Idonia: A Romance of Old London

The first remembrance I hold of my father is of a dark-suited tall man of an unchanging gravity on all occasions. He had, moreover, a manner of saying "Ay, ay," which I early ca...

It is, I conceive, natural in a young man to use more time than wisdom in the building of hopes which be little else than dreams, though they appear then more solid than gross r...

I found my father sitting as his wont was in the high wainscoted book-room beyond the hall. When I entered he looked up from a pile of papers he had been diligently perusing, an...

In the middle of the month of November our business was pretty well settled, and the day of my departure ordained, which was to be upon the Wednesday following, there being a fr...

I awoke long before dawn on that memorable Wednesday which was to set a term to my pleasant and not altogether idle life in the Combe. Yet early as I had awakened, my father pre...

I leave you to imagine whether Sir Matthew made much or little of our adventure in the marshes, and of the part he took therein, when, having parted from us, he found himself fr...

I think I overlaid my conscience in the night, seeing I stayed abed until near seven o'clock next morning, a thing I had never before done; but, indeed, I had now some colour of...

On the morrow I rose very contrite for the proneness of my mind towards pleasures, and calling to remembrance with an excessive sadness, that protestation of our bailiff's again...

I mind me of a sad play once I saw, that is played now in a duke's palace, and after in a glade within a forest, where one of the persons, a noble youth whom his presumption hat...

laying a hand upon my shoulder, "for we that use the playhouse and the jolly tavern understand these things well enough. No need for words where a nod sufficeth. But the women w...

My father replied about ten days after to the letter I had writ him, with another of so sweet a tenour (and yet shrewd enough in the business parts of it), as reading it, I coul...

There was a press of people about the door as I went forth, which so hindered my passage as Mr. Nelson, who had started up in alarm of my sudden departure, caught me ere I had r...

I know not yet (and I thank Heaven for my ignorance) what may be the peculiar weakness of old age, though I suspect it to lie in an excessive regard for life; but of youth I hav...

If a young man's heels be seldom slow to follow after his heart whither he hath left it for lost, he hath indeed so many classical examples to draw upon as he need stand in no f...

But so confused as I was by her laughter, I could neither deny nor confirm that saying, but stood before her very hot in the face and, I make no question, as sour to look upon a...

Take a town for all in all, in its sadness and pleasure, the shows that pass through it, the proclamations of kings, the tolling of the great bell, marshallings of men-at-arms a...

We had stood awhile fronting each other thus, when "By the Mass!" cried Mr. Skene, clapping his open palm upon my shoulder, "'tis Mr. Denis Cleeve or the devil is in it," and so...

I was in the midst of a most excellent and comforting dream of Idonia, to whom I was again happily united, and we (if I rightly call it to mind), Duke and Duchess of Salamanca o...

The execution of my design was precipitated by a certain accident which at that time befell me, and was by me regarded as happy or untoward, according as I dwelt upon the recogn...

In the wan light, with which the room was now gradually filling, I looked at the man I had been so strangely moved to succour, and knew him for my old antagonist, Guido Malpas....

The events which succeeded upon my escape from the _Fair Haven_ of Wapping have come to assume in my mind a significance and singular quality of completeness that hath, therefor...

My father once, reading in a favourite philosopher, paused with his finger on a certain passage to ask me what I made of the sense of that he should read; and so continuing his...

The tide had turned. The river had given up its dead. There was no appeal from this distorted corpse, smirched with yellow so about the throat and breast, where my uncle's paint...

Whatever the doubts I may at first have entertained, it was soon enough abundantly clear that the _Saracen's Head_ was under way toward the open sea; for from my place in the ho...

Now, had I but had the luck to know it, my two captors were themselves of this guild of the ferrymen whose rights they so stoutly stood by; and I could have obtained my freedom...

To tell all that befell me ere I set foot in England once more were scarce less tedious to the reader than it was to me in the happening, who counted each day for lost until I h...