"Faintly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. Nor is this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so they lighted all the candles and poked the fire, before they turned to entertain their guest. But the candles did not burn very well, very faintly and flickeringly,—and the fire fell lower and lower, instead of growing higher and higher as they ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... had set an hour and more. It was dark; and an awful thunder-storm, whose march, like the distant reverberations of an invading army, had been faintly heard beyond the barriers of Blarwyn Fells throughout the afternoon, was near them now, and had burst in deep-mouthed battle among the ravines at the other side, and over the broad lake, that glared like a sheet of burnished ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... A slight sound of a scuffle, a cry, came faintly from the fore-deck. Then dead silence fell again. Time flew on. The tide was beginning to run out; the galley swung with it. The Indians, stolid enough as a rule, began to fidget on their seats. A lantern appeared at the fore end of the rowers' ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... and mother turned away, and walked along back towards the house, the light shining more and more faintly upon them, until they were ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... Chad smiled faintly, and then, with a flush, he spoke again—warning Mrs. Dean, in the kindliest way, that, henceforth, her house would be under suspicion, and telling her of the severe measures that had been ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... wearied maestro, and all around was still, Though the sunlight danced on tree-top, on valley, and on hill; The distant city's busy hum, just faintly heard afar, Served but to lull to deeper rest Euterpe's ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... hundred yards beyond the point where we had hit upon this new trail which was only faintly visible, the horses turned eastward, on to a field. Between two posts the wire of the fence had been taken down, and since I could not see any trail leading along the road further south, I let my horses have their will. I knew the farm on which we were. It was famous ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... terrible carnage: "As soon as he sees an African coming on board, he runs to him and cuts him in half, crying, 'My poor mother!'" The filial hero varies this a little, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting the Deity to "have pity on" his parent—a proceeding faintly suggestive of a survival in his mind of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... a ring—a half-hoop of diamonds—a glove, and a bunch of violets faded and dry almost beyond recognition, yet faintly fragrant. A pitiful collection truly, telling plainly of a love ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... garments and shown a motherly solicitude over the disposal of Miriam's things. Miriam noted the easy range of the child's voice, how smoothly it slid from birdlike queries and chirpings, to the consoling tones of the lower register. It seemed to leave undisturbed the softly-rounded, faintly-mottled chin and cheeks and the full unpouting lips that lay quietly one upon the other before she spoke, and opened flexibly but somehow hardly moved to her speech and afterwards closed again gradually until they ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... passed. From the street occasional stirrings reached them faintly; but in the room only short breathing broke the silence. As day dawned Moses, from his seat near ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... linger on the lips as if a hope was deserting them for ever. 'Oh, non mi amava!' cried she, and her voice trembled as though the avowal of her despair was the last effort of her strength. Slowly and faintly the sounds died away, while Gorman, leaning out to the utmost to catch the dying notes, strained his hearing to drink them in. All was still, and then suddenly, with a wild roulade that sounded at first like the passage of a musical scale, she ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined; more a sentiment than a passion—a compound of impulse and fancy, while the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... last, Mr Frank," said the man faintly. "I've been asking that native chap how long a man could go on like this before he's knocked over ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... frighten the gentle Ayah as she fondles her darling. The current of babble and laughter has almost ceased to flow. Baby lies silent in the Ayah's lap staring at the ceiling. He clasps a broken toy with wasted fingers. His Bearer comes with some old watchword of fun; Baby smiles faintly, but makes no response. The old man takes him tenderly in his arms and carries him to the verandah; Baby's head falls heavily on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... figure sprang from a cluster of dense foliage that half hid a golden fountain close at hand. A tall, straight youth he was, with black hair and keen grey eyes; broad of shoulder and narrow of hip; a clean-limbed fighting man. His skin was but faintly tinged with the copper colour that marks the red men of Mars from the other races of the dying planet—he was like them, and yet there was a subtle difference greater even than that which lay in his lighter skin and his ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Water!" faintly moaned the Polish lad. His voice was a moan, but it was his voice. He opened his eyes, looked almost uncomprehendingly at his two chums ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... wife quietly allowed her fair head to fall on her mother's shoulder, and whispered faintly in ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... easy and his tongue fluent. Beatrice had only to lean her head back and smile faintly from time to time. The General suddenly paused—so suddenly that Beatrice looked up and noticed the sudden pallor of his ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... faintly, her head sinking upon his shoulder like that of a tired child slowly falling to sleep. "I am ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... persuasion. In their mythology St. George did not conquer the dragon: he tied a pink ribbon round its neck and gave it a saucer of milk. According to them, a course of consistent kindness to Nero would have turned him into something only faintly represented by Alfred the Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed up in the celebrated verse ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Beauchamp's career the boldest readiness for public action, and some good stout efforts besides, to the flat result of an optically discernible influence of our hero's character in the domestic circle; perhaps a faintly-outlined circle or two beyond it. But this does not forbid him to be ranked as one of the most distinguishing of her children of the day he lived in. Blame the victrix if you think he should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upperparts grayish; median dorsal stripe, extending from crown between ears to rump, black faintly bordered with 'verona brown'; lateral dark dorsal stripes similar to median stripe, but with anterior one-third deeply suffused with 'verona brown'; central light dorsal stripes grayish, slightly ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White
... being supposed, in law, the service of his purse excused that of his person, unless his own country were in danger; and he appealed to my lord treasurer, and my lord president, whether it was not so, who both assented it was so, though some of them faintly, as unwilling to have been urged to such an answer. So it is thought that proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be done in the Star-chamber ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... opened his eyes with a smile. There was something still faintly suggestive of tenderness in the look with which Madame le Claire regarded him, and he returned it with the air of a man to whom such looks ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... moon was full. It edged over the low hill flanking Glen Oaks on the east. June bugs buzzed ponderously like armor-plated dragons toward the lights glowing faintly from the town. Frogs croaked from the swampy meadows ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... doctor always attributed the permanent idiocy of Lord Canterville's uncle, the Hon. Thomas Horton. The sound of approaching footsteps, however, made him hesitate in his fell purpose, so he contented himself with becoming faintly phosphorescent, and vanished with a deep churchyard groan, just as the twins ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... of his voice, but she seemed too glad of his bare acquiescence to object to such trifles. She sent Wu Chi to call Terence down to them. He had apparently been in his shirt sleeves working at the gun. He came with his hands still faintly glistening from their hasty washing, and with the coat which he had just bundled into still rather bunched around his big shoulders. He came and stood against the massive, rough-finished stones of the fireplace looking down at Elizabeth. There had always been ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... ye met, with distant streak So faintly promis'd the pale Dawn to break: So dim it stain'd the precincts of the Sky E'en Expectation gaz'd with doubtful Eye. But now such fair Varieties of Light 5 O'ertake the heavy sailing Clouds of Night; Th' Horizon kindles with so rich a red, That tho' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I saw him every day. He but faintly disguised from me the hope he had entertained of ruling France; and in the numerous conversations to which our respective occupations led I ascertained, though Bernadotte did not formally tell me so, that he once had strong expectations ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... too," Urquhart said, and the fact formed a shadowy bond. But Peter's tone had struck a note of flatness that faintly indicated a lack of enthusiasm as to the menage. This note was, to Peter's delicately attuned ears, absent from Urquhart's voice. Peter wondered if Lord Hugh's brother (supposing it to be a paternal uncle) resembled ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... sight of Vait-hua was the dim line of surf on the sand, and beyond it the slender figure of Vanquished Often holding aloft a lantern whose rays faintly illumined against the darkness her windblown white tunic and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... grade from an almost colorless mineral (goshenite) though faintly green, with blue reflections, yellowish green of a peculiar oily liquidity (davidsonite), to honey yellows which form the so-called "golden beryls" of the trade, and which have a considerable value. These stones have a hardness of 8, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... sufficient to give us the direction of any vanishing lines going to the same point. For those that go in the opposite direction we proceed in the same way, as from b on the right to V' on the left. They are here put in faintly, so as not to interfere with the drawing. In the sketch of Toledo (Fig. 164) the same thing is shown by double lines on each side to separate the two sets of lines, and to make ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... looking over his shoulder, saw the other wherry bearing down upon them through the faintly opalescent mists of dawn. A hail came ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Thou hast protected us on our departure and aided our return: our steps failed not, we have passed through the Land, our feet have stood within thy gates, O Jerusalem! From the sight of our own eyes are we conscious of the refulgent light that once shone brightly on our country, and which yet faintly glimmers, though she has become desolate. Thou hast inspired us with a contrite spirit to perceive and declare Thy Almighty power over all the inhabitants of the world, therefore has Thy servant ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... writing at the time, calls the scheme "an undertaking wholly new to our English customs, much at variance with the usual education given to women in this country." She, sensible woman, one in advance of her day, hoped it would succeed, but hoped rather faintly. "If it succeeds," she goes on, "it will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken down a 'Chinese wall of prejudices,' religious, social, professional, and have established a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... me. No one went to bed; indeed, I believe half the town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was broad awake, and attempted to get up and walk, but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a distance and cried, but so faintly that it was impossible to hear me thirty yards off. And there I might have lain and died, for I was now almost given over, the ponds, and even the river (near which I was lying), having been dragged. But providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been out all night, resolved to make one other ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... I heard, far off, from a remote attic up in the roof of the rambling old building to which I had never before penetrated—I heard, faintly, a voice calling me by name, which fell on my heart like sweetest music. And when the rusty key had turned in the rusty old lock, and the crazy door was pushed open, I found a pair of arms flung tightly about my neck, and a pair of lips pressed close against mine, with cries ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... with Little Jakey that night, and when all were still, and the night taper was glimmering faintly through the room, I felt his little hand pull mine, as if he would draw me closer ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... He was smiling faintly. "We wait," he told the com-tech. "I should imagine it takes time to climb twenty flights of ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... rustic nook reclining, silken tresses softly twining, Far-off bells so faintly ringing, While we list the blackbird singing, Merrily his roundelay. There! I composed those lines this morning during the process of shaving. I don't think they are very bad. I put them at the beginning of my letter so as to make sure that you will ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... I saw her she was dead. In our hateful English fashion, they had shut her up in a dark room, and we had to take candles to see her. I shall never forget the moment when my eyes first rested on that awful snow-white sheet, so faintly indented by the fragile form beneath, lines very fragile, but oh! so hard and cold, like the indentations upon frozen snow; never forget my strange unaccountable terror when he on one side and I on the other turned down the icy sheet from her face. But terror changed ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,—a gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... ELEGANS, B. & C. Sporangium rather large, globose, stipitate, somewhat cernuous; the calyculus thickly coated inside with dark purple granules, faintly ribbed, occupying about a third part of the sporangium; the network of slender threads, with large irregular dark purple nodules, quite variable in shape and size, angular and lobed, below sometimes much elongated, the meshes very irregular. Stipe rather short, tapering upward, bent ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... as she leaned her head against the tree and when she opened them she saw that the leaves of the tree had turned from black to green and that the grass was green and the sea and sky faintly blue. Above her head the long, carved ripples of the morning cirri flushed with a heavenly pink and there came from a thicket of a little wood the first soft whistle of a wakened bird. Another came and then another, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the doubt from her, but for a distant sound that came faintly on her ears—the sound of covert laughter. Her doubt turned to conviction. Her face became hot; her heart, but for the anger at it, would have grown sick with the disappointment. Her conductors and the donkey were retreating, having played their joke out! Two certainties forced themselves upon her ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... their right to enjoy the boon of light and air. At one corner, where the foliage became so thick as almost to shut out day, a large stone bench and sundry rustic seats indicated that this sheltered spot was either in general favor or particular use by some inhabitant of the house, which was faintly discernible through the dense mass of verdure that partially concealed it, though situated but ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the last two or three minutes the appearance of the fog had changed. It was dense still, but yellower in colour and even faintly luminous. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sur Saleve).—I was awakened by the twittering of the birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I threw open my windows, the yellowing crescent of the moon looking in upon me, while the east was just faintly whitening. An hour later it was delicious out of doors. The anemones were still closed, the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chamber, attended only by a single handmaid. "Dost thou too desert me?" exclaimed the wretched woman to her servant, as she rose to slip away. In silent determination the soldiers surrounded her couch, and Anicetus was the first to strike her with a stick. "Strike my womb," she cried to him faintly, as he drew his sword, "for it bore Nero." The blow of Anicetus was the signal for her immediate destruction: she was dispatched with many wounds, and was buried that night at Misenum on a common couch and with a mean funeral. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... everyone of the Racketty-Packettys massaged, and soothed, and patted, and put wet cloths on heads, until the fever was gone and the Castle dolls all lay back on their pillows pale and weak, but smiling faintly at every Racketty-Packetty they saw, instead of turning up their noses and tossing their heads and sniffing loudly, ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett
... influence on public affairs; and we may therefore infer that, in a society where printing was unknown and where books were rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad must have produced effects such as we can but faintly conceive. It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse. ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... away, out of the window, over the bleak yard with its piles of lumber. The voice of Issacher raised in expostulation with the driver of Cahoon's "truck-wagon" could be faintly heard. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the knee and the hip," Captain Martin replied faintly. "If it hadn't been for the tiller I should have fallen, but with the aid of that I made shift to stand on the other leg. It was just before we fired, at the moment when I ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... mouse somewhere in the room and the children were asked to be kitties and try to find it. Whenever anyone came very near the hiding place, Billy miaowed loudly, or if everyone was very far from it, Billy would mew only faintly. The "kitty" who found the mouse kept ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... snow-clad Sahara absolutely uninhabited for the first six hundred miles, and then sparsely peopled by the filthiest race in creation, and you may faintly realise the region traversed by my expedition for nearly two months of continuous travel from the last Russian outpost to Bering Straits. Place a piece of coal sprinkled with salt on a white tablecloth, a few inches off it scatter some lump sugar, and it will give ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... himself out at full length on the ground, and kept his eyes open for chippers and spiders, and all the busy little things that crept, or leaped, or flitted around him. Now and then the afternoon hush was broken by the faintly tinkling bells of a horse-car turning some distant corner, the rumbling of a heavy team going over the dusty turnpike, or the voices of the belfry clocks calling the hour to each other from the steeples of the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... enchanting. The opposite shore gleamed silvery blue in the delicate white light of a northern spring day. In the distance, the masses of houses and the spires of Hamburg hung upon the horizon like a faintly tinted, half-washed out transparency. A light breeze ruffled the broad bosom of the Alster, and the red and green steamboats plowed dark furrows in its brightness, which remained there long after the boats had passed, and faded away finally in ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... for the first time the palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger over the older nation; no more fortune ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and put some boxes on that, and finally a straight-backed oaken chair. One or two of those chairs were split up and helped to do the roasting on the kitchen hearth. So, climbing the pile, we emerged under the rafters, and could see daylight faintly in several places coming through the starlings' holes. One or two bats fluttered to and fro as we groped among the lumber, but no pistols could be discovered; nothing but a cannon-ball, rusty enough and about as big as an orange, which they ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... appointed scouts, riding off and returning at sundown with the information that the plantation they were on was the farthest to be seen—all beyond was wilderness, but with nothing in the shape of high ground beyond, save in one spot where a hill or two rose faintly blue against the sky. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... "No," she answered faintly, but with candor. "No. I've discouraged it. I thought of you." She paused, too kind to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the security of a sheltered nook on the side of a cliff he watched boats tossing on the sea. The sense of neighbouring strain and struggle added to the completeness of his own repose. A bed of mignonette scented the air agreeably. Some white roses glimmered faintly in the twilight Far off, a grey still shadow, lay the bay. Frank's cigarette dropped, half smoked, from his ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... ago, in Paris, there was a very good comedian who prided himself on being perfectly 'classic.' To be classic in France is to be elegantly conventional. No actress can be really kissed according to classic rules; the lips must be faintly smacked about three feet from her shoulder. Wills are classically written by a flourish of the pen, and classical ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... return of landed men to power would mean the return of simplicity to politics; and one can imagine the country squires, the last resort of enthusiasm for Church and King, feeling that Bolingbroke had here emphasized the dangers of a regime which already faintly foreshadowed their exclusion from power. The pamphlet was the cornerstone in the education of Frederick's son; and when George III came to the throne he proceeded to give such heed to his master as the circumstances permitted. It is perhaps, as Mr. A.L. Smith has argued, unfair to visit Bolingbroke ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... and four sets of policemen's feet went heavily down the stairs. Beneath her bedclothes Mrs. De Peyster began faintly, ever so faintly, to return to life. Judge Harvey glared at Mr. Pyecroft, hands spasmodically clutching and unclutching; his look grew darker and darker. Respectful, regretful, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... The speaker's name is Hakuriyo, a fisherman living in the pine-grove of Miwo. The rains are now over, and the sky is serene; the sun rises bright and red over the pine-trees and rippling sea; while last night's moon is yet seen faintly in the heaven. Even he, humble fisher though he be, is softened by the beauty of the nature which surrounds him. A breeze springs up, the weather will change; clouds and waves will succeed sunshine and calm; the fishermen must get them home again. No; it is but the gentle ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... again, and passed out by a side door into the streets. It was raining heavily, and the wind was moaning through the deserted thoroughfares, where no sound of footsteps could be heard. Behind him lay his pleasant home, never so precious as at this moment. He looked up at the windows, the two faintly lit up, and that other darkened window of the chamber he had not dared to enter. In a few hours those women, so unutterably dear to him, would be overwhelmed by the great sorrow he had prepared for them; those children ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... ignoring the proofs of their treason. The bill, however, passed through the Canadian parliament, after a fierce struggle from the opposition. The British party still remained quiet, in the hope, faintly entertained, that the queen's representative would refuse the royal assent, dissolve parliament, and take the sense of the colony on the question. The governor, either on his own judgment, or by the directions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hall. At the end of the hall was the door of the back bedroom, or the larger room adjoining it. The door was closed, but from beneath it shone lamplight in sharp, yellow streaks. And from behind it came faintly the sound of a deep groan, the groan of ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was called Mulledwiney told a story. In the middle of it Miaow got up from the limb of the tree, coughed slightly, and put her paw delicately over her mouth. "You must excuse me," she said faintly. "I am taken this way sometimes—and I have left my salts at home. Thanks! I can get down myself!" The next moment she had disappeared, but was heard coughing ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... did not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his teeth. Then he crushed the bones between ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... regiment, which had just begun to breast the hill. A shout arose; the men of the front companies were buffeted and swept from the track in every direction. A few shots rang sharply from behind, and a few more faintly from a startled Boer piquet on Surprise Hill. Then the uproar died away in the valley of the Bell Spruit, leaving the column disordered and amazed at its own wreck. It was a disaster complete, sudden, and incurred by no fault of officers or men. Up to ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... little procession went by with its queer muffled noises, the big church bell boomed ten, and the constabulary bugles from the other end of the town blew taps. The sound came faintly clear on the still night air, and the tall cocoanut tree that I love to watch from my window drooped its dim outline ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly; then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers' encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... still, carefully put away; and a portrait of the good Mayor of Westward Ho! (the novel, not its namesake town) which was found in the cellar with Vandyck's name faintly traced on it, hangs opposite the fireplace. The great treasure of the room, though, after the ceiling, is a letter from Kingsley, framed, protected with glass, and lying on ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... corridor and began operations. Three or four were measured in quick succession; then, when I cried, "Otro" (another), the jefe's eyes began to bulge. That one measured, and another called for, he seemed half-distracted; desperation seized him; as he faintly repeated "Otro" he looked wildly around in search of subjects and it was plain that he had not begun to realize what demands we planned to make upon him. Before the noonday rest, we had measured fourteen subjects, but the jefe's ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... said the Baron, but Otto's lips only moved faintly in answer. His father kissed him upon either cheek. "Come, Hans," said he, hastily, "take him hence;" and he loosed Otto's arms from about ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... sombre draperies of the sky, The faintly-gleaming stars half-hidden lie; Upon Night's bending head a hood of snow Seems weighing it unto the earth below; With gentle frowns she shakes her sable hair And sends the snow-flakes whirling through the air. And soon a soft, thick mantle, pure and white, Gives to the earth a new and ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... speck appears against the sky. In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling sweeping towards us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck [of the stagecoach], a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm."—Mark ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... the fossil fishes and their skeletons in the Museum, ... knowing that Cuvier intended to write a work on this subject," and might naturally wish to reserve the materials for his own use; and when the young naturalist, as he showed his own sketches and notes to the veteran, was faintly venturing to hope that, on seeing his work so far advanced, he might perhaps be invited to share in a joint publication, Cuvier relieved his anxiety and more than fulfilled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... face. If Eustace had just kissed her, and she had felt a tear of his on her face, and he had said nothing, she could have loved him then as a father, perhaps, more than as a husband. His allusion to the supposed Papal absurdity disgusted her at such a time, only faintly, because of her weakness, but distinctly, and in ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... rosy streaks appeared already in the eastern horizon, and the summits of the glaciers were faintly illuminated. Eliza saw it, but she did not rejoice this time at the majestic beauty of the sunrise; it made her only uneasy and sad, and while her father concealed his rifle carefully in the hole in the rock, Eliza glanced around anxiously, murmuring ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour, agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which cost us much ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... is in the secret work," responded the countess, smiling faintly. "My older son claimed the right of undertaking the more perilous task. Likewise he was the more familiar with the vicinity of our summer estate at Merz, having been there often ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... well beware, Patroclus, glorious Chief! That thou revisit not these ships again, Till first on hero-slaughterer Hector's breast Thou cleave his bloody corselet. So he spake, And with vain words thee credulous beguiled. 1030 To whom Patroclus, mighty Chief, with breath Drawn faintly, and dying, thou didst thus reply. Now, Hector, boast! now glory! for the son Of Saturn and Apollo, me with ease Vanquishing, whom they had themselves disarm'd, 1035 Have made the victory thine; else, twenty such As ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... is at Barren Hill. He has been there for five years now. My solicitor knows that I take an interest in him. He calls it philanthropy." Cynthia smiled faintly into the fire. "I was one of the people he swindled," she said. "But he paid ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... faintly, because she felt herself startlingly lifted on a tide against which it was a useless thing to struggle. Something in her wanted to sing, and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... More faintly imaged, and wanting force and purpose, as it were, because of his darkened intellect, there was this same stamp upon the son. Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend with it, and would have haunted those ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... belong all to the past? Or were they here beside him even now—even now? Had he wandered backwards perchance into that strange, sweet heaven of love from which he had been so suddenly and terribly cast out? Ah, how he had loved her! How he had loved her! Very faintly there began to stir within him the old fiery longing that she, and she alone, had ever waked within him. He would worship her to the last flicker of his dying soul. But the darkness was spreading, spreading, like a yawning of a great ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... abruptly] It's cardiac valvular—a little valve—[Tapping heart]—here. [Slaps PETER on the shoulder] There's my 'phone, [As a bell is heard faintly but persistently ringing across the street] I'll be back. [Catches up his ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... smiling faintly, "would my colonel have been satisfied with what I did to save the prisoners ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... man was undressed and in bed, Dr. Stevens had prepared and administered a hypodermic. The patient's eyelids fluttered and Dr. Stevens listened to the faintly moving lips. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... out his hand, smiling faintly, with the ring uppermost to be kissed. Beatrice stood perfectly still. She could see Ralph at an ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the twilight and stand awhile in the silence beside the bare sandy mound. No stone—no mark. Another nameless grave! She had been a child once, with dancing eyes and smiles, loved by some one, surely, and perhaps mourned by some one living. The low hum of Benton's awakening night life was borne faintly on the wind. The sand seeped; the coyotes wailed; and yet there was silence. Twilight lingered. Out on the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... stood on the deck of the Channel boat in Dover Harbour looking back on England, whose white cliffs gleamed faintly through the darkness, a sense of tragic certainty came to me that a summons of war would come to England, asking for her manhood. Perhaps it would come to-night. The second mate of the boat came to the side of the steamer and stared across the inky waters, on which there were shifting ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... chirping on the skylight over my head, and I could faintly hear the Italian criers in the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... her imaginative mind. Nothing can be conceived more strongly calculated to impress the feelings of a romantic girl, than the poetic attractions which are thrown around the Roman Catholic religion by nuns, and cloisters, and dimly-lighted chapels, and faintly-burning tapers, and matins, and vespers, and midnight dirges. Jane had just the spirit to be most deeply captivated by such enchantments. She reveled in those imaginings which clustered in the dim shades of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... considerable time; but the scene was so novel and beautiful, that I found ample amusement in my own thoughts and observations. The twilight rapidly closed round us: the long lines of statues along the roof and balustrades, faintly defined against the evening sky, looked like spirits come down to gaze; a prodigious crowd of carriages, and people on foot, filled every avenue: but all was still, except when a half-suppressed murmur of impatience broke through the hushed silence of suspense and expectation. At length, on ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... that we could distinguish, high up, the narrow archway through which it gushed. It seemed, too, that by a little management any one daring enough might have passed round the rocky amphitheatre in which we were, right beneath the waterfall to the other side, where rifts and faintly-discerned chasms whispered of further wondrous passages unexplored, and I felt sure—for the more I searched the more the feeling came home to me—that we were the first human beings who had ever entered ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... degree, certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scenery never but by them expressed, as, for instance, the stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery of their darkness signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching winds; the solemn flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light; the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against clear still twilight. With equal gratitude I look to the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... about my feelin's, father, so long's I do my dooty," said the boy with native insolence, as he looked eagerly over the side at the mass of fish which gleamed faintly white as it neared the surface, while he helped with all his little might ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... were invited by the soldiers into their shelters, which are dry caves with narrow entrances and with clay floors covered with matting or sacking and faintly illuminated by the light which filters in from the entrance or by bits of candle on the inside. Men who had been on duty throughout the night were sleeping in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... least shadow spares, And highest stalles in heauen his seat, Then Lyners peeble bones he bares, Who like a lambe, doth lowly bleat, And faintly sliding euery rock, Plucks from his ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... flaring, arrogant German crest which allied soldiers had grown to despise) moving northward along the distant road. They looked almost like toy wagons. Sometimes, when the breeze favored, they could hear the rattle of wheels and occasionally a human voice was faintly audible. And all the while from those towering heights beyond came the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the head-gear in the gas light inspired me with interest and respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I, was face to face with my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins cruelly ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... faintly. And his mother, never for a moment suspecting that he could wilfully deceive her, or that such a thing as had really happened could be possible, began to look ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... always objects of interest. Then to sit down upon a ledge that has been planed off by ice, and smoothed by the tenuous passage of an ocean's palpitating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping around its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going water, and growl so drowsy with the song that it breaks at last into surprising articulations, and talks and laughs, and shouts and sings—ah! this, indeed, is enchantment! There are few men, I suppose, so fortunate as to have enjoyed a country breeding, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... preceded me, I ran up the stair two steps at a time, turned to the right, and along the corridor until I came to the room occupied by the late earl. The coverings of the bed lay turned down just as they were when his lordship sprang to the floor, doubtless, in spite of his deafness, having heard faintly the fatal crash at the foot of the stairs. A great oaken chest stood at the head of the bed, perhaps six inches from the wall. Leaning against this chest at the edge of the bed inclined a small, round table, and the cover of the table had slipped from its sloping surface until it partly concealed ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... sleep, The whippoorwill is calling, The stars are twinkling faintly, The dew is softly ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... whisper so faintly in my ears, O Death, my Death? When the flowers droop in the evening and cattle come back to their stalls, you stealthily come to my side and speak words that I do not understand. Is this how you must ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... effect of the whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded: the light deepened upon the group; more and more ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... we look more closely, we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind: 20 Nature affords at least a glimmering light; The lines, though touch'd but faintly, are drawn right. But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, Is by ill colouring but the more disgraced, So by false learning is good sense defaced: Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs Nature ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... wanted to get away from everybody, and look this horrible fact in the face. She found her way to the garret, whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish glass, looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud. She knelt down and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... mean to him in the years that were to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those fine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the moon's, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants to bed, before ringing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... had been wiped off the earth! Sharp eyed and eared, alertness night after night availed him nothing. And not until the twinkling lights of Nagasaki were put astern, when the Vandalia turned her nose into the swollen bed of the Yellow Sea, did the traces again show faintly. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... not asleep within an hour. Moreover, although Ramsdell did know what to do, and did it, the stroke of midnight found him still staring at the dark with burning eyes, while the pillowcase underneath his head hissed faintly to the steady throbbing of his temples. The noxious, deadly poison of Mrs. Brenton's talk had made its insidious way through and through his system, loosening its carefully maintained tensions, overthrowing ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray |
