"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Spain, the future of the Tropical Republics of Spanish America, is utterly blank and dark; not to be prophesied, I hold, by mortal man, simply because we have no like cases in the history of the past whereby to judge the tendencies of the present. Will they revive? Under the genial influences of free institutions will the good seed which is in them take root downwards, and ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... brought forward during the night, had taken up commanding positions, and were pouring a terrible fire into the enemy's encampment at a distance of little over a mile. The enemy's guns were replying, but at this short range the naval guns were able to fire point-blank, and their shells ripped the defences erected to shelter the Boer camp into fragments, and carried ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... will be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable passages I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... chance of victory? no trick? Can I not get them ashore? Can I not get them in the toils? try them in point-blank fight, man to man, all the strength of despair fighting with me? Ah, could they but hear me, could I but find some high place and speak to them; tell them how clear as the sun is my right, how monstrous the wrongs I have borne, what a crime is theirs in withstanding me! You murder not me alone, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... made by the majority voting," decided the chair, "the tellers will again distribute blank slips and ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... Finally, Peppino unlocked the door of a large cupboard that stood in the corner, and with a clinking and crashing of glass there poured out a cataract of empty brandy bottles. Emptiness: that was the key-note of the whole scene, and blank consternation its effect. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... whirled from the room, slamming behind her the mahogany door, at which Peyton stared for some seconds, in blank amazement, too overwhelmed to speak or ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Crown Prince, whereupon I innocently asked him how many sons there were. He replied, "Sixty-seven," and that he had taken all their photographs. The reply was rather startling, and I impulsively asked, "And how many daughters?" He looked blank and admitted that he did not know. Of course I understood that the family relations of the King were modelled on strictly Oriental lines, and that he had three legal wives, the number prescribed by law; but I was unprepared for a ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Jack added, seeing that we consented, "we're with you." And then his enthusiasm taking fire, as usual, he exclaimed: "Hurrah! Columbus forever! We've conquered a hemisphere with a blank shot." ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... be avoided are the separate entries or letters of the diary or epistolary forms, the introduction of stars or blank spaces to indicate a hiatus, and the division of the narrative into parts or chapters. The evils of the diary and epistolary forms have already been discussed and need no further comment. The use of stars or spaces either is due to an improper plot, or is entirely unnecessary. In the first instance ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... annihilated. You can fancy no response to this signal of solitude disturbed, and again it comes sadly over the water, the despairing plaint of some companionless and incomplete existence, exiled from happiness it has never known, and conscious only of blank and utter want. Loon-skins have a commercial value; so it is reported. The Barabinzians of Siberia, a nation "up beyond the River Ob," tan them into water-proof paletots or aquascutums. How they catch their loon, before they skin their loon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... or whimsical adventures private to each damsel that she believed the speaker's knowledge to be little less than supernatural. Literature of the skittish sort must deplore the monastic reticence, but history can do no more than accept it and leave imagination to fill in the blank ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a laugh, but looking rather blank afterwards; "and how did she threaten me, Jennet, eh?—But no matter. Let that pass for the moment. As I was saying, you must have seen mysterious proceedings both at Malkin Tower and your own house. A black gentleman with a club foot must visit you occasionally, and your mother must, now and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... now. There was nothing more to work for, or to look forward to. Nothing lay before him but his solitary blank life in the miserable hut below. There was no interest in the world for ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Farm, away beyond Burkby village, and down into the valley of the Wreake without a check, where he broke away, was headed, tried earths, and was pulled down scarce forty minutes from the find. The pack then drew Hungerton foxhole blank, drew Carver's spinnies without a whimper; and lastly, drawing the old familiar Billesden Coplow, had a short, quick burst with a brace of cubs, and returning, settled themselves to a fine dog fox that was raced ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... did not satisfy. He was not trained enough to analyze his own thoughts to any purpose; he was not experienced enough to understand where his thoughts were leading him. He only knew that he felt no call to pray and fast that the Torah did not inspire him, and his days were blank. The life he was expected to lead grew distasteful to him, and yet he knew no other way to live. He became lax in his attendance at the synagogue, incurring the reproach of the family. It began to be rumored among the studious that the son-in-law of Raphael the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... sure enough. As he caught sight of the party he gaped at them a moment in blank astonishment, and then ran up, his ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... me too? Do not fear resistance; my life is a blank without him. He is dead; let death come to me; it would be a welcome visitant. The only kindness that you could now bestow upon me would be my death-blow. Strike then, and end it all! In death we should be united, George and I; and as my limbs grew stiff and my breath passed ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... see the faces of friends; it was good to know that his labours had not been in vain, and that the border was assured. And underneath it was a great exaltation. He walked on air. For she had not known! The blank astonishment of her face had proved that to him beyond a doubt. She really thought that she had destroyed the pilocarpin; she had not deliberately held from ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... aloud. Rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, vowel coloring, the effect of enjambement, to name only the more obvious phenomena, appeal solely to the ear. Looking at a page of verse is like looking at a page of music. Unless the symbols are translated into sound values, the effect is blank. A skilled musician is able to translate the printed notes to the inner sense, but even he will prefer to hear the music and will always consider this the final test. Thus it is also with verse: it must ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... flew to her breast; and before she had time to conceal, to pretend, to affect, he had seen the blank expression of her face. You see, she had been merely reading; not thinking. The sound of her own voice had drowned the sense. To read intelligently a thing the comprehension of which was far over her head was the utmost this eleven-year-old ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... English, completed the blank amazement which literally paralysed the only three genuine Republican soldiers there— those, namely, whom Rouget had borrowed from the sergeant. As for the others, they knew what to do. In less than a minute they had overpowered and ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... man lay the map of Australia before him, and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask him if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place foot ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... place must be full of interest," said Redwood. "Interest is food for a child, and blankness torture and starvation. He must have pictures galore." There were no pictures hung about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into which new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest had passed. There was one window that looked down the length of a street, and in addition, for an added interest, Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... seized upon him now with no uncertain hand. His money, his pony, even his little bundle gone! This was calamity. He suffered as only the young can suffer. His world had suddenly become a blank. Through bloodshot eyes he looked upon the stranger and tried to hate him, but ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... she said that I remembered that I had mimicked her that night while dressing and that Grace had laughed, but had said in the same breath, that it wasn't fair. So I asked her point blank if that was what she meant, and she said 'yes,' only she hadn't waited long enough to hear what Grace had said about unfairness. She had come to the door just in time to hear me mimic her, and had rushed back to her room ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Blank silence followed this tragic denouement. Wingenund, a cruel and relentless Indian, but never a traitor, pointed to the small bloody hole in the middle of Miller's forehead, and then nodded his head solemnly. The wondering Indians stood aghast. Then with ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... sight, over against them, raising its towering head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing, except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked over the river at their neighbours. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... I'm glad of it ... because they're looking on you as my protege ... holding me responsible for you. Munday, in the Schiller class, tells me you sometimes bring in your daily lesson in Wilhelm Tell, translated into blank verse ... and good stuff, too.... And King says he turns over the most difficult lines in Horace in class for you to translate ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Steinmetz had him by the collar; his face was gray, his heavy eyes ablaze. If any thing will rouse a man, it is being fired at point-blank at a range of four ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... midnight when Elwood awoke, and all was blank darkness. He called to Howard and Tim, and not until he had felt around with his hands, did he remember his situation. Then ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... rebels pour out! We see the swift plunge of the caisson within the dim background of haze, With the shreds of platoons inward scudding, and fainter their batteries blaze; As the mist curtain falls all is blank; as it lifts, a wild picture out glares, A wild shifting picture of battle, and dread our warm hopefulness shares; But never the braves of the 'White Star' have sullied their fame in defeat, And they will not to-day see the triumph pass by ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... England, off the coast of Dorsetshire, that Keats wrote his last beautiful sonnet on a blank leaf of his folio copy of Shakespeare, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... I never could quite approve of it for it causes so much waste of paper. Just look here!" she said, holding up a little account-book, "here are all the right pages quite filled up, while all the left pages are blank. It takes only four lines to enter my receipts, because you know I receive my money only once a quarter. Well, that brings me back to the point. Here are all the receipts on one side; my whole income, deducting income-tax—which, by the way, I cannot help regarding as a very unjust ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... opportunity of meeting several of the leading Baptist ministers in New England, and, as I was thoroughly imbued with Parker's ideas, we had many heated discussions on theology. There, too, I met Orestes Bronson, a remarkably well-read man, who had gone through every phase of religious experience from blank atheism to the bosom of the Catholic Church, where I believe he found repose at the end of his days. He was so arbitrary and dogmatic that most people did not like him; but I appreciated his acquaintance, as he was a liberal thinker and had a world of information ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... he said, huskily, trying to steady his voice. "There! Madame the countess is waiting. All will be well now." He turned, smiling, toward the young countess, and lifted his hat, then stepped back and fixed me with a blank look of dismay, which said perfectly plainly that he had unpleasant news to communicate. The countess, I think, saw that look, too, for she gave me an almost imperceptible nod and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Last of them all to yield was Kathryn, sitting in a front pew and, after her custom, smiling up at him in an admiration which he had come to find galling in its emptiness of any meaning. But, at the last passionately fervent words, her blank smile faded and, for the first time in all his preaching, her face became overcast, intent. His sermon ended, Brenton bowed his head in a benediction which, in his heart, he sent most earnestly upon his wife. Perchance the selfsame hour that saw his self-vindication should ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... had in him a trace of the general, and did what his mind could grasp with a grim thoroughness, while, as the result of it, there was blank astonishment one morning in a mining camp as he and the men who followed him appeared as by magic from amidst the pines surrounding it. They were also armed, and the miners, who rose from their breakfast, stared at them motionless in silence, that ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... to wait until to-morrow," the message read, and Patty and Mona looked at each other in blank dismay. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... language. I know that Berlin is the capital of the country, and I can recall the names of many of their big towns,—Leipzig, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremburg; I have a sort of fancy that I have visited them; but I know nothing of the history of Germany,—that is all a blank. Funny, isn't it?' and ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... is as flat as a Chinaman's. I can hardly wonder that the people here have retrograded, or rather, not advanced. This dull flat would make anybody dull and flat. I am no longer surprised at John Tyler. He has had a bare blank brick house, entitled sweetly Margarita Cottage, or some such tender epithet, at Hampton, a mile and a half from the fort. A summer in this site would make any man a bore. And as something has done this favor for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... administrative correspondence, we eventually came by the authority itself. This was a great and happy day in the lives of myself and the forty-nine other officers who had by this time become involved in the affair. "Sgt. Blank is authorised to draw ration money in lieu of rations as from March 1st, 1916," I read to him, and sighed with relief. But it was a premature sigh. The trouble was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... development of a mine after it is located and proved in part, there is more unavoidable economic waste. The rock is blank and silent. It can only be explored by means of expensive drifts and drillings. In one mine at Bisbee, Arizona, a shaft was sunk which had drifts at the 600-and 900-feet levels, all without result. Later on they found a blanket of copper between those two levels, from which six million ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... she has any, consists in casting doubts on everything. Here lies the great difference between two women; the townswoman is certainly virtuous; the lady does not know yet whether she is, or whether she always will be; she hesitates and struggles where the other refuses point-blank and falls full length. This hesitancy in everything is one of the last graces left to her by our horrible times. She rarely goes to church, but she will talk to you of religion; and if you have the good taste to affect Free-thought, she will try to convert you, for you will have opened ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... another batch likewise; about one inch thick of hard-pressed straw is needful at each contact. Twist straw into rough bands, and wind it round each pot. Fill up corners to prevent the bands shifting loose. Empty small tins make good stuffing for blank spaces. Old newspapers torn to bits and rolled into balls make good packing for pots and hold them firmly, but this method is dangerous if the packing becomes wetted. Pots should always be packed tight. ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... though obstinate in maintaining that his hurt was only a blank wound (to use a term of General Simon's), had allowed it to be carefully dressed by the surgeon of the village, and now wore a black bandage, which concealed one half of his forehead, and added to the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... giving offense to the class accustomed to monopolize the sounding titles and to wear the glittering plumes was a wonderfully difficult thing to do. Here at least was a brave and honest effort to accomplish what no previous committee had even attempted. The other committees had left the award a blank, to be filled in by a puzzled and unwilling Congress, who preferred ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... seemed best, all the Athenians assembled in the market place. Then each voter received a shell (Greek, ostrakon), and dropped it into a place made for that purpose. All in favor of banishment wrote upon their shells the name of the man they wished to exile. The others left theirs blank. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... had fallen over everyone. The dancers paused, and looked one at another, each one struck with the other's paleness; and there, in the middle of the hall, everyone saw a strange old man looking angrily, but in silence, at Ezekiel Grosse, who was fixed in terror, blank as a statue. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... and made one or two pretty good hauls; but the sturgeon was the great event of the day. John and Stephen wrapped it up carefully, and were quite proud to show it to their mother on getting home; but they looked rather blank at hearing their father say, in a way which showed that ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... is a great variety of that article; an English ambassador once papered his entire suit of rooms with that with which a Chinese mandarin honored him. MICHAEL ANGELO left a straight line as a card, and was recognized by it. Our friend H—— once distributed blank pasteboards in Philadelphia, and everybody said, 'Why, H—— has been here!' Not long since, a lady dwelling in New York asked her seven-year-old GEORGY ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the foremost should pass the artemisia-bush; for by that he had calculated the point-blank range of his rifle. Another moment, and its crack would have been heard; but the horseman, as if warned by instinct, seemed to divine the exact limit of danger. Before reaching the bush, his heart failed him, and in a wavering, irresolute manner, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... A blank leaf from the little memorandum book he always carried, and a bullet for pencil—perforce, the note was brief; but it told what he wanted: gold to buy a riding outfit, his pistols which Perkins had taken from him, and news of Bill's ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... it out, but all seemed a blank. No doubt, if he could at some time coax Joe to confess who it was he believed this stranger to be, who was in the vehicle, and who looked back so often as he whipped his tired horse, the puzzle might ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the factory, further than cannon shot, which we compute to be a mile; in order to hinder the enemy from attacking you unawares, and from being sheltered from the factory's guns. But you are to keep up, and repair, your palisadoes, for your defence." ... "You are to fire point blank upon any ship, sloop, or vessel that shall come near the factory, unless they make the true signal, and answer yours. The letter proceeds to offer 30l. to the widow or children of any man killed in defence of the factory; to every one who should lose a leg, or an arm, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... all the bells clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Frenchman in pondering on the proposal; when it was finally agreed that the Mongo should be set at liberty, provided he left, as hostages, four of his children and two of the black chiefs who visited him in my boat. The compact was sealed by the hoisting of a flag under the discharge of a blank cartridge; and, in an hour, the pledges were in the cabin, under the eye of a sentry, while the Mongo was ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... only in a subdued mood of mind just fit to make the most of it. The familiar place took her back to the time when it became familiar; she compared herself sitting there and feeling the whole world a blank, except for the two or three at home, with the child who had sat there years before in that happy time "when the feelings were young and the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... journey to Rome was and is a complete blank. I was mostly insensible, and, when I showed signs of consciousness, was delirious. I recall nothing except a vague sense of endless pain, misery and horror. I have no memory of anything that occurred on the road after I was ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to the window, and looked out. It was a moment before he could see; and then, with a quick nod of his head, he began, with extreme caution to loosen the window catches on the sill. There was a narrow space between the house and what was the blank brick wall of the building next to it, and this space extended to the rear, and therefore, indirectly, by circling the house at the back, led to the house and the door in the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... extended to me during my stay. As I anticipated, he readily acquiesced, and I instantly followed up the concession by calmly remarking that I should like to have the two white women who were in the camp sent over to my "little place." To this suggestion he gave a point-blank refusal. I persisted, however, and taunted him with deliberately breaking the inviolable rules of courtesy; and at length he gave me to understand he would ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the ex-Ispravnik, 'the town of Zaszyversk does exist. Even on a small map of Siberia you can easily find it to the right of a large blank space; if you remember your geography lessons you will even know that it is designated as "town out of governmental bounds". An appointment to such a place means for an official that he is expected to send in his resignation; ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... further and perhaps repeat again as springing from their own acute judgment, he began to talk the most arrant nonsense he could think of, or to fire off some of his stinging sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but blank and embarrassed faces around him—everybody thinking the man was mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, but they had ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and crowned with heaven— For it was dipped in horrors that bear fruit, And it was bathed in universal hopes!— Your Excellency asks me to efface That gleam of heaven and that stain of blood, And, having nothing but a blank sheet left, To make a shroud for Freedom out ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... able, all that is to be said for his proposal; his arguments are enforced and supplemented by other speakers on his side; while the opposition endeavours to be equally exhaustive. In short, though one were to come to the meeting with a mind entirely blank, yet such a one, having ordinary faculties of judging, would in the end be completely informed, and prepared for an ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... that blank, awful look. She waited for a few moments, and then, finding that Sir Oswald questioned her no further, she crept quietly from the room, glad to escape from the sorrow-stricken husband. Malicious though she was, she believed that this time she ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a distant shore. Below, that majestic yellow flood poured downward unbroken, although De Noyan imagined he perceived distant spars of the Spanish fleet outlined against the blue background of the southern sky. This may have been possible, yet to my eyes all was blank, although I could mark pretty accurately where they should ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... paragraph. These marks are typographically unsatisfactory. They are weak and therefore hardly adequate to their purpose in aiding the understanding through the eye. Being cast on the upper part of the type body, they leave a blank space below and thus impair the beauty of the line and interfere with good spacing. Certain rules for the position of quotation marks when used with other marks are based upon these typographical considerations ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... little at other times it was simply in order to please the king. If the Court subsisted after her it was only to languish. Never was princess so regretted, never one so worthy of it: regrets have not yet passed away, the involuntary and secret bitterness they caused still remain, with a frightful blank not yet ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... creatures, and that she would neither damn her soul nor place herself under the necessity of saying to her confessor that she had so far forgotten herself as to commit such a sin with a priest. I objected that I was not yet a priest, but she foiled me by enquiring point-blank whether or not the act I had in view was to be numbered amongst the cardinal sins, for, not feeling the courage to deny it, I felt that I must give up the argument and put ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... already had his credulity stretched about as far as it would go, and he was beginning to wonder whether he was really awake; but when he heard the hail and recognised the speaker he stared at him in blank and, for the moment, speechless bewilderment. Then he got hold of his voice again and said, keeping as steady ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... and cannot procure them from newsdealers, they can be obtained from this office direct. Cut out and fill in the following Order Blank and send it to us with the price of the weeklies you want and we will send them to you by return mail. POSTAGE STAMPS TAKEN ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... was not so much the difficulties of sledging as the depressing blank conditions in which our march was so often made, that gave us such troubles as we had. The routine of a tent makes a lot of difference. Scott's tent was a comfortable one to live in, and I was always glad when I was told to join it, and sorry to leave. He was himself extraordinarily ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 15, 1791. The early part of this letter relates to certain blank commissions signed and left with Mr. Lear to be filled up under the direction and advice of the Secretary of the Treasury. He next adverts to a vacancy in one of the United States judgeships—that of the district of Pennsylvania—by the death of ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... Mrs. Hubert, in a widely spaced, emphatic phrase of condemnation. To her sister she added, "It's really not exaggeration then, what one hears about their home life." One of her daughters, a child about Sylvia's age, turned a candid, blank little face up to hers, "Mother, what is a drunken reinhardt?" she asked in ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... littered over the table. The sergeant halted abruptly with his hand on the cellar door, three or four of the sleepers stirred restlessly, one woke for a minute sufficiently to grumble curses and ask "what the blank was that"; the rest slept on serene and undisturbed. The sergeant stood there until the last sounds of falling rubbish had ceased. "A shell," he said, and drew a deep breath. ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... wonder and suffer and restrain and be humiliated at your love for Polk?" I asked, firing point blank at all of Nell's traditions. "Why not tell him about it and ask him if he ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... principal Eocene areas of North-western Europe, showing: Shaded dotted: Hypogene rocks and strata older than the Devonian. Shaded horizontal lines: Eocene formations. NB.— the space left blank is occupied by fossiliferous formations from the Devonian ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... desks in the room. Nancy examined the one upon her own side of the study and found only stationery, blank books, pencils, and pen and ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... his ears. I pushed aside the letter to my mother, and waited with a blank sheet of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... notably now it bewildered Duncan as he entered on the echo of Spaulding's "Come!" He had apprehended the visage of a thunderstorm, with a rattle of brusque complaints: he encountered Spaulding as he had always seemed: a little, urbane figure with a blank face, the blanker for glasses whose lenses seemed always to catch the light and, glaring, mask the eyes behind them; a prosperous man of affairs, well groomed both as to body and as to mind; a machine for the transaction of business, with all a machine's vivacity and temperamental ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... now finished, and I wanted to return to my hospital at M. The German authorities met my request with a blank refusal. I was not at all prepared for this. I had only come in for two days and had left all my luggage behind me. Also one cannot leave one's hospital in this kind of way without a word of explanation to anyone. I could not go without permission, and it was more ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... reviving, and when Jeanne-Marie went up to her again, she raised herself on the bed, resting on one elbow, and fixed her large eyes upon the woman, first with a look of blank unconsciousness, and then with a sudden light of terror in them, as of some wild hunted thing just caught ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... charts of the Antarctic region show a plain white circle beyond the eightieth parallel... It has always been our ambition to get inside that white [Page 113] space, and now we are there the space can no longer be a blank; this compensates for ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... writing his name and nothing more on the back of the bill of lading, the rights in and under it may be transferred from hand to hand by mere delivery. A bill of lading so indorsed is said to be indorsed "in blank.'' But the shipper or consignee may restrict the negotiability of the bill of lading by indorsing it not "in blank,'' but with a direction requiring delivery to be made to a particular person or indorsee, or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was how I was treated by those heathen and cynical macaronies, Mr. Fox's friends. I may not say the same for the whole of Brooks's Club, tho' I never darkened its doors afterwards. But I encountered my Lord March that afternoon, and got only a blank stare ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Turtlers out again. A.M., employ'd getting on board stone ballast and Airing the spare Sails. Mr. Gore, being in the Country, shott one of the Animals before spoke of; it was a small one of the sort, weighing only 28 pound clear of the entrails; its body was ——* (* Blank in manuscript.) long; the head, neck, and Shoulders very Small in proportion to the other parts. It was hair lipt, and the Head and Ears were most like a Hare's of any Animal I know; the Tail was nearly as long as the body, thick next the Rump, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... as a real shock when people began to ask him point-blank whether he was engaged to Jan, and if so, what they were going to do about Tancred's children. Rightly or wrongly, he discerned in the question some veiled reflection upon Jan, some implied slur upon her conduct. He was consequently ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... forward. To them he issued short commands; they took their places at the instrument tables. Then he led us from the room through an arch, over a small trestle, into a tiny inner courtyard. A tropical garden, surrounded by blank circular walls of the building. A patch of blue sky showed above it. A garden secluded from prying eyes, with only a single spider bridge crossing overhead. Vivid flowers and foliage made it a bower. Brown bark paths laced it; a tiny ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... is Sunday between twelve and two. Such a ridiculous time! One is certainly not at one's best at that hour. Isn't it the Irish R.M. who talks of that blank time of day when breakfast has died within one and lunch is not yet? I find it, on the whole, entertaining, though somewhat trying; for Boggley, you see, has to be out paying calls on his own account, and so I have to receive my visitors alone. It ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... home, and that on taking up my Greek Testament one morning to read (as is my wont) a chapter, I found, to my surprise, that what seemed to be the old, familiar book was a total blank; not a character was inscribed in it or upon it. I supposed that some book like it had, by some accident, got into its place; and, without stopping to hunt for it, took down a large quarto volume which contained both the Old and New Testaments. To my surprise, however, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... him to let him know how ill I take it. I have letters to tell me that I ought to think of employing some body to set the tithes of the deanery. I know not what to do at this distance. I cannot be in Ireland under a month. I will write two orders; one to Parvisol, and t'other to Parvisol, and a blank for whatever fellow it is whom the last Dean employed; and I would desire you to advise with friends which to make use of: and if the latter, let the fellow's name be inserted, and both act by commission. If the former, then speak to Parvisol, and know ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... could only write my great book! It is the pleasure debarred me. Years ago I started to collect material; but my affliction came, and now I can only feel the matrices and picture them in my mind. I see through your eyes, dear Gabrielle. To me, the world I loved so much is only a blank darkness, with your dear voice sounding out of it—the only voice, my child, that is music to ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... recall starting for the street car with the officer, Pete; then memory was a blank until she was sitting in a stuffy room with a prison odor—the anteroom to the court. She and Pete were alone. He was walking nervously up and down pulling his little fair mustache. It must have been that she had retained throughout the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... had suffered his judgment to be unbalanced by the impulsive speeches of Hilda and of his own mother. Then, all at once, as he sat one morning at his accustomed place in one of the lecture-rooms, noting in a blank book the wisdom that fell from the lips of a shrivelled professor, his thoughts wandered and the vision of Hilda rose before his eyes, with the expression she had worn when she had spoken of that terrible catastrophe which ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... drawinge of the said lot shall be thus: Two equal small rowleses of paper to be indifferently made and rolled up, in one of which rolls the wordes 'Godd's Guift' are to be written, and the other rowle is to be left blank and so put into a boxe; which boxe shalbe thrice shaken up and downe, and the elder person of those two that are elected to drawe the first lot, and the younger person the second; and whiche of them draweth the lott wherein the wordes 'God's Guift' ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... blank at this information. After ruminating for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said, with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... chilling—more complete. Both her speaking, and that of Gertrude and Paul Lathrop, seemed to her to have dropped dead in exhausted air. An audience of boys and girls—an accompaniment of faint jeers, testifying rather to boredom than hostility—a sense of blank waste and futility when all was over:—her recollection had little else ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... something else, but next morning asked Stuyvesant for a day's leave. Stuyvesant granted it and Dick resumed: "Do you mind giving me a blank order form? I'm going to Adexe, and the storekeeper wants a few things we can't get in ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... perception of space. I shall use the sense of sight for the illustration, although precisely the same reasoning would apply to the sense of touch. Suppose that I sat in an entirely passive position and gazed at a spot on an otherwise blank piece of paper before me. I am perfectly passive so far as motion on my part is concerned. I may be engaged in any manner of speculation or be in the midst of the so-called active attention to the spot; but ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... in, and, stooping down in the middle of the blank stone chamber, took hold of a large copper ring and drew up one side of a heavy flagstone, which turned silently upon copper pivots, and this flag he laid back till it was ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... too ready with complaint In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity's constraint Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope Must widen early, is it well to droop, For a few days consumed in loss ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... of the young German glanced through Kirtley's mind. But Rudi was a thick-headed boy, and what could he or anyone accomplish with a passport? Gard had scarcely been called upon to use it. It had been treated almost as a blank formality, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... stone, and on the occasion of cricket-matches a gay bevy of ladies assembled here to look at the exploits of the young Rawdon Crawleys and Pendennises of the day. Immediately opposite the terrace, across the green, on the immensely high blank wall, was the word "Crown" rudely painted, and above it what was intended as a representation of that sign of sovereignty. This had a history. It was said to have been written there originally by "the bold and strong-minded Law," commemorated by Macaulay in his Warren Hastings article, who became ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... office. His death in the very midst of the battle entirely changed the position. M. Brisson's time had not come, and considering his age it indeed now seemed as if he might never attain to the supreme magistracy. The future looked blank; but M. Loubet was elected President, and a ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... on for some time without effect, the old gentleman's patience became exhausted. He laid down his gavel, arose to his feet, glared at the irrepressible member, and, shaking his finger savagely, shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... entering the room he had thrown a defiant glance around him, which had not quailed even before the stern eye of the tall man, Turner, who, as the agent of the absent Fetters, had bid on Sam Brown. His face then hardened into the blank expression of one who stands in ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... doctor was ushered into the library, Bivens, who was awaiting him alone, sprang to his feet with a look of blank amazement, and then a smile began to play about his hard mouth. He thrust his delicate hands into his pockets and deliberately looked the doctor's big figure over from head to foot as he approached ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... every French finger tightened on the trigger. His colonels watched him eagerly. Up went his sword and up went theirs. READY!—PRESENT! —FIRE!! and a terrific, double-shotted, point-blank volley crashed out of that zigzag wall and simply swept away the heads of the charging columns. But the men in front were no sooner mown down than the next behind them swarmed forward. Again the French fired, again the leading British fell, and again more British rushed ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... cousin Sarah, who, even then, a fresh-faced girl of eighteen, had begun to feel those responsibilities toward the human race which have since so consistently distinguished her, and pursued me with hideous bits of paper bearing a mocking resemblance to blank cheques, which she called "pledges," by means of which she urged me to begin in the days of my youth the practice of total abstinence, with the result that she has become hopelessly involved in my mind with ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... blank: they drew out, and went up the hill into the covert, while the field moved along to be as close as possible, and the followers on foot dodged about feverishly, hoping for luck that would make a fox break their way. Too often the weary lot ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised! But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the peace whom they favored to favor them. One way was by making them a discount on his legal fees. There was a competition among the justices for business on these terms, and the lowest bidder generally got it. Blank writs of summons, even, signed by the justice would be sold at so much a dozen, to be filled in ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... responsible to the Postmaster of the city. Applicants for positions in the force of Letter Carriers must, as a prime necessity, be able to command a sufficient degree of political influence to secure their appointments. Possessing this, they make their applications in duplicate, on blank forms supplied by the Department. The applicant must state his age, general condition, former occupation, experience in business, his reason for leaving his last place, and whether he has served in the army or navy. One of these applications is laid before the Postmaster of the city, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... frenzy of rancor, interrupted or rather suspended for several moments by pity. She took the frame in her hands, she cast it upon the ground, trampling the glass beneath her feet, then she began to write, on the first blank sheet, one of those notes which passion alone dares to pen, which does not draw ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... desk, the watch officer resumed his tour of duty. The six great lookout plates into which the alert observers peered were blank, their far-flung ultra-sensitive detector screens encountering no obstacle—the ether was empty for thousands upon thousands of kilometers. The signal lamps upon the pilot's panel were dark, its warning bells ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... was time to consult Biddick. He was sitting at his desk staring at a blank sheet of paper. His fingers were harrowing his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... archives and of writings of all kinds in New Mexico during the Indian revolt of 1680 and in succeeding years has left the documentary history of the province during the seventeenth century almost a blank. Publications are very few in number. There is no doubt that the archives of Spain and even those of Mexico will yet reveal a number of sources as yet unknown; but in the meantime, until these treasures ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... its early maturity; it can be picked in August, which allows plenty of time, in favourable weather, for next year's fruit buds to develop before winter; whereas with the late sorts these buds have very little chance to mature while the current year's fruit is ripening, with the result that a blank season nearly always follows an abundant yield. The Worcester Pearmain is so highly decorative, with its large pale pink and white blossoms in spring and its glowing red fruit in autumn, that it would ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... that, if there had been an Athenaeum, and if the people had been readers, years ago, some leaves of dedication in your library, of praise of patrons which was very cheaply bought, very dearly sold, and very marketably haggled for by the groat, would be blank leaves, and posterity might probably have lacked the information that certain monsters of virtue ever had existence. But it is upon a much better and wider scale, let me say it once again—it is in the effect ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... three guns. With a shout of "Come along Tigers, show them what you can do," Captain Tomson led them straight at the enemy. Two of the gun teams were overcome, but the third could not be reached, and fired at them point blank. L/Cpl. Signaller J. Smith was wounded and fell, Captain Tomson, bending down to tie him up, was shot through the head. Only two men got away, leaving their leader, now dead, in a small shelter outside the trench. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... nothing to gain by concealment," replied the culprit. "If I had never seen Waterford, I might have been an honest man to-day. I went into some land speculations with him. We bought two hundred acres at Bloomvale, confident that the new Blank and Plank Railroad would pass through the centre of it, for it was one of the routes surveyed, and we had an assurance that it would be the one adopted. Instead of coming direct to the city, as we were almost certain it would, they tapped the North Central, and left our land ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... attack, Ihope I have not been wanting in that respect which is due even to a somewhat rancorous assailant. Ihave not returned evil for evil, nor have I noticed objections which I could not refute without seeming to be offensive. Is it not mere skirmishing with blank cartridge, when Professor Whitney assures me that I have never fathomed "the theory of the antecedency of the idea to the word in the minds of those who hold that theory?" Surely, that is the theory which everybody holds who forms his idea of the origin of language from the manner in which ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... away; but Bradford, who had courteously come up just as I began to succeed, was so kind as to see him fall punctiliously into the water, when he had gone far enough to suggest a reprimand of my slight unseemliness. And now, when the Artist was Christian enough to exclaim, "Why, Blank, I did not know you were such a shot!" I thought it high time to rest on my (back and) laurels. Reposing, therefore, upon the round leathern pillow which was my inseparable and invaluable companion, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the other; and to assist him in this he is trained to carry his consciousness without break from the physical plane to the astral or devachanic and back again, for until that can be done there is always a possibility that his recollections may be partially lost or distorted during the blank interval which separates his periods of consciousness on the various planes. When the power of bringing over the consciousness is perfectly acquired the pupil will have the advantage of the use of all the astral faculties, not only while out of his body during sleep or trance, but also ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... and a lamb to be drest in a vessel of brass, which was really the case. The emperor Trajan made a similar trial of the god at Heliopolis, by sending him a letter sealed up,(96) to which he demanded an answer.(97) The oracle made no other return, than to command a blank paper, well folded and sealed, to be delivered to him. Trajan, upon the receipt of it, was struck with amazement to see an answer so correspondent with his own letter, in which he knew he had written nothing. The wonderful ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of thin blank paper, say 81/2 x 11 inches. Take the first sheet, and telling the subject to watch what you do, fold it once, and in the middle of the folded edge tear out or cut out a small notch; then ask the subject to tell you how many holes there will be in the paper ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... stranger would come for her in my place, and that it was my purpose never to see her again. From the moment of my leaving the woman's house—that last straw of surrendering my baby was more than my heart and brain could bear—everything, with one exception, was a blank to me until I awoke to consciousness, five weeks later, to find myself being tenderly cared for in the home of a young man, who was spending the winter in Rome for his health. His sister—a lovely girl, a few years his senior—was ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... by which a long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children's heads. M. Reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what Donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[142] M. Reymond's brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, entitles his suggestion to great weight. The angles of the cantoria where the side panels join ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford |
