"Background" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known established its altars in Dovelands Cottage. The understanding between father and daughter was complete and was rendered more perfect by the necessity for companionship experienced by both. Poor Mrs. Duveen possessed the personality of a chameleon, readily toning with any background; but intellectually she was never present. Why Michael Duveen had selected such a mate was a mystery which Flamby, who loved her mother the more dearly for her helplessness, could never solve. It was a mystery to which ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... forced from her the admission that it was expecting a good deal of Ann. She could see that nothing would be more bootless than thrusting traditions upon people who would not know what to do with them. But something about Ann encouraged one to believe she could fit into a background prepared for her. And if she could—would—! The prospect lured—excited. It was as inexplicably intoxicating as a grimace at the preacher—a wink at the professor. It seemed to be saucily tweaking the ear of that insufferably solemn ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... noiselessly, bringing the boat's nose this way and that with deft turns of the wrist. She was as harmonious against the background of brown water and green grass as a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... unpastoral-looking fields of an industrial neighbourhood. The town-village which stretched up the hillside before him presented scarcely a single redeeming feature. The small, grey stone houses, hard and unadorned, were interrupted at intervals by rows of brand-new, red-brick cottages. In the background were the tall chimneys of several factories; on the left, a colliery shaft raised its smoke-blackened finger to the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took from him his interest in every other fact ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... guard drew back a heavy drape that hid an embrasure in the far wall. There, on a stubby pedestal, was revealed a gleaming sphere of crystal, a huge polished ball that shimmered a ghastly green against a background of jet. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... advice on half the subjects on which she had been longing for it. However, short as his visit was, it was very useful as well as very pleasant, reviving old thoughts and habits of feeling which were in danger of falling into the background, and stimulating her to follow the example of a brother who was so stedfastly bent on ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... degree that startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September; the window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a few dappled white clouds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... replied Walters. "Every man in that hangar has been carefully screened by our Security Section. Background, history, everything. No, I think ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... all out,—Brown and his wife, French and Irma, with Paulina in the background. They crowded around him with vociferous welcome, Brown leading in a series of wild cheers. After the cheering was done, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... center of a family group. It was her sharp voice that had first aroused the American's attention. Opposite her sat the Duke, his thin face wearing an expression of gloom and dissatisfaction. The child Tato occupied a stool at her father's feet, and in the background were three serving women, sewing or embroidering. Near the Duke stood the tall brigand known ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... before, she noticed the silence and emptiness of the small bar, and the room beyond; and as she tapped loudly Mrs. Tennant came from another room. This time it was Sally who took charge of everything. Gaga drooped in the background, a feeble figure. But he gathered strength to smile at Mrs. Tennant and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the lesson of nature for a moment. In the springtime the farmer plants the kernels of corn shelled from ears like this. [Draw the ear of corn, making first a solid yellow background for the ear and then putting in the fine lines with brown or black.] He has every reason to believe that when the harvest time comes he will reap a crop of many hundredfold, because each kernel is expected to send up ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the more remarkable and the stronger as a witness of the truth, from the fact that it occurs in this perfectly incidental fashion, and without a word of explanation or apology, as taking for granted that there was a background of teaching in the Thessalonian Church which had prepared the way for it, and rendered it intelligible, as well as a background of conviction ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... supplementing that of Isidore and Bede and explaining sacred Scripture. Aristotle is treated like a Church father, but extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of St. Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore fall into the background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his utterances are second in sacredness only to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... reach the center easily. Any table with tight joints in the top and four- or five-inch boards fitted tightly around the edge will serve the purpose. The inside of the box should be painted to prevent warping and leaking. An "ocean blue" is a good color, as it makes a good background for islands. ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... conquer and expand on the south of the Humber, as the Englishmen of Deira and Bernicia remained free to the north of that river. It was plain, therefore, that from this moment the growth of these powers would throw their fellow kingdoms into the background, and that with an ever-growing inequality of strength must come a new arrangement of political forces. The greater kingdoms would in the end be drawn to subject and absorb the lesser ones, and to the war between Englishman and ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... a "golden age" myth; faint traditions of a period when things were better; which seems to coincide with this background of matriarchal rule. The farther back we go in our civilization the more traces we find of woman's power and freedom, with goddesses, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... by Saint Marx and many flags, quickly filled with an incongruous mass of four hundred delegates, and the gallery were soon yelling. Bebel, who kept in the background and pulled the strings, proposed a limiting amendment about "political action" which the Anarchists maintained includes revolutionary force. This was the signal for the fight. Landauer, a German, young, long, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... in jerks, between puffs, of his adventures; his first shot at a tiger, some trouble with hillmen at Peshawur, a row at a mess-table, in which two chaps lost their heads, and one his papers. He had been present as a guest, but had kept well in the background. There had been a lot of drinking done—luckily he was all right. He had a good head, you see; could carry a lot ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... or Sydney. However, I soon modified my somewhat hasty judgment. We had seen the town's worst aspects, and later I noticed some attractive-looking shops; the imposing Houses of Parliament, in their enclosed grounds, standing out sharply defined against the hazy background of Table Mountain; and the Standard Bank and Railway-station, which would hold their own in any city. At the same time, as a place of residence in the summer months, I can well understand Cape Town being wellnigh deserted. Those who can boast of even the most moderate ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... by means of the men. Of course, there will be from the outset a small proportion capable of rightly using the place. For all these reasons, it seems as if we may be very well contented that the recreation part of the scheme has been for the moment kept in the background. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... crucifix on Calvary's height Has cast its shadow on the human heart. Let now Religion's great co-worker Art, Limn on the background of departing night, The shining Face all palpitant with light, And God's true message to the world impart. Go tell each toiler in the home and mart, 'Lo, Christ is with ye, if ye seek aright.' The world forgets the vital ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Gotha, which can only come to pass in the course of the next months; besides this, he has such gigantic plans for his new establishment in Gotha that the affairs of the Neue Zeitschrift might be left somewhat in the background. I entirely agree with you on this point, that you cannot put the Neue Zeitschrift in the market and offer it to just any publisher who has shown himself up to now hostile to our tendencies. To do such a thing as that could ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... marriage pomps on the reception of Marie Antoinette in Paris; the numbers who perished are still spoken of obscurely as to the amount, and with shuddering awe for the unparalleled horrors standing in the background of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... themselves about the actress-teacher, who clasped her arms about the shoulders of as many as she could reach. It made a pretty scene in front of the old school-house, with the green trees for a background. The use of the school had been allowed the moving picture company for ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... small rectangles like wooden blocks. The rooms still boasted the old-time splendor of vaulted ceilings, some dark, with skilfully fitted paneling, others with a faded and venerable gilding forming a background for the colored escutcheons which were emblazoned with the coat of arms of the house. In some rooms the high walls, simply whitewashed, were covered by rows of ancient paintings, and in others were concealed by rich hangings of gay colors which time ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fog lifted and before us lay the blessed land. A high range of sparsely wooded hills, crowned with rocky ledges, and with abrupt slopes covered with dry brown grass, running to the water's edge, formed the background of the picture. Nearer, a tongue of high land, brushy and rocky, made out from the main shore, and curving southward, formed a shelter to what seemed a harbor within. Against the precipitous point ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... "but I do not look my years, though my hair, still thick and full of vigour, is prematurely white—so often the case with men whose brains are continually on the stretch. The little home, far from grandiose, which forms the background to this most interesting personality is embowered in trees. Cats have made their mark on its lawns, and its owner's love of animals was sharply illustrated by the sheep-dog which lay on his feet clad in Turkish ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him, but I knew, from what he told me of the doctor's remarks, that he had no earthly chance of being passed. He seemed to have entirely mastered his regret at his inability to serve his country in the ranks, but I understood at once that he was merely putting his own troubles in the background in face of my own. The meal over, we "got behind" two of Dennis's excellent ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... now always in the background. He took her for quiet meals and brought her home early. He promised her that sometime he would see that she got ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... caught a glimpse of a tiny blaze afar over to the east, and instantly passed the word. Only half an hour it was observed, and then, away toward the south-east, an answering gleam burned for a moment against the black background of the Sierras. Then both went out as ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... plum- black statue—taking no interest in the transactions of these incomprehensible whites, but dreaming with calm eyes of a certain bush village high on the jungle slopes of Malaita, with blue smoke curling up from the grass houses against the gray background of an ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... that part of the defences nearest the woods, when they saw the ten natives approaching holding up their empty hands and making other demonstrations of a peaceful nature. Far away on the heights in the background the whole army of savages could be seen watching the ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... them—he couldn't remember who the dickens it was—told him about this? He had supposed she was just the ordinary American woman doing Europe with an affectionate dollar-dispensing husband in the background somewhere. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... party, and the Llewellens, would cross each others' paths in the woods, or pastures; but little Margaret always shrank into the background. If Nan tried to surprise her, the half wild little thing would slip away into the deeper woods like ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... they were sad, long days. Troubles which she had previously managed to keep in the background now again beset her. She had attached herself to her grandfather; gratitude for all that he was doing at her wish strengthened her affection, and she awaited each new day with fear. Waymark seemed colder to her in these days ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the gravel outside, speedily followed by a peal on the bell; and Mr. Cottrell emerged from the dining-room just in time to see Jim open the hall door to Laura Chipchase, attired in hat and habit, with Miss Sylla mounted and holding her cousin's horse in the background. ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... much room for doubting or regret. Several important concerts were fixed for May. She looked forward to these with intense eagerness, and pushed everything that interfered with preparation into the background. As though to make up for that instinctive recoil from giving her heart, of which she was always subconscious, she gave him all her activities, without calculation or reserve. She was ready to play for him all day and every ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... This was the first occasion upon which they could re-appear in the arena of National politics. It had been suggested to them from friendly sources that while the memory of their part in the bloody strife was still so fresh it would be prudent for them to remain in the background, but they vigorously resented this proposed exclusion. General Forrest of Tennessee published an indignant letter, in which he referred to "the counsel of timid men" that those who had prominently borne the flag of rebellion should abstain from any share in political ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... always Leam in the background with whom he had to reckon—Leam, who wandered through the house in her straight-cut, plain black gown, made in the deepest fashion of mourning devisable, pale, silent, feverish, like an avenging spirit on his track; undoing what he had done if he had profaned an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... face, lit by a half cordial, half mocking smile; the same fragile body and indomitable spirit. The illusion is enhanced by our surroundings, for the mellow splendor of the room where we stand might have served as a background ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Turn into trees." Then back she fell, dead. And as she fell, the tribes that were standing round the edge of the ring, preparatory to gathering their goods and going, and that her hand pointed to as it waved round, turned into trees. There they now stand. The tribes in the background were changed each according to the name they were known by, into that bird or beast of the same name. The barking Mahthi into dogs; the Byahmul into black swans: the Wahns into crows, and so on. And there at the place of the big borah, ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... to forbid monotony, and sufficiently intellectual to be stimulating, and there was always the background of Big Business. Larry was conscious that he was moving amid large ideas and far-reaching interests, and that though he himself was a small element, he was playing a part not altogether insignificant, with a promise of bigger things in the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... instances in which women have been called to places of power and responsibility in the State are comparatively rare, is not to be attributed to natural incapacity or mental inferiority, but to the fact of the persistent efforts made by men to keep them as much as possible in the background; that in many instances women have broken the fetters of oppression and prejudice by which they were bound, and have ascended the hill of fame in advance of their male opponents. If, then, women have in ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... know where she is," cries a little, shrill voice from the background. It comes from Tommy, and from that part of the room where Tommy and Mabel and little Bertie are having a game behind the window curtains. Blocks, dolls, kitchens, farm yards, ninepins—all have been given to them as a means of keeping them quiet. One thing ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... The background to our portrait is a forest, lofty, shaggy, and dense, and the home of a thousand wild things, which, being invisible at this moment, could not, with due regard to fidelity, be introduced into our picture. The foreground is a cultivated clearing of about one hundred ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... it had been designed as a setting for Natalie, although every color-scheme, almost every chair, had been bought with a view to forming a background for her, it was too big, too massive. It dwarfed her. Out-of-doors, Audrey lost that feeling. In the formal garden Natalie was charmingly framed. It was like her, beautifully exact, carefully planned, already with its spring borders ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mind of the average citizen with the idea of Pyramids and flesh pots. For the first, symbolic pictures were largely to blame. There never was a design representing "Britain's far flung battle line," which did not show a comfortable man in a sun helmet with a Pyramid in the background. Pyramids are so easy to draw. The artists were beaten by the flesh pot—because they had no very clear conception of what a flesh pot looks like. But the old Biblical phrase rose irresistibly to the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... itself from an internal cloud. She frowned—a deep wrinkle appeared on her forehead, the corners of her mouth drooped somewhat, and her face, with that brilliant star in the aureole of bright hair above, had an expression of pain when seen on the drapery of the box as a background. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... little stream near Arnay-le-Duc, and beheld, on the other side, two or three thousand of the royalist cavalry. There were no guns in sight, and the infantry had been drawn up at some distance in the background. ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... mean that it shall always go. If a story always had the rapidity and intensity of a climax, it would be intolerable. Music that is all rushing climaxes is unbearable; a picture must not be a glare of high lights. The quiet passages in music, the grays and low tones in the background of the picture, the slow chapters in a story, are as necessary as their opposites; indeed, climaxes are dependent on contrasts in order ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... and trees among which he toiled. Something of their dignity, too, though your town dweller might fail to see it beneath the drab exterior. He had about him none of the highlights and sharp points of the city man. He seemed to blend in with the background of nature so as to be almost undistinguishable from it, as were the furred and feathered creatures. This farmer differed from the city man as a hillock differs from an artificial golf bunker, though form and substance ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... and masses of them, in clumps on the grass, with other shrubs and trees by the side of walks, and one great continuous bank of them half a mile long right past the west front of the house, away down as far as one could see, shining glorious against a background of firs. When that time came, and when, before it was over, the acacias all blossomed too, and four great clumps of pale, silvery-pink peonies flowered under the south windows, I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and thankful, and grateful, that I really cannot describe it. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... six persons. It was just growing dusk, but the dancing firelight gave a pleasant illumination. Harmer and Mason were seated on opposite sides of the hearth in straight-backed wooden armchairs, and both were smoking. Rachel sat at her wheel, with her sister Dinah near to her; and in the background hovered two fine-looking young men, the two eldest sons of the household—Reuben, his father's right-hand man in business matters now; and Dan, who had the air and appearance of a sailor ashore, as, indeed, was the ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and face, whereon was stamped a most fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the fox, who had not hitherto spoken, and kept rather in the background, modestly bent his head, and looked ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... sky, glowing with tints of the clearest, palest amber melting into a delicate rose, which merged in its turn imperceptibly into a clear, deep, transparent blue as the eye glanced from the horizon toward the zenith, was without a trace of cloud, and against this pure and exquisitely tinted background the outlines of Hurst Castle stood sharply out, the castle itself and the low spit of land on which it is built appearing of a deep, rich, powerful, purple hue, as though carved out of a giant amethyst, while the country further inland ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... in stately fashion. Beneath an old willow, whose drooping boughs form quite a vault of pale verdure, a squadron of multicolored boats remain fastened to the balustrade of a landing stage. Through an opening in the trees you see in the distance fields of yellow corn, and in the near background, behind a row of poplars, ever moving like a flash of silver lightning, the Oise flows on between ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sky-blue Montague in the foreground, with a dissolving view of impossibly-constructed servitors of both houses and the County Paris, with six strongly accented bridges to his nose and a worsted tear upon his cheek, in the background. Under this production was worked in white, upon a black ground, the legend which Mrs. Rusker mournfully repeated as she ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... France, widowed of Henry and waiting for Richelieu, lay in the clutches of Concini's, Epernons, and Bouillons, bound hand and foot to Spain. Germany, falling from Rudolph to Matthias, saw Styrian Ferdinand in the background ready to shatter the fabric of a hundred years of attempted Reformation. In the Republic of the Netherlands were the great soldier and the only remaining statesman of the age. At a moment when the breathing space had been agreed upon before the conflict ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mistake in our houses is, that they are designed, as inexperienced persons choose their paper-hangings, to be something of themselves, and not as mere background, as they should be. Thus it is that people seek to beautify their houses by ornamenting them, as a vulgar person sticks himself over with jewelry. A man's house is only a wider kind of dress; and as we do not call a man well-dressed when we are forced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... there are stories of gallantry, of sea rescues, of moving incidents wherein there is nothing but good to tell of the human animal. Would that it were all so. But it is not. The ruthlessness of the German rears itself like a sordid shadow against the background of Anglo-Saxon and Latin gallantry and heroism—a diminishing shadow, thank God, and thank, also, the navy of Great Britain ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... morning, Mrs K," said my friend, as we entered the stifling house; "how are you geting on?" The mother stood in the middle of the floor, wiping her sore eyes, and then folding her hands in a tattered apron; whilst her daughters gazed upon us vacantly from the background. "Oh, then," replied the woman, "things is worse wid us entirely, sir, than whenever ye wor here before. I dunno what will we do whin the winter comes." In reply to me, she said, "We are seven altogether, wid my husband an' myself. I have ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... ever had a background of ten thousand million stars, peering up from below them as well as from overhead. Nor did any ever have a mottled greenish planet rolling by 4,000 miles beneath them, nor a blazing sun glaring down at them from ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... for the first time publicly displayed. Like many valuable articles, its appearance, marred by bad cutting, did not quite correspond with the large estimate of its worth, about two millions. In order to increase its effect, the precious clumsily-cut "goose's egg," relieved against a background of crimson velvet in its strong cage, was shown by gas-light alone. Since those days, the jewel has been cut, so that its radiance may have full play when it is worn by her Majesty on great occasions. To keep the Koh-i-Noor in company, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... an old willow by little Jacques; then the old faces of her grandfather and grandmother, the sufferings of her mother, and the handsome face of Major Brigaut,—in short, the whole of her careless childhood. It was all a dream, a luminous joy on the gloomy background of the present. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... history transpires in the healthy atmosphere of the open air, on the green earth beneath the open sky.... The figures of Right, Truth, Justice, Honor, Purity, Courage, Reverence for Law, are always in the background; and the grand passion inspired by the book is for strength to do well and ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... their brightness being repeated on the white smock-frocks of some of the labourers, and in a mellower, ruddier form on their faces and hands, on those of the grinning gargoyles, and on other salient stonework of the weather-beaten church in the background. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Confessor, and at some farther distance her faithful nurse, was seated at this silvan banquet, the leaves rustling to a gentle breeze, the water bubbling in the background, the birds twittering around, while the half-heard sounds of conversation and laughter at a distance announced that their guard was in the vicinity, she could not avoid making the Constable some natural compliment on his happy selection of a place ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... background and dropped beside the still figure of Lomax. He opened the man's left hand and pulled out a bunch of keys, examining them. "Engine keys, Captain Muller. Hey—it's my set! He must have lifted them from my pocket. It looks as if Grundy's ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... coat of arms, Arba; I won the decoration when I retired from hard work at the age of fifty. That was about the time you were starting in life by selling fake mining stock around this State. My coat of arms is two patches on a homespun background, surrounded by looped galluses. And I can show you the mile of stone walls I ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... me in a dainty Louis Quinze room done in rose and French gray, and filled incongruously with delicate chairs and heavy brocaded curtains, a background which instantly you felt precisely suited his Excellency. In the English newspapers, which, by the way, are not barred from Berlin cafes, I had read of his Excellency as the "Iron Fist," or the "Heavy Heel," and I rather expected ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... respectively contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with two or three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all the party drank; some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering in the background, waiting to be pressed, two paying for their own liquor and withdrawing. B—— treated them twice round. The pilot, after drinking his brandy, gave a history of our fishing expedition, and how many and how large fish we caught. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... he ejaculated, and for a long minute the spoon was poised while his eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him against the background of Paradise Ridge. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... unrolled. It was no good. Poor me! nobody quite understood. Some thought possibly that I was a glib liar; others did not even trouble to think anything. How much they understood! They had not the background, the atmosphere, the long weeks which were necessary to teach even us ourselves. They had not tasted the poison and did not yet suspect its existence. So I gradually desisted. Now I say nothing, never a word. I listen and understand how history is made. It ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... new threat from an advancing Soviet Union, against the background of regional instability of which it can take advantage, requires that we reinforce our ability to defend our regional friends and to protect the flow of oil. We are continuing to build on the strong political, economic, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... further offer of help; and when the moment came he quietly took his place beside her in the carriage. His last impression, as the horses wheeled round, was of the open hall door—Crapham in his sombre livery and the maid in her black dress, both silhouetted against the dark background of the hall; then, as the carriage moved forward smoothly and rapidly, he leaned back in his seat ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... villagers to meet Where they enjoy communion sweet, With Him who answers ev'ry prayer That humble faith can utter there. There's music in those sabbath bells, This pleasing truth methinks they tell, That God is held in rev'rence there, And worshiped in His house of prayer. In the fair background now are seen Sweet hills and dales, all robed in green, With here and there a pleasant grove Where every class delights to rove; There, age sits down beneath the shade, Where he has oft in childhood strayed; There, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... related but apart from their appearance they have no other essence, no being or reality. The Tathata doctrine which was preached by As'vagho@sa oscillated between the position of this absolute non-essentialness of all dhammas and the Brahminic idea that something existed as the background of all these non-essential dhammas. This he called tathata, but he could not consistently say that any such permanent entity could exist. The Vijnanavada doctrine which also took its rise at this time appears to me to be a mixture of the S'unyavada doctrine and the Tathata doctrine; but ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... preparatory work on the ground of the huge new Air Trust plant, he deemed most essential. The Cosmos people, scenting a big contract, had fostered his belief, and now, already, the work was well under way. Subterranean methods were still sufficing; but, should these fail, others lay in the background. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... secret, deprecating scorn. A girl has, indeed, eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil when her eyes are opened in such wise that she is ashamed of her plain, honorable, old-fashioned parents, or, if not ashamed, is still willing to let them retire to the background while she ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... into the young, whose purport is that children should seldom be seen and never heard, had early been accepted by Christian, without resentment, even, as she grew older, with gratitude. Having diffidently taken Larry's listless and pallid paw, she had slipped into the background, and waited silently, while her eager brain absorbed and stored every detail for future meditation. Long after Larry had lightly forgotten all save the large facts of his illness and incarceration, Christian could describe the Pope, whose highly-coloured ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... plain rolling away to the Sierras in the background. The railroad track traversed it in a thin line. There were no trees—only here and there a clump of cactus or chaparral, a tuft of dog-grass or a few patches of dogwood. At intervals in the distance one could see a hacienda standing in majestic solitude in a cup ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... simply unhappy I should thank God," he went on without looking at his listener. "My personal unhappiness sinks into the background when I remember how often in my enthusiasms I have been absurd, far from the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often I have hated and despised those whom I ought to have loved, and vice versa, I have ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... goblins' territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worth remembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in the various caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything to cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the present in the background. But at length, I think on the third or fourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements, a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hard at work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation, seeing that had in the meantime been postponed ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... restriction against the women taking part in the men's dances. They also act as assistants to the chief actors in the Totem Dances, three particularly expert and richly dressed women dancers ranging themselves behind the mask dancer as a pleasing background of streaming furs and glistening feathers. The only time they are forbidden to enter the kasgi is when the shaman is performing certain secret rites. They also have secret meetings of their own when all men ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... the men hate her too because she will not flatter them by accepting their ridiculous attentions. She will be much happier in her own home,—such a grand old castle it is!—a cluster of towers and broad battlements, with purple mountains in the background, and tall pine-trees everywhere ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... carriage-wheels, but as he opened the door he was quite dazzled at the scene before him. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and the terrace and wide lawn were bathed in the pure white light. A crisp frost had touched the grass and silvered each blade, and the effect against the dark background of trees ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... appropriate, but they'll do," whispered Roger to Dr. Watkins, whose clear tenor supported him. Dorothy's sweet voice soared high, Tom's croak made a heavy background, and the more or less tuneful voices of the others added a hearty body of sound. There was no response from the house except that a corner of an upstairs curtain was drawn ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... Until proficiency is attained, two copies of the alphabet should be kept by each observer for reference, one for dispatching a message arranged in alphabetical order and the other far reading a message arranged as set out above. The white flag should be used when standing against a dark background, and the blue one when on the skyline ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... Rothes dainty, Mrs. Davenant dapper, and Sir Philip's curls were all blown about by the wind. Mrs. Byron rejoices that her Admiral and I agree so well; the way to his heart is connoisseurship it seems, and for a background and contorno, who comes up to ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... conquered, the white man John Every should be handed over to me, together with any goods which he might claim. His cruel captivity was, I need hardly say, the only reason that induced me to join in so hair-brained an expedition, but I was careful from motives of policy to keep this fact in the background. Nala accepted this condition. My third stipulation was that no women or children should be killed. This being also agreed to, we went on to consider ways and means. Wambe, it appeared, was a very powerful petty chief, ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness. Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense. Lambent fire in her eyes—the light that he used to call non-Aryan—took the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... to have a freak cousin or so knockin' round in the background, and I s'pose it was a star play of Mr. Robert's, givin' the glad hand to this one; but if I'd found Clifford hangin' on my fam'ly tree I'd have felt like ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... before reaching Albury, and the country was very beautiful in the afternoon, when our friends drove us through the district. The Murray was in flood, and the "water, water everywhere" sparkling in the winter sunshine, with the snowcapped Australian Alps in the background, made an exquisite picture. Albury was the only town we visited in our travels which still retained the old custom of the town crier. Sitting in the room of the hotel after dinner, we were startled ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... avenue of cypresses in the Montparnasse Cemetery at Paris. The background shows mortuary chapels, stone crosses on which are inscribed "O Crux! Ave Spes Unica!" and the ruins of ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... sitting. When I came to collect them and publish them in a volume, I conceived my parson-editor, with his pedantry and verbosity, his amiable vanity and superiority to the verses he was editing, as a fitting artistic background and foil. He gave me the chance, too, of glancing obliquely at many things which were beyond the horizon of my ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... photography was unknown, and in addition there were certain crudities of construction that seriously interfered with the illumination of the pictures, rendering it necessary to make them practically as silhouettes on a very conspicuous background. Hence it will be obvious that these toys produced merely ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth. Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Christian and Graeco-Roman symbolism in one work of modern art, is the most natural interpretation; but it would not be impossible to trace in it a metaphor of the resurgent Pagan spirit also—as though, leaving Jonah and his Biblical associations in the background, the artist had determined that from the mouth of the monstrous grave should issue not a bearded prophet, but the victorious youth who had captivated with his beauty and his heroism the sunset age of the classic world. At any rate, whatever ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... immaterial alarms, terrors and beauties scared by the sound of speech, memories and forgettings that the touch of memory itself crumbles into dust—this very texture of the life of the soul might have been a gray background over which tumultuous existence passed unheeding had not Edward Thomas so painfully sought the angle from which it appears, to the eye of eternity, as the enduring warp ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Steward of the Household. In niches are shown the statues of Edward III. and John of Gaunt, the king's ancestors. In the foreground the clerk of the Company is exhibiting the roll with the names of the kings, &c., who were free of this Company. In the background are represented the banners of the Company and of the City of London. The Yeomen of the Guard, at the entrance of the palace, close the view. On the staircase are likewise pictures of the following Lord Mayors, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... his deep affection for us, presents us this flag as the greatest and most expressive remembrance which he can give us. The red stripes stand for the generous blood of her sons, shed to obtain her liberty; the white stripes stand for her virginity and purity as our country; the blue background indicates the sky and each star represents a free and independent State; this is America, and the Consul is desirous that we also should have so glorious a history as hers and that it may be as brilliant as could be wished, securing peace with respect, and may God be our help ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... I." No. 53. "The Restoration of Monarchy and King Charles II." A number of cavaliers on horseback, with their conical hats and long tresses, occupy the foreground of this picture; the army appears in the background. This is the last, though ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... turn gray in the sunlight, it suddenly occurred to him that, in some unaccountable manner, the question of the succession had receded somewhat into the background; it no longer seemed to him of such overwhelming consequence; at least, he had not been thinking of it a moment before, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... air; but even as I urged him I knew that he could not, without losing his rich beauty of careless suggestion, and the persons and images that for ancestry have all those romantic ideas that are somewhere in the background of all our minds. He could not have made Slieve-na-Mon nor Slieve Fua incredible and phantastic enough, because that prolonged study of a past age, necessary before he could separate them from modern association, would have ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... Sand Goby, or Spotted Goby, He is common enough in the pools at low tide, but not easy to find. You can look at him, yet not see him! For he takes the same colour as the rocks and sands of his home. Amid the glinting lights and shadows of his rock-pool, with a background of sand, rock, and weed, this little fish is nearly invisible. Of course it is a dodge, and a useful one, to escape the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... late proprietress, a chair with a high, straight back, in which, even in her old age, she used always to sit bolt upright. On the wall hung an old portrait of Fedor's great-grandfather, Andrei Lavretsky. His dark, sallow countenance could scarcely be distinguished against the cracked and darkened background. His small, malicious eyes looked out morosely from beneath the heavy, apparently swollen eyelids. His black hair, worn without powder, rose up stiff as a brush above his heavy, wrinkled forehead. From the corner of the portrait hung a dusky wreath of immortelles. "Glafira Petrovna deigned to ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... simple, hexagonal room, with lofty, gold-entrellised window; its whole beauty consists in this, that the walls are inlaid with amethysts, from whose jacinth-hued background shine forth the more lustrous raised arabesques formed by topazes and dalmatines. Precious stones are the delight of the Padishah. Every inch of his garments is resplendent with diamonds, rubies, and pearls, his very fingers are hidden by the rings which sparkle upon them. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... greatly in the interval, and perhaps she was not reluctant to carry on a flirtation with the young man—your client. Of course, she could not allow it to go further than the outside of the door of the Duke of Chiselhurst's town house, for you must remember there was her husband in the background—a violent man, as you have said; and Lord Donal must have thoroughly angered the Princess by what you term his rudeness in tearing off her glove; and now the Princess will never admit that she was at the ball, so it seems ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... into the background of his mind as—juvenile, doing a juvenile share, no sort of man yet—Mr. Britling could give a free rein to his generous imaginations of a national uprising. From the idea of a universal participation in the struggle he passed by an easy transition to an anticipation ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... among the shadowy figures gathered there, its subject being Colonel Benjamin Harrison. He was friend and college roommate of Thomas Jefferson, and a member of the first State Executive Council in 1776. Against the dense background is shown a slender gentleman of the old school, with an intellectual, kindly face and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by aeons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against a dun background. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine |
