"Roomful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consecutive or consistent system of thought or precept. His influence has been mainly by isolated ideas of more or less truth and value. It is impossible here to analyze his work. Such is the mixed tissue of his woof that the captive princess who was set to sort a roomful of birds' feathers had scarcely a harder task than one who should try to separate and classify his threads, some priceless and steady, some rotten, false, misleading. Morals, manners, religion, political economy, are mixed with art ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... from violence," said Jessie. "I suppose men ARE braver—in a way—than women. It seems to me-I can't imagine—how one could bring oneself to face a roomful of rough characters, pick out the bravest, and give him an exemplary thrashing. I quail at the idea. I thought only Ouida's guardsmen ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Perhaps she would have preferred not to have her private business shouted out before a roomful of women. But she put a good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... seemed petrified; they stood rooted in their tracks as if the anger in that menacing voice had halted them in mid-action. 'Poleon, too, turned cold, for it seemed to him that he had opened the door upon a roomful of wax figures posed in theatric postures. Then in the flash of an eye the scene dissolved ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... bowed my head in prayer, and it seemed as though the Lord put the words in my mouth. I told that roomful of people of my past life and how God saved and had blessed me for four years. We had a grand meeting and a number were saved that night, and, above all, I received one of the greatest ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... her," said Peter, whose love possessed him, mind, body, and soul. "Why, I've heard her keep a whole roomful of people laughing, and every one of them as dull as ditch-water till she came in. And to see her hold her own against men at games—she's more strength in one of her pretty, white wrists," said Peter, looking with an air of disparagement ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... peculiarly that I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that the cows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving the college, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl I didn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. If only I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... curly head and silken-clad shoulders of the newcomer with some curiosity. The subdued ripple of astonishment that had passed over the roomful of girls told her that here was no ordinary pupil. Mignon's expensive frock of dark green Georgette crepe, elaborately trimmed, also pointed to affluence. Mary reasoned that she must be known to the others. A stranger would ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... sniff reduces flesh to clay. I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know, but I always felt it worth while to be forearmed against the very worst. Well, a bottle of this stuff is calculated to stiffen an ordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and I remembered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the small hours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I begged them to give me a drink before they left me. And what ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... performer volunteered to entertain a roomful of patients of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, and made up a very successful little monologue show, entirely humorous. The audience in the main gave symptoms of being slightly bored, but one highly intelligent maniac saw the whole thing ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... for a piece of wood, and the dog crept out with his tail between his legs. Stasiek was left again to his restlessness, alone in a roomful of people. Even his mother was now struck by his miserable face and gave him a piece of bread to comfort him. He bit off a mouthful, but could not swallow it and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... senses, and these outer senses have to be learned one at a time by being flashed through with inner ones. Except to people who have tried it, nothing could be more grotesque than kissing, as a form of human expression. A reception—a roomful of people shouting at each other three inches away—is comical enough. So is handshaking. Looked at from the outside, what could be more unimpressive than the spectacle of the greatest dignitary of the United States put in a vise in his own house ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to his friend Minturn, "must be some fire there. He was as hot as pepper in a minute. Wanted to fight any one who mentioned the matter. He'll have his hands full if he fights all who are talking about him and Ferdy's old flame. I heard half a roomful buzzing about it at Mrs. Nailor's. But it was none of my affair. If he wants to fight about another man's wife, let him. It's not the best way to stop ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... forgeron of Chevancourt who used to sing this, or something very like it, upon a table—entirely for the benefit of les deux americains, who would subsequently render "Eats uh lonje wae to Tee-pear-raer-ee," wholly for the gratification of a roomful of what Mr. Anderson liked to call "them bastards," alias "dirty" Frenchmen, alias les ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... perilously similar to her own. This, in some cases, has been laughable, as when 'Rolling Thunder,' a Sioux chief (Indians are all chiefs in the spirit world), appears and says: 'Goot efening, friends; id iss a nice night alretty.' And yet I have seen a whole roomful of people receive communications from a spirit of this kind with solemn awe. I burn with shame for the sitters and psychic when this kind ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... than that there; there's carpets on the floor, an' a piano to play on, an' a whole roomful o' books! Losh!" he exclaimed, "I'd like to get my hands on them jist for ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... a roomful of books and letters from great people that her ancestors collected. Why, Father says that she would be very rich if she'd sell the papers she has, but she will not part with a thing! Mother says she just lives in the past and she'd ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... a roomful if you want to see them," said The traveller; "but I don't see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and ends. I like homely and native things about me when ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... that wins me. But I don't want you killed.'... It certainly was nervy of the youngster. Said it just the same as—as he'd offer to cinch my saddle. Gulden can whip a roomful of men. He's done it. And as for a killer—I've heard of no man ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... thought, but I seen her back up this Bard ag'in' a roomful of men. And she'll keep on backin' him till he's got ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... as it may, here was a roomful. Not only Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long, dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... should be made to feel at home as quickly as possible. Chicken Little hated introducing people and had been dreading the ordeal, but kindly Mrs. Jenkins took Katy by the hand and presented her to the whole roomful at ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... reading, but more thinking," Cairns declared. "He has been much alone, and he has lived. He sees inside. 'The great books of the world are little books,' he said recently, 'books that a pocket or a haversack will hold. You don't realize what they have given you, until you sit down in a roomful of ordinary books and see how tame and common the quantities are.' And it's true. Look at the big men of few books. They learned to look inside of books they had! He knows the Bible, and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... him, Emile, that she had in the first place joined the league of conspirators, and this was one of the results. Sobrenski's judgment had been more far-seeing than his own. One girl in a roomful of fanatics, (he was one himself, but that did not make any difference,) would naturally stand a very poor chance if she was foolish enough to ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... take you a piece if you want me," she said. "It's so hard to talk when there's a roomful, isn't it? I thought ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... free at last! For a moment, dazed by the sudden release, the bird battered his splendid head against the ceiling, then, before the roomful of travelers realized what had happened, he was out in the open, spreading his glorious ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... places, and Wedderburn, the once retiring Wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window, playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five of them. Now, Hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls, but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond him. Coming up the staircase his feelings for Wedderburn had been generous, a certain admiration perhaps, a willingness to shake his ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... however, very difficult to remember a number of good and laughable ones, so we will give a list of some, which will be quite sufficient to puzzle a roomful of little folk ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... was going to Tsarskoye Selo. "I, too," said Baklanov, suddenly. "And I-and I-" The whole roomful decided on the spot to go ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... South—if they could have guessed how little he cared to do it! He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connexion with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters. To be quiet about the Southern land, not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her wounds and her memories, not prating in the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them, producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin, intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... before others. When I made that silly blunder about the brazen serpent, you so kindly put me right. Michael would have smiled and let it pass as not worth correcting; then I should have repeated it before a roomful of people, and wondered why they looked amused! Ah, but what do I care for people, or the world! It is my true place beside Michael I want to win. I want to 'grow up unto him in all things.' Yes, I know that is a text. I am famous for misquotations, or rather, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... isn't a secret any longer," cried Polly, flushing with excitement. "You said 'little brown house,' we heard you just as plainly; and you re getting up something, I know you are." "People don't usually select a roomful of listeners, and then shout out their secrets," said Jasper. "You are in for it now, Joe, and no mistake. Go ahead, old fellow, and give us the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... no very unreasonable application of the word—then this Irish-speaking peasantry has a better claim to the title than can be shown by most bodies of men. I have heard the existence of an Irish literature denied by a roomful of prosperous educated gentlemen; and, within a week, I have heard, in the same county, the classics of that literature recited by an Irish peasant who could neither write nor read. On which part should the stigma of illiteracy ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... expect to stop long, dear creatur'. I'm 'most seventy-six year old," and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement in her honest wrinkled face. "I said right out to Is'iah, before a roomful o' the neighbors, that I expected it of him to git me home an' bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn my livin', if 'twas so I could, till then. He'd made sly talk, you see, about my electin' to leave the farm and go 'long some o' my own folks; ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... thing except most cordial good-will and the tender happiness of a bride; but her heart was fighting like a knight in a tournament for rescue of one beset, and she was inwardly saying: "If she dares to refuse speak to her now, I'll expose her before this whole roomful of people." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... out a handkerchief and mopped his face nervously. "The question is what do we do now, chums? A roomful ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... Gordon, for example, told him that he had refused a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole Rhodes business policy. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of tiny shoes under the dressing-table, radiated a whole roomful of feminity. He was almost afraid to go further, and would not have dared to look in the mirror. In three days her mere presence had ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... said. "After all, what is golf? Just pushing a small ball into a hole. A child could do it. Indeed, children have done it with great success. I see an infant of fourteen has just won some sort of championship. Could that stripling convulse a roomful of banqueters? I think not! To sway your fellow-men with a word, to hold them with a gesture ... that is the real salt of life. I don't suppose I shall play much more golf now. I'm making arrangements for a lecturing-tour, and I'm booked up ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... had to wear their old ones. She thought these were good enough to lend. She had no toys or dolls except of home manufacture, but her rag baby and set of broken dishes afforded just as much happiness as children nowadays get from a roomful ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the hotels do not; and if it was not ungrateful, after all your trouble, I should like to make a bonfire of this roomful of haberdashery, and walk quietly away to my new home by ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... was fillin' wid men at the ind av the day. I made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an', wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid Vulmea. I wint away, walkin' thick an' heavy, but not so thick an' heavy that any wan cud ha' tuk me. Sure and thrue, there was a kyartridge gone from my pouch an' lyin' snug in my rifle. I was hot wid rage against thim ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... up as we were here—the woman with six empty beds to nurse, and me on 'tother side with a roomful o' momentoes, an' no end to it but the grave—there seemed no way out but matterimony. What with my fifty an' her little savin's we might ha' managed it, too, comfertable enough. But when along comes you an' ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... personal insignificance on their mildly sloping or aristocratically beaked faces, hung together in a visible closeness of tradition, dress, attitude and manner, as different as possible from the loose aggregation of a roomful of his own countrymen. Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known what "society" meant; nor understood that, in an organized and inherited system, it exists full-fledged where two or three of its ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... Henri said, as the two of them returned and descended the stairs to join the Bretons. "I'd sooner kill a roomful of Germans than that one Frenchman should be hurt. And here, all that we've done is to reverse the numbers. Come along, Jules, and let's get out of the fort and back to an ambulance! My head's splitting, and we shall both want ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... deep-laid plans of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... Thoreau—some new glints of his life and fortunes, with letters to and from him—one of the best by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace Greeley, Channing, &c.—one from Thoreau himself, most quaint and interesting. (No doubt I seem'd very stupid to the roomful of company, taking hardly any part in the conversation; but I had "my own pail to milk in," as the Swiss proverb puts it.) My seat and the relative arrangement were such that, without being rude, or anything ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... him: "If you could mortify me before a whole roomful of people, as you did last night, what could I expect after marriage but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a wonderful library; but here were thousands—as old, as musty, as neglected, as dilapidated, therefore as certainly full of wonder and discovery, as man or boy could wish.—Oh the treasures of a house that has been growing for ages! I leave a whole roomful of lethal weapons, to descend three steps into six roomfuls of books—each 'the precious life-blood of a master-spirit'—for as yet in my eyes all books were worthy! Which did I love best? Old swords or old books? I could not tell! I had only ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of the man's feet upon the steps was audible long before he reached the waiting roomful. Every eye fastened itself upon the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of it. Your friend may be trustworthy, but careless; some one may be dishonest enough to read it; it may be lost. It is a good plan to write nothing you would not be willing to have read before a roomful of people who ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... husband. It isn't that I yearn to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel. I—I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that marries them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man couldn't but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months and months and months when I never had to do anything by a ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... parlor and seated, at last. That is, all excepting Uncle George and eight or ten, who hardly could be missed from such a roomful. Jack had arranged the chairs in several long rows, facing the great sliding-doors that separated the parlor from the back sitting-room; and on these were seated subdued and expectant boys and girls, all gazing at the closed doors, while the ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... thump as she and her mother went in at the teachers' gate, and up the stairs and into the principal's office. And thump, thump some more when she saw the whole roomful of strange boys and girls and thump, thump some more when her turn came and she was sent (fortunately with her mother along) to the first grade room—number 104. The room was full of children, hundreds, Mary Jane thought there must ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... then, nor a little later when she and Calderwell drove hurriedly away from the house, did Billy once remember that Miss Marguerite Winthrop was coming to call that afternoon to see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw and a roomful of ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... more than the whole business was worth.—and the judge advocate was wishing himself well out of it when, on a sunny Friday morning, the third day of the court, the president rapped for order and the big roomful of spectators was hushed to respectful silence. The defense had made its first request, that the principal witness for the prosecution, Nevins, should be present, and there he sat, nervous and fidgety, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... has turned away from the mirror and the butler has pulled back the portieres leading into the drawing room. I follow my wife's composed figure as she sweeps toward our much-beplumed hostess and find myself in a roomful of heterogeneous people, most of whom I have never seen before and whose personal appearance is ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... extreme sickness the power and attraction of the man made themselves felt, and there seemed to be more vitality and fire of the spirit in him as he lay exhausted and speechless in bed than in an ordinary roomful of people in health. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down Dr. Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful. No princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity than Sojourner her audience. She stood among them, calm and erect, as one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in the desert. I presented one after another to her, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor.... Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with fresh evidence of the popular ignorance, even among students of music, in regard to the outward form and inner grace of what is conceded to be the most popular of all arts. In a roomful of professed music lovers a definition of counterpoint was recently called for, and no one present could give an intelligent answer. This led to a discussion of musical questions which resulted in the disclosure ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... by being drawing-room lectures. The first time I saw her she was standing by the piano, against a flippant background of Dresden china and photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccupied with their spring bonnets all she thought she knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled to hear her had given me to understand that she was "doing it for the baby," and this fact, together with the shortness of her upper lip and the bewildering ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... most to Fanny, was the unconscious possession of a rich fund of humor. He was funny without intending to be, and this not only made him a diverting companion but ensured him a welcome everywhere. With the straightest of faces, he would say funny things in so ludicrous a manner that a roomful of people would go into convulsions. He laughed with them, not realizing they were laughing at him, but ever preening himself on being a very witty and clever person indeed. His greatest fault was inordinate vanity. He ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... four doors short of 211th Street. Well, sir, when you blow in there you'll see a roomful of curios. I'm not exactly a connoisseur, but I know enough to tell Japanese work from Chinese. This was made by a Jap. And that reminds me. You said last night that Wong Li Fu put you off your balance by a jiu jitsu trick and handed that husky detective some, too. Very few Chinks have ever ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... of note, a religious enthusiast, and full of queer fancies, was, when young, a tutor in a private family. On one occasion his employer took him to a strange house, and introduced him to a roomful of company. Stilling had not contemplated marriage; but, in the company, he saw, for the first time, a young woman who he felt was his destined wife. Walking across the room, he addressed her with ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... mere worship of success. So it is now, but so it was not, in many circles of English society at least, during the continuance of the war. Almost up to the very fall of Richmond, to express a decisive adherence to the Northern cause was often to be singular and solitary in a roomful of company; the timorous adherent would be minded to keep silence, and the outspoken one would be prepared for a stare and an embarrassed pause to ensue upon his avowal. At the same time that all his sympathies and hopes were for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... dinner!" Paul swore softly to himself, for he had no wish to share his good fortune with a roomful of people. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... arrived. It was his custom when he entered a saloon to ask the entire roomful, no matter how many, "to come up and licker," and, of course, he ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... flouted him was not in itself so terrible, because he had quite made up his mind that sooner or later he would take a coward's revenge for the slights he had been made to endure at her hands. But that he should have been flouted in the presence of a whole roomful of people, that he should have been deliberately left for another man, was a different matter altogether. His first impulse when Jeanne left him, was to walk out of the house and have nothing more to say to the Princess ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ROSALIND had been disappointed in man after man as individuals, but she had great faith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented qualities that she felt and despised in herself—incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice, and petty dishonesty. She once told a roomful of her mother's friends that the only excuse for women was the necessity for a disturbing element among men. She danced exceptionally well, drew cleverly but hastily, and had a startling facility with words, which ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... appearance she was endeavouring to present; but with the result, repeatedly again, that it only went and lost itself in the thick air that had begun more and more to hang, for our young woman, over her accumulations of the unanswered. They were THERE, these accumulations; they were like a roomful of confused objects, never as yet "sorted," which for some time now she had been passing and re-passing, along the corridor of her life. She passed it when she could without opening the door; then, on occasion, she turned the key to throw in a fresh ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston, giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that grows swarms with insect life, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... and with his own hand hastily lifted the portiere, disclosing her to her waiting guests. She had no choice but to precede him, doubtless framing an excuse for Nina's absence. If so, she need not have troubled, for Giovanni spoke in her stead, and with such distinct enunciation that the whole roomful heard: ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... to shake off the prejudice, or whatever it may be, and we hold up, on the contrary, to the gaze of some sceptical acquaintance a humble little volume in plain mellow sheep—say, a first Walton, or Bunyan, or Carew, nay, by possibility a Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde—which a roomful of perfectly gentlemanly books should not buy from us. It may strike the reader as a heresy in taste and judgment to pronounce the four Shakespeare folios of secondary interest from the highest point of view, as being posthumous and edited productions. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... apparently set in. "I am now tied down neck and heels by engagements every night this week, or most joyfully would have trod the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard Street. I am quite well, but exhausted with a roomful of company every morning till dinner." A little later, and this momentary flash of health had died out; and we find him writing what was his last letter to his daughter, full, evidently, of uneasy forebodings as to his approaching end. He speaks of "this vile influenza—be ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... unseen world imagined in our hypothesis is not connected with the present material universe by any such "invisible bonds" as would allow Bacon and Addison to come to Boston and write the silliest twaddle in the most ungrammatical English before a roomful of people who have never learned how to test what they are pleased to call the "evidence of their senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to exclude all intercourse whatever between the unseen ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... have been appointed clerks. There is a roomful of them just over the Secretary's office, and he says they distract him with their noise of moving of chairs ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... clearly expressed on all faces at the words. The whole roomful began to whisper to each other, and turned their eyes upon the invalid, as though he had given some serious offence. Raphael, who had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness of his early youth, felt a momentary confusion; then he ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and the girls after her. Tegeloo, seemingly deprived of speech, was motioning wildly at the door leading to the saloon. They dashed past him into the roomful of people cheering, shouting, crying, praying, and kissing, in a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... would have haunted our dreams; although I was now and then visited by a nightmare-consciousness of being a bewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such as turning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or else lose my head. But she blended the humorous with the romantic in her selections, so that we usually dropped to sleep in good spirits, if not ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... clerks and some messenger-boys and a couple of traveling-men had had the benefit of it. Ferguson, reporting at that open door, was bidden curtly to come in and sit down. "I'll see you presently," she said, and burst out into the large office. Instantly the roomful of people, lounging about waiting their turn, came to attention. She rushed in among them like a gale, whirling away the straws and chaff before her, and leaving only the things that were worth ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... of your husband as a society man? A howling success, eh? He's been sitting for one quarter of an hour by the side of old Mrs. Gillis. And a whole roomful of devoted patients, past and future, looking daggers at him because he ignores them. How's that for business policy, eh? Can't you bring him to ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... people who were something more than amateurs in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's new idol properly. In the native country of Positivism, one distinguished man of letters and one of science, for a time, helped to make up a roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew cold. In England, on the other hand, there appears to be little doubt that, in the ninth decade of the century, the multitude of disciples reached the grand total of several score. They had the advantage of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... king playing cards with de Longueville. There was a roomful of courtiers, and as she entered she was the target for every eye; but she was on familiar ground now, and did not care for the glances nor the observers, most of whom she despised. She was the princess again and full of self-confidence; ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... who voted, with most gratifying response. Many such investigations were made of women in office, laws relating to women, suffrage and labor legislation, women's war record, an infinite variety of subjects. Thousands of newspaper clippings were tabulated and a roomful of carefully labelled files testified to the unremitting work of the bureau. Twenty State libraries and some others were supplied during the year with the books issued by the National Suffrage Publishing Company and its pamphlets were ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... girl! all her fears and doubts returned. To sing to a whole roomful of people—she had never done it in her life. It would be as bad as that nightmare fancy which used to haunt her, of being dragged forward to find the ten thousand eyes of a crowded theater all focused upon her, a sensation almost as horrible as ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of having the devil for a listener, if the old saying is true. Yet still, I felt a keener poignancy in her sequestration. Her beauty had even greater claim to regard than his eloquence. She was a woman who could have commanded a whole roomful with it, and no one would have wanted a word from her. She could only have been entirely herself in society, where, and in spite of everything that can be said against it, we can each, if we will, be more natural ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... as to reasonableness: when the hour for closing comes, our customers bein' gathered for social purposes, it seems abrupt to fire 'em all out when the clock strikes. Now, when a policeman comes along after hours an' finds one of us with a roomful of customers discussin' public questions, we don't want to turn up in court next ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... her eyes were flaming. She dominated the roomful of girls like a little Napoleon. The change in her startled them. Hitherto they had always looked on her as rather an unusually quiet girl. She had always made herself unobtrusively pleasant to them all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of possessing this militant ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... roomful of guests in full dress, being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... against the door he faced the roomful of children who stood there motionless and staring; and as he looked, wild feelings rushed over him and made him tremble. Who was he? Where had he come from? Where in the world had he spent the other years of his life, the forgotten years? There seemed to be no one to whom he could ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... looked over the roomful of girls who sat watching her with serious faces. Which one of them was guilty? Time ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... a sheet about her. After she had undergone a deal of Teaze, from the Annoyance of the Spectre, she gave a violent snatch at the sheet, that was upon it; wherefrom she tore a corner, which in her hand immediately became Visible to a Roomful of Spectators; a palpable Corner of a Sheet. Her Father, who was now holding her, catch'd that he might keep what his Daughter had so strangely siezed, but the unseen Spectre had like to have pull'd his hand off, by endeavouring to ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... "I should say not! Just as you are you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the things they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but disheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions. You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative, homely, rough, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the trouble of holding her for a while. At any rate Daisy submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself, and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of the gentlemen showed calm fortitude under their ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... operatic construction waked into life again as in the confession of the hero-lover. Here, moreover, there comes into the score an element of novelty, for the confession is extorted from Lorris while a virtuoso is entertaining a drawing-roomful of people with a set pianoforte solo. As for the rest of the opera, it seems sadly deficient in melody beautiful either in itself or as an expression of passion. "Andrea Chenier" has more to commend it. To start with, there is a good play back of it, though the verities ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... taverns, which is but a part of the general decay of democracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality. I remember that a roomful of Socialists literally laughed when I told them that there were no two nobler words in all poetry than Public House. They thought it was a joke. Why they should think it a joke, since they want to make all houses public houses, I cannot imagine. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who never left her, her cousin La Reboul, daughter of a skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman, too, who really meant to succeed her, though very nearly her own age, being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of Girard's admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as La Cadiere, a tradesman's daughter and herself a sempstress, La Laugier, and La Batarelle, the daughter of a waterman. They had godly readings ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... both, or whether his stronger will and higher purpose prevailed, it would be hard to say. Certainly Erica was quite as unwilling to sing as Lady Caroline was to favor her with a request. Both had to yield, however, and Erica, whether she would or not, had to serve her roomful of enemies and a great deal of good ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall |
