"Passer-by" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street corner, or squatting in the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... this palace well, and has described it as the early home of his Improvisatore. In those days two fountains tinkled, one within, the other just outside, the dusky iron-barred basement. One fountain, however, has ceased to flow, and now if a passer-by peeps in at the grated window, whence issue hot strong vapors and bursts of merry laughter, he will see a huge stone basin into whose foaming contents one fountain drips, and over which a dozen washerwomen bend and pound with all their might and main in a bit of chiaroscuro ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... that blew at evening from the sea. A moment later Janaway knew that the stranger was Lord Blandamer, and stepped back instinctively to let him pass. But the open door had caught the attention of the passer-by; he stopped, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to escape. The use of the great hall with its view across the river was practically denied to her, she was never allowed to look out of the window under any circumstances, for fear she might appeal to some passer-by for aid, and, in general, unless she was under especial surveillance, she was confined, day in and day out, in a little back room, a veritable cell, which was without windows, and where her only light came from the rude candles common to that age. Priests ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Mayo had been the meek and apologetic passer-by along the ocean lane, expecting to be crowded to one side, dodging when the big fellow ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... James Renwick, Jr., the architect who built Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. His house was one of the great houses of the early days. Now known as the De Rham house—Brevoort sold it in 1857 to Henry De Rham for fifty-seven thousand dollars,—it still strikes the passer-by on account of its individuality of appearance. But long before the De Rhams entered in possession it had its romance. There, the evening of February 24, 1840, was held the first masked ball ever given in New York. It was, to quote Mr. George S. Hellman, "the most splendid ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... led downstairs into the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... inscriptions. Independently of the obelisk, the cupola of this temple bore eight allegorical statues, of which the one was France in mourning; the second, Justice raising her sword, and the others the principal virtues of the King. On the principal side these words occurred: "Passer-by, whosoever thou be, abhor Jean Chatel, and the Jesuits who beguiled his youth and destroyed ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid, cold, moonshine women, whose souls ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... chapel. Only the apse was left. It contained one narrow deeply-splayed Romanesque window, and a piscina where the priest washed his hands. The altar-stone lay upon the ground where the altar must have stood, and behind it a rough wooden cross had been piously raised to remind the passer-by ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... their heads to the skies, and all the old stone walls and hedgerows are covered with trailing vines and blooming flowers. The air is rich with song of birds, sweet with perfume, and the blossoms gaily shower their petals on the passer-by. Overhead, white, billowy clouds float lazily over their background of ethereal blue. Cool June breezes fan the cheek. Distant knolls are dotted with flocks of sheep whose bells tinkle dreamily; and drowsy hum of beetle makes the bass, while lark song forms the air of the sweet symphony ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the young Warreners and their cousin went out for a walk, and, fixing a piece of paper against a tree, practiced pistol shooting for an hour. Any passer-by ignorant of the circumstances would have wondered at the countenances of these young people, engaged, apparently, in the amusement of pistol practice. There was no smile on them, no merry laugh when the ball went wide of the mark, no triumphant shout at a successful ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... work; besides, they two were there inside to give the alarm on hearing the slightest noise. Formerly, by the help of the dog, the watching had been more complete, for the animal was so alert that no passer-by could approach the doors for an instant without his barking. After its death the Senor Obrero spoke month after month of getting another, but he had never fulfilled his promise. But all the same, without ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... The vesper sparrow nests upon the ground in the open fields, but the junco chooses a mossy bank or tussock by the roadside, or in the woods, and constructs a very artistic nest of dry grass and hair which is so well hidden that the passer-by ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... had turned out of the gate of La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way. Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an eager and comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He saw and noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as to the means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing the slightest differences in the medley of things and people. Armed with hope, as the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected help. To anybody but ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... and I were standing on the window-ledge, peering down—to the best of our ability—into the square and into the area depths below. Like a snow-flake in summer, we saw our paper-twist lying on the pavement; but our delight rose to ecstasy when a portly passer-by stooped and picked up the document ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... surrounding the Convent of Monterey. They looked for all the world like a row of charming gargoyles—every mouth was open—although there was no blankness in those active mischief-hunting eyes. Their bodies, propped on boxes, were concealed by the wall from the passer-by, and from the sharp eyes of duenas by a group of trees just behind them. Their section of the wall faced the Presidio, which in the early days of the eighteenth century had not lost an adobe, and was full of active life. At one end was the house of the Governor of all ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... looking at the lower end of men, attracted little attention from the passer-by. He who has his eyes on the ground passes unheeded. For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of boots not made in Konigsberg. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... of the mild weather, Matty's stand had been removed out of doors and beneath the shelter of Johnny Petersen's shop; and this situation proved more profitable than it had been within, as many a charitable passer-by, seeing the pitiful figure and pinched face of the poor child, would stop to purchase. During the hours of the day when the sun was warm and bright, her surroundings were not much less attractive than they had been within; for the glass sashes of the little flower-store were generally wide open behind ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... another light,—that which came from Dolly's windows. She had been hard to suit about her arrangements; she would not have candles lit, for she did not wish an illumination that might make the interior visible to a chance passer-by; and yet she would not have the shutters shut, for the master of the house coming home must read his welcome from afar in rays of greeting from the windows. So she made up the fires and left the curtains open; and ruddy firelight streamed out ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... proceeding to the front without the opportunity of posting the letters they had written, or sending home the money they had received during the voyage. With his usual carelessness, 'Tommy' was leaving his letters with any one he saw on the jetty, and even confiding his money to be sent home by any chance passer-by. ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... say if I was the only passer-by who heard the cry; certainly I was the only one who responded to it. I ran down the narrow street, which was practically deserted, and heard windows thrown up as I passed for ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... them so they are left to loaf in their hammocks in peace, and no more capable of ruling themselves than of lifting themselves by their non-existent boot-straps. Outwardly life seems to run as smoothly as elsewhere, and the casual passer-by does not to his knowledge make the acquaintance of those reputed bands of adventurers from many climes said to carry out swiftly and efficiently every whispered ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... so thick that it was entered with difficulty, and no passer-by would dream that a party was hidden within it. Near the stream Edmund and his companions with their swords soon cleared away a circle, and with the boughs constructed an arbour. A thin screen of bushes separated them from the river, but they could see the water, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... old, when friends gave love for love.' And yet I could have sworn—Come now, a wager," purred Demetrios. "Show your contempt of this bauble to be as great as mine by throwing this shiny pebble, say, into the gallery, for the next passer-by to pick up, and I will credit your sincerity. Do that and I will even name my price ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... escape. A policeman was strolling along his beat. Emily and Hannah were taking their places in the old-fashioned barouche preparatory to starting on their afternoon amble. Just across the road old "All a-growing all a- blowing" was standing by his barrow, loudly urging a passer-by to ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... compromises and weak compliance on the part of disciples too timid to stand alone, or too sensitive to face a sarcasm and a smile. A wholesome contempt for the world's cackle is needed for following Christ. The geese on the common hiss at the passer-by who goes steadily through the flock. How grave and awful is that irony, if we may call it so, which casts the retribution in the mould of the sin! The judge shall be 'ashamed' of such unworthy disciples—shall blush to own such as His. May we venture to put stress on the fact that He does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... spoke he pointed with his whip to a heap of twigs and pieces of wood which lay to the left of the road, directly before the travellers, and which presented a repulsive aspect. It is customary for every passer-by to throw a stone or a piece of wood upon such a blood-stained spot, and thus the monument of murder grows under the continued curse of society. Thus it now stands there, hateful and repulsive amid the beautiful fir-trees, and it seemed as if the earth had given forth the ugliest of its mis-shaped ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the small rooms serve only partially to shut out peering eyes; they afford no protection from listening ears. Moreover, these homes of the middle and lower classes open upon public streets, and a passer-by may see much of what is done within. Even the desire for privacy seems lacking. The publicity of the private (?) baths and sanitary conveniences which the Occidental puts entirely out of sight has ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... provided with children. Girls of five or six were playing games with sleeping infants strapped to their backs, and even boys were impressed into this nursery work. The younger children are clothed only in kimonos, so that the passer-by witnesses many strange sights ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... up, it becomes more of a liquid than a solid; and it has an aroma by virtue of which it secures the attention and commands the respect of the most casual passer-by. It is more than just cheese. I should call it mother-of-cheese. It is to other and lesser cheeses as civet cats are to canary birds—if you get what I mean; and in its company the most boisterous Brie or the ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, left with us forever. We will inscribe on the tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.' The passer-by will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of feeling will go out of their way to come ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... to inquire what kind of patties were inviting the passer-by on Mr Altham's counter. They were a very large variety: oyster, crab, lobster, anchovy, and all kinds of fish; sausage-rolls, jelly, liver, galantine, and every sort of meat; ginger, honey, cream, fruit; cheese-cakes, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... look, and hurriedly note his points, fearing every moment that he would take wing; but not a feather stirred. A king on his throne could not be more absolutely indifferent to a passer-by than this little beauty. He was self-possessed as a thrush, and serene as a dove, but he was not conveniently placed for study, being above my head in strong sunlight, against a glaring sky. I could see only ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... end of Fleet Street the passer-by cannot fail to be attracted by the picturesque, timbered house which faces Chancery Lane. This unique survival of the past, which has been carefully restored within recent years, has often been described as "Formerly the Palace of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey." Another legend ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Lew. "A passer-by would have about as much chance of seeing us in there as we have of discovering China from this hillside. The question is, how are we going to ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... a town or village, we asked some passer-by about the hotels, we would be looked over and somewhat doubtfully asked: "Do you want a two-dollar house?" And we soon learned to pocket our pride, and ask if there was not a cheaper house. Strange that people whose business is hospitality ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... fourpence," gave him a happy idea for unravelling the perplexity of Valentin in Les Deux Maitresses; and his unconscious exclamation, "Si je vous le disais pourtant que je vous aime," which caused a passer-by in the street to laugh at him, furnished the opening of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... northern side disappeared beneath the mortar torn from the fronts of the houses by the bullets, and was as white as if snow had fallen on it; while pools of blood left large dark patches on that snow of ruins. The foot of the passer-by avoided a corpse only to tread upon fragments of broken glass, plaster, or stone; some houses were so riddled by the grape and cannon-balls, that they seemed on the point of tumbling down; this was the case with M. Sallandrouze's, which we have already ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Puss passer-by, within this simple tomb Lies one whose life fell Atropos hath shred; The happiest cat on earth hath heard her doom, And sleeps for ever in a marble bed. Alas! what long delicious days I've seen! O cats of Egypt, my illustrious sires, You who on altars, bound with garlands green, Have melted ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... passer-by, who went up so quickly without trouble and whose march in sandals was not heard, distances more and more profound deepened on all sides, blended in twilight ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... when I came out of my cottage and passed his garden he was there, his crutches under his arms, leaning on the gate, silently regarding me as I went by. Not boldly; his round dark eyes were like those of some shy animal peering inquisitively but shyly at the passer-by. His was a tumble-down old thatched cottage, leaky and miserable to live in, with about three- quarters of an acre of mixed garden and orchard surrounding it. The trees were of several kinds—cherry, apple, pear, plum, and one big walnut; and there were also shade trees, some shrubs ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... being in his right mind, dare to smite his father and mother, or his grandfather and grandmother, let the passer-by come to the rescue; and if he be a metic or stranger who comes to the rescue, he shall have the first place at the games; or if he do not come to the rescue, he shall be a perpetual exile. Let the citizen in the like case be praised or blamed, and the slave receive freedom or a hundred ...
— Laws • Plato
... the Vesper Club!" shouted a belated passer-by. The crowd swarmed around from Broadway, as if it were noon ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... name of Dick—an abbreviation of Richard—had been given to the little orphan, it was because it was the name of the charitable passer-by who had picked him up two or three hours after his birth. As to the name of Sand, it was attributed to him in remembrance of the place where he had been found; that is to say, on that point of land called Sandy-Hook, which forms the entrance of the port of New York, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... in a sunny corner with their work. It was quite another world, neither the Champs-Elysees nor Montmartre. All looked perfectly respectable, and the couples sitting on out-of-the-way benches, in most affectionate attitudes, were too much taken up with each other to heed the passer-by. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... went along, a certain feeling of shame touched him. Surely his predicament must be apparent to every passer-by. No doubt, every one recognised the unsuccessful man in the very way he slouched along. The young girls in lawns, muslins, and garden hats, returning from the Post Office, their hands full of letters, must surely see in him the type ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofty monument of snow upon the battle-field, and crown it with the victor's statue, hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter, the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the level common; and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, "How came it there? Who reared it? And what means it?" The shattered pedestal of many a battle monument has provoked these questions, when none ...
— Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unusual on the southern coast. From these houses, as you approach the city, you enter upon a scene of filth and dirt indescribable, and have to pass through a line of beggars, who exhibit the most loathsome and revolting sores, to excite the pity of the passer-by. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... word California, should be a lesson to any actor in emotional sound values. The thing that struck me most on my first visit to California was that boosting instinct. In store windows everywhere, I saw signs begging the passer-by to root for this development project or that. Several years ago, passing down Market street, I ran into a huge crowd gathered at the Lotta Fountain. I stopped to investigate. Moving steadily from a top to a lower window of one of the newspaper offices, as though unwound from a reel, ran a long ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... half-mile before coming to the station. It is a fine old structure, planted firmly and solidly on the ground, and looking as though it might stand another century, without showing more marks of age than it does now after having closed its first one hundred years. This is an object in which every passer-by, even the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... end of it, when she trimmed it and glazed and ironed it and gave it to her lord, saying, "Carry it to the bazar and sell it to one of the merchants at fifty dinars; but beware lest thou sell it to a passer-by, as this would cause a separation between me and thee, for we have foes who are not unthoughtful of us." "I hear and I obey," answered he and, repairing to the bazar, sold the curtain to a merchant, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... assassinated. The murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. But often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... were left to me for my declining days, Its form should be that I might hear the chimes that memory plays, And when at last upon my grave the wavy grass had sprung, Some passer-by could truly say "His ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... to preside over wealth and commercial prosperity. In the houses of the poor it is nearly always placed in the room facing the street; and Matsue shopkeepers usually erect it in their shops—so that the passer-by or the customer can tell at a glance in what deities the occupant puts his trust. There are many regulations concerning it. It may be placed to face south or east, but should not face west, and under no possible circumstances should it be suffered to face ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... admired these gay and careless beings, the more conscious he grew of his own outlandishness; he knew that he looked like a man who has no idea of the direction of the streets, who stands close to the Palais Royal and cannot find it, and asks his way to the Louvre of a passer-by, who tells him, "Here you are." Lucien saw a great gulf fixed between him and this new world, and asked himself how he might cross over, for he meant to be one of these delicate, slim youths of Paris, these young ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... and occasionally almost white, but borrowing a golden hue from their purses, that appeared and disappeared so rapidly, as to almost make me dizzy. I was about as bewildered as the poor Indian who sought to take the census of London by notching a stick for every passer-by he met. And now before we are through supper on the first evening of our arrival, another appears, who is evidently an eligible 'parti' and twice as good as the minx deserves; but in a few days he, too, will vanish into thin air, and another and different style of man will ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... far the best arrangement; it would never do for it to be left floating where any passer-by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... ribbon round its neck, and across the corner hung a gorgeous hammock of Persian colored threads, with two or three pillows of canary-colored China silk in one end. A bamboo lounging-chair and a Shaker rocker completed the picture; and the passer-by could generally see Miss Anita Ferguson reclining in the one, and a young (but not Wise) man from the East in the other. It was not always the same young man any more than the decorations were always of the ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of those who profess and call ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... member of the family to another living in the same house the door-bell is always rung by the servant before she brings the parcel in, to make believe that it has come from some outsider; and if a parcel has to be taken to a friend's house it is very often entrusted to a passer-by, with the request to leave it at the door and ring the bell. In houses where there are many children, some of the elders dress up as the good Bishop St. Nicholas and his black servant. The children are always very much impressed by the knowledge ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... the tense agony of suspense, and he peered cautiously out from under the silk blind. A late passer-by went slowly up the street, and Leh Shin's heart beat a loud obbligato to the sound of his wooden pattens. By craning his neck as the man passed, he could just distinguish the Burman crouching behind the wooden man, who blandly indicated the heavy padlock. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... been a charming picture, a passer-by, one apart, living her own life. Now she has listened to me; she has come at my call; she has brought ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... poem he had once attempted; it was suggested by a reading of Coleridge—and there, possibly, lay the point of association. Coleridge: then he fell upon literary reminiscences. Where, by the way, was St. Mary Redcliffe? He put the inquiry to a passer-by, and was directed. By dreary thoroughfares he came into view of the church, and stood gazing at the spire, dark against a blotchy sky. Then he mocked at himself for acting as if he had an interest in Chatterton, when in truth the name signified boredom to him. Oh, these English ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... down in wide-eyed intentness upon me. How annoyed he must have felt at all this hullabaloo, this lover of privacy and quiet, to have his name cried from the treetops, and his retreat advertised to every passer-by! ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... hardly ten years of age, I would carry stones in my pocket and tackle the school teachers if they attempted to whip me. My father was away from home at his work most of the time, and my mother (God bless her dear old soul) could not manage me. She has often called in some passer-by to help her punish me. I can now see I richly deserved all the punishment I ever received, and more too. When there was company at our house, and my mother would be busy preparing a meal, I would get my bow and arrows and shoot the cups off from the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... ambulances to pick up any frightened persons possessed of less agility than a kangaroo or a jack-rabbit might inadvertently have been bowled over. These disasters are seldom the automobilist's fault, and, happily, they are becoming fewer and fewer; but the indecision that overcame the passer-by, in the early days of the bicycle, still exists with many whenever an automobile comes in sight, and they back, and fill, and worry the automobilist into such a bad case of nerves that, in spite of himself, something of the nature of an accident, for which ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... figure, indeed, whose boots, bright and polished, were thrust helplessly enough through the leg-holes of the stocks, as though offering themselves to the notice of every passer-by. Tall he was, and point-de-vice from those same helpless boots to the gleaming silver buckle in his ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse, this man imbruted by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer-by: "Well, Comrade!" He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer-by, the joyous smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly glance at him and answered, shaking ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Man wishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The roadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is something more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True alms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material hardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown to him by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more grateful to him who pities him but does not help ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... suspicious characters stepped nimbly about the cross-streets in quest of prey, and innumerable wrecks of Womanhood, God pity them! shed a deeper darkness over the shaded and dusky lanes and byways whence they momently emerged to salute the passer-by. Beneath the shelter of night, Misery stole forth from its squalid lair, no longer awed by the Police, to beseech the compassion of the stranger and pour its tale of woe and suffering into the rarely willing ear. Serene and silvery in ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... charmed with the quiet of this place," she remarked presently; "never a scream of a locomotive to break it, no pavements to echo to the footsteps of the passer-by, no sound of factory or mill, or rumble of wheels, scarcely anything to be heard, even on week-days, but the thunder of the surf and occasionally a ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... something better than he had ever experienced in his own home. There came a day when the appeal was so insistent that he braced himself to the effort, and after many weary miles reached the place of his dreams, only to find that the blue distance had disappeared. Meeting a passer-by he told him of his journey and its object, and of his disappointment, "Look behind you," was the reply. He looked, and behold! over the very spot he had left in the morning—over his own home—the blue haze hung, as a veil of beauty, with its ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... a passer-by upon whose complacent features prosperity had set its smug hall-mark—"there, but for the grace of God, goes Nat Duncan!" He rolled the paraphrase upon his tongue and found it bitter—not, however, with a tonic bitterness. "Lord, what a worthless critter I am! No good to myself—nor ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... been my desire to become a Saint, but I have always felt, in comparing myself with the Saints, that I am as far removed from them as the grain of sand, which the passer-by tramples underfoot, is remote from the mountain whose summit is lost in ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... the gondola still glides on, there is heard a slow and distant tolling of bells. The Deed is done, then?—no longer will the piteous hands be thrust out of the barred window—no longer will the wild cry for help startle the passer-by in the night-time. And now again, as the gondola goes on its way, another sound—still more muffled and indistinct—the sound of a church organ, with the solemn chanting of voices. Are they praying for the soul of the dead? The sound becomes more and more distant; the gondola ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the principal hotel were dark; and without being stared at curiously by any passer-by, I stationed myself under the first floor ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... gave utterance to this philosophical sentiment, as if he were a thirsty, cold-eyed tiger, lying in wait to spring upon an unwary passer-by. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... people are constantly passing, saying in the presence of others, "Let any one who does not add to this liar's heap (TUGONG BULA) suffer from pains in the head." Then others do likewise, and the nature of the growing heap becoming known, every passer-by throws a stick upon it lest he should suffer pains. In this way the heap grows until it attains a large size, in some cases that of a small haystack, and, being known by the name of the liar, is a cause ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in Kansas is planting fruit trees on all its streets, so that in a few years there will be an abundance of fruit free to every passer-by. This is a most excellent plan, but individuals would be likely to find the fruit molested if only a few trees are planted in ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... great variety of flowers arranged with genuine taste, a little too formal and stiff to meet our fancy, but yet finding ready customers at reasonable prices. In Madrid, Florence, or Paris, it is sunny-faced girls who offer these fragrant emblems to the passer-by; but at Hong Kong it is done with less effect by almond-eyed men and ragged boys. The city is so far Europeanized as to be less typical of Chinese manners and customs than are cities further inland; but revelations come ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... different from what I had expected him to be. He ought to have taken after his maternal grandmother, whereas he has been born, as the proverb has it, 'like not father nor mother, but like a chance passer-by.'" Thus from the first life regarded the little Chichikov with sour distaste, and as through a dim, frost-encrusted window. A tiny room with diminutive casements which were never opened, summer or winter; an invalid father in a dressing-gown lined with lambskin, and with an ailing foot swathed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a large board, upon which was to be distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather hut, next to the road, was a row of wooden sheds, separated from the path by a muddy ditch, and partly filled with hay and straw. These cribs might have been supposed the habitations of the cows, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... The passer-by smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the world's ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... there had been great rains, and the water might still be higher than usual. Seeing neither hillside nor meadows, nor river, but a heath, level and white as a mantle of snow, Germain stopped, looked about for a house, and waited for a passer-by, but could find nothing to set him right. Then he retraced his steps and reentered the wood. But the mist thickened yet more, the moon was completely hidden, the roads were execrable, and the quagmires deep. Twice the gray almost fell. Her heavy load made her lose courage, and although ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... being thus lengthened by five or six minutes' walk. That night also Helene turned into the Rue Raynouard, craving for gloom and stillness, and entranced by the loneliness of the long thoroughfare, which was lighted by only a few gas-lamps, without the shadow of a single passer-by falling across ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... colossal influence—by his satisfied and successful air. The former Marseillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the passer-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded his rags and his hopes on the Canebiere, dreaming at the back of his dark shop of the triumphs, the pleasures, the revels and the indigestions that money affords, had, moreover, always preserved the bitterness of those wretched days and his red, Jewish lip ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... sepulchral stone Some name arrests the passer-by; Thus, when thou view'st this page alone, May mine attract ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... To my mind it is far better to remind the ignorant who perhaps never heard of Tompion or Graham, to hold their memory in grateful respect. Possibly, too, the inscription on the tablet may prompt the casual passer-by to look up what these two men did, and if so a keener appreciation ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... to be seen a glass case, inclosing a ham still in good preservation. A slab of black marble attracts the eye of visitors, who find thereon the following inscription in Latin, engraved in letters of gold—'Passer-by, contemplate here the mortal remains of the pig which acquired for itself imperishable glory by the discovery of the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... The rope was not strong enough, however, to bear his weight; it snapped when he was some twenty-five feet from the ground, and caused him to fall with his back upon the stone pavement. There he lay, in an almost unconscious state, for a considerable time. But no passer-by observed him; and before daylight he was able to crawl to the house of an old nurse of his eldest son's, who gladly afforded ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... one of his guests—young Wainwright—leaping down the stairs. He looked up with a surprised question. But Stephen ran past him, across the office, without heed. He gained the door, rushed down the steps, and shouted. The boys ceased playing, a passer-by came to a stop, out of the saloon opposite stepped Miguel. Miguel hastened across, drawing his hand over his mouth as he ran. Stephen opened ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... grim old city gates. Once outside, under the wide blue sky in the free open air of the country, he drew a long, long breath of pleasure, and quickly found a hidden corner in the cleft of the hoary trunk of an olive-tree, where no passer-by could see him. There he sat, his chin resting on his hands, gazing and gazing out over the plain below, drinking in the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... inoffensiveness to most things. But, away in a by-yard, with a gate marked "private," there stands a shed wherein the storks are kept warm in winter, behind wooden bars; and between these bars stork-heads have a way of dropping at the toes of the favoured passer-by, like to action of a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... offered the man a sovereign. Naturally enough the fellow could not change it, and Barnes went in to get some silver from his rooms, promising to return in a minute or two. The cabby descended and walked to the corner of the street to see if he could beg a match for his pipe from any passer-by. He may have been away for perhaps five minutes, certainly no more, during which time he stood with his back to the Mansions. Seeing no one about, he returned to his cab, ascended to his seat, naturally without looking inside, and fell fast asleep. The next thing he remembers is ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... know—they had been but few, surely, and yet in ten minutes after their first speech all those who gazed knew that the tale was told. And as they rode homeward together beneath the arching trees and through the crowded streets, their faces wore such looks as drew each passer-by to turn and gaze after them, and to themselves the whole great world had changed; and of a surety, nowhere, nowhere, two hearts beat to such music, or two souls ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... property was constantly boasting about it to his friends, for he maintained that it was the richest, and most beautiful, and most valuable—hm—in all the country round. Surely no other thing in this world ever found itself more admired or prized than this SOMETHING did. The commonest passer-by would notice it, and say all manner of fine things in its praise, whether in the early spring, the full summer, or the autumn, for at each of these seasons it put on a fresh charm, and formed a subject of ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... its presence. Such a serpent was never molested. But if a snake rattled after an Indian had passed, the red man went back and killed the creature, on the ground that it was a sneak and a coward, which had neglected to give warning to the passer-by. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... most tender thing that has ever come into my life—or yours. It must never be accused of giving pain to you, so I shall obey you—and wait. You are right to avoid the risk of entrusting a single word of hope to me. I am a passer-by. My sincerity, my honesty of purpose remain to be proved. Time will serve my cause. I can only ask you to believe in me—to trust me a little more each day—and to let your ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and not from the inside of the room. And even if they have already taken to their heels"—Jimmie Dale was leading Burton up the stairs again as he talked—"it might prove exceedingly inconvenient for us if some passer-by should happen to recollect that he saw two men of our general appearance leaving the premises. Now keep close—and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... tried the window bars. The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness. Baffled in his attempt to wrench the bars away, he shouted at the top of his voice, hoping that some passer-by—some good Samaritan—would hear his cry and come to his relief. Some one laughed out there in the night; a low, coarse laugh that chilled ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon |
