"Prefatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lecture; he could not even recall how it began! He arose, after his introduction, in a bath of cold perspiration. The applause gave him a moment to recover himself, but not a word came to his mind. He sparred for time by some informal prefatory remarks expressing regret at his illness and that he had been compelled to disappoint his audience a few days before, and then he stood helpless! In sheer desperation he looked at Mrs. Bok sitting in the stage box, who, divining her husband's plight, motioned to the inside pocket of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver, which, in conjunction with the members of the Publication Sub-committee—Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W. Douglas—I have helped to put through the press. But scarcely any prefatory remarks are necessary. This book may well stand on its own merits. Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad satisfaction that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of our grey mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept waters, and the streets and skyscrapers ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... of a dullard as Pope himself. The consequent alterations make the hero of the poem a thoroughly incongruous figure, and greatly injure the general design. The poem appeared in this form in 1743, with a ponderous prefatory discourse by Ricardus Aristarchus, contributed by the faithful Warburton, and illustrating his ponderous vein of ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... other facts I was at the time vividly aware: of the charm of finding the archaeologist in an upper room of the mediaeval church which is turning itself into his study, of listening to his prefatory talk, so informal and so easy that one did not realize how learned it was, and then of following him down to the scene of his researches and hearing him speak wisely, poetically, humorously, even, of what he ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the "Memoirs of a Busy Life" purports to be a review merely of the period of Miss Abbott's career as a prima donna, there are three prefatory chapters wherein are detailed quite elaborately the incidents of her girl-life and of her early struggles. This we view with particular approval, the more in especial because, since Miss Abbott's achievement of fame, a number of hitherto ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... than the Joint Committee on Printing or I supposed it would be. I had no idea of the difficulties to overcome in obtaining the Presidential papers, especially the proclamations and Executive orders. In the Prefatory Note to Volume I, I said: "I have sought to bring together in the several volumes of the series all Presidential proclamations, addresses, messages, and communications to Congress excepting those nominating persons ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... of the work, and one Latin, the Latin version being generally supposed to be a translation. The Latin MS., Regula Anachoritarum sive de vita solitaria ( Magdalen College, Oxford, No. 67, fol. 50) has a prefatory note:— Hic incipit prohemium venerabilis patris magistri Simonis de Gandavo, episcopi Sarum, in librum de vita solitaria, qaem scripsit sororibus suis anachoritis apud Tarente. But Bishop Simon of Ghent, who died in 1315, could not have written the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... prefatory chapter, but for two reasons:—First, that most novel readers, as my own conscience reminds me, are apt to be guilty of the sin of omission respecting that same matter of prefaces;—secondly, that it is a general custom with that class ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... tower which looketh towards Damascus." My temples throbbed with agony—I burned all over. I had no exact notions of death in bed, except that of my poor mother, and I thought that I was to die like her; the horrible fear seized me that all this burning was but prefatory to bursting out into flame and consuming into ashes. The dread hung about my young heart and turned that to ice, while the rest of my body was on fire. This was my last recollection, and then all was blank. For many days I lay unconscious of either pain or existence: when I awoke ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... regarded at these meetings; the lecture was announced for eight, but rarely began before half-past The present being an occasion of exceptional interest, twenty minutes past the hour saw the chairman rise for his prefatory remarks. He was a lank man of jovial countenance and jerky enunciation. There was no need, he observed, to introduce a friend and comrade so well known to them as the lecturer of the evening. 'We're always glad to hear him, and to-night, if I may ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... however, was a collection of translations, which he had printed by Schultz & Beneze, and published (3rd/ 15th June 1835) under the title of Targum, or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects. {142b} In a prefatory note, the collection is referred to as "selections from a huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits." Three months later he published another collection entitled ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... at first, and which attracted so powerfully that of all the world; but also to the order, which You gave me, to add a Bore, of which Yourself had the goodness to give me the idea, and which was proved by everyone to be the finest part of the work. [Footnote: See Prefatory Memoir, page xxviii. ?] I must confess, Sire, I never did any thing with such ease and readiness, as that part, where I had Your Majesty's ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... "After a prefatory conversation,—my blood (I thought it had been cooler) flushed over my whole countenance as he spoke—he alluded to my situation. He desired me to reflect—'and act like a prudent woman, as the best proof of my superior understanding; for he must own I had ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... anxious to be moved and stirred as he was to move and stir it. The sermon was intended to be a long one, for, had it been otherwise, Brother Hines had lost his reputation; and, therefore, the preacher, after a few prefatory statements, delivered in a grave and solemn manner, plunged boldly into the midst of his exhortations, knowing that he could go either backward or forward, presenting, with equal acceptance, fresh subject matter, or that already used, so long as his strength held out. He had not preached ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... unfinished, and though containing, in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation—has points of remarkable interest about it. One of these—a prefatory sketch of the melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains—is like nothing else in Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense fiction—it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... he wrote the Preface to the Volume[393], [dagger] which, though prefixed to it when bound, is always published with the Appendix, and is therefore the last composition belonging to it. The ability and nice adaptation with which he could draw up a prefatory address, was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... some prefatory account of the materials which compose this second posthumous volume of the Works of Mr. Burke, and of the causes which have prevented its earlier appearance, will be expected from me, I hope I may be indulged ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Imperial Edition Prefatory note to First Edition I An escort to the citadel II The master of the King's magazine III The wager and the sword IV The rat in the trap V The device of the dormouse VI Moray tells the story of his life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... occasionally mentioned here, stood in much Correspondence with the Crown-Prince in the years now following: Correspondence which was all published at the due distance of time; Suhm having, at his decease, left the Prince's Letters carefully assorted with that view, and furnished with a Prefatory "Character of the Prince-Royal (Portrait du Prince-Royal, par M. de Suhm)." Of which Preface this is a small paragraph, relating to the Siege of Philipsburg; offering us a momentary glance into one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at law commences in court. This is not so. Many suits are fought and decided by the special pleaders, and so never come into court; and, as a stiff encounter of this kind actually took place in Hardie v. Hardie, a word of prefatory explanation may be proper. Suitors come into court only to try an issue: an issue is a mutual lie direct: and towards this both parties are driven upon paper by the laws of pleading, which may be thus summed: 1. Every statement of the adversary ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Janet, who met him as he opened the door without any prefatory knock, and caught him with both hands; "I'm blithe to see yer bonny face ance mair. We're a' jist at ane mair wi' expeckin' ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the great Bauer does not draw very correctly! (602/3. F. Bauer, whom Pritzel calls "der grosste Pflanzenmaler." The reference is to his "Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants, with Notes and Prefatory Remarks by John Lindley," London, 1830-38, Folio. See "Fertilisation of Orchids," Edition II., page 82.) And, good Heavens, what a jumble ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... with some prefatory remarks, introduced Miss Rice, of Antioch College. Miss Rice announced as the theme of her address, "Woman's Work," and said that the work proper for woman is whatever she has the ability and opportunity to do. Miss Rice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... labour offered her in the person of Reed Opdyke. Glorious indeed would be the conversion and the consequent cure of a desperate case like that! It would be a brilliant vindication of her science from the slanders of that decreasing number who persisted in ignoring the prefatory X. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to his Jamie Telfer: "There is another ballad, under the same title as the following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little difference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed to the ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... our gentry as to the study of Letters, before and about 1500 A.D., is probably well represented by the opinion of one of them stated by Pace, in his Prefatory Letter to Colet, prefixed ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... humiliating than its foregoer. Teutsch Order is steadily sinking,—into debt, among other things; driven to severe finance-measures (ultimately even to 'debase its coin'), which produce irritation enough. Poland is gradually edging itself into the territories and the interior troubles of Preussen; prefatory to greater operations ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... bracketed prefatory lines, explanatory of the parchment on which are recorded the last hours and last talk of St. John with his devoted attendants, purport to have been written by one who was at the time the owner of the parchment. It appears to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification, but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the more evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... opens finely. There are none of these idle prefatory lines which one may skip over before one comes to the subject. Verses 9th ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the driver's seat of the First Person Singular, it is my proud privilege to crack the prefatory whip and start this newest and best Le Gallienne Vehicle upon its course through the garlanded Via Laurea to the Sign ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... acknowledged in a prefatory note to the epigrams my obligation to Dr. Hermann Georg Fiedler, Taylorian Professor of the German Language and Literature at Oxford, in respect of his verifications of the German originals of many of the epigrams published by Coleridge ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the completion of the series by an attempt to make a critical examination of the salient points which distinguish his genius, and mark his place in general literature. Mrs. Ritchie tells us in a brief prefatory note that although her father's wishes have prevented her from writing his complete biography she has at last determined to publish memories which chiefly concern his books. Her desire has also been 'to mark down some of the truer chords to which his life was habitually set'; and accordingly ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... pretensions to culture. She simply chronicles a tour made in her husband's yacht, accompanied by two or three young children and as many friends. But she has good sense, good temper and character, and what she writes fully justifies her husband's prefatory statement, that "the voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been completed, without the impulse derived from her perseverance and determination." Unprepared by special study, and quite devoid of science, she yet notes well, and interests us in, the animals, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... eleventh edition of this book goes to press, the opportunity is given for a brief prefatory description of a pilgrimage to Hubbard's death-place in the Labrador Wilderness from which ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... writer of this prefatory page, the book he thus introduces is an exceptionally sane, practical and valuable treatment of the problem of problems suggested by our present American Civilization, namely: The Training of the On-coming Generation—the new Americans—who are to realize the dreams of our ancestors ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... touched on. In 1903 G. F. Monkshood and George Gamble arranged a compilation from Saltus's work which they entitled "Wit and Wisdom from Edgar Saltus" (Greening and Co., London). The work is done without sense or sensitiveness and the prefatory essay is without salt or flavour of any sort. An anonymous writer in "Current Literature" for July, 1907, asks plaintively why this author has been permitted to remain in obscurity and quotes from some of the reviews. In "The Philistine" for October, 1907, Elbert Hubbard ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... lost in making their entrance through the gate. Innumerable instances of the same kind might be quoted, all tending to show how strongly among the peasantry of the south this superstition is entertained. However, I shall not detain the reader further by any prefatory remarks, but shall proceed to lay before him ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... kind—a gathering which, although it proved abortive so far as its particular purpose was concerned, yet had one remarkable consequence. Says Carlyle in his survey of the beginnings of the seventeenth-century prefatory ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... related concerning the lad's early life by the prefatory and commenting author, as if expecting the general reader to admit that there had been some advantage for him in this manner of education:—that simplicity and devoutness are wholesome states of mind; that parish cures and uncle Abbes are not betrayers or devourers ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... thus barring all egress, Mr. Chints fumbled a moment in his pocket and drew out an envelope, and with a loud, prefatory "Ahem!" began: ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... himself in a position of somewhat special difficulty and delicacy, when it became necessary to consider the question of retaining or excluding the prefatory matter attached to the impressions of this work in 1744 and 1780. A careful and impartial perusal of that matter made it evident that the prudent course, on the whole, was to reject these prolegomena. There was no alternative but their entire preservation ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... are irredeemably committed," replied Ralph, as the music, after some prefatory flourishes, broke into the delicious rhythm of a Strauss waltz, "then it is no use struggling against fate. Come, let us make the plunge together. Misery ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... soft husky prefatory noise of protest in his throat, which seemed to stimulate his wife to a more definite assertion, and she cut ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Friend,—I have done your bidding and sent the translations to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which says all sorts of harm of Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... critical first days of March, a new edition of the History of that "Great Man," with "considerable Corrections and Additions," was advertised; the actual date of publication being, apparently, about March 19. The new edition appeared with a prefatory note, "from the Publisher to the Reader," which although it bears no signature conveys, undoubtedly, Fielding's intention, if not his actual words. There is the familiar protest against the "scurrility of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... by his wife (Posthumous Poems, 1824) among the 'poems written in 1820'. Another composition, in blank verse, curiously similar to Mary's own work, entitled Orpheus, has been allotted by Dr. Garnett (Relics of Shelley, 1862) to the same category. [Footnote: Dr. Garnett, in his prefatory note, states that Orpheus 'exists only in a transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written in playful allusion to her toils as amanuensis Aspetto fin che il diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole'. The poem is thus supposed ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... among my one-pound notes, at that time the principal currency of the country; yet could not help thinking that my friend cast an awfully hungry eye at the pieces of paper. He had already commenced a very elaborate speech prefatory to the request of a loan, when I cut him short, by telling him that I had promised my god-mamma not to lend anyone a single penny until I had been on board my ship six months, which was really the case. He commended my sense of duty; and said it was of no manner of consequence, as next ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... who had the work in design being met together, the minister began the day's work with prayer for special assistance to attain due preparation, and a suitable frame, throughout the whole solemnity: and thereafter had a prefatory discourse to the people, showing the nature of the work in general, its lawfulness, expediency, and necessity, from scripture precedents and approven examples of the people of God, adducing the 9th chapter of Ezra, Neh. Ezek. Dan. and Neh. x. ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... prefatory words of any sort, I entered on my narrative, and put him in full possession of the events which have already been ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... elaborate preface. A general sketch of the voyage which it describes was published in the 'Times' immediately after our return to England. That letter is reprinted here as a convenient summary of the 'Sunbeam's' performances. But these prefatory lines would indeed be incomplete if they did not contain a well-deserved tribute to the industry and accuracy of the author. The voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been completed, without the impulse derived from ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... To conclude my prefatory reasons for not writing a long preface, there is one point on which I am anxious to appeal to the indulgence of my readers. It is obvious that the work being written in English by a Spaniard, must bear some traces of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... University was brief, and that he left without taking his degree, for I have been unable to find anything further recorded of his academic career. {0a} The Rev. Edmund Prys, Vicar of Clynnog-Fawr, in a prefatory englyn to Ellis Wynne's translation of the "Holy Living" says that "in order to enrich his own, he had ventured upon the study of three other tongues." This fact, together with much that appears in the Visions, justifies the conclusion that his scholarly ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... assisted Dr. Arthur Mitchell in his preparation of the English translation of L'Evolution creatrice. In August of 1910 James died. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of the translation, to introduce it to the English reading public by a prefatory note of appreciation. In the following year the translation was completed and still greater interest in Bergson and his work was the result. By a coincidence, in that same year (1911), Bergson penned for ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... ELLIPSIS} In answer to these charges he writes, after certain prefatory matter in the first book of the work entitled A Refutation and a Defence, in the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... life. Vain Fortune, even in its present form, is probably not my best book, but it certainly is far from being my worst. But my opinion regarding my own work is of no value; I do not write this Prefatory Note to express it, but to ask my critics and my readers to forget the original Vain Fortune, and to read this new book as if it were ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... should all write the story of the Moonstone in turn—as far as our own personal experience extends, and no farther. We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India fifty years since. This prefatory narrative I have already got by me in the form of an old family paper, which relates the necessary particulars on the authority of an eye-witness. The next thing to do is to tell how the Diamond found its ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the World's Fair she described in a letter to Mr. John P. Spaulding, which was published in St. Nicholas, and is much like the following letter. In a prefatory note which Miss Sullivan wrote for St. Nicholas, she says that people frequently said to her, "Helen sees more with her fingers than we do with our eyes." The President of the Exposition gave her ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... enter upon," because the first four lectures I gave in the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three only defined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematic analysis and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the 'Disuse of the Comma' are quite equal to impromptu experimentation in the field of psychic phenomena." I was aware that the young people themselves hardly expected serious acquiescence, and that, too, stimulated me. I cleared my throat in a prefatory manner, and silence fell upon the group. A light breeze had risen outside, and the timbers of the barn creaked persistently. From the shadows almost directly overhead there came a faint clanking. It was evidently caused by the rusty pulley-wheel which I had observed ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Centrale', t. i., p. 239, 400; 'Examen Critique de l'Histoire de la Geogr.', th. ii., p. 320. A distinguished philologist, Professor Buschmann, calls attention to the circumstance that the poet Firdousi, in his half-mythical prefatory remarks in the 'Schahnameh', mentions "a fortress of the Alani" on the sea-shore, in which Selm took refuge, this prince being the eldest son of the King Feridun, who in all probability lived two hundred years ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... edition, with prefatory remarks, copious notes, and excursive illustrations, by T. Holt White, etc. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... their Bibliographies, with The Dead Prophet, express Tennyson's lifelong abhorrence of the critics and biographers, whose joy is in the futile and the unimportant, in personal gossip and the sweepings of the studio, the salvage of the wastepaper basket. The Prefatory Poem to my Brother's Sonnets is not only touching in itself, but proves that the poet can "turn to favour and to prettiness" such an affliction as the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Christian! Vomit and spew out the Mettal which hath so inqinated and invenom'd both Body and Soul, that hath stain'd and infected they mind with desires and contrivances, and thy hands with Commission of such matchless Enormities. I will then shut up all this, being but an Extract of what is in the Prefatory part of the Original. I earnestly beg and desire all Men to be perswaded, that this summary was not published upon any private Design, sinister ends or affection in favor or prejudice of any particular Nation; but for the publick Emolument and Advantage of all true ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... Giles, Cripplegate; a printer and publisher; but to his singular combination of titles, we cannot add that of author of the treatise in question. "C.H." has seen that he did not enter Oxford till 1534; and in his Prefatory Epistle, Crowley speaks of the author of the treatise as a person ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... fifteen years after its first appearance in print, Luther issued his Tessaradecas in a new and final edition, adding a brief prefatory note. He no longer holds many of his former views, and there is much in his little book that he has outgrown and might now correct. But with characteristic unconcern, he lets it all stand, and even restores ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... often drew tears from me, little as I was inclined to attach a serious meaning to them) make it now, in the opinion of my friends, a duty incumbent on me to introduce the posthumous works of my beloved husband, with a few prefatory lines from myself; and although here may be a difference of opinion on this point, still I am sure there will be no mistake as to the feeling which has prompted me to overcome the timidity which makes any such appearance, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Death-Wake from which this edition is printed was once the property of Mr. Aytoun, author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, and, I presume, of Ta Phairshon. Mr. Aytoun has written a prefatory sonnet which will be found in its proper place, a set of rhymes on the flyleaf at the end, and various cheerful but unfeeling notes. After some hesitation I do not print ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... composed, I mean the Christians; then the anathema reaches not the heathens, who had never heard of Christ, and were nothing interested in that dispute. After all, I am far from blaming even that prefatory addition to the creed, and as far from cavilling at the continuation of it in the Liturgy of the Church, where, on the days appointed, it is publicly read: for I suppose there is the same reason for it now, in opposition to the Socinians, as there was then against the Arians; the one being ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... charming Essay, in the Spectator, is so applicable and prefatory to a work of this nature, that we cannot resist inserting that inimitable production in his ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... or demerit it possesses remains for the reader to ascertain. His judgment will be unprejudiced if he finds no word of promise on the prefatory page. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Clam, and the lady leaning on his arm, had proceeded in silence, for the lady's thoughts were so absorbed that she paid no attention to the many prefatory coughs with which her companion was continually clearing his throat. He thought of fifty different ways of commencing a conversation, and putting an end to the rapid pace they were going at. But onward still hurried the lady, and breathless, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of books which follows these prefatory remarks, I have indicated the most important of the sources used by me. Special references will be made in their proper places to works of a subordinate value for the purposes ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... supposed author of "The Knickerbocker History of New York." All this prefatory matter is merely to carry out the pretence, as do the Note and ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... house are a Miss Denham and the cook: I lunched there,' Mr. Tuckham nodded approvingly. 'Lydiard must be mad. What he's wasting his time there for I can't guess. He says he's engaged there in writing a prefatory essay to a new publication of Harry Denham's poems—whoever that may be. And why wasting it there? I don't like it. He ought to be earning his bread. He'll be sure to be borrowing money by-and-by. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... [PREFATORY NOTE.—This Novel was carefully wrapped up in some odd leaves of MARK TWAIN'S Innocents Abroad, and was accompanied by a letter in which the author declared that the book was worth L3000, but that "to save any more blooming trouble," he would be willing to take the prize of L1000 by return ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... derived the greater part of the thematic substance of the suite, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note, from melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention. "If separate titles for the different movements are desired," he says in his note, "they ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... that are not actually in the Note-Books; the longest of these are the two New Zealand articles "Darwin among the Machines" and "Lucubratio Ebria" as to which something is said in the Prefatory Note to "The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit" (pp. 39-42 post). In that Prefatory Note a Dialogue on Species by Butler and an autograph letter from Charles Darwin are mentioned. Since the note was in type I have received from ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... prefaces to works on cookery, and more than this, have contributed to the literature of the same. There is a very excellent handbook by Phillis Browne, to which the late Sir J. Risdon Bennett, a former President of the Royal College of Physicians, London, contributed the prefatory note. In it he remarks, the value of wholesome and properly-cooked food has never been sufficiently understood or appreciated in the United Kingdom. "In scarcely any other country," says he, "does so much prejudice and ignorance prevail on the subject of food and ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... and deserves more attention than it has received from the English people, as the present ruling race in India. Dr. A. C. Burnell, an authority second to none in Indian historical questions, says in his prefatory note to A Tentative List of Books and some MSS. relating to the History of the Portuguese in India Proper: 'In the course of twenty years' studies relating to India, I found that the history of the Portuguese had been shamefully neglected.... In attempting to get better information, I found that ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... Dr. Drake's book, then, for the data upon which it was condemned, we find that it opens with a prefatory dedication to Sir E. Seymour, one of Queen Anne's Commissioners for the Union, and a high churchman, wherein the author distinctly ventures a blow at Presbytery when he ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... have learned privately; but he added, that Mr. Thistle would be lost before the other vessel joined. As to the manner of his loss the magician refused to give any information. My boat's crew, hearing what Mr. Thistle said, went also to consult the wise man; and after the prefatory information of a long voyage, were told that they would be shipwrecked, but not in the ship they were going out in: whether they would escape and return to England, he was not permitted ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... require any pressing, but did as he was told; and, bestowing a collective nod on the company, drank their healths with the prefatory remark, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... retired to rest that night than the wind began to rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... combined with his own prefatory statements, we feel justified in laying down the following canons as ruling ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... art in Renaissance times—Michelangelo and Tintoret, greatly to the disadvantage of Michelangelo. This heresy against a popular creed served as text for some severe criticism; but as he said in a prefatory note to the pamphlet, readers "must observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the fact of his power to be generally known," and he referred to Mr. Tyrwhitt's "Lectures ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... PREFATORY NOTE.—The reader is requested to judge the following production mildly, as it is the first effort of a youthful genius (16 years old in looks and feeling, 42 by the family bible and census.) The author has felt that America should have a new kind of verse of its own, and he thinks ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... at that day adorning the Modern Athens. The great success of Pickwick brought down upon its author demands from all sides for another work, and "Boz" agreed to write Nicholas Nickleby, to be published in monthly parts. In the prefatory notices, which give additional value to the cheap and elegant reprint of the works of Dickens, we are indulged with slight glimpses of his own recollections, personal and literary.' It is unnecessary to note the titles of Mr Dickens's subsequent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... heart beat so uncontrollably at every well-known sound in his room? When the clock was about to strike, the prefatory grating of its spring made him start, and for several seconds he panted for ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... new era and a desire to be abreast of the times, recently adopted the somewhat awkward title of the Nineteenth Century and After. Like the Fortnightly, it presented a brilliant array of names from the first. The initial number contained a Prefatory Sonnet by Tennyson, and articles by Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Manning, and the Dean of Gloucester and Bristol. It is sufficient to state that this standard has since been maintained by Mr. Knowles and has made his Nineteenth Century and After the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... submission. They were to have no direct influence in the deliberations of the commons, and now they were to have no deliberate voice in their own house. Such was the state of public feeling when, on the 3rd of October, Earl Grey moved the second reading of the bill. After some prefatory remarks, he said, that being called to form a new administration, he stated to his majesty that the only condition on which he would accept office was that he should be allowed to bring forward the question of parliamentary reform as a measure of government. That condition was sanctioned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... just one. Vanity has been immemorially the charter of poets. In this, the ancients were more honest than we are. The old poets frequently make boastful predictions of the immortality their works shall acquire them; ours, in their dedications and prefatory discourses, employ much eloquence to praise their patrons, and much seeming modesty to condemn themselves, or at least to apologise for their productions to the world. But this, in my opinion, is the more assuming manner of the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... from her chair and faced them, as calmly, as complacently as if she were about to ask them to proceed to the dining-room instead of to throw a bomb into their midst that would shatter their smug serenity for all time to come. With a glance at Mr. Carroll she began, clearly, firmly and without a prefatory apology for what was ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... 1573 has been justly styled 'one of the most quaint and charming of all the early Dictionaries.' In his 'Prefatory Address to the Reader' the author tells, in fine Elizabethan prose, both how his book came into existence, and why he gave ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening, I put Mrs. Roylake's self-control to a new test. With prefatory excuses, I informed her that I should not be able to dine at home as usual. Impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this, her presence of mind was equal to the occasion. I left the house, followed by my stepmother's ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... stirring tale, and has enough in it of life and interest to keep it for some years to come in request. The prefatory memoir by Sir Thomas Talfourd would be at all times interesting, nor the less so for containing two long letters from Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Deacon, full ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... were staring blankly in between the piers—and the momentum of Victor's car was too great to be arrested within the distance. The girl cried out, but didn't know it, and crouched low; the horn added a squawk of frenzy to a wild clamour of yells; all prefatory to a scrunching, rending crash as, in the very mouth of the gateway, a front fender of the incoming car ripped through the rear fender above which Sofia was sitting. Thrown heavily against Victor, then instantly back to her place, she felt the car, with brakes set fast, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Wordsworth handled legendary subjects, and it is most instructive here to notice his avoidance of the romantic note, and to imagine how Scott would have managed the same material. In the prefatory note to "The White Doe of Rylstone," Wordsworth himself pointed out the difference. "The subject being taken from feudal times has led to its being compared to some of Sir Walter Scott's poems that belong to the same ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... great problems appears and reappears throughout his published writings, but his views are most clearly and systematically exposed in his "Romanes" lecture on "Evolution and Ethics" delivered and published at Oxford in 1894, and afterwards republished with a prefatory essay in the last volume of his Collected Essays. Not long before his death, Professor Romanes, who had come to live in Oxford, founded a University lectureship, the purpose of which was that once a year a distinguished man should address the University ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... discoveries in 1612, as delineated on Champlain's small map, introduced by him in the prefatory matter, apparently after the text had been struck off, will appear in connection with the map itself, where it ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... the 1st, the 11th, and last but one, of the prefatory sonnets to the 'Odyssey'. Could I have foreseen any other speedy opportunity, I should have begged your acceptance of the volume in a somewhat handsomer coat; but as it is, it will better represent the sender,—to quote ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... least) both to other parts of the same preface and to the author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth, in his recent collection, has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a controversy, in which I have been honoured more than I deserve ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... prefatory remarks it will be well to let the document speak for itself. It is of considerable length, and, as we have seen, of intricate construction. I shall therefore quote only those sections which bear directly ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... bookshop which I visit, never without making a discovery or two—not infrequently, as in the present case, assisted in my good fortune by the bookseller himself—I lately came upon an edition of Long's Marcus Aurelius with an admirable prefatory note that is, I believe, peculiar to this issue—that of 1869. And since the eyes of the present generation have never been turned towards America so often and so seriously as latterly, when our Trans-Atlantic cousins have become ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... when Friedrich took that Camp, there was nothing but a series of attempts, all ineffectual, of demonstrations, marchings, manoeuvrings and small events; which, in the name of every reader, demand condensation to the utmost. If readers will be diligent, here, so far as needful, are the prefatory steps. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... half the Praise, etc. These lines are not by the Earl of Roscommon, but by Edmund Waller. They occur in Waller's prefatory verses to Roscommon's translation ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... by me; whereas I wrote every word of it, but had not then the courage to say so, as certain things therein might well have offended some folks, and I did not wish that. I think I will give here a bit of the prefatory "Ramble," to show how the emptying out of my thought-box must have been a most wholesome, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Prefatory Note to my "Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," four printed Editions (of which three are more or less complete) exist of the Arabic text of the original work, namely those of Calcutta (1839-42), Boulac (Cairo), Breslau (Tunis) ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... requires, with whatever discount, to be carefully studied. The Life of Wordsworth, by the Bishop of St. Andrews; The Correspondence of Southey; the Rev. Derwent Coleridge's brief account of his father's life and writings; and the prefatory memoir prefixed to the 1880 edition of Coleridge's Poetical and Dramatic Works, have all had to be consulted. But, after all, there remain several tantalising gaps in Coleridge's life which refuse to be bridged over; and one cannot but think that there must be enough ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Carmel by S. John of the Cross. Prefatory Essay on the Development of Mysticism in the Carmelite Order, by Benedict Zimmerman, O.C.D., pp. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... convey an entirely wrong sense. These and the use of several other terms are carefully noted and explained by the Revisers, and will, I hope, induce every careful reader of their revision to make it his duty to study their prefatory words. The almost unavoidable differences between them and the American Revisers, as to our own language, are alluded to by them in terms both friendly and wise, and may be considered fully to express the sentiments of the New Testament ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... separate document, but each ode appeared with the introductory notice as a portion of the text, this seemed to give it the authority of the text itself. Then after the other texts disappeared and Mao's had the field to itself, this means of testing the accuracy of its prefatory notices no longer existed. They appeared as if they were the production of the poets themselves, and the odes seemed to be made from them as so many themes. Scholars handed down a faith in them from ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the marvelous and romantic, to a degree that weakens our faith in him as a trustworthy historian. Not until the middle of the present century were we in possession of a memoir claiming to be in any respect complete. In 1838, there appeared in London an edition of his writings, with a prefatory sketch of his life, by the Rev. Alfred Suckling, LL.B. The editor had access to a few private MSS., which, in our judgment, have not served to modify the previous accounts of Sir John's character, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not of that pettifogging order which would allow of his sitting down with the patience requisite to master the secret of the figures. To-night, for the twentieth time, he brought out the MS. He again read the prefatory note carefully over, although he could almost have said it by heart, and once more his puzzled eyes ran over the complicated array of figures, till at last, with an impatient "Pish!" he flung the MS. to the other side of the table, and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... made in the text. In the present, the variations from old copies are noted by reference of all changes to former editions (abbreviated f.e.), and every indication and explanation is given essential to a clear understanding of the author. The prefatory matter, Life, &c., will be fuller than in ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Preliminaries with my Reader, I shall not trouble him with any more prefatory Discourses, but proceed in my old Method, and entertain him with Speculations on every useful Subject that falls in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... In the prefatory chapter of Our Women (CASSELL) Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT coyly disclaims any intention of tackling his theme on strictly scientific principles. The warning is perhaps hardly necessary, since, apart from the duty which the author owes to his public as a novelist rather than a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... published in vellum covers a small volume which he christened The Enemies of Books. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left this world for a better one, where—so piety bids us believe—neither fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly wisdom. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... With these few prefatory words, gentle reader, I fling open the front door—to use a metaphorical expression—and invite you to witness a few scenes of our domestic life that I have from time ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... shortly after our return, Aunt Helen said to me, with a prefatory cough which was apt to be a sign that she regarded the topic to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... method that I can trace, whatever Scaliger the father, or Heinsius may have seen, or rather think they had seen. I have taken up, laid down, and resumed, as often as I pleased, the same subject, and this loose proceeding I shall use through all this prefatory dedication. Yet all this while I have been sailing with some side-wind or other toward the point I proposed in the beginning—the greatness and excellence of an heroic poem, with some of the difficulties which attend that work. The comparison therefore ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth, are his own, without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray this nervousness. I confess to a respect for even the prefatory doggerel of good Tinker Bunyan—a respect for his paternal tenderness toward his book, not at all for his villainous rhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from me, a profound anxiety ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... for me to add more to these few prefatory words than is here written. What I might otherwise have wished to say in this place, I have endeavored to make the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... quarrying and industrialism between Liege and Namur, and far too many residential villas along the banks between Namur and Dinant, altogether to satisfy those who have high ideals of scenery. Wordsworth, in a prefatory note to a sonnet that was written in 1820, and at a date when these signs of industrialism were doubtless less obtrusive, says: "The scenery on the Meuse pleases one more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... pages, said my father, turning over the leaves,—are a little dry; and as they are not closely connected with the subject,—for the present we'll pass them by: 'tis a prefatory introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for I am not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil government; the foundation of which being laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species—I was insensibly led into it.—'Twas ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... West Point, Poe arranged for the publication of a volume of poetry, which appeared in New York in 1831. This volume, to which the students of the academy subscribed liberally in advance, is noteworthy in several particulars. In a prefatory letter Poe lays down the poetic principle to which he endeavored to conform his productions. It throws much light on his poetry by exhibiting the ideal at which he aimed. "A poem, in my opinion," he says, "is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... From a prefatory note it appears that Takumi Jingor[o] published his collection with the hope of reviving interest in a once popular kind of poetry which had fallen into neglect before the middle of the century. The word ky[o]ka is written with ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... it!" And the whole story is given, with a careful attention to detail which is quite unnecessary, even if there were any reason for telling the story at all, and generally concluded with a repetition of the prefatory exclamation. How many pathetic sights are told of, to no end but the repetition of an unpleasant brain-impression. How many past experiences, past illnesses, are gone over and over, which serve the same worse than useless purpose,—that of repeating ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... know, a Christian and a scholar, and an ornament to the social circles of O. and the neighboring parishes. But as an author, G. becomes public property, and a fair theme for criticism; and in that capacity, I say G. is publishing the shame of his country. I call him G., without the prefatory Mister, not from any personal disrespect, much as I am grieved at his course as a writer, but because he is now breveted for immortality, and goes down to posterity, like other immortals, without titular prefix.' [Cheers.] Now, here is where you ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... learnt privately; but he added that Mr. Thistle would be lost before the other vessel joined. As to the manner of his loss the magician refused to give any information. My boat's crew, hearing what Mr. Thistle said, went to consult the wise man, and after the prefatory information of a long voyage, they were told that they would be shipwrecked, but not in the ship they were going out in; whether they would escape and return to England, he was not permitted to reveal. This tale Mr. Thistle often told at the mess-table; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Daily Chronicle, the Glasgow Herald, the Glasgow Examiner, the Scottish Guardian, the North British Daily Mail, the Glasgow Morning Journal, the Mercantile Advertiser, and others. (For absence of these notices, see author's prefatory note.) ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... edition of "Different Forms of Flowers." Wrote prefatory letter to Kerner's "Flowers and their ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... black[1] or a fair man, of a mild or choleric[2] disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting[3], and correcting will fall ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... fit of editorial prerogative, I have added Henley's poem "Invictus" as a prefatory note. . .Michael ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... purpose, nor would it be possible within the limits of a prefatory note, to attempt an account of Schopenhauer's philosophy, to indicate its sources, or to suggest or rebut the objections which may be taken to it. M. Ribot, in his excellent little book, [Footnote: La Philosophie ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said you was going to be perm'nent!" Mrs. Zapp began quietly, prefatory to working herself up into hysterics. "And here Ah've gone and had your room fixed up just for you, and new paper put in, and you've always been talking such a lot about how you wanted your furniture arranged, and Ah've gone and made ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... Phrygian. But, beside the chance that a trial of this importance would hardly be blessed to a Pagan monarch whose only motive was curiosity, we have on the Hebrew side the comparatively recent investigation of James the Fourth of Scotland. I will add to this prefatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, though a native of Jaalam, has never been a stated attendant on the religious exercises of my congregation. I consider my humble efforts prospered in that not one of my sheep hath ever indued the wolf's clothing of war, save for the comparatively innocent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of January, the house resolved itself into a committee of the whole, on the report of the secretary of state, relative to the privileges and restrictions of the commerce of the United States; when Mr. Madison, after some prefatory observations, laid on the table a series of resolutions[13] for the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Indicator, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had reprinted from The Examiner a review of Lamb's Works, with a few prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine under the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Stuart Farquaharson, which had a moment before seemed incapable of any expression beyond lethargic fatigue, underwent so sudden a transformation that the ingenue interrupted her weeping to watch it. There was a prefatory blankness of sheer amazement followed by an upleaping of latent fires into the eyes; fires that held hints of revived hopes and suppressed yearnings. Within the moment this fitful light died again into a pained gravity. What was the use of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... prefatory remarks to the "Faerie Queene," the editor expresses the customary regrets that the poet should have chosen so defective a stanza, "so romantick a story," and a model, or framework for the whole, which appears so monstrous when "examined by the rules ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and ladylike hawk in her patrician throat, prefatory to a new attack. Carl knew he would ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... that the present paper will doubtless reach many readers who may not, in consequence of the limited edition, have seen the preliminary volume on mortuary customs, it seems expedient to reproduce in great part the prefatory remarks which served as an introduction to that work; for the reasons then urged, for the immediate study of this subject, still exist, and as time flies on become more ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... paying about two hundred Spanish dollars for the escort, I have had to feed all the people, and furnish them with tents. They had led me to expect much more reasonable treatment; but there is no help, and I feel that I am not yet at the end of my troubles of this description. With these prefatory remarks, I enter upon an account of my departure from Mourzuk ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... poor lady, and after a moment's hesitation was on the point of adding something more; but Mr. Striker here interposed, after a prefatory clearance of the throat. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the pages which follow is, as I have said in the Prefatory Note, to explain the policy pursued toward Germany by Great Britain through the eight years which immediately preceded the great war of 1914. It was a policy which had two branches, as inseparable as they were distinct. The preservation of peace, by removing difficulties ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... his fellow-actors about his violence and want of personal self-control on the stage; for as he stood at the side scene by me, in the last act of "King Lear," ready to rush on with me, his Cordelia, dead in his arms, he made various prefatory and preparatory excuses to me, deprecating beforehand my annoyance at being dragged and pulled about after his usual fashion, saying that necessarily the scene was a disagreeable one for the "poor corpse." I had no very agreeable anticipation of it myself, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... state of Scotland, during a period highly unfavourable to poetical composition. Yet the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century have afforded some subjects for traditionary poetry, and the reader is here presented with the ballads of that disastrous aera. Some prefatory history may not ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... now to the objection of satyricalness, wits have been always allowed this privilege, that they might be smart upon any transactions of life, if so be their liberty did not extend to railing; which makes me wonder at the tender-eared humour of this age, which will admit of no address without the prefatory repetition of all formal titles; nay, you may find some so preposterously devout, that they will sooner wink at the greatest affront against our Saviour, than be content that a prince, or a pope, should be nettled with the least joke or gird, especially in what relates to their ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... In these prefatory observations, however, I would suggest the question whether the caustic may not be employed with benefit even in some of the severer diseases to which the human frame is liable. Indeed I consider the investigation as only just begun, and many other uses of the lunar caustic, ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... houses of widows and heiresses, vaunts the docility of his temper, and the greatness of his expectations, enlarges on the solitude of widowhood, or the dependence and insignificance of a spinster; and these prefatory encomiums usually end in the concerted ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Hawthorne calls "the most august position in the world." Pierce was elected President of the United States in 1852. The other was Horatio Bridge, who afterwards served with distinction in the Navy, and to whom the charming prefatory letter of the collection of tales published under the name of The Snow Image, is addressed. "If anybody is responsible at this day for my being an author it is yourself. I know not whence your faith came; but while we were lads together ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... accounts ought to be regarded as fabulous, and as old wives' tales, handed down from one writer to another without any basis of truth. But, as I have to make a voyage round the world, I will not extend my prefatory remarks, but will come ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... suffice. He is to understand that the grand tug of War, this Year, gradually turns out not to be hereabouts, nor with Daun and his adjacencies at all, but with the Russians, who arrive from the opposite Northern quarter; and that all else will prove to be merely prefatory ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Eggen returned to the task he had left unfinished with the fairy scenes in Syn og Segn and gave a complete translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In a little prefatory note he acknowledges his indebtedness to Arne Garborg, who critically examined the manuscript and gave valuable suggestions and advice. The introduction itself is a restatement in two pages of the Shakespeare-Essex-Leicester-Elizabeth story. ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... throat, a faint bitterness in his tone, a spark of indignation in his eye. But these the Doctor ignored. He reached out his hand, took the folded paper gently from Richling, crossed his knees, and, resting his elbows on them and shaking the paper in a prefatory way, spoke:— ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable |
