"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (which went through many editions after its first appearance in 1494), is an engraving of a fool, wearing cap and bells, seated astride on the back of a lobster, with a broken reed in his hand, and a pigeon flying past him as he stares vacantly at it with open mouth. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... henna, and who rattled and clinked as they moved and the barbaric ornaments of silver and gold which circled their arms and ankles shifted upon their small-boned limbs. The blind man was singing loudly. The women, staring vacantly, held the corners of their cloaks mechanically to their already covered faces. The man with the bristling beard talked violently with friends, and occasionally, interrupting himself abruptly, joined almost furiously in the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Andelsprutz in her houses looked vacantly over the plains like the eyes of a dead madman. At the hour her chimes sounded unlovely and discordant, some of them were out of tune, and the bells of some were cracked, her roofs were bald and without moss. At evening no pleasant rumour arose in her streets. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... staring vacantly at the half-empty shelves, and all but shivering in the damp room. There was no heater in the store at any season, and the one in the office, if used, emitted spurts of smoke through every aperture ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... motionless in her chair, her elbow leaning on the carved arm-piece, her chin supported upon the back of her half-closed hand, of which the heavy, perfect fingers were turned inwards, drooping in classic curves towards the lace about her throat. Her strangely mismatched eyes stared vacantly towards an imaginary horizon, not bounded by banks of flowers, nor obscured by the fantastic foliage of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... at the window—for even the dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it—while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he to pass the time till the house was astir the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... days of my youth as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things, I became sadder and sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire till my eyes closed in ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... cheerful servant, with nothing in his look to recall the proud gentleman of the Tidewater. Donaldson sat on a log, contentedly smoking his pipe, while Ringan, whistling a strathspey, attended to the horses. Only Shalah stood aloof, his eyes fixed vacantly on the western sky, and his ear intent on the multitudinous ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... seemed to have gone out of the world, all the scent out of the roses. Villon could only repeat to himself: "A week!" and stare vacantly at the king. The king emphasized his offer, lingering ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs Fred, screaming and terrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on the table gave a certain ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... face in turn and stared vacantly at her sister. It was so blurred and swollen with incessant crying that if Maud had not known it was her sister who lay crouched there before her, she ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an infant, but of a philosopher, was ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... would have heard nothing more. She gazed vacantly at the opposite wall, a knee between her hands, and swaying slightly to and fro. Her face, bloated with drink, had become almost pale, and was the picture of long-settled grief. It was as if she were in fresh mourning for the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... lethargy in the true sense of that word—a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly eyeing the human scene, living in a gentle simmer of the faculties like a boiling kettle when the gas is ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... For five months the patient presented a marked stupor. She was for the most part very inactive, totally mute, staring vacantly, often not even blinking, so that for a time the conjunctivae were dry. She did not swallow, but held her saliva; did not react to pin pricks or feinting motions before her eyes. Sometimes she retained ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... on the side of the bed, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her gaze fixed vacantly on the floor,—"Poor baby! Dead,—thank God!" was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... out the cry of the lieutenant's dying friend behind him; and there before him, right against the wall, lay the sailor Ralling, that fine chap from Maryland who was one of the men who had won the gig-race at Newport News; now he stared vacantly into space, his mouth covered with blood and foam. "Shot in the lung!" thought Meade, hurrying on and trying, oh ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... who watched them until the last glimpse of their light dresses was lost in the crowd, stood beside the second emigrant train vacantly glancing at the aliens who thronged about it. His bronzed face was a trifle weary, and his lips were set, but at last he straightened his shoulders with a little resolute movement and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... believe he was really hearing something, and counter-questions skilfully dropped into the gravity of the occasion. Those who could not be put off by Sawdy were turned over to Lefever, who could hypnotize a man by asking questions, and send him away satisfied, but vacantly speculative as to whether he was crazy or ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... "In debt?" Bassett repeated vacantly. "Oh, not literally, I see! She expects to teach and help others in that way. That's commendable. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the house and plunged into a study of the mystery. Nothing appeared to be further from his intention. With an air of nonchalance which, under the circumstances, seemed to me to border upon affectation, he lounged up and down the pavement, and gazed vacantly at the ground, the sky, the opposite houses and the line of railings. Having finished his scrutiny, he proceeded slowly down the path, or rather down the fringe of grass which flanked the path, keeping his eyes riveted ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of supreme power the prince felt profound contempt for men and became apathetic. He lay two days on a couch with his hands beneath his head gazing vacantly at the ceiling. He did not wonder that his sacred father passed his time at the altars of the gods, but he could not understand how Herhor was able to manage the avalanche of business, which, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... The number of Franks resident here is too small to call for a place of general recreation, and the Turk never feels a want of this kind. The most he does is to saunter slowly from the bath to the coffee-house, and there to kill his time with the help of a pipe and a cup of coffee, staring vacantly on the ground before him. Although the coffee- houses are more frequented than any other buildings in the East, they are often miserable sheds, being all small, and generally built only ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... lay upon her lap. It was almost empty. She looked at it vacantly and then closed ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sitting on the rain-water butt, mewing peevishly at a sparrow which had perched upon the clothes-line. The young master was in his room, coughing; he had already gone to bed. Pelle bent over the edge of the well and gazed vacantly over the gardens. He was hot and dizzy, but a cool draught rose from the well and soothingly caressed his head. The bats were gliding through the air like spirits, passing so close to his face that he felt the wind of their flight, and turning about with a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... were fixed vacantly into space. She was thinking—thinking again of that fateful paragraph in the paper—the unexpected news which had rendered her a widow. And poor Adolphe? Alas! though he had been her only friend and full of sympathy for her, ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... know, Jonathan," continued Spriggs, turning to the other friend of Skulpit's, who was sitting on a stool by the table, gazing vacantly at the petition. Jonathan Crumple was a meek, mild man, who had known better days; his means had been wasted by bad children, who had made his life wretched till he had been received into the hospital, of which he had not long been a member. Since ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... corner; he shivered. In spite of all the weeks of solitude, a sudden chill seized him; he gathered up his crutches, and stalked on them to the table where little Jane was yet finding something to do. She brought him a chair, and for a minute or two he watched her; then he was only staring vacantly at his hands, as they lay before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... vacantly. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he said, in a high, thin voice. "I added up figures in the old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I added up figures in the old warehouse—Don't you remember ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... latter's clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered glass made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up into his ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... drank some brandy to steady his nerves; and he did not forget that there was an ambuscade of Rebels at Blue's Gap, and that he was to share in the attack on them at daylight: he spurred his horse, as he drew nearer Romney. Dode, being a woman, thinking love lost, sat by the fire, looking vacantly at nothing. Yet the loss was as costly to him as to her, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... in the middle of the square, and he walked round and round it. He gazed vacantly at a statue in the middle of the garden, and then walked round the rails again. The darkness was gathering fast, the gas was beginning to blaze, and he was like a creature in the coil of a horrible fascination. That word, that ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... anguish of an irreparable wrong, she rose, passed her hand vacantly across her brow, and muttering, "Oh, God! oh, God!" peered vainly into the dark for light—hope—refuge! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... night brought the conversation to a close, and for some moments they stood looking vacantly at the landscape. Overhead the sky was a blue dome, and so still was the air that the smoke-clouds trailed like the wings of gigantic birds slowly balancing themselves. And waves of white light rolled up the valley as if jealous of the red, flashing furnaces. An odour ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... perfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil and full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely maidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a world without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and virtuous. A world purely ideal, divorced from all reality, unsubstantial like the kingdom of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed by any puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled by allegorical vices; cheerful, serene, filled with flowers and song of birds, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... grinning vacantly into the dark. There was a peculiar something in Jig's smile that ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... mount and ride out to sea on—the hair blown back (so she envisaged it, and the breeze stirred slightly among the orange trees) and she herself was emerging from silver spray—when she saw Jacob. He was standing in the Square with a book under his arm looking vacantly about him. That he was heavily built and might become stout in time was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... spoke thus, he sat down by the side of his table, and casting his eyes vacantly thereon, suddenly started at seeing the address of his own name, and in the hand of the Countess Moranza. It was the package she had handed to him at her dying moment. In the excitement of the scene, and the circumstances that followed, he had not opened ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... they ate a crust of bread together, and drank some of the water of the fountain. In the afternoon, there they sat, and Bellerophon had thrown his arm around the child, who likewise had put one of his little hands into Bellerophon's. The latter was lost in his own thoughts, and was fixing his eyes vacantly on the trunks of the trees that over-shadowed the fountain. But the gentle child was gazing down into the water; he was grieved, for Bellerophon's sake, that the hope of another day should be deceived like so many before it, and two or three quiet teardrops fell from his eyes and mingled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... him to understand that I was ready to take my leave, but he motioned me to resume my chair. After gazing vacantly out the window for a moment, he covered his face with his hands ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the young fellow leaned on the rotting fence, staring vacantly at the collie dog, who, in turn stared ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... sagaciously and gave himself up to silent musing, his solitary eye fixed immovably upon the straight wall of forest on the opposite bank. Lakamba lay silent, staring vacantly. Under them Lingard's own river rippled softly amongst the piles supporting the bamboo platform of the little watch-house before which they were lying. Behind the house the ground rose in a gentle swell of a low hill cleared of the big timber, but thickly overgrown with the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A woman came running noiselessly ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had finished our meal we stared vacantly at the snowflakes that were blown over the top of the stack above our heads and whirled round and round in front of our eyes. Gradually we began to feel the cold again. Many of us got up and walked about, for it was nipping our feet. I was stiff ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... not reply, did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother a cry ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... near the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the fact that two weeks of Radville had driven Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination; it had been all ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Ghuzzeh, at the place called Umm Jerar, which is associated with Abraham. Going one day to look for it, I found a military policeman on duty within half a mile of the spot. I said to him, "Can you tell me the way to the tessellated pavement?" He looked at me vacantly for a minute and then replied: "Is it the wire road that you happen to mean, sir?" On one occasion, the General was going round the front line accompanied by the Intelligence Officer (who is the ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... walked quickly away, and left the captain in the centre of the garden staring vacantly before him, in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... of course, Colonel," he answered, lifting his chin from his breast, upon which it was resting, "arranged, quite satisfactorily arranged." Then he looked about rather vacantly, for his mind, it was clear, was far away, and added, "Do you want: I mean, were you talking about the new drainage mill for the salt marshes?" Mary interrupted ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... fiercely at the savage-looking intruder, but fortunately he held his hand and bent over his companion wonderingly, and hardly able to believe what he saw; for as the dog nuzzled about Nic's face, the young man, partly aroused by the shaking, opened his eyes, looked vacantly at the brute for some moments, and then, as if his intellectual powers were returning, he smiled, the animal stopping short and ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... expression in which a trace of sadness and gloom spread like an elusive twilight. He took out his letter, but did not glance at it, simply holding it tightly gripped in his sinewy right hand. Then his old eyes stared vacantly, as eyes do when their sight is cast back many, many years into the past. The missive was from beyond the sea—he knew the handwriting—a waft of the flowers of Avignon seemed to rise out of it, as if by the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... heard by Pao-yue, he gazed vacantly for some time, feeling the while very unhappy; but raising himself impetuously: "Well!" he exclaimed, "if you don't notice me, all right, I too will go to sleep," and as he spoke he got up, and, descending from the couch, he betook himself to his own bed and went ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... over Tom, turns him over on his wales, as he has it, and finally gets him on his beam's ends, a besotted wreck unable to carry his canvas. "Lost yeer reckonin', eh, Tom?" he continues as that bewildered individual stares vacantly at him. The inebriate contorts painfully his face, presses and presses his hands to his burning forehead, and says they are firing a salute in his head, using his brains ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... dream, and in which there is no refreshment. I think of the brain which must be worked out at length; of Scott, when the wand of the enchanter was broken, writing poor romances; of Southey sitting vacantly in his library, and drawing a feeble satisfaction from the faces of his books. And for the man of letters there is more than the mere labour: he writes his book, and has frequently the mortification of seeing ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room. Bid a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last touches to the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Paul gazed vacantly from the zenith to the nadir, and from west to east, when suddenly his eyes fell on the Abbot of Antinoe. His face grew pale with a holy terror, and his eyeballs reflected ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... third time. Why did he? He had his chance; two chances in fact. But this is folly, for of course he had no chance at all. Fate stood by that news-stall, with the blear-eyed, frousy woman that tended it looking vacantly on; Fate, veiled, too, and not even monosyllabic in his behalf. I should have known this, I think, even if I had not lived those curious, long eight months in Algeria and slept those dreamless nights ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive, into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips unmoving, his ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... echoed Don vacantly. He remembered then that Lawton roomed in Number 20 Billings, directly above Number 6. ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... my father looked vacantly from me to him and from him to me, and at last, his old hospitable instincts coming uppermost, he said, "Thou hast not asked thy cousin ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... much obliged—and that sort of thing," Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall "Dismal old place, ain't it, Ned? Never saw it but once, when my governor quarrelled with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the child Clara, which Miss Ingamells had certainly overheard, prevented him, as an independent man, from beginning his work for at least ten minutes. He whistled, opened his father's desk and stared vacantly into it, examined the pen-nib case in detail, and tore off two leaves from the date calendar so that it should be ready for Monday. He had a great scorn for Miss Ingamells, who was a personable if somewhat heavy creature ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... his childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of history. 'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... his feet and, supporting him by an encircling arm, led the way to where even now Alexis, having received first aid treatment at the hands of his brother, was sitting up and gazing about somewhat vacantly. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... being a poor old bachelor was quite the pleasantest possible condition, yet he rolled out the phrase twice as if to touch Penelope's heart. Remembering the only other bachelor I had ever seen, I stared at him in wonder. This other was Philip Spangler, who sat all day in the store gazing vacantly at the stove. Once I asked Stacy Shunk why he stayed there, and Stacy, lifting a warning finger, whispered: "He's jest a bachelor, Davy, an old, old bachelor." Contrasting him with Mr. Blight, I was puzzled. If it was a terrible thing to ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... street. Harkutt coughed ostentatiously, put the paper back in his pocket, set one or two boxes straight on the counter, locked the drawer, and disappeared into the back passage. John Milton remained standing in the doorway looking vacantly out. But he did not see the dull familiar prospect beyond. He only saw the paper his father had opened and unfolded before him. It was the same paper he had read last night. But there were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE! After the words "Value received" there had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... through one long afternoon, Vacantly plucking the grass. I lay on my back, with steadfast gaze Watching the cloud-shapes pass; Until the evening's chilly damps Rose from the hollows below, Where ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... became yet more intoxicated. I did not hear the young man say a word: he appeared a passive automaton. The Gypsies, however, spoke for him, and were profuse of compliments. It was now proposed that the caballero should settle the dispute; a long and noisy conversation ensued, the young man looking vacantly on: the strange people had no money, and had already run up another bill at a wine-house to which they had retired. At last it was proposed, as if by the young man, that the Gypsy should purchase his own mule for two dollars, and forgive the strangers the reckoning of the preceding night. To this ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... president and vice-president followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... he was, with outstretched arms, feeling in the air, helpless in her blindness to do more. Slaughter, with his arms dropped to his sides, stared vacantly at them. Only ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... consented to have tea, partly to fill up the time, and went up languidly to the deserted room, which looked so miserable and desert a place without her who put a soul into it and made it home. He did not know what to do with himself, poor boy, but sat down vacantly, and stared into empty space, seeing, wherever he turned, the rows of faces, the ladies making signs to each other, the red robes of the judge, the lawyers contending, and that motionless pale figure in the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... slips the badger to his den; The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,— Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore. All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records of the westward caravans, Where silent heaps of wreck and nameless graves Make milestones for the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... there, of a bare, bowed, neat little head in the midst of that inclosure of men's cold eyes, seemed to be the last touch needed to overthrow her tottering reason. She stopped, swaying from the unaccustomed cessation of motion, and held out her arms, smiling vacantly and babbling baby-talk in German as though to a dearly loved little ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... looked at him vacantly; he no longer understood the French language. In his fever, all recollection of it had vanished. Instinct had effaced all that art had inculcated, and Madou understood and spoke nothing save his savage dialect. At this moment, another of "the children of the sun," Said, encouraged ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... men with torches were clearly being used as guides through this black maze of streets, and I stopped one such and offered him a guinea to do his office for me. He was a lean, shabby, hungry-looking man, who might be forty by the look of him. He stared vacantly at me for a few seconds, and then hurriedly led the way, holding his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Gregory paused irresolutely. He did not know what course to pursue, so he repeated vacantly, "I ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... one third butter, one third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping bean, surmounted by crimped pork, showed that a Providence Yankee might well find an appropriate entertainment. But again the eyes of Roseton looked vacantly on, and again, amid strains of music, the walls of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... belonging to a very different class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the Dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man, in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! A scholar, a man of wit, of high ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... draw myself up, set my teeth as I tread on the creaking steps, get happily down the stairs, and stand once more at the door. I put on my shoes, take my time with the laces, sit a while quietly after I'm ready, and stare vacantly before me, holding the letter in my hand. Then I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... did not heed his ironical remarks; she sat gazing vacantly into space, but the look on her face was not pleasant ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... be seen to stare vacantly at the distance while they strained their ears to listen. As for Hugh himself he found it hard to believe his senses, for the absolute quiet and dead calm brooding all day long over that retired spot in the wilderness had been rudely shattered by a most astonishing ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... confused to make any reply. Utterly exhausted as he had been, his deep sleep seemed to still hold him, and he sat gazing vacantly at his brother, who added in a ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... saw his two half-sisters and some others with whom he was not acquainted. He was certain that the one he wished to ascertain about was among them, but from the darkness of the advancing evening he was unable to distinguish her. He adopted a device for doing so. He hummed, as he looked vacantly around, the "Ishi-kawa,"[79] but instead of the original line, "My belt being taken," artfully, and in an arch tone, substituted ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... themselves vacantly, for he did not wish to betray his surprise at not hearing the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... building when he plays. If the public knew it, what a row!" The man gasped in the spring air. Zora was terrified. What secret was being withheld from her? Who could be with him? Perhaps he was deceiving her, Belus, her husband! She tried to pass the man, who stared at her vacantly. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Duncan Lisle, still gazing vacantly into the varying flames, performed anew the journey, not from Kennons to Troy on the Hudson, but from the latter city, via New York, back to his Virginian plantation. His sister and Ellice Linwood were his companions, for it had been arranged that, though ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... fisherman leaning against the open kitchen-door, a basket of fish at his feet, and his clear grey eyes fixed vacantly upon the silver waves, which flashing and murmuring in the sunlight, came racing to the beach below. The old sailors' wrinkled face, once so ruddy and bronzed, was as white as his hair; his cheeks had fallen in, and deep hollows had gathered about his temples; it was painful to ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... with actresses, and would always postpone a battle for a ball or a horse-race. About five years ago we were lying off Lisbon in a steamer in our way from Spain. The morning was fine, and we were upon deck staring vacantly about us, as is our custom, with our hands in our pockets, when a large barge with an awning, and manned by many rowers, came dashing through the water and touched the vessel's side. Some people came on board, of whom, however, we took but little notice, continuing ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... cheek. "Tell her all!" she repeated vacantly; then suddenly she turned upon him eagerly, and said, "But ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the bookshelf stared vacantly at them. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Swain nodded vacantly, but I could see that he had not understood. His face was still working and he seemed to be ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Keeping close together, Pepeeta light and graceful, the doctor heavy and awkward, both of them thoroughly embarrassed, they ascended the steps as a bear and gazelle might have walked the gang-plank into the ark. They entered unobserved save by a few of the younger people who were staring vacantly about the room, and took their seats on the last bench. The Quaker maidens who caught sight of Pepeeta were visibly excited and began to preen themselves as turtle doves might have done if a bird of paradise had suddenly ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... show and the financial panic that ran over the country in that year had set thousands of hungry men to wait dumbly on park benches poring over want advertisements in the daily papers and looking vacantly at the lake or had driven them to tramp aimlessly through ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... his eyes down from the sky, fixed them vacantly upon Lynde, and made no response. Presuming him to be deaf, Lynde repeated his question in a key adapted to the exigency. Without a change in his mild, benevolent expression, and in a voice whose modulations were singularly musical, the old ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... man stirred, lifted his head and opened his eyes. They rested vacantly for a moment on Charity and Harney, and then closed again, and his head drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman's face. She glanced out of the window and then came up to Harney. "I guess you better go along now," she said. The young man understood ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... indeed, his small black eyes shone with that fire which a pretty woman or an "affair of honor" could alone kindle. The visitor stared vacantly at him, and said slowly, "And what good is that ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... gateway all the day long, With her Majesty's footmen in crimson and gold. I'd care not a pin for the waiting-lord; But I'd lie on my back on the smooth greensward With a straw in my mouth, and an open vest, And the cool wind blowing upon my breast, And I'd vacantly stare at the clear blue sky, And watch the clouds that are listless as I, Lazily, lazily! And I'd pick the moss and the daisies white, And chew their stalks with a nibbling bite; And I'd let my fancies roam abroad In search of a hint for a birthday ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... couldn't be frightened at four months," vacantly interrupted Susan Hetth, who could not see the trend of the conversation, or the need of the detailed interrogation. "She would be ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... realizing to the full that the tumult of the battle had ceased. The boy felt stiff and sore in every bone and muscle, and, although the cannon and rifles were silent, there was still a hollow roaring in his ears. His eyes were yet dim from the smoke, and his head felt heavy and dull. He gazed vacantly at the forest in front of him, and wondered dimly why the Southern army was not still there, attacking, as it had attacked for ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a step, and covered his face with his hands. For a full minute there was absolute silence. Rathbawne had returned to the table, and, with his fore-arms across the back of a chair, and one foot on the lower cross-bar, was staring vacantly at his autographs, his hands moulding and remoulding each other into an infinity of forms. Natalie was at the window, her face in the crevice between the curtains. The same impulse had prompted both father and daughter. There ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... cannot make Lionel understand anything. He sits vacantly gazing at nothing. He has had so much trouble, that ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... church-tower. For the last two or three minutes he had been conscious of people a few yards ahead of him, and, as their slow stroll was yet slower than his, he had been getting nearer and nearer to them. Now his eye rested half vacantly on their backs, and the perception forced itself upon him that the three backs were those of ladies; and the next thing that dawned upon him was that there was something familiar as well as pleasing about the carriage, the curves, and the movements ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... passing his fingers tremulously back and forward along the top of the mantelpiece, like a man in search of something, and continued so, looking along it, feebly and vacantly, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... imagination, they held me by a hundred threads of far-reaching association. And suddenly I had expected to create this kind of intense personal tie between myself and a roomful of new cold alien presences—things staring at me vacantly from the depths of unknown pasts! Can you fancy a more preposterous hope? Why, my other things, my own things, had wooed me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus Callipyge, who had drawn me, drawn ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its sombre associations. But the back bedroom, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. At night-time, this "alcove"—as our "maid" was wont to call it—had, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the faint buzz of the flies caused drowsiness to creep upon the spirit. The long ride, too, and the ardent desert air, made this repose a luxury. Androvsky's face lost its emotional expression as he gazed almost vacantly at the brown water shifting slowly by between the brown banks and the brown walls above which the palm trees peered. His aching limbs relaxed. His hands hung loose between his knees. And Domini half closed her eyes. A curious ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... raise the young woman in his arms and deposit her upon the bed. Then he struck another match and leaned close to examine her. The flare of the sulphur illuminated the room and shot two rectangles of light against the outer blackness where the unglazed windows stared vacantly upon the road beyond, bringing to a sudden halt a little company of muddy and bedraggled men who slipped, ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she seemed to take in only what Mr. Peck had thought of the dance and supper; at the end she said, rather vacantly, "What nonsense!" ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... pallor that overspread his features, nor the expression, not of anger, but of anguish, that settled upon his face, for she had turned half away from him, and was gazing vacantly across the river. There was an unpleasant pause, which was broken by the noise of voices in alarm near the house, the trampling of hoofs, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... and his brothers and Stanley stared somewhat vacantly at the president and the professors. The students wanted to speak several times, but Doctor Wallington ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... charms for me. Metaphysics—faugh! I tried to study; took down volume after volume, ran my eye vacantly over a few pages, and threw them by with distaste. I loitered about the house, with my hands in my pockets, and an air of complete vacancy. Something was necessary to make me happy; but what was that something? I sauntered to the apartments of my sisters, hoping their conversation might ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... upon the platform of the nearest car, where he sat blinking vacantly at the assembly, while the conductor, leaning out from the door of the baggage-car, looked back towards the rider who was clattering through a dust cloud down the street, as he asked: "Anybody else besides the tired man? Is ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... master to imagine anyone could do work when the house matches are on. The other day Claremont had me up and asked me why my work had been so bad lately. I told him that the house matches were so exciting that I could not concentrate my mind on anything else. He looked at me vacantly and said: 'Well, are they really? I don't know whom they excite; they ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... and looked vacantly out of the window, with a vague dissatisfaction at heart. Unrecognized fully as yet, the great law of nature, which brings to each a distinct and separate existence, was beginning to operate. As she had said to Mara, vital interests were looming up, new experiences ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... one morning, watching her father work on his picture. Not that she was especially interested in him or the picture, but there was nothing else for her to do. She stood with her slim legs apart, her hands clasped behind her, staring rather vacantly, when he looked up and ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... been dead too, he sat so rigid and motionless, his fixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth. Before him on the table lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of himself, taken in some remote epoch of complexion, one of a child ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... gleam of her eyes. She had followed his movements and was holding him now, but half vacantly. The pity of it all touched him; the rest of the story cleared. Her tongue was like a blown bag, the blackness of it apparent even in the dark. She was dying of thirst, the bullet wound in the shoulder turned up to him. The little ones were still active, for the tigress ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... Isabel replied to her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara. De Craye foiled it adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her bosom lifted to a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she looked at De Craye vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by his readiness, and thankful for the succour. Her look was cold, wide, unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look, however, stood too long ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eyes roll wildly, his walk is unsteady, and he appears not to observe his father, who stands at a distance, and gazes at him with a countenance expressive of compassion. He paces with long strides through the chamber, then stands still again, and at last throws himself into a chair, staring vacantly at the object directly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I've ever understood, how little I've ever known myself," she thought, staring vacantly at a severe spinster, with crimped hair and a soured expression, who sat before the opposite window. "I've gone on in the dark, making mistakes and discoveries from the very beginning, undoing and doing over again, creating illusions and then destroying ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... bewail the days of my youth as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things I became sadder and sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire until my eyes closed ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... a few moments. Her face had regained its composure, and her eyes were bent vacantly upon her tapestry frame as she turned over in her mind all that ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle |
