circular curtain, suspended in the aqueous humor behind the cornea and in front of the crystalline lens. In its center is a round opening for ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... shouted back. "I'll be ready in five minutes;" and out of bed he crept, sleepy and confused, into the chilly air of the little room. He had no matches, but there was a short curtain before the window, and when he pulled it back the moonlight came faintly in—enough for him to distinguish the few objects in the room. He dared not attempt to wash, he was so afraid of being late. He managed to get out his oldest pair of trousers, and hurried on his ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... the wall is beginning to rise above the rubbish and the debris; we must build a home for the new-found joy, even if as yet it only sings drowsily and faintly within our hearts, like the awaking bird in the dewy thicket, when the fingers of the dawn begin to raise the curtain of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Christ within. But some time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe 'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... door opened, and one of her brothers put in his head. At once Amina began to scream and roll herself in the window curtain. "A man in the harem! Oh! oh! oh! Were there no slippers at the door?" And her screaming brought Lucy awake ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard Little Arthur sigh so pitifully. It was those sensitive eyes we looked for in the sleeping-car windows, and all in vain. I think I saw the wealth of clustering ringlets, or at least the makings of it. I am almost positive I saw curl-papers as the curtain ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... which one can but draw a curtain, and stand "eyes front". Look this way, look that, what answer is there, what reason, what explanation, of the hidden martyrdoms of the work-a-day world, which the blank wall of heaven seems to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and thinking of Aurora, he forgot where he was, till the dismal howling of wood-dogs deep in the forest woke him. It was almost pitch dark under the tall beeches, the highest of the trees preventing the beams of the moon from illuminating the path till later in the night. Like a curtain the thick foliage above shut out the sky, so that no star was visible. When the wood-dogs ceased there was no sound beyond the light fall of the horse's hoofs as he walked upon the grass. Darkness and silence prevailed; he ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... I saw a curtain move at that window on the left a while ago," commented Astro, "and all ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... the things for the meals—the table, the pots and pans, and the sideboard; at the other end was the bedroom. In a corner stood Mother Barberin's big bed, in the opposite corner, in a little alcove, was my bed under a red figured curtain. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... obliged to lend us a Part of their Tongue before we can know how they are Conquered? They must be made accessory to their own Disgrace, as the Britons were formerly so artificially wrought in the Curtain of the Roman Theatre, that they seemed to draw it up in order to give the Spectators an Opportunity of seeing their own Defeat celebrated upon the Stage: For so Mr. Dryden has translated ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... will do for that part. But it's the other part of it—the soul of the thing. These men, lots of them, are but little more than boys—big, strong, strapping fellows with the whole of life before them. And they are—blind. Whichever way they turn a big black curtain shuts them in. And it's those four black curtains that I want you to paint. I want you to give them something to look at, something to think of, something to live for. And you can do it. And when you have done it, you'll find ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... measurement between the angles of the two southern bastions is 123 feet, and that of the curtain wall connecting these bastions is 78 feet. Some curious relics have been found in the fort,—among others, a steel mill for making wafers for the Host. It was found in 1848, in a remarkable state of preservation, and is now in an English ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Mr. Peaess; "you can do nothing now—the curtain has been up these ten minutes; Horatio and Marcellus are coming off, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... reach us. Then the glory of the roses would burst upon us, and we looked up from them to the flowering orange trees. Wherever there was a stretch of meadow, violets and daisies and buttercups ran through the grass. Plowed land was sprinkled with mustard and poppies. The olive had been like a curtain. When it lifted as we drew near, we forgot that there ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... and went and laid itself down at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the shape of a verandah to relieve its formality. Behind its front railings there were no trim laurel bushes—only an uncomfortable bed of equal parts of mould and broken red tiles, in which a withered juniper was dying hard; at the windows were no bright curtain-folds or hanging baskets of trailing fern to give a touch of colour, but dusty wire blinds and hangings ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... pocketed it all, thanking them in a low voice, with his surly mien, but with a look that was for the first time smiling and affectionate. Then he climbed into his berth, drew the curtain, and lay quiet, thinking over his affairs. With this money he would be able to purchase some good food on board, after having suffered for lack of bread for two years; he could buy a jacket as soon as he landed in Genoa, after having gone about clad ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... they were,—but for the agony of the recollection that rushed upon him. He would have gone staggering out of the pavilion to seek the remains of his Clorinda, and save them from the wolves; but his friends told him they were at hand, under the curtain of his own tent. A gleam of pleasure shot across his face, and be staggered into the chamber; but when he beheld the body gored with his own hand, and the face, calm indeed, but calm like a pale night without stars, he trembled so, that ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of junction of that coat with the sclerotic by a thickened edge—the ciliary processes. At the line of junction of the sclerotic and cornea the iris passes across the interior of the eye. This (which may be viewed as a dependency of the choroid) is a muscular curtain perforated by an aperture termed the pupil. The retina will be recognized as a delicate, glassy layer, lining the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... tremendous account of the doings of one gale? And let it be observed that we have lifted only one corner of the curtain and revealed the battlefield of only one small portion of our far-reaching coasts. What is to be said of the other parts of our shores during that same wild storm? It would take volumes instead of chapters to give the thrilling incidents of disaster and heroism in full ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... half mast the rest of that day, and minute guns were fired at sunset. And there was something sad and solemn in the dull, booming sound as it echoed and reechoed over that broad and mysterious sea. And when night came, and drew a dark curtain around the ship, and her timbers murmured and complained, and every sail stood out in shadow against the clear sky, and the surface of the water seemed alive with sprites, flitting and dancing here and there, groups of sorrowing ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... the wall in a strained and uncomfortable attitude. He rushed forward and seized it in his arms, when, to his horror, the head slipped off and rolled on the floor, the body assumed a recumbent posture, and he found himself clasping a white dimity bed-curtain, with a sweeping-brush, a kitchen cleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet! Unable to understand this curious transformation, he clutched the placard with feverish haste, and there, in the grey morning light, he read these ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... extinguishment in the ocean. At the same time, the hull of the vessel and every projecting point in the coast-line of the bay stood out in relief against the bright emerald-green tint of the sea. A moment afterwards, the darkness of night descended suddenly upon us like a vast curtain ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hills in shades of red and brown; and, fearful that man, who is inclined to overlook nearby joys and pleasures for more distant and less certain ones, might overlook the familiar hills, even though freshly painted, hides her far-off attractions with a hazy curtain. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... did so the slender erectness of that figure in advance, the square set of the broad shoulders, the easy air of authority with which he cleared the way. Without ceremony Farnham flung aside a heavy brocaded curtain, glancing inquiringly into the smaller room thus revealed. It contained a square table and half a dozen chairs. Three men sat within, their feet elevated, quietly smoking. The gambler coolly ran his ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... that same shore line, but the people had vanished. There was only the thick, steamy mist, the tropic jungle crowding down to the shore, and the waves rolling in monotonously from the waste of gray ocean beyond the curtain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... himself, "'Tis well! I will indeed gladden thee, O Accurst." Then he turned and espied a street which was no thoroughfare, and one of its houses at the upper end adjoined the tenement wherein was his bride; so he went up to it and behold, its gateway showed a curtain drawn across and a lamp hung up and an Eunuch sitting upon the door-bench. Now this was the mansion of a certain noble who was lord over a thousand of his peers and his name was the Emir Yunas:[FN155] he was an angry man and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of fair size, fully equipped with all the tools of the trade, the walls blackened by smoke, the earthen floor littered with debris, a leathern apron hanging over the anvil. A curtain drawn aside formed a smaller, separate apartment, with puncheon floor, lighted by a small window through which a gleam of sun fell. I caught therein glimpse of a bunk full of disarranged blankets, a straight-back chair, and a small table, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; 65 That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain; That all ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... off by a ridge covered with herbaceous vegetation;—but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which both sides are shrouded in sombre green-crests of trees forming a solid curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic masses of Carbet loom up far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve of the coast, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... cupolas of Quebec, there is a fertile area of meadow and cornfield stretching from Dorchester bridge to the deep ravine and Falls over which the Montmorency, La Vache, hangs its milk-white curtain of spray. On the river shore, in 1759, stood Montcalm's earth and field works of defence. Parallel to them and distant about half a mile, the highway, over which H.R.H. Prince Edward's equipage pranced daily, during the summers of 1791-3, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... poisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There are actually two villains—a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is a more difficult person than your hero) very unusual—one of whom is despatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actual curtain. There is the proper persecuting minister—Louvois in this case. There are valiant and comic non-commissioned officers. There is a brave, witty, and generous Count; a lover of the "fatal" and ill-fated ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round it except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed furthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... curtain so that Joan was able to see through the door. The men were drawn up in a half-circle round the table, upon which ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow," she said anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any importance just then. "Those curtains have not worn as well as they should, considering the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta has forgotten to dust the stair railing AGAIN. I really ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the most elevated part of the town. From a gallery we could survey at once the summit of the Silla, the serrated ridge of the Galipano, and the charming valley of the Guayra, the rich culture of which was pleasingly contrasted with the gloomy curtain of the surrounding mountains. It was in the dry season, and to improve the pasturage, the savannahs and the turf covering the steepest rocks were set on fire. These vast conflagrations, viewed from a distance, produce the most singular effects of light. Wherever ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... said the prince, addressing the whole company, and not looking at any one in particular; 'you know, Verzhembitskaya must be called before the curtain to-night.' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... A curtain hung across the door of the inner chamber, through which Philammon could hear plainly the steps of some one walking up and down ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... very like the Lady of Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments or a flutter of a programme in a spectator's hand made the silence less intense, not an echo of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Maggie entered, smiling to me as she did so; her left hand lingered fondly for a moment on her father's grey locks, then she sat down unbidden to the piano. My own face was partially shaded by the window curtain, so that I could study that of my fair cousin as she played without appearing rude. Was she beautiful? that was the question I asked myself, and was trying hard to answer. Every feature of her face was faultless, her mouth and ears were small, she had a wealth of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "God is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar twopence for it, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... very much ashamed of himself, when, to his surprise, instead of receiving tickets in return, he heard a loud exclamation behind the wall, followed by a confused sound of scuffling, and the hole suddenly disappeared. The next moment a little bell tinkled, and the wall rose slowly before them like a curtain, carrying the trees with it apparently, and he and the Goblin were left standing in a large open space paved ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as the pull at two sides of a curtain opening on a scene that stiffens ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... down my pen, "you are a prophet in disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes. Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon these tragic happenings? For Heaven's sake direct me. Where, for instance, does ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to which led five steps of silver, and on its right and on its left were many chairs of gold and silver. Quoth Tohfah, "The Shaykh led me to the estrade and seated me on a chair of gold beside the throne, and over the dais was a curtain let down, gold and silver wrought and broidered with pearls and jewels." And she was amazed at that which she beheld in that place and magnified her Lord (extolled and exalted be He!) and hallowed Him. Then the kings of the Jann came up to that throne ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... know if I can give any kind of freshness to these words, but I wish to try. To begin with, I notice the highly-imaginative and picturesque form into which the Apostle casts his thoughts here. He, as it were, draws back a curtain, and lets us see two royal figures, which are eternally opposed and dividing the dominion between them. Then he shows us the issues to which these two rulers respectively conduct their subjects; and the question that is trembling on his lips is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... my earliest youth I dreamed in hues volcanic. I saw each day open Like a curtain of flame. Black slaves attended My waking moments; Three ebony slaves Washed sleep from my white body. Three ebony slaves Around my ivory smoothness Folded heavy robes Of crimson and white. And as I issued forth Into the blue vault of the daylight ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window-curtain in order to admit a clear spectacle of the wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand—a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At this first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly-bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something for ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... saw, was a kind of nymph, her spread drapery forming the receptacle. "I must get one of those," he thought. "I wonder what they cost." Then he puffed violently again. The doctor had risen and was pacing the cabin floor slowly over by the red curtain that concealed the bunk. O'Malley absent-mindedly watched him, and as he did so the words he had heard kept on roaring at the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... limestone, veined and dappled with colours which melted into each other with every possible variety of colour. On the summit of the cave were three festoons, or rather wrinkles, in the rock, run up parallel like the folds of a curtain when it is drawn up. Each of these was hung with icicles of various length, and nearly in the middle of the festoon in the deepest valley of the waves that ran parallel to each other, the stream shot from the rows of icicles ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... visit the lodge-gates of Newcome Park the moon shining on their carving? Is there any pleasure in walking by miles of grey paling, and endless palisades of firs? Oh, you fool, what do you hope to see behind that curtain? Absurd fugitive, whither would you run? Can you burst the tether of fate: and is not poor dear little Rosey Mackenzie sitting yonder waiting for you by the stake? Go home, sir; and don't catch cold. So Mr. Clive returns to the King's Arms, and goes up to his bedroom, and he hears ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... word and therefore immoral. Bell objected from the bottom of his silly soul that Lady Macbeth should soil her mouth with it. "Blanket of the dark," he says, "is an expression greatly below our author. Curtain is evidently better." "Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?" Whereat Bell again complains that Lady Macbeth is "unnecessarily indelicate." "Though this tragedy," says Bell, "must be allowed a very noble composition, it is highly reprehensible for exhibiting the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... care to follow me to my stage-box, I imagine he will hardly see the curtain rise upon just the Venice of his dreams—the Venice of Byron, of Rogers, and Cooper; or upon the Venice of his prejudices—the merciless Venice of Daru, and of the historians who follow him. But I still hope that he will be pleased with the Venice he sees; and will ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... for no one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might be, and were, made. She could, from behind a curtain negligently half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... before this crisis of the engagement that the curtain of night had enveloped the scene; but instead of this circumstance abating the fury of war, which had now completely drenched the field with the blood of the combatants, the rage of battle appeared only to increase as the night advanced. Still ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... may state that I have had personal knowledge of all the negociations and questions at issue above referred to, and I can only declare that I have confined myself to facts; these will stand out in a much clearer light when the curtain is raised and the events of the last two years in this sorely afflicted part of the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... did not recoil, but before entering the shop he was not sorry to have an opportunity to reconnoitre. He approached cautiously, and peered through the window at a place where a rent in the curtain allowed him some view of the interior. Behind the counter a woman who looked some fifty years of age was seated, mending a soiled dress by the light of a smoking lamp. She was short and very stout. She seemed literally weighed down, and puffed out by an unwholesome ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... could not see more than a few hundred yards. I hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I could see the blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a madman and jabbed at me with an oar, ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But* I to you be all so good and true, *unless As ever was wife since the world was new; And but* I be to-morrow as fair to seen, *unless As any lady, emperess or queen, That is betwixt the East and eke the West Do with my life and death right as you lest.* *please Cast up the curtain, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... cathedral, and from Betsey Trotwood's domain we get a view of the chalk cliffs and downs at Dover. A happy conceit throws shadow pictures of the principal characters upon a sheet as they cross the stage just before the first curtain rises.—MATTHEW WHITE, JR., ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... it is of no use even to think of it.' And taking off his hat," slightly raising his hat, as salutation and finale, "he retired precipitately behind the curtain of the interior corner of the tent," says the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... while a child, and now An amorous youth; then for a season turned Into the wealthy householder: then stripped Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs And wrinkled frame man creeps towards the end Of life's erratic course and like an actor Passes behind Death's curtain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains and his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and they are all put back into their box. The glance ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... a few days gave me a clearer idea than I had ever had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... disclosed their silver linings, and over the whole earth there spread a broad smile, as if the hypocritical performance had been part of the original deception. I am confident now that it was, for that brief drenching of trees and sward was almost the last noticeable preparation before the curtain rose. The next day there was a deep, unbroken quiet across our piece of world, as if a fragment of eternity had been quietly slipped into the place of one of our brief, noisy days. The trees stood motionless, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... deep trance of shadow, felt no throb To such soft wooing answer: thro' its dream Brown rivers of deep waters sunless stole; Small creeks sprang from its mosses, and amaz'd, Like children in a wigwam curtain'd close Above the great, dead, heart of some red chief, Slipp'd on soft feet, swift stealing through the gloom, Eager for light and for the frolic winds. In this shrill moon the scouts of winter ran From the ice-belted north, and whistling shafts Struck maple and struck sumach—and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain. The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... curtain was up; and knowing that the ritual of Madame Ancelin required absolute silence at such a time, he waited quietly in the little room, separated by a step from the front of the box, where Madame Ancelin was seated in bliss between Madame Astier ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of our position, that we can not positively assert a future active in the indicative mood. Try and form to yourselves a phrase by which it can be done. Should you succeed, you would violate a law of nature. You would penetrate the dark curtain of the future, and claim to yourself what you do not possess, a power to declare future actions. Prophets, by the help of the Almighty, had this power conferred upon them. But in the revelation of the sublime truths they ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the first person she encountered. She had not been one of the superior tourists who are "disappointed" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller than its fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at the entrance, the first time she found herself beneath the far-arching dome and saw the light drizzle down through the air thickened with incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic and bronze, her conception of greatness rose and dizzily rose. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... revolution had been in a social sense. It was impossible to tell to what class in pre-revolutionary days any particular member of the audience had belonged. I was struck by the new smartness of the boy officers of the Red Army, of whom a fair number were present. As we waited for the curtain to rise, I thought how the mental attitude of the people had changed. A year ago, we lived with exhilaration or despair on a volcano which might any day erupt and sweep away the new life before any one had become accustomed to live ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome |
