"Rambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rooted to the earth, and filled as of old, with the music of summer birds. On the very centre of the island stood an old mansion house, the residence of its proprietor before the paradise became city property. It was a rambling old building, with wings of unequal length shaded with magnificent willows, and surrounded by shrubbery, and pretty lawns, interspersed with fine old trees. Terraces beautifully lifted from the water's edge; and gravel walks, bordered with the thickest and heaviest box-myrtle, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... He is by her side, rejoicing at the sight of her, rejoicing that he has kept his faith, has lived the whole year discreetly, without drinking or swearing. There are no blueberries yet to gather-it is only springtime-yet some good reason they find for rambling off to the woods; he walks beside her without word or joining of hands, through the massed laurel flaming into blossom, and naught beyond does either need to flush the cheek, to quicken ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... her importance in the field of discussion, the cause of reform. Her speech, in itself, had about the value of a pretty essay, committed to memory and delivered by a bright girl at an "academy"; it was vague, thin, rambling, a tissue of generalities that glittered agreeably enough in Mrs. Burrage's veiled lamplight. From any serious point of view it was neither worth answering nor worth considering, and Basil Ransom made his reflexions on the crazy character ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... a row of cook-shacks like the one I had been in, and several stores and saloons. The lumber-camp was a little town. A rambling log cabin attracted me by reason of the shaggy mustangs standing before it and the sounds of mirth within. A peep showed me a room with a long bar, where men and boys were drinking. I heard the rattle of dice and ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... their longest, The heat was at its strongest, When Brown, old friend and true, Wrote thus: "Dear Jack, why swelter In town when shade and shelter Are waiting here for you? Quit Bulls and Bears and gambling, For rural sports and rambling Forsake your Wall Street tricks; Come without hesitation, Check to Dobbs' Ferry Station, We dine at ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... week Jo stayed away from the fishing village. The scratches on his hand and on his cheek were all too plainly visible. He occupied his vacation-time in rambling in other places ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs when my father's good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... pleasantly situated. Her husband was a grave, staid man who was very kind to Margie, always. The farm was a rambling affair—extending over, and embracing in its ample limits, hill and dale, meadow and woodland, and a portion, of a bright, swift river, on whose bold banks it was Margie's delight to sit through the purple ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... index finger of his right hand on his forehead, shook his head, which may be translated thus: He is rambling terribly.) ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... kept for this place in a rambling record a story which might have been told in my last paper. When I left the barracks of Ballincollig and said good-bye to her Majesty's service, I had an encounter with one of my non-commissioned enemies. I had my leave of absence in my pocket, and my discharge was to follow me by ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... land and had taken each a sip from our water-bottles, for all their throats were parched and swollen with thirst. It was a terrible tale which they had to tell, and it made us shiver and grow sick while they told it. I will tell it again now, not, indeed, in their words, which were wild, rambling, and disconnected, but in my own words, making as plain a tale of it as I can, for indeed it needs no skill to exaggerate the horror ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... are rambling through the country, denotes that you will be oppressed with sadness, and the separation from friends, but your worldly surroundings will be all that one could desire. For a young woman, this dream promises a comfortable home, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... expected a day of happiness and laughter with Redbud, basking in the fond light of her eyes, and rambling by ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... as soon as she caught the perplexed expression of their faces; and by the time they arrived at Abermouth, she was as much delighted with all the new scenery as they were, and found it hard work to resist their entreaties to go rambling out on the seashore at once; but Elizabeth had undergone more fatigue that day than she had had before for many weeks, and Ruth ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... evening of the 29th, the third night from their last camp, Eyre took the first watch to look after the horses, as this was necessary every night to prevent them rambling ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... England when every man turned himself into a Sherlock Holmes, but there is no man who might not with advantage to himself practise scouting in the Essex forests or on the Surrey hills. The world is filled with life, and yet people go rambling through fields and woods without having seen anything more exciting than a couple of rabbits and ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... are rambling over the hills,—those of Nature's rearing, and others formed by the accumulation of refuse brought up from the mine. We discover and secure some fine specimens of the metal; sundry of the knowing ones, after mysterious interviews with rascally-looking miners, appear with curious bits of pure silver ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Of these vast, rambling mansions numerous descriptions have been handed down to our day. The following, written in 1774, is an account recorded in his diary by the tutor, Philip Fithian, in the family of a ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... much to be seen from the railroad in the way of long rambling farmhouses and country houses of the modest kind, and there is much to be gained by studying these for use in our own domestic architecture; their average work is so much less pretentious, so much more homelike than ours; their surroundings are studied so carefully, the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... flew over to Ireland, threw up his commission, and took orders in the church. But instead of adopting the quietude which would have been suitable for his new profession, the clerical robes seem to have made him more intractable than the military uniform. After some months of rambling and romance in Ireland, he rushed over to England again, resolving to conquer or die at her feet; but the lady still rejected him, and, being alarmed at his violence, threatened to appeal to Lord Sandwich. There are many circumstances in the conduct of this unfortunate man, amounting to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... had no flavour till now. The tobacco had been of mere English growth, compared with its present taste. A duel in that great old rambling room upstairs, and the best bed ordered already ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... will be enough to dislodge the notion before it gets fixed in us." Then said I, "Which of his words has moved you most? For the fellow seemed to rampage about, in his anger and abusive language, with a long disconnected and rambling rhapsody drawn from all sources, and at the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... mistress did not know that Hannes had enjoyed himself out of doors hours before. He used to rise at four o'clock and begin his day with a bath in the river. Shortly after this the little girl, Lischen, would join him and they would spend a couple of hours rambling about, looking for bird's nests, hunting butterflies and picking wild flowers. Hannes' pale cheeks soon became plump and ruddy, as the result of fresh air and country food. Musical work went right on as usual. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... knife, which he happened to have with him, for prize! When at last Yule emerged from the wilds and on 25th March marched into Prome, he was taken for his own ghost! "Found Fraser (of the Engineers) in a rambling phoongyee house, just under the great gilt pagoda. I went up to him announcing myself, and his astonishment was so great that he would scarcely shake hands!" It was on this occasion at Prome that Yule first met ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was the occupant of the bedroom that lay in darkness beyond the half-opened door to the right. He lived, when at home, in a big, rambling house in the Berkshires, a house from the windows of which one could see into three states and overlook a wonderful expanse of wooded hill and sloping meadow; a house which held, besides Phil, and Phil's father and mother and Aunt Louise and a younger brother, Phil's sister. Satherwaite growled ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... this rambling way, wandering from the subject, after the fashion of old age. Olive could have listened long to the pleasant stream of talk, which seemed murmuring round her, wrapping her in a soft dream of peace. She laid down her tired head on the pillow, with an unwonted feeling of calmness and rest. Even ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted—a garden with a perfect riot of colors—suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... the highest fashion, ever permits herself to wear hat or bonnet, except when going to mass or upon a railway journey. White childish locks, braided and shining, red locks, brown locks, black locks, with bright faces under all, went streaming by, and then a solemn priest or two headed a rambling host of lads with well-scrubbed cheeks and clean collars, and decent raiment of church-going Sunday black. Then came a flock of young women in white muslin, very starched and stiff, with blue bows and blue sashes. In front of these two stalwart wenches bore ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... rambling composition. 2. I clean rum; belonging to number. 3. Poet in dread; the act of making inroads. 4. Oxen are set; clears from blame. 5. Gin ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... am a bold and rambling boy, My lodging's in the isle of Throy; A rambling boy, although I be, I'd lave them ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... by a single step, will depend upon the character of the house and its surroundings. To express a generous hospitality the main entrance should be so convenient and inviting that it seems easier to enter than to pass the door. This effect, especially in large rambling houses, is most easily obtained by keeping the first floor near the ground. That hospitality and good cheer will always be found beneath your roof ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... turned up a little rambling road and went on still talking to herself, and the Philosopher watched her go up that road for a long time. He was very glad she had gone away, and as he tramped forward he banished her sad image so that in a little time he was happy again. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... wide and ancient staircase the smart girl preceded Tom, shading the chamber candle with her hand, to protect it from the currents of air which in such a rambling old place might have found plenty of room to disport themselves in, without blowing the candle out, but which did blow it out nevertheless—thus affording Tom's enemies an opportunity of asserting that it was he, and not the wind, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the most touching and the most important event in all human history. And so, on the Sunday evening preceding the celebration of Father Letheby's first Christmas in Kilronan, I spoke to him at length on my ideas and principles in connection with this great day; and we went back, in that rambling, desultory way that conversation drifts into,—back to ancient prophecies and forecastings, down to modern times,—tales of travellers about Bethlehem, the sacrilegious possession of holy places by Moslems, etc., etc., until the eyes of my curate began to kindle, and I saw a possible Bernard ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... willingly pass again through the whole of a gone-by career. And this, properly considered, is one of our greatest blessings; stifling much of vain regret, and teaching us to "look forward" to the future. We have always had, if we may so call it, a domestic rambling propensity; a desire to see "dwellings," not so much for their pictorial as their, so to say, personal celebrity: and sometimes, as on our visit to Barley Wood, this longing comes upon us at the wrong season, when a cheerful fire at "home" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... stood aside, and allowed her visitor to serve herself with beans. When Nance's first hunger had been satisfied, she began a rambling monologue, of an accustomed sort to ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... oranges, lemons, grapes, and figs of the richest quality and in great abundance. The coast line, a wall of volcanic rock, is broken into varied forms, by the constant action of the waters. Here, they spent day after day, rambling about the old town, making excursions into the neighboring mountains, or crossing the bay to different points of interest. They delighted particularly in sailing under the shadow of the cliffs, watching the varying colors, blue, purple, and green, presented ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... seen some slim, slip-shod housekeeper, at midnight ferreting over a rambling old house in the country, startling at fancied witches and ghosts, yet intent on seeing every door bolted, every smouldering ember in the fireplaces smothered, every loitering domestic abed, and every light made dark. This is the master-at-arms ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... it a good deal, my lady. And I liked the idea of it very much." Lizzie pricked up her ears. In spite of all his harshness, could it be that he should be the Corsair still? "I am a rambling, uneasy, ill-to-do sort of man; but still I thought about it. You are ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I doubt if the stream has much to tempt me in the way of trout, and I prefer rambling about the lanes ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her with all sorts of feminine arrangements, and he was determined to keep them apart. Nan wondered a great deal why Dick did not come to interrupt or tease them as usual, and grew a little absent over Mrs. Mayne's rambling explanations. When the gong sounded, no one asked her to stay to luncheon. Mrs. Mayne saw her put on her hat ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... mineral baths of Ischia chiefly congregate. One of its old-established inns is called La Piccola Sentinella. The first sight on entrance is an open gallery, with a pink wall on which bloom magnificent cactuses, sprays of thick-clustering scarlet and magenta flowers. This is a rambling house, built in successive stages against a hill, with terraces and verandahs opening on unexpected gardens to the back and front. Beneath its long irregular facade there spreads a wilderness of orange-trees ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... French a good deal better than I can some of Jessie's United States," said Evelyn, plaintively, and so they laughed their way out onto the broad, picturesque porch of the rambling old inn and stood ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... in rambling the woods, when health would permit, and had a boat lent to me, with which, in company, I several times penetrated the tortuous river, Esteenahatchie, to the bay, some miles distant. At night the boats were all sunk, or they would have been stolen or destroyed by the Indians, who hovered ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... home, and the wagon bumped along over roots and stumps until it was a wonder how Religion kept herself on the board which served for a seat. All the swamps and woods in Sawny were in bad repute. There was an old cemetery, rambling over many acres, lost in ivy and briers and immense trees, but abundant in ghost stories. There was the swamp through which Sherman's soldiers had cut a road, and near by was the hill-side where many sunken hollows marked their graves. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the rule, testament the exception, is proved by Taylor, (Elements of Civil Law, p. 519-527,) a learned, rambling, spirited writer. In the iid and iiid books, the method of the Institutes is doubtless preposterous; and the Chancellor Daguesseau (Oeuvres, tom. i. p. 275) wishes his countryman Domat in the place of Tribonian. Yet covenants ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the cedars he proposed to reconnoitre a little before making himself known. He observed that she was attired in a dark, close-fitting costume suitable for rambling among the hills. At first he thought that she was pretty, and then that she was not. His quick, critical eye detected that her features were not regular, that her profile was not classic. It was only the rich glow of exercise and the jaunty gypsy hat that had given the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... [sic]; but those that live near the Mahometan countries are mostly Mahometans. The Southern provinces lie in a temperate climate, and would produce all manner of corn and vegetables; but the inhabitants pay no regard to it, and lead a rambling life, driving great herds of cattle before them to such parts of the country where they can meet with the best pasture, and here they pitch their tents, but seldom remain long enough in a place to reap a crop of corn, even if they were to plough the ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the title: "Accedens of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the Caligat Knight, the latter term designating ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... peasants come into the court, and ask to see the "master." The master goes to the door, and generally finds that they have some favour to request. In reply to his question, "Well, children, what do you want?" they tell their story in a confused, rambling way, several of them speaking at a time, and he has to question and cross-question them before he comes to understand clearly what they desire. If he tells them he cannot grant it, they probably do not accept a first refusal, but endeavour by means of supplication to make him reconsider ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a low, rambling building, bespeaking the monastery in some of its severe outlines and showing a succession of cloisteresque arches on the left, terminated by a chapel beyond which rose the ancient tower visible from the inn-window—a wonderful example of Saxon architecture, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... was so grave that Miss Trevor was alarmed, and imagining that she had brought herself and her young cavalier into some difficulty, she became more incoherent, nervous and rambling than usual. Repeating herself over and over again, she related, in such a confused manner, the story of her encounter with Hannah, and of how the latter had entrusted her with the money for Percy; of how she had intended to return to Sylvandale at once when she ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... of rhymed heroic verse in plays;—a stupid French innovation, which all the ingenuity of a Dryden defended in vain. It was cast into the shape of a dialogue,—the Duke of Dorset being one of the respondents,—and formed the first specimen of Dryden's easy, rambling, but most vivid, vigorous, and entertaining prose. No one was ever more ready than he to render reasons for his writings,—for their faults as well as merits,—and to show by more ingenious arguments, that, if they failed, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... beggars, and wandering models. Bertha, though sitting with the stolid patience of a Mississippi clam-fisher, was thinking at express speed. Her mind was of that highly developed type where a hint sets in motion a score of related cognitions, and a word here and there in Moss's rambling remarks instructed her like a flash of light. She was at school, in a high sense, and improving her time. The sketch was expanding into a carefully studied portrait bust and Moss ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... seventh sandwich, that life isn't so bad if you manage to live through it. When he began the afternoon shift his ancient philosophy had returned, and to the clatter of the activity about him he contributed his rambling voice. Presently the words of his song recruited a few converts from the gang about him; and by four o'clock, with the freight moving faster than it had for many a day, the hollow spaces in the long pier were ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... chattered mostly of Canada, and he would sit in the shade of the cottage, listening to her while she described their life; the big, rambling farm, the children she had been brought up with, the great lake with its ice and its storms, the apple-orchards, the sleighing in winter, the beauty of the fall, the splendour of the summers, the boom that was beginning 'up west.' Cunningly, in fact, she set the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quickly—for they both spoke the French language. We were made welcome by one of them, who proved to be the master, and who helped us to alight. A long, and latterly a wet journey, had completely fatigued us—and after mounting up one high stair-case, and rambling along several loosely-floored corridors—we reached our apartments, which contained each a very excellent bed. Wax candles were placed upon the tables: a fire was lighted: coffee brought up; and a talkative, and civil landlord soon convinced ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that day, being their first, was spent in an excited and rambling endeavour to master the localities and ascertain the most interesting ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... a cultivated garden that keeps his gardener pretty busy. But the wild-flower garden along the rambling old north fence the colonel tends himself. In June it is a hedge of lovely wild roses followed a little later by masses of purple phlox. Then come the meadow lilies and the painted cup and so on, until in late October ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... now near the alleged hiding-place of Batavsky's rubles, and while seemingly only rambling over the wild country, he was studying the diagram that the old man had given him and trying to locate the hiding-place by the aid ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... because he had not cared to think of his own decease; he had made no plans about the valuable fortune which, as Helen had too forcibly told him, he would not be able to bear away with him when he left Bursley for ever; this subject was not pleasant to him. All his rambling sentences to Helen (which he had thought so clever when he uttered them) were merely an excuse for not parting with money—money ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... day will occasion some new operation to be carried out, and all plants having a naturally rambling habit, such as petunias and verbenas, must be strictly kept within bounds by being pegged down. This can be done by using what are known as "verbena-pins," and these can be purchased at a cheap rate from ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... Household Tales," by Mrs. Hunt, with Introduction by A. Lang, 2 vols. 8vo, 1884. It is curious that so biting and carping a critic, who will condescend to notice a misprint in another's book, should lay himself open to general animadversion by such a rambling farrago of half-digested knowledge as that which composes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... he learnt every nook and corner of the rambling house, the swiftest ways from garret to cellar, the entrances and exits of the runs, their sudden drops and windings, and all the thousand intricacies of architecture that make life under one roof possible for both ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Emperor had done more than pass the lodge gates; and now the outlines of the low rambling structure looked strange to him, silhouetted against a spangled sky. He was glad of this, for he had spent some joyous days here as a boy, and he wished to separate the old impressions ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... witness, to have done many famous and good cures upon diverse poor folks, that were otherwise destitute of help: yet among all other experiments, this methought was most absurd and ridiculous, I could see no warrant for it. Quid aranea cum febre? For what antipathy? till at length rambling amongst authors (as often I do) I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, repeated by Alderovandus, cap. de Aranea, lib. de insectis, I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... story of her afflictions to a close. And lest her "solid" reader's eyes reject the rambling recital as utterly unworthy the honor of their notice, she is tempted to whittle it down to a moral before saying farewell. For you must know that Keturah has learned several things ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Val d'Erraha there stands a house—a rambling, ungainly Farm, as such are called in Majorca. It runs off at strange angles, presenting a broken face to all points of the compass. From a distance it rather resembles a village, for the belfry of the little chapel is visible and the buildings seem to ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fear that the confusion and interruptions amid which I write have made this rather a rambling letter. Do you visit the North in the Summer? I would be very happy to welcome ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... his dinner and finished it in silence, while the skipper kept up a rambling fire of instructions ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... week in Somerset. The right June weather put me in the mind for rambling, and my thoughts turned to the Severn Sea. I went to Glastonbury and Wells, and on to Cheddar, and so to the shore of the Channel at Clevedon, remembering my holiday of fifteen years ago, and too often losing myself in a contrast of the man I was then and what I am now. Beautiful beyond all ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... companion were destined to have their wish gratified sooner than they had expected. They let themselves into the farmhouse where they were staying, and Venner turned up the lamp in the big rambling sitting-room. There, half-asleep in a chair before the fire, sat the very man whom they had been discussing. He appeared to be heavy with sleep—his melancholy eyes opened slowly as he turned to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the rambling talk and vague accounts of the Dent and Weir affair Martinez was able to piece together the fragments in a clear statement. This was that Saurez had seen Weir and Dent in Vorse's saloon. The pair had gambled for a time with Vorse, Burkhardt (at that time sheriff), Sorenson and Judge Gordon. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... to wander in the Highlands, he made his home among the lakes at Elleray. This home was a rambling, mossy-roofed cottage, of very picturesque appearance, overhung by ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... which I write, which is a brick street of New York, with one catalpa-tree in it,—a poor, vegetable fakir, standing on his one leg at a distance of about three blocks from "our corner," and sprawling out all round with his shrivelled hands, as if to catch the passing robe of some rambling breath of fresh air. With a trustful hope that this statement may be accepted in extenuation of the inevitable platitudinism down the gently inclined plane of which I feel myself impelled to slide into my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... interests. I held to this idea. I charged my intendant to seek for me a site spacious enough for my enterprise; and when he had found it, had showed it to me, and had satisfied me with it, I had what rambling buildings there were pulled down, and began, with a sort of joy, the excavations ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... nothing changed; it was in such conditions I had myself grown up, and played, a child, beside the borders of another sea. And some ten miles from where I walked, Cook was adored as a deity; his bones, when he was dead, were cleansed for worship; his entrails devoured in a mistake by rambling children. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tolerate him. He finally humiliates himself to the extent of exclaiming, 'You don't know what it means to be a cripple!' The pathos of it plumbs the depths. The death of Fannie Price, of the sixteen-year-old mother in the slum, of Cronshaw, and the rambling agonies of old Ducroz and of Philip himself, are perfect ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Sloman, whom you must remember. I am going to-night to see Macready in Macbeth: I have seen him before in it: and I go for the sake of his two last acts, which are amazingly fine, I think. . . . I am close to the British Museum, in which I take great pleasure in reading in my rambling way. I hear of Kemble lately that he has been making some discoveries in Anglo-Saxon MSS. at Cambridge that, they say, are important to the interests of the church: and there is talk of publishing them, I believe. He is a strange fellow ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... that we remained here. The ground was so soft that the horses, much as they are inclined for rambling, did not go further away than a quarter of ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... In a rambling and aimless speech, Mr. Pilley set forth in a somewhat general way the steps leading up to this meeting, and then called upon Mr. Innes, the chairman of the Board of Management, to state more specifically the object ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... times when he and they were as great friends as could be, and would go in swimming together where there was a bit of sandy strand along the East River above Fort George, and that in the most amicable fashion. Or, maybe the very next day after he had fought so with his fellows, he would go a-rambling with them up the Bowerie Road, perhaps to help them steal cherries from some old Dutch farmer, forgetting in such adventure what a thief ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... There was good swimming in the pond of the institute, and skating was practised there on the frozen surface of the neighbouring meadow; then we had our coasting parties at the "Upper House" and down the long slope of the Dissau, the climbing and rambling, the wrestling and jumping over the backs of comrades, the ditches, hedges, and fences, the games of prisoner's base which no Keilhau pupil will ever forget, the ball-playing and the various games of running for which there was always time, although at the end of the year ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 6th of March, 1888, Senator Beck made a rambling speech commencing with a fierce denunciation of a bill then pending to grant pensions to certain disabled soldiers of the Union army. He then veered off on the tariff and the great trusts created by it. I ventured, in a mild-mannered way, to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Ronda. They were of that kind of lawless ruffians who infest the borders of belligerent countries, ready at any time to fight for pay or prowl for plunder. The wild mountain-passes of Spain have ever abounded with loose rambling vagabonds of the kind—soldiers in war, robbers in peace, guides, guards, smugglers, or cutthroats according to ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Mouse, on his return to his hole after leaving it for the first time, thus recounted his adventures to his mother: "Mother," said he, "quitting this narrow place where you have brought me up, I was rambling about to-day like a Young Mouse of spirit, who wished to see and to be seen, when two such notable creatures came in my way! One was so gracious, so gentle and benign; the other, who was just as noisy and forbidding, had on his head and under his chin pieces of raw meat, which shook at every step ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... The rambling operations of the naval war till the close of 1780— directed by the allies to such secondary objects as the capture of West Indian islands, or of Minorca and Gibraltar, and by Great Britain to defensive ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it is true, consisting of but a parlor and two bedrooms on the ground-floor, and two low chambers under the roof, with a kitchen in the rear; but compared with the rambling old stable-like building we now inhabited, it seemed ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... in rambling over the black ashes of several villages that had been burned, they discovered a hollow place, by sounding the earth with a stick, and, upon digging, arrived at a granary of the seed known as "tullaboon;" this was a great ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... incident of note before the three of them reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... was a large and rambling old place, and it was some time before the searchers reached the neighborhood of the festive garret. When they did, however, there was no longer any room for doubt. Wild laughter, and high-pitched voices singing many favorite nursery airs and school-room songs ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a letter, dated 4th August 1690, to his friend the Countess of Sunderland, which is further of interest as giving Evelyn's own account of the origin of Sylva—'when many yeares ago I came from rambling abroad, observ'd a little time there, and a greate deale more since I came home than gave me much satisfaction, and (as events have prov'd) scarce worth one's pursuite, I cast about how I should employ the time which hangs on most young men's hands, to the best ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... how the wags abroad do call Each other forth to rambling: Anon you'll see them in the hall For nuts and apples scrambling. Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound! Anon they'll think the house goes round: For they the cellar's depth have found, And there ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... if none of these were obliging enough, or at liberty to indulge them in their favourite pastime, then they made enemies for themselves among the neighbouring clans, or else crossed over to Holland to keep their hands in there till fortune favoured them once more at home. The old castle, with its rambling towers, and walls, and buttresses was a sort of rallying-point for all the pugnacious spirits of the time, and its bluff walls showed many a scar and many a dint where hostile guns had played upon them, not, you may be sure, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... know," said Mr. George. "Perhaps we shall not have time. I may think it is best to spend the time in rambling about among the mountains and glaciers near the head of the valley, where I believe is to be found the most ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... insect, attached to a twig which, clogged with mud, it rolls across a page. Her spelling was abominable. Her sentiments infantile. And for some reason when she wrote she declared her belief in God. Then there were crosses—tear stains; and the hand itself rambling and redeemed only by the fact—which always did redeem Florinda—by the fact that she cared. Yes, whether it was for chocolate creams, hot baths, the shape of her face in the looking-glass, Florinda could no more pretend a feeling than swallow whisky. Incontinent was her ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... was staying in Flintshire and near Capel Curig, rambling through the dells or fishing in the brooks, it was surprising how soon the companionship of a Gorgio would begin to pall upon me. And here the Cymric race is just as bad as the Saxon. The same detestable habit of looking upon nature as a paying market-garden, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... river close by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly upon two dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its neck and the other with a rope round its feet. The bodies were too much decomposed to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about in the sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a very gruesome one. They may have thought much, but they said little. They returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when they found two more ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... darkness, as we did, I was unable to see but little, except as the nearer moon, in her wild and ceaseless hurtling through the Barsoomian heavens, lit up little patches of the landscape from time to time, disclosing walled fields and low, rambling buildings, presenting much the appearance of earthly farms. There were many trees, methodically arranged, and some of them were of enormous height; there were animals in some of the enclosures, and they announced their presence by terrified squealings and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... find his clew as he had hoped, and instead of lifting the fog grew heavier. He found himself at last no longer striving for any end, but rambling along mechanically, feeling like a man in a dream—a nightmare. Once he recognized a weird suggestion in the mystery about him. To-morrow might one be wandering about aimlessly in some such ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for English composition had, by much exercise, developed itself into a passion. In the pursuit of it he was indefatigable, rambling, and petulant. He had "Webster's Unabridged" on the brain,—an exasperating form of king's evil. The little dingy slips that emanated freely from the palace press were as indiscriminate as they were quaint. No topic was too sublime or too ignoble ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was a big, rambling affair of the Colonial type, with three tall pillars supporting the veranda roof and reaching above the second story. On each side of the main part was a generous wing. It stood rather high on a sloping lawn, and we have said that it "stared" ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... an absolutely business-like manner. She requested a consultation, and listened while the gipsy, decidedly nervous, gave a rambling description of a dark gentleman and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... was weak and feverish. His wound had opened, and his clothes were heavy with stiffened blood. He complained bitterly of thirst, and talked at times in a rambling, ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... constituted a good road differed beyond the possibility of harmonizing. When they said that a road was good they meant that it was straight, level, and businesslike. When they said that a road was bad they meant that it was rugged, rambling and picturesque. So, to their bewilderment, whenever we had a choice of good or bad roads, we always chose the bad. And, to get at what we really wanted, we learned to inquire which was the worst road to such and such a place. That we knew would be the road for us. From ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... had a great rambling house—it had but one Storey, with a Piazza running round, but a huge number of Rooms and Yards—in the suburbs of Kingston. There did I take up my abode. She had at least twenty Negro and Mulotter Women ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... for the former, and the others overruled him, not thinking it was worth their while to take so much trouble as to go rambling about in a strange place. They seemed bent on taking to the boat, when one of them suggested they might get into a scrape if they returned without their companion. They finally resolved on sitting down and waiting ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... rambling soon after the end of hop-picking, and hold a kind of informal fair on the village green with cockshies, swings, and all the clumsy games that extract money from clumsy hands. It is almost the only time of the year when the labouring people ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... little being, and a prime favourite with naturalists, who have described its habits and celebrated its beauty with enthusiasm. We shall not soon forget the delight with which we first made acquaintance with this graceful little rover. While rambling along the shore in quest of marine animals, our attention was arrested by a drop of the clearest jelly, as it seemed to be, lying on a mass of rock, from which the tide had but just receded. On transferring it to a phial of sea-water, its true nature was at once revealed to us. A globular body ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... that morning, and also she happened to be dressed in her riding- habit and had gathered up the skirt over her arm, so that on this occasion she made no sound of sweet approach. Wingfold had been uttering one of his rambling monologues—in which was much without form, but ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... begin to despair of ever gratifying my longing after a rambling life. It is probably all for the best. I dare say I would have become a mere vagabond. But I had embraced a wide field in my contemplated travels: romantic Spain, la belle France, classic Italy, and that dreamy, misty Faderland. But I suppose that ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... lived in a large, rambling, many-gabled, house, just off the main thoroughfare of Holborn, that had at the back of it a garden surrounded by a high wall. Of this ancient place the front part served as a shop, a store for merchandise, and an office, for ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... up like a sleeping eye when I got before it. It was a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines half torn away by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally an aged man-servant holding a candle high above his head let ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... and not to be talked of in the same breath with Spezzia. The hotels, too, are all built away from the sea; so that one cannot sit and watch the play of the waves from one's windows. Nor are there pleasant rambling paths down among the rocks, and from one short strand to another. There is excellent bathing for those who like bathing on shelving sand. I don't. The spot is about half a mile from the hotels, and to this the bathers ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... The little rambling hotel of Kalka, where the railway spreads out over the plains, raises its white-washed shelter under the very walls of the Himalayas. Madeline, just arrived, lay back in a long wicker chair on the veranda, and looked up at them as they mounted green and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding and beautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved front door. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before the house was a great front garden, and ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was a frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected deep hate. So Platte took no action, and came to believe gradually, from the Colonel's silence, that the Colonel must have "run off the line" somewhere that night, and, therefore, preferred to stand sentence on the lesser count of rambling into other people's compounds out of calling hours. Platte forgot about the watch business after a while, and moved down-country with his regiment. Mrs. Larkyn went home when her husband's tour of Indian service ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... out a lighted window, seen and lost through the trees. Conscious of a man's-sized appetite he galloped up the long lane, turned in at a gate sagging wearily upon its hinges, and rode to the door of the lighted house. The first glance showed him that it was a long, low, rambling affair resembling in dejectedness the drooping gate. An untidy sort of man in shirt-sleeves and smoking a pipe came to the door, kicking ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... While rambling through the streets we saw a funeral procession. First came many banners and symbols of the Greek Church, carried by church officials; then followed the casket borne by men, the casket open and the pale face of the dead exposed to the gaze of the onlookers; ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... After rambling leisurely about for some time, reading the iscriptions on the various monuments which attracted my curiosity, and giving way to the different reflections they suggested, I sat down to rest myself on a sunken tombstone. A winding gravel-walk, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... her; but that pang was spared to her in part at least. Pen knew his mother quite well, and familiarly smiled and nodded at her. When she came in, he instantly fancied that they were at home at Fairoaks; and began to talk and chatter and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear him outside. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was true, then. He had been guilty—and with that creature!—an intrigue with a servant-maid, and she had loved him—and he was dying most likely raving and unrepentant. The Major now and then hummed ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lane, hedged high, An ancient stile, A rambling path, A brook, And musk,— Golden bells of fragrance, Fusing all ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... in his Letter to King Henry the Eighth, stileth him, Britanicarum Literarum Lumen & Decus. Indeed he had Scholarship enough, and Wit too much: Ejus Sermo (saith Pitz.) salsus in mordacem, risus in opprobrium, jocus in amaritudinem. Whoso reads him, will find he hath a miserable, loose, rambling Style, and galloping measure of Verse: yet were good poets so scarce in his Age, that he had the good fortune to be chosen Poet Laureat, as he stiles himself in his Works, The Kings Orator, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... time. I was glad, though, when Cora Belle's home became a part of our beautiful picture. It is situated among great red buttes, and there is a blue lake back of the house. Around the lake is a fringe of willows. Their house is a low, rambling affair, with a long, low porch and a red clay roof. Before the house is a cotton-wood tree, its gnarled, storm-twisted branches making it seem to have the "rheumatiz." There is a hop-vine at one end of the porch. It had not come out when we were there, but the dead vine clung ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that daughter of the sea, Sweet, when uplifted to her aged nurse, She sat, and communed what the world could be; And rambling stories caused her to rehearse How Yule was kept, how maidens tossed the hay, And how bells rang upon a ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow |
