"First moment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself to take. But for these brief periods of self-communing, he felt that his body, as well as his mind, would and must have given way. Peggy's husband had leant helplessly on him, and from the first moment he had been—so indifferent onlookers would have told you—the sympathetic, helpful witness of the various phases Tom Pargeter had lived through during those ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of the fall of Calais had threatened at the first moment to be as disastrous as the international results of that misfortune had already proved. The hour for the definite dismemberment and partition of the French kingdom, not by foreign conquerors but among its own self-seeking and disloyal grandees, seemed to have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to their catechism class, and these were all the religious duties he had ever known her to accomplish. For the last ten years it seemed to him that she had been as indifferent as he was about such things—naturally and frankly indifferent. When the first moment of stupefaction had passed, he opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, said nothing, and, turning suddenly on his heels, went out of the room humming a kind of air to which music and words were about all ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... your very remarkable career," he went on, "I have a few,—a very few words to say. Sir, there have been many women in my life, yes, a great many, but only one I ever loved, and you, it seems must love her too. You have obtruded yourself wantonly in my concerns from the very first moment we met. I have always found you an obstacle, an obstruction. But latterly you have become a menace, threatening my very existence for, should you dispossess me of my heritage I starve, and, sir—I have no mind ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... short, and may be quickly told. M. Roussillon had taken advantage of the first moment when he and Hamilton were left alone. One herculean buffet, a swinging smash of his enormous fist on the point of the Governors jaw, and then he walked out of the fort unchallenged, doubtless on account of his lordly and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... horror seized on Romola, for at the first moment it seemed as if her brother's vision, which could never be effaced from her mind, was being half fulfilled. She clung to Tito, who, divining what ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... whom she had given a promise was there to claim her, how was she to go down and say what she had to say, before all the world? It was perfectly clear to her that in accordance with her reception of Urmand at the first moment of their meeting, so must be her continued conduct towards him, till he should leave her, or else take her away with him. She could not smile on him and shake hands with him, and cut his bread for him and pour out his wine, after such a ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... with an amused smile from Pierre to the vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to stop him, she ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in her genuine, half-childish appreciation of him. There were, of course, people who said that Lucy had been violently in love with Sir Tom, and that he had made up his mind to marry her money from the first moment he saw her; but neither of these things was true. They married with a great deal more pleasure and ease of mind than many people do who are very much in love, for they had mutual faith in each other, and felt a mutual repose and satisfaction ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... heretofore, he was thanked in the first moment of triumph, to be slighted at leisure. Lord Cochrane, on entering the city, was welcomed as the great deliverer of Peru: the medals distributed on the 28th of July—the day on which Peru's independence ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Charlemagne, and Louis regarded it as the most sacred of relics. On this the king swore to observe the treaty, though it contained clauses to which he would not have assented under other circumstances. The document was immediately signed. Louis, for the first moment since learning of his almost fatal blunder, breathed at ease. As for the second part of his promise, that of helping Charles to punish the townsmen whom he had himself stirred to rebellion, it little troubled his conscience—if he possessed any sentiment ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... returned home from the station, for the first moment he did not recognize his younger daughter-in-law. As soon as her husband had driven out of the yard, Lipa was transformed and suddenly brightened up. Wearing a threadbare old petticoat, with her feet bare and her sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, she was ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both histories. But though men, in later times, have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... that night and after the first moment of embarrassment, the meal resolved itself into a frank discussion of ways and means, quite as if nothing had happened. Roger flatly refused to take Dick's ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the arena, raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with impatient signs, then suddenly it sprang forward, but not on the Athenian. At half-speed it circled round and round the space, turning its vast head from side to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... In the first moment of surprise, and possibly of alarm, Ralph rose from his seat, and fell back a few paces, quite taken off his guard by this unexpected apparition. In another moment, he stood, fixed and immovable with folded arms, regarding his nephew with a scowl; while Kate and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, waking into conscious life under the ministries of parental benignity and kindness, have no emotion ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... things," Max returned. "I suppose it's my speciality. I knew you were in love with her from the first moment I saw you." ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... that flanked the steps, to where a servant stood holding open the door. A sense of gloom and chill at once overwhelmed me. From the interior, which I faintly saw stretching before me, there breathed even in that first moment of hurried entrance a cold and haughty grandeur that, however rich and awe-inspiring, was any thing but attractive to ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... marked our arrival were repeated, the Yale stand being the center this time of the maelstrom of cheers. I shall not attempt to describe our own feelings as we got the first glimpse of our opponents in the coming fray. Who can describe the sensations of the contestants in the first moment of a championship game? ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... the female Bats produce only a single young one at a birth; that this is at first blind, naked, and helpless; and that the female nurses it carefully—a process which must be greatly facilitated by the power of clinging to its parent possessed by the young Bat from the first moment of its appearance in the world. The two nipples possessed by the female are situated upon the breast, sometimes quite at the sides under the arm-pits, a position which renders it particularly easy for the careful mother to tend her offspring, while she is also enabled ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... like crying. It had been increasing, the oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the meagerness of poverty. And now it seemed ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... witched me to wish for love—to desire it; and I sit here a-thinking, a-thinking.... If love ever came to me I should think it would come now—ere the dawn; here, where all is so dark and quiet and close to God.... Cousin, this night, for the first moment in all my life, I have ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... DARLING ROSE,—This is only to tell you that I love you. I have been writing letters to you in my heart ever since I went away. But this is the first moment I have been able to put one down on paper. Father and mother never leave me—that sounds absurd, but it's true. If father isn't there, then mother is. Mother comes into my room after I am in bed, and tucks me up, just as she used to do when ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... were still bending over the papers, Cousin Jasper, with his thin, intent face, listening, Tom Brighton talking steadily, his eyes alight with that cheerful, eager kindliness that had so drawn Oliver to him from the first moment. They both turned in astonishment as ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed, he had regained his composure. He had hardened himself against adversity.—-"Continue!" he had said for the third time, to his comedians, speaking machines; then as he was marching with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... has the capital defect of not being adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend, if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which, though it is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Manor-house. Frank Sandys was a cousin of Mrs. Graves' deceased husband. She had advised the Vicar to send Jack to Beaufort, and had written specially commending him to Howard's care. But the boy had needed little commendation. From the first moment that Jack Sandys had appeared, smiling and unembarrassed, in Howard's room, a relation that was almost filial and paternal had sprung up between them. He had treated Howard from the outset with an innocent familiarity, and asked him the most direct questions. He was not ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at length forcibly broken; Mr Gosport, taking advantage of the first moment Miss Larolles stopt for breath, said, "Pray what carries you to town, Miss Beverley, at this time of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Edmonds, after a long and careful examination in regard to my acquirements, placed me in one of the higher classes. There was to me an irresistible attraction in the countenance and manner of my teacher; and, from the first moment I saw her I loved her. Although her home is now far distant from mine, and we have not met for many years, I love her as dearly now as when she took me by the hand when a child of eleven years. She conducted her school in a very systematic and orderly manner, and was very particular to require ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... by the qualified consent which he has given to its taking place he has precluded himself from opposing it by arms. Accordingly, every idle story which arrives from Munich which tends to revive this apprehension makes an impression which I am unable, at the first moment, to efface." Lord Yarmouth, from the Prussian camp, Aug. 12, 1793, Records: Army in Germany, 437. "Marquis Lucchesini, the effectual director, is desirous of avoiding every expense and every exertion ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Darsie, eagerly,—'I thank you with all my heart for this communication. I have blamed myself as a Christian man for the indescribable longing I felt from the first moment I saw that rascal, to send a bullet through his head; and now you have perfectly accounted for and justified this very laudable wish. I wonder my uncle, with the powerful sense you describe him to be possessed of, does not see through such ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... much; she should bring you back to life. But I was too late. I know not if it is my failure that has brought about this sorrow, or if God has taken it into His own hands. I only know that she was yours living, she is yours now. I must tell you that in the first moment of that terrible shock of the loss, there came a wicked, selfish gleam of gladness that I had not given her up to you. But I have wiped that out with my tears, and I can tell you without shame that is yours, that I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... reviewed swiftly his connection with her, from the moment when she had held his hand indifferently, yet with intention, in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room, till the moment, just past, when he had said to her, "You are free." And he knew that from the first moment when she had seen him she had made up her mind that some day he should be her lover. He hated her, and yet he knew now that in some strange and obscure way he almost respected her, for her determination, her unscrupulous courage, her will to live as she chose to live. She at any rate possessed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... commonplace; the proffer of a friendly message through the medium of a cliche which, however false in its general application, offered a short cut to the interpretation of feeling. Racquet who had maintained a well-bred silence from the first moment of his mistress's reproof, had honoured me with his approval while we sat in the farm-house sitting-room, and sealed the agreement by a friendly thrust of his nose as we ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... I have just received your friendly letter of the 22nd ult., to which I shall take the first moment of leisure to give a more detailed answer. In the meantime I can only say that I feel most sincerely the embarrassment of your situation, and hope that you may be able to triumph in the good cause. That no effort may be wanting, you shall have all the assistance ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... glances, nor one sigh, was lost on her; they might have been said to fall on the shield of Minerva, which some philosophers assert protected sometimes the breast of Sappho. Eugenie bowed coldly to the count, and availed herself of the first moment when the conversation became earnest to escape to her study, whence very soon two cheerful and noisy voices being heard in connection with occasional notes of the piano assured Monte Cristo that Mademoiselle Danglars preferred ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... like that which the heart feels in the first moment when it gives utterance to its own, and hears the avowed passion of the desired object:—a pure flame, the child of sentiment, just blushing with the hues of passion, just budding with the breath and bloom of life. No sin has touched the sentiment;—no gross smokes have risen to involve ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... From the first moment that the function of the lungs or of the skin is interrupted or disturbed, compounds, rich in carbon, appear in the urine, which acquires a brown colour. Over the whole surface of the body oxygen is absorbed, ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... himself up stiffly. His eyelids quivered. He did not accept Rnine's invitation to look; he examined neither the hat-box nor the bank-notes. From the first moment, without taking the time to reflect and before his instinct could warn him, he believed what he was told and collapsed heavily into a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... merely looked amazed for the first moment, foolish for the second, and the third he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... second. That was all the time Bart Stanton had from the first moment his supersensitive ears heard the faint whisper of ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I were all awoken at the same time late the next morning by a loud trumpet blast that shook the very air around us with its intense bass. For the first moment of our consciousness we were all dazed and could not fully comprehend the situation, and for a brief time we all sat unsteadily around the beach where we had fallen asleep. As we grew more awake, we began to understand what had happened, or at least I did, and I was frightened ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... kind of torments they would provide. And her soul, half childish yet, was hesitating on two sides. But Acte, hearing of these hesitations, looked at her with astonishment as if the maiden were talking in a fever. To oppose Caesar's will, expose oneself from the first moment to his anger? To act thus one would need to be a child that knows not what it says. From Lygia's own words it appears that she is, properly speaking, not really a hostage, but a maiden forgotten by her own people. No law of nations protects her; and even if it did, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... It is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters, appearing so suddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the inhabitants of this earth. When he recovers from the shock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees chappy fingers, skinny lips—in fact, nothing to distinguish them from poverty-stricken, ugly ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... to crush it, Philip could not help feeling a sense of relief. Fate was interfering; the girl was not for Pete. For the first moment since he returned to the kitchen he breathed freely and fully. But then came the prick of conscience: he had come to plead for Pete, and he must be loyal; he must not yield; he must exhaust all his resources of argument and persuasion. The wild idea occurred ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... After the first moment of stupefaction, all who had an injury to avenge arose and hurried to the chase. Sforza retook Pesaro, Bagloine Perugia, Guido and Ubaldo Urbino, and La Rovere Sinigaglia; the Vitelli entered Citta di Castello, the Appiani Piombino, the Orsini Monte Giordano and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the first moment of his connection with Malcolm Lightener as an employee. He had reported promptly at seven o'clock, and found Lightener already in his office. It was Lightener's custom to come down and to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... quicker beating heart. Not Eleanor alone, but her father and Ri confronted him, and it was very plain to see that a tempest was in the brewing. Her eyes were bright with tears and indignation; their brows heavy with formidable frowns. At the first moment of his entering, extreme astonishment at seeing him was clearly their dominant emotion, and as evidently it rapidly developed into a sentiment ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Almost from the first moment of my acquaintance with Mr. Conkling, I had endeavored to interest him in the reform of the civil service, and at least, if this was not possible, to prevent his actively opposing it. In this sense I wrote him various letters. For a time they seemed successful; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... fire might, at the first moment of flight lead to recapture, should any of my plans fail; and it would take us a half an hour to extinguish the embers by fetching water in ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... her work hastily upon the Table, and proceeded to execute his commands with every mark of unwillingness. Her countenance had displeased me on the first moment of my examining it. Yet upon the whole her features were handsome unquestionably; But her skin was sallow, and her person thin and meagre; A louring gloom over-spread her countenance; and it bore such visible marks of rancour and ill-will, as could not escape being noticed by the most inattentive ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... all Roumania. My idea is that if he had been differently constituted he could successfully have risked the experiment. The King possessed in Carp a man of quite unusual, even reckless, activity and energy, and from the first moment he placed himself and his activities at the King's disposal. If the King, without asking, had ordered mobilisation, Carp's great energy would have certainly carried it through. But, in the military situation as it was then, the Roumanian army would have been forced to the rear ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... patchwork quilt stood in a corner; in the middle was an iron stove in which logs crackled and sparkled. The air was hot and dry, but the priest, being accustomed to the atmosphere of stoves, took no notice, in fact, he noticed nothing but the room's one inmate, who from the first moment compelled his ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... of reunion. Misonne and Pierre Nouquet killed some sea-birds near the hut, whence it was not prudent to stray far. These fresh provisions and the replenished fire raised the spirits of the weakest. Louis Cornbutte got visibly better. It was the first moment of happiness these brave people had experienced. They celebrated it with enthusiasm in this wretched hut, six hundred leagues from the North Sea, in a temperature of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Guthrie's mental ejaculation in the astonishing first moment. A deep-sea sailor, who had come through what he had come through, to let himself be caught unawares by such a paltry mischance as this! Then, what an unspeakable ass to have been so careless—to have shown himself incapable of protecting ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... fiercely. "You must have seen what has been in my heart for days—that I care for you. The first moment I set eyes on you I knew that you were just the kind of girl I wanted for a wife. At first I was afraid of you. I had heard things about you—gossip and all that. You came here. We were thrown together. I still mistrusted you, but I watched you, and saw you weren't as bad as I'd been ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... first moment I have had for writing during these three days, which have installed me into a new mode of life so thoroughly that they seem three years. Scarcely pausing in New York or in Beaufort, there seems to have been for me but one step from the camp of a Massachusetts regiment to this, and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... figures hurrying across the back of the stage, the moving ghost-like workmen all around, and in the midst that white-hooded, languid figure—revived in Kendal's memory whenever in after days his thoughts went wandering back to the first moment of real contact between his own personality and that ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her for a child the first moment, she was so very small. 'Do not be frightened, my dear,' I said soothingly, 'I will make Tinker behave himself.' And a well-aimed blow from my umbrella made him draw off growling. In another moment I had him by the collar, and by dint of threats and coaxing contrived to shut him up in the kitchen. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been to her! This one idea pervaded her—too glorious, too happy for utterance, almost for distinct thought. The softening of his voice, and the look with which he had regarded her, recurred again and again, startling her with a sudden surprise of joy almost as at the first moment. Of the future Laura thought not. Never had a promise of love been made with less knowledge of what it amounted to: it seemed merely an expression of sentiments that she had never been without; for had she not always looked ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at her without speaking. The sympathy in her heart ceased as quickly as a fountain that is stopped; and she was conscious only of that lifeless chill with which she had entered the room. Now that the question had come, she knew that she had dreaded it from the first moment her eyes had rested on the face of her visitor, that she had expected it from the instant when she had heard that a woman awaited her in the house. It was something of which she had been aware, and yet of which ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... any source of information capable of furnishing a satisfactory answer.[202] A bill becomes law on the date of its approval by the President.[203] When no time is fixed by the act it is effective from the date of its approval,[204] which usually is taken to be the first moment of the day, fractions ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... you MUST form some opinion of it at least, at first sight,' cried Edie; 'you can't help having an impression of a place from the first moment, even if you haven't a judgment on it, can you now? I think it really surpasses my expectations, Mr. Le Breton, which is always a pleasant surprise. Venice fell below them; Florence just came up to them; but Oxford, I think, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the first moment of his superstitious fear was over, seemed to have bent up all his faculties to the pitch of resolution necessary to carry on the adventure, lent the adept his assistance to turn over the stone, which, by means of a lever that the adept had provided, their joint force ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... do the sums themselves; to send down men into their provinces to put things right whenever they went wrong. Tiberius was much more loath to do this. At times one almost suspects him of being at heart a republican, anxious to restore the Republic the first moment it might be practicable. That would be, when the whole empire was one nation and some few souls to guide things should have appeared. At any rate (in his latter years) it must have seemed still possible that the Principate ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... on Arethusa having that Green Dress from the first moment of seeing her in it. It seemed to Elinor to suit the girl as if, as Miss Rosa had enthusiastically declared, somebody had sat down before her and studied her "style". Her namesake nymph might have worn the gown just as it was without a single ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... loveliness of her peculiar soft, grey-blue eyes. Jims couldn't remember his mother and had no idea what she looked like, but the thought came into his head that he would have liked her to have eyes like that. After the first moment Jims did not mind the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at that time guaranteed to a British subject, his servants sleeping in the gallery outside the chamber-door. About midnight, he was waked by loud shrieks and expressions of terror from some one in the gallery. In the first moment of surprise, he concluded it must be the alguazils of the holy office seizing his servants to carry them to the Inquisition. But, on going out, he saw the servants standing at the door, and the person who had caused the alarm, a ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... respectful to ceremonies he neither believed in nor understood, but which had in them the imposing element of devout earnestness. Yet his eyes were raised and looked up from under his brows, steadily and watchfully, for he knew that Maria Addolorata was behind the screen, and from the first moment of entering the church it seemed to him that he could distinguish her voice from ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Presently, on the first moment, indeed, when he can do so with any decency, he leaves Miss Knollys' house a sadder, and ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... speak to you—day and night I have thought of them, and now that you are here—oh, I know you sent me away—that is, you hid from me; and why, Judithe? I believe on my soul it was because you meant those words when you said: 'I love you now, and from the first moment you ever looked at me!' I told myself at first, when I left France, that it was all falsehood, coquetry—but I could not keep that belief, for the words rang too true—you thought you were going over ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... draught, as Benedict tells the story, the dead boy "opened one eye, and said, 'Why are you weeping, father? Why are you crying, lady? The blessed martyr, Thomas, has restored me to you!' At evening he sat up, ate, talked, and was restored." But the father forgot the vow which he made in the first moment of joy at his son's recovery, namely, that he would offer four silver pieces at the martyr's shrine before Mid Lent. And once more all the household was stricken with sickness, and the eldest son died. Then the parents, though sore smitten themselves, dragged themselves to Canterbury ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... do wish now that I had been less hurried, less precipitate. My wife's great loveliness must be my excuse. She is the daughter of a poor curate, the Reverend Charles Trevor, who came two years ago to supply temporarily the place of the Rector of Lynton. He brought his daughter with him; and the first moment I saw her I fell in love with her. My heart seemed to go out from me and cleave to her. I loved her with what I can see now was the selfish ardor of a young man. I had but one thought—to win her. I wrote to my father, who was in Italy, and asked his consent. He ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... from one of the leading transports. Though the jackies affect to dispute it, I was assured that it was from a far-sighted youngster from Arizona, who first descried and then announced the deadly line of bubbles. No periscope was visible this time, and for the first moment those on the bridges of the destroyers were incredulous. Then the unmistakable bubble lines clean across the bows put the certainty of danger beyond question. Once again fortune favored us. The submarine was in front instead ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... unwilling from the first, and the mother turned away and lay close against the stained, discoloured wall, too apathetic, too utterly resigned to the fate life had meted out to her to accord this most unwelcome baby further attention. This first moment of her life might easily serve as the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... soft and beautiful were the eyes swimming in tears and lifted so timidly to his face! She could not have touched Rex more deeply. Daisy was his first love, and he loved her from the first moment their eyes met, with all the strength of his boyish, passionate nature; so it is not strange that the thought of possessing her, years sooner than he should have dared hope, made his young blood stir with ecstasy even though he knew ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... feared, from the first moment," he murmured to himself, "to meet her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, that I dread to influence. I may be the murderer of what is tenderest ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... dear Nelson. Believe me, that I am incapable of wronging you, in thought, word, or deed. No; not all the wealth of Peru could buy me for one moment: it is all your's, and reserved wholly for you; and * * * certainly * * * * * * * * * from the first moment of our happy, dear, enchanting, blessed meeting. The thoughts of such happiness, my dearest only beloved, makes the blood fly into my head. The call of our country, is a duty which you would, deservedly, in the cool moments of reflection, reprobate, was I to abandon: ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... a few minutes later she was shown into the private office of her future employer, she almost laughed in his fat round face—so absurd in that first moment did ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... the workhouse when she was first fitted out. He had belonged to her ever since, having remained to assist the ship keeper in sweeping her out, and looking after her when he had to leave her. He had never, I believe, set foot on shore since the first moment he had been sent on board. He was as cheap to keep as a dog, and was as vigilant and more useful, and he got dog's fare, and received dogs thanks—more kicks than halfpence. He had no parents and no friends. His father, he told me, was a sailor; and as he had gone away some ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... need of practicable Spanish. Then I invoked the help of a young professor, who came to me for an hour each day of a week in London and let me try to talk with him; but even then I accumulated so little practicable Spanish that my first hour, almost my first moment in Spain, exhausted my store. My professor was from Barcelona, but he beautifully lisped his c's and z's like any old Castilian, when he might have hissed them in the accent of his native Catalan; and there is no telling how much I might have profited by his instruction if ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... atrocious daring if they were not defeated in a way to be an example to the rest, he hesitated in great anxiety, since a report of his intentions had gone before him, what force he could employ, and how he could be quick enough to take them by surprise the first moment that circumstances should afford ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... he was breathlessly attending to the captain. On my left sat Matthew Blake, whose eyes were firmly riveted upon the same person, and who heard his marvels with an interest scarcely inferior to that of his sisters. Annoyed and in ill-temper, I ate my breakfast in silence, and resolved that the first moment I could obtain a hearing from Mr. Blake I would open my negotiation, and take my leave at once ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... lest they maul them as they lay. And directly, there was a noise of men shouting, and the light of lanthorns in the night, and the footmen of the house to come running with lanthorns and cudgels; and knew not whether to deal with me, or not, in the first moment, even as the dogs; but when they saw the men upon the ground, and learned my name and saw me proper, they kept well their distance and had no lack of respect; but, indeed, my sweet cousin to have the most of any; only that she showed no intent ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... members for the Cortes be assembled from those Provinces which are not in the possession of the Invader: or at least (if circumstances render this impossible at present) let it be announced that such is the intention, to be realized the first moment when it shall become possible. In the mean while speak boldly to the People: and let the People write and speak boldly. Let the expectation be familiar to them of open and manly institutions of law and liberty according to knowledge. Let them be universally trained to military exercises, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... cannot. Yet will I not deny it, nor conceal it; From the first moment I beheld thy face I felt a tenderness in my soul towards thee. My mind has since been inward to the Lord, Waiting his word. It ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... right hand as he turned from the fire with the branding iron red-hot in his hand. Near the Dutchman stood Morgan's borrowed horse, drowsing in the sun with head down, its weight on three legs, one ear set in its inherited caution to catch the least alarm. From the first moment of his encounter with these scoundrels Morgan had not lowered himself to address them a single word. Such commands as he had given them had been in dumb show, as to driven creatures. This rule of silence he held still as he ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... in I saw six little girls standing against the wall motionless, side-by-side, like smelts on a skewer. The eldest was perhaps ten and the youngest eight years old. For the first moment I could not understand why this girls' school had taken up its abode in my rooms; then, however, I divined the prince's delicate attention: he had made me a present of a harem, and had chosen it very young from an excess of generosity. There, the more unripe ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... which I at once recognized, changed the suspicion which had from the first moment flashed upon my ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... replied the girl simply, her eyes downcast in modesty. "Yet association with that dastardly blackguard, Dr. Weirmarsh, was horrible! How I refrained from turning upon him through all those months I cannot really tell. I detested him from the first moment Sir Hugh invited him to our table; and though I went to assist him under guise of consultations, I acted with one object all along," she declared, her eyes raised to his and flashing, "to expose him in his ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... for your stuffs? She only makes an errand to come hither, because you have inspired her with a violent passion. Do but ask her the question; it will be your fault if you do not marry her. It is true, said I, I have had a love for her from the first moment I cast my eyes upon her; but I did not aspire to the happiness of thinking my love acceptable to her. I am entirely hers, and shall not fail to retain a grateful sense of your good offices in that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... I cannot bid adieu to Lord Ponsonby and his amiable family, without acknowledging how much the pleasure derived from my voyage and visit to Constantinople was enhanced by their unceasing kindness. Indeed, from the first moment I became acquainted with his Lordship in Naples, he has uniformly treated me with a degree of affability as flattering to me as it was kind in him; besides honouring me, up to the present moment, with a confidence which, in general, is the result only of long tried and intimate ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... for the 21st century from its very first moment by solving the so-called Y2K computer problem. We had one member of Congress stand up and applaud. And we may have about that ration out there applauding at home in front of their television sets. But remember, this is a big, big problem, and we've been ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the future. These Catholic figures were to her so many disagreeable automata, moved by springs she could not possibly conceive, and doing perpetually the most futile and foolish things. She knew, moreover, by a sure instinct, that she had been unwelcome to them from the first moment of her appearance, and that she was now a stumbling-block and a grievance to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knew how much the two were together, it was a different thing to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one half-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiled their simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the old ground of perfect ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... done to be made a plaything of by a foolish passion. It was now four years ago,—that affair of Crosbie,—and Miss Dale should have accepted him long since. Half-a-dozen times he had made up his mind to be very stern to her; and he had written somewhat sternly,—but the first moment that he saw her he was conquered again. "And now that brute will reappear, and everything will be wrong again," he said to himself. If the brute did reappear, something should happen of which the world should hear the tidings. So he ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject of literary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember any writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in one part of his book or another, countenanced the idea that the great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... those Greywethers be giants of yore agone, or landwights, carles, and queans, who have been turned into stone by I wot not what deed; but that whiles they come alive again, and can walk and talk as erst they did; and that if any man may be so bold as to abide the time of their awakening, and in the first moment of their change may frame words that crave the fulfilment of his desire, and if therewith he be both wise and constant, then shall he have his desire fulfilled of these wights, and bear his life back again from out the dale. And thus must ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... I could do but pretend," I exclaimed, gaining control over my voice as I spoke. "My every movement has been watched since we left Quebec; this is the first moment I have been left alone—if, indeed, I am now." And I glanced about doubtfully into the shadows ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... first moment of his being domiciled on Glashgar, what with the good food, the fine exercise, the exquisite air, and his great happiness, Gibbie began to grow; and he took to growing so fast that his legs soon shot far out of his winsey garment. But, of all places, that was a small matter in Gormgarnet, where ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Urartu and reconquer Syria at one and the same time. Tiglath-pileser, therefore, crossed the Euphrates in the spring of 743 B.C., neither Matilu of Agusi, Kushtashpi of Kummukh, nor their allies daring to interfere with his progress. He thus advanced as far as Arpad, and, in the first moment of surprise, the town threw open its gates ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding you forget your 'protestation' ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, sure that the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,' you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to any imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment he had ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... perfect believer. But, on the other hand, let us remember that the main thing is not the maturity, but the progressive character, of faith. It was most natural that this man in our text, at the very first moment when he began to put his confidence in Jesus Christ as able to heal his child, should be aware of much tremulousness mingling with it. But is it not most unnatural that there should be the same relative proportion of faith and unbelief in the heart and experience of men who have long professed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... not mine, I never ought to have appropriated them. I ought now to destroy them unopened; all the more that the excitement of the first moment, the sudden rush of ideas which had prevented me from obeying the agonized supplication of my poor aunt, had subsided. I asked myself once more what was the cause of her misery, while I gazed at the inscription upon the cover, in my aunt's hand: "Justin's Letters, 1864." The ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... devotion: and would renew, in a solemn and public manner, and in the temple, the oblation of himself to his Father for the accomplishment of his will, and the redemption of man, which he had made privately in the first moment of his Incarnation. With what sentiments did the divine Infant offer himself to his Father at the same time! the greatest homage of his honor and glory the Father could receive, and a sacrifice of satisfaction adequate to the injuries done to the Godhead ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Of trumpets. From the first moment that the outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man who, like Lycius, is living a ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... man. Let him be framed for an instant or so in the doorway—time for his eyes to produce their peculiar effect. And by the way: if he be a wearer of glasses, he should certainly remove these before coming in. He can put them on again almost immediately. It is the first moment that matters. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Lawrence's fault that Nicky had met Desmond. She had never asked them to meet each other. She did not deny that it was in her house they had met; but she had not introduced them. Desmond had introduced herself, on the grounds that she knew Dorothy. Vera suspected that, from the first moment when she had seen him there—by pure accident—she had marked him down. Very likely she had wriggled into Dorothy's Suffrage meeting on purpose. She was ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... passage I have come to yet; still I was quite prepared for it. I gave Robert up, and gave him up to Shirley, the first day I heard she was come, the first moment I saw her—rich, youthful, and lovely. She has him now. He is her lover. She is his darling. She will be far more his darling yet when they are married. The more Robert knows of Shirley the more his soul will cleave to her. They will ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... gave motion to that first atom, and first set the great machine of the universe a-going? It is not possible to elude this home question by an endless circle, for this question, lying within a finite circumference, must have an end at last; and so we must find the first atom in motion, and the first moment of that first motion, together with the first mover, whose hand made that ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... easy deportment of Madame Polozov would probably for the first moment have disconcerted Sanin—though he was not quite a novice and had knocked about the world a little—if he had not again seen in this very freedom and familiarity a good omen for his undertaking. 'We must humour this rich lady's caprices,' ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... experience. But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men like Denis, girls like herself—for under the unlikeness ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... black people held their breath in their first moment of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was a laugh—a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... himself that he detests some one, for it to become a habit, and the more he is argued with the more desperately he will cling to it. But often, again, there are deeper reasons for it, which pass the child's understanding: he has no idea of them.... From the first moment when he saw Christophe, the son of Count Bereny had a feeling of animosity towards the man whom his mother had loved. It was as though he had instinctively felt the exact moment when Grazia began to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... hands, but how many thousand millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years, which of itself is an important result; and when the first moment of enthusiasm is passed, this reflection will fill them with consternation." The conclusion which he drew was, "that so violent a shock would convulse the throne of Alexander, and force that prince to sue ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... at the singular appearance of Sarah. From the first moment her person had been known to her until the present, she had never seen her look half so beautiful. She literally lay stretched upon a little straw, with no other pillow than a sod of earth under that rich and glowing cheek, while her raven hair had fallen ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... music, to be reasonable, and hung up in every part of the house. The resort of strangers to Killarney would then be much increased, and their stay would be greatly prolonged; they would not view it post-haste, and fly away the first moment to avoid dirt and imposition. A man with a good capital and some ingenuity would, I think, make a fortune by ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... the enemy's expedition to this place, and been anxious for us. This is the first moment of leisure I have had, and, if not interrupted, I will endeavor to give you a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... bound,—the stream that sank into the earth at Pisa emerges a river at Florence. The solution of the mystery lies in the peculiar plasticity of Andrea's genius, and the ascendency acquired over it by Giotto, although a younger man, from the first moment they came into contact. Giotto had learnt from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art, imperfectly apprehended by Giovanni and his other pupils, and by following up which he had in the natural ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... grace was gone from his body; and Heriot's features, surely, but the beauty had melted away like morning dew. And his dress, which had always been orderly and beautiful, was neglected; so that under the half-laced jerkin Hobb saw that he was shirtless. Yet after the first moment's shock, he knew this gaunt and ugly youth was Heriot. And Heriot seeing his coming hung his head, and made a shamed movement of retreat into the shadow of the barn. But Hobb hurried to him, and took him by the shoulders, and beheld him with the eyes of love ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... he could be sure of it; it was Dr. Rowlands' voice and Montagu's. He got convinced of this, and summoned all his strength to shout in return. The light kept moving up and down on the shore, not a hundred yards off. His fear vanished; they were no longer alone. The first moment that the tide suffered any one to reach them they would be rescued. His mind grew calm again, and he determined to hold up for Russell's sake until help should come; and every now and then, to make it feel less lonely, he answered the shouts which came from ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... gone from the hall when John missing Leila returned to the outer room to put on his cloak. The boy-cap Leila liked to wear in bad weather, her rain-cloak, his umbrella, were as they had been left. He stood still in the first moment available for thought and knew that here was a new trouble. She must have been so shocked and ashamed as to have fled in the rain ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... In hers, too, fear was to be read, but accompanied by other impressions. And yet, if her face had expressed only fear, perhaps that which happened would not have happened. But in the expression of her face there was at the first moment—at least, I thought I saw it—a feeling of ennui, of discontent, at this disturbance of her love and happiness. One would have said that her sole desire was not to be disturbed IN THE MOMENT OF HER HAPPINESS. But these expressions appeared upon their ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... are too good and honest to wish to throw me away, now when you have seen how my soul has hungered for the sight of you these many years, how even now I cling to you with a despairing clutch. But you can not disguise yourself, Ralph, and I saw from the first moment that you loved ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... point of lowering the lamp he heard someone coming downstairs. The door opened, and, to his surprise, Clara came in. Familiarity could not make him insensible to that disfigurement of her once beautiful face; his eyes always fell before her at the first moment of meeting. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... out and started.... It really was very funny, and I no longer wondered at the heartless mirth of the onlookers. A pea on a drumhead is a restful object in comparison with Watson on that ice-hill. His sledge seemed determined from the first moment to rid itself of the unfortunate man clinging to it; it went everywhere and sampled every obstacle, and it shot him eventually, as it had shot me, into a snowheap, with one Chinese lantern twisted by its strings round his neck, and another, held by the post, in his hand. Watson did not know ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... talents to make himself independent; he then suggested to Mr. Seebright various ways of employing his powers, and pointed out some useful and creditable literary undertakings, by which he might acquire reputation. Seebright listened, his eye eagerly catching at each new idea the first moment, the next turning off to something else, raising objections futile or fastidious, seeing nothing impossible in any dream of his imagination, where no effort of exertion was requisite, but finding every thing impracticable when he came to sober reality, where ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... as if her words possessed physical impact. He shrunk in a heap in the library chair and dropped his head upon his arms. To prevent Grace from learning the truth, he could have done almost anything in that first moment of insane terror; but ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Renovales always thought of his life in Venice with a sort of pleasant homesickness. It was the best period of his life. The enchanting city of the lagoons,—bathed in golden light, lulled by the lapping of the water, fascinated him from the first moment, making him forget his love for the human form. For some time his enthusiasm for the nude was calmed. He worshiped the old palaces, the solitary canals, the lagoon with its green, motionless waiter, the soul of a majestic past, which seemed to breathe in the solemn old ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... After the first moment of panic, Bart realized Montano could not tell him from a Lhari. He remained motionless. ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... may feel inclined, and justly perhaps, to smile at some of my scruples; but it is enough to say that every hour that has elapsed since the idea was first started has only served to deepen and confirm the feeling with which I at the first moment regarded it; and, in short, that if such a game ought to be played, I am neither young nor poor enough to be the man that ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... awful idea that maybe a big frog was squatting right under her leaf staring at her with his bulging hungry eyes, Maya was about to fly off when something dreadful happened, something for which she was totally unprepared. In the confusion of the first moment she could not make out just exactly what was happening. She only heard a loud rustling like the wind in dry leaves, then a singing whistle, a loud angry hunter's cry. And a fine, transparent shadow glided over her leaf. Now she saw—saw fully, ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... neither heard nor saw me. Upon the ground, by the bed's head, as if it had dropped from under the pillow, was a packet seated and directed to myself. I knew the handwriting at a glance, even though the letters were blotted and irregular, and possibly traced in the first moment that his present curse fell upon the writer. I placed the packet in my bosom; the Hermit saw not the motion; he lay back on the bed, seemingly in utter exhaustion. I turned away, and hastened to the monastery for assistance. As I hurried through the passage, the Hermit's ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... confess at the same time I should have risked the measure the first moment I saw the mediation given up by her Majesty; because I did not view the United States as humble supplicants at this Court; as they were not seeking aids from her Majesty, and had nothing to ask but what they intended to give an ample equivalent for. And I did ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... chamber, he should have stretched out arms of longing. Even if Babette had been present, she would only have smiled her gay little smile and coquetted with him. She could not understand. He had known, of course, from the first moment, that she could not understand! And so, why the ache, ache, ache of the heart! Or WAS it the heart, or the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... garment in whose capacious folds his father was muffled when he was slain, that it may be seen by all; the chorus recognise on it the stains of blood, and mourn afresh the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes, feeling his mind already becoming confused, seizes the first moment to justify his acts, and having declared his intention of repairing to Delphi to purify himself from his blood-guiltiness, flies in terror from the furies of his mother, whom the chorus does not perceive, but conceives to be a mere phantom of his imagination, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... poisoned spears by the gracious influences of time. The nightly guest, Sorrow, slips away, and ere we know, another sits in her place. Some of us try to fight against that merciful process and seem to think that it is a merit to continue, by half artificial means, the first moment of pain, and that it is treason to some dear remembrances to let life have its way, and to-day have its rights. That is to set ourselves against the dealings of God, and to refuse to forgive Him for what His love ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... At the first moment No. 6, being engrossed by the story, could not guess at all; but in another instant ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... him in peace and quietness. On receiving the tardy acceptance he departed hastily, much pleased with the results of his diplomacy—which would hardly have been the case had he been able to read the young man's mind. One thing had been plain to Gerrard from the first moment in which he realised fully what Charteris's death would mean to him. It set an absolute barrier between Honour and himself. He could no more take advantage of Bob's removal from the field by an accident ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... never doubted what he heard, it seemed to him like a dream that he had dreamt long ago and forgotten. It was a curious sense of unreality that impressed him most, that feeling of "This cannot really have happened to me ..." that everyone knows in the first moment of disaster. It was this sensation, not any temporising or actual disbelief, that kept him still motionless, staring. Polkinghorne began to feel the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Orchard Street, I thought of this, and could not help fancying that if indeed it had been possible he could have appeared to me, the familiar trust and affection with which I always regarded him would have been paramount to all fears and wonders in the first moment of my ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a word; she turned dourly round, went into her room and locked it. "I'll run awa' from it a'!" and in the first moment of her solitary passion of grief, the words struck her like an order. In great emergencies, the soul does gives orders; clear, prompt, decisive words, that leave no shadow of doubt behind them. "Go" said her soul to her, and she began immediately to consider her plans. She ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... she called "a pretty tune," she knew nothing whatever of music, understood less. And yet, almost from that first moment, she understood Ben Cohen, realising him as lover and child: understood him better, maybe, then than she did later on: losing her sureness for a while, shaken and bewildered; everything blurred by her own immensity of love, longing; ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Jamaica. The dim blue mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful even to Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing accustomed to the beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to Jamaica from the first moment that his eyes rested on its green and golden shores. Perhaps he was by this time a little out of conceit with Hayti; but be that as it may he retracted all the superlatives he had ever used for ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... resembled exactly the charming princess he had so often seen in his dreams, and which had like to have proved fatal. Then shutting his eyes, he advanced backward, sword in hand, toward the enchanter, who at the first moment he saw him, began those mysterious wavings of the hand with which he was wont to put his victims to sleep, and those cabalistic words which changed men into beasts, insects, and reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... hospitality here, and were eager to receive the word of the Lord. May 14th, we left Zeer, and went to Bass. It was Saturday night, and we remained over the Sabbath in the village of Nerik. I shall always have a pleasant remembrance of the Sabbath we passed there. Prom the first moment that we went in till Monday morning, we were never alone, so many were assembling to hear the words of the Lord. With tearful eyes and burning hearts, they were inquiring for the way of salvation. They would say, 'What shall we do? We have no one to sit among us, to teach us, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... to," he retorted; "I'm only telling you what every one knows. Wasn't I aware from the first moment that she married me out of pity, and didn't they all know it, and laugh and tell her she was a fool. She knew that she was a fool too, but she was very young, and thought it fine to sacrifice herself for an idea. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... was a complete reverse of No. 1. He liked not the Dyaks who brought him to me, but in the first moment of our acquaintance he adopted me as his foster-father, and loved me like a son. Throughout four months of jungle vicissitudes he stuck to me. He was a high-class orang,—and be it known that many ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... directly behind me. I jumped down on the floor again, and swung round my torch like a searchlight on a battleship at sea. There was no human presence in that chamber except myself. Of course, after my first moment of surprise, I realised that the laugh was but an echo of my own. The old walls of the old house were like sounding-boards. The place resembled an ancient fiddle, still tremulous with the music that had been played on it. It was easy to understand how a superstitious ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... home the butcher's son was considered as the paragon of all perfections and beauties; Manuel alone protested and El Carnicerin (the little butcher),—as he had named him derisively from the very first moment,—was the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... warm with the joy of fighting. Now it was different. Trent was seldom sentimental, but from the first he had had an uneasy presentiment concerning this man who lay now within his power and so near to death. A mutual antipathy seemed to have been born between them from the first moment when they had met in the village of Bekwando. As though it were yesterday, he remembered that leave-taking and Francis's threatening words. Trent had always felt that the man was his enemy—certainly the power to do him incalculable ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... next proceeded to put into execution was in the mind of Deerfoot from the first moment be learned of the situation of the endangered ones. It was impossible to succeed without a perfect understanding with his friends, for they necessarily had an important part to play in ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... first moment that I met you,—from the moment when, during that memorable journey, you shone forth as the guardian angel of all the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to you the first moment, as next to my father and mother no person in the world feels so much interest in all that concerns me. I need not tell you that ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... conduct of the minister who proposed it, than from all that has been written upon the subject in newspapers and pamphlets, under the titles of essays, letters, speeches, and considerations, from the first moment of its becoming the subject of public attention until now. The questions in general are put with great subtlety and judgment, and they are answered with such deep and familiar knowledge of the subject, such precision and perspicuity, such ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... just told' me to confirm me in the interest which I had felt in her from the first moment. I told her unsparingly that Steffani had seduced and abandoned her of malice aforethought, and that she ought to think of him only to be revenged of his perfidy. My words made her shudder, and she buried her beautiful face in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... except for commonplaces which any one might have overheard, since the day on the mountain; and in this first moment of the ten, each was wondering whether or no that day should be ignored between them. Leopold did not feel that it should be spoken of, for it was possible that the girl did not recognize the chamois hunter in the Emperor; and Virginia did not feel that she could speak of it. But ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson |
