"Brown study" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with this scanty information. Alfred could hardly have gone to London; for there was a train up from Barkington itself at 8.30. But he might have gone to almost any other part of the island, or out of it for that matter. Sampson fell into a brown study. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was that, on the misty afternoon when young Mr. Walter a Cleeve passed him unawares, Jim had been standing for twenty minutes flat against a tree on the upper outskirts of the plantation, sunk in a brown study. The apparition startled him, for the thick air deadened the sound of footsteps; and the sound, when it fell on his ears, held something unfamiliar. (Jim was unacquainted with sabots.) He stood perfectly still, let it go by, and at once prepared to follow—not that his suspicions connected ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though her eyes still ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pellew walked slowly in the opposite direction in a brown study, leaving his thumbs in his armholes, and playing la ci darem with his fingers on his waistcoat. He played it twice or thrice before he stopped to knock a phenomenal ash off his cigar. Then he spoke, and what he said ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... experience as the basis of his opinion about the non-normal state of the gazer. He reaches this conclusion from an anecdote reported, as a not unfamiliar phenomenon, by a friend of Miss X. But the phenomenon occurred when Miss X. was not crystal-gazing at all! She was looking out of a window in a brown study. This is a noble example of logic. Some one says that Miss X. was not in her normal consciousness on a certain occasion when she was not crystal-gazing, and that this condition is familiar to the observer. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... gradual change. She would never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "game sense." But at first she had played in a kind of stupor; again and again she would stand at the backline in a brown study until the passage of the ball woke her with an apologetic start. Now, she frolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going after every shot, smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily put ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... don't you write the story of your life?" So says my nephew Tom to me when he comes in and finds me sitting in a brown study before a comfortable fire. I have finally granted his request, for I have spent many an hour in relating my thrilling adventures to him and am sure that he has enjoyed them and even profited by them. Thus have I been persuaded to write this little ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... thought of the poor editor, leaning over his chair in a brown study, biting the pen-handle, and wondering how he can please "A Constant Subscriber," who objects to the rather light nature of the articles he is now giving to the public; or, "Sacerdos," who does not like poetry; or, "Senex," who asks sarcastically: Is he putting himself in rivalry with the "Edinburgh" ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... seemed to be of their host's opinion. The two merchants took brief leave, as if under consciousness that something was wrong. Mistress Margaret, her body-guard of 'prentices being in readiness, plucked her father by the sleeve, and, rescuing him from a brown study, (whether referring to the wheels of Time, or to that of Fortune, is uncertain,) wished good-night to her friend Mrs. Judith, and received her godfather's blessing, who, at the same time, put upon her slender finger a ring of much ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... species of brown study all the way along Tudor Street; his companion also maintained silence in a fashion which showed that he was by nature and custom a man of few words. It was not until the two were climbing the old balustrated staircase of the house in King's Bench Walk in which Ronald Breton's ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... interrupted by loud and increasing chirpings. I look about me: my window is surrounded with sparrows picking up the crumbs of bread which in my brown study I had just scattered on the roof. At this sight a flash of light broke upon my saddened heart. I deceived myself just now, when I complained that I had nothing to give: thanks to me, the sparrows of this part of the town ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... started. For a moment it seemed as if he were about to speak. But instead, he stared hard at Maida, falling gradually into a brown study. From time to time he came out of it long enough to look sharply at her. The sparkle had all gone out of her face. She was ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... fixed his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the clerk was dimly visible; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... whether he had gone too far; and, as the door closed behind him, put his hands in Captain Gething's pockets and went off in a brown study. Slowly and distinctly as he went along the various things grouped themselves together in his mind, and ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... and the Circean similitude was not a little enhanced by the antique masonry,{2} and the expanse of sea which was visible from the eminence. He leaned over the gate, repeated aloud the lines of the Odyssey, and fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by the approach of a young gentleman from ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... haste. Seor ——-, a young Spaniard who is living with us, returning here late last night, was challenged by the sentinels at the corner of the street, with the usual "Quien viva?" to which, being in a brown study, he mechanically replied, "Spain!" Fortunately, the officer on duty was a man of common sense and humanity, and instead of firing, warned him to take better care for ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... thought. Vulgo' vocatum, 'a brown study.' Bunyan used this word in the same sense in the first edition of 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' at the Interpreter's house: 'Now was Christian somewhat in a muse.' It was afterwards altered, but not improved, by substituting the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the current of this business had been wholly altered; but the pirate ship was very gently touched upon. Nor did I hear the Colonel to an end even of that which he was willing to disclose; for Mr. Henry, having for some while been plunged in a brown study, rose at last from his seat and (reminding the Colonel there were matters that he must attend to) bade me follow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sat up very very late that night, and I took it into my stupid little head that his sitting up had something to do with the packet, and the thought so possessed me, that I got up and went softly into the library, and there he was in a brown study over some medical work. Oh Marie I felt so ashamed ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... me for having startled you so," he said, gently, then adding with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. "You were surely in a very brown study." ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... already.' Leigh Hunt was a bookstaller, for he says: 'Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair. "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired."' ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused, and after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... my boots just now in what the novelists call "a brown study." There was no urgent reason for putting on my boots. I was not going out, and my slippers were much more comfortable. But something had to be done. I wanted a subject for an article. Now if you are accustomed ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... drawingroom, but finally dropped it for more agreeable subjects. The men, however, when the cloth Was removed, filled their glasses, and continued the discussion with unabated vigour. Brian alone did not take part in the conversation. He sat moodily staring at his untasted wine, wrapped in a brown study. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... but there's a nook just off it which I shall use for a breakfast room, looking out into the prim, Prunella scrap of garden, and that I will make giddy-gay with chintz and Minton. There'll be a remote workroom for me, far upstairs, and a friendly brown study where Michael Daragh's lame dogs may come to be ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... address even a schoolmaster, but for something in his manner which seemed to denote that he was uneasy or distressed. As they stood hesitating at a little distance, they saw that he sat for a few minutes at a time like one in a brown study, then laid aside his pipe and took a few turns in his garden, then approached the gate and looked towards the green, then took up his pipe again with a sigh, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... in a brown study, tapping the table with his fingers, sat for some moments. Rising abruptly, he placed his hat on his head, and requesting Mr. Damsel to follow, left the room. In a short time he was in the Union Depot, and stepping up to the clerk of the parcel-room, asked for a package ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... indeed. We can meet him at any time. It was his Highness, the duke, walking quite alone, under the orange trees, with a slender little cane in his hand, that he was beating the branches with, all in a brown study, showering down the blossoms among his gold buttons—so romantic—and in his glossy hair. Lucy gave a little scream when she saw him, and clasped her hands so. The duke gave a start and came toward us, then checked himself and begged pardon in such delicious Spanish, only we couldn't quite ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... absorbed in her own mysterious mental processes to take note of or analyze this observation. For a few moments she was lost in a brown study, and gazed about her with a glance that ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... this last state of mind I know not a better term that can be chosen, than that of reverie. It is of the nature of what I have seen denominated BROWN STUDY(16) a species of dozing and drowsiness, in which all men spend a portion of the waking part of every day of their lives. Every man must be conscious of passing minutes, perhaps hours of the day, particularly when ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... entering his own room, Quirk, closing his door, stood for some time leaning against the side of the window, with his hands in his pockets, and his eyes instinctively resting on his banker's book, which lay on the table. He was in a very brown study, the subject on which his thoughts were busied, being the prudence or imprudence of leaving Titmouse thus in the hands of Gammon. It might be all very well for Quirk to assert his self-confidence when in Gammon's presence; but he did not really feel ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... was off in a brown study so deep about artificial sins, I didn't hear Liddy come in, she shut the door so softly and trod on tiptoes so light on the carpet. The first thing I knew was I felt her hands on my head, as she stood behind me, a dividin' of my ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... A little stream, or rivulet, trickled from the wood, and a rustic bridge—more for ornament than use, for a man with long legs could stride the stream well—was thrown over it. Val had reached thus far, when he saw someone standing on the bridge, his arms on the parapet, apparently in a brown study. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the appearance of having become stained by wear. With a much-perplexed face, Riderhood looked from it to the sleeper, and from the sleeper to it, and finally crept back to his chair, and there, with his hand to his chin, sat long in a brown study, looking ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Olive went round to the back door, so as to dispose of her ladened garments and brush off her shoes This done, she went into the kitchen, where a warm atmosphere still lingered, and, preferring to be alone, sat down there, with her feet in the oven and her chin in her hands, and once more fell into a brown study. Only a few minutes later, Kittie came into the dining-room for something, and on going back, failed to close the door, so that the murmur of voices came quite distinctly out to the quiet kitchen. A discussion was warmly ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... filled up his spare time by devoting himself to the art of slipper-stitching. This man often beheld Halil prowling about on the house-top in the moonlit nights where Guel-Bejaze was sleeping, and after sitting down within a couple of paces of her, remain there in a brown study for hours at a time, often till midnight, nay, sometimes till daybreak. With his chin resting in the palm of his hand there he would stay, gazing intently at her charming figure and her pale but beautiful face. Frequently he would creep closer to her, creep so near that his lips would ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... lost the use of your tongue, for want of us to talk to. I shall be affronted if you go into a brown study the first day ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoughts, and no longer amused by my surroundings, I must have forgotten myself for a moment in a brown study; for when I came to, I was surprised to find that we four had drifted some distance apart, and that K—— was now whispering rapidly to the Russian officer alone, and that the sergeant was standing far ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now, and talk your brightest and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was in a brown study, seemingly unheedful of the rumbling sound. In a moment he roused ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... returned to his office with a grave face, and sat for the best part of three hours in a brown study. Then he took ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... entirely perfunctory and pointless, that I was sure he had not in the least followed my remarks. Every now and then he roused himself and put on some show of interest, asking me to repeat or to explain more fully, but it was always to sink once more into the same brown study. At last he rose and threw the end of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with an unobservant eye, being too much occupied with his thoughts to take notice of anything; and it was only when two magpies near him broke into a joyous duet, in which each strove to emulate the other's mellow notes, that he awoke from his brown study, and began to walk back again ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... His brown study lasted only a moment. With a quick movement he walked to the blackboard, caught up a section of sheepskin, and began erasing the symbols of the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... seated, one afternoon, in front of his house on a low stool, where he was wont to sun himself and smoke an imaginary pipe, while the children were at play in the grassy square. He was absorbed, apparently, in what he used to term a brown study. Thursday October, making his appearance from among the bushes on the opposite side of the square, leaped the four-foot fence like a greyhound, without a ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... an order, dispelled his brown study; and Rose—beautiful, desirable, but profoundly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... space yet uncovered, stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which they lay, stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding a sheltered nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and the waves bursting around me. There I fell into a sort of brown study—almost a half-sleep. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... round on him; "it is more a white dream than a brown study. Fancy this room all lit with Chinese lanterns and the moon outside, and us sitting up until twelve o'clock, and music, Boris, and everybody dancing. The story books will have come true—oh, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... herself in a brown study several times over these circumstances and her father's manner before she went to sleep ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... to this criticism. Perhaps he scarcely heard it, for he appeared lost in a brown study. Finally he said: "Will you permit my daughter to call upon ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... serenity that men found irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes brimming melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a brown study erbout somethin'." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... she and Bruce were alone in the room. He was sitting at Mother Jess's desk, in as deep a brown study as she had been. The ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... detective had gone Mr. Marshall sat in a brown study for a few moments. Then he summoned his superintendent ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... in a brown study, a few feet away from the players, deep in his melancholy thoughts. The army, his military career, intercourse with his brother officers and their ladies—it was all a grave disappointment to him. His illusions were gone, though it was but a couple of years since he had donned the bright, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... not begun to clear when I came to the doorstep, on which I found a milk-can—and the man with the twisted nose. The milk-can told me the servants were all out; for, of course, Arthur, browsing about in his brown dressing-gown in a brown study, would not hear or answer a bell. Thus there was no one to help me in the house, except my brother, whose help must be my ruin. In desperation I thrust two shillings into the horrid thing's hand, and told him to call again in a ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... right. I ought to have an understanding with her,—I will have!" replied Maurice, still in a brown study. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... their town houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to frequent the street during the season, I am so apt to fall into a brown study, that I'm certain to be jostled until I am black and blue—I have found myself calculating an arithmetical problem at a crossing, and have not been aware of my danger until a pair of greys sixteen hands high in full trot have snorted in my face—I am an idler by profession, live at a club, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... what I think to be the most reasonable view of the case," said the boy, after taking a few turns across the floor and spending some minutes in a brown study. "Beardsley knows there is no man in the family; that we'd be only too glad to have somebody to go to for advice; and he hoped we would take that ignorant Hanson for a counselor, if he could make us believe that he was really Union. But Hanson ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... that's just what I was wishing you would do, old chap, but I hated to break in on your brown study. Here's a supposed-to-be reliable chart of this region, which I paid a man a good sum to get up for me; but already I've found it more or less crooked, and have begun to lose confidence in its accuracy. Perhaps you could ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... my father threw the Almanack away from him on the sofa, and remained deep in a brown study, which never ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... allowed to stay on the water after nine o'clock? She had ceased to think of the young man, but the image of his sister haunted her. How stylish she was, yet how simple and quiet! "I wonder," thought Flossy to herself, "if I could ever become like her." The reflection threw her into a brown study in which she remained for weeks, and during which she refused the hand of a staid and respectable townsman, who, in her father's words, was ready to take her with all her follies. David Price was disappointed. He loved this independent daughter, and he had hopes that her demure ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... was finally aroused from a brown study by the impassive steward presenting two great dishes. The clatter of some late convive seating himself also caused him to turn ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... large and generous. Miss Farwell handed the letter to Dr. Harry with the briefest explanation possible. For a long time the doctor sat in brown study. Then making no comment further than asking her to use the money as the minister had directed, he questioned her as to the patient's condition. When she had finished her report he drew a ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... sitting for some time in a brown study, staring into the red caverns, where the yellow fire-elves were beating out their rainbow gold on their ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my good Fandor, I am bored to death. I would rather submit to your indiscreet questioning than stick here in a brown study—black, I might say—with only ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... effectively induced by mental concentration alone. Artificial methods dangerous, and not advised by best authorities. Abnormal conditions not desirable. The "one pointed" mind. The Clairvoyant "day dream" or "brown study." False "psychic development." Use of hypnotic drugs strongly condemned. Scientific psychological methods stated and taught. The laws of attention and concentration of the mind. How Clairvoyance develops by this method. The ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Lord when he comes. He is searching, too. Perhaps you shall know him by the Quest in his eyes. He, too, is looking for the white presences.... You must know the world—so that you may not be bewildered. You must not be caught in the brown study of Pan. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... notice. He was puffing away at his pipe, long-drawn-out, solemn puffs, and gazing at the fire in a brown study. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... dropped into a "brown study." He was suddenly recalled to the present, by the arrival of the mail. The most important packet bore the handwriting of Sir ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... interesting to Edna, and she sat looking at the outstretched feet upon which she had just drawn her stockings till her mother reminded her that time was flying. "Wake up, dearie," she said. "Why, what a brown study you are in. Reliance will be ready long before you are. Hurry on with your shoes, and then come let me tie ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... I fancied you had gone to change your habit ages ago, and here you are, plunged in a brown study." ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... said, "It is a bad beginning for the Hydriot plans!" he answered, "I don't know that," and stood looking at the ruins of his "Dragon's Head" in a sort of brown study, till we grew impatient, and ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what they seem." I can not think of any thing, now, more certain to make one shudder, than to have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear with its cold, flabby under-lip. A camel did this for one of the boys, who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up and saw the majestic apparition hovering above him, and made frantic efforts to get out of the way, but the camel reached out and bit him on the shoulder before he accomplished it. This was the only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... laboring about the enclosure, his lip curling upward with fine contempt. The "dogs" were hewing with axes about some newly made carts, or rushing around on errands as slaves are made to do. Everyone was busy and did not notice him in his brown study. ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... Very well. (He goes in. Raina watches him until he is out of her right. Then, with a perceptible relaxation of manner, she begins to pace up and down about the garden in a brown study.) ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... still less propitious; for they cannot, in my views, be any of them the sort of people to enjoy happiness and longevity!" When his reflections reached this point, he felt the more dejected, and plainly betrayed a sad appearance, and all he did was to droop his head and to plunge in a brown study. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and sometimes we fight duels with them." I expounded in brief the distinction between these processes and their formalities, whereat he remained for a long while in a brown study. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... But Paul was of a mind just now to scorn delight and live laborious days. He confined himself for many hours of each day to his bedroom, and on the weekly railway journey with his chief he sat for the most part in a brown study, And made frequent entries ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... be listening. He had relapsed into his own thoughts and was frowning. Suddenly he came out of his brown study, and hit the table such a resounding bang with his fist that every one jumped, the doctor ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... was some river," retorted Bobby. "Anyway, Miss, you didn't seem to be listening to a word I said. What were you thinking about in such a brown study?" ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... Wycherly, a man-of-war's man, in particular, has not the slightest idea of 'passive obedience and non-resistance,'—that is a doctrine which is intelligible only to papists and tories. Bluewater is in a brown study; thinking no doubt of the manner in which he intends to lead down on Monsieur de Gravelin, should we ever have the luck to meet that gentleman again; so we will, if it's agreeable to all ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... very much. He thought how pleased the mother would be, and he thought how hard she worked to give her little boy a musical education, and how many comforts the thalers would buy. Oh, he would work hard for it. The dear mother would be so surprised. And he fell into a brown study, from which he was awakened by feeling a pair of strong arms around him, and being frantically whirled around the room, while a voice shouted ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... had something on his mind, but he said nothing more. Only Nan noticed his brown study. But when she asked him what it was about, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... father only avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson's Weekly, she might now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths and homes had cist its shadow over ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a wagon train, and started off. But generally we got only as far as Oh, Susannah! I remember once, in coming out from one of our meetings, finding myself next a solemn and earnest youth originally from my own rural village. He walked by my side for several squares lost in a brown study. Then ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... the window-seat as soon as he was left alone, and fell into a brown study. Somehow he could not make it out at all. He was sharp-witted by nature, and years of suffering and forced inaction had made him more thoughtful than most boys of his age. He had long ago grasped ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... willing Solomon, and Sarah studied the poster with intent, serious dark eyes. Driving on, Richard found her curiously self-absorbed. She answered him in monosyllables and was apparently deep in a brown study. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... luckless Tartarin was in his study, in a brown study himself, when he saw the commandant stride in, stern, wearing black gloves, buttoned up to ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... old man peevishly; "you are paying too much;" and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out of the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man whom Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago awoke from a brown study, in which he had been ever since, and came to him and said, "Yes, but the honey is none the worse for ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... table in laborious cogitation, or biting the feather end of his quill, or rapping his forehead with his knuckles, to stimulate the action of the organs within, or else striding up and down the room, in a brown study, over sundry half-written and discarded sheets of paper, scattered on the floor. L'Isle's servant wished to speak to him, but was too wise to disturb him in the midst of those throes of mental labor. But, when pausing suddenly in his walk, he pressed his forefinger on his ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... opposite direction. Most women expect men to look out for them when they dodge, but Elizabeth's code did not allow her to put herself under obligations to any man. To tell the truth, she was in such a brown study over the events of the morning that she had become practically oblivious of her surroundings. When she recovered sufficiently from her confusion at her clumsiness to take in the details of the situation, she realized that the individual in question ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... boots to form a pool on the car floor. The heavy wool of his short driving trousers steamed in the car's warmth. His shoulders dried in a little cloud of vapor. He noticed none of these things, but stared ahead, his gaze vacant, the bronze of his face set in the lines of a brown study, his strong capable hands hanging purposeless between his knees. The ride to Mackinaw City was six hours long, and the train in addition lost some ninety minutes; but in all this distance Thorpe never altered his pose nor his fixed attitude of attention ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Dieu,'" he murmured, following some train of thought and musing aloud as was his habit. Then, still in a brown study, he opened the roll-topped ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely at the speakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out a notebook and jotted ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was in a brown study all the way out to the baseball park. She arrived rather earlier than usual to find the grand-stand empty. The Denver team had just come upon the field, and the Kansas City players were practising batting at the left of the diamond. Madge walked down the aisle of the grand ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... passion. She was a woman with one or two other masculine traits besides her roving heart. For instance, she could sit and think hard and practically for hours together: and on these occasions her thoughts were never dreamy and vague; it was no brown study, but good hard thinking. She would knit her coal-black brows, like Lord Thurlow himself, and realize the situation, and weigh the pros and cons with a steady judicial power rarely found in her sex; and, nota bene, when once her mind had gone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... on the rock for a moment in a brown study, and the crowd, which had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side, sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... a brown study as he took the bundles from Izzy and dropped them on his bed. Izzy went out, and Gordon stood staring at the wall. Trench? Or the new Commissioner Crane? If Earth should win—and they had most of the power, after all—and Bruce Gordon ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Western chap," Mrs. Allen said to Patty one day; "but he seems preoccupied. Sometimes he sits as if in a brown study, and says nothing for quite some minutes. And then, when you speak to him, he answers abruptly, as if bringing his mind back ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life. Her mother was inaccessibly entrenched in a brown study; her father contemplating fate in the vinery. Neither of them had a word to throw to a dog. 'Is it because of me?' thought Fleur. 'Or because of Profond?' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for the sake of a brown study? I wish I had known you were not busy, for I have been round all the woods ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... addressed to a young man who roused himself from a brown study and looked up. Then he looked down to see whence the voice proceeded. Directly in his pathway stood a wee boy, a veritable cherub in modern raiment, whose rosy lips smiled up at him blandly, quite regardless of the sugary smears that surrounded them. One hand clasped ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... following Him; doing as He did; and the whole thing impressed him as nothing had ever done before. So, when he went to the office next morning and found Udell strangely silent and apparently in a brown study, he was not at all surprised, and asked, "What's the matter, George? Didn't you sleep well last night either? Or did the thoughts of having been so generous with your ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... pier in a brown study. Mrs. Loraine had positively refused to let me see Kate, at the present time or in the future. She was again confined to her room, not to leave it, I judged, for weeks, unless I put my plan of intervention into execution. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... got home, that mischievous, malicious twinkle changed, and he looked at me in a dazed sort of way and I smiled back quite audibly. And do you know, that mule has been in a dark brown study ever since. He is trying to get through his slow brain how I managed to make him pull me home ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... He found Jimmy Skunk sitting in a brown study. He had quite forgotten to look for fat beetles, and when he forgets to do that you may make up your mind that Jimmy is ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... cogitation, revery, musing, meditation, consideration, abstraction, imagination, brown study, contemplation, deliberation, introspection, retrospection, lucubration, rumination, preoccupation, excogitation; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Bradford drove homeward the afternoon of the fete, he was in a brown study, having no realization of time or place until the wise horse turned in at the barnyard gate, and after standing a moment by his usual hitching post, looked over his shoulder and gave a whinny to attract his master's ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Rupert fell into a brown study as soon as the captain had left them, and Angela did not interrupt the current of his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... at his little niece with interest as she sat in her big chair, her elbows supported by her knees, and her chin resting in her hands, "are you going into a brown study?" ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... he heard her stepping briskly about the kitchen, shooing out intruding cats, and humming a darky air to herself. He went reluctantly back to the shore and rowed across the river in a brown study. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that it could all 'a' been fixed aforehand!" said Simon, and laughed louder than before. The obtusity of the Reverend Mr. Suggs, however, prevented his making any discoveries. He fell into a brown study, and no further allusion ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... familiar name, Mary thought. She came out of her brown study and listened. It was something to do with Stephen Richford. Surely there could not be two men of the same name. No; ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... him say to himself, 'A foolish woman! I can't believe it.' Sir ANDREW gave him a gentle pat upon the shoulder, and offered to lay him a bottle of wine that he was thinking of the widow. My old friend started, and recovering out of his brown study, told Sir ANDREW, that once in his life he had been in the right. In short, after some little hesitation, Sir ROGER told us in the fulness of his heart that he had just received a letter from his steward, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Hales, our countryman, reports, that these great clerks were invited to dinner by the French King, on purpose to observe their humours, and being brought to the room where the table was laid, the first fell to eating of bread as hard as he could drive, at last, breaking out of a brown study, he cried out 'Conclusum est contra Manichaeos;' the other fell a gazing upon the Queen, and the King asking him how he liked her, he answered, 'Oh, sir, if an earthly Queen be so beautiful, what shall we think of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... he instantly realised his surroundings, and the strange experience he had just gone through, which had seemed so long and which in reality had been so brief, left little more impression on him than that which remains with a man who has been immersed in a brown study or who has been staring at something, say a poster in the street, and has not noticed ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... muttering a Latin grace and crossing himself. Up to now I had taken it for granted he was a member of the Scottish Kirk. I glanced at the minister in some mystification; but he, good man, appeared to have fallen into a brown study, with his eyes fastened upon a dish of apples which adorned the centre of ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and, taking up the bottle, refilled their glasses. Then, catching the dull, brooding eye of Mr. Stobell as that plain-spoken man sat in a brown study trying to separate the serious from the jocular, he drank success to their search. He was about to give vent to further pleasantries when he was stopped by the mysterious behaviour of Mr. Chalk, who, first laying a finger on ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... presently asked, quite subdued; for he had fallen into a brown study, and was still holding ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... in to remove the glasses and the obnoxious pipes. Mr. Carlyle sat in a brown study; presently he ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... suspicion of her existence, while Victor declared there was no trace of a white woman any where about the premises. Mr. St. Claire, he said, sat in the library, his feet crossed in a chair and his hands on top of his head as if in a brown study, while Aunt Phillis appeared far more impatient than usual and had intimated to him plainly that "in her 'pinion white niggers had better be at home tendin' to thar own business, of they had any, and not pryin' into thar ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... are, in a brown study. This is capital—I had no idea you would have so good a room as this, Nat. Did you do all ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... an expression of pain and terror still reflected in his face, lay in a broken and restless sleep. Walter was sitting as still as death at the head of the bed. A book lay on his knees, but he had not been reading. He was in a "brown study," and the dreamy far-off look with which his eyes were fixed upon vacancy showed how his thoughts had wandered. It was the same look which attracted Power's attention when he first saw Walter in chapel, and which had shown him that he was no common boy. It often made him watch Walter, and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... aroused him from his brown study; he looked up, to find the hall deserted and M. Raoul standing at ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this outburst the Shepherd remained silent, gazing into the fire; then he roused himself from his brown study and said: "I've been keeping something from you, my bairns. Mr. Craigie told me last week that the Auld Laird has taken a whim to turn all this region into a game preserve, and that he will not renew our lease when the time is up. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... a brown study, seeing never Kalia's broad, homely face, untidy wisps of hair, brown bosom covered by her coarse gray kerchief, but that face, young and fair and tender, which in his dreams had become mingled with that Other Woman's ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Kate," said the king, rousing himself with an effort from his brown study; "come, we will go down into God's free air. Perhaps He is nearer to us there, and may illuminate us with good thoughts and ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Mrs. Devar thinks of it," broke in Cynthia, whose cheeks were borrowing tints from the red roses and the white with astonishing fluctuations of color. She ran off, more like Io, the sylph, than ever, and Medenham stood there in a brown study. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... was clearly their right, had reserved it to themselves to choose the time and way of making their invention public, when it was to break on the world, some fine morning, like the discovery of a second moon performing its orbit round the earth. I sunk into a brown study. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... While in a brown study on this anthill, 30 men on horseback suddenly dashed up towards me from the direction of Elandslaagte. I threw myself flat on my face, seeking the anthill as cover, prepared to sell my life dearly should they prove to be Englishmen. As soon as they observed ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise, and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But looking disappointed, would retire slowly into ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... roused from her "brown study," as she called it, by various questions as to Mrs. Harris's route of travel, and also as to her travelling dress, which Lucy was very ill prepared to answer, having cast hardly a passing glance at it, in her sorrow for her teacher's departure. On their way home ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... a brown study. It was certainly very unkind in some man that he hadn't married Miss Polly and taken care of her, so she need not have wandered around the world with a double-covered basket and a snuff-box. It was a great ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... speaking-trumpet under his left arm, at right angles with his body. It had evidently seen much service, was battered, and the black Japan worn off in most parts of it. As we have said before, Mr Vanslyperken walked his quarter-deck. He was in a brown study, yet looked blue. Six strides brought him to the taffrail of the vessel, six more to the bows, such was the length of his tether—and ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand, to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... off, and we got into the trap in which he and I had driven out from Berwick, and as soon as we had started homeward he fell into a brown study and continued in it until we were ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... must I this evening, ere I go to bed, eat much or little? I do not ask this without cause. For if I sup not well, large, round, and amply, my sleeping is not worth a forked turnip. All the night long I then but doze and rave, and in my slumbering fits talk idle nonsense, my thoughts being in a dull brown study, and as deep in their dumps as is ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents, with singular attention; but, from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a sort of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on. The gamin approached this pensive personage, and began to step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is afraid of waking. At the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... apathetic sentences without much interest, but the sum of their message appeared suddenly to catch his attention. He sat upright, and after a moment's frowning brown study, looked sharply up at ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... is shut out from your consciousness, and you are oblivious to the sights and sounds around you. We frequently witness the sight of two lovers to whom the outside world is non-existent for the time being, and to whom there is nothing in the world except themselves. Again, persons often fall into a 'brown study,' or 'day dream,' in which all consciousness of the outside world seems to be shut out, yet the person is fully conscious and wide awake. These mental states are very much akin to that of the trained clairvoyant, and is the state which should be sought after ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... he checked himself in time, and fortunately no one had heard him. The men moved on and struck into the rutted track leading from the batteries to camp. He turned and followed them in a brown study. Ever since Badajoz, siege operations had been Sergeant Wilkes's foible. His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent parallels, traverses, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from. Then they were espoused. But a block to the match came in Lincoln having no position. Awaiting his efforts as a law student, the wedding was postponed; but, meanwhile, death came quick where fortune lagged. She died and left her lover broken-hearted. He seems then to have been smitten with the brown study afflicting him all his life, and by some, like Secretary Boutwell, affirmed to be independent of the surrounding grounds for depression and grief. Fears of suicide led his friends to watch him closely; and he was known to go and lie ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... patience, your honour, and all will be out as quick as directly—in the twinkling of a bed-post.—For three successive nights I sat up in a brown study, with a four-in-the-pound candle burning before me till almost cock-crow, composing a love-letter, a most elaborate affair, the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, which, having copied neatly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... been home two days, and the old town had begun to take on its remembered aspect as he wandered through the streets and along the river banks. On this second day he was going up Main street deep in a brown study when he heard his name called by a young man who was approaching him, and ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... feverish anxiety with which he awaited the hour of union. He thought that seven o'clock would never come. He had no appetite at breakfast, and after that he rode, but luncheon was a blank. In the midst of the operation, he found himself in a brown study, calculating chances. All day long his imagination had been playing hazard, or rouge et noir. Once he thought that he had discovered an infallible way of winning at the latter. On the long run, he was convinced it must answer, and he ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... him when you meet him places. You talked with him for half an hour at that Dugdale reception. You have him here in your own house—Tom's house—when he's such a bitter enemy of Tom's. (During the foregoing speech, Anthony Starkweather makes entrance from rear. His face is grave, and he is in a brown study, as if pondering weighty problems. At sight of the two women he pauses and surveys them. They are unaware of ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... wondering how Ned contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family," said a brother, found in a brown study after listening to one of Burke's speeches in Parliament; "but then I remember; when we were at play, he ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... so serious, so self-contained, and not yet three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a brown study ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... a brown study, eating mechanically. The men began an eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and bloodthirsty suggestion. Some suggested the kidnapping and sequestration of Reed until the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... narrow streets of the town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should have done for the packet? A Calabrian would ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton |
