"Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time, he leaned nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence—the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... eastern end of the chapel stood the altar, behind which a very rich curtain of Persian silk, embroidered deeply with gold, covered a recess, containing, unquestionably, some image or relic of no ordinary sanctity, in honour of which this singular place of worship had been erected, Under the persuasion that this must ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... are with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... you want anything from me; if not, begone, for your attempts to terrify me are vain. I fear you not.' The only answer returned was a low laugh; and where the moonlight streamed in through the partly-drawn window-curtain, there stood a frightfully-grotesque figure. Its body, as well as Anna could distinguish, resembled that of a beast, but the head, face, and shoulders were those of a human being; the former being decorated with a horn over each shaggy eyebrow. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... being seen. But there was the fact. There was his attitude—his tiptoeing—his way of leaning toward the mantelpiece at an angle from which he could see what was going on in the Park and yet be protected by the curtain. ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... going slow at first. That's how you've got to handle big deals—careful. But you'll sure be a knock-out when that she-undertaker in there gets you rigged out in classy clothes. Then the curtain will go up on the real show—and it's going to be a big show—and you'll be the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... it be right, This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 Laughingly through the lattice drop; The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully, so fearfully, 25 Above the closed and fringed lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall. Oh lady dear, hast thou no fear? 30 Why and what art thou dreaming here? Sure thou art come ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the building; still curving, it sank by a gentle gradient; and then it rose again and turned almost at right angles. Pushing ahead resolutely, although in not a little doubt as to the meaning of my adventure, I thrust aside a heavy curtain, soft to the hand. Then I found myself just inside a large circular hall. Letting the hangings fall behind me, I took three or four irresolute paces which brought me almost to the centre of the room. I saw that ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... entrenchment has the disadvantage that if the enemy gets over your front parapet he has a rear parapet which he can use against you and you have great difficulty in getting him out. Where we were later the line consisted of a series of small redoubts or forts connected up with a parapet or curtain. The redoubts were closed at the back and in them were built the dugouts in which the defenders sleep. The redoubts were very strongly held, and if the Germans got over the single parapets they could be driven back with fire from the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... noble than those kept by the mountains of the Lecco Lake, as they marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to Lombardy and Venetia; bearing aloft, as though on the purple pillars of some majestic gateway, the great curtain of dazzling cloud which, on a sunny day, hangs over the Brescian plain—a glorious drop-scene, interposed between the dwellers on the Como Mountains, and those marble towns, Brescia, Verona, Padua, which ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... banker," replied John Turner, looking with an obese deliberation toward one of the deep windows, where, half-concealed by the heavy curtain, a third person stood gazing down into ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... strong shadows in the face; both Vandyke and Rembrandt do this by making the colour of the background amalgamate with the colour of the hair, or dark shades of the head. Rubens, Reynolds, and Lawrence often used a red curtain in contact with their flesh, to produce the same result. The luminous character of the head is certainly better preserved by its giving out rays or similarity of tone to the surrounding background. It has been remarked that the luminous ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... hedge of trees and shrubbery. She hesitated not two seconds over her choice, and in a third was struggling and forcing a way through the undergrowth and beneath the low and spreading branches whose shadows cloaked her with a friendly curtain of blackness. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... to the mountain atmosphere were evidenced in the opaque density of the fog that had ensued on the crystalline clearness of the sunset. It hung like a curtain from the zenith to the depths of the valley, obscuring all the world. It had climbed the cliffs; it was shifting in and out among the pillars of the veranda; it even crossed the threshold as the door ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... perspective, give to Coptic buildings an air of secrecy and of mystery, which, however, is often rather repellent than alluring. In the high wooden lattices there are narrow doors, and in the division which contains the altar the door is concealed by a curtain embroidered with a large cross. The Mohammedans who created the mosques showed marvellous taste. Copts are often lacking in taste, as they have proved here and there in Abu Sargah. Above one curious and unlatticed screen, near ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... could not make it up with him. A cold curtain seemed to have fallen between them. The old reserve which had only melted after many meetings, was upon him again. He stood, as it seemed, on the former pedestal. A strange, surging sensation filled her head—a sense of helpless fighting against a flood of unhappy ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... little man. And a preposterous store, empty, echoing, bare of wall, the three pianos near the front, the remainder of the floor stretching away like the corridors of the lost. He was going to get a dark curtain, he explained, and furnish the back part of the store as his own room. What dignity in phrasing, but how mean that little room would look—cot bed, washbowl and pitcher, and little mirror—almost certainly a mirror with a wavy surface, almost ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... headman of the village to which we went was out cutting wood for a garden, and his wife refused us a hut, but when Kansabala came in the evening he scolded his own spouse roundly and all the wives of the village, and then pressed me to come indoors, but I was well enough in my mosquito curtain without, and declined: I was free from insects and vermin, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a grand scale. The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more than ten miles long; the Godley eight. The Hochstetter Fall is a curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to the Tasman glacier. It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of a falling pinnacle ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... place where Baumberger fell, and at the cold ashes of Stanley's campfire, and at the Harts and their house, and their horses and all things pertaining in the remotest degree to the drama which had been played grimly there to its last, tragic "curtain." They stared up at the rim-rock and made various estimates of the distance and argued over the question of marksmanship, and whether it really took a good shot to fire from the top and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the ladies be blindfolded and seated behind a large screen or curtain or in a tent in an adjoining room which is dimly lighted. A gypsy tent may be improvised with three long sticks tied together at one end, the other ends resting on the floor at equal distances forming a tripod which is covered with a couple of ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... said to him, again and again, after I was dressed and in my make up. I was cold first, and then hot. And I trembled in every limb. "They'll have to ring the curtain ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... suddenly. Heavy leaped back, stumbled over another girl, and went sprawling. The flames did not touch her, but they did ignite the curtain ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... were bound to be disappointing. It was just after daylight. The mist of the night had thickened instead of vanishing. Here and there patchy bits of land could be seen through the haze, but for the most part France was invisible behind a curtain ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... they bit into the reeds, sending spouts of fire twenty feet and more into the air, and making the hot air dance above it in a way that was perfectly dazzling. But the reeds were still half green, and created an enormous quantity of smoke, which came rolling towards me like a curtain, lying very low on account of the wind. Presently, above the crackling of the fire, I heard a startled roar, then another and another. So the lions were ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... when Pascal neglected to shut off the garden hose, she caught herself scolding him as if he were human. Was that a shadow from the curtain waving in the breeze, or did she see a hurt look flit across the mouth of the pumpkin? Corinne put out her hand ...
— Weak on Square Roots • Russell Burton
... front of the curtain and walked swiftly over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small, sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his hat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... was meant for an artist, and it is to be hoped that there was one at Tarr Farm to see the curtain of fog slowly lifting from the bright waters of the Creek, and creeping up the bluff beyond it, until it melted into the clear blue sky, and let the sunshine come glancing down the valley, where groups of derricks, long lines of tanks, engine-houses, counting-rooms ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... on, but within a few minutes darkness dropped a curtain over all that we had seen ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... laid in bed all morning. 4. He will sit out on his journey this morning. 5. Let him sit there as long as he wishes. 6. He sat the chair by the table. 7. He awoke everybody at daylight. 8. He laid down to sleep. 9. Let him lie there until he wakes. 10. The shower has lain the dust. 11. The curtain raised because it was raised by his orders. 12. The river has risen four feet. 13. Falling trees is his amusement. 14. To have been awaked then would have been sad. 15. To have waked then would have been sad. 16. Waking at dawn, they renewed the journey. 17. He has set there all day. 18. ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... and forty-five—was sitting, plainly garbed in mbugu, upon a carpet spread upon the ground within a curtain of mbugu, her elbow resting on a pillow of the same bark material; the only ornaments on her person being an abrus necklace, and a piece of mbugu tied round her head, whilst a folding looking-glass, much the worse for wear, stood open by her side. An iron rod ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... her son. She said, "It is truly extraordinary that the boy should express such affection for a strange dervish. Send for him to your closet, and order him to relate his adventures, to which I will listen from behind a curtain." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Dickerson. "But this seat is 'another's,' as they say on the stage; he's gone out 'to see a man,' and I'm keeping it for him. Just caught sight of you before the curtain fell. Couldn't ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... the Zambezi forms a natural riverine boundary with Zambia; in full flood (February-April) the massive Victoria Falls on the river forms the world's largest curtain of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the eggs, having been in the incubator a week, were far enough advanced to be tested. At a south window there hung a heavy green Holland curtain. In this mamma allowed August to cut a hole, a little smaller than an egg, and she ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... each of which is perfect in itself. Each part may be distinct in nature and purpose, yet each and all are inseparably and unitedly connected with each other, and all work harmoniously together for the accomplishment of a definite and specific end, that is, the production of a lace curtain of exquisite design and pattern. As we watch the machine and its workings, we see therein the evidence of the existence of a spirit or power that gave it its birth. A spirit or mind that made and formed the machine, that constituted, arranged, and gave ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... stormy seasons of the year. Known only to Him who is Omniscient are the multitudes of heartrending scenes of protracted agony and dreary death that are enacted year by year, all unknown to man, upon the lonely sea. Now and then the curtain of this dread theatre is slightly raised to us by the emaciated hand of a "survivor," and the sight, if we be thoughtful, may enable us to form a faint conception of those events that we never see. We might ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Let us lift the curtain now, on the last, an extraordinary, tableau. In the Wimple nest a strange company are met at the bidding of Madeline Splurge, who couches a flashing lance for the life and the honor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... storm be done; Then out will come the golden sun, And we shall see, upon the run Before his beams, in sparkling streams, What now a curtain o'er him seems. And thus with life it ever goes, 'Tis shade ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... "A curtain on the window would soften the light on hot afternoons," Miss Alice thought. So she made one of some white barred muslin she had and put it up. She also thought that as Jennie still had not much appetite, ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... debouchment (into the garden) of this oscillating road, the splash and roar of falling waters invades your retreat. And then suddenly as if a curtain had arisen or dropped to the earth you emerge upon a great marble terrace of steps, and before you is spread a forest of geysers distributed in entrancing vistas in a lake of tumbling and scintillating waters. The scene is amazing and transporting. Rushing jets of water are enclosed in ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... own generation—the acts of contemporary patriots—now claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page, and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been dealing, and which we feel we have inadequately described. We have spoken of the men whose speeches from the dock are on record, but we still linger over the history of the events in which they shared, and of the men who were associated with them ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... by as we sat in the dark with our lamp behind the green curtain over the window, but at last the trampling of horses was heard and the red light appeared. Presently Clement came to our door, and exchanged a few words, but he said he must return to the Coadjutor, who was in the best ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an air of profound seriousness, Mrs. Porter erect and complacent, the other leaning forward and peering through her spectacles. Mamie took advantage of their backs and turned to cast a hurried glance at the water-proof curtain. It was certainly an admirable screen; no sign of Steve was visible; but nevertheless she ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... here for ever?" demanded Stair Garland, lying on the sand of the upper cavern and looking out at the blue curtain of sky, which was all he could see. Outside was a kind of balcony on which they stretched their legs at night, but, as there were preventive officers on the cliffs with telescopes under their arms, it was forbidden to go out there ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... He tells us that after being converted, our heroine 'set herself to proclaim and establish the doctrine,' and that this she did 'seated behind a curtain.' We are no doubt meant to suppose that those of her hearers who were women were gathered round the lecturer behind the curtain. It was not in accordance with conventions that men and women should be instructed ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... that lamp's metallic gauze, That curtain of protecting wire, Which Davy delicately ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... inference of the reader from the letter, the mistake, and the headline—as seen from the outside. The falsehood was serious; the editorial rebuke was serious. The stern editor and the sombre, baffled contributor confront each other as the curtain falls. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... was getting on. On their reappearance outside, they transmitted orders that the doctor should be sent for. In a little time, a matron reported that the doctor had arrived, and an old nurse invited dowager lady Chia to ensconce herself under the curtain. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a man's room, where a window is never opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... inside. It was the bell-ringer going his rounds and opening all the doors; first of all a dog came out, stretching his neck as though he was going to bark with hunger, then two men with their caps over their eyes, wrapped in brown cloaks; the bell-ringer held up the curtain ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... old sealer's advice, earnestly urged, all slip back among the trees, the low-hanging branches of which afford a screen for concealment like a closed curtain. The bundles are taken away, and the camp-ground is cleared of everything likely to betray its having been lately occupied by white people. All this they are enabled to do without being seen by the savages, a fringe of evergreens between ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... her cheeks suddenly as she looked toward Oscar. The curtains behind him swayed, but so did the curtain back of her. A May-time languor had crept into the heart of April, and all the windows were open. The blurred murmurs of insects stole into the house. Oscar, half-forgotten by his captor, heard a sound in the window behind him and a hand ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... for a cabinet, so a curtain was hung across a tiny alcove, just the ordinary "arch" found in most rooms ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly disfigured by the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the battle of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights spring up one by one, at first like pin pricks in the distance, growing and widening until the grotesque shapes of the buildings from which they sprung had faded into nothingness, and there was left only a velvet curtain of strangely-lit stars. At a giddy distance below he could trace the blaze of Broadway, the blue lights flashing from the electric wires as the cable cars rushed back and forth, the red and violet glimmer of the sky ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... moment a hearty laugh from little Fanny, who had set herself to play behind the curtain, drew my attention towards her. She was twice as big as my companion on the window-seat, though but a few months older; her broad, flat face, showed like the moon in its zenith, set in thin, silky hair: and with eyes as pretty as they could be, expressing neither thought ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... had been to the play a great many times in New Orleans, and was wise in matters pertaining to the drama. So here, in due time, was set up some extraordinary scenery of my own painting. The curtain, I recollect, though it worked smoothly enough on other occasions, invariably hitched during ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the advantage over me," replied Peter. "I have some difficulty in unfolding my lower wings." He shook her hand and held the last curtain aside ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here a day and a half, and we know not how much longer it will be before the curtain rises and the first act of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... which bound the Vermont Delta on the eastward sweep in to close the foot of the Delta's V, and run sheer to the river's brink—rose upon our left. The low tree-covered lands on the Louisiana side lay at our right, and over them hung, center of a most radiant evening curtain, painted in a thousand colors by the mighty brush of nature, the round red orb of day, now sinking to ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... left came a low murmur of voices. It was this room which he had been directed to enter. But what held his glance fascinated was a small recess immediately on his right, half concealed by a torn velvet curtain. It was directly opposite the left-handed door and, owing to its angle, it also commanded a good view of the upper part of the staircase. As a hiding-place for one or, at a pinch, two men, it was ideal, being about two feet deep and ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... my name, the stranger gave a sudden start and gazed steadily at me, his eyebrows raised in the extraordinary manner that I have described, something like the festoon of a curtain, and a smile playing on his face as if expecting a joke and ready to enter into it, and enjoy it. All this I observed out of the corner of my eye, without appearing to regard him or notice ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... aside to look into the window, and the curtain of that descended relentlessly. The bank had suddenly taken on an aspect of Sabbath blankness. Once more the Colonel rattled the knob, then he turned ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the money, and pressed eagerly into the show. The little people had just appeared, and were bowing and paying compliments to the company. But Mother Manikin was not there. Rosalie's eyes wandered up and down the show, and peered behind the curtain at the end, but Mother Manikin was nowhere to be seen. Rosalie could not watch the performance, so anxious was she to know if her dear little friend were within. At last the entertainment was over, and the giant and dwarfs shook hands with the company before ushering them out. Rosalie was the ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... more'n I can understand these new-fangled ways. Who'd ever 'a' thought that folks'd go to stringin' up bed-coverin's in their doors? And says I to Janie, 'You can hang your great-grandmother's counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but,' says I, 'don't you ever make a door-curtain out o' one o' my quilts.' But la! the way things turn around, if I was to come back fifty years from now, like as not I'd find 'em usin' my ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... declare it must be time to get up; but there was not a faint gleam of light yet at the window, and I resolutely refused to rise, sending my companion back to bed, and going off again, to wake at last with the sun shining brilliantly in by the curtain. This time I jumped up, with the full impression upon me that I had overslept myself; while there lay Mercer on his back, with his mouth wide-open, and giving vent every now and then ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... read a profound political pamphlet under the guise of a brilliant novel may find it in "Sibyl, or The Two Nations." The gay overture of "The Eve of the Derby," at a London club, with which the curtain rises, contrasts with the evening amusements of the proletaire in the gin-palaces of Manchester in a more than operatic effectiveness, and yet falls rather below than rises above the sober truth of present history. And we are often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... on her feet, so that she can't get out by herself? [He rises and lifts the curtain of the cart.] Why, this is n't mistress Vasantasena—this is ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... and Asiatic magnificence, I could scarcely suppress the feeling that I was only entering the most stately of theatres; where, with all the temporary glitter of the stage, the sounds of the orchestra, and the passion and poetry of the characters—the fifth act was preparing, and the curtain was to fall on the death of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... An ordinary young woman would have laughed herself into hysterics. Kitty tore off the scribbles, not the least sign of laughter in her eyes, and sought the window-seat in the living-room. There was one word which stood out strangely alien: haberdasher. Why that word? Was it a corner of the curtain she had been striving to look behind? Had Thomas been a haberdasher prior to his stewardship? And was he ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... homes, our kitchen was also the bedroom. Near the fireplace were all the things for the meals—the table, the pots and pans, and the sideboard; at the other end was the bedroom. In a corner stood Mother Barberin's big bed, in the opposite corner, in a little alcove, was my bed under a red figured curtain. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... mountain have occupied them for thousands of years, and doubtless a thousand years from now the descendants of these tribes of people and bats will still be there in the cisternlike caverns with the broad fan of sparkling water spreading like a beautiful curtain across the great ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... great Peter Paul, of one of the governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes, with crown ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Our curtain of fire was ahead of us still, an' theirs was behind us an' thick, An' there wasn't a thing we could do for ourselves—the few of us left had to stick. You haven't much chance to get central an' talk on the phone to the music of guns; Gettin' word to the chief is a matter right ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... assumed his right to plead with Lucilla, and that in such a case she should be a welcome refuge, and Phoebe still more indispensable; so her lips opened in a yielding smile, and Phoebe thanked her rapturously, vague hopes of Robert's bliss adding zest to the anticipation of the lifting of the curtain which hid the world ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... improves, always ends at the same goal,—the grave. Millions live and die like the beasts that perish. They aspire, struggle, and are determined to rise, but just when they are fitted to endure, and to enter upon ampler spheres of service, the curtain falls on the tragedy, the stage scenery is changed, a new company of players takes their places, and the farce, for it is a farce as well as a tragedy, goes on from century to century, and there is no meaning in anything. ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... happen in Egypt: and already she regarded my friend as a ram caught in the bushes, for a sacrifice on her altar. Instead of screening him I had dragged him in front of the footlights. But fortunately there was still time to jerk down the curtain. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... to stir within his breast As though the curtain of old days were torn, And, as he drained the glass with eager zest, "Behold," I thought, "I wronged him. In that nest, So far from turmoil, full of old-world rest (He is about to tell me), he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... form an idea of the Creative Will, by reference to its outward and visible forms of activity. We cannot see the Will itself—the Pressure and the Urge—but we can see its action through living forms. Just as we cannot see a man behind a curtain, and yet may practically see him by watching the movements of his form as he presses up against the curtain, so may we see the Will by watching it as it presses up against the living curtain of the forms of life. There was a play presented on the American stage a few years ago, in which ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the brink of some terrible disaster. Surji Rao's wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and some one in the dark behind spat at him. Amongst them they managed to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable. But the old man continued to decline obstinately to ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... The curtain rings up on his work for the Steelyard,—work which covered many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated here—with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. The oil portrait of Georg Gyze, or George Gisze, as ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... late. I hope nothing has occurred," Manuel said anxiously, drawing the velvet curtain aside ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... the curtain of that birthday was dropped down for ever found its vent in music—music in which Mr. Dale took a part, and in which Miss Tredgold excelled herself. It was the music that awoke Pauline's slumbering conscience. It was during that music that her heart ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... orb of day appearing for a single instant. You couldn't even find its hiding place behind the curtain of mist. And soon this mist began to condense ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... languidly into an arm-chair, and sat sighing and smiling with affectation, not turning a deaf ear to her visitor, but taking in with her eyes a full view of what passed in the shop; having drawn aside the curtain of rose-colored silk, which sometimes covered the window in the wall between the shop ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... later there was a distinct lightening of the gloom, and before many more minutes had passed the boat was forced out suddenly through a curtain of drooping boughs into the dazzling light ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... sank behind the hill-tops a long dark curtain fell upon the stage of day, and the intervening hills cut short the time in which light and shade mingle at sunset. I thought of going out for a ride, and was about to get up when I heard a footfall on the steps behind. I looked back, but there ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... not new, and in this case is both uncalled for and ineffective. Gounod made a somewhat similar effort in his "Romeo et Juliette," where a costumed group of singers presents a prologue, vaguely visible through a gauze curtain. Meyerbeer tried the expedient in "Le Pardon de Ploermel," and the siciliano in Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" and the prologue in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" are other cases in point. Of these ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under it—she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... note Mrs. Mavor stretched out her hands to her little girl, who was sitting on my knee, caught her up, and, holding her close to her breast, walked quickly behind the curtain. Not a sound followed the singing: no one moved till she had disappeared; and then Mr. Craig came to the front, and, motioning to me to follow Mrs. Mavor, began in a low, ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... play be by Euripides, it ends not with a "curtain," not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, strikes some people as rather ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... At length the curtain fell upon the bloody scenes of the war. Under the mighty blows of Grant and his lieutenants the Rebellion was crushed. On a bright day the President, accompanied by Mr. Sumner, entered the streets of Richmond, and witnessed the grateful ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... The curtain fell. Chatelet was now paying a visit to the Duchesse de Carigliano in an adjourning box; Mme. de Bargeton acknowledged his bow by a slight inclination of the head. Nothing escapes a woman of the world; Chatelet's ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... adulterers, false-swearers. Yet they bound themselves to call them all, as they lowered them into their graves, their 'beloved brethren,' and to declare that they committed them to the dust 'in sure and curtain hope of a resurrection to eternal life,' though they believed in their hearts that they would rise to eternal damnation.... They were the hirelings of the king and government. They regarded the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... I've drawn my curtain so that I can't see those hateful motor ambulances coming in slowly full, and going back empty fast, and must go to sleep. I simply loathe the sight of those M.A.'s, admirable inventions though ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... no longer to be seen. The disciples, whose identity had so occupied the minds of the little church-goers and been the subject of week-day discussions, were now hidden with the whole scene from the eyes of all beholders. A red curtain veiled the long-valued painting in its disfigured old age. Against this glowing background was suspended a huge golden cross of the simplest construction. It was, in fact, the work of the carpenter of the neighbourhood, and was gilded by the hand of ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... old antient Church, His monument remayneth to be seen; His memory yet in the mouths of men, That whilst he lived he could deceive the Devill. Imagine now that whilst he is retirde From Cambridge back unto his native home, Suppose the silent, sable visagde night Casts her black curtain over all the World; And whilst he sleeps within his silent bed, Toiled with the studies of the passed day, The very time and hour wherein that spirit That many years attended his command, And often times twixt Cambridge and ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... even respect and pity takes possession of every heart. The devotion of the old man raises the fallen girl, and in the admiration he inspires the fault of Claudie is almost forgotten. But it is too late. The old man takes the arm of his daughter, and leads her away with him. When the curtain rises for the last scene, Dame Rose has retained Claudie and her grandfather at the house, a riot in the village having prevented their departure. Denis has come near being stoned to death. Finally he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... handsome young king, with mounted postilions and outriders, or a liveried carriage of somebody born with a von before his name. As the twilight comes on, the shutters of the shop windows are put up. It is time to go to the opera, for the curtain rises at half-past six, or to the beer-gardens, where delicious music marks, but does not interrupt, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... begged for quick and thorough work. He was not to be disappointed. Without any formalities the presiding officers of the last session were re-elected—in times of peace and party strife this would have been impossible. This short curtain raiser being over, the first act of the drama began. Before an overcrowded house the Chancellor described simply and clearly the efforts of the Government for the preservation of peace. He stated cold facts, showing unmistakably Russia's double ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... had placed a light upon the table, and was engaged in drawing the curtain of the window. The speakers whom they had heard were two men, who had a pack of cards and some silver money between them, while upon the screen itself the games they had played were scored in chalk. The man with the rough voice was a burly fellow of middle ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... as you saw a determination of the angle at which this weight of 250 grams just slipped on the ice. The lower surface of the weight, the part which presses on the ice, consists of a light, brass curtain ring. This can be detached. Its mass is only 61/2 grams, the curtain ring being, in fact, hollow and made of very thin metal. We have, therefore, in it a very small weight which presents exactly the same surface beneath as did the weight of 250 grams. You see, now, that ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... tapped the customary three blows behind the curtain, and the orchestra began the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... surrounded by a wall. The circumference of the principal temple is not very considerable, and the sanctuary, which contains the tooth, is a small chamber hardly twenty feet broad. Within this place all is darkness, as there are no windows, and inside the door, there is a curtain, to prevent the entry of any light. The walls and ceiling are covered with silk tapestry, which, however, has nothing but its antiquity to recommend it. It is true that it was interwoven with gold thread, but it appeared never to have been especially costly, and I cannot ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Zalvidea decided to put the box in a safer place. Going to the window, and drawing aside the curtain, he opened it. Listening intently for a moment, and hearing nothing, he returned to the table, lighted a small dark lantern, extinguished the candle, and taking up the box after closing and locking it, he left the room, and walked softly through ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... sweetly, time-beguil'd, One of her bridegroom, one her child, The bridegroom he. They have receiv'd Happy letters, more believ'd For public news, and feel the bliss The heavenlier on a night like this. They think him hous'd, they think him blest, Curtain'd in the core of rest, Danger distant, all good near; Why hath their "Good night" ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... in that house except his heart. He was stifled with the horror that he glimpsed, that he almost touched, although that door remained closed. He felt along the wall in order to reach the window, and pulled aside the curtain. Window and blinds of the little room giving on the Neva were closed. The bar of iron inside was in its place. Then he went to the passage, mounted and descended the narrow servants' stairway, looked all about, in all the rooms, feeling everywhere with silent hands, assuring himself ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... it revealed several places on the frame of the mirror over the mantel, where the gold had fallen away and had been replaced by an inferior sort of gilding. By some subtle trickery with the lace curtain that hung at the open window, it laid an arabesque of delicate shadow upon the polished floor. In the room beyond, where Madame's crystal ball lay on the mahogany table, with a bit of black velvet beneath it, the sun had made a living rainbow that carried colour and light ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... drama this would have been the cue for the curtain to fall with a rush, ending the act and leaving the audience a space to wonder how the complication could ever be untangled, but on the Fenelby's porch there was no curtain to fall. ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... as if a curtain had been drawn, the outlines of a rough shanty appeared in front of them. It was a tumble-down sort of a place, seemingly made of driftwood and old sacks and bits of canvas. From a rusty iron stove-pipe on top, a feeble column of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... dark blue paper with yellow flowers, the window is "ornamented" with a curtain of red calico in which holes take the place of flowers. There is in front of the window a rush-bottom chair with the bottom worn out; near the chair a stove; on the stove a stewpot; near the stewpot a flowerpot turned upside down with a tallow candle stuck in the hole; near ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... a stately outer drawing-room, filled with old French furniture and fine pictures; then the butler lifted a velvet curtain, pronounced the visitor's name with a voice and emphasis as perfectly trained as the rest of him, and stood aside for ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certainty that you can never have full strength again, though you live on twenty, forty, sixty years. The flag of your courage may well be down half-mast! Apathy—that creeping nerve disease—is soon your bed-fellow and the companion of your walks. A curtain has fallen before your vision; your eyes no longer range. The Russian "Nichevo"—the "what-does-it-matter?" mood—besets you. Fate seems to say to you: "Take the line of least resistance, friend—you are done for!" But the sacred work says to ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... "Life is like a play": I am playing "Heavy Father" In a "Screaming Farce" to-day, That so "brings down The house," I frown, And fain would "ring the curtain down." ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... As the last curtain fell and Dennis was no longer able to adjust his gloomy contemplation to incongruous orchestration, he hastened from the theater, scrambled down the precipitate stairs and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Clifton, the Youngs withdrew, evidently much disappointed, and as the door closed behind them, Electra felt that the circle of doom was narrowing around her. Mr. Clifton approached her, but, averting her head, she lifted the damask curtain that divided the parlour from the studio, and effected her retreat, dreading to meet his glance—putting off the evil day as long as possible—trying to trample the serpent that trailed after her ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... again in the green wood; the fountain bubbled at my feet. Strong hands parted the curtain of green leaves, and through the gap came sunlight—sunlight and the hunter with eyes like mountain lakes; and as I moved to meet him the vision vanished. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... who do things, and if they are really friends of mine, I like to enter into their life, to know of their work, to sympathise, to take an interest in it. It was like that with you at first. Now it has all gone. You have drawn down a curtain. I do not believe that you go to the Admiralty at all. I do not believe that you have any wonderful invention there over which you spend ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the hangings. Something strange about the former arrested his eye. It was standing awry on its pedestal—was, indeed, almost toppling over. He looked up and saw that one of the curtains supported by the arm hung loosely from one of the curtain rings. It was as though some violent hand had torn at the curtain in passing, almost dragging it from the pole and precipitating the figure down the stairs. Immediately beyond the landing, in the corridor, was a door on the right, flung ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... who made their appearance as a matter of course at a First Night in the height of the Season. Pit and gallery were already packed with a throng, tense, expectant and alert, that waited for the rise of the curtain with the eager patience of a terrier watching a dilatory human prepare for outdoor exercises. Stalls and boxes filled slowly and hesitatingly with a crowd whose component units seemed for the most part to recognise the probability that they were quite as interesting as any ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... and seventy-one transported! What a terrible tragedy committed in the name of law and Christian government! Mary Burton, the Judas Iscariot of the period, received her hundred pounds as the price of the blood she had caused to be shed; and the curtain fell upon one of the most tragic events in all the history of New York or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... feastings to come. Mrs. McAlister came back from a final survey of the corner house, made her eleventh tour of the parlor, dining-room and kitchen at The Savins, and then took her stand at the front window where she tapped restlessly on the glass and swayed the curtain to and fro impatiently. She was not a nervous woman; but to-night her mood demanded constant action. Moreover, it was only an hour and a quarter before the train was due. If she were not watchful, the carriage might come ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... a tailored suit of blue and looking particularly beautiful, walked haughtily by and disappeared behind the heavy green curtain. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... upstairs to a curtained doorway, guarded by two sentries, in front of whom he paused. At a sign from the former, one of the men disappeared behind the curtain, and the next moment Naoum appeared in the doorway. Waving the guide back he signed to George to enter, and a moment later Helmar stood in ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld |
