"Bombshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Iron King's marriage was told by Sylvan. Had a bombshell fallen and exploded among the servants, they could not have been more shocked. There was a simultaneous exclamation of surprise and dismay, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... wondering why he told her. 'I had a grandfather, who made a will. He had a fancy to wrap up a bombshell in the will. Now—the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Dale's lips set firmly under his mask. There was a way to save the man. It was something he had never intended to do again—but it was worth the price—to save this man. It would be like a bombshell exploded in the underworld; it would arouse the police to infuriated activity; it would stir New York to its depths—but, after all, it could not touch Smarlinghue. It would only instill the belief that somehow Larry the Bat had escaped from the tenement fire; it ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... sound, save now and then a terrific volley from the cloud batteries now fast approaching. By nine o'clock little puffs of wind began to steal through the woods and tease and toy with our fire. Shortly after, an enormous electric bombshell exploded in the treetops over our heads, and the ball was fairly opened. Then followed three hours, with only two brief intermissions, of as lively elemental music and as copious an outpouring of rain as it was ever ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... harness of the carpenter-shop when, in the middle of July, the news struck down in our quiet community like a bombshell that France had declared war on Prussia; also that Denmark was expected to join her forces to those of her old ally and take revenge for the great robbery of 1864. I dropped my tools the moment I heard it, and flew rather than ran to the company's office to demand ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... about enough of this thing," continued the rough visitor. "You insist on keeping the whelp here, when you know he is a bombshell in your path and mine. Why don't you send him to sea, and let him ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... A blond bombshell slithered down the bar and ground herself against my leg. "Wanna buy me a drink, honey?" she gasped. I smuggled a lift and slipped all four of her garters off the tops of her hose. A funny, stricken look replaced the erotic ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Paris they spelled it with the ei. This moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... perturbed throughout its viscera, both public and domestic. Cooks, shopkeepers, street passengers, told the news from door to door; thence it rose to the upper regions. Soon the words: "Mademoiselle Cormon has returned!" burst like a bombshell into all households. At that moment Jacquelin was descending from his wooden seat (polished by a process unknown to cabinet-makers), on which he perched in front of the carriole. He opened the great green gate, round at the top, and closed in sign of mourning; for during Mademoiselle Cormon's ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... fact and determined to punish him. Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head as if struck by a bombshell. The closing passage of that memorable speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some deep premeditation. It is well known now that Mr. Webster afterwards ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... surprises you, madame," he began; "and I must confess that—hum!—it does not surprise me less than it does you. But extraordinary circumstances require exceptional action. On any other occasion, I would not fall upon you like a bombshell. But we had no time to waste in ceremonious formalities. I will, therefore, ask your leave to introduce myself: I am General Count ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to be overlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them. "Ah! come, now. What drunken piggishness is ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... roused to a fresh interest, and with fast-beating heart I await my father's answer. It comes as a bombshell to my sensitive ears:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... who wrote and published this declaration, fancying that they were throwing a bombshell into the gathered crowds of American (male) citizens, are very much in earnest, doubtless, and are entitled—we have platform authority for saying it—to "respectful consideration"; but their movement scarcely rises, as yet at least, to the dignity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the hour she was setting down this first result of her instinct's warning against the danger signal she had seen in Hiram Ranger's manner, he was delivering a bombshell. He had led in the family prayers as usual and had just laid the Bible on the center-table in the back parlor after they rose from their knees. With his hands resting on the cover of the huge volume he looked at his son. There was a ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... blank silence fell on the little group crouched among the boulders. Bob's statement that he had to go back through the fire zone—to Houck—had fallen among them like a mental bombshell. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... had a vague idea of 'bearing testimony' as her father would have borne it in like circumstances. But she turned very pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She looked like a Quaker prophetess—like Dinah Morris in society—like—but ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... great law of social economy. Even a few medical writers sometimes advocate the principles of this so-called liberalism. In a recently published work, there are enumerated only two demerits of polygamy and six of monogamy. These six demerits which the author is pleased to term a "bombshell," he introduces on account of his moral convictions no less than humanitarian considerations. The same author terms monogamy a "worm-eaten and rotten-rooted tree." The worm that is devastating the fairest tree of Eden and draining its richest juices is what our contemporary ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... vice-chancellor's lady burst, nevertheless, like a bombshell in the cottage. It was to this effect:—The Palmers were known, if not just in the best, yet in very good society; the sons bore sign of a defective pedigree, but the one daughter out was, thanks to her mother, fit to go anywhere. For her own part, wrote the London ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... a moment to try and regain the command of my faculties. But it was as if a bombshell had exploded inside my skull, scattering all my wits to the four winds of heaven. Only the conviction of failure remained, attended by a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... do with the fact that he chose, for his impetuous experiment in reaction, the field of geology, rather than that of zoology or botany. Lyell had been threatening to publish a book on the geological history of Man, which was to be a bombshell flung into the camp of the catastrophists. My Father, after long reflection, prepared a theory of his own, which, as he fondly hoped, would take the wind out of Lyell's sails, and justify geology to godly readers of 'Genesis'. It was, very briefly, that there had been no gradual modification ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... lighting a bombshell—though Uncle Stanley little guessed it—"I think the position calls for some one younger than I am. Besides, my name is Cutler, whereas for eight generations this concern has been headed ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... had any honest motive, they'd not be hidden in the first place and they'd have taken their cure to the Medical Center in the second. Well, I had a bit of something listed against them, so I decided to let my bombshell drop. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... his word for it, and begin where I left off at Bretton Woods, only hurrying on, perhaps, a little faster than I should if there were no bombshell to explode later. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... for the final conference and the signatures, Austria intervened and announced her opposition. Then suddenly followed the bombshell of the ultimatum to Servia, timed at the precise moment to stop the signing of ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield. And others were exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an amused and superior way. As for myself, I found it most enjoyable. I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at the effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... at once so caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of Nopolis. Groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. Every one awaited, with heartfelt anxiety, the reply of the dignified Smith. Next ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... announcement of Lord Tancred's engagement! No one had heard a word about it. There had been talk of his going to Canada, and much chaff upon that subject—so ridiculous, Tancred emigrating! But of a prospective bride the most gossip-loving busybody at White's had never heard! It fell like a bombshell. And Lady Highford, as she read the news, clenched her pointed teeth, and gave a little ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... expected them and no preparations had been made for their reception. Their departure from Turin had been so recent, and it resembled a flight. The Emperor did not wish to be recognized on the way, and burst into Fontainebleau like a bombshell. The palace porter was an old servant, named Guillot, who had been Napoleon's cook in Egypt. "Well," the Emperor said to him, "you must go back to your old business and cook us some supper." Fortunately the porter had in his sideboard some mutton-chops and eggs. He set to work, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been "boosted" beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... will believe him. Yet he is dangerous, and if he denounces us in the Duma it will come as a bombshell. I called upon Anna Vyrubova early this morning, and she has gone to the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... a charge, and it blew all to pieces. I'll know better next time. There are lots more chunks of meat, and we'll soon have a feast. I'll make another bombshell." ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... what had been happening in this country in those fateful years before the bombshell of ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... in the most casual and innocent way; he hadn't the faintest notion in the world that what he had said was like a bombshell bursting beneath the structure of Mr. Cumshaw's composure. He was intelligent enough to realise that it was more than probable that Cumshaw possessed knowledge of that almost forgotten episode which was not shared ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... long speech. The veteran rancher had thrown a veritable bombshell into camp. Delton—the man lying asleep upstairs—the head of the smugglers! Two thousand dollars' reward! Why, all they had to do was to tie him up and carry him to town—over to the deputy's house. Capturing the smuggling king the first night at the Shooting Star! It ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... Accepting the aphorism as true, it has to be applied with the corollary that the main point is to know when to allow imprudence to predominate over prudence. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that when Mr. Chamberlain launched his programme, which Lord Milner admits "burst like a bombshell in the camp of his friends," he overweighted the balance on the imprudent side. The heat with which the controversy has been conducted, and which Lord Milner very rightly deplores, must be attributed mainly to this cause rather than to any inherent and, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Bombshell number two, and a worse one than the first. For the moment Jim's head swam. If he had been asked just then in so many words where he had been at that time, it is likely that he would have admitted everything. By some miracle the Head did ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... limiting their means of amusing themselves; the aesthetic young man recovered now, polished his shoes and put a lavender handkerchief in his breast pocket. The hostages were in a fair way to annex the deserted village, when a bombshell burst in the shape of a despatch from the American ambassador that permission had been obtained for all ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... it must," said I. "Nobody would be benefited by throwing such a bombshell of scandal into society. If anybody living were suffering from wrong it might be different. But there's no reason to blacken unnecessarily the name ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the news of his venture, as told by the emissaries he sent to the Light Country, struck its people like a bombshell. These emissaries—all men—had come to the Great City, and, finding their presence tolerated by the authorities, had immediately started haranguing ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... on the Angers expedition when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell among his accomplices; and the dates of his return and arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457, which would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we have gained, and all the world will have to admit it; now let us think what we may put into our bulletin to tell the people HOW we have gained it. For ten years past Bonaparte has issued such high- sounding accounts of his victories that I always felt in my anger as though my heart were a bombshell ready to burst. Well, this time, let us also draw up such a bulletin of victory, and show that we have learned something. Let us proclaim that we have conquered, and draw up the document as soon as we arrive ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... his treble little giggle, for on the whole it answered better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a bombshell of the obvious ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... was crippled the other would replace it. He says he imagines he hears the voice of Sherman now, saying: "Tell Wheeler to go on to South Carolina; we will mow it down with grape shot and plow it in with bombshell." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... If a bombshell had fallen in the room, a greater sensation could not have been produced. Every individual arose from the table, and the Colonel, striding up and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by friendly rebels, and under the new administration it is likely their further publication will be edited by men who will gladly shield Davis at the expense of a Union soldier. The letter of Stephens to Johnson is an extraordinary one. Its publication will be a bombshell in the Confederate camp. I will deliver the copy to Colonel Scott to- morrow. One or two paragraphs from it go far to sustain your stated opinion of Jeff. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... to a meeting of our American delegation, when another bombshell was thrown among us—nothing less than the question whether the Pope is to be allowed to become one of the signatory powers; and this question has now taken a very acute form. Italy is, of course, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... start one evening for her round, Mrs. Lee Carter's maid brought up a bombshell. Superficially it looked like a letter with foreign stamps, marked "Private" and readdressed with an English stamp from Ireland. But that one line of unerased writing, her name, threw her into heats and colds, for she remembered the long-forgotten hand of Lieutenant Doherty. She had to sit down ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... steeples of Charleston were black with expectant crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun. One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the stronghold is girt by an almost continuous ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... forward some grenadiers and Highlanders, and took possession of the hills in front of the Lighthouse battery, where a lodgement was made under a fire from the town and the ships. On the 21st one of the French ships was set on fire by a bombshell and blew up, and the fire being communicated to two others, they were burned to the water's edge. The fate of the town was now almost decided, the enemy's fire nearly silenced and the fortifications shattered to the ground. All that now remained in the reduction was to get possession ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... had sprung up while the main suit was pending. Old suits were revived and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... sententiously, "that sermon was a perfect bombshell; and, mark my words, it will either blow the doctor out of his pulpit, or some of the first-class saints out ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... down the banks right abreast of them, crashing through trees and bushes, and sending down showers of smaller stones. The men paddled with all their might, but the rock came straight at them, struck a flat piece of the cliff; and bursting like a bombshell, descended round them in a shower of small pieces, none of which, however, touched them, although many fell ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... give the necessary hardiness, immunity and resistance. The outlook, therefore, is promising for the cultivated varieties of hickory nuts and walnuts that I know you are all working for. Foreign parasites are always dangerous. This chestnut blight fungus comes into any such scheme as that like a bombshell. When it comes to an introduced parasite like that we can not tell what will happen. I thank ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... cruelty and waste—particularly when it's dangerous. Docked Lani are the height of stupidity. Just because someone wants a pet that is an exact duplicate of a human being is no reason to risk a court action. Those Lani, and a few others whose tails have been docked, could be a legal bombshell if ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... A bombshell exploding in the room could not have astonished them as did my answer. I realized to the full the probable result, but my spirit was high, and I felt the utter uselessness of prolonging the interview. Sooner or later the same end ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the railway lines, half a dozen of the railwaymen pressed around Radek, and almost fought with each other as to who should walk next to him. And Radek entirely happy, delighted at his success in giving them a bombshell instead of a bouquet, with one stout fellow on one arm, another on the other, two or three more listening in front and behind, continued rubbing it into them until we reached our wagon, when, after a general handshaking, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... And at the same instant something was thrown into the tent, like a bombshell, passing the table, knocking over the candle, and ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... (cyanogen), resembling neither father nor mother in its actions and powers, to the confusion of all preconceived ideas, when Gay-Lussac, a Frenchman, introduced it to the world, where it fell like a bombshell upon the theory of chemical combinations. This impertinent fellow, combining with hydrogen in his turn, produces prussic acid, the most frightful of poisons; one drop of which placed on the tongue of a horse strikes it dead as if ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... he vanished, leaving the captain about as comfortable with this piece of intelligence as he would have been with a bombshell ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... this telegram had been dispatched the long-feared action on the part of Japan had been taken and a new situation had been created. The Japanese "advice" of the 28th October was in fact a veritable bombshell playing havoc with the house of cards which had been so carefully erected. But the intrigue had gone so far, and the prizes to be won by the monarchical supporters were so great that nothing could induce them to retrace their footsteps. For a week ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... but not even the smile in her welcoming dark eyes could make him quite forget the Widow. She was an uncertain quantity, like a stick of frozen dynamite that will explode if it is thawed too soon; and there was a bombshell to come which gave more than even promise of producing spontaneous combustion. So Wiley sighed as he fired his cook, and told his men that they would ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... silence. Pamela's question had fallen something like a bombshell amongst the little party. It was ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... involved, and placing it upon the true issue as to a government of party, or of justice. If, in elucidating and applying it, I can incorporate some of Lord Brougham's fulminations on the evil of party with my own conceptions, I may be able to add the occasional discharge of a cannon, or the bursting of a bombshell, to the running fire of ordinary musketry. Though I am no stranger to contests, I cannot divest myself of palpitations at the approach of an engagement. When once the fire has commenced, I feel but little concern except to keep cool and good-natured, and to have an ample supply ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... wood, and seemed bubbling over with something. He, too, had suffered sorely in the storm he had helped to raise the preceding day, and had tremblingly eaten such dinner as the irate Zibbie had tossed on the table for him, as a man might lunch in the vicinity of a bombshell. He seemed to relieve himself by saying, with his characteristic grin, as he replenished the fire, "It was dreadful 'pestuous yesterday, but de winds is gone down. I'se glad dat ole hen is done for, but she hatch a heap ob trouble on ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... crucified and not risen as his dupes dreamed, lived in heaven, knew him, Saul, and all that he had been doing, was 'apparelled in celestial light,' and yet in heavenly glory was so closely identified with these poor people whom he had been hunting to death that to strike them was to hurt Him! A bombshell had burst, shattering the foundation of his fortifications. A deluge had swept away the ground on which he had stood. His whole life was revolutionised. Its most solid elements were dissolved into vapour, and what he had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the three largest of the enemy's ships were set on fire by a bombshell. On the night of the 25th two other of the ships were boarded, sword in hand, from boats of the squadron; one being aground, was burnt, the other was towed out of the harbor in triumph. The brave Drucour kept up the defence until all the ships were either taken or ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Then the bombshell fell. A strange voice suddenly intervened, a voice whose American accent seemed more marked than usual. The four men turned their heads. Selingman sprang to his feet. Mr. Grex's face was marble in its whiteness. ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... how you used to chaff me about my whims. Well, I've got a whim now, and I'll have my way as usual. I am going to see you to-morrow, and if you won't see me under my conditions in London, I shall call at Woking in the evening. Oh my goodness, what a bombshell! But you know that I am always as good as my ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... plot exploded in thousand pieces. Mustn't be honeymoon couple. Heroine radiant young girl, eighteen, hair red as Circe's, eyes of new-born angel, comes like bombshell into hero's life. Not good simile, bombshell. Query, hero. Would she fall in love with man of B. N.'s type? I see another type more ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... their features, were rather exceptional people. Things have changed since then, and the so-called Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively, and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, both those belonging to the Legations and the dozens of ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... him, rather aggressively.] Well, I seem to have accidentally dropped a bombshell among you! Will any lady or gentleman kindly oblige with some particulars——? [To OTTOLINE, who checks him with an imperious gesture—changing his tone.] I ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... plan to prevent the duel?" demanded Lorry, turning upon the chief, who had dropped limply into a chair and was mopping his brow. When he could find his breath enough to answer, Dangloss did so, and he might as well have thrown a bombshell at ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Crawford, decidedly ladylike—which the other is not, however pleasant a companion. I should as soon think of falling in love with a handsome bombshell, as with her. No knowing when she might explode. Now if I had met Miss Crawford at Newport two years ago, who knows but affairs might have been different? Heigho!" And so Walter Harding went on to his business; while Tom Leslie, the member of the party ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... me; I'm going to protect you. I know men, and those men will respect me for coming out with it. I haven't been in politics all these years to be beaten at last by Ed Thatcher. I've pledged votes enough to-day to give me a majority of three on the next ballot; but I'll explode Thatcher's bombshell in his own hands. I'm all prepared for him; I have the documents—the marriage certificate and the whole business. But you won't suffer; you won't be brought into it. That's what I'm going ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife, were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... kindly, though the soft embroideries in the delicate lawn were ruffled by a quicker breath, the natural perversity of her sex must needs answer perversely, and Ursula de Vesc blew up his siege trench with a bombshell. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Philip's ardent pleadings, was yielding to the extent of letting Foxy's family sit with him in relays and cheer him as much as they liked, when Grandmother dropped her bombshell. At least, that was what John called it when they talked it over afterwards. Joy always spoke of it as "the time ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... fell on the letter, which, had it contained a bombshell, could scarce have wrought more damage in so short a space of time. Tearing it across and across, he flung it into the fire, and derived a gloomy satisfaction from watching it burn. But though paper and ink were reduced to ashes, neither fire nor steel could annihilate the winged words, thoughtlessly ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... of a startling and unexpected nature occurred. Its effect on the inmates of the cabin was pretty much the same as if a bombshell had suddenly fallen ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... an impulse like that it was possible for it to result in something dangerous, especially in those earlier days. This time it produced a bombshell; not just an ordinary bombshell, or even a twelve-inch projectile, but a shell of planetary size. It was a sort of hoax-always a doubtful plaything—and in this case it brought even quicker and more terrible retribution than usual. It was an imaginary presentation ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... young bird sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and when the old one returned and called, it came out from the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert White saw and describes in his letters was picked up in a field, unable to ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... not now believe that Mr. Klutchem had run away. Fitz, who up to this time had enjoyed every turn in the discussion, and who had listened to Yancey with a face like a stone god, his knees shaking with laughter, now threw another bombshell almost ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the rest of the party, who had squeezed their way into the little parsonage. It was so replete with life and bustle that it appeared like a social bombshell, with effervescing human nature as an explosive material, and might burst into fragments ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... is a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... in Ruth were quiescent; nothing had ever occurred in her life to tingle them into action. She was dressed as a white woman should be; and that for the present satisfied her instincts. But she threw a verbal bombshell into the spinsters' camp. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... taught not to a few scholars here and there in musty libraries, but proclaimed in the vernacular to the whole populace with all the energy and enthusiasm of a recent convert and a master of language! Had a bombshell been exploded among the fossilized professors it had been ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... that such a tender joy would be misplaced now as much as ever during the last hundred years, to go no further back. The end of the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell. In its lurid blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of military and administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless vividness. And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the day that the glorified French Revolution itself, except for its destructive ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... If a bombshell had dropped into Sellersville, consternation could not have been more complete. But it became quickly apparent that not all of the gang would surrender without a fight. The leaders retreated for ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... only go on lying harder than ever. If you want to upset the whole town, one line will do it. With five shillings' worth of human labor and electric fluid, sir (I dabble a little in science after business hours), we'll explode a bombshell in Thorpe Ambrose!" He produced the bombshell on a slip of paper as he spoke: "A. Pedgift, Junior, to A. Pedgift, Senior.—Spread it all over the place that Mr. Armadale is coming down by ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Dipsaceus (Teasel Gourd), Cucumis Dudaim (Balloon Gourd), Cucumis Erinaceus (Hedgehog Gourd), Cucumis Grossularoides (Gooseberry Gourd), Cucumis Perennis, Cucurbita Argyrosperma, Cucurbita Melopepo, Cyclanthera Explodens (Bombshell Gourd), Cyclanthera Pedata, Eopepon Aurantiacum, Eopepon Vitifolius, Lagenaria Clavata (Club Gourd), Lagenaria Enormis, Lagenaria Leucantha Depressa, Lagenaria Leucantha Longissima, Lagenaria Plate de Corse, Lagenaria Poire a Poudre, Lagenaria Siphon, Luffa Cylindrica, Luffa Solly ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... midst of all this, fell, like a bombshell, the intelligence of his engagement with Maggie Browne; a good sweet little girl enough, but without fortune or connection—without, as far as Mr. Buxton knew, the least power, or capability, or spirit, with ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sink her. The rebel ram, early in the morning of April 19, came floating down the Roanoke river with the current, past the batteries on the right bank of the river above Plymouth, and bore down upon the United States steamers Southfield and Bombshell, and sunk them. It is supposed that Captain Flusser, in the excitement of the moment, exposed himself unnecessarily, and was shot by a sharp-shooter from the Albemarle. When it was noised among the Federal army and naval forces at Plymouth that Flusser was killed, the ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... w'at gwine ter hap'n nex'?" groaned Chunk, as he disappeared toward the mansion. He burst like a bombshell into the kitchen, a small building in the rear ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... another diplomatic bombshell burst in Europe. Darnborough came to and fro to Bracondale half a dozen times in the course of four or five days. Once he arrived by special train from Paddington in the middle of the night. Many serious conferences did he have with his ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... kind of bombshell friendship into the camp of her prejudices, Miss Phyllis," he said with his mouth twitching with a laugh, as if he didn't know whether we would ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Wanted—a Cromwell F. Harald Williams England's Ironsides F. Harald Williams The Three Cherry-Stones Anonymous The Midshipman's Funeral Darley Dale Ladysmith F. Harald Williams The Six-inch Gun "The Bombshell" St. Patrick's Day F. Harald Williams The Hero of Omdurman F. Harald Williams Boot and Saddle F. Harald Williams The Midnight Charge Clement Scott Mafeking—"Adsum!" A. Frewen Aylward The Fight at Rorke's Drift Emily Pfeiffer Relieved! (At Mafeking) "Daily Express" How Sam Hodge Won ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... certain of the grounds, and solid upon them, upon which he made those threats. He had too great a knowledge of affairs not to know that the commission would be a packed one, too great an acquaintance with the strategy of James to believe that his lonely evidence, unless of bombshell nature, would have a chance of carrying weight in a court of his Majesty's picking. And, then, he was of too big a mind to put forward evidence which would have no effect but that of affording gossip for the scandal-mongers, and the giving of which would make ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... so many irons in the fire now that he had no time to waste his brain tissues thinking about a paper like Peaceful Moments. It was one of his failures. It certainly paid its way and brought him a small sum each year, but to him it was a failure, a bombshell that ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... now would be to try to take one nation and secretly ally himself with it, leaving the other out in the cold. Then began the intrigues which planned the isolation of France, an amazing situation, a bombshell in present day international diplomacy, that I shall discuss fully ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... her tendency not to get ruffled. She had been his good angel, domestically speaking, and, indeed, in every way, since they had first begun to keep house together, and it had rather amused him to let fall such a bombshell as the contents of his telegram upon the regularity of her ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... strangled him. After the intoxicating drink he had swallowed Fumichon did not know what he was talking about any longer, and his apoplectic face was on the point of bursting like a bombshell. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... life cut short had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake's name was a household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at Society, should actually have shed blood seemed too ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... When Mr. Noble's bombshell fell, in Senator Dilworthy's camp, the statesman was disconcerted for a moment. For a moment; that was all. The next moment he was calmly up and doing. From the centre of our country to its circumference, nothing was talked of but Mr. Noble's terrible revelation, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... a bombshell into the little group. Margery first found a voice, but it was a most awed, ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... departure. Instantly, I recollect, my thoughts flew back to the Tantallon Castle and the dark words we had heard whispered, so it was not as much of a surprise to me as to the residents at Kimberley; to them it came as a perfect bombshell, so well had the secret been kept. The next day the text of the Manifesto, issued by Mr. Leonard, a lawyer, in the name of the Uitlanders, to protest against their grievances, appeared in all the morning papers, and its eloquent language ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... that the Mayflowers were not aristocrats, only—what does your history book say? Oh, I have it—'from the middle and humbler walks of English life;' not blue Mayflowers, but common colors—can't you see that it will be such larks for me to use this little fact like a little bombshell, when Mrs. Arkwright, or Maud, or Flo Aplin, or any of these Mayflower braggers begin to ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... bombshell had exploded in the court. Even his Honour was aghast, and I am sure the lady next to me only recovered from the shock of the surprise in order to wonder whether she need put off ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately. He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... their heads, a bunch of lilac and pink and white sweet peas. It cost her no trouble at all, and about half a minute of time, to charge the atmosphere, so full of sweet peace and rest, with a saturated solution of bitterness and disquiet. Her presence alone was a bombshell, and with a sentence or two in her clear, innocent voice, the fell deed was done. Fielding stopped smoking, his cigar in mid-air, and stared with a scowl at the child; but Eleanor, delighted to have found the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews |
