"Folk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right?" Carrier put a leg out of bed. "So you question my right, do you? You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you are given powers, and you come here to air ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... his companions, led by Laihova, followed the throng of country-folk to the market-place. They had passed the guard at the gate by means of that potent talisman, silver, before which few gates are permanently closed. If the party had sought to pass with any pomp or circumstance, or if they had carried merchandise along with them, they could not have passed ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... yes. And to-day we sail for Nombre de Dios. Being before the town we send in a boat under flag of truce to say we hold captive their governor, Don Federigo de Cosalva y Maldonada, demanding for him a sufficient ransom. The money paid, then will we fire a broadside into the city and the folk shall see their proud Governor swung aloft to dangle and kick at our mainyard; so do we achieve vengeance and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... still, dear Lord, in every place Thou standest by the toiling folk With love and pity in thy face, And givest of thy help and grace To those ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... people is very largely made up of these contributions from the folk-songs of dwellers in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the British Isles. One rarely goes far out of the way in attributing to this source any air that he may hear that captivates him with its seductive opulence of harmony. Exquisite melodies, limpid and unstrained as the carol ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... he being also institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary whole and entire power pre-eminence authority prerogative and jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final determination to all manner of folk residents or subjects within this his realm, in all causes matters debates contentions happening to occur insurge or begin within the limits thereof without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and carrying two sabres hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue cotton with white stripes, and bearing guns; the Mikado's guards, enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and coats of mail; and numbers of military folk of all ranks—for the military profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised in China—went hither and thither in groups and pairs. Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims, and simple civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair, big heads, long busts, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... print their manuscripts as they found them—the Bollandists have recorded the legendary stories of the Middle Ages. Yet even for an age which searches diligently, as after hid treasure, for the old folk-lore, the nursery rhymes, the popular songs and legends of Scandinavia, Germany, and Greece, the legends of mediaeval Christendom might surely prove interesting. But I regard the "Acta Sanctorum" as specially valuable for mediaeval ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... a particle of genuine contrition. Rather, I believe, he uttered them because he had a weakness not for words which signified anything, but for words which, being out of the way, were not used by the common folk of the suburb. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... unwieldy, and piled clumsily with cargo, one might reasonably suppose their safe piloting to be a nautical impossibility; yet so perfect is the skill—the instinct, rather—of these almost amphibious river-folk, that a little child, not uncommonly a girl, shall lead them. Accidents are marvellously rare, considering the thousands of large, heavy, handsome keng boats that ply continually between the gulf and the capital, now lost in a sudden bend of the stream, now ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... to fear from the fairy folk," he said. "Come, now, your eyes are fair sticking out of your heads. I'll give you a skirl on the bagpipes if Jeanie'll bring them from the closet. Jock, stir up the fire, and Alan, give your clothes a turn and ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... demands a tongue not us'd To infant babbling. But let them assist My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid Amphion wall'd in Thebes, so with the truth My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr'd folk, Beyond all others wretched! who abide In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words To speak of, better had ye here on earth Been flocks or mountain goats. As down we stood In the dark pit beneath the giants' feet, But lower far than ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... We are the covetous. Our neighbours' goods afflict us sore. From Frisco to the Bosphorus All sightly stuff, the less the more, We want it in our hoard and store. Nor sacrilege doth us appal— Egyptian vault—fane at Cawnpore— Collector folk are sinners all. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... turbid with silt and sometimes emerald green with algae nourished on sewage and other septic riches, and the hills stretching back from the river are spiky with tall buildings linked by urban and suburban clutter, where life lacks the natural elbow room that the old Tidewater folk—planters and yeomen and bondsmen and slaves alike—were able ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... filled with company, and she was petted, and caressed, and praised on every side. Her spirits became very high, however, and she enjoyed herself much; and it is perhaps only very very critical folk, bent on spying out a fault, that could have detected the little clouds of anxiety that now and then shot across her face. A thought of whether her curls were all right, or her dress untumbled, &c. just now and then disturbed the charm, and prevented her ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... we delighted, like children, to people our home, are now replaced by other guests tragically real, as big-hearted as those most loved of our shadow-folk. Yet sometimes they seem still to live. . . . While correcting the final proofs we have been tempted to modify the end, to bring the story of Jaffery more or less up to date; but we have felt that any addition would ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... town, which joins the lower town except by the separation of the wall of the fortifications, and had not been in the latter for five years, because they considered it was too bustling and too much a place of pleasure for such quiet, homely, and orderly folk as they professed to be and certainly were, in every sense of the word. At Bordeaux I knew three old ladies who were born in that city, and never had been in any other town during their whole lives, nor ever desired to pass the walls ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... ambiguous, and I am not sure that the East Barsetshire folk were so crass as they were accused of being, in not understanding it at once. The dreadful hint was wrapped up in many words, and formed but a small part of a very long oration. The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... work, but the barge-folk seem to think nothing of it. Whole families are born, live, and die on their barges. You often see the wife or daughter of the bargeman steering, while the children are playing on the top of the hatches, and the husband is doing some work among ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... loved, was a street of poor folk—people to whom poverty clung like their shirt. It tumbled over the ridge opposite the church, fell rapidly for a hundred yards, and then, recovering its balance, sauntered easily down the slope till it met Botany Road on level ground. It was a street of ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... have left the Cross Way House for Trevlyn Chase (for Lady Humbert knew that the secret of the treasure lay with none but themselves, and would have no fears for that). And if in the dead of night the whole force of the gipsy folk and the highwaymen—or even these latter alone, if they could not get the gipsies to join with them—were to sweep down and attack that solitary house, what chance would its inmates have against them? None, absolutely none! The ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... last, 'ung at Tyburn an' gibbeted on Blackheath. They took me to see 'im in 'is chains, an' bein' only a little lad, I cried all the way back 'ome to my mother an' found 'er a-cryin' too. But because 'e'd been so famous in 'is perfession they gibbeted 'im very 'igh, an' so, as folk 'ad looked up to 'im in life they ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... when they like, and they don't when they don't like. We are free and easy folk, I can tell you, and we have a gay time. I'll tell you all about father and the old castle, and the dogs, and the cows, and the cats, and the rabbits, and the mice when we have a spare moment. That brother ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... a new town in the frontier West. The old settlers and the new mingled gaily. The old timers with their indifferent dress, their vernacular and free manners of the mountains and ranges brushed elbows with the more modern folk of the poor and the middle class of the Middle West. They were uninteresting and mediocre, these newcomers, yet the sort who thrive astonishingly upon new soil, who become prosperous and self-important in an atmosphere of equality. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the prince was well aware. Full seldom was the youth allowed to ride without a guard of knights. Siegmund and Siegelind bade deck him out in brave attire. The older knights who were acquaint with courtly custom, had him in their care. Well therefore might he win both folk and land. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... England," the Gaulois recently published an article by M. Guy Dorval on the erosion of the English coasts. The writer refers to the predictions of certain British men of science that England will one day disappear altogether beneath the waves, and imagines that we British folk are seized by a popular panic. Our neighbours are trembling for the fate of the entente cordiale, which would speedily vanish with vanishing England; but they have been assured by some of their savants that the rate of erosion is ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... what it is about. FOR THE FAIR, it says. But, my lord Hermes, how shall a mortal and a rustic like myself be judge of such unparalleled beauty? This is no sight for a herdsman's eyes; let the fine city folk decide on such matters. As for me, I can tell you which of two goats is the fairer beast; or I can judge betwixt heifer and heifer;—'tis my trade. But here, where all are beautiful alike, I know not ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... could not believe that. But what if he should sometime begin to chafe? What if they two should, in days to come, degenerate into just the ordinary, everyday married folk, whom she saw about her everywhere, and for whom just such horrid books as this must be written? It was unbelievable, unthinkable. And yet, that man ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... me say that,' remarked the old woman, shaking her head. 'You're not the first. Older folk than you have wondered at the same thing before now. Yes, I was his wife. Death doesn't change us ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the folk upon the raft there was a certain comic element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one of them dared to oppose the grenadier, for they were packed together so tightly that if one man were knocked down, the whole raft might capsize. ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... ventured also beyond the confines of these two wonderful compilations. There is a wealth of delightful imagination in the legends and folk-lore of the Jews of a later period which is almost entirely unknown to children. I have drawn also on these sources for some of the stories here presented. My desire is to give boys and girls something Jewish which they may be able to regard as companion delights ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the vulva covered lest demons should have intercourse with them. Even at the present day St. Paul's injunction is still observed by Christendom, which is, however, far from accepting, or even perhaps understanding, the folk-lore ground on ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he is, however, no worse, and in some respects better, than the "swagger" folk who "do" Egypt, or rather, consent in a languid way to be "done" by Egypt. These are the people who annually leave England on the plea of being unable to stand the cheery, frosty, and in every respect healthy winter of their native country—that winter, which with its wild ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... expression in his prose than in his verse. Add to this a certain bent toward the mysterious and supernatural, and we have the principal elements that enter into the composition of these legends, whose quaint, weird beauty not only manifests the charm that naturally attaches to popular or folk tales, but is due especially to the way in which they are told by one who was at once an artist ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... with bold eyes, and long, thick, dark hair, and the pale, very fair complexion of girls in the South—white as a magnolia flower. For which reasons Henriette was one of the first on whom Cerizet cast his eyes; but Henriette came of "honest farmer folk," and only yielded at last to jealousy, to bad example, and the treacherous promise of subsequent marriage. By this time Cerizet was the Cointet's foreman. When he learned that the Signols owned a vineyard worth some ten or twelve thousand francs, and a tolerably comfortable ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... in that season {18} on a day, In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with devout corage, At night was come into that hostelrie Wel nine and twentie in a compagnie Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle In felawship; and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward Canterbury wolden ride. The chambres and the stables weren wide, And wel we weren esed atte beste. And shortly, whan the sonne was gone to reste ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... my nerves, this business, Mr. Holmes," said he, as he sank, like a wearied man, into an armchair. "It's bad enough to feel that you are surrounded by unseen, unknown folk, who have some kind of design upon you, but when, in addition to that, you know that it is just killing your wife by inches, then it becomes as much as flesh and blood can endure. She's wearing away under it—just wearing ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... together. I was very gay, eating, drinking, and doing the honours of my table to perfection. On rising from table I stayed among them and played cards instead of going out. I saw them all off between eleven and twelve: I was charming, and if you only knew with whom; what physiognomies, what folk, what talk!" ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... fashionable resort, where the fine folk of Europe now bathe, and flirt, and prattle politics or scandal so cheerfully during the summer solstice—cool and comfortable Ostend—was throughout the sixteenth century as obscure a fishing village as could be found in Christendom. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the open windows I saw the green folk squatting upon their sleeping silks and furs, grunting an occasional monosyllable, which, in connection with their wondrous telepathic powers, is ample for their conversational requirements. As I drew closer to listen to their words a warrior entered ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselves—as they do in a state paper of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr. Froude—"What comyn folk of all the world may compare with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, and so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" They may have been fed on "great shins of beef," ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the boys and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it was more pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but even the grown folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Etretat, the men, who are all seafaring folk, go every year to Newfoundland to fish for cod. Now, one night the little son of one of these fishermen woke up with a start, crying out that his father was dead. The child was quieted, and again he woke up exclaiming that his father was drowned. A month later the news came ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of doors feeling that London must be a very terrible place, if the folk there went about counting all who met them as possible enemies. I was homesick for the Broads, where everybody, even bad men, like the worst of the smugglers, was friendly to me. I hated all this noisy city, so full of dirty jumbled houses. I longed to be in my coracle ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... inconspicuous, to be sure, but in pattern evidently military and aggressive. What a guy I felt myself, and how every smile or laugh upon the street seemed to mean Me! The way to the railroad station had never seemed so long, nor so thronged with curious folk. I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... deep-sea fisheries of the United Kingdom fell through from any reason, half-a-million of its inhabitants would be brought face to face with starvation. And even these enormous figures include only the fisher-folk themselves, and do not take into account the vast army of buyers, curers, dealers, &c., who are dependent for their very existence upon the fishing industry. Take away the deep-sea fisheries from the old country, and its whole fish supply would practically ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... much business doing. Three friends, Smithfield dealers, or some such folk, talking loudly over their liquor of prices and prospects; and one fat fellow, by the fire, smoking a pipe, with a large glass of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... after the size of the dwellings of handicraftsmen. The lower story was fitted up as a shop. Specially was it provided with one of those half-doors now so rarely met with, which are to whole doors as spencers worn by old folk are to coats. They speak of limited commerce united with a social or observing disposition on the part of the shopkeeper,—allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in this Steventon rectory, in the family room where the boys might be building their toy boats, or the parish poor folk complaining to "passon's madam," or the county ladies paying visits of ceremony, in monstrous muffs, heelless slippers laced over open-worked silk stockings, short flounced skirts, and lutestring ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... shining brilliantly, and the movement in the streets possesses more of animation than it has done. The movement ends always in a knot of people, and folk go from group to group vainly seeking information, and quite content if the rumour they presently gather differs even a little from the one they have ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each, riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go by without stopping. Still, they were very wearying marches, and not comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we had to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to bed ourselves, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... infallible token of the Lord's hiding his face, is security, and a spirit of deadness and laziness, when folk go about duties dreaming, and do all as it were through their sleep. Therefore we may conclude sad things on this land, that the Lord hideth his face from us. And therefore arise, and do not settle and quiet yourself in such a condition. The Lord is angry, needeth any more ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season, and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener and greener—reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... separately; yet it sets off (in the same sort of felicitous manner of which Shakespeare's clown-scenes and others are the capital examples in literature) both the slightly matter-of-fact details of the beatification of the valley and the various minute sketches of places and folk, and the almost superhuman goodness of Benassis, and his intensely and piteously human suffering and remorse. It is like the red cloak in a group; it lights, warms, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die. Upon that generous-rounding side, [131] With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the "practical" man has dragged the nations into war: the Balance of Power, for instance. Fifteen or twenty years ago it was the ineradicable belief of fifty or sixty million Americans, good, honest, sincere, and astute folk, that it was their bounden duty, their manifest interest, to fight—and in the words of one of their Senators, annihilate—Great Britain, in the interests of the Monroe Doctrine (which is a form ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Old-fashioned folk say "Never." An American writer, who calls himself "A Speculative Bachelor," has quite another idea on the subject. He asks: "Shall Girls Propose?" "Why is it that in the matter of initiative a coarse, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Some plague was working in the East and unchaining thousands. The folk that it loosed were strange to me who in this particular life have seldom left England, and I studied them with curiosity; high-featured, dark-hued people with a patient air. The knowledge which I have told me that one and all they were very ancient souls who often and ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... climb the steep under the clear gray sky and the paling morning star, she stops to gather a spray of the red-rose berries or a feathery tuft of dead grasses for the chimney-piece of the log-house, or a handful of brown ones for the child's play,—and of these quiet, happy folk you would scarcely dream how lately they had stolen from under the banner and encampment of the great King Death. The husband proceeds a step or two in advance; the wife lingers over a singular foot-print in the snow, stoops and examines it, then looks up with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of Irving's sources, as traced in German folk-lore, does not come within the scope of this introduction. The first record of a play is Thomas Flynn's appearance as Rip in a dramatization made by an unnamed Albanian, at the South Pearl Street Theatre, Albany, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... I got him in with some trouble, and he has fallen asleep. I thought this would be the explanation of his absence! No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... public praise on the men they love. Lydia, however, quickly left the subject, and returned to his own affairs. Nothing, he confessed, could have been friendlier or sincerer than her interest in them. They plunged into the subject of the estate; and Faversham stood amazed at her knowledge of the dales-folk, their lives and their grievances. At the end, he ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not follow that no real key exists within the reach of human investigation or speculation. Therefore one naturally feels a little stirring of hope at the news that a fresh and keen intellect, untrammelled by the folk-lore theologies of the past, is applying itself to the problem. It is always possible, however improbable, that we may be helped a little forwarder on the path towards realization. One comes back to the before-mentioned analogy of flying. We had been assured over ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... all the information she could. Princess Flachspinnenlosburg, it appeared, traced her descent from the incorrigibly lazy daughter of a poor and not over scrupulous mother; Baroness Belohnte von Haulemaennerschen from similarly humble folk, whose daughter was servant of all work to seven dwarfs, and afterwards married the King of one of the petty states before mentioned; Baroness von Bauerngrosstochterheimer's ancestor was a peasant; Countess Gaensehirten am Brunnen's ancestress ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... not be able to expound my German hieroglyphics, I proceed to tell you in plain English that we are going to be invaded. I have within this day or two seen grandees of ten, twenty, and thirty thousand pounds a-year, who are in a mortal fright; consequently, it would be impertinent in much less folk to tremble, and accordingly they don't. At court there is no doubt but an attempt will be made before Christmas. I find valour is like virtue: impregnable as they boast themselves, it is discovered that on the first attack ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... vegetables, or bleating sheep and bellowing bulls, coming to be killed by the Jewish method. The canal that bounded the Ghetto at the back offered a much more extended view, but one hardly dared to stand there, because the other shore was foreign, and the strange folk called Venetians lived there, and some of these heathen roughs might throw stones across if they saw you. Still, at night one could creep there and look along the moonlit water and up at the stars. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... wouldn't, my dear, bless him! for he's a good, true man, though he does talk a bit hard sometimes, and every one likes him. See how good he is to all these Malay folk, who have no call upon him at all. Oh dear! it will be a hard time for every one when you do go away. I know I shall ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... as lively and beautiful as the town itself. It chiefly consists of corn-fields studded with groves, or rather tufts of trees, and divided by green fences, in which were pear and apple-trees in full bearing. The fields near the town had paths around them and across them, where the towns-folk, as I understood from my informer, were accustomed to walk in the evening and which, the corn being ripe and high, were pleasantly recluse. Felice and myself crossed three or four of them, and ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... But now my troubles began, for the guards and watchmen thrust me from the doors. In the end I bribed them and was admitted to the antechambers, where were merchants, jugglers, dancing-women, officers, and many others, all of them, it seemed, waiting to see the Prince; folk who, having nothing to do, pleased themselves by making mock of me, a stranger. When I had mixed with them for several days, I gained their friendship by telling to them one of my stories, after ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... which some light still glittered was easily discovered, and, taking a stout sword from his small armoury, Dick thrust it deep into the seam, and weighed strenuously on the hilt. The trap moved, gaped a little, and at length came widely open. Seizing it with their hands, the two young folk threw it back. It disclosed a few steps descending, and at the foot of them, where the would-be murderer had left it, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ventures to declare, in this connection, that the children of educated coloured folk "will not marry among their own people." Will he tell us, then, whom the daughters marry, or if they ever do marry at all, since he asserts, with regard to West Indian Whites, that "hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt them to make a wife of a black lady"? Our author evidently ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... merits, uneducated people and servants have not—as a class—strict ideas on absolute truthfulness and honourable trustworthiness in all matters. A large part of the plans, hopes, fears, and quarrels of uneducated people are founded on what has been overheard by folk who were not intended to hear it, and on what has been told again by those to whom a matter was told in confidence. Nothing is a surer mark of good breeding and careful "upbringing" (as the Scotch call it) than delicacy on those little points which are trusted to one's ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was a mistake, for the coney does not do so, but it has a way of moving its jaws which might lead to the idea that it ruminates. In other parts of Scripture the habits of the animal are more accurately depicted—"The rocks are a refuge for the conies;" and again: "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks." Solomon says in the Proverbs: "There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise." These are the ants, for they prepare their ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... with yellow light from a rift in the west, and all the broken hills looked blue against the silvery grey. God bless them! for man cannot spoil them, nor any revolution shape them other than they are. We see them as the folk from Flodden saw them, as Leyden knew them, as they looked to William of Deloraine, as they showed in the eyes of Wat of Harden and of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead. They have always girdled a land of warriors and ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... these schoolboy antics!" cried she. "Here be we, at an hour when honest folk should be abed, slinking down the river like pirates, with ne'er a pillow to our backs or a covering to our bones— and for why? What am I to say to my master your father, child, when he knows of your running ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... shouts were now heard, for some fisher folk were putting out off shore to discover what ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Church, and therefore would only work for his own hand. Finally he caused his "cup to overflow," as he described it, or, in plain English, made the country too hot to hold him, by becoming involved in a bitter quarrel with the Boers. Of these, on the whole, worthy folk, he formed the worst; and in the main a very unjust opinion, which he sent to England to be reprinted in Church papers, or to the Home Government to be published in Blue-books. In due course these documents reached South Africa again, where they were ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... street, like those which he had already passed through, was lined on both sides by gaily attired people of both sexes and all ages, who rent the air with their enthusiastic acclamations as the cortege swept past them, the only difference being that the majority at least of these folk were, like himself, hurrying in the direction of ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... goes! up with the Ark and the trumpets, and out on to the hot sand for the march! It would have been a great deal easier to have stopped in the tents. It was disheartening work marching round thus. The sceptical spirit in the host—the folk of whom there are many great-grandchildren living to-day, who always have objections to urge when disagreeable duties are crammed up against their faces—would have enough to say on that occasion, but the bulk of the people were true, and obeyed. Now, we do not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... can take him on. I tracked him over from New York, and I've been close to him for a week in London, waiting some excuse to get my hand on his collar. Mr. Gregson and I ran him to ground in that big tenement house, and there's only one door, so he can't slip us. There's three folk come out since he went in, but I'll swear he wasn't one ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... She wrung from these positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by universal report, were generous, genial, and unassuming. To Charlotte Bronte these kindly, if somewhat commonplace folk, grew to seem what a Turkish pasha seems to the inhabitants of a Macedonian village. It was not merely the surroundings of her life—it was life itself, in its general mundane arrangements, which was intolerable to her. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... exception of a few general reflections which are of little value, Mr. Beckwith's paper ends. It was read, I ought to say, by the Rev. Richard Walsh at the meeting of the South Wilts Folk-lore Society and Field Club held at Amesbury in June 1892, and is to be found in the published transactions of that body (Vol. IV. New Series, pp. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the other, "thou art so woundy like myself, that had I met thee anywhere but in the middle o' these folk, I should have been afeared that I was agoing to die, and had zeen mysel'. My name is George Prescot, at your sarvice. I coom from three miles down the river there; and what ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the writer has put together is the record of a busy, successful and, on the whole, happy life, passed in the company of interesting people, about many of whom Madame LEHMANN has remembered some entertaining story. Chiefly, as is natural, the persons recorded are the musical folk of the last half-century, from JENNY LIND to Sir THOMAS BEECHAM; though in the allied Arts I was taken by a pleasing and new anecdote of ROBERT BROWNING reciting How they Brought the Good News into an Edison phonograph, and overcome by loss of memory ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... [alarmed] My masters, I pray you bear with us, and we will satisfy you, for we are merry folk who would make all merry as ourselves. For, look you, there is humour in all things, and the truest philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and to make ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... resort of the Cairo folk is the island of Gezireh; here a long avenue of lebbek trees furnishes a fashionable promenade, while games of golf, tennis, cricket, and polo, together with the races, are a constant source of attraction. The once famous palace of Gezireh (the scene of ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... superstitious man, Arnold," he said, "but I come, after all, of hill-folk, and I believe that there are times when one can feel and see the shadow of coming things. My grandfather knew the day of his death, and spoke of it; my father made his will before he set foot on the steamer which went to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... great discourses. To him the Master had said, "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people," and he had walked long, long miles up the mountain side to do it. Pace the critic! This preaching was the very thing for those needy folk this ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... ascribed to the gracious majesty of Ammon, and reached their destination, the Ta-neter, or "Holy Land"—the "abode of Athor," and perhaps the original home of Ammon himself—without accident or serious difficulty. The natives gave them a good reception. They were simple folk, living in rounded huts or cabins, which were perched on floors supported by piles, probably on account of the marshiness of the ground, and which had to be entered by means of ladders. Cocoa-nut palms overshadowed the huts, interspersed with incense trees, while near them flowed a copious ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... inspired by a text from the Song of Songs "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley". It is written as an allegory, a somewhat subdued form of expression that in this case serves admirably to convey an impression of restrained fire. Its style is reminiscent of the folk songs, with the first stanza introducing the general theme of the song, the appearance of the rose, that is, of the Savior in a lost and indifferent world. The remainder of the verses are naturally divided into three parts: a description ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... on arriving at the first clump of trees Luc le Ganidec would cut a switch, a hazel switch, and begin gently to peel off the bark, thinking meanwhile of the folk at home. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... whole body of scientific observers by surprise. It would even appear that something like these extraordinary sunsets was necessary to call the attention of such observers to what has long been a source of perplexity to a variety of common folk, like sailors, farmers, and fishermen. But to such people the look of the weather, and what comes of that look, is of far more consequence than the exact amount of ozone or the depth or width of ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... flow'd, no ebb between; And the old folk, time's doting chronicles, Say it did so a little time before That our great-grandsire, Edward, ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... of where I sit a talking to thee. There's none of my kin laid in old Cairnhope churchyard. Warning's not for thee, nor me, nor yet for our Jock. Eh, lad, it will be for Squire Raby. His father lies up there, and so do all his folk. Put on thy hat this minute, and I'll hood myself, and we'll go up to Raby Hall, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... themselves with his drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of the city, and its little folk and great. When he was outrageously extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Are such things, now? can it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pride in the wager which I had undertaken. Suffice it to say, that my songs, and perhaps my appearance—for I cannot be accused of vanity now in saying nature had been bountiful to me—won my way to her heart. Troubadours were licensed folk, and even in her father's presence there was nought unseemly in my singing songs of love. While he took them as the mere compliments of a troubadour, the lady, I saw, read them as ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... chivalry, when men lived the wonderful tales of heroism that are now discredited and fading before the materialism of modern civilisation, and in this respect he had an affinity with the English composer, Elgar. He derived enjoyment from fairy tales and folk-lore, and these were his apparent consolation in his tragic last years. He was a man of rare qualities, noble, sincere and unselfish to an extreme. He hated insincerity in any form, and if he had been more ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... Jackson: Cigar Merchant (HUTCHINSON) seem in their announcements to be desperately afraid lest anyone should guess it to be a War book. It is, they suggest, the story of the flowering of perfect love between two married folk who had drifted apart. It is really an admirable epitome of the War as seen through one pair of eyes and one particular temperament. I don't recall another War novel that is so convincing. The almost incredible confusions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... 10. Folk-lore of the Mixe Indians. 11. Astrological Divination of the Zapotecs. 12. Similar Arts of the Mixtecs. 13. Nagualism in Chiapas, as Described by Bishop Nunez de la Vega. 14. Nagualism Among the Quiches, Cakchiquels and Pokonchis ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... along the street as Montgomery's passing whistle disturbed the early naps of these quiet folk, who had been so greatly interested and wearied by that day's unusual events. But the clear, birdlike tones were comfort to ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... true, but it is. You could find plenty of new houses, the newest of the new: palaces of millionaires, middle-sized houses of middle-class people who are happier than the happiest millionaires; fantastic cottages for summer folk; cozy cottages of "commuters"; queer colonies of Italians, and even of darkies; but there isn't a foot of Long Island ground on which these palaces and houses and cottages and colonies have sprung up that isn't as historic as European soil. It's enthralling to see how intimately ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... of Dare the loan for a year of the Brown Bull of Cualnge, and at the year's end he shall have the meed of the loan, to wit, fifty heifers and the Donn Cualnge himself. And bear thou a further boon with thee, macRoth. Should the border-folk and those of the country grudge the loan of that rare jewel that is the Brown Bull of Cualnge, let Dare himself come with his bull, and he shall get a measure equalling his own land of the smooth Plain of Ai and a chariot of the worth of ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... approached the group of commanding officers, the bands added their music. By the stipulation, they had been commanded to play an English or a Hessian march, but they were too proud to select one of their dignified national airs. Instead, they gave the tune of an English folk song of hoary age, known from time immemorial as "Derry Down," but now called "The World Turned Upside Down," a title the British bandmaster no doubt ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... South adherents would come riding up and down Misery and its tributaries from "nigh abouts" and "over yon." From forenoon until after midnight, shuffle, jig and fiddling would hold high, if rough, carnival. But, while the younger folk abandoned themselves to these diversions, the grayer heads would gather in more serious conclave. Jesse Purvy had once more beaten back death, and his mind had probably been devising, during those bed-ridden days and nights, plans of reprisal. According to current report, Purvy had announced that ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... comfort of the little apartment the Viennese expanded, cheered. She devoted herself to the boy, telling him strange folk tales, singing snatches of songs for him. The youngster took a liking to her at once. It seemed to Harmony, going about her morning routine, that Marie was her ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... teachers.' A more questionable diligence displayed itself in the zealous practice of experiments in animal magnetism and mesmerism. With a faith that might have moved mountains the two brothers laid their hands upon all sorts of sick folk, and they believed themselves to have wrought many cures and wonders. William Greg described animal magnetism as a 'discovery bearing more immediately and extensively on the physical happiness of the world ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... when Sheriff Brandt and his men came up they found the mountain folk united. He was surprised at the size of the force with ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... camphor-bottle, which she kept in a sort of folk-lore fashion, as her mother had used to do in the country. Allbright brought the whiskey, of which he kept a small supply in the house in case of dire need, and stood over Carroll with that and a teaspoon, with a vague idea of trying to insinuate a ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said (I had overtaken him and old Molly sauntering up the steep hill above the village); "if it comes to that, you know, the women-folk will have to take turns at the carrying while you are away. I believe I should make rather a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... the canoe than Ja plunged into the jungle, presently emerging into a narrow but well-defined trail which wound hither and thither much after the manner of the highways of all primitive folk, but there was one peculiarity about this Mezop trail which I was later to find distinguished them from all other trails that I ever have seen ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... understand, Porthos? At the bottom of that staircase lies, probably, the cardinal's treasury of which folk tell such wonders, and we should only have to descend, empty a chest, shut the cardinal up in it, double lock it, go away, carrying off as much gold as we could, put back this orange-tree over the place, and no one in the world would ever ask us where our fortune ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with the Swan Creek folk? Could he make them see the hills breathe? Would they feel as I felt under his voice and eyes? What a curious mixture he was! I was doubtful about his first Sunday, and was surprised to find all my indifference as to his success or failure gone. It was a pity ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... sleeplessness, his eyes wandering madly, and roaring in a hoarse voice, he tramped about the town from one tavern to another, threw away money without counting it, cried and danced to the sad tunes of the folk songs, or fought, but ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Norman nave, which well deserved admiration on account of its architectural merit, acquired even greater celebrity under the designation of Paul's Walk as a famous meeting-place and promenade of fashionable folk. ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... Rose-red. "You stupid, prying goose!" answered the dwarf; "I was going to split the tree to get a little wood for cooking. The little bit of food that one of us wants gets burnt up directly with thick logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy folk. I had just driven the wedge safely in, and everything was going as I wished; but the wretched wood was too smooth and suddenly sprang asunder, and the tree closed so quickly that I could not pull out my beautiful white beard; so now it is tight ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... that deep full voice, with its perfect intonation, was in itself a pleasure—pleasant, also, to discover that Brian Wendover, albeit a famous Balliol man and a Greek scholar after the Porsonian ideal, could still be warmly interested in simple things and lowly folk. She began to feel at ease in his presence; she began to perceive that here was a thoroughly noble nature, a mind so lofty and liberal that even had the man known her pitiful sordid story he would have been more inclined to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Jock-at-a-Venture to the parsons, gesturing with his hands and twisting his small, elegant feet, "I don't know as I'm in favour of stopping these play-acting folk from making a living; stopping 'em by force, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed that the lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind rages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the community. The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon country folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than that caused by a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-storm that grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... far land of Used-to-Be, Strange folk were known to you and me,— Mowgh and Puck, and all their kin, Launcelot, and Huckleberry Finn, Wise Talleyrand, brave Ivanhoe, Juliet, and Lear, and Prospero, Alleyne and his White Company, And trooping ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... ear! Confess, sirs, I know how to live: Some love-sick folk are sitting here! Hence, 'tis but fit, their hearts to cheer, That I a good-night strain to them should give. Hark! of the newest fashion is my song! Strike boldly in the chorus, clear ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... "Some folk might say there was madness in his method," muttered the Inspector. "But he's all on fire to start, Colonel, so we had best go out, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... prisoners sacrificed to the Red One. This was true to-day, and it extended back into old history carried down by word of mouth through the generations. When he, Ngurn, had been a young man, the tribes beyond the grass lands had made a war raid. In the counter raid, Ngurn and his fighting folk had made many prisoners. Of children alone over five score living had been bled white before the Red One, and many, ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain very prettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the game to be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestal of virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don't care to be made the stamping-ground for their ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... weather. Eventually it became too dark for any survey work, but there was always plenty to do indoors for the majority of us. Apart from our specialist duties some one was always to be found who could give employment to the willing—there were no idlers or unwilling folk amongst us. Simpson, for example, would employ as many volunteers as he could get to follow the balloons which he frequently sent up to record temperature and pressure. To each of these balloons a fine silk thread was attached, or rather the thread was attached ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine discontent .... Occasionally, intruding faintly upon the countryside peace, she was aware of a distant humming sound that grew louder and louder until there shot roaring past her an automobile filled with noisy folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of dust. Even these intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were powerless to destroy her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, pausing once in a while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
