"Curbstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... human tide that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... President King, of Columbia College. Struck by its magnitude, he had the curiosity to get some estimate of it by timing its progress, and he found that although it filled the broad street from curbstone to curbstone, and was moving rapidly, it took between twenty and twenty-five minutes for it to pass ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighbouring curbstone, where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands; when he arose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any longer, I walked quickly away and left ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... limit, boundary, bounds, confine, enclave, term, bourn, verge, curbstone^, but, pale, reservation; termination, terminus; stint, frontier, precinct, marches; backwoods. boundary line, landmark; line of demarcation, line of circumvallation^; pillars of Hercules; Rubicon, turning point; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lace; an heterogeneous gleaming of bare, brawny arms, and distended busts, all lend a sort of barbaric splendor to that mysterious group floating, as it were, into a hall in one blaze of light. A soft carpet, over-lain with brown linen, is spread from the curbstone into the hall. Two well-developed policemen guard the entrance, take tickets of those who pass in, and then exchange smiles of recognition with venerable looking gentlemen in masks. The hostess, a clever "business ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... question supposed to involve a doubt of the generally accepted Hebrew traditions. To-day such questions are recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone congregations, but among intelligent and educated persons. You may preach about them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them, you may talk about them with the first sensible-looking person you happen to meet, you may write magazine articles about them, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stopped on the curbstone in front of the house, shivering a little in the pale autumn sunshine, but laughing and pushing each other as they gathered closer around the man with the hand-organ. As the wheezy notes were ground out, the man unwound the rope that was coiled around his wrist, and bade the monkey at the other ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... till they were gone. The trucks that obstructed the children's only playground, the street, went with the dirt, despite the opposition of the truckman who had traded off his vote to Tammany in the past for stall room at the curbstone. They did not go without a struggle. When appeal to the alderman proved useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. He took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... and Charlie Martindale, of the First National Bank, nodded to her, but these exquisites were too young for her; they danced too well and laughed too easily. The person who stopped her for a long curbstone conference about the weather, while most of the town observed and gossiped, was the fateful Henry Carson. The village sun was unusually blank and hard on Henry's bald spot to-day. Heavens! she cried to herself, in almost hysterical ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... a little bent. Some gentlemen almost stand, with a thick cushion reaching above the rail of the box, and their toes several inches over the foot-board. This is not only unsightly, but attended with risk, for if you came in contact with the curbstone, or any trifling obstruction, you might very readily, and most likely would, be thrown from your seat. The rail of the box, ought always to be a few inches above ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... anyway," sighed Lizzie, as she picked herself up, bruised, wet, and faint with pain; "but, oh, my heart! won't Madame scold when she sees that band-box smashed flat," groaned the poor child, sitting on the curbstone to get her ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... man-about- New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it went "down the line," bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafes, and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his account by way of preface ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... people, all of whom regarded the boy and the goose curiously, bewildered both the travellers. More than once, when Dan was sure Crippy was close at his heels, on looking around he would see the goose standing on one foot near the curbstone, looking sideways at the street much as if trying to decide whether he would continue to follow his master, or toddle back home as fast as his legs of ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... of argument, I was so profoundly convinced of its truth, that without having first tried it upon my own person, I would have sat where I was, upon the curbstone, and had a tooth removed with the perfect expectation of absence of pain and of still being conscious of touch. While yet walking with my children, I commenced to breathe as rapidly as possible, and, as anticipated, found my steps growing shorter ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles, collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not whither. The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable along the Quai d'Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l'Universite, Josephin appeared to stop ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... hand-cart was chained. Next this I had piled broken brickbats and paving-stones, and other heavy things, that would not be stolen. There was the stump and the root of an old pear-tree there, too heavy to steal, and too crooked and hard to clean or saw. There was a bit of curbstone from the street, and other such trash, which quite masked the fence ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... of Hume Street a young woman was standing. She wore a blue dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curbstone, swinging a sunshade in one ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... long conversation was begun, the policeman standing on the curbstone, one foot resting upon the hub of a wheel, the expressman leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, twirling his whip between his hands. The expressman told some sort of story, pointing with his elbow toward the house, but the other was incredulous, gravely shaking his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... profession." Physicians would consult him freely. As a chemist and experimental pharmacologist, he prepared various remedies. Some of these he tried out on patients himself, others he gave to practitioners who might use them. Boyle seems to have abundantly provided what we today call "curbstone consultations." ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... did. Mr. Davenport reentered the hotel. Beth seated herself upon the curbstone, and looked at the bay horse behind which she was soon to have the bliss of driving. She thought it about as nice a horse as she had ever seen. Her curiosity overcame her momentary shyness. "Is it ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manuscript tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the way. I could not even pick out my street; the unobtrusive street signs were lost to my unpractised sight, in the glaring confusion of store signs and advertisements. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably chivalrous, protective, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... paid they followed him out. At the curbstone he said, "Keep together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long." He lifted the battered hat he was wearing, smiled at Susan. "Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em yet!" And away he went—a strange figure, his burly frame squeezed into a dingy ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and small as the scope of it was, it could be varied almost indefinitely. I would sometimes meet with a schoolfellow proceeding in the same direction, and my Father, observing us over the wall one morning, was amused to notice that I always progressed by dancing along the curbstone sideways, my face turned inwards and my arms beating against my legs, conversing loudly all the time. This was a case of pure heredity, for so he used to go to his school, forty years before, along the ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... I could hug a curbstone ... or the handle o' your collection bag. I do feel most uncommonly jolly. I could laugh ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... night dark, and the street deserted. The gloomy silence was only disturbed at long intervals by the opening or shutting of a door, or by the distant tread of some belated pedestrian. Having at least twenty minutes to wait, Pascal sat down on the curbstone opposite the Hotel de Chalusse, and fixed his eyes upon the building as if he were striving to penetrate the massive walls, and see what was passing within. Only one window—that of the room where the dead man was lying—was lighted up, and he could ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was then seated on a bench near the basin, regarding with a kind of mechanical interest the gambols of two daring birds that came to sport on the curbstone. She ceased for a moment to work on a little child's frock which she was hemming. It is necessary to say that this belonged to the generous offering made to Mont Saint Jean by the prisoners, thanks to ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the rose-trees had been allowed to climb up to its lowest branches, so that its green arms stirred the roses. Under the tree was a swing, and at the back of it a sort of thicket of lilacs and witch-elms; there was a round plot of grass, with a garden bench and a very small pool with a white curbstone round it and a fountain that did not play. The pool was full of aquatic plants and a few black newts ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... point Mr. Hume would take up in mocking him. He'd call him a curbstone fiddler, and say that he ought to be playing at barn dances and Italian christenings instead of aspiring to the platform. Spatola would get frantic with rage, and fairly scream his ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... and his calm, proud eye—a governing, compelling and determined eye. She had never met his glance yet: she withered away before it as a mouse withers and shrinks and falls to its den before a cat's huge glare. She used to look at him from the curbstone in front of the chemist's shop, or on the opposite side of the road, while pretending to wait for a tram; and at the pillar-box beside the optician's she found time for one furtive twinkle of a glance that shivered to his face and trembled away into the traffic. She did not ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great hole in her stocking. Had her black hair been brushed and displayed, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the establishment of which had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter, disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone, undecided, it seemed, upon his ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the curbstone. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the inscriptions and making measurements an open two-seated carriage was driven up to the curbstone, about four o'clock in the afternoon. From this a gentleman in a business suit, about sixty years of age, alighted and approached me. He was a man of pleasing address. He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this cannon." "I am," was the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... was presented to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had ever been a master. She began to shake; a convulsion took her, and suddenly she sat upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed as he had never ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... district. It came into being as the lightning comes, a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone—together with an urgent selling order—by some employee in the cable service. In five minutes the dull noise of the curbstone market in Broad Street had leaped to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear and men rushed hatless in and out. Was it true? ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... evidently, people always talked so. Ascending the rise, we reached a large house on a corner. The greater part of the people who were walking along with me halted at this house. They stood all over the sidewalk of this house, and sat on the curbstone, and even the snow in the street was thronged with the same kind of people. On the right side of the entrance door were the women, on the left the men. I walked past the women, past the men (there were several hundred of them in all) and halted where the line came to an end. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... possible that so obvious and so limited a message as this, a teaching so slightly distinguished from the curbstone rhetoric of a modern agitator, can be an adequate reproduction of the scope and power ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... of rich and poor, educated and illiterate, well and obscurely born. On the steps of the court-house, in the post-office while the daily mail is sorted, in the corner drug store on Sundays, in lawyers' offices, on the curbstone,—wherever a group of men is assembled,—there is the freest talk on every possible subject; and the lives of men are open to their fellows as they cannot be in cities by reason of the mass or in country districts by reason of the solitude and the shyness which solitude breeds. Against ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... sidewalk, and unfastened his little shirt, and left me to watch him, while he held his hands under a leak in a hose that was fastened to a hydrant near us. He got enough water to dash on Charlie's face and breast, and then seeing that the boy was reviving, he sat down on the curbstone and took him on his knee. Charlie lay in his arms and moaned. He was a delicate boy, and he could not stand rough usage as the Morris ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... pulled the string for the carriage to stop, as they had arrived at the corner of the street where he was to get out. The coachman drew up to the sidewalk and stopped. Mr. George opened the door and stepped out upon the curbstone, and then said, as ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... of their terrible fear, go on a strike. Let the horses of these fat aldermen, left all day in the court house alleyway without food and checked tight with head-check lines, go on a strike. Let the patient nags that stand all day by the curbstone and are plagued and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a strike. In such a strike as any of these the Lord himself might condescend to take sides with the ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... brena craggy, broken surface. brenal briery or brambly ground. bribon m. rascal. brillante brilliant. brillar to shine. brillo brilliancy. brindar to toast (with wine), vr. to offer. brindis m. toast. brisa breeze. brocal m. curbstone of a well. brotar to germinate, break out. bruma haziness, mist. buenamente easily, by fair means. buenaventura fortune-telling. bueno good. buey m. ox. buitre m. vulture. bullicioso noisy. buque m. vessel. burgomaestre burgomaster. burla jest, mockery. burlar ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... tender colours converged from various directions, making gayly for the thrilling gateway—and the most beautiful little girl in all the world, Marjorie Jones, of the amber curls, jumped from a carriage step to the curbstone as Penrod and Sam came ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... picture in the shade of the great elm, that sultry morning of August, three quarters of a century ago. The presence of the crutch showed there was something sad about it; and so there was; for if you had glanced at the little bare brown foot, set toes upward on the curbstone, you would have discovered that the fellow to it was missing— cut off about two inches above the ankle. And if this had caused you to throw a look of sympathy at his face, something yet sadder must long have held ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... into the brougham, which was waiting for them, for near at hand they perceived Silviane's landau, with the majestic coachman motionless on his box, while Duvillard, Gerard, and Duthil still stood waiting on the curbstone. They had been there for nearly twenty minutes already, in the semi-darkness of that outer boulevard, where all the vices of the poor districts of Paris were on the prowl. They had been jostled by drunkards; and shadowy women brushed against them as they went by whispering ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... situation with consummate tact and diplomacy, goes off unsteadily in the direction of Piccadilly, accompanied by a suite of small boys who have kindly resolved to see him through any further adventures that may await his progress. The Cabman remains to discuss the affair at great length on the curbstone. The Policeman paces slowly on, conscious that he has worthily maintained the dignity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... the curbstone and stared into the middle of the street. Her face was white with fright and the tears which had not as yet come were close to her big blue eyes. Her little fists were clinched and even her perky plaid hair ribbon seemed ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... more tolerant, even in his wrath, than most men would have been, but he had disposed of his enemy effectually. The fellow lay stunned upon the ground. In his fall, he had cut his head upon the curbstone, and the blood streamed from the wound when his companions crowded near, and raised him. Owd Sammy Craddock offered no assistance; he leaned upon his stick, and looked ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... means of support. The money on which he had relied was gone. His credit was utterly destroyed, and he had no hope of being reinstated in his former position. The only way he could possibly be useful in the street was by becoming a curbstone broker, a go-between, trusted by neither borrower nor lender, and earning a precarious livelihood by commissions. Even in that position he felt that he should labor under disadvantages, for he knew that his course had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... barbers, fortune-tellers and a multitude of small tradesmen carrying on a business in a jog, or niche in the wall, not as large as an ordinary bootblack's stand. Along the narrow sidewalks are seen many of these curbstone merchants. Some have their goods displayed in glass show-cases, ranged along the wall, where are exhibited queer-looking fancy articles of Chinese workmanship, of a cheap grade, all sorts of inexpensive ornaments for women and children's wear, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... felt as if I had escaped through the buckle of my father's creed and for once was a happy maverick soul in the world at large, with no prayer-meeting responsibilities. I could have danced and glorified God on a curbstone, if such a manifestation of heathen spirituality would not have ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... breathe the same atmosphere, to exhibit the same indifference towards the other loungers. One or two more privileged passed in through the stage-door and disappeared. Tavernake contented himself with standing on the edge of the curbstone, his hands thrust into the pockets of his dark overcoat, his bowler hat, which was not quite the correct shape, slightly on the back of his head; his serious, stolid face illuminated by the gleam from a neighboring ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... habit of turning out for every pedestrian he met, giving the other man the right of way instead of holding to his own half of it, sometimes stepping in puddles of water to do so and not infrequently being edged off the curbstone by ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... Freddie, handing it over, as he and Flossie took their seats in the goat wagon. There was plenty of room for them and the red-haired driver. Other children on the block crowded to the curbstone and looked on with eager eyes as the Bobbsey twins started on their ride. Mrs. Bobbsey, talking with her friend in the darkened parlor, knew nothing ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... where at the corners of all the streets and squares and the beginning and end of every bridge and viaduct; the entrance to a palace or a public office; the gateway to a market or a subway, a park or a garden; the foot of a lamp-post or a statue; a curbstone running round an open space, or a wall abutting on a roadway, the same thing is always found for the purpose of keeping off the wheels of vehicles as they roll by,—a round stone: so one finds in the Annals always the same form given to every subject: that form is policy; ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of misery could be furnished by any ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... unlike any other sound in the universe—the glad exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos'd throats of men! But on this occasion, not a voice—not a sound. From the top of an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block'd by the curbstone and the crowds,) I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look and gait—his perfect composure and coolness—his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, stovepipe hat push'd back on the head, dark-brown complexion, seam'd and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... quickly out to the car tracks and signal violently to the motorman with the umbrella. As the car whizzes past without stopping she should cease signalling, remark "Well I'll be God damned!" and return to the curbstone. After this performance has been repeated with three successive cars she should then walk slowly out and lie down, in a dignified manner, across the car tracks. In nine cases out of ten the motorman of the next "tram" will see her lying there and will be gentleman enough to stop ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... difference whether the guests were "carriage company" or not, to quote good Mrs. McGuffey. Peter would not be Peter if he lived anywhere else, and Miss Felicia wouldn't be half so quaint and charming if she had received her guests behind a marble or brownstone front with an awning stretched to the curbstone and a red velvet carpet laid across the sidewalk, the whole patrolled by a ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain, The curbstone war, the auction's hammer; And swift, on Music's misty ways, It led, from all this strife for millions. To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... in many of them sidewalks have been made, not always the widest to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this climate—it ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the son of a poor washerwoman. His first studies were made on the curbstone and in the gutter, and pretty soon he became the toughest boy in the neighborhood. His mother decided the time had come for her son to enter the army. Coucou did not hesitate long; only he made it a condition that he ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... as formerly. He took a "deal" on the curbstone occasionally, or now and then ventured a few pieces of silver upon the black or red. He was back ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... customers as happened to be within; and, if these proved to be Matty's patrons, he would watch the progress of the sale with great interest. Then he would turn to his roaster, and work it violently for a few moments, then be off to the curbstone or crossing, exchanging some, probably not very choice, joke with some other street-gamin, or the conductor or driver of a ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... private. In its breadth, emptiness, and extent it had the majesty of inorganic nature, of matter that never dies. The only reminder of mortality was a doctor's brougham arrested in august solitude close to the curbstone. The polished knockers of the doors gleamed as far as the eye could reach, the clean windows shone with a dark opaque lustre. And all was still. But a milk cart rattled noisily across the distant perspective; a butcher boy, driving with the noble recklessness of a charioteer at Olympic ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sudden. He was thrown from a carriage, and, striking his head upon the curbstone, was picked up senseless, and died unconscious. Upon examining into his affairs his administrator was unable to find any property beyond what was needed to pay the few debts he left behind him. So it came about that Frank was ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... protests against the shams of her life agreed with her own more gentle horror of pretension. Marion, wreathed in veils, was, however, at the steering-wheel, and, as she guided the huge machine to the curbstone, showed no symptoms of wishing to alight. Beside her was Reggie Bradford, a large, fat youth, whose big, good-natured laugh almost called back echoes from the surrounding houses. As the car stopped he lumbered down from his perch, and helped Mrs. Bayford to descend. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... would be shot on sight if he set foot on Cuban soil. Rizal, hunted hard, attempted to escape in disguise on a Spanish troop ship carrying discharged soldiers to Spain, but was detected while on the Red Sea, returned to Manila and shot to death. I stood on the curbstone that borders the Luneta along the principal pleasure drive, between the whispering trees and the murmuring surf of the bay, just where the martyred poet and patriot waited and looked over the waters his eyes beheld, the last moment before the crash of the rifles that destroyed him, and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... these drivers towards him, and his person was lost to sight amidst their pantomime. They did not try to underbid each other, and they were perfectly good-humored; as soon as he had made his choice, the rejected multitude returned to their places on the curbstone, pursuing the successful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, while the horses went on munching the contents of their leathern head-bags, and tossing them into the air to shake down the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... majeste devant les gamins." If I chance to be in St. James's street when a semi-squadron of these elegant warriors are returning from attendance upon royalty after a Drawing-Room or a Levee, I am sure to make one of the gamins who stand upon the curbstone to see them pass. If the day be a fine one at the height of the season, and London happen to be wearing otherwise the brilliancy of supreme fashion—with beautiful dandies at the club-windows, and chariots ascending the sunny slope freighted with wigged and flowered coachmen, great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... south and, as they passed the tents of the commanding general, even though they kept their heads erect and noses to the front, their wary eyes glanced quickly at the unusual array of saddled horses, of carriages and Concord wagons halted along the curbstone, and noted the number of officers grouped about the gate. Ponchos and overcoat capes were much in evidence on every side as the men broke ranks, scattered to their tents to stow away their dripping arms and belts, and then came streaming out to stare, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... however. Miss Moreland had her misgivings on that point. And, just as she was about to draw a breath of relief, convinced that, after all, she would go, the girl stopped deliberately in the shadow of a tree, and sat down on the snow-covered curbstone. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... is to find your "lead," for this precious metal is not found indiscriminately in every rock or ledge you may chance upon. It is found only in the quartz rock, a ledge of which, say twenty feet in thickness, may run like a curbstone set on edge for many miles across hills and in valleys. It may be a mile in depth, and maintain a nearly uniform thickness, being perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side of it, and keeping its distinctive character always, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... his own board another to grace his coat-collar, as if thereby to summon back the waning fortunes of the day. But Madam Delia still sat at her post, undaunted. She kept her eye on two sauntering militia-men in uniform, but they only read her sign and seated themselves on the curbstone, to smoke. Then a stout black soldier came in sight; but he turned and sat down at a table to eat oysters, served by a vast and smiling matron of his own race. But even this, though perhaps the most wholly cheerful exhibition that the day yielded, had no charms for Madam ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... his bell and a boy on the curbstone whistled shrilly, but the dog refused to budge. He only rolled over ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... Village, fell in splinters at the bottom of my mind. Sadly I looked upon the old Carl Schurz mansion on the hill, and we departed for the airy plateaus of Central Park. Desperately I pointed to the fading charms of East River Park—the convent round the corner, the hokey pokey cart by the curbstone. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... her, sir; I was afraid she was coming into the shop after me, and my arm was too sore for me to want her to clinch hold on it again. So when she started to go, I took a step nearer, and saw her move toward the curbstone and hold up her hand. But it wasn't a car she was after, for none came by ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... the city Dryden insisted on leaving the reporter at his doorsteps, a courtesy which went straight to Harrington's heart, for, as he expected would be the case, his wife and son Tesla were looking out of the window at the moment of his arrival and saw him dash up to the curbstone. His sturdy urchin ran out forthwith to inspect the mysteries of the huge machine. As it vanished down the street Harrington put an arm round Tesla and went to meet the wife ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... riding down the avenue; a single horseman, coming at a fast gallop. I had never seen Mr. Thorold on horseback; yet from almost the first sight of this mounted figure my heart said with a bound who it was. I stood still by the curbstone, looking breathlessly. I felt more and more sure as he drew nearer, if that can be when I had been sure all along; but, would he know me? Would he even see me, in the first place? So many ladies walk on Pennsylvania avenue; why should his eye pick me out? and he was riding so fast too, there ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... golden pins and bodkins; a gold chain of manifold strands encircled her throat, and drops long and heavy hung from her ears. One afternoon, after playing with her young charges, Gelsomina went for water to that picturesque marble well in the court. While bending over the curbstone and drawing up the bucket, like Zara-of-Moriah fame, she dropped one of her long, heavy ear-rings into the water. Great was the lamentation of the simple creature! Warm was the sympathy of the household." But the old well was far too deep ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... cheerily from the door-way; and a moment later Varrick was hurried into the coupe, which had just drawn up to the curbstone, and, with Maillard seated beside him, was soon whirling in the direction of the Northrup mansion to ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... as it was re-renamed, settled down to a run of forty-three New York weeks, and along the Rialto the source of its authorship leaked out and became curbstone, and finally newspaper, patter. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... day before the steamer sailed, they found themselves, about six o'clock, in Gracechurch Street. It was a fine summer evening. The street was less crowded than earlier in the afternoon, although there was a continuous stream of waggons, omnibuses, and cabs both ways. As they stood on the curbstone, a little way north of Lombard Street, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... before Easter, the General came puffing down the outside aisle of Old Market, with his colored man behind him with an enormous basket. The General's carriage was drawn up to the curbstone, and the gray horses were dancing little fancy dances over the asphalt street, when all at once Jimmy thrust a bunch of arbutus ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood as well as he understood her words. He turned the mare up to the curbstone . ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... street he turned in his saddle and looked behind him. His satellites stood in the bar-room door, loungers loafed on the curbstone, a woman or two drifted into the General Merchandise Store. The Postmaster was eying him idly through his fly-specked window, and a group of boys, who had been drawing pictures with their bare toes in the deep white dust of ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... backer of domestic slave-dealers, and put his money into forms of gain men hesitated at; not only at the curbstone, for usury, but behind pawnbrokers and sporting men, in lottery companies and liquor-houses, and, it was said, in the open slave-trade, too, clippers for which occasionally stole out of the Chesapeake on affected trading errands to the East Indies, and came home with nothing ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Hill, and many less busy parts of London, ring with such cries for a month before Christmas. All the year round the hawkers are standing patiently on the curbstone with their wonderful penn'orths; but it is at Christmas-time that they do most business. Some children are fortunate enough to be taken by their parents to see the streets at Christmas-time, and sometimes they are allowed to buy some of the pretty things for ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the deep. Doubly withdrawn is it, for that the coast from which it stands apart is itself almost unvisited by Europeans,—an out-of-the-world state, in marked contrast to the shore bordering the Pacific, which is now a curbstone on the great waterway round the earth, and incidentally makes a happy parenthesis of promenade for the hasty globe-trotter. The form, too, of the peninsula came in for a share in its attraction. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and the bright chocolate-coloured vista of the Fifth Avenue seemed to surge before her as he said, 'May I have the pleasure of making my direction the same as yours?' and moved round, systematically, to take his place between her and the curbstone. She had never walked much with young men in America (she had been brought up in the new school, the school of attendant maids and the avoidance of certain streets) and she had very often done so in England, in the country; ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... why it should be so, it seemed to us that the Vicksburg negroes were happier than those of any other place we visited. Whether drowsing in the sun, walking the streets, doing a little stroke of work, fishing, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were upon the whole as cheerful and as comical a lot of people as ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... and yet humorously, pausing a moment on the curbstone before crossing the wet and icy street. Then as she went on and a coachman pulled up his horses almost upon their haunches to let her pass, she took up the thread of her ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... very early on Thursday morning, insisted on accompanying her from his office to her friend's house on the North Side. On Halstead street their carriage suddenly stopped. Putting her head out of the window, the countess perceived that the coachman had drawn up close to the curbstone to avoid the onset of a yelling mob of boys and men armed with every description of weapon, from laths and brickbats to old muskets. The boys appeared to regard the whole affair as merely a gigantic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... be," says one man, "if I could only lay my hand on that she-devil, and strike off her head on the first curbstone!" ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... foiled, he said nothing, but his lips grew white. He closed them fast, and went and stood near the door. When Clare, unsuspecting as innocent, opened it, he was met by a blow that dazed him, and a fierce kick that sent him on his back to the curbstone. Almost insensible, but with the impression that something was interfering between him and his work, he returned to the door. As he laid his hand on it, it opened a little, and his master's face, with a hateful sneer upon it, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... I was stepping into the roadway, the drunken man collided heavily with a telephone pole, caught clumsily at it to save himself, and fell, striking his head on the curbstone and rolling into the gutter. It was a case for the Good Samaritan, and, as it happened, that time-honored personage was at hand. Before I could edge away, as I confess I was trying to do, a clean-cut young man in the fatigue ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the butt of an alleged cigar, into which he had stuck a sharpened match as a visible means of support, a boy who was probably not so old as he looked sat upon the curbstone at the corner, and claimed the world for his cuspidor. He was an ill-favored runt of a boy, with a sedate manner and a face somewhat resembling ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mustang, in whom was no fault, and who had every appearance of speed, but who was only marking time as it is called in military drill, I believe, when he seemed to be getting swiftly over the ground; he showed a sociable preference for the curbstone in turning corners, and was condemned, to be replaced the next evening by a pony-horse that a child might ride or drive, and that especially would not shy. Upon experiment, he shied half across the road, and the fact was reported to the dealer. He smiled compassionately. ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... and it may have been providence; but whichever it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighboring curbstone, where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands; when he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... and followed the girl. One or two other passing cabs heard the cry, and made for the place, but the girl had taken care not to call till she was near enough to give her friends the first chance. When they reached the curbstone—who should it be waiting for the cab but Mrs. and Miss Coleman! They did not look at the cabman, however. The girl opened the door for them; they gave her the address, and a penny; she told the cabman, and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It's such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us as we come out. No, I don't feel ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... on a very cold January afternoon, and Cyril was hurrying up the hill toward Billy's house, when he was startled to see a slender young woman sitting on a curbstone with her head against an ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... . . I am sitting on the curbstone of a street at the edge of the town. The houses end abruptly and the yellow vineyards begin here. The view is broad and uninterrupted to the crest ten kilometers or so across the valley. Between this and ourselves are the lines of the two armies. A fierce ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... passes without neighbors meeting for a common social experience. This is why people move to the city, because every city, great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and therefore it is dull, because the richest experience of mankind is the experience of common social joy. The best recreation is acquaintance and conversation. The farmer's son spends many ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... accident as has just befallen you. There was Major Price—you must recollect him, Sir Rowland,—he stumbled as he was getting out of his chair at that very gate. Well, he was executed for murder. Then there was Tom Jarrot, the hackney-coachman, who was pitched off the box against yonder curbstone, and broke his leg. It was a pity he didn't break his neck, for he was hanged within the year. Another instance was that of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... one of Chicago's segregated districts for advertising and encouraging vice, asked this question, as he stood on the curbstone in one of our midnight gospel meetings: "If the wise men who are set up over us to rule us want it this way, what can you expect ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... works for long," Rend said evenly. "It gives a man about an hour's grace. Then the informers spot him. Now if I were being hunted, I might use mutant's disguise. But I wouldn't just sit on a curbstone with it. I'd make a break out ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... has found the Living Water. She forgot her old thirst. She forgot the errand that brought her to the well. She left the empty water pot by the curbstone and bounded away like a happy child into the city. She is under the compelling power of a marvelous discovery. She has a story infinitely too good to keep. And in spite of the fact that her past had been a shameful and sordid past—she would not let it close her lips. She gave her testimony, and ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... colossal in proximity to the attractive, the vastness of a grand American hotel casting its shadow over an Italian loggia. It partook at once of the Parisian and the Yankee. The Chateau de Chambord sheltering a chocolate maker, and the studio of an artist now become the salon of a rich curbstone broker. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... at the main entrance just as this vision of beauty emerged to take her place in a coupe which was waiting by the curbstone. She dropped her card-case upon the sidewalk, and Crombie's heart throbbed with delight as he picked it up, gave it to her, and received her smiling thanks for his little service. Another time, as he was descending in the elevator, a door opposite the shaft, on the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... over here. That there is the Reddin's' house, the big white one where them curbstone ladies are in the yard. I wisht you could git a peek in the parlor; they've got chairs made outer real gold, an' strandaliers that look ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... opposite side of the street, and when the Osprey's pilot turned out to let them pass, they tried to crowd him off into the gutter. But Marcy, beside being a sturdy fellow, knew how to stand up for his rights. He braced his foot firmly against the curbstone and met the shock of the collision so vigorously that those who would have sent him headlong into the street were sent backward themselves, and came very near going head first down the stairs that led into ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... paid she'd go back to her footlights," Gabriel developed from the curbstone as his companion closed the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... as hell.... I'm sorry," said Henslowe, dropping down into a chair beside them. Andrews introduced Walters, the rabbit man took off his hat, bowed to the company and went off, making the rabbit hop before him along the edge of the curbstone. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Now, if I sleep soundly to-night I'll be ashamed to look up at my father's portrait when I walk into my office to-morrow morning. Why didn't you have better sense than to coax me into your infernal meeting?" He rapped his cane angrily against the curbstone as he strode on. "And the trouble with me is," continued Mr. Converse, with much bitterness, "I know the conditions are such in this state that a meeting like that can be assembled in every city and town—and the complaints will be just and demand help. But there's no organization—it's ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Gawd's will,' 'e ses—an' 'e ain't no bad sort neither, an' 'is fice was white an' wet with sweat—'Gawd done it,' 'e ses. An' me, I'd nussed the child an' I clawed me 'air sime as if I was 'is mother an' I screamed out, 'Then damn 'im!' An' the curick 'e dropped sittin' down on the curbstone an' 'id ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the post office at this hour. School children, happy at the close of an irksome day of school, shouted boisterously at each other in the street. Laboring men, with empty dinner pails in hand, sat restfully on the curbstone just outside the post office door, and talked of the happenings of the day. The village blacksmith wiped the honest sweat from his brow, closed the shop door, and came down to the post office, where he was met by his flaxen-haired girl of three summers. ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... of you! You might as well catch at the winds!" shouted Beulah, and, with one last effort, she threw, her whole weight on the reins and turned the horses into a cross street. The wheels struck the curbstone, the carriage tilted, rocked, fell back again, and on they went for three squares more, when the horses stopped short before the livery stable where they were kept. Embossed with foam, and panting like stags at bay, they were ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... roughs from the East Side, good-natured spectators who merely wanted to see this splendid prison, and a moving line of gentlemen and ladies who simply happened to be passing that way at this time. The curbstone was lined with a score of reporters of the city journals, each with his note-book. Every window and entrance was eagerly watched. It was hoped that one of the family might be seen, or that some servant might appear ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... back, followed by the mother, grandmother, and two children, with downcast eyes, five persons in all forming the sad procession, if it may be so called. It was observed that the gayly-dressed and elegantly mounted caballero promptly backed his horse to the curbstone and raised his sombrero while the mourners moved by, that other peons bowed their bare heads, and that every hat, either silk or straw, was respectfully doffed along the street, as the solemn little cortege wound its way to the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... incarnation of the 'eccentric' person, on the curbstone, is supposed to represent Mr. Moore at the present moment, Mr. Whistler thinks the likeness exaggerated—as it is absurd to suppose that Mr. Moore can really imagine that any one admires him in his late role before Interviewer, or in that of the Expert in ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz |
