"Bystander" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rafters of an unfinished house, and nearly killed himself; a bystander declared that he ought to be employed, as he went ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... A bystander said, "I don't know that they make as good soldiers as white men, from the fact that they are not so intelligent. Here is General Hunter, and I presume he will say the same thing"—turning ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw! haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a three-days acquaintance! It beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'—aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it—aw, haw! ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... were sufficiently posted in the nefarious goings on of the 'dreadful' progeny quite to appreciate the bystander's surprise, but they gazed with renewed ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... two instances, the only two on record, of the tangible descent of an aerolite during the progress of a star-shower. On April 4, 1095, the Saxon Chronicle informs us that stars fell "so thickly that no man could count them," and adds that one of them having struck the ground in France, a bystander "cast water upon it, which was raised in steam with a great noise of boiling."[1243] And again, on November 27, 1885, while the skirts of the Andromede-tempest were trailing over Mexico, "a ball of fire" was precipitated ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... struggled to touch his hands and to kiss the skirt of his robe, till Clarendon, with some difficulty, rescued him and conveyed him home by a bye path. Cartwright, it is said, was so unwise as to mingle with the crowd. Some person who saw his episcopal habit asked and received his blessing. A bystander cried out, "Do you know who blessed you?" "Surely," said he who had just been honoured by the benediction, "it was one of the Seven." "No," said the other "it is the Popish Bishop of Chester." "Popish dog," cried the enraged Protestant; "take ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... protection to prevent injury by rough handling. A leather shield may be used for this purpose, which is cut with two holes, one for the key and the other to permit the operator to observe the numbers on the dial. The shield answers a further purpose of preventing any bystander from noting the numbers on ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... been looking on and not performing all my life: except in one instance in a long life, I've only been a bystander in the way of courtship and matrimony. Here we are at last, and now for a chaise to Deal. Thank God, we can afford to shorten the time, for Bessy's ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... aimlessly. They seemed to have no friends among the pleasure-seekers. At last, however, as they stood reading a public notice posted at the entrance of the town-hall or yamen, a bystander ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... character is, he immediately shows it in his eyes, just as he who is beloved forthwith reads everything in the eyes of lovers. The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not. But the affectation of simplicity is like a crooked stick.[A] Nothing is more disgraceful than a wolfish friendship [false friendship]. Avoid this most of all. The good and simple and ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... writing-table, with her face turned to the door. She had once been photographed at her writing-table, with a curtain behind her, and her face turned to the door. The photograph had appeared in The Queen, The Ladies' Field, The Sketch, The Taller, The Bystander, Home Chat, Home Notes, The Woman at Home, and Our Stately Homes of England. It was a favourite photograph of hers; she had taken a fancy to it, and therefore she always liked to be found in this position. The photo had ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... much to be said for and against this rule on both sides. A broader method to the lawyer seems shockingly loose and slipshod. The rules of evidence to the bystander seem an inhuman farce. The first allows an atmosphere to be created from which the whole truth may be reached. Would not an ordinary person, if he wanted to find out about the accident, read the newspapers, find out the police reports, ask what a witness thought, what that ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... managed that situation very cleverly just now?" said the lady, with a keen glance that made Margaret color. "One has such a dread of the crowd, just public sentiment, you know. Some odious bystander calls the police, they crowd against your driver, perhaps a brick gets thrown. We had an experience in England once—" She paused, then interrupted herself. "But I don't know your name?" she ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... brig in which Roger had sailed; and it was to the house of this couple, his only relatives, that the young man directed his steps. On trying the door in Quay Street he found it locked, and then observed that the windows were boarded up. Inquiring of a bystander, he learnt for the first time of the death of his brother-in-law, though that event had taken place nearly eighteen ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... more respect now for Jumbo, and decided to keep him on the defensive, especially as a bystander announced that ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... carriages, horsemen, and promenaders for hours on end without any sense of weariness. And when a bystander, seeing that I was a stranger, took compassion upon my ignorance and condescended to point out to me the various celebrities present, my pleasure was complete. There certainly is no place like London for show and glitter, I'll grant you that; but all the same I'd no more think of taking up my permanent ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... her manner that I almost immediately forgot the affair, and said nothing about it. A few nights later, though, as I was walking down Broadway, near Twenty-seventh street, I noticed a large crowd of men and women gathered, and questioning a bystander as to the reason thereof, I was informed that a stylishly dressed lady was "too drunk to navigate" and was in the hands of a policeman. As I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the unfortunate woman, I was shocked ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... spot when I saw four carts approaching. In each of them were three persons sitting, with their arms closely pinioned. On each side of the carts rode public officers, the sheriffs, city marshals, the ordinary of Newgate, and others. I asked a bystander where they were going and what was to be done to them, for I did not know at the time that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... expostulations and encouragement; but Keith took the first two, and they prepared to enter. The younger man took off his silver watch, with directions to a friend to send it to his sister if he did not come back. The older man said a few words to a bystander. They were about a woman's grave on the hillside. Keith took off his watch and gave it to one of the men, with a few words scribbled on a leaf from a memorandum-book, and the next moment the three volunteers, amid a deathly ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... her excited manner, her swift apology to himself for the accident, and her frantic rush across the wharf. He had looked after her with curiosity and had remarked to a bystander: ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... of the performance; though a few 'men of wicked spirits' would try to peep behind the curtain. But they never found him out; they all danced to Cromwell's tune, but none discovered that the pipe they heard was in their Protector's mouth. Even Ludlow, with all the proverbial opportunities of a bystander, though most anxious to know his great opponent's game, never guessed that he had patched up the Insurrection of March 1655, from the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the impartial attitude of the bystander at a street fight. Smothered in the embraces of Daughter of the Pigeon, covered with embarrassment, I struggled and cursed, and had desperately decided to fling her bodily over the eight-foot wall of the paepae into the jungle, when another arrival dashed ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... relieve your mind, any," he told Ware, "it isn't such a case of innocent bystander as you may think. This man is the one who hired Saleratus Bill to abduct me in the first place; and probably to kill me in the second. I have a suspicion he ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... witness, with admirable self-possession; "but law is law, all over the world, and I rather guess this question is ag'in it. In the Granite State, it is always held, when a thing can be proved by the person who said any particular words, that the question must be put to him, and not to a bystander." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... delicacy of line in the contour of the head and face which was particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long—not of that pronounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable dress and ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heard. It came from a bystander lying flat on his belly inside the mouth: he had crawled in as ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... acquire some supernatural power over themselves. Asked his name by a stranger, who is ignorant of their superstitions, an Araucanian will answer, "I have none." When an Ojebway is asked his name, he will look at some bystander and ask him to answer. "This reluctance arises from an impression they receive when young, that if they repeat their own names it will prevent their growth, and they will be small in stature. On account of this unwillingness to tell their names, many ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... voice is as a tenor in the same fix. He may—and does—get so hoarse that it is a pain to hear him; but as long as he can croak in good volume he is all right. Mere shouting will not do. He must shriek, until to the sympathetic bystander it seems that his throat must split wide open. Furthermore, he must shriek the proper things. It all sounds alike to every one but transport riders and oxen; but as a matter of fact it is Boer-Dutch, nicely assorted to suit different occasions. It is incredible that oxen should distinguish; ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... who knows not God in Nature, who does not, that is to say, correspond with the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead. The author of "Ecce Homo" may be partially right when he says: "I think a bystander would say that though Christianity had in it something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so many Christians the idea of God ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... may pass the cliff in the darkness," put in a bystander. "Mine eyes are good, but I cannot see mid-stream, and a boat that carries no lights may easily slip by unseeing ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... solemn: to fall at such a moment. He spoke as if it was his last political scene: as if he felt that between alienated friends and unwon foes he could have no party again; and could only as a shrewd bystander observe and advise others. There was but one point in the Speech which I thought doubtful: the apostrophe to "Richard Cobden."[14] I think it was wrong, though there is very much to be said for it. The ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... to certain lower ends, his success surpassed his expectations. Pope was in ecstasies. He fell upon Warburton's neck—or rather at his feet—and overwhelmed him with professions of gratitude. He invited him to Twickenham; met him with compliments which astonished a bystander, and wrote to him in terms of surprising humility. "You understand me," he exclaims in his first letter, "as well as I do myself; but you express me much better than I could express myself." For the rest of his ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... left. Their gymnastic and military training was incessant; wherever they met, we are told, they began to box; under the condition, however, that they were bound to separate at the command of any bystander. To accustom them early to the hardships of a campaign, they were taught to steal their food from the mess-tables of their elders; if they were detected they were beaten for their clumsiness, and went ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... itself, or the aspect of the gamblers around the tables. Of the wild excitement, the frenzy of gain, the outbursts of despair which one has come prepared to witness, there is not a sign. The games strike the bystander as singularly dull and uninteresting; one wearies of the perpetual deal and turn-up of the cards at rouge-et-noir, of the rattle of the ball as it dances into its pigeonhole at roulette, of the monotonous chant of "Make your game, gentlemen," ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... respectable houses, brandishing arms and shouting "Stop thief!" and adding much to the noise and excitement, but availing nothing to stop the fugitive. Only one young fellow, an officer by his dress, snatched a gun from a bystander, and fired with so true an aim that had I not ducked my head I would have ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Blue Town, after gravely consulting his souan-pan (exchange-table), announced the value to be about a thousand sapeks less than it should have been. The missionaries remonstrated, and a colleague was called in to check the sum, but he, with due gravity, declared that the first was right. A bystander interfered, and declared in favour of the strangers. 'Sirs Lamas,' said the banker, 'your mathematics are better than mine.' 'Oh, not at all,' replied we, with a profound bow; 'your souan-pan is excellent; but who ever heard of a calculator always exempt from error?' These phrases were, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... spasmodically. At every session of Congress tremendous efforts have been made by people desiring an adequate navy, and tremendous resistance has been made by people who believed that we required no navy, or at least only a little navy. The country at large has taken a bystander's interest in the contest, not knowing much about the pros and cons, but feeling in an indolent fashion that we needed some navy, though not much. The result has been, not a reasonable policy, but a succession of unreasonable compromises between the aims ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has," remarked a bystander to Rene, "you'll not be so ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Matilda's head was inimitable and indescribable. It was not arrogance or affectation; it was perfectly natural to the child; but to a bystander it would have signified that she was aware Maria's views and statements were not to be relied upon and could not be made the basis of either opinion or action. She took off her things, and without another word made her way to the room of ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... Both were somewhat proud of their grip, and a bystander might have mistaken their amiable efforts to crush each other's fingers for the outward and visible signs ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... in his hair; even as it was, he had the ear-rings. But the smile of him it was that won Bertha, when she came to work in the little restaurant. It was a smile that put the world at its ease; it proclaimed the coming of morning over the meadows, and, taking every bystander into an April friendship, ran on suddenly into a laugh that was like silver, and like a strange puppy's claiming you ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... arguments in his favour. Against him were the chances that his companion might show fight; that he might check his prisoner's exit until his comrade on the box could come to the rescue; or that some officious bystander might act on the side of the law; or that a shot might drop him as he fled; or, finally, and most probably of all, that he might be drowned in ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... propriety. It is as purely ideal a doctrine as that of the Vedas. Its two eternal principles are both ideal. The plastic force which is one of them, Kapila distinctly declares cannot be perceived by the senses.[71] Soul, the other eternal and uncreated principle, who "is witness, solitary, bystander, spectator, and passive,"[72] is not only spiritual itself, but is clothed with a spiritual body, within the material body. In fact, the Karika declares the material universe to be the result of the contact of the Soul with Nature, and consists in chains with which Nature binds herself, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the men glanced toward the little group; but a bystander who had been present at the trial, said loud enough ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... A bystander once said: "Why don't you climb onto him and stay with him till he gets sick o' pitchin'; that's what a broncho buster ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... couple met. They were almost close together before either of them knew anything of the other's approach. A bystander would have discovered sufficient marks of confusion in the countenance of each; but they felt too much themselves to make any observation. As soon as Jones had a little recovered his first surprize, he accosted the young lady with some of the ordinary forms of salutation, which she in the same ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... backwards, I came in with a left and right as fast as a rapid double-hit could be delivered, with both blows upon his impudent mouth. In an instant he was on his back, with his heels in the air; and, as I prepared to operate upon his backer, or upon any bystander who might have a penchant for fighting, the crowd gave way, and immediately devoted themselves to their companion, who lay upon the ground in stupid astonishment, with his fingers down his throat searching for a tooth; his eyes were fixed upon my hands to discover the weapon with which he had ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... witness its departure. He was in a very good temper, however, for he had won what his companions called a hatful of money on the steeple-chase, and he stood to win on other races that were to come off that afternoon. During the interval that elapsed before the next race, he talked to a sociable bystander about Sir Philip Jocelyn, and the young lady he was going to marry. He ascertained that the wedding was to take place the next morning, and at ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the axe, when the Sheriff led him away to Arthur's Hall, saying the order of the execution was changed by the King's command, and Cobham was to precede Grey. Cobham came, with so bold an air as to suggest he had heard; but he prayed so lengthily that a bystander ejaculated he had 'a good mouth in a cry, but was nothing single.' He expressed repentance for his offence against the King. He corroborated all he had said against Sir Walter Ralegh as true 'upon ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... was Felix, the ex-slave, another protege of Claudius, who trembled when Paul of Tarsus told him a little wholesome truth. These men were all immensely rich, and once, when Claudius complained of poverty, a bystander said, "You should go into partnership with a couple of your freedmen, and then your finances would be all right." The fact that Narcissus, Pallas and Polybius constituted the real government is nothing against them, any more than it is to the discredit of certain Irish refugees that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... at a revival service in the Beulah Church, in 1822, conducted by Fathers Crandall, Tupper and McCully, twenty-five persons were immersed in Morris's millpond. During the service a woman stood up to exhort, handing her infant of six months to a bystander. The woman was Mrs. Tupper, and the infant the future Sir Charles Tupper. This must have been Sir Charles's first ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... angry with creatures of his own creation for thinking what they cannot help thinking, and being what they cannot help being. Every one has heard of the Predestinarian, who, having talked much of his God, was asked by a bystander to speak worse of the Devil if he could; but comparatively few persons feel the full force of that question, or are prepared to admit God-worshippers in general, picture their Deities as if they were ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... appreciated the great kindness shewn us by the units to which we were attached. Those of us who happened to be in or near Petit Douvre Farm during this attachment were much interested in finding some of the early drawings of Bairnsfather, as done for the "Bystander." The interior walls of the farm were covered with his charcoal sketches, in some cases to the order of Commanding Officers who were to follow! It was at the same farm that Pvte. Cottam, of D Company, acted as head butcher ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... found the prices higher than in Oaxaca or Puebla, and equal to those of a first-class hotel in Mexico itself. As the landlady seemed to have no disposition to do aught for us, we decided to look elsewhere. At a second so-called hotel we found a single bed. At this point, a bystander suggested that Don Pedro Barrios would probably supply us lodging; hastening to his house, I secured a capital room, opening by one door directly onto the main road, and by another, opposite, onto the large patio of his place. The room ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... outline and moulding; the teeth were not as they should have been, and the nose was unsatisfactory. But the eyes under their long lashes were shrewdness itself, and there was an individuality in the voice, a cheery even-temperedness in look and tone, which had a pleasing effect on the bystander. Her dress was neat and dainty; every detail of it bespoke a young woman who respected both herself and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that they have had its germs floating in their minds, though from the lack of favorable conditions, or some other cause, they never took root or became vital. An act of heroism is performed, and a bystander is conscious that he has that within him by which he could have taken the same step, although he did not. Some one steps forward and practically opposes a social custom that is admitted to be evil, yet maintained, and by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... succeeded in working loose my heavy gold belt, and I dashed it on the table in front of them. "There! Now you send for some gold scales, right now, and you divide that up! Right here! Damn it all, boys," I ended, with what to a cynical bystander would have seemed rather a funny slump into the pathetic, "I thought we were all real friends! You've ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... finding their paradises. Touching the life of Alma, in Mohi's chronicles, 'tis related, that a man was once raised from the tomb. But rubbed he not his eyes, and stared he not most vacantly? Not one revelation did he make. Ye gods! to have been a bystander there! ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... interrupted a bystander. "Git in the haymow an' think they got to have their blamed ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... by the suit. It fell away, exposing the initials S.M. carefully worked into his shirt. Second Mistake, Malone thought wildly, muttered, "Sorry," again and turned west, feeling fairly grateful to the unfortunate bystander. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... down for a moment, only to arise the next and walk to the board announcing the arrival of trains. Almost immediately one pulled into the station. Perceiving a bystander—one of the sort that always give the impression of being well-informed—he inquired ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... internal management and artifice, and how explicit they are with themselves, is another question. There are many operations of the mind, many things pass within, which we never reflect upon again; which a bystander, from having frequent opportunities of observing us and our conduct, may make shrewd ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... to face. What was done could not be undone; but, though he greeted her with only a calm bow, and she fluttered her fan with abrupt little jerks to conceal her embarrassment, nothing took place which could surprise the bystander; indeed, Katharina's pretty features assumed a defiant expression when he enquired how the little white dog was, and she coldly replied that she had had him chained up in the poultry-yard, for that the patriarch, who was their guest, could not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bystander, standin' by, spoke of Bonnie Castle. It stood up sort o' by itself on a rock one side of Alexandria Bay. And I wondered if Holland's earnest soul that had thought so much on't once, ever looked down on it now. For instance when the ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. He must ignore it; and to the bystander he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... money out of the collection, as soon as possible," Rand said. "To reopen the question of her husband's death and start a murder investigation wouldn't exactly expedite things. I'm just a more or less innocent bystander, who wants to know whether there is going to be any trouble or not.... Now, you came here to tell me what happened on the night of ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... home. Mr Gordon also followed the body to the house, and, feeling that at such a time any attempt at comforting the childless widow would be of no avail, he merely placed a sum of money in the hands of a respectable-looking person, a bystander, for her use, and slowly and sick at heart he was in the act of returning to his friends, when he met Christina Cunningham, who was in search of him, for the purpose of bringing him back to luncheon. She saw that he was deadly pale, and hurriedly asked if he felt ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... the gallows being raised was a little lad, the town swineherd, who asked a bystander the meaning of the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... as hairs on her head," replied the bystander. "She wants to marry the Prince of Moonshine, but he only dresses in silver, and the King thinks he might find a richer son-in-law. The Princess will go ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... defensive. The man was in bad training, and luckily I had the advantage by an inch or so in length of arm. Before five minutes was over, I had caught enough of the bystander's remarks to know that my noble host had betted a pony that I should be knocked down in a quarter-of-an-hour. My one object now was to make him lose his money. My opponent did his utmost for his patron, and fairly winded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... put by a bystander; but instead of answering, it went on as though continuing the former train ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... ye!" commented a bystander. "Don't be frettin' that a-way, ma'am; sure even if he's in gaol itself, he'll be out agin before ye know where yez are an' maybe they wouldn't keep him ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... it is to beguile the simple-minded Dutchman by selling him worthless goods at five times their value. "I have loads of friends among the Boers. There is hardly a Boer in the Transvaal who does not know me"—("To his cost," put in a bystander with a grunt)—"and yet I have tried all I know"—("And you know a good deal," said the same rude man)—"and I ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... happens to us in this world, that when we come with our heart in our hands to some person or other,—when we pour out some generous burst of feeling so enthusiastic and self-sacrificing, that a bystander would call us fool and Quixote;—it often, I say, happens to us, to find our warm self suddenly thrown back upon our cold self; to discover that we are utterly uncomprehended, and that the swine who would have munched up the acorn does not know what ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that shot the tailor," proclaimed an awe-stricken bystander. (Legend takes strange twists in Our Square as elsewhere.) Some outlander, ignorant of our traditions, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... girl, and avowed its readiness to believe all that was related of her. [Morning Post, March 2, 1838.] "Her appearance as she sits, as pale and almost as still as a corpse, is strangely awful. She whistles to oblige Dr. Elliotson: an incredulous bystander presses his fingers upon her lips; she does not appear conscious of the nature of the interruption; but when asked to continue, replies in childish surprise, 'it can't.' This state of magnetic semi-existence will continue we know not how long. She has continued in it ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... right time. It is the fate of some men to come at the right moment, just as it is the lot of others never to be there when they are wanted and their place is filled by a bystander and an opportunity is gone for ever. Which is always a serious matter, for God only gives one or two opportunities to each ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... think one of the greatest bores of companionship is, not merely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as they might the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a process amusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely uncomfortable to the person being ready-shod: but that they bore you with never-ending talk about their pursuits, even when they know that you do not work in the same groove with them, and that they cannot hope ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... hear the little doctor by all means,' said Howe, with contemptuous generosity. 'I would not be any more affected by anything he might say than by the mewing of yonder kitten.' So vigorous was Tupper's speech that a bystander muttered that 'it was possible Joe would find the little doctor a cat that would scratch his eyes out.' In 1855 the prophecy was fulfilled. In his own county of Cumberland Howe was defeated by Tupper, and throughout ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... abide by this decision. They found it more practicable to secure to themselves an elevated reputation by severe observances, rigid self-denial, and the practice of the most inconceivable mortifications. This excited wonder and reverence and a sort of worship from the bystander, which industry and benevolence do not so assuredly secure. They therefore in frequent instances lacerated their flesh, and submitted to incredible hardships. They scourged themselves without mercy, wounded their bodies with lancets and nails, [145] and condemned ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... course, nothing of the stout lady still left in the bedroom; and when Elliot, heedless of the cheers and hand-shakes that met him, flung Lady Dover into the arms of the nearest bystander, and turned again towards the ladder, they were utterly at a loss to understand what he could ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Roaph's," he observed to a bystander, "that's a fearfo sect that gallas. Yoan been up to t' Holehouses to tey a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... never thought otherwise," answered my lady, rising and dropping him a curtsy, in which stately action, if there was obedience, there was defiance too; and in which a bystander, deeply interested in the happiness of that pair as Harry Esmond was, might see how hopelessly separated they were; what a great gulf of difference and discord ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the regular set—husband and wife. They had only been wed about three weeks, new time, and from the way they behaved towards each other, a innocent bystander would think they had only staggered away from the altar a hour before. They sit together on the sofa, three inches closer to each other than the paper is to the wall and both of them must of been palmists judgin' from the way they hung on to each other's hands. The male of the layout is ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... was weary of governing them, and that his arms being broken, he could no longer be a great warrior. He gave some messages for his friend, the agent, who was expected at the village, and then turning to a bystander, told him he had heard that day that he had a bottle of whiskey, and ordered him to bring it. This being done, he caused it to be poured down his throat, and when drunk he sang his death ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... An observant bystander would have perceived a queer sort of crispness in Morrison's manner from the outset of the interview; the same perspicacity would have detected something hard under the smooth surface of Despeaux's early politeness. Mr. Despeaux was not so elaborately ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... scientific gentleman did not appear to take the slightest interest in his explanations. On the contrary, with those expressive shrugs of the shoulder and shakes of the head which convey so much to the bystander without absolutely committing the actor,—with an occasional sly, mysterious, undertone remark to his colleagues,—he indicated very plainly, that, though his humanity would not permit him to give a worthy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was honesty. Madonna, or I have read your grey eyes in vain; it was enthusiasm—that flame of our fire so sacred that though it play the incendiary there shall be no crime—or where would be now the "Vas d'elezione"?—nor though it reveal a bystander's grin, any shame at all. I shall live to tell that story of thine, Lady Simonetta, to thy honour and my own respect; for, as a ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... enterprise. Buchanan's History is not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary, we can only say that he would have been ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of her father, occasioned by costly studies, her own brief sojourn at the court of Margaret, and the solitude, if not the struggles, in which her youth was consumed. It would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander to hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might unite in one. But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest, and found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his love for me?" asked Paulina. "It has never yet shaped itself in words. A woman's own instinct generally tells her when she is truly loved; but how came you, a bystander, a mere looker- on, to discover Douglas ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sea had gained considerably in height, and, a few minutes afterwards all the horrors of a tempest seemed impending. The wind roared around me, pushing on the waves with a frothy velocity that, to a bystander, not to an inmate amidst them, would have been beautiful. It whistled with shrill and varying tones from the numberless crevices in the three immense rocky mountains by whose semicircular adhesion I was thus immured - and it burst forth at times in squalls, reverberating from height ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... office of the chief, sir; you will find him on the other side of the hall," said a bystander. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the crowd, which was orderly enough, and amused himself by noting the credulity of the country folk, until his attention was attracted by a solemn procession passing up the market-place behind the tents. He inquired of a bystander what ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... sighed Kit. "She seems good foundation for a civil war here. Helen of Troy,—a lady of an eastern clan!—started a war on less, and the cards are stacked against us if they start scrapping. When Mexican gentry begin hostilities, the innocent bystander gets the worst of it,—especially the Americano. So it is just as well the latest Richard in the field does not know whose bullet hit him in the leg, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... making the Englishmen again fall back in confusion. It is certain that these shots were discharged for no other purpose than that of frightening the crowd; one of them did take effect in the heel of a bystander, but in every other case the shots were fired high over the heads of the crowd. While this had been passing around the van, a more tragic scene was passing inside it. From the moment the report of ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... years of age, he had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, exclaiming, as he did so, "Would that the blow had been in the heart of Orange!" For this he was rebuked by a bystander, who told him it was not for him to kill princes, and that it was not desirable to destroy so good a captain as the Prince, who, after all, might one day ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to himself for a few minutes, and struggled hard to say something to his nephew, but could give forth only a feeble jabber, after which he turned blank again. Coronado, in the extreme of anxiety, now made another effort to get at Clara. Reaching her house, he learned from a bystander that she had gone out to walk with the Americano, and then he thought he discovered them ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... fought it with a determination apparent to every bystander, and now, on the last day of the trial, the counsel for the prosecution rose to sum up his case. He was listened to with attention, and his speech was effective. The theme was the individual who, after forgery and embezzlement, had taken French leave, quitting a post of trust and credit for ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and managed to slip through. Once they landed on Earth, they had the Steele names, but by the time that cleared, you were outbound with another set of papers. It may have confused them, because they knew David Briscoe was dead—and there was just a chance you were an innocent bystander who could raise a real row if they pulled you in. ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... parenthesis. I hope you haven't begun to think that I am the hero of this comedy. Let it be furthest from your thoughts. I am only a passive bystander.) ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... extemporise?' Aroused by his appeal, and the earnest look which accompanied it, Mozart sat down and played a simple theme; and then Beethoven, taking up the slender thread, improvised so finely—allowing his feelings to flow into the music as he went on—that a bystander could not fail to have been struck by the change which came over Mozart's face as he listened. The abstracted look gave place to one of pure astonishment. Then he arose from his seat, and, stepping softly into ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... laid his hand on the splash-board, saying, "What I want, though, is this trap here of yours, see, to drive in back myself;" and as he spoke the bystander followed him in canon, "What he wants, though, is that there trap of yours, see, to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... any bystander among you know The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him Afield or in the city? answer straight! The hour hath come ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... way back to the inn we passed the town lock-up, with a railed space in front of it, in which three great black-muzzled bloodhounds were stalking about, with fierce crimsoned eyes and red tongues lolling out of their mouths. They were used, a bystander told us, for the hunting down of criminals upon Salisbury Plain, which had been a refuge for rogues and thieves, until this means had been adopted for following them to their hiding-places. It was well-nigh dark ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a bystander, whose sympathies had been awakened for the much suffering heathen. "I saw him running for all he was worth. That's pretty strong ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... of more than common docility and a young childhood of few explicit revolts, the boy of twelve years old enters upon a phase which the bystander may not well understand but may make shift ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... game which created the most mirth was providing a goose for the tailors, which was accomplished by some of their confederates throwing into the circle any bystander who was not on his guard, and who, immediately that he was thrown in, was thrashed and kicked by the whole circle until he could make his escape. An attempt of this kind was soon made upon Seymour, who, being well acquainted with the game, and perceiving the party ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whistle. At the first sound, Traveller stopped and pricked up his ears. The General whistled a second time, and the horse with a glad whinny turned and trotted quietly back to his master, who patted and coaxed him before tying him up again. To a bystander expressing surprise at the creature's docility the General observed that he did not see how any man could ride a horse for any length of time without a perfect understanding being established between them. My sister Mildred, who rode ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son |
