"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sat down on the doorstep, thinking of what they ought to do to get peace, for they could not go on living as things were. She wondered if confession and penance and mortification and repentance could relieve them from ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... next day, the 6th of September, the kibitka halted in the village of Alsalevok, which was as deserted as the surrounding country. There, on a doorstep, Nadia found two of those strong-bladed knives used by Siberian hunters. She gave one to Michael, who concealed it among his clothes, and kept ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... and walked to the address which Fritz had given me. As I stood on the doorstep, with the bell handle still in my hand, the door was suddenly opened. It was Delora himself who appeared! He shrank away from me as though I were something poisonous. I laid my hand on his shoulder, firmly determined that this time there ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... falsehood to your conduct. I understand quite enough. Your own brother saw you bidding him an affectionate good-night at one o'clock, on my doorstep. Such things do not happen by accident. I wonder that you dare look me in the face after roaming the streets at that time of night with such a ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... I keep all my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them down again to your customers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, and send them off from my doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher a man has to carry the raw material of thought before he works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew all this very well when he advised every literary man ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental parlor. Her household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of age, of whom more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon her doorstep when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken in for the night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by the good soul as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at school at the "Academy" in another ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this is old or young till I've told it?" demanded Curly, as they all three sat on the ruined doorstep of the mill ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... they came to Bunny Cotton-Tail's house. Grandpa Grumbles set Tippy Toes down on the doorstep and shouted, ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... the doorstep of the hut). He's tender-hearted. It's hard on him, poor dear. Well, what of that? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... down and get rid of this beastly thing. It's dark enough to leave it on the clergyman's doorstep, I should think. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... the people were saying, Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and Richard and Gilbert,[35] Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading of Scripture, And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down to the sea-shore, Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep 550 Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... up his armful, transferring it, on the doorstep, to a cab which carried him to his rooms. He dined alone, hurriedly, at a small restaurant near by, and returned at ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... go to New York;—what will you do with your youngster?" he interrupted himself. "Leave him on Dr. Lavendar's doorstep, I suppose?" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... would be," commented the other, turning to his wife, who sat on the doorstep, "I reckoned so when I see that lady at the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... we come upon a group of little children seated about a doorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting oranges into little bits, and playing "party," as children do on the other side of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the skinny hand of an old woman is stretched ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Crown and kingdom; through a stronger Greed than love I Lesbia court,— For a queen is worth my homage. From her trellis I have come, From a sweet and pleasant converse. But, what's this? Each night I stumble On a man here at my doorstep. ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... beyond him, on the doorstep leading directly into the living-room of a house which joined the other, midway between two windows (the union marked by a third doorway unused and boarded up, around whose stone was the growth of decades), sat Stephen ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and brown, showed no sign of having been out of bed all night. From cold water and a razor in his own lodgings he came back at a round pace to St. Martin's Lane. He found his aide, Mr. Mackenzie, taking the air on the doorstep of the Blue House, and rebuked him. "I bade ye ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... advice, and hadn't come downstairs yet. Ellaline, too, was still in her room, sulking, no doubt, and hadn't said good-bye to Sir Lionel or any of us. I know that, because my room at this hotel has been close to hers—and to his, too; so whenever a word is murmured on a doorstep I hear. No word has been murmured this morning; and E. has had her ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... doorstep, he sat down and regarded the horse with malevolent disgust. After a time, jerking off his hat savagely, he burst out into a ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Pons' treasures, and then—after dreaming his dream in sheets of gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor. Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for since Pons fell ill, La Cibot's work ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... liked milk. He never knew it, though, until he chanced to come upon a saucerful which some one had set out on the big flat stone that served as the back doorstep of the farmhouse. ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... him upon the doorstep, and he took off his hat to the cool, pine-laden breeze that came from a mountain in the distance. He liked this town at once. He liked the elm-lined village street, and the snug white houses and the quiet and content ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... after our company was thus dissolved the mayor was knocked down at the foot of Swan Hill by the Town Wall, gagged and trussed, and laid upon his own doorstep, where he was found by the maidservant in the morning, having wrought himself to the verge of apoplexy by his struggles to rid himself of his bonds. He besought the captain with tears of outraged dignity to resume his guardianship of the town; but the old warrior merely rubbed ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the delay, I got down and walked along the line to the engine. It had stopped at a level crossing. At the side of the closed barrier, on the doorstep of her hut, with the light shining upon her, sat the wife of the gatekeeper, a child in her arms. She was a young woman, fair and pale. She seemed somewhat uneasy, and yet had no idea of quitting her post. She was talking in a low voice to the engine driver and stoker ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... receiver for five minutes," the voice said. "Precisely at half-past twelve you go and look on your front doorstep. Then come back and tell me what you have found. You need not fear that ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... told that he was going off for a week or two. No letters need be forwarded, for he would be constantly moving, but Mrs. McCunn at the Neuk Hydropathic would be kept informed of his whereabouts. Presently he stood on his doorstep, a stocky figure in ancient tweeds, with a bulging pack slung on his arm, and a stout hazel stick in his hand. A passer-by would have remarked an elderly shopkeeper bent apparently on a day in the country, a common little man on a prosaic errand. But the passer-by would ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... night, Tatiana had said no word, nor had she moved from her doorstep: it was only when they brought back the dripping body to the village that she stirred, and when she saw it she laughed a dreadful laugh, and the spirit went from her eyes, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... me—Magda, I'm sick of having their mothers come to me!—and begged me to interfere. She says you're ruining the boy's prospects. He's a brilliant lad, and they expect him to do something rather special. And now he's slacking completely. He's always on your doorstep. If you care about him—do you, Magda?—tell him so. But, if you don't, for goodness' sake send him ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... partisans, the Journal and the Democrat had their friends. The trio stood as ancient landmarks, as recognized and familiar institutions. Here was a double-headed monster which, without saying "by your leave" or "blast your eyes" or any other politeness, had taken possession of each man's doorstep, looking very like it had brought its knitting and was come ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... intention! When I shouldered the bag I was not aware of the cat inside. But, after all, why not? The fair courtyards of the House of Art are thronged by many humble retainers. And there is no retainer so devoted as he who is allowed to sit on the doorstep. The fellows who have got inside are apt to think too much of themselves. This last remark, I beg to state, is not malicious within the definition of the law of libel. It's fair comment on a matter of public interest. But never mind. Pro domo. So be it. For his house tant ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... know," said little Joan. "I wish Mother had allowed us to sit on the doorstep. We could have ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... SHAW, interviewed on his doorstep, derided the action of the Glasgow Corporation. No amount of water, he told our representative, could have the least effect in making our modern cities less beastly than they were. For his part, however, he was taking no risks. He had that morning arranged for the erection ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... engine might puff and purr and snort but at least it could not talk, and his secret was quite safe. This reflection lighted his face with courage and when the family came out to join him no one would have suspected that the slender boy waiting on the doorstep harbored a thought of anything but anticipation in the prospect of the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... at least a welcome distraction, and under its genial influence Mrs. Briggs's spirits rose. She was quite cheery by the time her two visitors took their leave. They left her waving farewell from her doorstep, the patches of paste still upon her ruddy countenance, but with no other traces of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and Mishaps of a Foundling The first volume tells how Dorothy was found on the doorstep, taken in, and how she grew to be a lovable girl of twelve; and was then carried off by a person who held her for ransom. She made a warm friend of Jim, the nobody; and the adventures of the pair are as interesting as they ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... little less indicative of bland good humour than usual. He had forgotten to light his customary cigarette after the exigencies of a Cabinet Council. He had even forgotten to linger for a few minutes upon the doorstep in case any photographer should be hanging around to take a snapshot of a famous visitor leaving an historic scene, and quite unconsciously he ignored the salutation of several friends. It was only by the merest chance that he happened to glance up at the corner of the street ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the good of knowin' about Popocatepetl," Mr. Quinn shouted at him, "when you don't know the name of a hill on your own doorstep!" ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... hostelry took its name from a giant oak which grew at its doorstep just to one side of the maple-lined driveway that led down to the Port Road, a hundred yards or so beyond. This enormous tree spread its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof. Ordinarily, of course, its ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... only two to take, and one of them was seatless. Hilda dropped into the whole one. Billy sat down on the doorstep. The twins sat upon the board edge of the bottomless chair. Cricket remained standing, with the blanc-mange still in her hand. All of them, shy, as children always are in the presence of poverty and ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... doorstep, looked up at the symmetrical old red house-front, with its frugal marble ornament, as he might have looked into ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... days later, before the entrance to Paul's laboratory, I encountered a terrible stench. So overpowering was it that it was easy to discover the source—a mass of putrescent matter on the doorstep which in general outlines ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... would treat Albert with mingled cordiality and reserve, and thus preserve her own dignity; she went through a mental rehearsal of the meeting two or three times—in truth, she was just going over it the fourth time when Charlton stood between the morning-glory vines on the doorstep. And when she saw his face pale with suffering, she forgot all about the rehearsal, and shook his hand with sisterly heartiness—the word "sisterly" came to her mind most opportunely—and looked at him with the utmost ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... invited had entered Sir Robert Cunninghame's Wallace boldly followed them; and Archie sat down on a doorstep nearly opposite. Presently he saw two figures which he recognized riding up the street, followed, as the others had been by four armed retainers. They were Sir John Kerr and his son. Archie rose at once, and turned down at a side street ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... see Doctor GLADSTONE'S little friends returning to School after the Easter Vacation. The Doctor, looking complacently expansive, cheerily anticipative, welcomed them on the doorstep. They did not welcome him. Oh, dear no! Look at them; the five senior pupils in front, headed, of course, by that overgrown and somewhat ungainly Irish boy, Master PATRICK GREEN, cock of the School, and prime favourite of Doctor GLADSTONE! Can you not fancy them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality; above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven, because the beings who pass ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the boys settled themselves on Mrs. Cahill's hospitable doorstep to await the arrival of the parade which could be heard far off on the other ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Church, waiting to be gathered up, and shame on the members who quietly and indifferently permit this! It must not be; men's souls are too precious to be trifled with; they have cost too much for us to allow them to starve and die on our doorstep; open the door, put forth your hand, draw them kindly, but firmly, into the family of the Lord; few of them will have heart to resist such efforts to save them; but if they do, then go out to them, stay with them, persuade and entreat them, pray for them, pray on and on, and in ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... she told me how the old man kissed me, how his eyes watered when he asked my story, how she told again of the moment when I was heard screaming on the doorstep, and how she offered to go and bring the paper which had been pinned to my bib. But the old man said it was no matter,—"only we would have called him Marquis," said he, "if his name was not provided for him. We must not leave him here," he said; "he shall grow up a farmer's lad, and not a ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... my advertisement of a half-pair of bellows and a stuffed canary, as the first insertion has had such remarkable results. On looking out of my bedroom window this morning I observed a queue of some hundreds of people extending from my doorstep down to the trams in the main road. They included ladies on campstools, messenger boys, a sad-looking young man in an ulster who was reading SWINBURNE'S poems, and others. Only with difficulty could the milkman fight his way through to place the can on the doorstep, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... the rich man to hell as if it were a matter of course? No crimes or vices are alleged. It must be that a life given over to sumptuous living and indifferent to the want and misery of a fellow-man at the doorstep seemed to Jesus a deeply immoral and sinful life. Jesus exerted all his energies to bring men close together in love. But wealth divides. It creates semi-human relations between social classes, so that a ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... that on the doorstep!" The Wolf's taunting laugh held a deadly menace. "And you painted a drop or two of it along the street as you ran. I thought when you bust away from the Spider's and that cursed gang nosed in that I was going to lose out; but I figured that I had hit you, and I was keeping my ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... heard saying. He embarked on a French vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved. Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... that letter upon the doorstep, held in place by the weight of a stone, and very softly slipped out into the shadows of the twilight and down the mountain by the path up which that morning I had come with my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, then my friend. I felt a certainty that as many as two hours would those men continue ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... package. This time, it being a fine, sunny, summerlike day almost as warm as September, he went clad in careful dress with only a light motoring coat on over all to preserve the integrity of his attire. He left this in the car when he leaped out of it, and appeared upon the doorstep looking not at all like his own chauffeur, but ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply an instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great city; there is a gloom of evening and vapour over the sky; I see the child is bending over the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and, growing closer, as I ponder, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... nearly two hundred cats,' said Anthea, 'besides the cow—and it would have to be a different-sized basket for her; and then I don't know how you'd carry it, and you'd never find a doorstep big enough to put it on. Except ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... air any gamer than I am. Why, if necessity demanded, I could load a shot-gun with tears an' scald a enemy to death. I don't know quite as much about my folks as you do yourn, but I kin ricolleck a red puddle on the doorstep. So now, we air standin' on equal ground. Miz Barker, I reckon it's yo' nature to cry, so jest pitch in an' cry all you want to while we air gittin' supper; an' then in the night, I'll change yo' pillow every time it gits too wet ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station on the morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation of seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a faint demonstration within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep of that little house where four Forsytes had once lived, and now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which Soames had come and out of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the "old people" of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... station was a curious sight that night. The flight was beginning. A crowd of people was collected at one end with boxes and bundles and children. One little boy was lying on a doorstep asleep, and against the wall farther on lay a row of soldiers. On the bench to the right, under the light, was a doctor in his white overall, stretched out sound asleep between the two rushes of work at the station dressing-room; and a Roumanian officer talked to me of Glasgow, where he had once ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... go. My address will be at the old house in Arundel Street. Shall I see you again before I go?" she asked him, when she stood on the doorstep. "Perhaps you will be busy, and ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... of the shop was standing on his own doorstep, his legs wide apart, one arm on his wide hip, the other still brandishing the knife wherewith he had been carving for ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... money for your debauchery? For the love of God be more careful of yourself, or you will be ruined. How shameful, how abominable of you! So the landlady would not admit you last night, and you spent the night on the doorstep? Oh, I know all about it. Yet if only you could have seen my agony when I heard the news! . . . Come and see me, Makar Alexievitch, and we will once more be happy together. Yes, we will read together, and ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... abusing his taste in dress. Nor was that all—he had drunk a great deal more strong wine than was wise, for to this his head certified. Lastly he had walked home arm in arm with his lady-snatching Spaniard, and by Heaven! yes, he had sworn eternal friendship with him on the doorstep. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... hollow, stood the small cottage where, at that very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the Finnegan's and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... my friend understand by a sign that we should do better not to insist; but, being determined to enter the inn, he slipped by the man on the doorstep and was in the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... there at once: I'll overtake you on his doorstep. (Christy turns to go.) Wait a moment. Your brother must be anxious to know ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... his direction. She tolerated his presence and that was all. But wherever she went he shadowed her. He was not obtrusive, but was content to keep at heel, and to be permitted to admire. I have seen him sit for half an hour on a doorstep, a canine monument of patience, waiting for her to come out, and I have seen her travel about the Place in apparently purposeless zigzags and circles for the mere pride and vanity of knowing how closely he would follow her ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... a man stopped at our gate. I was standing on the doorstep breaking sticks. He looked over the top bar of the gate and called to me to know if Mother Barberin lived there. I shouted yes and told him to come in. He pushed open the old gate and came slowly up to the house. I had never ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... dragged slowly away. Dinner was over and still no message for us forlorn little ones. At last Aunt Polly slowly arose from her seat upon the doorstep, with the light of a strong, courageous resolve on her ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... the convalescent Hound went to lie upon the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn. They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... a vision of some sharp-visaged female marauder insinuating the tip of a very pointed nose between the great front door and the lintel. 'I only hope,' the elder woman went on, 'that I won't be here the first time Donald encounters your new friend on the doorstep. That's all!' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with one of his latest converts upon his own doorstep, with admirable al fresco effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. "Good-by, good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down, or round the gulch, you know—ha, ha!—but straight across lots to the shining ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... there is a dead brick wall; on the other side, bounding a little space of unpaved ground, rather higher than the lane, there are a few old brick cottages, of very mean and dirty appearance. At the doors of some of the cottages squalid, untidy women were lounging; some of them sitting upon the doorstep, with their elbows on their knees, smoking, and looking stolidly miserable. We were now getting near where the cholera made such havoc during its last visit,—a pestilent jungle, where disease is always prowling about, "seeking whom it can devour." A few sallow, dirty ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... student. His convictions drag him out of his little home at all hours to minister to the sick and exhort the wicked; they give him no rest, and never let him feel he has done enough; and when he comes home weary, after a day's wrestling with his parishioners' souls, he is confronted on his doorstep by filthy abuse pasted up on his own front door. He never speaks of these things, but how shall they be hid? Everybody here knows everything that happens before the day is over, and what we have for dinner is of far greater general interest than the most astounding political earthquake. They ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... blow no more The leaves around the kitchen door. It takes my time till ten fifteen To make the doorstep nice and clean," ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... avert it. I thought of his little daughter who was 'as pretty as a pink.' Perhaps Fate was going to strike him through her. Perhaps when he got home he would find that she was dead. There were tears in my eyes when I alighted on my doorstep. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the same moment there was a glimmer of a gray dress in the twilight of the hall; and the next moment Honnor Cunyngham appeared on the doorstep, the morning light ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... household consumption, no tradespeople save milkman and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most light, and the world outside had no suspicion of anything being wrong in the staid, old-fashioned house opposite Sir John Drinkwater's. Even the neighbours ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... her doorstep with her rifle across her knees and halfway to the fence-line Jerry paused and looked back. The rifle came up—and dropped back again as Alexander belatedly pretended that she had not seen him. At the ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... owner's absence. But the householders of Madeira Place do not absent themselves, even in summer; they could hardly get much nearer to the sea. And if you will take the pains to seat yourself, toward the close of day, upon an opposite doorstep, between two rows of clamorous little girls sliding, with screams of painful joy, down the rough hammered stone, to the improvement of their clothing, you will see that the house ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... year 1700, and he found no less than eight thousand existing entire; and yet these were but a very small proportion of the number that must once have been there. The palaces and modern churches of Rome owe, as I have said, all their ornaments to this passion of the ancients. There is not a doorstep nor a guardstone at the corner of the meanest court in Rome which is not of marble, granite, or porphyry from some ancient building. Almost all the houses, as Raphael said, have been built with lime made of the costly old marbles. The very streets in the newly-formed parts ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... not. I tell you, girl, I'm mad in love with you, and I'll sit on your doorstep all night 'til you agree to ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Only he knew they were not men. He did not even think of ghosts. All he knew was it was a death fire, a death silence, death tepees, death figures. He fled through the woods knowing only death was behind him—running and running, and never stopping till he dropped exhausted across the fort doorstep at two in the morning. He blurted out why he had come. Then he lapsed unconscious. They filled him with rum. It was twenty-four ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... a well-educated, dainty and exceedingly attractive Japanese girl presents herself on the doorstep of a house in New York where one of the young men resides. Situation! What shall the young man do with his charming and unexpected protegee! In view of the prolonged success of Fay Bainter in the play, East Is West, it was obviously the thing to make a play out ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... that ridiculous little Methodist meeting house on the very doorstep of my garden, father?" I demanded, as I stood tall and furious before him in the breakfast room on the morning after my return home from my winter in the East with Aunt Clara. "Cousin Nickols has spent many months out of three years on the plans of ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... amontillados so steep that the camera probably gets a crick in the neck looking up at him; ride the foaming torrent with one hand clasping the mane of his now tamed broncho, and the other hand triggering his shooting-iron; and eventually fall exhausted from the horse at the very doorstep of the ranch, one arm, pinged by a dastardly rifle-bullet, dangling helplessly by his side. (It is, by the way, always the arm or shoulder; the cinema never allows him to get it distressingly in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... kitchen, bursting into tears. The cook, solicitous, receives a slap in the face, and as the maid bounces out, the cook, seeking a victim, grabs away the gingerbread from the butcher's boy. And that still hungry juvenile slams the door as he leaves and kicks the slumbering cat off the back doorstep. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... cliffs on the other side of the gorge, and (to my surprise) crowded with people so that I couldn't have believed the whole City of London held half the number, let alone a god-forsaken hole like Otta. I stood for a while on the doorstep counting 'em, and the next thing I remember was crossing the street to a low wall overhanging the gorge and leaning upon it and watching the cliffs working up and down like mine-stamps. This struck me as curious, and after thinking it over I made up my mind ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... she at once entered the house, as if the door had been opened to admit her. That startled him. It was the custom for everybody to wait on the doorstep till asked inside. He went into ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... spilled the soap, all right enough. I'm willin' to believe yuh did without no affidavit. Doggone it, a bachelor never has any such a man-trap around in a fellow's road. I've lived in Montana fourteen years, an' I never slipped up on my own doorstep till you got here. It takes a woman t' leave things around—where's my ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... pretentious gentility, decent poverty, the infamy that wears a brazen front, and the crime that burrows in darkness—he knows them all at a glance. The patched window, the dingy blind, the shattered doorstep, the pot of mignonette on the garret ledge, are to him as significant as the lines and wrinkles on a human face. He grows to like some houses and to dislike others, almost without knowing why—just as one grows to like or dislike certain faces in the parks and clubs. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... to wake, it is enough To sleep:—With God and time he leaves the rest. But on a day death on the doorstep sits Waiting, or like a veiled woman walks Dogging his footsteps, or athwart his path The splendid passion-flower love unfolds Buds full of sorrow, not ordained to know Appeasement through the answer of a sigh, The kiss of pity with denial given, The crown and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... seen sleeping against the walls, or gossiping languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel; but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry, the prevailing characteristic of the few groups of the lowest orders of the people which appeared in the streets ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... afternoon she met old Lord Groome on the doorstep, just coming to call on her, and hesitated a moment between asking him in or allowing him to accompany her as far as Mrs. Beale's, but decided on the latter because she would get rid of him so much the sooner. Her attitude toward him, however, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Cowperwood, keenly alive to a new treasure. Good heavens, where had been his eyes all this while? Here was a jewel lying at his doorstep—innocent, untarnished—a real jewel. These drawings suggested a fire of perception, smoldering ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... voted a fool, an altruist. A magistrate, commenting on the great plague and the manner in which the majesty of the "Law" (the majesty of Martial Law!) was being outraged, averred that from his own doorstep every night at eleven o'clock he gazed at hundreds of illuminated houses. It was true; and we used to wonder which his worship was—an invalid, an altruist, or ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... at first disposed to look askance at Mr. Tasker. Old-fashioned matrons clustered round to watch him cleaning the doorstep, and, surprised at its whiteness, withdrew discomfited. Rumour had it that he liked work, and scandal said that he had wept because he was not allowed to do ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... living, he would let the bishop settle his account with his conscience, but if Dr Pendle refused, he would then go up to London and hire a bloodhound to follow the trail of Dr Pendle's crime even to his very doorstep. In thus giving his patron an alternative, Cargrim thought himself a very virtuous person indeed. Yet, so far as he knew, he might be compounding a felony; but that knowledge did not trouble him in ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned on a matter of life and death. "Sorry to hear it," said the lawyer as he took the reins—"hope you may find things better than you expect. We shall see you again ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... him angrily, and went upstairs. And old Jamie waited. He dared not smoke his pipe in the parlor, nor even on the doorstep (which was a pleasant place; there was a little park, with trees, in front), for Mercedes thought it ungenteel. The present incongruity of this regard for appearances never struck Jamie, and he waited there. After eleven o'clock he fancied he might venture; the neighbors were not likely to be up ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... melting in spite of herself as she looked down from the doorstep into his dark, smiling eyes. His strong, tanned face was beardless, his teeth were white, his abundant brown hair tousled and boyishly awry,—and there were mud splashes on his cheek and chin. He was tall and straight and his figure was shapely, despite the thick ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and was soon driving homeward with his sister. No one of the party noticed a young negro, with a handkerchief bound around his head, who followed them until the carriage turned into the gate and swept up the wide drive that led to Warwick's doorstep. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... condition of his family, and shrank from being seen of men's eyes; every one they met must know they had not a place to lay their heads! The world was like a sea before them—a prospect of ceaseless motion through the night, with the hope of an occasional rest on a doorstep or the edge of the curb-stone when the policeman's back was turned. They set out to go nowhither—to tramp on and on. Is it any wonder—does it imply wickedness beyond that lack of trust in God which is at the root of all wickedness, if the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... She left abruptly. "Sweet disposition." Howat grinned. "You are seeing family life as it's actually lived." Later his thoughts returned to what she had said about Ludowika Winscombe; he recalled the latter's speech, seated on the doorstep; some stuff about a premonition. Myrtle had suggested that he was interested in her. What ridiculous nonsense! If his father said anything on that score the other would discover that he was no longer a boy. Besides, such insinuations were a breach of hospitality. How Mrs. Winscombe would ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the moon was not yet up, and Gibbie walked like a swift shadow before him. Suddenly, as if some old association had waked the old habit, he started off at a quick trot. Fergus did his best to follow. As he ran, Gibbie caught sight of a woman seated on a doorstep, almost under a lamp, a few paces up a narrow passage, stopped, stepped within the passage, and stood in a shadow watching her. She had turned the pocket of her dress inside out, and seemed unable to satisfy herself that there was nothing there but the hole, which she examined again and again, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... succeed and did not even wish to give any character to Hamlet, did not even understand that this was necessary. And learned critics continue to investigate and extol this puzzling production, which reminds one of the famous stone with an inscription which Pickwick found near a cottage doorstep, and which divided the scientific world into two ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... up the road that led behind the trees, and presently saw Juanita's cottage. A little grey stone house, low-roofed, standing at the very edge of a piece of woodland, and some little distance back from the road. Daisy saw the old woman sitting on her doorstep. A grassy slope stretched down from the house to the road. The sun shone up against the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... these words, stop; and he seeing the alley quite empty and deserted, sits down on a doorstep, and I do likewise, both of us being ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... is deserted, madam," said the boatman, who had moored his wherry to the landing-stage, and had carried the two trunks to the doorstep. "You had best try if the door be fastened or no. Stay!" he cried suddenly, pointing upwards, "Go not in, madam, for your life! Look at the red cross on the door, the sign of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... left him contemplating the far beauties of the little blur of light that was Med, Mr. Toby Amory set a match to one of his jealously expended store of Habanas and added one more aroma to the spiced air. To be standing on the doorstep of a king's palace, confidently expecting within the next few hours to assist in locating the king himself was a situation warranting, Amory thought, such fragrant celebration, and he waited ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... and ate with closed doors; the Egyptians felt no repugnance at eating and drinking in the open air, declaring that unbecoming and improper acts should be performed in secret, but seemly acts in public. The first blind alley they came to, a recess between two hovels, the doorstep of a house or temple, any of these seemed to them a perfectly natural place to dine in. Their bill of fare was not a sumptuous one. A sort of flat pancake somewhat bitter in taste, and made—not of corn or barley—but of spelt, a little oil, an onion or a leek, with an occasional scrap ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with white spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... checked through the limp, dew-laden grass of the woods-pasture and slipped on the rotting logs. But she caught herself from tumbling, and safely gained the border of Gillespie's corn field. There she sat down trembling on the stone doorstep of the spring-house, and waited rather than rested in the shelter of the chestnut boughs that overhung the roof. She was aware of the spring gurgling under the stone on its way into the sunshine, from the crocks of cream-covered milk and of butter in the cool dark of the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... grateful acceptance were on her very lips when her front-door bell rang too, very long and insistently and had hardly left off when it began again. Olga opened the door herself and there was Mrs Quantock on the doorstep with her invitation for Saturday night. She was obliged to refuse, but promised to look in, if she was not very late in getting away from Mrs Lucas's (and pop went the cat out of the bag). Another romp would ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... responded the child. She passed rapidly and apprehensively through the kitchen, but paused on the doorstep to make some overtures to Mrs. Wiggins. If that austere dame was not to be propitiated, a line of retreat was open to the barn. "Say," ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... him to ride like that. But he turned her aside from the steep hill, and passed along the street that led to the town gate of the House.—Whom should he see, as he turned into it, but Mrs Catanach!—standing on her own doorstep, opposite the descent to the Seaton, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking far out over the water through the green smoke of the village below. As long as he could remember her, it had been her wont to gaze thus; though what she could at ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... he had to stand aside, and Captain MacWhirr strode over the doorstep without saying a word ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... general development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads. With the opening of a transcontinental line the vast El Dorado of the West was laid practically at the doorstep of Eastern capital. Not only did American pioneers turn definitely toward the West, but foreign emigrants bent their steps in vast numbers in that direction, and capital in steadily increasing amounts made its way there. Towns sprang up everywhere and soon developed into busy centers of trade ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... he was sufficiently enlightened; it all went fast, for the little boy had been almost as great a help as the piano. Sidney haunted the doorstep of No. 3 he was eminently sociable, and had established independent relations with Peter, a frequent feature of which was an adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books criticised for not being ALL geegees and ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... tie-pins, game, cigars, ebony walking-sticks, confectionery, baskets of red mullets, old prints, Capodimonte ware, candied fruits, amber mouthpieces, maraschino—all from donors who plainly desired to remain anonymous. Such things were dropped from the clouds, so to speak, on my doorstep: an enigmatic but not unpleasant state of affairs. Gradually it dawned upon me, it was forced upon me, that I had worked a miracle. These good people, thinking that their demands upon O——'s executors would be cut down, Italian-fashion, by at least fifty per cent, had anticipated that ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... said: "People expect too much of me, altogether too much." That Sunday was his last before his address on Mazzini in Central Park. He finished with the hot sun over his head, and walking across the park to the house of Grant Wilson, he fell down faint and hopelessly ill on the doorstep. He never rallied, and after thirteen days the end came. An impressive warning to the old, who are selfishly urged to do hard tasks, that they must conserve their own vitality. Bryant was eighty-four when killed ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... standing is a sufferer from this cause. She was acquainted with a young man of respectable family, but immoral life. His gaiety had a fascination for her, and his reputed wildness only added to the charm. On one evening, as he escorted her home, and took leave of her on the doorstep, she allowed him to kiss her. It chanced that at the time she had a small sore on her lip. The poisonous touch of his lips conveyed the infection through this slight abrasion, and she became tainted with the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... is precisely what one does. He let himself in and shut the door, though it was only striking ten on one of the city clocks. No one can go to bed at ten. Nobody was thinking of going to bed. It was January and dismal, but Mrs. Wagg stood on her doorstep, as if expecting something to happen. A barrel-organ played like an obscene nightingale beneath wet leaves. Children ran across the road. Here and there one could see brown panelling inside the hall door.... The march that the mind keeps beneath the windows of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... but how much will you give to paint my pootty darter?" sez I. "P'raps I'd better come in," sez he. "P'raps you 'ad, if we're a-comin' to bisniss," sez I; "so jest make a long leg an' step over them dirty-nosed child'n o' Mrs. Mix's, a-settin' on my doorstep, an' I dessay we sha'n't quarrel over a 'undud p'un' or two," sez I. An' then I bust out a-larfin' agin—I shall die a-larfin'.' And then she added suddenly in the same tone of sadness, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... youth and spare figure, though the day had been when he could have run him down in no time. The space between them rapidly increased, and as the rays of the rising sun streamed upon Simon in the act of turning a distant corner, Gabriel Varden was fain to give up, and sit down on a doorstep to fetch his breath. Simon meanwhile, without once stopping, fled at the same degree of swiftness to The Boot, where, as he well knew, some of his company were lying, and at which respectable hostelry—for he had already acquired the distinction of being in great ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical grimace at Anne over ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not shut the street door after Fyne, but remained on the doorstep for a while, looking up and down the street in the spirit of independent expectation like a man who is again his own master. Mrs Fyne hearing her husband return came out of the room where the girl was lying in bed. "No change," she ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and found it vacant, for the news of Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... grime of the Flats, a woman sat on the doorstep of a wretched house. Her rounded shoulders slouched wearily—her tired hands were folded in her lap. She stared with dull, listless eyes at the squalid homes of her neighbors across the street. The Interpreter had described the woman to Helen—"a girl with fine instincts ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... so conservative, so proudly, scornfully aloof, that one would doubt they existed at all, were it not for their stately homes in the older sections of the city, where giant elms keep watch and ward over eave and column and dormer window, where hydrangeas sweep the doorstep, and faun and satyr, rough hewn, peer through the shrubbery—sit primly in the box-like pews with the preacher towering above them ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a visit only every fortnight from his friends, who brought him provisions on mules' backs. He willingly let me in, and spread a mattress for me on the floor alongside his own. The Arab he kept outside, and the poor fellow had to sleep coiled up on the doorstep. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... robin-redbreasts arter they'd committed sooicide with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere little Tony. He's alvays a playin' vith a quart pot, that boy is! To see him a settin' down on the doorstep pretending to drink out of it, and fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking a bit of firevood, and sayin', "Now I'm grandfather," - to see him a doin' that at two year old is better than any play as wos ever wrote. "Now I'm grandfather!" He wouldn't ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Kruse to announce their arrival with three cracks of his whip. The servants had long been watching at the doors and windows for their master and mistress, and even before the carriage stopped all the inmates of the house were grouped upon the stone doorstep, which took up the whole width of the sidewalk. In front of them was Rollo, who, the moment the carriage stopped, began to circle around it. Innstetten first of all helped his young wife to alight. Then, offering her his arm, he walked with a friendly bow past the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... be there; he always is when it is a bright day like this. He sits in an old chair on that broad doorstep in front of his house, and leans on a big, ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... who did not love, he was oddly angry at the sight of two young figures on the doorstep. Their clear voices came to him across the quiet street, vibrant and full of youth. It was the Sayre boy ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from it. Of man or woman, of wolf, bear, or lion, I spy not a single trace. Only here and there I behold the footprints of some strange monster, who has left his mark at random on either side of the road." So on he sped to the woody heights of Kyllene, and stood on the doorstep of Maia's cave. Straightway the child Hermes nestled under the cradle-clothes in fear, like a new-born babe asleep. But, seeing through all his craft, Phoebus looked steadily through all the cave ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... shyness soon henough!" he said under his breath. "She can just cool 'er 'eels on the doorstep till she gets courage to knock. 'Twull ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the old lady's tears gushed forth the moment she looked upon it. There was the well, the garden, the gate partially open, the barn in the rear, now half fallen down, the curtain of the west window rolled up as it was wont to be, while on the doorstep, basking in the warm sunshine, lay a cat, which ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... length the visitors rode away, they left him grinning a cheery farewell from his doorstep. He seemed to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... organized a serenade to President Fillmore and his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. The President bowed his acknowledgments from a window of the Executive Mansion, but Mr. Webster came out on the broad doorstep of his home, with a friend on either side of him holding a candle, and, attired in a dressing gown, he commenced a brief speech by saying, "Now is the summer—no! Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... disputed with the news editor, or asked unnecessary questions, but many a reporter did a lot of steady thinking when he got outside the office and safely on to the doorstep. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various |
