"Sill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hold their breath and hurry thence. Miss Thompson hovers there and gazes: Her housewife's knowing eye appraises Salt and fresh, severely cons Kippers bright as tarnished bronze: Great cods disposed upon the sill, Chilly and wet, with gaping gill, Flat head, glazed eye, and mute, uncouth, Shapeless, wan, old-woman's mouth. Next a row of soles and plaice With querulous and twisted face, And red-eyed bloaters, golden-grey; Smoked haddocks ranked in neat array; A group of smelts that take the light Like ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... knees gave way, and I began to weep on the window sill. I heard voices coming, and I knew that I mustn't let them see me with the tears running down my face. But the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... with all the strength he possessed, Jack swung it toward the near side, until locking the forward wheel on that side against the sill of the cart. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... they were about to give up in despair, a jealous woman revealed the fact that Caleb P. Marsh, of New York, had received the appointment of post-trader at Fort Sill through the endeavors of his wife with the wife of the Secretary of War, General Belknap. Marsh made a contract with the trader already there, permitting him to continue, in consideration of twelve thousand dollars of the annual profits, divided in quarterly installments. The money thus received ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... by the rope, whereon I had made knots to this end; nor was the climbing more difficult than to scale a branchless beech trunk for a bird's nest, which, like other boys, I had often done. So behold me, at last, with my legs hanging in free air, seated on the sill of the casement. Happily, of the three iron stanchions, though together they bore my weight, one was loose in the lower socket, for lack of lead, and this one I displaced easily enough, and so passed through. Then I put the wooden bar at the rope's end, within the room, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... said a few words, and went to wake Rogron and do the same offices for him. Then she went down to take in the milk, the bread, and the other provisions left by the dealers. She stood some time on the sill of the door hoping that Brigaut would have the sense to come to her; but by that time he was already ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... smothered her, and she had wept so much that her eyes could not bear the strong light of the afternoon sun. I drew down the blind—with such haste as to pinch my fingers cruelly between the sash and the sill. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... and he hopes you and he will come to a better understanding by-and-by. Will that do, Walter?' added the saucy girl, turning to him and putting her arm round his neck, as he stood leaning upon the sill of the window—'or should I have said that you are sorry you were so touchy? or that you hope she will ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the lady," said the mother, trying to pull the child away. "My land, if I ever live to get you children to your grandmother's I'll be thankful! Lottie, stop making scratches on that window sill!" ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... our long—gun was run out to have a parting crack at her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the midship—port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like bright silver sparks in the moonlight. A sharp piercing cry rose into the air—my soul identified that death—shriek with the voice that I had heard, and I saw the man who ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... himself who cowered down out of sight, clutching the woodwork of the window-sill with wealth behind him ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... an hour later. ISABEL is picking up the scattered orange blossom which she ties together and lays on the window sill. LUBIN comes in with a large bunch of ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve my own mind of the impression which the recollection of it causes me, but also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which I am sill far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself. It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men and women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself—for I was there voluntarily—sentence of death had been passed. I ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... came. My parents prostrated themselves on the ground in his presence. "With your permission—" Haughty he swept on, to be ushered to the inner rooms. Even the officer in charge remained at a distance. Prostrate at the sill my father gave thanks for the honour of this unexpected presence, for his lordship's deigning to halt the palanquin. On command Shimo served the tea, not daring to raise face from the tatami under the satisfied scrutiny of this honoured guest, exercising ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... play over the hilltop and the streams of rain chasing each other down the lightning rod. And this was the day that had dawned so joyfully! It had been a red sunrise, and she had leaned on the window sill studying her lesson and thinking what a lovely world it was. And what a golden morning! The changing of the bare, ugly little schoolroom into a bower of beauty; Miss Dearborn's pleasure at her success ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... realised that the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola, shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin had halted at the casement window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the window ledge ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... words, and reported them to the mob. They immediately returned, dragged the old man down the stairs of his palace by the hair, and cut his throat upon his own door sill. They were now searching the city, in all directions, for Von Gaden the German physician of the late tzar, who was accused of administering to him poison. They met in the streets, the son of the physician, and demanded of him where his father was. The trembling lad replied that he did ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the finest lace for miles about," said Michael, unhearing, unheeding. "Rare tales she would be telling me and I no higher than the sill of the window there, and I'd thought to find her long dead and buried surely, the way she was always as old as the Abbey itself. But no—there she was still in her bit of a cottage, the time I was just home, the oldest old woman I ever saw out of a mummy's wrappings and like a witch indeed ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... path, a low flight of stone steps, a pause to leave your shoes without the sill, and you tread in the twilight of reverence upon the moss-like mats within. The richness of its outer ornament, so impressive at first, is, you discover, but prelude to the lavish luxury of its interior. Lacquer, bronze, pigments, deck its ceiling and its sides in such profusion that it seems ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... might be of great use to him in case of escape; but at that moment he thought he heard a slight scratching at the lower part of the door of the barrack. Helping himself with his arms, he succeeded in crawling as far as the door-sill without wakening ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... and the door panels burst from the heat, and all the room at his back suddenly blazed with fire, and then went up the cry from that agonized girl, at sound of which Lanier started and strove to climb to the little window-sill, with a lurid sheet lapping down about his head, and then a brace of young Irishmen, Cassidy foremost, came scrambling up a human pyramid, smoking and singeing below them. They reached the blazing eaves and burst through the fringe of flame, dragging Bob forth and on to the edge, and then ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... stuffiness were well justified. After a restless night we came awake at daylight to the sound of a fine row of some sort going on outside in the streets. Immediately we arose, threw aside the lattices, and hung out over the sill. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... sill. The night-bedlam from the Street of the Sailors, punctuated by far, hungry bellows from swamp monsters, sounded in his ears. Enemies, human and animal, ringed him in Kurgo's house: but up above lay a clean, ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... Gianetto was already lying on the litter ready to set out. When he saw Mateo and Gamba in company he smiled a strange smile, then, turning his head towards the door of the house, he spat on the sill, saying: ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... come, and soon the summer was over, and the winter was coming, and no one wanted Dandy, for he had such a bad name. He got hungry and cold, and one day sprang upon a little girl, to take away a piece of bread and butter that she was eating. He did not see the large house-dog on the door sill, and before he could get away, the dog had seized him, and bitten and shaken him till he was nearly dead. When the dog threw him aside, he crawled to the Morrises, and Miss Laura bandaged his wounds, and made him ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... future) and he had endeavoured to divert her thoughts by making "memory pictures" of the name and address after the method of a thought reader. He had told her to picture a cat sitting on a window ledge, and that would fix the name in her mind. "Purr"—"Sill"—there it was! As for the place, it was only necessary to imagine him wandering in a wood (he slyly suggested it)—Charleswood, and there ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the sounds, and then I saw something come up above the sill, and clutch at the broken window-frame. It caught a piece of the woodwork; and, now, I could make out that it was a hand and arm. A moment later, the face of one of the Swine-creatures rose into view. Then, before I could use my rifle, or do anything, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... very hot. With her nostrils close to the opening In the shutters, she inhaled the heated air of the yard of drying grass. On the white window-sill just outside, a bronze wasp was whirling excitedly, that cautious stinger which never arrives until summer is sure. The oleanders in the big green tubs looked wilted though ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... called a small room—close to their stuffy little back parlor. Lisle would go to the yard behind the house, which was common to two or three besides No. 13, and with one foot on a projecting bit of brick-work could get his hand on the sill and make his signal. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody's window sill to save some woman's character, and it has been ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a small, malformed head, a dog-like head, deep-set in square shoulders. Malignant eyes peered intently in. Higher it arose—that wicked head—against the window, then crouched down on the sill and became less sharply defined as the creature stooped to the opening below. There was a faint sound ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... flourished, not in the least like his uncle's sexagenarian crabbedness of hieroglyphic. In the corner was the name of a firm he did not know, and the top of the letter was covered with a long row of stamps, for it was very thick and heavy. So he went into his room, and sat down on the window-sill to see what Messrs. Screw and Scratch of Pine Street, New York, could possibly want of ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... neither contentment nor benevolence. In a recess of the window sat young Matthew, whistling softly to himself as he stroked a hawk upon his gloved wrist, while his brother Godfrey stood at another window, looking out, with his arms upon the sill. The only person who noticed Perrote's entrance was Agatha, and she pulled a little face by way of relief to her feelings. Lady Foljambe worked ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... a fit of hysterical weeping the woman drew back, endeavoring to close the cabin door. But Darrin's foot across the sill ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... Dolores had seen and heard also, for she had followed every movement he made and every change of his expression, and had faithfully told her sister what she saw, until the laugh came, short and light, but cutting. And Inez heard that, too, for she was leaning far forward upon the broad stone sill to listen for the sound of Don John's voice. She drew back with a springing movement, and a sort ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... the cat. Then the cat found a paneless window by which she had entered and disappeared into the night. The dog, who had also entered by that window when chasing the cat, had been helped on the outside by a box which stood under the sill, but there was no such aid on the inside and he did not attempt to make the jump from the floor, but stood barking until the place shook. Just then a voice was heard on the outside. "Lion, Lion," it called, "where ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... overflowed. She flung herself down with her face hidden in her arms folded upon the window sill, while ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... first floor opened, and a pair came and looked at them curiously. The girl was Marie Donval, of the Gymnase, whom the doctor recognised and named in a loud voice. The other was a deformed little creature, whose head was barely visible above the window-sill. Freydet, with much indignation, and Vedrine, with ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... determination not to be stung into a fresh quarrel, the boy he addressed, as soon as he heard his companion begin to reiterate his assertion that Sir Robert Gowan had gone over to the Pretender's side, turned slowly away, and, with his elbows once more resting on the window-sill, thrust a finger into each ear, and stopped them tight. So effectually was this done, that he started round angrily on feeling a hand laid ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... than the Majestic; it was perhaps smaller; it could not show more terra-cotta, plate-glass and sculptured cornice than the Majestic. But it had a demeanour ... and it was in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill—not only of the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in the Square—there were boxes of bright blooming flowers. These he could plainly distinguish in the October dusk, and they were a wonderful phenomenon—say what you will about the mildness of that particular ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... an inopportune moment, I could not resist the temptation to raise my eyes level with the sill of the window. So did Uncle Jap's Lily. We both peered in. Uncle Jap was facing Leveson; in his hand he held the long-barrelled six-shooter; in his eyes were tiny pin-point flashes of light such as you see in an opal on a frosty morning. Terror had spread a grim mask ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... about to slam the door, but Harry put his foot over the sill and the muzzle of his pistol within six inches ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... time Edna sat at the window expecting every moment to hear her aunt's heavy tread upon the stair. Finally, from sheer exhaustion, the little dusky head drooped on the sill, and when the last fading sunbeam stole into the room it found the ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... at home and in the middle of receiving a sound rating from his wife for no particular reason but just for the pleasure of it. The huge man was sitting on the bench by the wall, with one arm on the table and the other on the window-sill, listening with an expression of fixed attention to his wife's homilies; this attention was, however, assumed, for whenever she buried her head among the pots and pans on the stove he yawned and stretched himself, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... gun, taking a long and careful aim as before; and this time the shot struck the sill of the frigate's lee bridle port, entering the port, and no doubt raking the deck for a considerable portion of its length. That it did enough damage to greatly exasperate the French captain seemed almost certain, for presently he bore away again and treated us ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... by this feeling of elation when, after a hearty supper, they reached their rooms. What was their surprise on opening the door to find Axtell sprawled out in a chair, his feet upon the window sill. He grinned affably. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... sight when he brought up with a loud whoa, and getting down, the lines in one hand and a black-snake in the other, he advanced to the sill and looked in. "Any passengers goin' south?" he cried ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... below held their breath when she came to the final stretch, and let go the last rickety nail to fling herself on to the window sill. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... gentleman reached out his thin white hand, as if the motion required an effort, and beckoned twice. Marcus answered with two bows, and immediately rose, and laid down his pipe on the window sill, thereby implying that he would come over at once. The old gentleman smiled ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... most comfortable arm-chair, he drew it toward the doctor, then he seated himself with his hands in his pockets, lifted his feet and placed his heels on the window-sill, and looked at the doctor with the most self-satisfied ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... of cooking, and says he would never look twice at a lady whose hands were not as soft and white as—well, as mine," and she glanced admiringly at the little snowy fingers, which were beating a tune upon the window-sill. ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... he sang out, poking his head above the window- sill. "Do you think you're in your own mud cabin in the wilds of Connemara? As for you, Larrikins, I have warned you before, and you had better keep your ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... union of them all. It is of no use to consult their governors, they don't and they can't know anything of the country but its roads, lakes, rivers, and towns; but of the people they know nothing whatever. You might as well ask the steeple of a wooden church whether the sill that rests on the stone foundation is sound. They are too big according to their own absurd notions, too small in the eyes of colonists, and too far removed and unbending to know anything about it. What can a man learn in five years except the painful fact, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... we know, the conjuror's place of abode. Thomas, however, did not leave his house, nor did he intend doing so, but that very night the stolen property was returned, and it was found the next morning on the door sill. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... deathlike stillness, such a stillness, as some author has expressed it, "it rang in one's ears." Time passed slowly; the streaks of moonlight on the window-sill did not shift their position, but seemed as though frozen.... It was still some ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The young Wilners included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of windows like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and shot out of trees like fowls. Even a small person like me couldn't go anywhere without being run over by a Wilner; and I could never tell which Wilner it was because ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... she said by herself; "I'll never make fun of Dudu any more—never. He must be a fairy, or how else could he have got up from the terrace on to the window-sill all in a minute? And I don't think a raven fairy would be nice at all; he'd be a sort of an imp, I expect. I wouldn't mind now if Houpet was a fairy, he's so gentle and loving; but Dudu would be a sort of ogre fairy, he's so black and solemn. ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... evening prayers at chapel church or meeting, never where concords of sweet sound sacred or social flow around or harmony is woo'd, nor where the Horse-Shoe meets his sight on land or sea by day or night on lowly sill or lofty pinnacle on bowsprit helm mast boom or binnacle, said Devil ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... close by, its blade broken in two. The great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless still, for if the beam ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... porch and the tall door, Her trembling foot upon the sill was placed— Her snowy veil swept the smooth-sanded floor— Her cold hands chilled the bosom they embraced. Who is this youth, whose forehead, like a book, Bears many a deep-traced character of pain? Who looks for ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Wachner uttered a hoarse exclamation of terror. One of the gendarmes had climbed up on to the window-sill, and was now half into the room. She waddled quickly across to the door, only to find ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... she-wolf suddenly got up from the bearskin upon which she was crouching, in front of Jurand, approached the open window, supported herself upon the sill, turned her triangular jaws toward the moon and howled in a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... casement and sat down on the wide sill, leaning her head against the window-frame, and gazing out into the fast gathering gloom. From far away, at the foot of the gently sloping lawns, the river murmured softly in the night; in the borders ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... said. "There's a touch of the antediluvian about it that I like. Good idea of yours, comin' here. No one to get in the way. It won't be disturbin' you if I sit on the window-sill while you ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... man, "put this in the lock which you will find in the under side of the window sill and turn it. ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... turf ran right up to the wall, and broke against it. The windows, seen close, were less windows than loop-holes, barred across. On the sill of one was a pot of musk, newly watered, and very fragrant. Within upon the wall shimmered a ship's cutlass, and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... eyes and finger-tips and backbone that murder, destruction, and agony on a scale monstrous beyond precedent was going on in the same world as that which slumbered outside the black ivy and silver shining window-sill ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... those scattered elements were blent, and once more the frangipane spread from the valley of Fontenay as far as the fort, assailing his exhausted nostrils, once more shattering his helpless nerves and throwing him into such a prostration that he fell unconscious on the window sill. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... arose to shut it. Over the trunks of the nearer pines played a strange flickering light, throwing them now into relief, now into shadow. "Strange!" murmured Bennington to himself, and stepped outside to investigate. As he crossed the sill he was seized on ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... matter claimed is a metal beam of peculiar cross-section, it should be classified with other metal beams, as in Class 189, Metallic Building Structures, even if it is named in the application as a beam of particular use, as a railroad-tie, car-sill, bridge-tie, etc. Should a mere dash-pot be found classified in Class 171, Electricity, Generation, a note should be attached indicating that it belongs in ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... for the nearest. The moon was bright, and I was in time to see three cats jump down from the shelf on which the cottage was "situated," and dart away in as many different directions. One ran close along the wall of the house, and I recognized Preciosa. Hurling myself over the window-sill, I was the first of our startled party to reach the scene ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... And, in order to try the experiment, he chose, or chance, perhaps, directed him to choose, the very window of the cabinet where La Valliere was. The ladder just reached the edge of the cornice, that is to say, the sill of the window; so that, by standing upon the last round but one of the ladder, a man of about the middle height, as the king was, for instance, could easily talk with those who might be in the room. Hardly had ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float—are just the remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and drowning when, his eye being turned at the moment to the cottage upon the hillside, he saw the candle for the night just being placed on the window-sill. The light arrested him, and 'there will be sorrow there to-morrow when I'm missed' passed through his mind. The thought made him give so fierce a kick that he fairly kicked the cramp out of his leg. A few strokes {21} brought him to the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... went his way into the upper air; and just as the sun arose, touching the pine-tree tops with fire, he came to his father's hut, where the eight children were rubbing their eyes and Zitza crying for her breakfast. No one knew that Mihal had been farther than the door-sill, nor did he tell the clamorous brood of children what he had seen, lest they should mock it as a dream, or attempt the ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... might have paused, but without hesitancy George put his foot on the window-sill, pushed down the window farther, and clambered into the room in which he had first seen Marguerite. His hat, pressing backward the blind, fell off and bounced its hard felt on the floor, which at the edges was uncarpeted. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... I was upon my mettle; and I as good as did it. More than that, blackguardly as it was, I enjoyed the doing. He is my friend. He had dined with me that day, and I felt like a man in a story. I climbed his wall, I crawled along his pantry roof, I mounted his window-sill. That one turn of my wrist—you know it!—and the casement was open. It was as dark as the pit, and I thought I'd won my wager, when, phewt! down went something inside, and down went somebody with it. I made one leap, and was off like a rocket. It was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would whisper; "it is so near. Let us push aside the chest of drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open with the Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the voices of the weary city, voices calling ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... students at the University McGregor had seemed very old. Secretly he was much admired and had often been the subject of talk. Those who had now come to see him wanted him to join a Greek Letter Fraternity. They sat about his room, on the window sill and on a trunk by the wall. They smoked pipes and were boyishly eager and enthusiastic. A glow shone in the cheeks of the spokesman—a clean- looking youth with black curly hair and round pink—and—white cheeks, the son of a Presbyterian ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... encouragement that hailed its presence of mind. The concentration of the flames, which threatened every moment to bring down a portion of the ponderous roof in one destroying crash, left a freer passage. She advanced quickly—she put her foot on the smouldering sill; she paused, hesitated. It ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... on to the rough ground of the solitary, wooded mound. In the faint light the little church, with sparse oak leaves and dock delicately carved on the granite capitals, was wonderfully grave and gentle in its utter emptiness; and I did it all possible honour. There is a low granite bench or sill round the base of the beautiful sheaved columns; a broken, disused organ-loft of coloured mediaeval thorn carving; and under two shapely little arches lie a knight, unknown, and lady in high coif.... I knew it all by heart, coming like that every day and sometimes ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness intended to be soothing. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and going to his own chamber threw himself on the broad window-sill, which was a favorite retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do. Here he could see the rain gradually subsiding with gleams through the parting clouds which lit up a great reach of the park, where the old oaks stood apart from ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasant memories of her past life. That afternoon she thought she would call up some more memories, so she went over on the counter and from there jumped down on the window-sill, landing with all four feet in the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Heidi, for the window-sill was too high for her to see over. In great disappointment, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... small and light; it was not a difficult thing to do, as she clung to the window-sill, and in a moment she had disappeared. Then her head ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... thus relieved, swung himself easily on the sill, and grasping Loo once more, descended to the street, where he was met by Mr Auberly, who had recovered from his state of partial suffocation, and who seized his child and hurried with her into a neighbouring house. Thither he was followed by Mrs Rose and Matty, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... boy would not sit down. He ranged the room, frankly curious, exclaimed at the pair of ring doves who lived in a box tied to the window-sill, and asked for crumbs for them. Adelbert brought bread from his ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sings on the sill: "Shut your eyes, deary, and sleep in a trice, Then I will stay here, and scare off the mice,— ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... throwing them first far away, then nearer and nearer till he would come to my window-sill. And when I woke one morning he was sitting there looking in at the window, waiting for me to get ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... In a moment I was in the lower hall, looking for a back stairway; if any one had found me I was going to beg a drink of water for my child. There was a door there, but it was locked; but desperation makes one keen, and I was not long in finding a key hanging up on a nail beneath a window-sill. The next instant the door was unlocked, and I on my ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... not begin till the end of August, when, one evening, Mrs. Prosser, quite alone, was sitting in the twilight at the back parlour window, which was open, looking out into the orchard, and plainly saw a hand stealthily placed upon the stone window-sill outside, as if by some one beneath the window, at her right side, intending to climb up. There was nothing but the hand, which was rather short but handsomely formed, and white and plump, laid on the edge of the window-sill; and it was not a very young hand, but one aged, somewhere ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the window—which afforded a convenient seat, since the crystal was but half the thickness of the wall—first took a long look all round the interior, and then leaped down, followed by his attendant. Eveena drew back, but was at last persuaded to mount the ladder with my assistance, and rest on the sill till I followed her and lifted her down inside. The Regent had by this time reached the machinery, and was examining it very curiously, with greater apparent appreciation of its purpose than I should have expected. When we joined them, I found ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... said this amateur philosopher, as he dusted the gray-painted sill of the wicket with a large red-and-white handkerchief, "it is great to hear a woman speak in public, anyway, even if she does not do it very well. It's sorto' like seeing a pony walking on its hind legs; it's clever even if it's not natural. You will have some all right—I'm going over ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... or too plucky to retreat before such a foe, persisted in remaining at their posts till the fire, which had at last been communicated to the building, crept unpleasantly near; then, by dropping from sill to sill of the broken windows, or sliding by their hands and feet down the rough pipes and stones, reached the pavement,—but not without injuries and blows, and broken bones, which disabled for a lifetime, if indeed they did not die in the hospitals ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... twelve cloudy glasses, standing in a circle on the sticky marble slab, and not a boy to be seen. A pair of hands letting go their hold on the window-sill outside explained matters. I ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a church, a republic within a republic, a world within a world, is spelled by four letters—Home! If things go right there, they go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong everywhere. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the foundation of Church and State. A man never gets higher than his own garret or lower than his own cellar. In other words, domestic life overarches and undergirds all other life. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... wide kitchen table, which was scarred with generations of use of cleaver and bread-knife and steak-pounder. The kitchen door was open to the broad land, which flowed up to the sill in a pleasant sea of waving grass. But she was turned from it, staring apprehensively toward the tea-room. Round her swirled the heat from the stove, and restless flies lighted on her cheek and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Do tell us more about yourself!" Joy was always teasing and the girls were used to her ways. Kit leaned over the door sill, grabbed a handful of snow, aimed it at ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... painted something in memory of his visit, and Mildred sought vaguely for what Mr. Mitchell had painted. Then, remembering that he had chosen to walk about with the Turner girl, she abandoned her search and, leaning on the window- sill, watched the light fading in the garden. She could hear the frogs in a distant pond, and thought of the night in the forest amid millions of ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... silence, and shameless Janet, peering above the window sill, saw what she saw. It was enough. She crept away upstairs to her room. She was lying there across the bed when Avery swept in—a splendid, transfigured Avery, flushed triumphant. Janet sat up, pallid, tear-stained, and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr. Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... some difficulty, carried her to the window, and placed her upon the sill. She was instantly grasped by strong arms, and carried down the ladder, Fred following as fast as possible. They had scarcely reached the ground before a crash of falling timbers told them that they had barely escaped with ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... forward to the window. Frederick, who carefully kept his face out of his father's view, bent half- way over the sill in his anxiety to watch the flying figure of Sweetwater, who was making straight for the dock, while Knapp, roused at last, leaned over his shoulder and pointed to the sailors on the deck, who were pulling in the last ropes, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... darkest of every one, In the dark house on the hill, Yet I turn to it here from this ruin of grass, She has leaned on that window's sill, And dark it is, but there is, there is An echo of light ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... her face a moment in the bowl of pink roses. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain. Leaning her head against the window-sill, she began stringing on the thread of a tune the things that just then thrilled her with a ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he lived and thrived for a fortnight, and I had hopes of keeping him till spring; but one cold night the furnace fire went out, and in the morning my pretty swallow-tail lay dead on the window-sill. Wasn't it ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... study of machine guns, see Subject XI, Machine Guns in Action, School of Musketry, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Combined Cavalry and Infantry Drill Regulations for Automatic Machine Rifle, cal. 30, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... fairy houses or toys, waist-deep in stores of winter fuel. With their mellow tones of madder and umber on the weather-beaten woodwork relieved against the white, with fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush blades by the lake ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Alderson, whose husband (the famous big-game hunter) had but recently returned from the jaws of a Zambesi lion. George's sister, Lady Clanroyden, a tall, handsome girl in a white frock, was arranging flowers in a bowl, and on the sill of the open window two men were basking in the sun. From the inner drawing-room there came an echo of voices and laughter. The whole scene was sunny and cheerful, youth and age, gay frocks and pleasant faces amid the old tapestry and mahogany of ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... nursery or bedroom, rocking to sleep, jolting the carriage over a door sill or up and down, the habit of picking baby up the moment he cries, late rompings—any and all of these may disturb sleep, as well as unsettle the tender nervous system of the child, thus laying the foundation for future nervousness, neurasthenia, and possibly hysteria. This ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... fiction is nearer reality than all other fictions, and the reason, too, that his realities, i. e., his declarations of faith, are nearer other men's fictions. When he writes of his conversion, like John Bunyan, he lets you see across the very sill of his soul. And he does it artistically. He is not conscious that art enters into the mechanism of this spiritual evisceration; but it does. St. Augustine, John Bunyan, John Henry Newman wrote of their adventures of the spirit in letters of fire, and in all three there ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... home apace: White hands were on the sill: But ere the rush of the unseen feet Had reached the turn to the open street, The bars shot down, the guard-drum beat— We ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... He drew his knife along the netting near the sill, then cut it from top to bottom on each side, close to the frame. So skilfully did the keen blade do its work that the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... breeze, spotting the grass below. The river swirled along, glassy no more, but dingy grey with autumn rains and rotten leaves. All beyond the garden told of autumn; bright and peaceful, even in decay: but up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the very window sill, summer still lingered. The beds of red verbena and geranium were still brilliant, though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and plane; the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined its delicate green leaves, and more delicate yellow blossoms, through ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... June offered, Daisy slowly crawled off the bed, and went and kneeled down before her open window, crossing her arms on the sill. June followed her, with a sort of ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... could be more musical. They have a pet poodle and a pet squirrel, too. The poodle is very fat, and his hair sticks out so much all over him, that he looks perpetually astonished, as if he had just seen a spook. He always stands on the window sill, when the sash is raised of an afternoon, and glares into the street until he sees the bachelor brother coming. Then he achieves a series of frantic yells and bounces, until somebody comes to open the door and lets him out, when he waddles to the front ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... modern architects; some of them, till bold and sacrilegious hands despoiled them, adorned with sculptures which, surviving the destruction of the people who raised them, the wanton rage of barbarous enemies, and the inroads of the elements for near two thousand years, sill remain, in their decay, the wonder and admiration of the world, the models of modern sculptors, and the greatest treasure of art a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... waited. Five minutes later, when he hung up, he had secured the information and made careful note of it, after which he sought an arm-chair in the hotel window, planted his feet on the window sill and gave himself up to reflection. He was occupied thus when T. Morgan Carey came out of the barber shop, and seeing Mr. Hennage, came over and sat down beside him. Mr. Hennage decided that the financier must have something on his mind, and he ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... vines covering the outside, while flowers bloomed indoors. These were set in pots and on shelves near the latticed windows. They seemed to grow finely, because so good a woman loved them. The copper door-sill was kept bright, and the broad borders on the clay floor, along the walls, were always fresh with whitewash. The pewter dishes on the sideboard shone as if they were moons, and the china cats on the mantle piece, in ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... On the morning of the 6th of May, he was killed by a shot from an arquebuse. His epitaph recounts his honours: "Aucto Imperio, Gallo victo, Superata Italia, Pontifice obsesso, Roma capta, Borbonius, Hic Jacet;" but in Paris they painted the sill of his gate-way yellow, because he was a renegade and a traitor. He could not have said, with the dying Bayard, "Ne me plaignez pas-je meurs sans avoir servi contre ma patrie, mon roy, et mon serment." (See Modern Universal History, 1760, xxiv. 150-152, Note C; Nouvelle ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... then Sally, who seemed absent-minded, found something else to wonder about—a certain musical whistling noise that filled the little church. But it was only a big bunch of moonwort on a stained-glass-window sill, and the wind was blowing through a vacancy that should have been a date, and making AEolian music. The little maid with the key found her voice over this suddenly. Her bruvver had done that, she said with pride. He ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of the little seamstress gave way, and, dropping her heavy head on the sunny window-sill, she too wept passionately over the ruin of the girl she had loved. But Gladys wept no more. Standing there in the long yellow shaft cast by the sunshine, memory took her back to a never-to-be-forgotten night, when an old man and a maiden child had toiled through the streets of Glasgow after midnight, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... he began to beat out the glass which shut off the other private rooms which adjoined the main office. In that process he brought the terrified Craig into view. He dropped the chair, reached in, and dragged Craig over the sill of the compartment. "This has been coming to you on the Noda waters! I'm glad you're here now to get it!" He held the Three C's director helpless in utter dismay, at the full length of a left arm, and ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... tune, He marked her through the pane, He could not help but mark, And only passed her by, To come again at dark. He was a winter wind, Concerned with ice and snow, Dead weeds and unmated birds, And little of love could know. But he sighed upon the sill, He gave the sash a shake, As witness all within Who lay that night awake. Perchance he half prevailed To win her for the flight From the firelit looking-glass And warm stove-window light. But the flower leaned aside And thought of naught to say, And morning found ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... afternoon sun crept toward the west, and it shone into the side window and through the screen of splendid fuchsias which clambered from sill to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... stood in the wild Wabash wood! The rank weeds were growin' like ghosts through the floor. The squirrels hulled nuts on the sill of the door. And the gals stood in groups scrapin' lint where they stood. And we boys! How we sighed; how we sickened and died For the days that had been, for ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... is that Mrs. Lyman says is too true," thought Willy, taking a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and drawing a profile of Miss Judkins on the door-sill, while that young lady tripped along the road, brushing the golden-rod and sweet-fern with the ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... situations, as under a bridge, a projecting rock, in the porches of houses, etc. They have been known to build on a small shelf in the porch of a dwelling, against the wall of a railroad station, within reach of the passengers, and under a projecting window-sill, in full view of the family, entirely unmoved by the presence of the latter at ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... of 8 to 40 and 50 pots. At first all pots were set singly. The line by which they were lowered and hauled up, and which also served as a buoy line, was fastened to one of the end frames of the bottom or sill, as it is called, at the intersection of the hoop. The buoys generally consist of a tapering piece of cedar or spruce, wedge-shaped, or nearly spindle shaped, and about 18 inches long. They are usually painted in distinctive colors, ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... but, not many minutes after we had laid them on the tiled floor of our room, we became aware that we were invaded. The ants were upon us. They were coming by thousands in a regular line of march up our window-sill and down again inside, straight towards the birds. When we looked out of the window, there was a black stripe lying across the court-yard on the flags, a whole army of them coming. We saw it was impossible to get the skins of the birds, so threw them ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Mayflowers were blooming and that reminded me it was time for your father to come home; you must forgive me, dear, and will you excuse me if I sit in the kitchen awhile? The window by the side door looks out towards the road, and if I put a candle on the sill it shines quite a distance. The lane is such a long one, and your father was always a sad stumbler in the dark! I shouldn't like him to think I wasn't looking for him when ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... float recklessness up to the high-water mark. There is another fight going on in the vestibule. One of the women has been caught up by the crowd and tossed bodily into the proscenium box, where she is caught and dragged by half a dozen brutes in over the sill and furniture in such a manner as to disarrange as much as possible what small vestige of raiment there is on her. The feat awakens general enjoyment. Men and women below vent their coarse laughter at the sorry figure she cuts and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... manufacturing town, and saw only red brick factories and dingy houses and dirty streets. The longing for the spring in her old English home lay in her heart like a throbbing pain. "Oh, papa," she sobbed, resting her arms on the window-sill and laying her head wearily down, "do you know all about it, dearest? Oh, if you could only tell me ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... SILL. To work and think, my dear, Up here would be, The height of conscientious folly. So eat and drink, my dear, I like to see, Young people gay—young people jolly. Olympian food my love, I'll lay long odds, Will please your lips—those rosy portals, What is the good, my love Of being gods, If ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... fine evening of this same year, upon a Sunday in June, two women were deeply busy in writing a letter. This took place before a large open window, with a row of flowerpots on its heavy old granite sill. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Zenda; the pipe was gone, and the dungeon's window, though still barred, was uncovered. The night was clear and fine, and the still water gleamed fitfully as the moon, half-full, escaped from or was hidden by passing clouds. Sapt stood staring out gloomily, beating his knuckles on the stone sill. The fresh air was there, but ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... when she slipp'd from off the bed, Her cramp'd feet would not hold her; she Sank down and crept on hand and knee, On the window-sill she laid her head. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... locked herself in her room, stumbled to the window, caught at it by the sill and leaned out. Her skin burned, her blood beat at her temples, and her breath came panting from her. Her white breasts ached with the burden of her strife. "I was born to live, not die. Air! or I ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... chance of an endowment of great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were open, in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring beehive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul. The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration—that which suffocates and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Duchess?" he continued, edging still closer to Denham, and adjusting his elbow and knee in an incredibly angular combination. Here, Katharine, who had been cut off by these maneuvers from all communication with the outer world, rose, and seated herself upon the window-sill, where she was joined by Mary Datchet. The two young women could thus survey the whole party. Denham looked after them, and made as if he were tearing handfuls of grass up by the roots from the carpet. But as ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf |
