"Unfamiliar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprised to see him. They were so much surprised indeed, as to be almost childishly interested, and Starmidge had never had such attentive listeners in his life as these two elderly city men, to whom crime and detention were as unfamiliar as higher finance was to their visitor. They followed Starmidge's story point by point, nodding every now and then as he drew their attention to particular passages, and the detective saw that they comprehended all he said. He made ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... a voice that Leslie fancied was not altogether unfamiliar to him, "is it possible that there is some one else in the same horrible plight as ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is an unfamiliar one, there is first the initiation by employment in a sweater's shop, and a few months, or even weeks, gives all the necessary facility. Then comes the question of workroom; and here it is only necessary to take the family room, and hire a sewing machine, which is for rent ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... even good, only I had the other troop before my eyes to correct my standard, and remind me continually of "the little more, and how much it is." Perceiving themselves worsted, the choir of Butaritari grew confused, blundered, and broke down; amid this hubbub of unfamiliar intervals I should not myself have recognised the slip, but the audience were quick to catch it, and to jeer. To crown all, the Makin company began a dance of truly superlative merit. I know not what it was about, I was too much absorbed to ask. In one act a part of the chorus, squealing in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... menagerie tent. As if by magic it has disappeared, and with it the sideshow and its banners, the Punch and Judy show, the horse tent, the cook tent, the blacksmith shop. Where once stood a dripping white city, now stretches a barren, ugly waste of unhallowed, unfamiliar ground, flanked by the solitary temple of tinsel and sawdust which they have just left behind, and which even now is being desolated by scowling men in overalls. The crowd oozes forth, to find itself completely lost in the night, all points of the compass at ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... to describe the rapids with the foot-rule standard, and give an idea of their power. One unfamiliar with "white water" usually associates a twelve-foot descent or a ten-foot wave with a similar wave on the ocean. There is no comparison. The waters of the ocean rise and fall, the waves travel, the water itself, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... at the count's card. His name was, as I have said, somewhat unfamiliar, although it was part of duty at our legation to learn all I could in the upper social life of Paris where, at this time, we had few friends and many foes. If, still unsatisfied, he chose to look up my driver, ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... compass, knew nothing whatever of the rocks and shoals, except by rumor that there were plenty of both. There appeared to be no way of reefing the lateen sail, which was made of no better material than calico, and I was entirely unfamiliar with the rigging. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... liked him little, in spite of their easy friendliness with mankind in general. At supper they talked with him perfunctorily, and covertly sneered because he sprinkled his food liberally with cayenne and his speech with Spanish words pronounced with soft, slurred vowels that made them sound unfamiliar, and against which his English contrasted sharply with its crisp, American enunciation. He met their infrequent glances with the cool stare of absolute indifference to their opinion of him, and their perfunctory civility with ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the main moment in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Unfamiliar to old and simple faiths. Its energy and speculative relations. It is decreasing as a religious moment owing to, (1) a better understanding of ethics, (2) more accurate cosmical conceptions, (3) the clearer defining of life, (4) the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... over between my fingers, holding the candle so that the light fell full upon it. It was not my father's; of that I was fully certain. It had a strange, unfamiliar look about it such as other people's small wares always have for us, and yet, the more I examined it, the more I began to think I had seen it somewhere before. I was mystified. As I turned my head I descried ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... flavor to Tobin," answered Ashton-Kirk. "But Rangnow is unfamiliar to me; and if it is a name at all, it is of Eastern European origin. In that case," laughing, "it could scarcely be expected to share the honors ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... voice, although he pretended to scorn such things! Sipiagin was the only one really pleased with the scene. It had afforded him an opportunity of showing off the power of his eloquence and of calming the rising storm. He knew Latin, and Virgil's Quos ego was not unfamiliar to him. He did not consciously compare himself to Neptune, but thought of him with a ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... that were to be seen on the way. By the forms of wild life along the banks of the river, this strange intruder on their peace was regarded with attention. The birds and beasts evinced little fear of the floating rafts. The sandhill crane, stalking along the shore, lifted his long neck as the unfamiliar thing came floating by, and then stood still and silent as a statue until the rafts disappeared from view. Blue-herons feeding along the bars, saw the unusual spectacle, and, uttering surprised "booms," they spread wide wings and lumbered away along the shore. The ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the discomforts of a resting-place on lava rocks, occasional stifling gusts of sulphur fumes, dripping rain, and heat that scorched our veiled faces, so long as we could gaze on that boiling, tumbling, heaving, ever-changing lake of fire. Such wild, terrible, unfamiliar beauty could not long ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... old words unfamiliar to the Hawaiian of to-day, and proverbs and expressions whose meaning is now doubtful, is that employed since the time of the reduction of the speech to writing in 1820, and is easily read at the present day. Andrews incorporated the vocabulary of this romance into ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... walk inland, but they had taken only a few steps when they both, as though by a common impulse, stopped. An unfamiliar sound had broken in upon the deep silence of this quiet land. Borrowdean, who was a few paces ahead, pointed to the bend in the road below, and turned towards his companion with a little gesture of ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... secured his advance note and have him conveyed on board in a more or less helpless condition. The next day when he came to his senses he would find himself in the forecastle of some strange ship in unfamiliar surroundings half-way down the river without a rupee in his pocket and very often with little more than the clothes he stood up in. The Government at last stepped in and ordered the home to be transferred to its present ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... with oaths unknown to all but them, While some essayed to frame the words of prayer, Or to articulate the stern command, And one, in most supreme authority, Declaimed a ponderous regal ordinance, But heard a sea of unfamiliar sounds, Confused and desultory turbulence, and dissonance of harsh, discordant tones, Instead of due attention and applause; Nor were his words and usual forms of speech Respected by the idle, wondering craft, Which lately comprehended ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... he said, for unconsciously the priest's words had been the opening of the door of communication between him and those he had brought to his home; for though the words possessed a pronunciation that was unfamiliar, the old Latin tongue recalled to Pen years of study in the past, and he snatched at the opportunity of saying a few words that the ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... him get that far! That was as good a chance as any. If he made an effort to find, say, a way to the flat above and chanced some means of escape there, it would in no wise obviate an attack upon him, and he would only be under the added disadvantage of unfamiliar surroundings. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... his attire. Never in all her life before had Dorothy seen rough cow-hide boots, and grey striped trousers worn with a rusty and moth-eaten dress-coat in the middle of the afternoon. An immaculate expanse of shirt-front and a general air of extreme cleanliness went far toward redeeming the unfamiliar costume. The silk hat, with a bell-shaped crown and wide, rolling brim, belonged to a much earlier period, and had been brushed to look like new. Even Harlan noted that the ravelled edges of his linen had been carefully ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... to me, and in the dream she had seen a tall, dark man, built very big, and dressed in unfamiliar clothing. And the man had been in a little room, and very sorrowful, and lonesome; and in her dream she had gone nigh ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... not altogether unfamiliar with the Complete Angler. And you are right. I have a little ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... some uneasiness. The sight of the young prince on his deathbed had moved him deeply, for at the bottom of his heart he was convinced that Ludovico Sforza was his murderer; and a murderer might very well be a traitor. He was going forward into an unfamiliar country, with a declared enemy in front of him and a doubtful friend behind: he was now at the entrance to the mountains, and as his army had no store of provisions and only lived from hand to mouth, a forced ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Agatha paid no heed to his words, and could bear to stay in the room only when she was able to do something to soothe or comfort him. She was not wholly unfamiliar with illness and the trouble that comes in its train, but the sight of James, with his unrecognizing eyes and his wits astray, a superb engine gone wild, brought a sharp and hitherto unknown pain to her throat. She stood over his bed, holding his hands when he would reach frenziedly ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... sinking and rising upon the long swells, and certain to be caught, in the very vortex, as may be said, of the hurricane, or tornado, or typhoon, or whatever it should be termed. The craft was not an unfamiliar one—both knew it well—for it was the Coral, with the mutineers ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... across the floor when Marcia awoke suddenly to a sense of her new surroundings. For a moment she could not think where she was nor how she came there. She looked about the unfamiliar walls, covered with paper decorated in landscapes—a hill in the distance with a tall castle among the trees, a blue lake in the foreground and two maidens sitting pensively upon a green bank with their arms about one another. Marcia liked it. She ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... in his situation. Suppose you were in India, and a letter was written to you by your wife—or your husband, I suppose I should say—telling you that your father was extremely ill, and that he himself had been deceiving you for some years. The writing would be strange—quite unfamiliar; the story would be almost incredible; you wouldn't know what to think. You'd be deeply anxious, and yet half believe that some one was practicing a cruel jest on you. For my part, if I had an explanation to make I would wait for a time of prosperity arid happiness. Misfortune ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... banking began thus: but such history is rarely of any value. The basis of it is false. It assumes that what works most easily when established is that which it would be the most easy to establish, and that what seems simplest when familiar would be most easily appreciated by the mind though unfamiliar. But exactly the contrary is true. Many things which seem simple and which work well when firmly established, are very hard to establish among new people, and not very easy to explain to them. Deposit banking ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... iron merchant, elder of the church though he was, awoke from his long dream of money getting and of earthly comfort to the reality of God, and of his obligation as a redeemed soul to Him. There crept an unfamiliar note of yearning sincerity into the prayers wherewith he took his heretofore formal part in the church prayer meeting, and it almost perceptibly thinned the frozen crust of the "icily regular" service. The men ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... relief was somewhat mitigated when she saw—as she did in the first glance, for this hand had been not unfamiliar to her once—that the letter Vivian enclosed to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... turned his eyes patiently upon. the faces around him. He had been introduced to a good many persons, but he had come to that time of life when an introduction; unless charged with some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisome encounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on the severity of a man who finds himself without acquaintance where others are meeting friends, when a small man, with a neatly trimmed reddish-grey beard and prominent eyes, stepped in front of him, and saluted him with the "Hello, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had "his work cut out for him." The tussle that ensued was tremendous, and Mrs Frog retired into a doorway to enjoy it in safety. But it was brief. Before either wrestler could claim the victory, a brother constable came up, and Ned was secured and borne away to a not unfamiliar cell before he could enjoy even one pipe of the "baccy" ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Court Playhouse[621] was projected and built by two men whose very names are unfamiliar to most students of the drama—Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove. Yet Gunnell was a distinguished actor, and was associated with the ownership and management of at least two theatres. Even so early as 1613 his ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... is made up chiefly of those who are unfamiliar with the soil and its culture—mechanics, professional men, who hope to regain health by coming back to nature, and citizens whose ill-success or instincts suggest country life and labors. From both these classes, and especially ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... looked anxiously after Mr. Farrington and Elise, who had gone on ahead, not noticing that Patty had stopped. But she knew she could soon catch up to them if only she could get her candles and manage to pay for them in the confusing and unfamiliar French money. As she was counting out the change, greatly to her surprise, the Frenchwoman lighted her seven candles, one after the other. Patty exclaimed in dismay, wondering if she did it to test their ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... danger of crossing the waters of the Pacific, you can by a short walk from the midst of the teeming life of an American City, be ushered into streets that are foreign in appearance and where scenes that are unfamiliar to the eye attract your attention on every hand. With the exception of the houses, which, as a rule, take on a European or an American style of architecture, you might imagine that you were in Canton or some other Chinese city. The life is truly Asiatic and Mongolian ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... brotherhood, long since unfamiliar to human intercourse under usual conditions, but welcome even at the cost of conditions such as these. The truth gradually emerges to our consciousness—it is not the evil in us that kills brotherhood, but the vain, unending effort to make the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... he harangued him in halting yet vehement Japanese, gesticulating and—after the manner of people speaking a tongue unfamiliar to them—talking at the top of his voice. But his oration had no stimulating effect on the poor Sato. Scarce waiting for Brice to finish speaking, the butler broke again into that monkey-like chatter of appeal and fright. Gavin silenced him with a threatening gesture, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... wheels was heard,—of unfamiliar wheels. The post-supporters knew the creak or rattle or jingle of every "team" in Bixby. There was a general stir, a looking up the street, in the direction whence the sound came; and then a gaping of mouths, an opening of eyes, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... is being deftly chipped, and its lucent content dropped first upon a plate,—a thrifty half-way station for possible unsoundness,—and then slid off into a clean-looking oval saucepan. The pan is then hung from an unfamiliar variety of crane close over the fire, and the contents wheedled and teased by a skillful spoon and bribed with salt and butter and a sprinkle of parsley. And even as we watch, the golden mass melts together; ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... after their experience has matured; and that, when the battle of Shiloh took place, and citizen regiments took part, with very slight knowledge of arms, it was equally true, that the officers themselves, both regular and volunteer, were proportionately unfamiliar with battle action on a large scale, and that, as a matter of fact, the Generals and Colonels, for the most part, had never seen a batallion drill, unless at West Point, much less drilled more than a company; and their conduct and opinions, in 1861-2, are not to be measured by the ripened experience ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,—there is such a terrible uncertainty in the results of unfamiliar culinary operations,—so many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal line which divides the invited from the uninvited fraction of the local universe,—that, if the notes requested the pleasure of the guests' company on "this solemn occasion," they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... return home after the first visit he discovered lying upon the floor under his bed, a Mid[-e]/ sack which contained some small parcels with which he was unfamiliar, but was afterward told that one of them consisted of "love powder." He stated that he had grown children, and the idea of marrying again was out of the question, not only on their account but because he was now too old. The missionary reasoned with him and suggested a course of procedure, ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... shone into his chamber, making everything plainly visible. Some one looked in at the window, then quickly disappeared. He paid no attention to this, but soon he heard the vestibule door open. He thought it was his orderly, returning late, drunk as usual. The step was an unfamiliar one, and he heard the ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... looked around him with keen interest. Before him stood a static generator of gigantic proportions and of a totally unfamiliar design. Attached to it was an elliptic reflector of silvery metal, from which rose ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... said Major Alan Hawke, "I am absolutely prevented from seeing you, unless you will trust yourself to me, and come here again." The frightened woman cast a glance at the unfamiliar loveliness of the secluded garden, with the hidden kiosques, sacred ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... you say, is the unseen, the completely new and strange? Not so. The epitome of the unfamiliar is the familiar inverted, the familiar turned on its head. View a familiar place under new conditions—a deserted and darkened theater, an empty night club by day—and you will find yourself more influenced by the emotion of strangeness than by any number of unseen places. Go back to your ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... if any, of my readers understand the method by which Indians light their fires, I will hastily describe it. The Indian is unfamiliar with the use of matches; even the more primitive flint and steel is a sealed book to him; hence he resorts to a very simple but laborious contrivance. Each Indian supplies himself with two dried stalks ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... the unfamiliar title, though possibly he was no more undeserving of it than some who flaunt it in the face ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... and the scenery of lower Natal amazed me. I had expected nothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were little Mozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line and a quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundant deep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliar cultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt were bananas ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... account for the crudity of our intercourse, not with officials only, but with the vast world which lies outside our narrow circle of associates. We have no human relations where we have no social relations; we are awkward and constrained in our recognition of the unfamiliar; and this awkwardness encumbers us in the ordinary routine of life. A policeman who has been long on one beat, and who has learned to know either the householders or the business men of his locality, is wont to be the most ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... straight down the slope, its top describing a great arc against the sky and gathering the air in its branches with a low but terrifying roar. The final crash was unexpectedly gentle,—or rather, would have seemed so to one unfamiliar with tree-felling. Some branches snapped, some sticks flew up and dropped, there was a shuddering confusion in the crystal air for a few seconds, then the stillness ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... kept various kinds of animals for several years, in order to observe them and try experiments at my convenience. I have suddenly inserted an unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have kept birds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight the animal is always surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious, and often retreats from it. By degrees his confidence ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... obstinacy than of firmness, of impetuosity than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias of a gigantic ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... steady as she read the unfamiliar Latin, still kneeling, with the book a little raised to catch the candlelight, and her grave tranquil eyes bent upon it. Only once did her voice falter, and then she commanded it again immediately; and that, as she read "Erant autem et mulieres ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... written about the qualifications necessary for charitable work. It is possible to exaggerate them. Those who are unfamiliar with the homes of the poor are likely to think it unsafe to send young and inexperienced people into poor neighborhoods. As a matter of fact, there are many good people in the poorest neighborhoods, and young workers are as safe there as anywhere. In an old note-book I find that years ago I set ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... her. Should she call out? One last bon voyage? The sound of a voice floated upward; a hard, rasping voice, unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar. In the leading canoe the Indians ceased paddling. The canoe lost momentum and drifted broadside to the current. The men were lifting something; something long and dark. There was a muffled splash, and the dark object disappeared. The canoemen ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... it would be rather a lark. He had smoked, frowned, and at last convinced himself that the only thing that held him back was fear of an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had become a fixed moral habit with him, and he had accepted ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... minister speak of Jericho but I never read of it in any fairy-tale. Oh, dear! I hope the prince won't go there. I want him to stay here and rescue the pretty princess from that wicked witch In-independence," she stumbled over the unfamiliar word. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... regarded with great tenderness—his foster mother, the second wife of Thomas Lincoln, and Ann Rutledge. Others had been to him, mostly, delightful but inscrutable beings. The company of women and of dollars had been equally unfamiliar to him. He had said more than once in his young manhood that he felt embarrassed in the presence of either, and knew not quite how to behave himself—an exaggeration in which there was ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... of the army in which he served, but of inferior rank—I listened respectfully as became me. Finally he led the talk to the subject of agriculture, and the condition and prospects of farming in England. Here I perceived that he was on wholly unfamiliar ground, and in return for the valuable information he had given me on other and more important subjects, I proceeded to enlighten him. When I had finished stating my facts and views, he said: "I ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... them from meddling in the affairs of Greece. "Leave the Greeks of Sicily alone," said Nicias with true prophetic insight; "and they will not trouble you. Do not disturb the prestige which belongs to a distant and unfamiliar power. If they once learn to know you, they may learn ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... and green, With brighte rays like gold between, As small thread over ev'ry joint, All full of colour strange and coint,* *quaint Uncouth* and wonderful to sight, *unfamiliar Upon the queene's hearse gan light, And sung full low and softely Three songes in their harmony, *Unletted of* every wight; *unhindered by* Till at the last an aged knight, Which seem'd a man in greate thought, Like as he set all thing at nought, With visage and eyes all forwept,* *steeped ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Niger makes a bend. There is a little promontory in the river, thickly covered with large gum trees. It was an evening in August and the sun was sinking. Not a bird in the forest but had gone to rest, motionless until the morning. Suddenly we heard an unfamiliar noise in the west, boum-boum, boum-boum, boum-baraboum, boum-boum, growing louder—boum-boum, boum-baraboum—and, suddenly, there was a great flight of water birds, aigrettes, pelicans, wild ducks and teal, which ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... at the great gray peaks closing in about them without recognizing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar they loomed, shrouded in clouds, like chilly giants in ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... they are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... a woman should extend to her all the courtesies practised when riding or driving with her, such as allowing her to set the pace, taking the lead on unfamiliar roads and in dangerous places, riding on the ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... human error which accepts what is sham and what is real. But it is worth while to remember that with unfamiliar things we often mistake what is real for what is sham. It is true that a very young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig. Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... my shoulder showed me that the copper-colored one had plunged in after me and was swimming rapidly in pursuit. His mighty strokes bade fair to close up the distance between us in short order, for at best I could make but slow progress with my unfamiliar craft, which nosed stubbornly in every direction but that which I desired to follow, so that fully half my energy was expended in turning its blunt prow ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and he watched for her approach. She put the cards into his hand saying, "Sophy's cousin, Isobel Murray, brought them." Her voice was full of resentment; and Andrew, not at the moment realising a custom so unfamiliar in a fishing-village, looked wonderingly in his mother's face, and then ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... pile of letters before him, and an empty postbag. He was leaning forward, his elbow upon the table, his head resting upon his right hand. Engrossed as I was with my own terrible discovery, I was yet powerfully impressed by his unfamiliar appearance. In the clear light which came flooding in through the north window he seemed to me older, and his face more deeply lined than any of my previous impressions of him had suggested. His eyes were fixed upon the mass of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... found the river trail most unfamiliar in appearance. Hardly did he recognise it in some places. It possessed a wide, leisurely expansiveness, an indolent luxury, a lazy invitation born of broad green leaves, deep and mysterious shadows, the growth of ferns, docks, and the like cool in the shade of the forest, the shimmer ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the beautiful story he identified on the blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it from his mound of books—French and German, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a surprise was purposed as well as feared. A tired and sleepy youngster, almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... just as free from a foolish willingness to take the reputations of her hour on trust. Her attitude was friendly and sensible, but it was at the same time critical and independent; and that is what every frank, upright, and sterling character naturally becomes in face of an unfamiliar society. Harriet Martineau was too keen-sighted, too aware of the folly and incompetent pretension of half the world, too consciously self-respecting and proud, to take society and its ways with any diffidence or ingenuous simplicity. On the importance of the small litterateur ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone of Battle hurling itself toward Roger's planetoid. They saw the pirate fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary's ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... remarkable as it was effective, and by its very strangeness was the more potent, since in the science of the green warriors there was no defence for this singular manner of attack, the like of which it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with as they were with the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gone five miles the hoodoo that had been working overtime on my behalf got busy again. The clouds that were rolling up from the east at sundown piled thick and black overhead, and when dark was fairly upon me I was, for all practical purposes, like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. It didn't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strength of my horse in bootless wandering; with moonlight I could have made it, but in that murk I could not hope to find the post. So I had no choice but to make camp in ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to many voices which have told of thy might, great chief," he answered, speaking the unfamiliar words slowly ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... distance, others apparently close at hand; some obviously from the land to the rear of the party, and others quite as obviously from the water in their front. And, most disturbing consideration of all, every one of them was absolutely unfamiliar, therefore in some vague, undefinable fashion, the more alarming. This effect was quickly made manifest by the agitated murmurings of the Indians, and the haste with which they replenished the dying fire, heaping on fuel with such a lavish hand that, for the space ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... 1909 the statement was flashed around the world that the North Pole had at last been reached, a name long unfamiliar ran from mouth to mouth with that of the man who claimed to be its discoverer. Dr. Cook was coming to Copenhagen, the daily despatches read, on the Danish Government steamer Hans Egede. A shipload of reporters kept an ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can be rendered the music written for the harp but nor that written for the violin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who can utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar instrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred by English literature, though it is one of the great literatures of the world. Our history was different and the evolutionary product was a peculiarity ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly, Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... invariably attempted to reproduce the required sounds without the slightest recourse to the written characters. Her daughter, my other teacher, also had her worries. She found that, in reading, whenever I came to words that were difficult or unfamiliar, I was prone to bring my imagination to the rescue and read from the picture. She has laughingly told me, since then, that I would sometimes substitute whole sentences and even paragraphs from what meaning I thought the illustrations conveyed. She said she not only ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... letters, but now I saw it plainly. I came out of my study upon the landing when I heard the turmoil of her arrival below, and she came upstairs with a quickened gladness. It was a cold March, and she was dressed in unfamiliar dark furs that suited her extremely and reinforced the delicate flush of her sweet face. She held out both her hands to me, and drew me to her unhesitatingly ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed of civilization that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns and ask us for what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... were exclusive and unequal were abandoned, it was necessary to define and to insist on those that were equal and the property of all. After destroying, the French had to rebuild, and to base their new structure upon principles unknown to the law, unfamiliar to the people, absolutely opposed to the lesson of their history and to all the experience of the ages in which France had been so great. It could not rest on traditions, or interests, or any persistent force of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... "original creation." And as with individuals, so with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture a nation inevitably condemns itself for a time to intellectual sterility. So long as it is occupied in receiving and assimilating a flood of new ideas, unfamiliar conceptions, and foreign modes of thought, it will produce nothing original, and the result of its highest efforts will be merely successful imitation. We need not be surprised therefore to find that ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night, through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a "messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... craft for which an innocent being like Mr. Hall was no match, began by offering refreshments. These consumed, he asked Mr. Hall to do him the favour of pawning his overcoat for him. Mr. Hall naturally put the question, Why didn't he pawn it himself? The stranger replied that he was unfamiliar with pawnshops, that he doubted his ability to make a good bargain, and that he was willing to pay his new acquaintance a commission on the proceeds. This last offer Mr. Hall had magnanimously refused, but out of mere good-nature he went forth to do the stranger's ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... greater novelties in store for the London man that morning. It was new to him to hear John Wesley's beautiful hymns sung to equally beautiful tunes, which were not, however, unfamiliar to his ear, and sung with a degree of fervour that quite drowned his own voice, powerful and deep though it was. It was a new and impressive thing to hear the thrilling, earnest tones of the preacher as he offered up an eloquent extempore prayer—to the petitions ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ship Island, in Mississippi Sound, about a hundred miles from the mouth of the river, Mr. Fox's proposition, which had been adopted by the Secretary of the Navy, was submitted to the President. Mr. Lincoln, himself a Western man, unfamiliar with maritime matters and engrossed with the idea of invasion from the north, was disposed to be incredulous of success; but with his usual open-mindedness consented to a full discussion before him by experts from both services. A meeting ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... first decide upon the location, usually in some mountain ranch owned by a man who is willing and anxious to have us hunt on his grounds. The sporting proposition of shooting deer with a bow strikes the fancy of most men in the country. If we are unfamiliar with the district, the rancher can give us valuable information concerning the location of bucks, and this saves time. Usually he is our guide and packer, supplying the horses and equipment for a compensation, so we are welcome. Some of the intimate relations established on these expeditions are ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... newcomer the ape-man realized that here was one similar to those who had given off the unfamiliar scent spoor that he had detected the previous night, and he saw that not only in the matter of scent did the man differ from other human beings ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... degree. But, as we have already seen, this is the precise genealogy attributed to the Cabala by the Jews. Moreover, modern Freemasonry is entirely built up on the Solomonic, or rather the Hiramic legend. For the sake of readers unfamiliar with the ritual of Freemasonry a brief resume of this "Grand Legend" must ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... long after the war in which Jones had played a part, Catherine said, with a different accent: "Ce Paul Jones etait une bien mauvaise tete." Certainly Jones's diplomacy, which was of a direct character, was not equal to his present situation, unfamiliar to him, and for success demanding conduct tortuous and insincere to an Oriental degree. Jones, in comparison with his associates in Russia, was remarkably truthful,—a trait which involved him in humiliating difficulties, and ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... [6] would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern construction. And, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining the English of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors would be to most of us unintelligible, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in order were full of interest to him, and were likely to be so to the members of the party; for they included some of the older countries of the world, such as Syria, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and Arabia. Geographically they were comparatively unfamiliar to the members of the party, who, unlike the professor, the surgeon, and Uncle Moses, had not been ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... and collars were unceremoniously hustled back into the drawer, for Miss Thorne was at odds with herself and the world. She was angry with Hepsey, she hated Winfield, and despised herself. She picked up a scrap of paper which lay on a glove, and caught a glimpse of unfamiliar penmanship. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the fashion of little children, that I might be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently already, and I remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with quickening spirit, half afraid, half enraptured. The feeling that I experienced in the presence of these unfamiliar things was one of reflection rather than of astonishment. I knew that the bright green vegetation closing in about me was every where in no less measure than in the heart of this forest, and emotions, sad and weird and vague took possession of me and affrighted but fascinated me. That I might ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... failed to find an amazing knowledge of Napoleon Bonaparte amongst the very old and "uncivilized" Indians. Perhaps they may be unfamiliar with every other historical character from Adam down, but they will all tell you they have heard of the "Great French Fighter," as they call the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... had ever fought with himself was raging within him, and while he heard every word that Murray uttered, they seemed to pass him by as if spoken to some other person. His heart was beating very hard, and he breathed uneasily. An unfamiliar, impersonal voice within himself was telling him that he must either give Murray a good licking then and there or run away. Nasty, ugly, hateful words seemed to crowd to his lips with an all but irresistible demand ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... girls and the three B's met her at the station and "ohed" and "ahed" in a fashion that would have been disconcerting to anybody who was unfamiliar with the easy manners of Harding girls, at the elegance of her new blue velvet suit and the long plumes that curled above her stylishly dressed hair, and at the general air of "worldly and bud-like wisdom," as Katherine called it, that ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Julia with sombre eyes. The doctor lay high in pillows, looking oddly boyish in his white nightgown in spite of his gray hair. A fire flickered in the old-fashioned polished iron grate; outside the window twilight and the fog were mingling. The room had some unfamiliar quality of ordered emptiness already, as if life's highway must be cleared for the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... tugging at him all the time to make him come quickly. A strange enough tale it seemed to Mr. Linton—of hermits and hidden camps, and the Winfield murderer, and someone who needed help,—but there was that in Norah's face and in her unfamiliar emotion that made him hurry through the scrub beside her, although he did not understand what he was to find, and was only conscious of immense relief to know that she herself was safe, after the moment of terror that her first cry had given him. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... and presently he became uneasy of the evil that might befall him were Dai and Rachel to lay their hands on him; he led his horse into the unfamiliar and hard and steep road which goes up to the Star and Garter, and which therefrom falls into Richmond town. At what time he was at the top he heard the sound of Dai and Rachel running to him, each screaming upon him to stop. Rachel seized the bridle of the horse, and Dai tried ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... over her part of the implied blame. She had reached the hopeless stage of one lost in a foreign land, where the language is unknown and every sight and sound unfamiliar and bewildering. This weak fashionable woman, the costly product of an artificial luxurious life, seemed capable of being little better than a millstone around the necks of her children in this hour of their need. If there had been some innate strength and nobility ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... She knew, though, that the cows sometimes went a long distance. She had been following the road, but thinking the sound came from the woods, she started off in that direction. She saw that the sun was just going down behind the trees; that she was on an unfamiliar path, and was getting farther and farther from home. But she must get the cows, and on she went, stopping now and then to locate the sound of ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... blunt?" responded Charles, but no one save the traveller at the small table caught the play on words, the Cockney cant term for money being unfamiliar to American ears. He smiled, and then studied the bond-servant with more interest than he had ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... evidences of the degeneracy of the age is the scandalous ignorance of our young people regarding the sacred Scriptures, which at the very lowest estimate are incontestably the finest English ever written. Those whose childhood antedates the lesson leaf are not so unfamiliar with that wondrous treasure-house of thought. It is not for me to say what has wrought the change. I can only point out that lesson leaves, being about the right size for shaving papers, barely last from Sunday to Sunday, while that very identical Bible with the blinding ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... casually; there were the usual number of advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and another in an unfamiliar hand-writing. She tore off the corner of the last, and, running her finger ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... there, and perhaps a trace or two of youthful jauntiness, not quite as yet outgrown. His illustrative poetical quotations are mostly from Shakespeare,—from Milton and Byron also in a passage or two,—and now and then one is reminded that he is not unfamiliar with Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and the "French Revolution" of the same unmistakable writer, more perhaps by the way in which phrases borrowed from other authorities are set in the text than by any more important evidence ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the first prostrate tree-trunks of the windfall, an infrequent but not unfamiliar odor assailed her nostrils. It was a disagreeable smell, not unlike that of cabbage or potatoes in the first stages of decay. The first tinge of it lashed her into frenzy so that she sprang forward in great leaps risking the breaking of her ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... gaslight that it was nine o'clock. But the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he had brought to Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the latter had given overnight. Not doubting it was from the captain, although the handwriting of the address was unfamiliar, he eagerly broke the seal. But he was ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... read them merely so as to avoid going to sleep, but afterwards I examined them with more attention, and subsequently with actual avidity, for they opened up to me a new, an unexpected, an unknown, an unfamiliar world. New thoughts, added to new impressions, would come pouring into my heart in a rich flood; and the more emotion, the more pain and labour, it cost me to assimilate these new impressions, the dearer did they become to me, and the more gratefully ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to exclude, in the person of this relative of Josephine, the first name of the Princess whom she succeeded on the French throne. On the other hand, it is fair to suppose that in the dashing and attractive Count of Narbonne she was willing to keep away certain things which were unfamiliar and so alarming to her, such as the lighter graces, the jesting spirit of the old court, and doubtless too the melancholy presentiments attached, in her mind, to everything that recalled Versailles and the daughters of Louis XV., who had ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... commend in the spirit of this last sentence. The hand and arm should never be made to do anything that is unnatural. But herein must be exercised the greatest possible judgment that the unfamiliar be ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to me; there were features that did not seem new.—Can it be so? Was there ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her heart's secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... her. "What? Hadn't we heard of the great Prize-fight?" We had not. "Not the great fight coming off between Jem Clark and the Dustman?" We were unfamiliar even ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sick man. I was afraid I should not recognise him, so baffling had been the light of the lantern; and found myself unable to decide if he were Scots, English, or Irish. He had certainly employed north-country words and elisions; but the accent and the pronunciation seemed unfamiliar ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a tear fell, for she was greatly moved. Her betrothed put his arm round her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly, he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... nursery-maids, while the Irish boys look on from the banks and throw pebbles when the policemen are not looking, wishing they had the spare coin necessary to embark for a ten minutes' voyage on the mimic sea. Unfamiliar figures wander through the streets of the West End, and more than half the houses show by the boarded windows and doors that the owners are out ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... this creature at bay as hunters hold the wild things of the woods when gun or club fail. Then, after that, she would have to deal with what must inevitably confront her at home. She seemed to be standing alone amid cruel and unfamiliar foes, but she ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Louis evening papers, and the Omaha and Kansas City morning papers. And on the first pages of all of these papers are pictures of John Barclay. There is John Barclay in the Bee, taken in his Omaha office by the Bee's own photographer—a new picture of Mr. Barclay, unfamiliar to the readers of most newspapers. It shows the little man standing by a desk, smiling rather benignly with his sharp bold eyes fixed on the camera. There is a line portrait of Mr. Barclay in the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to King, who had gathered his men in the little plaza. He saw that the soldiers were not Texans, that is, men who had long lived in Texas, but fresh recruits from the United States, wholly unfamiliar with border ways and border methods of fighting. The town itself was an old Mexican settlement with an ancient stone church or mission, after the fashion of ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pleasant sense of having "made it up" with the boy whom he thought he had so greatly injured, Solomon started along the path toward the kitchen door. He began to realize that he had an appetite—something now long unfamiliar to him. As he drew near, an ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... been chosen, as the most conspicuous colonizer of his time. The freshness of the story is in its clear exposition of the terrible difficulties in the way of founding self-sustaining colonies—the unfamiliar soil and climate, Indian enemies, internal dissensions, interference by the English government, vague and conflicting territorial grants. Yet out of these difficulties, in forty-five years of actual ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... long after Evelina slept, Ann Eliza lay awake in the unfamiliar silence, more acutely conscious of the nearness of the crippled clock than when it had volubly told out the minutes. The next morning she woke from a troubled dream of having carried it to Mr. Ramy's, and found that he and his shop had vanished; and all through the ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... its progress has recalled often to my memory a man with whose friendship we were once honoured, to whom no region of English literature was unfamiliar, and who, whilst rich in all the noble gifts of nature, was most eminently distinguished by the noblest and the rarest,—just judgment and high-hearted patriotism. It would have been hence a peculiar pleasure and pride ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... no longer a subject for my entertainment, and I suffered from an uneasy isolation that had not the merit of sharpness and was no spur to the mind. I had the feeling that every one I might see would be a stranger, and that their language would be unfamiliar to me, and this, unlike most men who travel, I had never ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and so largely contributed to the polity of Asia and the upraising of Africa, have been a dead letter, which spell his extinction. He lived up to his racial traditions, and is fast dying with them. His language, his arts, his religious rites are of an unfamiliar past. ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... over. The rambling house, with its rickety, old-fashioned furniture—and its memories—was now deserted, except for Robert Fairchild, and he was deserted within it, wandering from room to room, staring at familiar objects with the unfamiliar gaze of one whose vision suddenly has been warned by the visitation of death and the sense of ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper |
