"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a member of the Society of Friends, formerly of Southampton Co., Virginia, now of Marlborough, Stark Co., Ohio, says, "I knew a Methodist who was the owner of a number of slaves. The children of both sexes, belonging to him, under twelve years of age, were entirely destitute of clothing. I have seen an old man compelled to labor in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... look challenged him to do,—had substituted action for words,—yet now, as he stretched out his arms to her, she held him off, fearful that she would find herself weeping on his breast. It would be sweet to do it—like getting home after a long voyage. But dizzily, with a stark clinging to a rock of integrity in herself, she fought him off, more with her militant spirit than with ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... lived a man whose name was Knoist, and he had three sons. One was blind, the other lame, and the third stark-naked. Once on a time they went into a field, and there they saw a hare. The blind one shot it, the lame one caught it, the naked one put it in his pocket. Then they came to a mighty big lake, on which there were three boats, one sailed, one sank, the third had no bottom ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... of fifteen, perhaps, was plaiting pandanus-leaf to make a hat, and an old woman was sitting on her haunches smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a new-born child, and another child, stark naked, was playing at her feet. When she saw me she called out to Strickland, and he came to the door. He, too, wore nothing but a . He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted hair, and his great hairy chest. His feet ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... shortly. "Stark, staring mad! No thanks to you that every bone in your body isn't broken. I wonder what Miss Phipps would have said if she had come in, while you were pirouetting on the mantelpiece! It would have been your turn to be surprised ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... music you copied for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about you, and about our acquaintance and our love-making, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... in discord and in dark, When struck by Love on high with will for mace, Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place, And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace, When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base, And blood for Freedom ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... Jr.,—as Richard Kildene,—and yet he had seen his cousin lying dead before him, during all the years that had passed since he had fled from that sight. In battle he had seen men clubbed with the butt end of a musket fall dead with wounded temples, even as he had seen his cousin—stark—inert—lifeless. He had felt the strange, insane rage to kill that he had seen in others and marveled at. And now, after he had felt and done it, he was arrested as the man he ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... breeding. We are not surprised that she regards fornication as but a venial fault—like cigarette smoking—and sins "capriciously, desultorily, more in a frolicsome spirit of camaraderie than anything else." Girls so reared are apt to be a trifle frolicsome. We are not shocked to see her stripped stark naked in Carrel's atelier in the presence of half a hundred hoodlums of the Latin quarter—seeming as unconcerned as a society belle at opera or ball with half her back exposed, her bust ready to spill itself out of her corsage ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... few days. I had never heard of a cricket eating anything. It seems that Pluto was a cannibal, for only the wings of poor Scamp were visible when I opened the lid, and they lay broken on the floor of the prison-box. Even with Pluto it had gone hard, for he lay on his back stark and stiff, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... the road was deserted. Once a low-hung two-wheeled vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting tail- board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched sideways on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and lashed it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip. He was collarless, and the scarlet and orange handkerchief, knotted about his throat, had ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... beginning a marked military and governmental superiority over the neighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it a certain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk at the mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savage souls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people that had been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling waves of barbarism wash over them. But we are not yet in position to speak definitely on these matters. ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... incident of the brook and of many others which had grown out of it, among them one concerning the death of a certain Reddy which had tragically come to pass a year or two before his birth. The said Reddy had been found one November evening stark and cold at the corner of the parson's spinney, with an empty gun grasped in his stiffened hand, and a whole charge of small shot in his breast. Crowner's quest had resulted in a verdict of death ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... harrow of oarsmen, Straight from amid white eddies arose wild faces of Ocean, Nereid, earnest-eyed, in wonderous admiration. 15 Then, not after again, saw ever mortal unharmed Sea-born Nymphs unveil limbs flushing naked about them. Stark to the nursing breasts from foam and billow arising. Then, so stories avow, burn'd Peleus hotly to Thetis, Then to a mortal lover abode not Thetis unheeding, 20 Then did a father agree ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... you what it is," said Tom Titus, turning round and wiping the sweat off his brow with his naked arm, "this here cretur here's stark raavin' mad." ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... swinging slowly to and fro. And when I held up the torch to look at his face, there leered down upon me the eyes of my old fellow 'prentice Peter Stoupe! At the sight the torch fell from my hands, and I reeled back into my comrade's arms, stark and cold, well-nigh as the corpse itself. Then there came upon me, with a rush, an inkling of what all this meant. I seized the light again, and dashed past the hall and up the staircase. Every room was ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... for Mrs. Gilman's proposals, up to a point, than could be made out for corresponding proposals on the other side. No one who thinks for a moment can question that all proposals whatsoever to make either sex independent of the other are stark madness; yet there is a certain short-lived plausibility in the argument that women are to be independent of men, and this depends upon the fact which we have already attempted to demonstrate and interpret by ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... passing deathward in the dark Of days that had been splendid where they went; Their crowns are captive and their courts are stark Of purples that are ruinous, now, and rent. For all that they have seen disastrous things: The shattered pomp, the split and shaken throne, They cannot quite forget the way of Kings: Gravely they pass, majestic ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... he cried, in amazement. "Are you goin' stark loony? Payin' that Simmie Crocker fourteen dollars a WEEK for drivin' team and swappin' our good sugar and flour for sewin'-circle lies over folks' back fences! I never heard such a thing in my life. Why, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of reel London Fog lately, I, for one, shood like to kno when we did have one. As for its orful effecks upon tempers, speshally female ones, Well, it's about enuff to drive a pore Waiter, let alone a hard-workin, middel-aged Husband, stark staring mad! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... he turned his terrible eye to me, 'I bear you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.' The captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck,—what a sight! Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on the puddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, the victory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for six months. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport it was! And we had not had a good fight so long, we ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that a fellow named Mortimer Morrison, a stage-struck chap, played a part on the local stage, and while delivering his lines he gave his audience a treat—the real thing in tragics. He went crazy—wild, stark, staring mad! He was an escaped sanitariumite—he got out, found the stage at Dalton, and was having a gay old time when the——" Nat suddenly stopped. "What's the matter, coz?" ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... little. The Fiesolani are not Florentines, people of the valley, but Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men little women keen and full of salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with you, and humour you, certainly ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... stricken with contrition. What were we doing? We had no right to be listening to this pitiful interview. The pain and protest in his voice had suddenly banished all the humour from it, and left naught but the bare, stark tragedy. We rose and tiptoed out of the room, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... surprise, my fright, my trouble, when I saw in a san-benito and mitre a figure which resembled that of Pangloss! I rubbed my eyes, I looked at him attentively, I saw him hung; I fainted. Scarcely had I recovered my senses than I saw you stripped, stark naked, and this was the height of my horror, consternation, grief, and despair. I tell you, truthfully, that your skin is yet whiter and of a more perfect colour than that of my Bulgarian captain. This spectacle redoubled all the feelings which ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... crept by. Hours of black, stark misery. The clock in the hall struck one—a single, bell-like stroke that reverberated through the silent house. It penetrated the numbed confusion of her mind, rousing her to a sudden recognition of the fact that she had been crouched so long in one position that her limbs ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... stark behind the barn, but he had no thought to spare for him; he peered for the traces of the horses' feet. There they were, stamped into the snow as into wax; Kasztan's large feet and the broken hoof of Wojtek; here the thieves had mounted and ridden off at a slow trot. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... I chose. I lived as I liked. I was my own mistress. And now—well, there is no one! I enjoy the respectability of your name, the privilege of knowing your friends, the ability to pay my bills, but I should go stark mad if it wasn't for Hester. I gave myself away to you, I know. You married me for pity, I know. But what in God's name do ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... partickeler pint dat Meriky got dat dressin'. She done been off to Richmun town, a-livin' in sarvice dar dis las' winter, and Saturday a week ago she camed home ter make a visit. Course we war all glad to see our darter. But you b'l'eve dat gal hadn't turned stark bodily naked fool? Yes, sir; she wa'n't no more like de Meriky dat went away jes' a few munts ago dan chalk's like cheese. Dar she come in wid her close pinned tight enuff to hinder her from squattin', an' her ha'r a-danglin' right in ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... fortune (and mayhap fame) have passed him by, and all through his own fault; he may whine about imaginary wrongs during the day when he is maudlin, but the night fairly throttles him if he attempts to turn away from the stark truth, and he remains pinned face to face with his beautiful, dead self. Then, with a start, he remembers that he has no friends. When he crawls out in the morning to steady his hand he will be greeted with filthy public-house cordiality by ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen. John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan, Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... tremendously glad such a woman as that is n't known to be your wife!" She had been cool and deliberate up to this time; but with these words her latent agitation broke out "Do you think I have been happy? Do you think I have enjoyed existence? Do you see me freezing up into a stark old maid?" ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... object for diversion in lieu of better. Accordingly they accosted him with rough words and unceremonious usage, the which he resenting, they came to boisterous threats and many blows, that ended only when the poor fellow lay with outstretched limbs stark dead upon the pavement. Sir Charles Sedley and Lord Brockhurst were also notable as having been engaged in another piece of what has been called "frolick and debauchery," when "they ran up and down all night almost naked through the streets, at last ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... standing stark and bare, a bleak black thing, on a sunny day against a sky of blue. You have looked at it, fascinated by the silent horror of it, a distorted cinder, not a tree, and someone tells you it was struck ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, and handed it over stark ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... fluttering, poor assuming elves, Stark full of pride, of folly, of—yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... flooded in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse itself almost ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... he was a finished scoundrel from early manhood to his grave." Nevertheless, his fiery nature kept him for a time with the Americans, and at the very outset he showed his independent spirit, having characteristically refused to "wait for proper orders." From New Hampshire came Stark, the hero of the frontier wars. And from all the towns came the militia leaders, who, gathering their companies into regiments, began the loose organization and crude subordination which should make ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... was stalking about with a stick in rags and nakedness. Full dress of many of these beggars would disgrace a Polynesian. Even the better dressed were hung with garments in rags, tattered, and dirty as a Paisley ragpicker's. The children were mostly stark-naked. In the middle of the day we reached a Mohammedan village named Taouen, twenty miles from Chaotong, and my man prepared me an al fresco lunch. The entire village gathered into the square to see me eat; they struggled ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... but an hour since, held all her hope of peace and safety now, unless her father could be saved from his fate by some miracle of heaven. But that was impossible. He had given himself up as if he were determined to die. He had been out of his mind, beside himself, stark mad, in his fear that Don John might bring harm upon his daughter. That was why he had killed him—there could be no other reason, unless he had guessed that she was in the locked room, and had judged her then and at once, and forever. The thought had not crossed her mind till then, and it was ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Did you ever dream of such gall? I've offered 'em money enough to buy a new set of cars and pension the driver for three generations; but that doesn't seem to be what they want. They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a ruling, and build walls between times. Are they all stark, raving mad? One 'ud think I made a profession of flagging trains. How in Tophet was I to know their old Induna from a waytrain? I took the first that came along, and I've been jailed and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... arc Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore; Above her, like a demon stark, The dark fire-mountain evermore Looming portentous, as of yore; Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves; Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines And olives, and the shattered shrines Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... gaping wounds deep into the dense gray ranks. Still, the wave broke; and, from its storm-blown top, one furious tongue surged over the breastwork and through the hedge of bayonets. It came from Armistead's brigade of stark Virginians. He led it on; and, with a few score men, reached the highwater mark of that last ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... field of pearls and gold and precious stones, limped unchallenged the tireless figure of "Soapy" Shay, diamond thief, a bloody bandage about his head, an exalted light in his pain-stricken eyes. His one-time captor lay stark and cold in the gruesome line in the bow of the boat. It was "Soapy" Shay who staggered out of the rack and smoke with the burly, stricken detective in his arms, and it was "Soapy" Shay who wept when the last breath of life cased out through ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... shown as small and summary symbols, the horizon is a streak of clouds and there is a deliberate shrinkage from physical refinement. The purpose of the picture is rather to express with the maximum of power the savagery of passion and the stark ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... trace this effect to its proper cause and it troubled him. I could have told him the reason in two words, but I feared to put into his mind the thought that the princess might learn to love him. As to the king, he would not have cared if Brandon or every other man, for that matter, should go stark mad for love of his sister, but when she began to show a preference he grew interested, and it was apt sooner or later to go hard with the fortunate one. When we went back to Greenwich Brandon was sent ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... twain of days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry and of the green * Yet none but those which bear the fruits for cast of stone complain. See'st not how corpses ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of the swollen purple throat, And the stark and staring eyes, Waits for the holy hands that took The Thief to Paradise; And a broken and a contrite heart The Lord will ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that has been forced too long to wing its broken way, the Eagle of the Sky—still two hundred yards from shore—lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderous hail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark, sun-baked Sahara shore. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Sunday became harmless or even obligatory on Wednesday or Thursday. It was all very hard for a rational being to understand and explain: but he meant to fathom it, all the same, to the very bottom—to find out why, for example, in Uganda, whoever appears before the king must appear stark naked, while in England, whoever appears before the queen must wear a tailor's sword or a long silk train and a headdress of ostrich-feathers; why, in Morocco, when you enter a mosque, you must take off your shoes and catch a violent ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... either opium, or we are stark, staring mad," I replied. "But I assure you we have no private information. We went in (as I suppose you did ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the stark fiscal facts of the 1960's clearly demonstrates where the primary blame for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... longer shall language be dumb! Thy vision shall grasp— As one doth the glittering hasp Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold— The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely. And out of the stark Eternity, awful and dark, Immensity silent and cold,— Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metals That cymbal; yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals, Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... mind. You always did find out our secrets and give us a lift. Well, I never cared much for books, you know; but down yonder when the devil tormented me I had to do something or go stark mad, so I read both the books you gave me. One was beyond me, till that good old man showed me how to read it; but the other, this one, was a comfort, I tell you. It amused me, and was as pretty as poetry. I liked 'em all, and most wore out Sintram. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... says, 'if you c'n be suited with namin' your family after rats 'n' mice I guess you c'n leave me out,' I says, 'n' I kind o' backed off so 's to try 'n' set him a-goin', but he stood still, 'n' o' course no true Christian c'n shut her door in her minister's face—even 'f she is stark crazy to get to cleanin' her garret. 'Why don't you name her Minnie after yourself?' I says (Minister, you know), but I c'd see 't he didn't take to that a tall. 'Oh, well,' I says then, feelin' 't I must get rid o' him somehow, 'name her ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... roared Jack; "to think after the way we have brought her up, after all our care of her, that she should go and fall in love with a dancing, dandified nincompoop, all powder and patches. Why damme! the wench is run stark, staring mad. Egad! a nice situation for a loving and affectionate ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... their common complexion) would defy the orderly genius of the superintendent of the Astor House. Their laziness, their filthiness, their inconceivable stupidity, and unconquerable good humor, are enough to drive one stark, staring mad. The sitting-room we occupy is spacious, and not ill-furnished, and especially airy, having four windows and a door, none of which can or will shut. We are fortunately rid of that familiar ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... her childhood returned tenfold, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She was falling in love with this man whose object was her father's ruin. A cold terror clutched at her heart. Even now, while their friendship was so new, so strange, there was a query, a stark, terrifying query, to stand up ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... bare-floored room with two other boys, as green and countrified as was he, and he took turns with them making up those beds, carrying water for the one tin basin, and sweeping up the floor with the broom that stood in the corner behind it. But even then the stark simplicity of his life was a luxury. His meals cost him three dollars a week, and that most serious item began to worry him, but not for long. Within two weeks he was meeting a part of that outlay by delivering the morning daily paper of the town. This meant ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... awaited us, as, in overhauling the sail-encumbered shrouds of the partially standing mast, we discovered several ice-bound figures rigidly hanging therein, which, being cut away and lowered to our boat, proved to be the body of a negro perfectly stark and dead, and three most pitiable white sailors, whose life was so far extinguished that they could neither move hand nor foot, nor utter ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he stood stark still and stared as the boy hurried along about his duties. Upon the Montauk's nearest neighbor the naval signalman was semaphoring, and he watched abstractedly. It was something about camouflage maneuvering in the zone. Tom took a certain pride in being able to read it. Far off, beyond the ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... twenty years' experience, as governor of a lunatic asylum, assured the writer that next to drink, overdrawn tea was the most responsible agent for insanity. That week he had received a farmer's wife and five strapping sons all stark mad from the poison stewing by so ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she? Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great, black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death, sitting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a pink tarlatan danseuse who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of those wall pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... been a little cooled already at the medical examination, where, to my horrible embarrassment, I was made to strip stark naked, and was inspected by an elderly gentleman in a pince-nez, with half a dozen uninterested people looking on, amongst them two or three louts in fustian who were awaiting their turn. I was put into a variety of postures, all of which I felt ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... conjecture; a man who did not drink, did not smoke, did not talk; who ate four bananas for his lunch and invariably carried a book in the pocket of his shabby coat. It was said of him that once, during a terrible blizzard, he had been the only clerk to reach the office; that he had worked there stark alone until one o'clock, when at the stroke of the hour he had taken out his four bananas and his book! There were other stories about him of the same kind, not all of them true to fate, but essentially true of the man's nature and of his rigid adherence to routine. He had risen, place by ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... a dupe or a stark-staring madman; but the case is different as it stands. I know—I would stake my life on it—that every word Martin Hall wrote is true, true as my life itself. I am not so sure that you ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... big men in blue were toiling, toiling, toiling at theirs. All through the night anxious eyes would be strained for Chaffee, and at dawn the slaughter would begin again. Wherever he looked, he could see with his mind's eye stark faces in the long grass of the valley and the Spanish-bayonet clumps in the woods. All day he had seen them there—dying of thirst, bleeding to death—alone. As he went down the hill, lights were moving along the creek bed. A row of muffled dead lay along the bed of the creek. Yet they were ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark naked, with the exception of a tattered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... streets. Mobs. And that's an incredible feat of observation," Costa marveled. "I had the feeling that if I came in here stark naked, you ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... relatives the Emperor and King of Spain, will hardly make your royal heads greasy with the fat of such property as we possess, 'Twill also be a remarkable spectacle after you have stripped our wives and children stark naked for the benefit of your treasury, to see them sent in that condition, within three days afterwards, out of the country, as the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... not very long survive her husband, and he had left his roots behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had farmed not wisely but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains to expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white bowlders. But instead he moped about, fretting for his fair green fields, and few proudly cherished beasts,—especially the little old Kerry cow. And at his funeral the neighbors said, "Ah, bedad, poor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sure of that,' said he. 'At any rate, we were stark lunatics to sit up against a hedge to ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... all instanter, and a curtain seemed to lift off his soul, and there glared the eyes of 'Santa Claus' into his mind's eyes. In a second he put two and two together and understood why, deep in his brain that night, had hidden such a feeling of stark care. ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... and his face was dusted with grey ash which emphasised his rather potent eyes. His features in profile were pure Greek, and on his low forehead there was a touch of gold. His particular followers or disciples had the silly expression of a mesmerist's subjects; they sat in the dust stark naked and unashamed, and looked happy and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Empire, ye gods!—an Empire!—when the flower of its manhood lies pale and stark like the windrows of corn after the harvester has done his work. Thoughts of a dreamer! Schemes of a visionary! How will the quaking lips which throughout the length and breadth of this vast hecatomb now cry, "Sauve ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... into the second hut—which we still called Gibson's, by the way, although he had never lived there—when to my dismay and horror (notwithstanding that I was prepared for the event), I beheld my poor Bruno laid out stiff and stark on the little skin rug that Gibson had originally made for him. I do not think I knew how much I loved him until he was gone. As I stood there, with the tears coursing down my cheeks, all the strange events of my wondrous career ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... not tell what a pleasure it was to me to hear again the old English services that once I had thought so long, as a boy will. And on that day, for the first time, it came to me that my man, Erling the viking, was a stark heathen, Odin's man. Truly he came to the church with me, and there he stood and stared at all that went on, quietly and reverently enough, but in such wise that I thought that he had somewhere seen the like before. So presently when we ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... did. Yesterday they went to the Gerhardts and spent two hours, and Ward came away bewitched with those people and marveling at the winning innocence of the young wife, who dropped naturally into model-attitude beside the statue (which is stark naked from head to heel, now—G. had removed the drapery, fearing Ward would think he was afraid to try legs and hips) just as she has always ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scarcely knowing what I was doing, "Will you let me?" I asked. "Don't talk loud," said she, "it will never do to let any one know what we are at." Our voices dropped to a whisper, whilst by her advice I pulled off trousers and drawers, and she stripped stark naked. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... occupy all the coaches—and Cephas thought it would look better and more popular to have 'em all occupied—we divided up, and Josiah went in one, alone, and lonesome as a dog, as he said afterwards to me. And I sot up straight and oncomfortable in another one on 'em, stark alone. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... him, he did not see and could not feel. And so as the century is old the booming tide is full, and John Barclay in his power—a bubble in the Divine consciousness, a mere vision in the real world—stands stark mad before his phantasm, dreaming that it is all real, and chattering to his soul, "Hanno is ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon jumped out of line, went clattering down into the dust from the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... One small alleviation we had in the man whose province it was to bale the water out of the boat; he threw it on our bodies to cool them. However, what with the scorching of the sun and cooling of the water, our skin was blistered all over. By day we were stark naked; by night we had on shirts or loose coats; for we had left our clothing ashore, on purpose to ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... police station. As they brought him out, a frantic woman burst through the throng and threw herself upon him. It was the children's mother come back. When they took her to the blackened corpse of little Ike, she went stark mad. A dozen neighbors held her down, shrieking, while others went in search ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... matter, Mr. Speaker; they do not cant it with your book-learning, your orbs, your centres, your prime magnitudes, and your nebulones, things I profess that would make a sober man run stark mad to hear them; while we, who should be considering the honor of our country and that it goes now or never upon our hand, whether it shall be ridiculous to all the world, are going to nine-holes or trow madam for our business, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... were alert as we approached the curve that opens the meadow into view, and—as I am a Christian man, living in the twentieth century—I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no country ever has. But since the advent of "freedom" it is scarred and wounded; great scar-patches stretch here and there where woods have been felled by the avarice illumined in the souls of landowners; hundreds and thousands of bare poles stand stark and stiff against the river light which have been glorious pyramids of leaf shedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill like the ballons of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shorn of wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... threw his master's wallees into a peat loft. Thus they were both carried off. They hired one David Cumming in the same parish to be their guide to Glasgow, who willingly consented. They pressed a horse for him to ride upon; but they had not gone far, when the horse ran stark mad, and, jumping and striking all around him with such violence as affrighted the beholders, they were obliged to let him go; but no sooner was he returned home, than he became as calm as ever. Cumming had to go on foot to Glasgow. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... he met Cospatrick, Earl of March, one sunny day, and foretold that, ere the next noon passed, a terrible tempest would devastate Scotland. The stout Earl laughed, but his laughter was short, for by next day at noon the tidings came that Alexander III., that much loved King, was lying stiff and stark on the sands of Kinghorn. He also foretold the battles of Flodden and Pinkie, and the dule and woe which would follow the defeat of the Scottish arms; but he ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Talbot, "Ah! my lord and master," he cried, "can this be verily you? May God forgive your sins! For forty years and more I have been your officer-at-arms and worn your livery, and thus I give it back to you!" And he covered with his coat-of-arms the stark-stripped body of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... led, but straightway followed the awful sounds, until she reached the chamber behind whose door they were shut. Upon the huge disordered bed, Sir Jeoffry writhed, and tried to tear himself, his great sinewy and hairy body almost stark. Two of the stable men were striving ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... she said, "me for the country and the simple life after this. They think I'm only a probationer and don't see anything, but I've got eyes in my head. Harrison is stark crazy over Dr. Wilson, and she thinks I don't see it. But never mind; I paid, her up to-day for a few of the jolts she has ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... population were arranged under different banners. The rich and poor alike took arms to defend the walls which sheltered them. The town paupers were enrolled in three companies, which bore the significant title of the "Tons-nulls" or the "Stark-nakeds," and many was the fierce conflict delivered outside the gates by men, who, in the words of a Catholic then in the city, might rather be taken for "experienced veterans than for burghers and artisans." At the same time, to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... enthusiasm, like those of life, run slow. It is then that the spirit of a man is at its weakest. Or perhaps it was the sight of Valmy that cooled his optimism. There it lay, grey and forbidding even with the yellow sunlight of dawn full upon it, and there, stark and clear, an offence against the sweetness of the new day, were the three royal gibbets. Their sinister hint was emphatic. The justice of the King was without mercy, and sombrely he asked himself, Was he so sure that ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... John Randolph set himself stark and grim. "The question is," said he, replying to Calhoun's new nationalism, "whether or not we are willing to become one great consolidated nation, or whether we have still respect enough for those old, respectable institutions [the States] to regard ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Albany, N.Y. Was admitted to the bar in March, 1867, at Warren, Ohio, and the same year removed to Canton, Ohio, which has since been his home. In 1867 his first political speeches were made in favor of negro suffrage. In 1869 was elected prosecuting attorney of Stark County, and served one term, being defeated two years later for the same office. Mr. McKinley took an active interest in State politics, and made speeches in many of the campaigns. On January 25, 1871, married Miss Ida Saxton. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... they turn back, ... The frigate toward Germany drifting floats, A broken wrack! What once had been ours overboard was strown, Each kinship mark Was quickly removed, to the sea it was thrown With curses stark! The Northern lion, that figure-head gray, Now had to fall, In pieces 'twas hewn, and the frigate lay Like a shattered wall. ... Repaired and refitted, its canvas it spread Near Germany's coast, With black-yellow flag and an eagle ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... bright to be looked at with the naked eye—the sun neared and reached the horizon. There was no change in the star-studded sky. There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the stark black shadows shifted. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... eddies in the otherwise motionless atmosphere, and are so strictly local in their character that it is by no means uncommon to see a ship sailing briskly along under one of them, while another ship, perhaps less than a mile away, is lying helpless in the midst of a stark, breathless calm. Or two ships, a mile or two apart, may be seen sailing in diametrically opposite directions, each of them with squared yards and a fair wind. Under ordinary circumstances the fickle and evanescent character of ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to see her, but when I entered the hut, she, poor thing, was already stark and cold. In dying she had rolled on to this child and crushed her leg. The village folk came to the hut, washed the body, laid her out, made a coffin, and buried her. They were good folk. The babies were left alone. What was to be done with them? I was the only woman there who had a ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... us. Then, again, are we to limit our interest, as these modern writers do, to the beautiful people or the interesting people or the gross, emphatic people. Dickens is never more childlike than when he draws us, wonderingly and confidingly, to the stark knees of a Mrs. Pipchin, or when he drives us away, in unaccountable panic-terror, from the rattling jet-beads of a ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... replied Carver with gentle alacrity. "Your word is enough. And while Alden finds wherewithal to feed and quench his thirst, John Howland shall bring a mantle or cloak from my house to throw about him, for it is not seemly that our people should see us entertaining a man stark ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... exhibitions of Oriental simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the great thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most startling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him to the Rue Payenne, to exactly the same spot where, a year before, at the very same hour, he had paid me the compliment I have related to you. It was a superb moonlight night. We immediately drew, and at the first pass I laid him stark dead." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... alone, the old cniht threw himself back upon the bench and covered his face with his mantle. "I have outlived my usefulness," he moaned. "I have lived to bring ruin on the house that has sheltered me. What guilt I lie under!" For a time he lay as stark and rigid under his cloak as though death had already closed about him. The guard-room seemed to become a funeral chamber, with a mass of hovering shadows for a pall. The fire held up funeral tapers of flickering flame, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... schoolmeasther, efther a little time. "I'll brak' every boan in your boddy, Smike," he says, efther another little time. Then all of a soodden, he sings oot for a loight, and when it cooms—ecod, such a hoorly-boorly! "Wa'at's the matter?" says I. "He's gane," says he,—stark mad wi' vengeance. "Have you heerd nought?" "Ees," says I, "I heerd street-door shut, no time at a' ago. I heerd a person run doon there" (pointing t'other wa'—eh?) "Help!" he cries. "I'll help you," says I; and off we set—the wrong wa'! Ho! ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... hees startled: come, he shall to taverne with us and confess all. If he do not strip his soule stark naked to us, say I am no fortune teller.—Please you to honour our society: we are going to indulge at the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... February was falling, together with a fine, drenching rain. The trees that over-hung the muddy lane were beating their stark branches together as though in despair over the general hopelessness of the outlook. The west wind that raced across the brown fields had the sharpness ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell |
