"Touch on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... violin, when a touch on the shoulder roused me. I looked up. Karl stood there, leaning across me toward Eugen. Something in his face told me that it—that which had been hanging so long over us—was coming. His expression, too, attracted the attention of several ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Two soldiers precede and two follow him, with the sergeant in command. They cross the room to the wall opposite the door; but when Richard has just passed before the chair of state the sergeant stops him with a touch on the arm, and posts himself behind him, at his elbow. Judith stands timidly at the wall. The four soldiers place themselves in ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... on the room. Mary was apparently deep in thought, and Ransford, after a glance at her, turned away and looked out of the window at the sunlit Close, thinking of the tragedy he had just witnessed. And he had become so absorbed in his thoughts of it that he started at feeling a touch on his arm and looking round saw Mary standing at ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... have a special reason for ending this chapter on the name of the great popular dictator who made war on the politicians and the financiers. This chapter does not profess to touch on one in twenty of the interesting cities of America, even in this particular aspect of their relation to the history of America, which is so much neglected in England. If that were so, there would be a great deal to say even about the newest of them; ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... daughter eagerly. She began to have hopes. Now, if only she could get the right touch on ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... thought it a mirage and watched it with eyes grown weary of the desert's delusions. But as the road bore toward it, it steadied to their anxious gaze, expanded into a patch that lay a living touch on the earth's dead face. By the time that dusk gathered they saw that it was trees and knew that Humboldt was in sight. At nightfall they reached it, the first outpost sent into the wilderness by the new country. The red light of fires came through the dusk ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... a soft summer wind; coming and going, and coming again. It calls for no answer or return; only it is there with its blessing, comforting tired nerves and soothing ruffled spirits. Mr. Copley hardly knew what Dolly was doing; hardly knew that it was Dolly; when now it was a gentle touch on his arm, leading him to the tea-table, and now a specially prepared cup, and Dolly bringing it, and standing before him smiling and tasting it, looking at him over it. And Mr. Copley certainly thought at such times that a prettier vision ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... old Duchess die outright, As you expect, of suppressed spite, The natural end of every adder Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder: {810} But she and her son agreed, I take it, That no one should touch on the story to wake it, For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery; So, they made no search and small inquiry: And when fresh gypsies have paid us a visit, I've Noticed the couple were never inquisitive, But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here, And bade them make haste and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... dark. I stumbled along the heaving bricks, now guiding myself by a hand on the whitewashed wall, now by a touch on a column wet with the storm. From all the eaves the rain was dripping on to the pebbles at the foot of the arcade: a pigeon, startled from the capital where it was sleeping, beat its way into the cloister close. Still the white thing ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... wind curled languidly in through the open church window, stirring the curly lock which Boyd now and then impatiently pushed away from his eyes ... was a delicate fingertip touch on Drew's cheek. A subdued shuffle of feet could be heard as the congregation arose. It was Sunday in Gainesville, and a congregation such as could only have gathered there on this particular May 7, 1865. Rusty gray-brown, patched, and with ill-mended ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... I'd sleep on the parlor sofa and leave the guest-room free, and Mr. Dane declaring he'd got a million things to do before sailing. Then he and Charles Edward dashed out into the night, as Alice would say, and I should have thought it was a dream that he'd been there at all except that I felt his touch on my hand. And Lorraine put her arms round me and kissed me and said, "Now, you sweet child, run up-stairs and look at the moonlight ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... it is not obviously true. Mere derision, mere contempt, never produced or could produce parody. A man who simply despises Paderewski for having long hair is not necessarily fitted to give an admirable imitation of his particular touch on the piano. If a man wishes to parody Paderewski's style of execution, he must emphatically go through one process first: he must admire it, and even reverence it. Bret Harte had a real power of imitating ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... might come sometimes—not very often," she said at last, with a sympathetic touch on my sleeve, "an' you must come to the side gate where grandmama won't see you. I'll let you in an' mamma will not mind. But you mustn't come often," she concluded in a sterner tone, "only once or twice, so that there won't ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... sensibility &c 375. sore point, sore place; where the shoe pinches. V. be sensible &c adj.; have a tender heart, have a warm heart, have a sensitive heart. take to heart, treasure up in the heart; shrink. die of a rose in aromatic pain [Pope]; touch to the quick; touch on the raw, touch a raw nerve. Adj. sensible, sensitive; impressible, impressionable; susceptive, susceptible; alive to, impassionable^, gushing; warm hearted, tender hearted, soft hearted; tender ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and declined. Sixty new members were admitted into the church, and things settled into the old state. School was resumed; I found that not one of my schoolmates had met with a change, but Miss Black did not touch on the topic. My year was nearly out; March had come and gone, and it was now April. One mild day, in the latter part of the month, the girls went to the yard at recess. Charlotte Alden said pleasantly that the weather ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... is doubtful whether Giorgione would be capable of the intellectual effort which produced the dreamy, passionate expression of the young monk, borne far out of himself by his own melody, and half recalled to life by the touch on his shoulder. Titian, like Giorgione, was a musician, and the fascination of music is felt by many masters of the Italian schools. In one picture the player feels vaguely after the melody, in another we are asked to anticipate the song that is just about to begin, or the last chords of ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the piercing chilliness of the washing tide—powerless to move or smile again. She would look well so, I thought—better to my mind than she looked in the arms of her lover last night. I fell into a train of profound meditation—a touch on my shoulder startled me. I looked up, the captain of the brig stood beside me. He smiled and held out ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... necessity for cable communication between the United States and Hawaii, with extension to Manila. Since then circumstances have strikingly emphasized this need. Surveys have shown the entire feasibility of a chain of cables which at each stopping place shall touch on American territory, so that the system shall be under our own complete control. Manila once within telegraphic reach, connection with the systems of the Asiatic coast would open increased and profitable opportunities for a more direct cable route from our shores to the Orient than ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... moment Sylvia felt a touch on her arm and looking round found herself face to face with Albert Morris, a short red ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... for me. If sadness and sorrow tend to loosen us from life, they make the place of rest more desirable." The talk of Socrates in the Republic, and the fine phrases in Cicero's De Senectute, hardly touch on the great grief, apart from physical infirmities, of old age—its increasing solitariness. After sixty, a man may make disciples and converts, but few new friends, while the old ones die daily; the "familiar faces" ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... cars, the piles of rails— you too are of to-morrow, grafted with an alien energy. You wear the costume of the west, you speak my tongue as one who knows; you talk casually of Sheffield, Pittsburgh, Essen.... You touch on Socialism, walk-outs, and the industrial population of the British Isles. Almost you might be one ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... hospitably received by Menelek. The British one, under Mr (afterwards Sir) Rennell Rodd, concluded a friendly treaty with Abyssinia (15th of May 1897), but did not, except in the direction of Somaliland, touch on frontier questions, which for several years continued a subject of discussion. During the same year (1897) a small French expedition under Messrs Clochette and de Bonchamps endeavoured to reach the Nile, but, after surmounting ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Surrender was printed on every feature. The wild fury of the passionate struggle that convulsed her, had spent itself; and as after a violent wintry tempest the gale subsides, and the snow compassionately shrouds the scene, burning the dead sparrows, the bruised flowers, so submission laid her cold touch on this quivering face, and veiled and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... account of a single event, not of a sequence; and that event is contemporary, not antecedent. In the third scene, the meeting of Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches, we have what may be called an exposition reversed; not a narrative of the past, but a foreshadowing of the future. Here we touch on one of the subtlest of the playwright's problems—the art of arousing anticipation in just the right measure. But that is not the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... make a sea voyage so infinitely interesting. I would suggest large sized charts showing landmarks, ship's position, and barometrical readings. What is more interesting at sea than the charts of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the poor first class passengers have a compass, if not a barograph and a thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the Briscoe picket fence, and a sound lilted through the stillness—a touch on the keys that Harkless knew. "Listen," ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... had been very explicit: "You are to proceed on as direct a course as you can to the coast of New Albion, endeavoring to fall in with it in latitude 45 degrees north . . . and are strictly enjoined {183} not to touch on any part of the Spanish dominions . . . unless driven by accident . . . and to be very careful not to give any umbrage to the subjects of his Catholic Majesty . . . and if in further progress northward . . . you find any subjects of a European prince . . . you are not to give ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Clementina dropped asleep she heard her breathing with long, easy, quiet respirations, and she lost the fear of the landlord's dish which had haunted her through the evening. She was awakened in the morning by a touch on her shoulder. Maddalena hung over her with a frightened face, and implored her to come and look at the signora, who seemed not at all well. Clementina ran into her room, and found her dead. She must have died some hours before without a struggle, for the face was that of sleep, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... being—our blissful being! There they sat—silent in all that outcry—composed in all that disarray—still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a prisoner—a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy flight. One old game treads on the heels of another—twenty within the hour—and many a new game never heard of before ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... but interested; and she indicated in the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her night-gown, that he ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Her own beautiful blond locks were piled high, and the style became her. But Charlotte's dusky braids were prettier low on the white neck, in the girlish fashion in which they had long been worn, and Celia announced this fact with a loving touch on the graceful coiffure her own hands had arranged ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... sudden withdrawal of the cooling touch on his forehead, and then hasty steps that went away from him, and the sound ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... 'You touch on delicate ground,' said Millbank; 'yet from me you may learn to suffer. There was a being once, not less fair than the peerless girl that you would fain call your own, and her heart was my proud possession. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... maid approached her with a hare's-foot and a saucer, to put a finishing touch on her face, to which she submitted with indifference, listening all the time to the music that came to her through the open door. There was time yet, but she was not impatient any more; the opera had begun and she was a part of it already, before she had set her foot upon the stage, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... modern vocal theorists generally believe that the most important materials of instruction were for some reason not mentioned. Three registers are mentioned by Tosi, while Mancini speaks of only two. Both touch on the necessity of equalizing the registers, but give no specific directions for this purpose. About all these early writers have left us, in the opinion of most modern students of their works, is the outline of an elaborate system of vocal ornaments ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... obtained, so soon as they were assumed as the vehicles of its life, the new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very words which they employed. This is a subject which I shall have occasion to touch on more than once in these lectures, but is itself well worthy of, as it would afford ample material ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... not my purpose to attempt an account of the surgery done by this eminent man, only to touch on some of its salient points. Thus he successfully removed an ovarian tumor, at a time when the operation had been done only a few times in the world. He removed a boy's tongue which measured eight inches in circumference, and projected five inches beyond the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... see Ripley and to congratulate him on his achievement. "Your promotion is certain, Captain Ripley," he said kindly; "and I should think his Majesty, when he hears of your gallantry, won't forget to give a touch on your shoulder with the flat of his sword, eh. You will find a handle to your name convenient, and you deserve it, that you do, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... deception. I laughed aloud triumphantly, and slapped my hand down upon my knee with the feelings of a fugitive debtor, who, hotly pursued by a sheriff's officer, escapes over the line into another county, and snaps his fingers at Monsieur Bailiff. I was aroused from my merry mood of reverie by a touch on my shoulder. I turned suddenly. It was the hard-faced little old gentleman, peeping in from the street. His broad-brimmed hat and two-thirds of his face were just lifted above the window-sill. He was evidently standing on tiptoe; and the window being ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... my purpose to outline the domestic relations in the maternal family clan, and to examine the sex-customs and forms of marriage. I shall limit myself to those matters which throw some light on the position of women, and shall touch on the features of social life only in so far as they illustrate this. These questions will be discussed in the three succeeding chapters. Some portion of the matter given has appeared already in the section on the "Mother-Age Civilisation" ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ceased and they stood still, breathing quickly, hemmed in by a large group of people. After a while Caroline suddenly felt a touch on her shoulder from behind. "I say, Laura, I thought you were not——" And she turned round sharply to see Wilson with outstretched arm peering between heads. "Oh," he exclaimed—"so sorry! I took you for Miss Temple. I only caught a ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... he could well enough make out the outline of past events; still, there was too much left to conjecture for his mind not to be always busy on the subject. He felt inclined to probe Mr. Wilkins in their after- dinner conversation, in which his host was frank and lax enough on many subjects. But once touch on the name of Dunster and Mr. Wilkins sank into a kind of suspicious depression of spirits; talking little, and with evident caution; and from time to time shooting furtive glances at his interlocutor's ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as in every other German work that has occasion to touch on abstract matters, there occur sentences couched in a peculiar terminology and not very susceptible of translation. There are one or two sentences of this sort, more especially in the chapter on Religion in the 1st volume, and in the critique of Euripides as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to us, and has taken all our nature upon Himself. If there is an outcast and abandoned soul on earth which may not feel that Jesus has laid a loving and healing touch on him, Jesus is not the Saviour for the world. He shrinks from none, He unites Himself with all, therefore 'He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him.' His conduct is the pattern and the law for us. A Church ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... content to continue the conversation. There was something so unusual in most of her opinions that I wanted to hear more, although I confess that what she said interested me less than she herself did. Before I could touch on another topic, however, the ladies ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... mean? Well, yes; no doubt her marriage has given her a sort of dolorous experience. She is acquainted with actual life. When it so happens that in the course of conversation we touch on such subjects I find she always leans to the darker side." He paused for a moment, adding abruptly, "And then there ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... writes because she cannot help writing; her works, contained in forty-odd volumes, touch on the most vital subjects in the world about her. She tells the truth precisely as she sees it. We may hope for much yet from the pen of this lady, who is still in the best years of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... into the hall, and stood at the back, under the gallery. Once more, she was aware of the stir that ran through the audience, as Schilsky walked down the platform. Hardly, however, had he drawn his bow across the strings, when she felt a touch on her arm, and a Russian, who was an intimate friend of his, beckoned her outside. There, he told her that he had been sent to ask her to leave the hall; and they smiled at each other, in understanding of the whim. Afterwards, she learned how, just about to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... sigh, which seemed much like a groan, into an arm-chair, and was lost in painful recollections. A gentle touch on his hand, which rested on the side-arm of the chair, restored him to consciousness. Before him stood the dauphin, and looked gravely and thoughtfully out of his large blue eyes up ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... imagined the girl making fun of his sentimental reasons for staying on deck; but, too proud to meet her ironical glances, stayed doggedly where he was, resolving to be off by the first train in the morning. He was roused from his gloom by a slight touch on his arm, and, turning sharply, saw the girl ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... had a filament attached externally along one side of the midrib and parallel to it, so that the filament would move if the lobes closed. It should be first stated that, although a touch on one of the sensitive hairs of a vigorous leaf causes it to close quickly, often almost instantly, yet when a bit of damp meat or some solution of carbonate of ammonia is placed on the lobes, they close so slowly that generally 24 h. is required for the ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... Cousin Mary all about the Christmas-tree, and the things that Santa Claus brought, I shall not touch on that subject. Now I hope, Cousin Richard, you have not forgotten your promise to ...
— The Nursery, January 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... class a teacher is often worried because there is not enough time in a single forty-minute lesson a week to touch on all of such subjects as chords, cadences, extemporizing, transposition, &c., in addition to sight-singing and dictation. It is certainly quite impossible to do so, and this is one of the reasons for apparently slow progress. But there is, ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death; Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, Bathed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Charge at Ely, August 7, 1710, no less than three folio pages are filled with accounts of the abuse of the clergy, and the way in which the clergy should meet it. Secker's, Butler's, and Horsley's Charges all touch on the same subject.] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... not emerge from the tomb till the third day afterwards, when Christ had risen. Is this credible? or is it an apocryphal marvel, which has been interpolated in the text of St. Matthew? The other Evangelists, while, along with St. Matthew, narrating the rending of the veil, do not touch on this incident at all. The whole representation, it is argued, lacks the sobriety which is characteristic of the authentic miracles of the Gospels and broadly separates them from the ecclesiastical ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... patronizing which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets over such questions; but they were in his pocket when Pym or Elspeth opened the door. It is wonderful how much you can conceal between the touch on the handle and the opening of the door, if ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... peninsula drew towards its ocean coasts; that there grew up on either side of the Channel which separates the Continent from Britain, the two great capitals in which modern activity is chiefly concentrated; that Northern Germany, together with the races which touch on the North Sea and the Baltic, developed a life and a system of their own; it is in these regions latterly that the universal spirit of the human race chiefly works out its task, and displays its activity in moulding states, creating ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the parish church Sunday morning was largely attended. Word had spread rapidly that the Bishop would arrive during the week, and it was confidently expected that the parson would touch on the question ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... through the choir-screen upon the spot whence the stranger had disappeared, her bosom, torn by these conflicting passions of horror, pity, love, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder, and turning, saw the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Reginald Simpkins and his transformation to manhood. And therefore, before I tell of the raid itself, I will touch on one or two matters concerning that transformation, and the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... these feelings in his heart that he went back to the camps to his work among the sick and wounded in body and in heart. And as he went in and out among the men they became conscious of a new spirit in him. His touch on the knife was as sure as ever, his nerve as steady, but while the old reserve still held his lips from overflowing, the words that dropped were kinder, the tone gentler, the touch more tender. The terrible restlessness, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic that must of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficulty among Latins like yourself. Against this preposterous Prussian upstart we have not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... in his Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above Mr. Forster's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is going to try a London life. So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with an easier mind than when I wrote last, for I was for a little time rendered very unhappy (so unhappy that I couldn't touch on the subject, which is always the way with me when pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally that papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted in replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that I was quite absurd, indeed, in being anxious ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... lay sleeping, it seemed to him that there was a touch on his forehead of something like a hand, and a murmur in his ear of something like a voice, and, what is more, a woman's voice. In a moment he was wide awake, and had started up and was staring around. The moonbeams streamed through the narrow windows into the room and fell in broad strips ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... After these three Spencer Perceval stood up. He recited the duty to our neighbour in the catechism, and descanted on that text in a style in all respects far superior to the others. He appeared about to touch on politics, and (as well as I recollect) was saying, 'Ye trusted that your institutions were unalterable, ye believed that your loyalty to your King, your respect for your nobility, your'—when suddenly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... came from his chamber, the ante-room being filled with his gentlemen and the leaders of the army, he stopped and laid his hand with a kindly touch on ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... taking any money, and I begged him to pick it up again and then I began to try to tell him about how hard it was to get along and to ask him to get work for Uncle William, but I started to cry again. Mr. Peters came over to my chair and took hold of the arm of it and told me not to cry. Somehow his touch on the arm of the chair thrilled all through me and though I knew that it was wrong I let him keep it there and even let him stroke the upholstery and I don't know just what would have happened but at that very minute Uncle William came in. He was most courteous to Mr. Peters and expressed his apologies ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Caucarouse was in great danger. That night, while all the Englishmen except their leader were out hunting, the Captain sat alone in his wigwam musing on ways and means to gain his end. There was a sound in the still forest—a crackling of underbrush—he roused at a light touch on his arm. Pocahontas stood by his side, alone in the darkness; swiftly she whispered her message and he understood its gravity ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... thereto by the people." A few weeks later he was chosen to the House, and the district continued to send him every two years from that time until his death. He did much excellent work in the House, and was conspicuous in more than one memorable scene; but here it is possible to touch on only a single point, where he came forward as the champion of a great principle, and fought a battle for the right which will always be remembered among the great ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... his long white beard and snow-white head, impressive as the type of venerable age, was putting Aunt Clara's foot into a soft shoe as carefully as though it was the last time it could be dressed. She 74, neat and velvet-faced, was stone blind, and so paralyzed that the slightest touch on the arm or hand made her spring and cry like a child. The shock put out both her eyes, and made her as helpless as an ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a light touch on his arm, and turned to see the starlike beauty of Dona Jocasta beside him. Truly the companionship of Dona Jocasta might be a more difficult thing to explain than that of the Indian girl of a ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Forbes' statement concerning his examination of the copies of the Shahnama in the British Museum, puts a crowning touch on his arbitrary and insulting style and furnishes an example of his notions ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... the terrace beside one of the carriages; at a little distance a groom was holding the nervous thoroughbred of Lord Algernon's dog-cart. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder, and Miss Desborough's maid put a note in his hand. It contained only ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... later when he became aware that a weight lay upon his chest, and that something was pencilling over his face and mouth. A soft touch on the cheek woke ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... enabled to do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime, saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... for their own women. But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory helpmeets for American girls. It is impossible to touch on more than a side or two of this subject. But as an illustration the following contrasted ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... he entered, hurrying through the brilliant crowd, he felt a touch on his arm. Flooded with an incredible certainty at the touch, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... no more. I never exceed two or three glasses, you know. Thank you, my dear Miss Starbrow, for a most delightful evening." And after shaking hands he made his way to the door, bestowing a kindly touch on each chair in passing, and appearing greatly relieved when he ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... as they waited in the darkness, now hopeful, now despondent, for Oliver felt a touch on his arm simultaneously with a soft, rustling sound, and the pat, pat of naked feet going over ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Diana's touch on his forehead, her tender, gentle fingers smoothing his hair as they gazed together at the mysterious shadowy depth beyond which flowed the Colorado; that tender touch on his hair and forehead and the desert ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... immeasurably of recent years at the expense of the direct representatives of the people. There are, however, powerful influences at work in the opposite direction, towards decentralization and new forms of representation, which there is no space to touch on here. Suffice it to say that here, as elsewhere, the price ...
— Progress and History • Various
... touch on his arm, glanced sullenly round, and saw a face under whose beauty lay the devil. Marway, with eye and thumb, requested him to withdraw for a moment, and he did not hesitate. As he went he chuckled to himself at the thought of Clare when ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... with a little chuckle; "we kept a touch on our irons when I was asking you who you were; and if the reply hadn't been all that it was, I reckon we'd have politely asked you to throw up your hands, boys. But say, this meat is prime, and seems to go ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... Russians as they rode away. Concha was to return as she had come, beside the carreta of her mother, and as Rezanov mounted his horse she stood staring with unseeing eyes on the brilliant, animated scene. Suddenly she heard a suppressed sob, and felt a touch on her skirt. She looked round and saw Rosa, kneeling close to the church. For a moment she continued to stare, hardly comprehending, in the intense concentration of her faculties, that tangible beings, other than herself and Rezanov, still moved on the earth. Then her mind relaxed. She was normal ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Palmer took her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss Mary's blood turned to water. "She knows about me!" she thought and nearly fell ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... continued his walk towards the town, with the same deliberate step as before. He had whiled away many minutes unconsciously, and would probably have lost the reckoning of as many more, had not his attention been suddenly diverted by a slight touch on the shoulder. Starting at this unexpected diversion, he turned, and saw, that, in his dilatory progress, he had been overtaken by the seaman whom he had last seen in that very society in which he would have given so much to ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... quite realise the fact as yet—perhaps did not realise it at all—but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she knew it just as little ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... He would read these between the strokes and dictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the five minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I am inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his opponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to have the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy a letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contents noted. In reply would state——" This sort of thing ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... faculties: it knows nothing of genius, fancy, wit, invention, presence of mind, resource. It does not discourse of empire, commerce, enterprise, learning, philosophy, or the fine arts. Slightly too does it touch on the more simple and innocent courses of nature and their reward. Little does it say(29) of those temporal blessings which rest upon our worldly occupations, and make them easy, of the blessings which we derive from the sunshine day and the serene night, from the succession ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the Carthaginians very attractive: fluent on morals, cuisine, manners, steamboats, the turf, fashions, the chase; voluble on the burdensomeness of the slave to his master, the blessedness of the master to his slave; but sore to the touch on politics and religion—with their religion quite innocently adjusted to their politics—and promptly going hard aground on any allusion to history, travel, the poets, statistics, architecture, ornithology, art, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... a more personal shape when the speaker, branching off from the main subject of Socialism, began to touch on temperance. There was no particular reason why Mr Waller should have introduced the subject of temperance, except that he happened to be an enthusiast. He linked it on to his remarks on Socialism by attributing the lethargy of the masses to their fondness ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... brightening the prosaic present with something of the glamour of the half-mythical past, even of flattering his auditors with the suggestion that they were the descendants and heirs of the men who had seceded to the Aventine, it was necessary for a popular orator to touch on the great epoch of the struggle between the orders. But Memmius, while satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction of the subject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch when liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to illustrate the uselessness of such ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... was surprising its driver. It answered his least touch on the lever controls. The engines were working perfectly. Only now and again he caught a faint lurch which told his practiced senses that some of the rudely improvised splices were working loose. Even these gave him no great alarm; at least, they did not ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... distinctly, and one also sees that he is not shabby. The little that seems lacking is woman's care, the brush of attentive fingers here and there, the turning of a fold in the high-collared coat, and a mere touch on the neckerchief and shirt-frill. He has a decidedly good forehead. His blue eyes, while they are both strong and modest, are noticeable, too, as betraying fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them is deepened by a certain ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was accurately based on that of Correggio, it lacked his aerial play of semitones. Though they went straight to Titian for color, they never approached Venetian lucidity and glow. There was something vulgar in their imagination, prosaic in their feeling, leaden in their frigid touch on legend. Who wants those countless gods and goddesses of the Farnese Gallery, those beblubbered saints and colossal Sibyls of the Bolognese Pinacoteca, those chubby cherubs and buxom nymphs, those Satyrs and S. Sebastians, to come down from the walls and live with us? The ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... early part of this work the base charge that Logan was not loyal before the War has been briefly touched on. It may be well here to touch on it more fully. As was then remarked, the only man that ever dared insinuate to Logan's face that he was a Secession sympathizer before the War, was Senator Ben Hill of Georgia, in the United States Senate Chamber, March 30, 1881; and Logan instantly retorted: 'Any man who insinuates that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... rude, is delicate in art - More delicate than Summer or than fall (Even as rugged man is more refined In vital things than woman). Winter's touch On Nature seemed most beautiful of all - That evanescent beauty of the frost On window panes; of clean, fresh, fallen snow; Of white, white sunlight on the ice-draped trees. Winter, though rude, is delicate ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... might I suggest that you should have an interview with Mrs. Brown-Smith herself? I assure you that you can trust her, and I happen to know that her view of the man about whom we are talking is exactly your own. More I could say as to her reasons and motives, but we entirely decline to touch on the past or to offer any opinion about the characters of our patients—the persons about whose engagements we are consulted. He might have murdered his grandmother or robbed a church, but my ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... types of lessee seem likely, sooner or later, to demand the attention of the National Mining Board. (I shall not touch on the question of distribution, inland and export. That is another and quite ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... up that night, just after she had gone to sleep, by a touch on the cheek. Her mother, palely indistinct in the darkness, was standing by the bedside. She wore a white wrap over her night attire, and the customary white bandage from which emanated a faint odour of eau-de-Cologne, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Haven is in Michigan, and in possession, too, Of as many rare attractions as our party ever knew:— The fine hotel, the landlord, and the lordly bill of fare, And the dainty-neat completeness of the pretty waiters there; The touch on the piano in the parlor, and the trill Of the exquisite soprano, in our fancy singing still; Our cozy room, its comfort, and our thousand grateful tho'ts, And at our door the gentle ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... have come to be equally unpleasant descriptions. So for drunken the euphemism intemperate came to be used, but is now hardly a more polite description. We would not willingly speak of a person being "fat" in his presence. If it is necessary to touch on the subject, the word "stout" is more favoured. In the absence of the fat person the humorous euphemism may be used by which he or she is said to "have a good ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... wakened by Molly's touch on her arm. It was late afternoon. Rhoda looked up into the squaw's face and drew a quick hard breath as realization ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... black line of roofs like a knife edge against a liquid, shimmering sky, down a broad ghostly band of silver white that was the road, all flecked and mottled with leaf shadows that moved slowly to and fro. He paused a moment. He scarcely dared breathe lest the whole thing vanish. A fairy touch on his arm, light as thistle-down, a subtle sense of warmth and a dim, intangible fragrance, and he started, blinking, and then walked on. Something was dry and dusty in his throat. "Golly, the old place sorta gets next to you on a night like this," he thought. "Guess ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least despair!'—and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Then, drawing her closer, I touched her lips with mine. But who was ever satisfied with that one touch on the lips for which the heart has craved? It was like contact with a strange, celestial fire that instantly kindled my love to madness. Again and yet again I kissed her; I pressed her lips till they were dry and burned like fire, then kissed cheek, forehead, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting and fishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing, are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on human processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory excitement so long the sole province ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... live in. I don't suppose New York is worse than London in that respect. The poor have a hard time of it anywhere. A man owes it to himself and family not to be poor. Now, that's one thing I like about your book; you touch on poverty in a sympathetic way, by George, like a man who had come through it himself. I've been there, and I know how it is. When I first struck New York I hadn't even a ragged dollar bill to my back. Of course every successful man will tell you the same of himself, ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... caught into his arms, but he turned away from her irresolutely. The last glow was gone from behind the Mountain. Everything in the room had turned grey and indistinct, and an autumnal dampness crept up from the hollow below the orchard, laying its cold touch on their flushed faces. Harney walked the length of the room, and then turned back and ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... poet's home-life would be incomplete did I not touch on his passionate fondness for his grand-children, the two little beings whose prattle and caresses lend a charm of peculiar sweetness to the waning hours of that illustrious career. For them the world-renowned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of Messene, who flourished 200 B.C., represents the literary and political energy still surviving in Greece under the Achaean League. Many of his epigrams touch on the history of the period; several are directed against Philip III. of Macedonia. The earliest to which a date can be fixed is on the destruction of Macynus in Aetolia by Philip, B.C. 218 or 219 (Polyb. iv. 65), and the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... his head bowed down upon them. Bills and papers, scattered in profusion on the table, showed what had been the nature of the occupation which he had not had the courage to finish. He started from his posture of despair as his wife laid a gentle touch on his shoulder; and, without uttering a word, she placed the unopened letter in ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... It is, however, the picture in these letters of the society of the French emigres in and about London that gives so much interest to the last group of correspondence. Of this, however, it will be more fitting to speak when the letters which touch on ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... sure that he had ever heard of Realism, this remarkable compound having (although it was invented some time earlier) come into general use only since his death. He had certainly not proposed to himself to give an account of the social idiosyncrasies of his fellow-citizens, for his touch on such points is always light and vague, he has none of the apparatus of an historian, and his shadowy style of portraiture never suggests a rigid standard of accuracy. Nevertheless he virtually offers the most vivid reflection of New England life that has found its way ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... well as by their goodness, can secure respect and exercise authority. It is the lawlessness of men that one deplores; the presumption of individual priests striking out for themselves unauthorised ways of managing their parishes and officiating in their churches. And, if I may dare to touch on such a subject, is there not a mode of speaking and writing on the Holy Eucharist prevalent among some men now, which has no parallel in the Church of England, except, it may be, in some of the non-jurors, and which does not express the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them. It was more like a town crowd preventing the passage of the police than anything the poet had ever pictured as the last stand of doomed and outlawed men of blood. Just as he was rolling his eyes in bewilderment he felt a touch on his elbow, and found the odd little priest standing there like a small Noah with a large hat, and requesting the favour of ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... to Vane, but felt a touch on his shoulder, and, looking round, it was to gaze in the ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... they rose and returned to the building. The airlocks opened at a touch on the operating handles. Inside, the air was fresh and sweet, the temperature was a pleasantly uniform 75 degrees Fahrenheit, the fans were humming softly, and there was running hot and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... grunting at a great rate, and the forge fire was throwing upon the ceiling fantastic illuminations and causing a thousand still more fantastic shadows, when, wholly without preliminary warning or greeting, Billy felt a slight touch on his arm. It was a slight touch, as I said, but a cold one, a very cold one indeed. Billy turned swiftly around with his hammer in one hand and his red-hot iron in the other. Standing almost beside him, with the glare of the fire working a curiously weird effect upon one-half ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... rather a delicate matter to touch on. I know, of course, that you're in the enviable position of having your fortune invested in the best ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... host, as the saying goes. Chester Hunt did come home to luncheon. She had just put the finishing touch on the sideboard, having rubbed the massive old silver and scrubbed the beautiful Wedgwood pitchers so that the former shone with some of its pristine glory and the latter's little fat cupids and heavy garlands of roses ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... A touch on Pine's shoulder made him leap to his feet with the alertness of a wild animal on the lookout for danger. By his side stood Chaldea, and her eyes glittered, as she came to the point of explanation without any preamble. The girl was painfully direct. "I have heard every word," she said ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... more quietly, for the force of her passion had exhausted her, when a very light touch on her shoulder caused her to raise herself and look up wildly. Prissie ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... them—his bibelots. He loved them intensely, like a miser; jealously, like a lover. Every day, at sunset, the iron gates at either end of the bridge and at the entrance to the court of honor are closed and barred. At the least touch on these gates, electric bells will ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... he did not know. The groups before him shifted and changed confusedly. The lights seemed to blaze and to dim, and then to blaze again. After a long interval he became aware of a touch on his arm. He looked down. A piquant, dark-eyed, tilt-nosed girl ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... stopped, for Mrs. Mayton put her handkerchief to her eyes. Two or three moments later she felt a light touch on her knee, and, wiping her eyes, saw Budge looking ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... parties began to cry aloud for some settlement of the succession. These humors broke out with great vehemence in a new session of parliament, held after six prorogations. The house of peers, which had hitherto forborne to touch on this delicate point, here took the lead; and the house of commons soon after imitated the zeal of the lords. Molineux opened the matter in the lower house, and proposed, that the question of the succession and that of supply should go hand in hand; as if it were intended ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... a touch on his shoulder, when he awoke and was surprised to find Bill and Addie Neidic standing by ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... all, Hector," he said, suddenly, as they sat together in the twilight: "well, I excuse you," with a laugh and a touch on ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... untroubled snow, fold over fold of undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills. There is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling sound. The magic is like a spirit mood of Shelley's lyric verse. And, what is perhaps most wonderful, this delicate delight may be enjoyed without fear in the coldest weather. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... sister to and precursor of death; and he thinks of it as capable of being cleansed only by a sacerdotal act, only by the great High Priest and by His finger being laid upon it. And we know who it was that—when the leper, whom no man in Israel was allowed to touch on pain of uncleanness, came to His feet—put out His hand in triumphant consciousness of power, and touched him, and said, 'I will! be thou clean.' Let this be thy prayer, 'Cleanse me from my sin'; and Christ will answer, 'Thy leprosy hath departed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dreamed that he was again standing near the little lake in his native land, watching the rays of the setting sun as they melted away from its surface. The beautiful lily was in his hand, and while he looked at it the leaves became withered, and fell at his feet. Then he felt a light touch on his hand. He looked up, and there on the chair beside him ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... militated against all his maxims of government; and he forthwith wrote a letter to the speaker of the House of Commons, commanding him to admonish the members "not to presume to meddle with matters of state which were beyond their capacity, and especially not to touch on his son's marriage." The Commons, not dismayed, and conscious of strength, sent up a new remonstrance in which they affirmed that they were entitled to interpose with their counsel in all matters of state, and that ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Yabsley to touch on her private sorrows, and there was an embarrassing silence. But suddenly, from the corner of Pitt Street, appeared a strange figure of a man, roaring out a song in the voice of one selling fish. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... most intimately private matters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of the world, unable to think, not even able to count! We can only greet them with a smile. But this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely serious aspect, and I should be sorry even to touch on the question of birth-control in relation to "Race-Suicide" without ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis |
