"Narrator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous some of these are—as the legend of St. Margaret—but they were not on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator, and thus the way was in a measure prepared for the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar craft, I would say that there is this objection in writing fiction to giving a story an autobiographical form, that through whatever dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow else he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now, in speaking fact, when the fact is associated ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply scepticism as ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... in his serene voice, described for the third time the various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator's fine accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... owner of Strawberry Hill was speaking of very remote events, which he reported on hearsay, and that hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the partialities and prejudices of the narrator. These, strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... plot itself but from your handling of it. The question of the proper method of narration is to a considerable extent a matter of suitability—of giving the narrative an appropriate setting; it is also a matter of the point of view of the narrator—whether he is to tell the story as one of the actors, or simply as an impersonal observer. A dozen master story writers would tell the same tale in a dozen different ways, and each of them would seem to be the right way; for each writer would view the events from a particular angle, and would ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... in California was drawn entirely from his travels on the Pacific slope, tedious to the narrator, but interesting because of the lad's interest, and because of the picture which the rapt listener made. His study-desk near by, strewn with papers and books, the white bed and bookcase farther off, pictures and mottoes of his own selection on the white walls, a little altar in the depths of the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... mentioned by name. Their itineraries were wholly dedicated to the interests of their co-religionists. The first of the line is Eldad, the narrator of a sort of Hebrew Odyssey. Benjamin of Tudela and Petachya of Ratisbon are deserving of more confidence as veracious chroniclers, and their descriptions, together with Charisi's, complete the Jewish library ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of Aesop is confined to instruction by examples; nor by Fables is anything else[1] aimed at than that the errors of mortals may be corrected, and persevering industry[2] exert itself. Whatever the playful invention, therefore, of the narrator, so long as it pleases the ear, and answers its purpose, it is recommended by its merits, not by ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... on reliable authority, that the original Mr. Black, whose Christian name was Andrew, was a famous teller of stories and narrator of facts regarding the persecution of the Covenanters, especially of the awful killing-time, when the powers of darkness were let loose on the land to do their worst, and when the blood of ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... threatening look at me. She had just sense enough left, after emptying her goblet of wine, to be on the watch for a new interruption on my part. I took care, of course, that nothing of the sort should happen. I was now as eager as Ariel to hear the story. The subject was full of snares for the narrator. At any moment, in the excitement of speaking, Dexter's memory of the true events might show itself reflected in the circumstances of the fiction. At any moment he ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... paused, overcome as much by his feelings as by weakness, and, during the silence that followed, Cabot stole away, ostensibly to see that the dynamo was running smoothly. When he returned the narrator had recovered his calmness, and was ready ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Smith more remarkable for chronicling what passed before his senses or for explaining what he saw? How does his account of the Indians (p. 18 of this text) compare with modern accounts? Is he apparently a novice, or somewhat skilled in writing prose? Does he seem to you to be a romancer or a narrator ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of Mr. Blunt's facial muscles. Very slight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simple souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been mental. There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: "I suppose you know how he got hold of her?" in a tone of ease which was astonishingly ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... meagre were the fact that the eggs of wild geese did not grow on trees its only recorded discovery. But the investigations made into the dread mysteries of the north, and the actual problems solved, were many, while the simplicity of the narrator marks the infantine character of the epoch in regard to natural history. When so illustrious a mind as Grotius was inclined to believe in a race of arctic men whose heads grew beneath their shoulders; the ingenuous mariner of Amsterdam may be forgiven for his earnestness in combating ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it must have been forged by the narrator or some other party. There must have been a motive in either case; and that may be either to obtain notoriety or money, to injure the reputation of the priests accused, or ultimately to remove the unfavorable impressions thrown upon them by their former accusers, by ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... by Dionysius (in Euseb., l.c.) is especially characteristic, as the narrator was an extreme spiritualist. How did it stand therefore with the dry tree? Besides, Tertull. (de corona 3) says: "Calicis aut panis nostri aliquid decuti in terram anxie patimur". Superstitious reverence for the sacrament ante et extra usum is a very old habit ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... sense of detachment about this description that has been possessed by the narrator even in the most anxious moments of his career. He was determined to see all that could be seen, and, quitting his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the more secluded headquarters of the pool forces. "A friend of mine was an operator who worked in the office of Belden & Company, 60 Broadway, which ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... showed no emotion, it was clear to both boys that he felt the most concern in the experience of Fred Linden. He said nothing until the narrator was through, including the account of the cyclone. Deerfoot had heard the noise made by the latter, but he was so far removed from its path that he saw none of its fearful effects, and in fact cared ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... tumble into a fountain at Versailles, when attempting a feat of agility in presence of the fair Hornecks. Water was destined to be equally baneful to him on the present occasion. "Some difference of opinion," says the fair narrator, "having arisen with Lord Harrington respecting the depth of a pond, the poet remarked that it was not so deep, but that, if anything valuable was to be found at the bottom, he would not hesitate to pick ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... cannot tell," briskly said the fair narrator. "But I know that the ladies of the court did not. As the king retired, and we remained in the opera boxes to amuse ourselves a little with the display, we heard, to our astonishment, a proposal that the tables should be cleared away, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... fully aware that he has not been able to present this affecting narrative in the simplicity and vivid freshness with which it fell from the lips of the narrator. He has, however, as closely as possible, copied his manner, and in many instances his precise language. THE SLAVE HAS SPOKEN FOR HIMSELF. Acting merely as his amanuensis, he has carefully abstained from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... man, woman, and child in England were made to read him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable freedom from any thought of after-benefit—even from the desire that we should read him. He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love of ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... account whispered cautiously in Wolfert's ear by the narrator, Peechy Prauw, as he held him by the button in a corner of the hall, casting a wary glance now and then toward the door of the barroom, lest he should be overheard by the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... and the rest of them drank down every word. The narrator led them by their venerable noses, and this least convincing of colossal bogies, this hundred-yarder, was the object of their mute adorations. And these (I was reflecting all the time)—these are the admired teachers from whom our youth ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... drum fellow; a dull tedious narrator, a bore; also a set of gentlemen, who (Bailey says) used to meet near the Charter House, or at the King's Head in St. John's-street, who had more of pleasantry, and less of mystery, than the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... were to be banded with those from Europe, to reduce the young republic to subjection. Congress named an especial and a secret committee, therefore, for the express purpose of defeating this object. Of this committee Mr.——, the narrator of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the narrator informed me, was left unmolested, being entertained by companions of his age until the moment for the sacrifice arrived, when he was seized and quickly bound to a tree. The warrior priest, who was the father of the sick one, then shouted out in a loud voice to his war spirits asking them ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... of Richard Watts in 1579, to give lodging and entertainment for one night, and fourpence each, to "six poor travellers, not being rogues or proctors". It furnished the theme to the Christmas cycle of stories, The Seven Poor Travellers, the narrator, who treats the waifs and strays harboured one Christmas eve at the Charity to roast turkey, plum pudding, and "wassail", bringing up the number to seven, "being", as he says, "a traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... next hour he became auditor rather than narrator. It was Iris who told of his wild fight against wind and waves, Iris who showed them where he fought with the devil-fish, Iris who expatiated on the long days of ceaseless toil, his dauntless courage in the face of every difficulty, the way in which he rescued her from the clutch of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... ransomed only by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that eccentric mixture of humor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pervaded with what seems to be the true spirit of artistic impartiality. The author is simply a narrator. He stands aside, regarding with equal eye all the issues involved and the scales dip not in his hands. To sum up, the first romance of the new day on the Ohio is an eminently readable one—a good yarn ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... however, one historical event, the narrator of which represents the Indians to have been in an entirely different condition from what they are now, or have been since. This is the account of Ferdinand de Soto's expedition to Florida. There are two historians of this ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... beautiful narrator, as she enacted before her this poetry and tragedy of real life, so much beyond what dramatic art can ever furnish. Her eyes grew splendid in their depth and brilliancy; sometimes they were full of tears, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... inaugurator inceptor incisor inheritor initiator innovator insinuator institutor instructor interlocutor interpolator interrogator inventor investor juror lector legator legislator lessor mediator modulator monitor mortgagor (law) multiplicator narrator navigator negotiator nonjuror numerator objector obligor (law) observator operator originator pacificator participator peculator percolator perforator perpetrator persecutor perturbator possessor preceptor precursor predecessor predictor prevaricator procrastinator procreator procurator professor ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... be "swep away," and rumours of spreading death and disaster were popular. Tread, the advanced blacksmith at Stornham, having heard in his by-gone, better days of the Great Plague of London, was greatly in demand as a narrator of illuminating anecdotes at ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Audubon, visited him in his solitary retreat, and spent a night with him. In his Ornithological Biography he gives the following narrative which he received from Boone, that evening as they sat at the cabin fire. We give the story in the words of the narrator: ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was always applied to it in Columbus's writings from this date onwards; and going on to describe the voyage, the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair - for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects - trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appreciation of the present! How many of us have listened over and over to the same tale of past annoyances, until we wonder how it can be possible that the constant repetition is not recognized by the narrator! How many of us have been over and over in our minds past troubles, little and big, so that we have no right whatever to feel impatient when listening to such repetitions by others! Here again we have, in nervous disease, the extreme of a common trait in humanity. With increased nervous fatigue ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... The narrator turned, saw a woman near and, not being a common person nor a coarse workman but a clever salesman and a householder, lowered his voice for the rest of the tale. During it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in this universal comedy. The passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral. La Fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the Nile of whose existence he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... William the Conqueror and the graceful, richly ornamented Abbaye-aux-Dames of Queen Matilda. Sincerity and truth Wace ever aims at, but he embellishes his narrative with countless imaginative details. As a narrator he has the tendency to garrulity, which few mediaeval poets altogether escaped, but he is by no means without conversational charm, and in brief sentences abounding in colloquial turns, he leads ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... certainly did not propose to tell her. Other reasons apart I did not desire to seem madder than I admittedly am,—and I lacked sufficient plausibility to enable me to concoct, on the spur of the moment, a plain tale of the doings of my midnight visitor which would have suggested that the narrator was perfectly sane. So I fenced,—or ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... cypress, planted upon his grave the day after his funeral, only three years' growth; and if he go and sit under the tree, beneath which Alvinzi reposed his withered and broken frame for thirty summers, will perhaps agree with the narrator of this mournful story, that mercy was mingled in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... anecdotes are probably false, (a thing that hereafter I shall have much pleasure in making out to the angry reader's satisfaction,) but to a dead certainty those anecdotes, in particular, which bear marks in their construction that a rhetorical effect of art had been contemplated by the narrator, —we may take for granted, that the current stories ascribing modern wars (French and English) to accidents the most inconsiderable, are false even in a literal sense; but at all events they are so when valued philosophically, and brought out ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... donor inventor odor conqueror senior tenor tremor bachelor junior oppressor possessor liquor surveyor vapor governor languor professor spectator competitor candor harbor meteor orator rumor splendor elector executor factor generator impostor innovator investor legislator narrator navigator numerator operator originator perpetrator personator predecessor protector prosecutor projector reflector regulator sailor senator separator solicitor supervisor survivor tormentor testator transgressor ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... the Queen" is Mary, daughter of James II., into whose service the narrator, a girl of 16, enters just before the marriage of Mary to William III. The descriptions of persons and manners at the courts of Charles II. and William III. are life-like and accurate. The language is simple, and imitative of the quaint quiet style ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... write narrative that should suggest and represent the continuity of life. He could pause for description or dialogue or reflection without interrupting this stream of life. Nothing need be, and nothing was, alien to the narrator with this gift; for his writing would now assimilate everything and enrich ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... individuals now, there is a human mass which is itself lost amid elemental forces. "More than six thousand miles of French trenches, more than six thousand miles of such miseries or of worse; and the French front is only one-eighth of the whole." Instinctively the narrator is compelled to borrow his images from the rough mythology of primitive peoples, or from cosmic convulsions. He speaks of "rivers of wounded torn from the bowels of the earth which bleeds and rots unendingly"—"glaciers of corpses"—"gloomy ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... relief, and he remained blind in that eye to the end of his life. [Footnote: Long afterwards Chantrey the sculptor, who had suffered a similar misfortune, exclaimed, "What! are you too a brother Cyclops?" but, as the narrator of the story used to add, Mr. Murray could see better with one eye than most people with two.] His father withdrew him from Dr. Burney's school, and sent him in July 1793 to the Rev. Dr. Roberts, at Loughborough House, Kennington. In committing him to the schoolmaster's charge, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... listened with the closest attention, fixing upon the narrator her splendid eyes, and in them, despite their feminine beauty and softness, seemed to smoulder a deep fire of resentment at the treatment accorded her kinsman, a luminant of danger transmitted to her down the ages from ancestors ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... leaning forward, breathlessly intent. Naturally such close attention flattered the narrator, who went ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... and the source from which it sprang are revealed by the fate which befell another denouncer of the land in the Name of the Lord. Of him, the narrator uses a form of the verb to prophesy different from that which he uses of Jeremiah, thus guarding himself from expressing an opinion as to whether the man was a genuine prophet. This is a further tribute to the moral effect of Jeremiah's person ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... as to create in the mind of him who has never looked upon the original, anything like a correct idea of what it is? The painter may indeed accomplish this, though even he will accomplish it imperfectly; but the mere narrator,—in good sooth, his words, however appropriate, must ever fall comparatively dull upon the ear, which is not the organ through which to convey to the mind any notion, however incomplete, of external scenery. When, then, I have stated, that our path carried ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... GEORGE SIMS, of Horrible London and other emotional tales, good to have seen the Baron chuckling over this capital short story, which is as ingenious as it is genuinely droll. It belongs to the same genus as the Danvers Jewels, though, in this latter, the idea of the character of the narrator is more humorously conceived than is Mr. SIMS's Baronet who acts as an amateur detective. The Baron highly recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in Blackwood, for this month, entitled, A Physiologist's Wife, by A. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... a philosopher united by a caprice of nature to an artist, and by that of fortune and of education to a worldly man and a traveller. The abstract speculations of the metaphysician would not have sufficed for him, nor would the continuous and simple creation of the narrator who narrates to amuse himself, nor would the ardor of the semi-animal of the man-of-pleasure who abandons himself to the frenzy of vice. He invented for himself, partly from instinct, partly from method, a compromise between his contradictory ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise. They were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... may be interested in the problem. I don't mean to say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear about it myself by this time. All I can say is that the personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive quite apart from the story he was telling me. I heard a few years ago that he had died far away from his beloved Naples where that "abominable adventure" did ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... boy, so much the same as that I had read in Gilbert, that it scarcely seemed to differ from it in a word. The name of Mr. Bligh, the father of the boy, was, however, omitted; and Dr. Ruddell could only be known as the author of the account by the lad's father calling the narrator Mr. Ruddell, in their discourse about the youth. The account is so strangely inserted in the Appendix to the volume, without comment or reference, that, had I not previously known the circumstances above names by Mr. Arundell, I should have fancied ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... "So," concluded the narrator, "here I am, a tenderfoot of the ocean, having marketed my ore-reducing process for a sufficient profit to give me a vacation, and also to permit of my buying a little old house ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is politely encouraging. Hagen joins his invitation to the half-brother's. The listeners place themselves at ease on the ground about the narrator, seated in their midst on a mossy stump. Then Siegfried, with his beautiful, bottomless zest in life, recounts in vivid running sketches the story we know. One after the other the familiar motifs pass in review. From them alone one could reconstruct the tale. Of his childhood in Mime's cave, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... this recital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, that the next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important in its consequences. This was to make the chorus assist the narrator by occasional question ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Lady Sale paid the Queen a visit at Windsor, while Miss Liddell was maid-of-honour in waiting. The lively narrator of the events of these days describes Lady Sale, as tall, thin, and rather plain, but with a good countenance, while Sir Robert was stout. Lady Sale told these wondering listeners, in a palace that she started from Cabul in a cloth habit, which got wet the first day, and became like a sheet of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... enamoured poet, but cannot condemn his friends who never saw his lady-love, and that is why I tremble lest my constant rhapsodies on India should bore my readers as much as Saadi bored his friends. But what, I pray you, is the poor narrator to do, when new, undreamed-of charms are daily discovered in the lady-love in question? Her darkest aspects, abject and immoral as they are, and sometimes of such a nature as to excite your horror—even these aspects are full of some wild ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... however, and we had reached the cigars, Mark Twain started in telling a story in his most captivating way. His peculiar drawl, his habit in emphasizing the points by shaking his bushy hair, made him a dramatic narrator. He never had greater success. Even the veteran Mark himself was astonished at the uproarious laughter which greeted almost every sentence and ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... a book!" she sighed ecstatically when the narrator had finished. "And what a picture for one of the characters!" She fell to studying Peace with a new interest in ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Mr. Tescheron, who, I am informed, was fearful that the narrator might be interrupted by ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... themselves before the king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees, and he says to her, weeping, "Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead, since they do not wish me to see him." And the narrator adds with admiration; "I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child." Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Immortal Bard, "dressed" the part in a most elaborate "neck-or-nothing tile." Upon being expostulated with by the manager, he triumphantly referred to the description of the chivalrous Prince in which the narrator particularly states— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... much to go on with now, my boy," continued the narrator; "for Mowla Buksh being down, the fighting elephants took good care to punish him well before they let him up again. But as the encounter had aroused the combative propensities of Chand Moorut, it was thought wise to remove him from the scene before he became too excited. This being managed by ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the writer who introduced into France with his Gil Blas what has been called the personal novel—in other words, that story of adventures of which the narrator is the hero, the aim of the story being to illustrate first and foremost the vicissitudes of life in general and those of a single person in particular. The subsequent introduction of letters into the personal novel, which allowed more than one character to assume the narrator's role, brought about ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the course of our intimacy. While thus acknowledging a debt, I must also avow that another motive strongly prompts me upon this occasion. I am not aware of any one, to whom with such propriety a volume of anecdote and adventure should be inscribed, as to one, himself well known as an inimitable narrator. Could I have stolen for my story, any portion of the grace and humour with which I have heard you adorn many of your own, while I should deem this offering more worthy of your acceptance, I should also feel more confident of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... folded arms and attentive mien, kept his eyes fixed steadily upon the narrator, as if he doubted the evidence of his senses. Without, the marshals had taken their places in the lists and another stentorian dissonance greeted these officers of the field from the good-humored gathering, which, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... argument is neatly introduced to account for the narrator's staying in the city at all, when he ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... account of all that had happened. He was one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-praised individuals who never interrupt and always understand, and at the close of Viner's story he said exactly what the narrator was thinking. "The real truth of all this, Mr. Viner," he said, "is that this is probably one of the last chapters in the history of the Lonsdale Passage murder. For if you find this woman and the men who are undoubtedly her accomplices, you will most likely have found, in one or other of ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... Instead of carrying out the plan originally formed, seizing the cashier at his window and getting to the safe without interruption, they leaped right over the counter and scared Heywood at the very start. As to the rest of the affair inside the bank I take the account of a Northfield narrator: ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... and rich the men were," the narrator continued, "they sat under awnings of silk; the buckles of their saddles were of gold, as was the fringe of their bridles; the bells were of silver, and made real music. Nobody knew them; they looked as if they had come from the ends of the world. Only one of them spoke, and of everybody on the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of valor, he gains no consideration, but is regarded nearly as a woman. In their great war-dances all the warriors in succession strike the post, as it is called, and recount their exploits. On these occasions their auditory consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades of the narrator. The profound impression which his discourse produces on them is manifested by the silent attention it receives, and by the loud shouts which hail its termination. The young man who finds himself at such a meeting without anything to recount is very ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Jesus, our precious Saviour, I beg you to pray with my husband: it maybe God will bless him." "My sister, God will bless him: this your anguish shall be turned into joy." "My own heart was moved," adds the narrator. "I saw my own love very little, compared with hers, and ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... daughter, for you have won her heart.' He immediately provided an outfit for his daughter, and when it was completed, my father and his bride rode away on horseback, while the trousseau of the Princess followed on three hundred camels." The passage proceeds (the narrator being Daruma, the offspring of the marriage), "When my father had returned home, and was desirous of celebrating his marriage Kandarin (his Wazir) said to him, 'Your wife will be destroyed if you touch her, for you are created of fire, and she is created of earth, which the fire devours. You ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of humour, enjoying themselves quite uproariously one night at a club, over a story one of them was relating of an unsatisfactory German son-in-law who had demanded an income. He was a man of small title, who had married the narrator's daughter, and after some months spent in his father-in-law's house, had felt it but proper that his financial position should be ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... We must remember that the narrator is a loyal Muhammadan. Mudkal was in the tract always in dispute between ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit than those of Lord Byron. They want his literary polish and tact; but what of that? 'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner derive a peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's mistress; and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in things ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the narrator, "don't get it into your precious noddles that this Territory's the only flat country under the sun. There are other spots upon this green earth where you can see hundreds of miles in ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... animated gesture, her expressive countenance, the solemn and thrilling air and accent with which she related the dark passages in her strange story; and, above all, that I could communicate the impressive consciousness that the narrator had seen with her own eyes, and personally acted in the scenes which she described; these accompaniments, taken with the additional circumstance that she who told the tale was one far too deeply and sadly impressed with religious principle to misrepresent or fabricate what ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Her narrator was not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. "There is Henry de Spain's coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you'll find his belt of cartridges. Don't take ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of woe, and his audience was thrilled and horrified. "Lord" Bill alone appeared unmoved. A close observer even might have noticed the faintest suspicion of a smile at the corners of his mouth. The smile broadened as the sharp doctor launched a question at the narrator ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... elderly gentleman were hushed, I drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving, with the best energy of my imagination, to throw a tinge of romance and historic grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were wofully disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey punch, which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... of prefixing a list of their personages;—and the dramatists of old used to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. In such a narrative as this, any proceeding of that kind would be unusual,—and therefore the poor narrator has been driven to expend his first four chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... it was that the doctor himself remained awake when such a powerful narcotic was administered, the narrator did not lose his presence of mind nor his absence of conscience, and said the doctor had, during the operation, held his nose tight with his two fingers. The doctor had since been offered thousands of tomans for the precious bottle, but would ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... impression upon outsiders who happened to meet him. There is a curious anecdote told by some one who met Arthur Hallam travelling with his father on the Continent only a short time before his sudden death. The narrator says that he saw with a certain satisfaction how mercilessly the young man criticised and exposed his father's statements, remembering how merciless the father had often been in dealing summarily with the arguments and statements ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... topic as a backdrop for a cultural study. He presents us with several characters, each at a different place in the gray zone between Jewish and Christian cultures: two Cantonists, one clinging to the Jewish side (Jacob); one closer to the non-Jewish side (Samuel, the narrator); as well as a Jewish convert unhappy with her lot (Anna, whose abuse of Samuel we later understand as the 'self-disdain' often seen among those who had left Judaism); her daughter Marusya, who although fully Christian is ostracized as being a Jewess, and struggles unsuccessfully to find her place ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... it—the murder. A stranger is found in a wood, hung to a tree. Nobody knows who he is. But he and the narrator had met in Paraguay. He, the murdered man, came home, visited the narrator, and fell in love with the beautiful being to whom the narrator was engaged. So the narrator lassoed ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... through the blinded giant's legs in the skin of a slaughtered animal, are a series of incidents that could not have arisen independently and casually. Yet till lately the mill stood to prove if the narrator lied, and every circumstance of local particularity seemed to vouch for the autochthonous character of the myth. The incident is an instructive one, and I have therefore included it in this volume, though it is little more than an anecdote in ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... evidenced by the remark of a small boy who, at the end of a story relating the necessary sequence of activities common to the countless thousands of heroic mothers, washing and ironing the family linen, waggishly shook his finger at the narrator, and with a beaming smile, said: "Now you know that it is my Ma and Tootsie you are telling about!" John had not discovered the fact that the story which reflected the daily service of his beloved mother reflected ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... on whose lips thousands and thousands of his countrymen had hung entranced. He was, what is less generally remembered now, perhaps the ablest and most accomplished diplomatist ever in the public service of the United States. Jared Sparks was a profound student of history, somewhat dull as a narrator, but of unerring historic judgment. I suppose he would be placed by all our writers of history with great unanimity at the head of American historic investigators. James Walker was a great preacher and a profound thinker. In the judgment ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... you. You see, I have lived so long in the East that I have lost much of my European training. Then, my name is unfortunate. Herod killed one of your Christian saints, while Voltaire was an infidel. You English people have strong prejudices, and thus my story would be injured by the narrator." ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... had heard the story of Lyttelton's dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... had listened without comment or interruption during the recital of the narrator, his eyes fixed, the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... formation of theoretic views, and illustrating an obscure but most interesting chapter in the marvelous history of human nature. It is written with perfect modesty, and freedom from pretense, doing credit to the ability of the author as a narrator, as well as to her fairness and integrity ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... charms really tempted the friend to endeavour to supplant George, or whether he considered the latter's attentions to the young Greek to be without definite object, and undertaken in a spirit of indifference, the narrator could not explain; but it was not long before Delancey considered himself as a principal in the transaction. Acme, whose knowledge of the world was slight, and whose previous seclusion from society, had rendered her timidity excessive, considered that ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... these results and observations are merely experimental. In another place I hope to reproduce the stories in the original, by phonetic methods. I have here given English versions of some of the stories recorded, as translated for me by the narrator, or by Mrs. Brown, and added some explanations which may be of assistance to a person listening when songs or stories are ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... began to grow very large, and the hushed, dramatic voice of the narrator caused her listeners to hold their breath, until occasionally they burst into fits of hearty laughter. But the hour had come. The bowls of bread-and-milk smoked on the sideboard, and all the girls hurried to begin and finish their food. After supper they ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... perceived a sudden change in the appearance of our eldest darling; his heavy lids veiled his eyes, an unnatural colour burnt in his cheeks, his breath became short. Clara looked at the mother; she slept, yet started at the pause the narrator made— Fear of awakening and alarming her, caused Clara to go on at the eager call of Evelyn, who was unaware of what was passing. Her eyes turned alternately from Alfred to Idris; with trembling accents she continued her tale, till she saw the child about to fall: starting ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... these rumours, when sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,—a silly old man of eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the historic mise-en-scene in which James Morier penned his famous satire. I next turn to the work itself. The idea of criticising, and still more of satirising, a country or a people under the guise of a fictitious narrator is familiar in the literature of many lands. More commonly the device adopted is that of introducing upon the scene the denizen of some other country or clime. Here, as in the case of the immortal Gil Blas of Santillane, with whom Hajji Baba has been not inaptly compared, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the story did not entirely deviate from fact, and was very artfully framed to excite sympathy for the narrator and indignation against the perpetrators of the supposed outrage. Tom Hadley, who had not the prolific imagination of his comrade, listened in open-mouthed wonder to the fanciful tale, but did not offer to corroborate ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... winter was already making itself felt, James decided to withdraw to Dublin; as our narrator says, "the young commanders were in some haste to return to the capital, where the ladies expected them with great impatience; so that King James, being once more persuaded to disband the new levies and ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... discover if she were a witch, and, in case she were, to have her apprehended. With this explanation, Harvey was able to get away. He related the story to the king, whose leave he had to go on the expedition. The narrator adds: "I am certayne this for an argument against spirits or witchcraft is the best and most ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... dens," they fired a gun through the roof of a house on the declivity of a mountain; upon which an old woman or two came crawling out, and scrambled up the hill; but no other persons appeared. "Whereupon," adds the narrator,[115] "the Paisley men, under the command of Captain Finlason, assisted by Captain Scot, a half-pay officer, of late a lieutenant of Colonel Kerr's regiment of dragoons, who is indeed an officer, wise, stout, and honest; the Dumbarton men, under the command of David Colquhoun and James ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her class, she was a brave narrator; her place was on the hearth-rug and she made it a rostrum, mimeing her stories as she told them, fitting them with vital detail, spinning them out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," her voice sinking into a whisper over the supernatural or the horrific; until she ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
