"Hansom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The hansom of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton drew up in front of No. 26, Victoria Grove, Chelsea; his kit-bag was on the roof of the cab. The cabman had a red flower in his buttonhole. Matthew leaped out of the vehicle, holding his straw hat on his head with one hand. On reaching ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... zenith. He bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for L13,500 a horse called Kangaroo, which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser, and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts of a hansom. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... another accident in 1881, on the seventeenth of October, a collision between two hansom cabs which resulted in the death of a driver whose name was Samuel Green. He lived at 14 Portington Mews, and had ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... answered his friend. "I just bought an old horse the other day, cheap. He is no good for the hansom I drive, for when folks take a hansom, they want to drive like the wind. But for a four-wheeler that takes families and their luggage, he's the very horse. I bought him cheap and I'll ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... one," the editor hinted. "Don't trouble yourself; I shall probably destroy them." With this Peter Baron took his departure, waiting however just afterwards, in the street near the house, as if he had been looking out for a stray hansom, to which he would not have signalled had it appeared. He thought Mr. Locket might hurry after him, but Mr. Locket seemed to have other things to do, and Peter Baron returned on foot ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... in the old man's face went to Beverly Cruger's heart and he showed his sympathy as he shook hands with him again. He hurriedly passed through the group of children who had gathered to look at the not too familiar spectacle of a hansom cab waiting at the door of Miss ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... astonishment. "I thought London people always drove. The vicar's wife had some friends from South Kensington who were positively lame if they went any distance on foot. They said our country roads were a disgrace—no asphalte, no hansom cabs." ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... her mistress twined the gossamer fabric round her head with careless grace. She opened the door for her to pass out on the veranda, and as she looked after her she muttered to herself, "She's a pooty missis; but not such a gran' hansom lady as turrer." A laugh shone through her dark face as she added, "'T would be curus ef she should fine turrer missis out dar." As she passed through the parlor she glanced at the large mirror, which dimly reflected her dusky charms, and said ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... boat, and reached Dover by the later and slower one as the June night began to descend. From Victoria I drove straight to my club, and snatched a supper of cold meats in its half-lit dining-room. Twenty minutes later I was in my hansom again and swiftly bowling westward—I say 'bowling' because it is the usual word, and I was in far too fierce a hurry to think ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... champagne cork had been known to produce a scandalized silence in the luncheon-room, and where serious-minded members congregated to scowl at one another's unworthiness from behind newspapers. A hansom conveyed him thither. In the hall he struggled over two telegrams which had caused him most complicated thought during his drive. The problem was to ease Zora's mind and to obtain a change of raiment without disclosing the whereabouts of either Emmy or himself. This ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Colonel yawning, with a sherry and bitters in one hand and a toothpick in the other. He decided not to remain in the Club. So he took his hat and went out into the street. It was raining in the street and he had no umbrella. He hailed a hansom ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was, she had to rise again before she got to sleep. Her mistress was again taken ill. Doctor and nurse were sent for in hot haste; hansom cabs came and went throughout the night, like noisy moths to the one lighted house in the street; there were soft steps within, and doors were gently opened and shut. The waters of Mara had risen and filled ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... to point out the disgraceful character of their conduct to them, when, noticing the Inspector whispering some orders to two of his subordinates, I think it best to take to my heels, which I do, pursued by a couple of Constables, whom I manage to escape, and, jumping into a Hansom, drive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... of wheels, and rousing herself from her reverie, she saw a hansom cab at the gate, and M. Vandeloup standing on the pavement paying the driver. She also heard her lover tell the cabman to call for him at eight o'clock, and her heart sank within her as she thought that ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... get some lunch, Tom went to bed to rest, after his two hard nights' work, and the rest of us went on shore. Directly we landed at the jetty we were rushed at by a crowd of jinrikisha men, each drawing a little vehicle not unlike a Hansom cab, without the seat for the driver—there being no horse to drive. The man runs between the shafts, and is often preceded by a leader, harnessed on in front, tandem fashion. Each of these vehicles holds one person, and they go along ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... until suddenly he understood the exact purport of his mission to Stanton College. He leaned forward as if he were going to tell the driver to return, but before he could do so the lodge-keeper opened the great gate, and the hansom cab ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... had been to a party at Ribston Hall: tea in the garden followed by a pastoral play. Anthony was sitting in the balcony, smoking, when the girls came back. He saw their hansom and ran downstairs to meet them, as he always did. They were a family who went in for ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... be sure!" said Mr Gregory grimly, and with a sarcastic smile. "Widgeon, run round the corner and call a couple of hansom cabs." ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... episode, for people of our means, a great deal of money in telegrams and cabs, and I counted on the receipt of news from Rapallo immediately after the junction of the discoverer with the discovered. The interval seemed an age, but late one day I heard a hansom precipitated to my door with the crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived with my heart in my mouth and accordingly bounded to the window—a movement which gave me a view of a young lady erect on the footboard of the vehicle and eagerly looking ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... to-morrow at the hotel," said Archibald to Morgan, as he got into a hansom an hour later. "We'll spend the afternoon together. There are some points about my book I want to settle. 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' Splendid title! Morgan, you're indeed a genius. 'An attempt to investigate ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... toot from the horn on a Happy Hansom means that business men, messenger boys and other persons in a hurry must postpone indefinitely their contemplated journey across the street. Crossing the street in front of a chauffeur who has given the above signal is very bad form, and is generally ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of Lothair, and have become part of our habitual speech—the phrase about eating "a little fruit on a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the true Londoner sees it—when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the pink ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... so much!" I heard myself saying, just as if he had had on a frock-coat and top-hat, and had stopped a hansom cab for me in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Parker explained, "is of no use to me—of no more use than a hansom cab. I have to keep a car in order to slip about quietly. Now in what part of London shall we look for a gambling hell, Mr. Walmsley? I know of eleven. Name your own street—somewhere ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the pavement, and the commissionaire called a hansom. The man looked closely at Anna as she crossed the footway, and as he held her skirt from the wheel he pressed something into her hand. Her fingers closed upon it instinctively. It was a letter. She slipped it calmly into her pocket. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to a stand on the very edge of the pavement, and waited. His exercised eyes had made out in the confused movements of lights and shadows thronging the roadway the crawling approach of a hansom. He gave no sign; but when the low step gliding along the curbstone came to his feet he dodged in skilfully in front of the big turning wheel, and spoke up through the little trap door almost before the man gazing supinely ahead from his ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... improved. One finds the plebeian cab or "growler," the more fastidious hansom, and the popular electric tram, which is fast replacing the omnibus in the outlying portions, to say nothing of the underground railways now being "electrified," ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... said Stafford. He didn't thank Howard for the offer; no thanks were necessary. "The thing is so sudden that I have not made any plans. I suppose there's something I can do to earn my living. I've no brains, but I'm pretty strong. I might drive a hansom cab or an omnibus, better men than I have done worse. Leave me alone, old man, to have a pipe and think of it." Howard lingered for an hour or two, for he felt that though Stafford had dismissed him, he ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... these literally State occasions, I drive up in state, that is in a hansom. There is only one other day in the year on which I am so splendid, but that is another beautiful story. It, too, is a day and an hour too joyous to be approached otherwise than on winged wheels, too ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Count Cipriani de Lloseta went out of the house together. They walked side by side for some yards while a watchful hansom followed. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... time," said Hansom, decidedly. I forgot to say that it was George Hansom whom Myron had picked up to help us. Anybody in Lime will tell you who George Hansom is,—a clear-eyed, open-hearted sailor; a man to whom you would turn in trouble ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... his fist, and walked up and down him on his knees, crying, 'I'll teach you to complain to the justices.' But one or two gentlemanly madmen, who soon found out that I am not one of them, have complained to me that the attendants wash them too much like Hansom cabs, strip them naked, and mop them on the flag-stones, then fling on their clothes without drying them. They say, too, that the meat is tough and often putrid, the bread stale, the butter rancid, the vegetables stinted, since they can't be adulterated. And as for sleep, it is hardly known; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... "Take this hansom, drive home, have some breakfast, and get an hour's sleep. It is quite on the cards that we may be afoot to-night again. Stop at a telegraph-office, cabby! We will keep Toby, for he may be of use to ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... finger in acquiescence, and the hansom rattled up to the curbstone. Flint handed Tilly Marsden into it with his habitual deference, gave a street and number to the driver, and, jumping in himself, slammed to the half doors with a clang which echoed along the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... professor's mood is not a happy one. Sitting in the hansom that is taking him all too swiftly to his destination, he dwells with terror on the girl—the undesired ward—who has been thrust upon him. He has quite made up his mind about her. An Australian girl! One knows what to expect ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... showed me Oxford he was in the ardor of what seemed a permanent severance from an admitted mistake. I see a deserted Oxford street, and a hansom coming up it—myself and my father inside it. I was returning from school, for the holidays. When I had last seen my people, they were living near Birmingham. I now found them at Oxford, and I remember the thrill of excitement with which I looked from side to side as we neared ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cigarette case and choosing a cigarette with exaggerated precision. When he had lighted it he tipped the porter, and strolled back to the entrance, on the chance of finding the carriage still there, but it had gone, and he called a hansom, paused a moment with his foot on the step, then finally directed the man to drive ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... and Miss Helen will kindly get into this hansom and I'll tell the man where to drive to, I have a bussiness matter to settle, but you can tell the servant ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... in the transformed laboratory, there were Henry Vandam, Dr. Hanson, Inspector O'Connor, Kennedy, and myself. At last the sound of wheels was heard, and Mrs. Popper drove up in a hansom, accompanied by Farrington. They both inspected the room narrowly and seemed satisfied. I had, as I have said, taken a serious dislike to the man, and watched him closely. I did not like his air of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... with your uncle—'specially in vacation. We've got it all planned. I'm to go into town with Waddy. I heard her say she had an appointment at the dentist's—and he'll be at the station with a hansom—" ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... carry the coat and belt before we meet a real officer. I got them once for a fancy ball—ostensibly—and thereby hangs a yarn. I always thought they might come in useful a second time. My chief crux to-night was getting rid of the hansom that brought me back. I sent him off to Scotland Yard with ten bob and a special message to good old Mackenzie. The whole detective department will be at Rosenthall's in about half an hour. Of course, I speculated ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... to Morley's, and ascertained that Stony Stratford was on the road to Rugby, and that I must leave the train at Wolverton station. I called a Hansom cab, and reached Euston Square depot just in time for the train. I will not attempt to describe the emotions which agitated me as I sped over the country. I was on the point of meeting my mother, and though the rich panorama of an English landscape was passing before me, ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... A hansom drove up to the door and stopped before he had time to seat himself. Hearing it he went to the window and saw a stout businesslike looking man get out, accompanied by an attendant. There followed a loud, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for the stranger was the late passenger on board the Argus, had been from boyhood the inseparable chum of Robert Audley. The tale of Talboys' marriage, his expedition to Australia, and his return with a fortune, was briefly told. The pair took a hansom to the Westminster coffee-house where Talboys had written to his wife to forward letters. There was no letter, and the young man showed very bitter disappointment. By and by George mechanically picked up a "Times" ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... used to it now, though, that I don't think of it any more. It's queer how soon you get used to things! It's just like riding along the streets, and keeping to the left instead of to the right. The first time I rode in a hansom (you weren't there that day, Betty) and we suddenly turned a corner, keeping close to the left curb, I poked open the little door in the roof and shouted, 'Hey there! Mister! You'll bump into something if you don't look out!' The driver just stared; he didn't seem ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... They step into the blazing entrance, and go thence to the stairway which leads to the celebrated public ballroom. They are stifled by the odor of dust, escaping gas, and human flesh. Alas! there are in every village in France doctors in hansom cabs, country lawyers, and any quantity of justices of the peace, who, I can assure you, regret this stench as they take the fresh air in the open country under the starry heavens, breathing the exquisite perfume of new-mown hay; for it is mingled with the little poetry ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dress, though she herself was in an ordinary walking costume. Tall and very graceful, with dark eyes and a perfect profile, she formed a curious contrast to her short and rather stout companion. It was only a question of a minute before they got into a waiting hansom and driven away; but, somehow, the incident worried Jimmy. He wondered who she was, what she was, and was so preoccupied with her that as he walked on eastwards, he hardly noticed that he left the Strand, with its life and hurry, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... was sitting alone in his house, and he received me with a smile. He talked calmly and without a shadow of fear, and with no hint of repining. He had gathered from the specialist that he had only a few weeks at the most to live, and he told me that as he rode away in a hansom from the house where he had received what he called his sentence of death, he looked at the people in the street like a man in a dream, and with a curious feeling of detachment from the affairs of the world. But he rallied, and went ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... support him he would have sunk down. He kept staring. A man came out of the shop with a small parcel, and gave it to the lady, who then drove off. The dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the carriage moved up Piccadilly he followed in the same direction, and hailed a hansom. Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... and from under it, the next moment, he saw the Captain waving two fingers at him out of the front of a hansom. When he returned to his hotel he found on his table a letter superscribed in Gordon Wright's hand. ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... he decided to go on up to Van Cleft's residence. But, realizing the probability of "shadow" work upon all who came from the door of the club, after the curious message on the wire, Shirley did not propose to expose his hand. Walking leisurely to the Avenue, he hailed a passing hansom. He directed the driver to carry him to an address on Central Park West. His shrewdness was not wasted, for as he stepped into the vehicle, he espied a slinking figure crossing the street diagonally before him, to disappear into the shadow of an adjacent doorway. This was ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... to manage that for you," the man remarked encouragingly. "It was one of Steve Hassell's carriages, I guess, unless the lady took a hansom." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversation—with Miss Vavasor, and had seen with delight the unmistakable symptoms of serious difference which at last appeared, and culminated in their parting. He did not venture to approach her, but when she got into a cab, took a Hansom and followed her to the entrance of the square, where he got down, his heart beating with exultant hope that "the rascal ass of a nobleman" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... veils the day just a little from its own loveliness, and lies upon the sighing and expectant city like the substance of a dream made visible. It has the magic to transmute you to this substance yourself, so that while you dawdle afoot, or whisk by in your hansom, or rumble earthquakingly aloft on your omnibus-top, you are aware of being a part, very dim, very subtile, of the passer's blissful consciousness. It is flattering, but you feel like warning him not to go in-doors, or he will lose you and all the rest of it; for ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... received my order with impassivity and shut us in together with the unconcern of a good servant. It was dark in the carriage, and neither of us spoke as we whirled through the snowy streets. Once the lights of a passing hansom illumined my companion's face and I saw that she was crying. It pleased me to see her suffer; she had cost me eleven weeks of misery; ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... The hansom came slowly down the street, the driver scanning the frequent doors for 31. He overlooked it by reason of the fact that the number had been rubbed off, but finally located it by discovering most of the numbers ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... sound of Broadway had changed subtly, with the coming of the September dusk. The quick-pacing people had given way to the clop-clop-clop of hansom-cabs, and the tram-cars with their tired horses came less frequently now. One felt that a giant had been at work all day, and was now stretching himself, not lazily, but a little relaxingly. Soon the great lamps would flare, and the crowds ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the invitation. He would much rather have been alone; but Hugo would take no denial. The two went out together without summoning the landlady: Hugo took his companion by the arm, and walked for a little way down the street, then summoned a hansom from the door of a public-house, and gave an address which Dino did not hear. They drove for some distance. Dino thought that his new friend's lodgings were situated in a rather obscure quarter of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs—who could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always goes hand in hand with reality; ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply of the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes. Arthur Agar was an expert ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... must explain that, on the morning after the accident, I had taken a hansom to the Devonshire Mansion with the intention of paying a professional visit to Alresca. I was not altogether certain that I ought to regard the case as mine, but I went. Immediately before my hansom, however, there had drawn up another hansom in front of the portals of the Devonshire, and out of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... off the miles like water, We might carry a royal ransom; And I think of her waiting, waiting, And long for a common hansom. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... no hour for finding cabs; it was the hour of the scavenger and no other being; and Rachel walked into broad sunlight before she spied a solitary hansom. It was then she did the strangest thing; instead of driving straight back for her trunk, when near the house she gave the cabman other directions, subsequently stopping him at one with a card in ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... misty in his memory; they occurred at various hotels in Seagate. Afterwards he would go, first taken by a governess, and later going alone, to Charing Cross, where he would be met, in earlier times by a maid and afterwards by a deferential manservant who called him "Sir," and conveyed, sometimes in a hansom cab and later in a smart brougham, by Trafalgar Square, Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly, and streets of increasing wealth and sublimity to Sir Godfrey's house in Desborough Street. Very naturally he fell into thinking ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... a hansom then For home, and feed the cabby; But my reward was what most men Would ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... of the Priestly to the Kingly Authority. Thus Solomon thrusts out Abiathar from being priest, I Kings ii. 27; and Jehoahaz administers the funds of the Lord's House, 2 Kings xii. 4, though that money was actually the Atonement Money, the Hansom for ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... from the Fr. cabriolet, derived from cabriole, implying a bounding motion), a form of horsed vehicle for passengers either with two ("hansom") or four wheels ("four-wheeler" or "growler"), introduced into London as the cabriolet de place, from Paris in 1820 (see CARRIAGE). Other vehicles plying for hire and driven by mechanical means are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he took a hansom and went to look for some rooms; he would not return to those he had left on the previous afternoon, for the sympathetic landlord had helped him to pack up the wedding clothes and had admired the wedding gift. Arthur felt that he could not face him again. He found some to suit him in Duke Street, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... trustees. The income supported Mr. Hadden in splendour for about three months out of twelve; the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the islands. He was now about a week returned from his eclipse, pervading Sydney in hansom cabs and airing the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and yet the unaffected creature hailed Carthew in his working jeans and with the damning bundle on his shoulder, as he might have claimed acquaintance with ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been Minister to France, had signed ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... in each man's being—blurring his vision of extinction, and thus our seamen go through a certain performance a dozen times over in a winter, and this performance is much like that of a blindfold man driving a Hansom cab from Cornhill to Marble Arch on a Saturday ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... were no reporters yet in sight, and thankful to have escaped notice I paid for my breakfast and left. At the cab-stand I chose the least dilapidated hansom I could find, and giving the driver the address of the Gilmore residence, in the East ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that's off the Hammersmith Road. We, that is to say dad and myself, live in Warwick Gardens, a bit this side of Addison Bridge, so if you really mean to go home we may as well get a hansom, and you can drop me at Warwick Gardens and ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... railings of the green enclosure in the middle of the Square. The man's form was in shadow, but his face seemed to be turned to Mrs. Romaine's house. Oliver sedulously averted his eyes and hailed a passing hansom cab. He had no mind to be delayed just then, and he was almost certain that he recognized in that gaunt and shabby figure his disreputable brother. No, by-and-bye he would talk to Francis, he said to himself, but not to-night. He had other game in view ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... more quickly Mr. Biggleswade had seen that the game was up, flung Blazer away from him, and bolted through the barrier. The Inspector rushed after him; but Blazer, who apparently had not had enough of Mr. Biggleswade's calf, outstripped him, and pinned the fugitive on the very step of a hansom. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... up and read the playbill. He read the name of the play, the titles of its acts, and the names of its actors. He wondered if the man who just then drove up in a hansom was one of the heroes of the piece, or whether he was one of the performers in the farce announced to follow the play. Still the people streamed in. There was no one he knew, and no ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... hansom threaded its way through the crowded street she rarely smiled, but her sombre eyes took in everything, and she "said things," as the boy put it, which he recalled and quoted years afterward. Incidentally she talked of herself, though always ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the restaurant window he corrected his watch, and ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... choked-up drains. The few stray passengers who had been loafing rather than walking about the street, had scuttered away like frightened rabbits to some invisible places of refuge, and though Salisbury whistled loud and long for a hansom, no hansom appeared. He looked about him, as if to discover how far he might be from the haven of Oxford Street; but strolling carelessly along he had turned out of his way, and found himself in an unknown region, and one to all appearance devoid even of a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer strayed from India to buy mules for the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... I mentioned, in the heart of the city, and, unless you prefer Shanks's pony, must perforce take a hansom to your hotel, or, if you have much luggage, two hansoms, for four-wheelers are almost unknown. In compensation, the Sydney hansoms are the cleanest and fastest you will ever have the good fortune to come across. Steam trams run out to the railway station, which is at the farther ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... lingering sweet good-night, and shut Mildred into the warm, lighted hall, and ran down the steps, and hailed a passing hansom, and was driven back to Chilworth Street. It had rained, and the heat, excessive for April, had abated, and the wise, experienced stars looked down between drifting veils of greyish vapour upon the little human ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... issued his cruel fiat, I slipped out, hurried down-stairs into the Strand, jumped into a hansom, and was driven at top speed to Hamilton Terrace, bent upon giving instant effect to a scheme I had long ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... The hansom drove up; its doors opened. Craig pushed aside the carriage man, lifted her in with a powerful upward swing of his arm against her elbow and side—so powerful that she fell into the seat, knocking her hat awry and loosening ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" has reached the sale of 375,000 copies in this country, and some few editions in the United States of America. Notwithstanding this, the present publishers have the best of reasons for believing, that ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... episode, for people of our means, a great deal of money in telegrams, and I counted on the receipt of news from Rapallo immediately after the junction of the discoverer with the discovered. The interval seemed an age, but late one day I heard a hansom rattle up to my door with a crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived with my heart in my mouth and I bounded to the window—a movement which gave me a view of a young lady erect on the footboard of the vehicle and eagerly looking up at ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Miss Beers said she was going uptown to be fitted, and that she would go alone because her aunt made her nervous. When Fred held her coat for her, she murmured, "Thank you, Alphonse," as if she were addressing the waiter. As she stepped into a hansom, with a long stretch of thin silk stocking, she said negligently, over her fur collar, "Better let me take you along and drop you somewhere." He sprang in after her, and she told the driver to go to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the funniest building I ever saw," he exclaimed. "It looks as if it was built up of sentry-boxes, and Hansom's cabs, and dovecots, and windmills, and pig-sties, and all sorts of other things. It was built, I see, by Ivan the Cruel, and it is said that he was so pleased with its strangeness that he put out the eyes of the unfortunate architect, to ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... felicitous valedictory word was said to the great actor and actress, and Mrs. Linton's carriage received Phyllis. Lord Earlscourt took a seat in Mr. Courtland's hansom. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... performances in town? Our three concerts you have heard all about. I still can't get over them. I go about haunted by the seriousness, the life-and-death interest people throw into music. It is astonishing! And outside, as we got into our hansom, such sights and sounds!—such starved fierce-looking men, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these excellent creatures send incidents of real life which they are sure will be useful to 'dear Dick' for his next book—narratives of accidents in a hansom cab, of missing the train by the Underground, and of Mr. Jones being late for his own wedding, 'which, though nothing in themselves, actually did happen, you know, and which, properly dressed up, as you so well know how to do,' will, they are sure, obtain for him a marked ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... disappeared. It was said about 1800, in derision of the Foxite rump, that the Whig Party came down to Parliament in a four-wheeler. It might literally be said in 1900 that the Whig Party and the Tory Party came to Parliament in a hansom cab. It was not a case of two towers rising into different roofs or spires, but founded in the same soil. It was rather the case of an arch, of which the foundation-stones on either side might fancy they were two buildings; but the stones ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... it a jackdaw if you like,' says he; 'but what I want you to understand is that it ain't no ornary bird. It's a bird,' he says, 'that'll do you hansom and you'll be proud to have, and I've called here to make you a present of it. All I want is a bit of bread, a pinch of tea, and some sugar to make my breakfast in an hour's time when I git to some cottage by the road where they got a fire lighted,' ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... Cathedral. Two thousand years hence the New Zealand dramatist may represent the Archbishop of CANTERBURY as walking about London in his lawn sleeves with coronation cope and mitre, or Cardinal HERBERT VAUGHAN as wearing his scarlet hat and robes, and riding in a Hansom cab, having been unable to pick up his own Cardinal's train. All this were hypercriticism, but that the name of ALMA TADEMA, R.A., is a public guarantee ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... independently of the question whether the particular work at which he is skilled is wanted at the moment or not. If it is not wanted, some new trade which is wanted ought to be taught at the public expense. Why, for example, should a hansom-cab driver be allowed to suffer on account of the introduction of taxies? He has not committed any crime, and the fact that his work is no longer wanted is due to causes entirely outside his control. ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... of the hansom cab, Fig. 32, by Mr. Raven Hill, illustrates a very strong color-scheme,—gray and white separated by black, the gray moderating the black on the upper side, leaving it to tell strongly against the white below. Notice how luminous ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... Ambassador" and then I bowed to the Prince and Duke of York, Connaught and Edinburgh and to the American Ambassador and then Henry White and Spencer Eddy, the two Secretaries and the naval attache all shook hands with me and I went around in a hansom in the bright sunshine in hopes of finding some one who would know me. But no one did so I went to Cox's Hotel and showed myself to Miss Groves and Miss Wather. I went on the Terrace yesterday with the Leiters ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... a smile to her companion—once before he had heard an audible titter from a little group of loiterers. He returned the glance with a lightning-like look of diabolical fierceness, and, turning round, stood upon the curbstone and called a hansom. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she doubted whether Lord Fawn would do much in that way. Then the door was opened, and Lord Fawn was announced. It was not at all unusual with Lord Fawn to call on the widow at this hour. Mount Street is not exactly in the way from the India Office to the House of Lords; but a Hansom cab can make it almost in the way. Of neglect of official duty Lord Fawn was never guilty; but a half hour for private business or for relaxation between one stage of duty and another,—can any Minister grudge so much to an indefatigable follower? Lady ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... easy." I was late; I was in a hurry; I had very little time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply: "Will do what I can." It was not till I had dressed and was rolling away to dinner that, in the hansom, I bethought myself of the difficulty of the condition attached. The difficulty was not of course in letting her off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. "I simply won't qualify it," I said to myself. I didn't admire her, but I liked her, and I had known ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... that in all ages artists have had their grooves, like other men, and have reproduced themselves and their own best effects. But, as this is inevitably true, how careful they should be that the effects are really of permanent value and beauty! Realistic hansom cabs, and babies in strange raiment, and schoolgirls of the last century, and Masters of Hounds, are scarcely of so much permanent value as the favourite types and characters which Lionardo and Carpaccio repeat again and again. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... countrymen, he threw me down! Twenty minutes later, after composing my soul and powdering my nose, I was telephoning all over the city trying to find Duncan. I got him at last, and he came to the Ritz on the run. Then we picked up a residuary old horse-hansom on Fifth Avenue and went rattling off through Central Park. There I—who once boasted of seven proposals and three times that number of nibbles—promptly and shamelessly proposed to my Dinky-Dunk, though he is too much of a gentleman ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Raffle's compliments right and left, and giving in no one note a single word of information that could be of any use to any person. Having thus earned his salary by half-past four o'clock he got into a hansom cab and had himself driven to Porchester Terrace. Miss Demolines was at home, of course, and he soon found himself closeted with that interesting ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... town. When he arrived at Victoria he took a hansom and drove to the house of the great doctor who had last seen Sibyl. Sir Henry Powell was at home. Ogilvie sent in his card and was admitted almost immediately into his presence. He asked a few questions, they were straight and to the point, and to the point did the specialist reply. His ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... thinking of this as he left the shop and began to cross the street. Because his mind was wandering he was less watchful. Suddenly a rubber-tired hansom, moving without sound, appeared immediately in his path—the horse's head loomed up above his own. He made the inevitable involuntary whirl aside to move out of the way, the hansom passed, and turning again, ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been said of the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib tongue. To explain the whereabouts of the Talleyrand Club were only a work of supererogation. Many hansom cabmen know it. Hansom cabmen know more ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... than a man's own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach. Mr. Ford's client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too great. He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind a dray, some strange associations built up the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gas lamps and the dark roofs of Broadway and the Avenue where they crossed a few blocks off, and the bunches of light on the Madison Square Garden, and to the lights on the boats of the East River. From below in the streets came the rattle of hurrying omnibuses and the rush of the hansom cabs. If Mr. Caruthers was surprised at this late visit, he hid it, and came forward to receive his caller as if ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... companionship, a possible alternative path suddenly presenting itself in an existence which had been peacefully following the same road, all this had been disturbing, bewildering even—and when the hansom drew up in Prince's Gate, Rachel felt an intense satisfaction at being back again in the haven, at the thought of the welcome she was going to find. And as on a summer's day to people sitting in a shaded room, the world beyond shut out, the opening ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... office one morning in a bad temper, you proceed to cure yourself by taking it out of the office-boy. He says nothing, apparently does nothing. But that evening, as you are going home in the Tube, a burly working-man treads heavily on your gouty foot. In Ladbroke Grove a passing hansom splashes you with mud. Reaching home, you find that the cat has been at the cold chicken and the butler has given notice. You do not connect these things, but they are all alike the results of your unjust behaviour to your office-boy in the morning. Or, meeting a ragged ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... trust officer returned to his hotel in his hansom, he jingled a few stray coins in his pocket, the remains of twenty pounds in gold that the day had cost him. A long education in finance, however, had taught him to be indifferent to these petty matters of preliminary expense. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... do; you won't drink; you're a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark, by the look of you. You wouldn't keep a horse the other day when I suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to suppose that theatres and all the live things you can by thereabouts ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Mrs. Harriet Hansom Robinson (wife of "Warrington," so long the able correspondent of the Springfield Republican), who with her daughter made the arrangements for our reception, gave the address of welcome, to which the president, Mrs. Stanton, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... He hung back a little, and followed the carriage. He calculated that if it left the Park at Hyde Park corner, or the Marble Arch, he could take a hansom and follow it. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... he drove more sedately through the London streets in the late evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors of the hansom and pulling carefully at his white gloves. Other hansoms flashed past him, the occupant of each with his mind fixed on one idea—dinner. He was one of a million of people who were about to dine, or who had dined, or who were deep in dining. He was so famished, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... last, and it was twenty-three minutes to two. He hurried her luggage downstairs, booked it with his own, and in another minute they were in a hansom—their first experience of that species of conveyance—on the way to the Vestry office. They had said scarcely anything to one another, save hasty directions from Lewisham, but their eyes were full of excitement, and under ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... lightly into the hansom that was waiting for her, and said to the cabman, "Office of the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... the piano and sang some of Ulick's music; stopping suddenly in the middle of a bar, she thought she would send him a note asking him to come to lunch. But what should she do till two o'clock? it was now only eleven. Suddenly it struck her that she might take a hansom and go and see him. She had never seen his rooms, and to visit him there would be more amusing than for him to come to Park Lane; and she imagined his surprise and delight at seeing her. Her thoughts went to the frock she would wear—a new one had come home ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... hansom and bowled silently down the dry grey road. All June was in flower in the pink pyramids of the chestnut-trees, and was already beginning to bleach the colour out of the long coarse grass in the open spaces of the Park. ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Street at five, flushed from a heated discussion with his committee about the price of bull calves, bought an evening paper, opened it, changed colour, forgot about bull calves and committee forthwith, and took a hansom headlong ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... or would not be cowardly; It was simply a necessity. The thing had to be stopped. He had to have rest and sleep and peace again. He had boasted in those reckless, prosperous days that if by any possible chance he should lose his money he would drive a hansom, or emigrate to the colonies, or take the shilling. He had no patience in those days with men who could not live on in adversity, and who were found in the gun-room with a hole in their heads, and whose family asked their polite friends ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... friend went together to the house of Mr Dobbs Broughton. As Dalrymple lived close to the Broughtons, Eames picked him up in a cab. "Filthy things, these cabs are," said Dalrymple, as he got into the hansom. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sitting bent forward in the hansom, her face determined and unchanging. She did not undertake to go forward beyond the hundred pounds. Something would turn up. She was lucky... others had gone to the tower; gone before the firing squad for lesser activities in what Hecklemeir called ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... with Madison Square, green and inviting, lying to his right. Pushed over into the Fifth Avenue traffic by the regulations, he contemplated returning to the Broadway stream as soon as possible, and was crawling along with his clutch barely rubbing, when a hansom cab, containing a beautiful but pale young woman, slowly passed. The occupant abruptly rose from her seat and scrutinized the car in ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... stopped for an instant opposite the hall-porter's box, and crying, "Good night to you, sir!" hurled the bag through the glass, rushed after his friend, and in less time than it takes to tell they were tearing up Pall Mall in a hansom. ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... consisted in the fastening up in separate brown-paper parcels innumerable pieces of bread and butter, addressing each with the name of the Reverend Junior Dean (who had annoyed Frank in some way), and the leaving of the parcels about in every corner of Cambridge, in hansom cabs, on seats, on shop-counters and on the pavements—with the result that for the next two or three days the dean's staircase was crowded with messenger boys and unemployables, anxious ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... all Christendom couldn't keep me in Dexter after four o'clock this afternoon. Good-by." And Crosby climbed into the hansom and was driven away at breakneck speed ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... was getting on and I did a thing I had never done before, though I had often read of it in the novelettes. I waved my umbrella and I got into a hansom cab. ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... black tie for a green one with red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... see Frank Danton's friendly face, and to listen to his friendly voice, commanding as one who had the right. Rose had her hat and shawl on directly, and, with baby in her arms, followed him down stairs. A hansom stood waiting. He helped her in, gave the cabman his orders, took his place beside her, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... it wasn't very handsome, and the poor old horse was no longer stylish if he had ever been, but there was little time to think about hansom cabs, for just ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... fellow-countryman in the trade, and enjoyed ourselves immensely; speech-making and toast-drinking being carried out in the extensive style so customary in the West. Picture our surprise on receiving a bill for 10s. 6d. next morning! Our friend of the dinner, kindly put at our disposal a hansom cab which he owned, but this luxury we declined with thanks, fearing a repetition of ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... escaped from a wrestling-match. He followed Cuningham into the omnibus with nerves all on edge. He hated the notion, too, of taking an omnibus to go and dine in St. James's Square. But Cuningham's Scotch thriftiness scouted the proposal of a hansom. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... offices at Winchester House, he managed to forget her, and to forget time, for nearly an hour and a half. When at last he came to himself from the enchantment of affairs, he jumped into a hansom, and told the driver to drive fast to Knightsbridge. He was ardent to see her again. In the dark seclusion of the cab he speculated upon her toilette, the colour of her shoes. He thought of the last five weeks, of the next five years. Dwelling on ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Chesterton lived in the days when he was becoming famous, when the inhabitants of that part of London began to realize that they had a great man in their midst, and grew accustomed to seeing a romantic figure in a cloak and slouch hat hail a hansom and drive off to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... alcove and a footman announced, in a terrible voice, that Lady Smigg's carriage barred the way, he turned from the house and continued upon his way to the "caves." It was then nearly one o'clock, and save for an occasional hansom making a dash to a club door, St. James' Street was deserted. Alban took one swift look up and down, crossed the street at a run and disappeared down the court which led to those amazing "tombs" of which few in London save the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... a hansom cab westward through Cockspur Street. One, a large individual of a bovine placidity, wore the Queen's uniform, and carried himself with a solid dignity faintly suggestive of a lighthouse. The other, a narrower man, with a keen, fair face and eyes that had an habitual smile, wore ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... over her face, she looked after her luggage, took a hansom, and drove down Victoria Street, past the Abbey, over Westminster Bridge, and so ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... police officers, they have a very sure appreciation of human nature. They do not harass those with whom they are concerned unnecessarily, but whether it is the London County Council, a powerful omnibus corporation, or an unlucky hansom driver, they act impartially, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot |
