"Faintly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followed, no repetition, and yet there could be no mistaking what he had heard. It was a groan, a human groan, emanating from a spot but a few feet away. He took a single step in that direction; then hesitated, fearful of some trap; in the silence as he stood there poised, he could faintly distinguish the sound of some ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... sunlight first made me happy as it stole through the curtains and over the coverlet till it kissed my lips and wrapped me in its warm embrace. Then I would fall asleep again and my dreams, if I dreamed at all, were white and faintly stirred me to a smile. I never tried to catch the sunbeams, for I felt their gold in my heart, nor could they have been nearer than they were, being associated with my mother's watchfulness as she stole in to smile upon my slumbers and claim the second silent unconscious ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... heart's best blood. Forth they came—fine, stalwart, well-grown fellows—looking, to my eye, as though they had as yet but faintly recognized the necessary severity of military discipline. To them hitherto the war had seemed to be an arena on which each might do something for his country which that country would recognize. To themselves as yet—and to me also— ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... 9th of April the high mountains of Otaheite were faintly discerned, but owing to calms the ship did not come to an anchor in Matavia Bay until the morning of the 13th. She was immediately surrounded by canoes, their crews bringing off fruits and fish, and waving green branches as ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... shivering—as if better to taste the dramatic solemnity that surrounded them—turned her blonde head a little to look at Camors; then cast on him her inspiring smile, placed her hand on her heart, as if to say, "I am fearful," and went on. They reached her chamber, where a dim lamp faintly illumined the sombre magnificence, the sculptured ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... so loud these Saxon gleemen Sang to slaves the songs of freemen, That the storm was heard but faintly Knocking ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... was a black drip from ceiling and walls, and the excavation was filled with the hollow boom of the water-and air-pumps. With lights flaring uncertainly, they followed the mine-boss out upon a rocky crag that gave upon a deep abyss, faintly illuminated by the flicker of the lamps of the working force below and by torches set in the wall. There was an upward slope in the formation of the ledge from the bottom of the cavern to the spur upon which they stood, but it was made by irregular juttings with ugly, saw-tooth projections. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... door that opened towards the garden. But no answer came. The sun had set half an hour before, and his parting, rays, were faintly tinging with gold and purple few clouds that lay just alone the edge of the western sky. In the east, the full moon was rising in all her beauty, making pale the stars that were sparking in ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... on anyone "If I practise hard," he murmured, "I shall master it." Immoral to hurt anybody but himself. Little things are all big with the past Lived in thoughts about events rather than in events themselves Love for open air and facts Low opinion of human nature Man abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life One's got to draw the line." "Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?" Pabulum of varying theories of future life Pass out of the country of the understanding of the young People do miss things when they are ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... the pencil to my aid to give you an idea of the scene, and that would but faintly illustrate it. A wilder and more picturesque coup-d'oeil never impressed human vision. It reminded me of pictures I had seen representing the bivouacs of brigands under the dark pines of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the prophets, on the songs of the inspired melodists, on the countless beauties of the Scriptures, on the character and teachings and mission of the Saviour. It was his to trace the Spirit of the boundless and the eternal, faintly breathing in every part of the mystic circle of superstition,—unquenched even amidst the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and in the cold and beautiful shapes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Heer Piet van Vooren," she replied, smiling faintly, "that if ever his lips should touch my face again it will be only when that face is cold in death. Oh! Ralph," she cried, turning to him suddenly and laying her hand upon his breast, "it may be that ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... for either sex, garments that writhed and contorted themselves in fantastic dances when gently stirred by a small, cool wind which, wafting across the river from the green New Jersey shore, breathed faintly of ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... the back streets. The glance of a Dublin man or woman conveys generally a criticism of one's personal appearance, and is a little hostile to the passer. The look of each person as I passed was steadfast, and contained an enquiry instead of a criticism. I felt faintly uneasy, but withdrew my mind to a meditation which I had covenanted with myself to perform daily, and passed ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... spikelet. The first glume is membranous, covered densely with silky hairs, ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, tip very minutely 3-toothed with three to five fine nerves. The second glume is similar to the first glume but with a more pointed tip, faintly 3- to 5-nerved; palea is not present and if present it is very small, hyaline and empty. The third glume is shorter than the first and the second glumes, thinly coriaceous, punctate, oblong, obtuse, pale, faintly 3- to 5-nerved ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... beacon, and in the foreground. Farther back the outer fjord is seen, with islands and outstanding headlands. The open sea is not visible. It is a summer's evening, and twilight. A golden-red shimmer is in the air and over the mountain-tops in the far distance. A quartette is faintly heard singing below in the background. Young townsfolk, ladies and gentlemen, come up in pairs, from the right, and, talking familiarly, pass out beyond the beacon. A little after, BALLESTED enters, as guide to a party of foreign tourists with their ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... my own," answered father, with a pleased flush making even brighter his dulled eyes and cheeks, faintly glowing from the shower at which Dabney had officiated a few minutes before. I had not failed to notice that we had sat down and were halfway through dinner and father's hand had not motioned Dabney towards ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tempered the morning chill in the air, and the slanting beams stretched over the tobacco, which, as the dew dried, showed a vivid green but faintly tinged with yellow—a colour that even in the sparkling sunlight appeared always slightly shadowed. To attempt alone the cutting of his crop, small as it was, seemed, with his stiffened limbs, a particularly ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... water about the keel splotched with phosphorescence. Carraway had a big grievance that night. He commented acridly on a colored woman that I had espied on board. She was not very easily visible herself, but one or two faintly colored children played often about the deck, and she herself might now and then be seen nursing a baby. I had seen her on a bench sometimes when I had gone to the library to change a book. I had seen her more rarely in the sunshine on deck, nursing ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... which yields to the tread like a carpet of velvet. There is no other vegetation, not even a spear of grass. Close at hand, in all directions, are frightful fissures and sheer precipices, except on the side where we have ascended. Presently the boom of a distant gun floats faintly upwards, the cautionary signal from the ship now seen floating far below us, a mere ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... clean! like a Japanese house, and almost as empty. Could it be? But no, this bed was American, and then why was she so heavy? What great weight was upon her? She could not move one little bit, and oh, my! what was it she could faintly see beyond and below her own nose—was it shadow? Surely she could not see her own lip? She smiled at that, and the movement wrung a cry of agony from her—when, like magic, a face was bending over her, so kind and gentle, and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... to dinner-parties, like himself. Sometimes they were accompanied by their wives or sweethearts, whose little high-heeled shoes made a sharp tap-a-tap against the pavement. Lamps were lighted. The reluctant twilight was gradually fading; the sunset still glowed faintly above clustered chimney-pots to the west. "I'm going to meet Terry," he told himself. "If the day had worked out as I'd planned, I should be going to ask for her hand in marriage—— When I planned that, I still believed ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... faintly, "I am tired: let me sit down." And then, as the girl made her seat herself in the one arm-chair that the room contained, and hung over her with affectionate solicitude, she went on, with paling lips: "You never said these things in your letter, child! I did not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's what she said," she remarked, laughingly, with quick ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... evening, but there was a bright moon which shone over head, and the broad light and shadow made the rocks around us appear peculiarly wild and rugged. They towered up one above the other till they met the dark blue of the sky in which the stars twinkled but faintly, while the moon sailed through the ether, without a cloud to obscure her radiance. And in this majestic scenery were found but two living beings—a poor boy and a mangled wretch—a murderer—soon to breathe his ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... he has acquired in these latter days, after the lapse of a century and a quarter. Poets too often, are not fully appreciated till they have been dead a hundred years, and thieves, it would appear, share the disadvantage. But posterity is grateful if our contemporaries are not; and Jack Sheppard, faintly praised in his own day, shines out in ours the hero of heroes, preeminent above all his fellows. Thornhill made but one picture of the illustrious robber, but Cruikshank has made dozens, and the art of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... white, forming a sort of collar, more or less distinct. Upper parts striped gray, black, and olive. Breast and under parts white, with black streaks. Tail olive-brown, with yellow-white spots. Female — Without cap. Greenish-olive above, faintly streaked with black. Paler than male. Bands on wings, yellowish. Range — North America, to Greenland and Alaska. In winter, to northern part of South America. Migrations — Last of May. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... task, To sigh in vain for sleep; Or faintly smile, our griefs to mask, When 't would be joy to weep; To court the shade of leafy bower, Thirst for the freedom wave, But to obtain denied the power— This is to ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... chlorine water and ammonia; is dextro-rotatory; not fluorescent, and practically insoluble in ammonia and in ether. A fourth alkaloid, cinchonidine, is isomeric with cinchonine, which yields it when boiled with amyl alcoholic potash, but is laevo-rotatory, slightly soluble in ether, and faintly fluorescent. When red bark is extracted with dilute hydrochloric acid, the product filtered, and excess of sodium hydrate added thereto, quinine and quinidine are precipitated: on concentrating the mother liquor, cinchonine falls down, and on further concentration ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... ladies richly dressed; all seemed wending their way to the sea. It was the first of the new moon, a period sacred to these worshippers of the elements; and here on the shores of the ocean, as the sun was sinking in the sea, and the slender silver thread of the crescent moon was faintly shining in the horizon, they congregated to perform their religious rites. Fire was there in its grandest form—the sun—and water in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean outstretched before them. The earth was under their feet, and wafted across the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... however, did not prevent them from rising to meet the situation. Indeed, it would have been hard for any one to resist the appeal made by the pale little creature whose hands were too weak to do more than clutch faintly at a finger and whose eyes were too ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... his head with a little shrewd smile. Mackay faintly endorsed his companion's offer, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... Gibson took largely to tinting his statues— colouring them faintly with flesh-tones and other hues like nature; and this practice he advocated with all the strength of his single-minded nature. All visitors to the great Exhibition of 1862 will remember his beautiful tinted Venus, which occupied the ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... melancholy which takes possession of the soul of a man of sensibility, at the instant that he leaves his country and the civilized world, to go to inhabit with strangers in wild and unknown lands. I should in vain endeavor to give my readers an idea, even faintly correct, of the painful sinking of heart that I suddenly felt, and of the sad glance which I involuntarily cast toward a future so much the more frightful to me, as it offered nothing but what was perfectly confused and uncertain. A new scene of life was unfolded before me, but how monotonous, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Faintly to my ears came the purr of a police whistle. The taxi-man evidently did not hear the significant sound. Merciful Providence had rung down the curtain; for to-night my role in the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... faintly to express All language must despair; But go, behold Arpasia's face, And read it ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... sound, and his chest heaved convulsively, once. He knew what she had done, for they had told him. He knew, now that he tried to speak and could not, that he was half killed by grief. She saw the effort and understood, and faintly smiled. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... basket half filled with persimmons. She was of an almost pure Saxon type—tall, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, with a skin the colour of new milk, and soft ashen hair parted smoothly over her ears and coiled in a large, loose knot at the back of her head. As he reached her she smiled faintly and a little brown mole at the corner of her mouth played charmingly up and down. After the first minute, Gay found himself fascinated by this single imperfection in her otherwise flawless features. More than her beauty he felt ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... she insisted faintly. "I released myself by American law. He is nothing to me." As she spoke she leant back against the seat and closed her eyes. Boyson saw clearly that excitement and anger had struck down her nervous power, that she might faint or go into hysterics. Yet a man of remarkable courtesy and pitifulness ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... twilight when he reached the edge of the hill on the farther side of the valley. He could see the lights of the town twinkling against the dark mass of tree and hill and building, while on the faintly-glowing sky the steeple of Memorial Church, the cupola of the old Academy building, and the court-house tower were cut in black. Down into the dusk of the valley the bay picked her way, and when they had gained the hill on the edge of town ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... he found himself before a window whose small panes dripped and groaned under a rain that was fast becoming a torrent. Chilled by the sight, he turned toward the door faintly outlined beside it, and in the semi-darkness seized an old-fashioned latch rattling in the wind that permeated every passageway, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... both remained fixed on the faintly illuminated space, where they expected to catch sight of them, but the straining gaze failed to ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... shoulders to pass under the low lintel of that narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He wore a cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the yellow rays of the sergeant's lantern gleamed faintly on a British uniform. Presently, as he advanced into the quadrangle, he disclosed the aquiline ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... get the wood ablaze without paper. Finally a few tiny sticks caught and blazed up. A moment later they died down into a little heap of embers, without even faintly scorching the wooden door that they were expecting to set on fire. A few moments of hope, then ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... odd thought that popped into my head," he assured Grunty Pig. "It made Mrs. Robin giggle when I mentioned it." He laughed merrily enough. And his wife managed to smile faintly. But ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... day spent in visiting the falls and the rapids, I was sitting to-night on a bench on the river bank. The racing water-ridges glimmered faintly in the dusk and the roar of the falls droned in unwavering monotony. I fell, I think, into a kind of stupor; anyhow, I cannot remember when it was that some one took a seat beside me, and began to talk. I seemed to wake and feel him speaking; ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... not listened and was afraid lest she should not answer rightly. Yet the events of the last few hours, the stray words as they seemed to her that she had heard, the faces that had been before her kept moving on before her now and repeating themselves faintly for a little time, just as one whose head is throbbing with some continued sound still hears it through all his pulses, even when he has gone out of reach of the reality. She seemed to be driving home with Lady Dacre's face full of tenderness opposite her. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... later Shaw and Maud walked along the river bank and discussed the situation. Autumn leaves carpeted the ground beneath their feet, and the faint murmur of the river below as it slipped over its pebbly bed came faintly to their ears. In the sky above them, wild geese with flashing white wings honked away toward the south, and a meadow lark, that jolly fellow who comes early and stays late, on a red-leafed haw-tree poured out his ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... following painting as an amusement rather than as an actual profession, his works are rare, and one of the finest examples of his art is the Glorification of the Virgin, in the Brera Gallery, at Milan. The mandorla-shaped glory surrounds the Virgin's figure, studded with faintly discerned cherub heads. On either side, a musical angel is in adoration; four saints stand on the earth below. The entire conception is rendered with the utmost delicacy: the grace and beauty of the Madonna are of exactly the quality to make ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... the stage, the lines may be perceived from that part of the pit and boxes which are near the orchestra; even then the shades are so very much softened by youth, and the parts so rounded, and so utterly free from acute angles, that they can, as yet, but faintly express strong, turbulent emotions, or display the furious passions. In a boy of his age, this, so far from being a defect, is a beauty, the reverse of which would be unnatural; and if it were a defect, every day that passes over his head would remedy it. What ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... enumerating all the figures that you may trace within it: but one may not be passed unnoticed. The Hexagon itself faintly images to us a cube, not visible at the first glance, and therefore the fit emblem of that faith in things invisible, most essential to salvation. The first perfect solid, and reminding you of the cubical stone that sweated blood, and of that deposited by Enoch, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cry and shrank back. These were the thoughts that her boy had built up between them in these silent years! He gave her a faintly ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... hunted for the sphere-containing cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb the grass with my fingers for my monumental memorial-flower. Nature had stored my keepsake tenderly in her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked blades were there; they are there still, though they never flower, darkened as they are by the shade of the elms and rooted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... looked at the man in the Homburg hat with great interest as they shook hands with him. Fullaway at any rate knew of his world-wide reputation; Allerdyke faintly remembered that he had heard of him in connection with some ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... service. I shall see you every few days—Cheyne Walk and Queen's Gate are not very far apart. As soon as I am settled, you and Anna must come and have tea with me, and I must introduce you to the Kestons. Now, mother dear, say something comforting to a fellow;" and then Mrs. Herrick smiled faintly. She loved her son far too well to hurt him by her reproaches; in her secret heart she strongly disapproved of the step he was taking, but she was a sensible woman, and knew that it was no ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... a beautiful morning of veiled sunshine, so warm that some hardy crickets chirped faintly as we went along. Once a blue jay came and looked at us, and the squirrels whirred among the chestnuts and hickories, and the roadsides were so thickly strewn with fallen nuts that we made but slow progress, stopping all the time to ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... bind to hers the heart of her husband. How eagerly did she read the face of that husband—as he bent over and gazed upon the innocent being to which she had given birth—and marked its glow of pleasure. But, he did not look into her face—he had eyes only for his boy! The mother sighed faintly; but he did not hear the sigh. Her long lashes fell slowly upon her cheeks, and tears stole from beneath them; but he turned away without ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... had not been there to whisper in her ear and divert her attention, I don't know what would have become of poor Potentilla, for though the first repetition of this absurdity amused her faintly, she nearly died of weariness before the time was over. Luckily Grumedan did not perceive this, as he was too much occupied in whipping up the frogs, many of whom perished miserably from fatigue, since he did not allow them to rest for a moment. The Prince's next idea for Potentilla's ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... wait on worthy Tamburlaine. Our army will be forty thousand strong, When Tamburlaine and brave Theridamas Have met us by the river Araris; And all conjoin'd to meet the witless king, That now is marching near to Parthia, And, with unwilling soldiers faintly arm'd, To seek revenge on me and Tamburlaine; To whom, sweet ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, that Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with his camel's hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into marble, thus (Fig. 7): and instead of colouring the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... resembling a lotus. Noticed by us (before) it seems to have disappeared, covered, (as her forehead is) with (a coat of) dust even like the moon hid in clouds. Placed there by the Creator himself as an indication of prosperity and wealth, that mole is visible faintly, like the cloud-covered lunar crescent of the first day of the lighted fortnight. And covered as her body is with dust, her beauty hath not disappeared. Though careless of her person, it is still manifest, and shineth ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... first as he knelt down beside his friend, who smiled at him faintly, and spoke in ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... in autumn leaves, Rustling leaves and fading grasses, And his little music-box Tinkles faintly as he passes. It's a gay and jaunty tune If the hands that play were clever: Michael plays it like a dirge, Moaning ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... of the receding lorry, still faintly audible, suggested an idea. It was travelling so slowly that he might overtake it before his petrol gave out. It was true he was going in the wrong direction, and if he failed he would be still farther from his goal, but when you are twenty-five kilometers from where ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of breakers was distinctly heard a little way ahead, and at the same time a light was seen away to the left, glimmering faintly through the darkness. It came home to the anxious crew with sickening certainty that they were being driven on the Farne Islands. These islands form a group of desolate rocks lying off the Northumbrian coast. They are twenty in number, some only uncovered at low tide, and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of the fellow's detested voice was enough to recall me from the grave, if my orders had been signed: I faintly exclaimed, "You are a liar!" which, even with all the melancholy scene around us, produced a burst of laughter at his expense. I was removed to the ship, put to bed, and bled, and was soon able to narrate the particulars of my adventure; ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and the desert. At 9:30 P. M. we stood upon its summit, and before us stretched the sandy wastes of Kara-Kum, enshrouded in gloom. Thousands of feet below us the city of Askabad was ablaze with lights, shining like beacons on the shore of the desert sea. Strains of music from a Russian band stole faintly up through the darkness as we dismounted, and contemplated the strange scene, until the shriek of a locomotive-whistle startled us from our reveries. Across the desert a train of the Transcaspian railway was gliding smoothly along toward ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... name—thy blessed name! My lonely bosom fills, Like an echo that hath lost itself Among the distant hills, That still, with melancholy note, Keeps faintly lingering on, When the joyous sound that woke it first Is ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... agony. Pictures of summer nights flashed upon me and faded,—where out of deep-blue vaults the stars hung like lamps, great and golden,—or where soft films just hazing heaven caught the rays, till all above gleamed like gauze faintly powdered and spangled with silver,—or heavy with heat, slipping over silent waters, through scented airs, under purple skies. And then storms rolled in and rose before my eyes, distinct for a moment, and breaking,—such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Almahdi faintly said the stone was shoddy, But he thought that, in a pinch, he might bid fifty cents himself. There ensued a slight commotion where he could repent the notion, And Abdullah was promoted to ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... reached the top, daylight was showing faintly in the east. Slowly and with a glory unspeakable the sun rose. The great flames and crimson smoke, which at night had appeared so dazzling, sank into insignificance. If anyone has the temerity to doubt ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... help Satan to build up that which my Saviour is casting down, and to make a prison for myself, and cords to bind me in it for everlasting. Nay, will a believing soul say, rather let me be a worker together with Christ. Though faintly, yet I resolve to wrestle with him, to pull down all the strongholds that Satan keeps in my nature, and so to congratulate and consent to him, who is the avenger and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... so fondly yet delicately performed, the boy felt himself amply rewarded by the glance of gratitude that shone in the eyes of the child,—even without the thanks faintly murmured by her on perceiving ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... spirit of night folded me about. Out of the mystery of the vast blue I heard faintly a new message, potent with promise, charged with possibilities. The earth was wrapped in a robe of gray, made of mist and illusion, and its every sound was hushed by the lullaby of the night-wind. Dim, silent mountains clustered about the silver waters, as great watchmen ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... these words the Baron sat glaring after the Italian, with something in his eye that resembled faintly the fierce glance ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... 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
... pallid lips for the dear child to lean towards her and kiss her; and then Patty's great anguish overcame her, and she burst into sobs. Amos drew her towards him and pressed her head gently to him, while Milly beckoned Fred and Sophy, and said to them more faintly,—'Patty will try to be your mamma when I am gone, my darlings. You will be ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... murmured, faintly, looking like a trapped hare at Aristide Pujol, who, debonair, hands on hips, stood a little ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... brother, that faith by which we receive into our spirits Christ's own Spirit, to be our life? If you have, then you are a new creature, with a new name, perhaps but dimly visible and faintly audible, amidst the imperfections of earth, but sure to shine out on the pages of the Lamb's Book of Life; and to be read 'with tumults of acclaim' before the angels of Heaven. 'I will give him a white stone, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... there became visible a cloud of dust and at intervals something swayed in it, something that rose and fell and then became hidden again. Out of that cloud came sharp, splitting sounds, which were faintly responded to by another and larger cloud in its rear. As it came nearer and finally swept past, the Gilas, to their terror, saw a madly pounding horse, and it carried a man. The latter turned in his saddle and raised a gun to his shoulder and the thunder that issued from it caused the creeping ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... would be better," said Polly faintly. "This doesn't seem to suit the part very well, but I did want to wear it." And she gazed regretfully down at her ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... of those qualities, experience may have demonstrated, are beyond our personal strength and reach—others may have practical disadvantages, which our self-interest and our reason over-rule, but as long as the feeling is there, it keeps whispering to us, however faintly, that we ought to try to live up to the best that is in us and not be ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... them upon a faintly beaten trail, looked back once to grin and wave his hand, and touched his horse with the spurs. Luck stared after him thoughtfully, but he did not put his thoughts into words. He had been trained in the hard school of pictures. He had learned to hold his tongue upon ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... those his lineage can defend? Be this thy comfort, that 'tis thine t' efface, With virtuous acts, thy ancestors' disgrace, And be thyself the honour of thy race. But see! the stars begin to steal away, And shine more faintly at approaching day; Now pour the wine; and in your tuneful lays Once more ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... remember that there is no foreign source from which we can draw cheap and abundant supplies of timber to meet a demand per capita so large as to be without parallel in the world, and that the suffering which will result from the progressive failure of our timber has been but faintly foreshadowed by temporary ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating sound, and each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock of the Trinita de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock of the Quirinal—then others faintly out of the distance. It was a quarter ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with violet, invading. Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... sent on the chance of finding us, as I had left money in the hands of an agent in Khartoum—but there was literally nothing to receive us, and we were helpless to return. We had worked for years in misery, such as I have but faintly described, to overcome the difficulties of this hitherto unconquerable exploration; we had succeeded—and what was the result? Not even a letter from home to welcome us if alive! As I sat beneath a tree and looked down upon the glorious Nile that ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... homeward; the streets were full of mirth and music, but I heeded none of it. I felt, rather than saw, the quiet sky bending above me dotted with its countless millions of luminous worlds; I was faintly conscious of the soft plash of murmuring waves mingling with the dulcet chords of deftly played mandolins echoing from somewhere down by the shore; but my soul was, as it were, benumbed—my mind, always on the alert, was for once utterly tired out—my very limbs ached, and when ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and we could barely distinguish the other sled, a dark speck before us. The old horse soon exhausted his enthusiasm. Braisted lost the whip, and the zealous boy ahead stopped every now and then to hurry us on. The aurora gleamed but faintly through the clouds; we were nearly overcome with sleep and fatigue, but took turns in arousing and amusing each other. The sled vibrated continually from side to side, and finally went over, spilling ourselves ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... balloonist. "He is still breathing—faintly. We must summon a doctor at once. Will you telephone for one, while I carry ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... spiral nebulae which face the earth squarely afford an excellent suggestion of the way in which planets are probably formed. In some of these nebulae the arms consist of almost continuous streams of faintly luminous matter; in others the matter is gathering about distinct centres; in others again the nebulous matter is, for the most part, collected in large glowing spheres. They seem to be successive stages, and to reveal to us the origin of our planets. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... and dreaming the long summer night, Till the dawn flushed its pink through the waning moonlight; When—I wish you could hear it once!—faintly there fell All around me the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... waterfall 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 ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the gorgeous tapestry, on which the heroes of other times stood frowning in gloomy repose, were now partially obscured in solemn shadows that might have imparted a sensation of superstitious awe. More faintly now gleamed the expiring light of the lamp, which looked a cold unearthly beam, colourless and fixed, save when the chilling draft of nightly air found its way through a crevice of the ponderous casement, and animated the languid flame with ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... woman smiled faintly; she did not enjoy pleasantries on a situation into which she had entered solely for the sake of her girl's reputation. She liked them so little, indeed, that there was room for wonder why she had countenanced deception at all, and had not bravely let the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... said Mrs. Wilkins once again, very faintly, before committing herself to the steps. It was useless to mention it now, of course, but she could not go down steps in complete silence. No mediaeval castle, she was sure, was ever built at ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Eglamor, whom Sordello foils and subdues in the contest of song. The fame as a singer which comes suddenly to him draws Sordello out of his Goito solitude to the worldly society of Mantua, and his experiences of disillusion and half voluntary self-degradation are those which had been faintly shadowed forth in Pauline, and exhibited more fully—and yet with a difference—in the Basil experiences of Paracelsus. Like the poet of Pauline, after his immersion in worldliness, Sordello again seeks solitude, and recovers a portion ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... when from 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 ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... she liked even the tiresome parts—the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... until the grey Cold light was paling, and a sullen glow Of livid yellow crown'd the dying day, And brooded on the wastes of mournful snow. Then Paris whisper'd faintly, "I must go And face that wild wood-maiden of the hill; For none but she can win from overthrow Troy's life, and mine that guards it, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... thy face, When we meet, when we embrace, Where the white sand sleeps at noon Round that lonely blue lagoon, Fringed with one white reef of coral Where the sea-birds faintly quarrel And the breakers on the reef Fade into a dream of grief, And the palm-trees overhead Whisper that all grief ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Sophy? How could she bear this unexpected temptation? He did not suppose he could effectually conceal it from her, for of late she had clung to him like a child, following him about humbly and meekly, with a touching dependence upon him, striving to catch his eye and to smile faintly when he looked at her, as a child might do who was seeking to win forgiveness. She was very feeble and delicate still, her appetite was as dainty as his own, and the heat oppressed her almost ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... said faintly; "Le Gardeur is lost if he return to the city now! Twice lost—lost as a gentleman, lost as the lover of a woman who cares for him only as a pastime and as a foil to her ambitious designs upon the Intendant! Poor Le Gardeur! what happiness might not be his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a faintly unsteady voice, "I want to thank you for taking that confounded dog off me. In another minute he might have torn my ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... She colored faintly as she mentally corrected herself. It was her engagement ring, and as such she had never once thought of it. Strange, when all the forms of her engagement had been so well observed; when Harry himself represented ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... children, with drawn, pinched faces, and they seemed to point at me as they plodded past, muttering, "But for you." Then, to the clanking of chains, hoarse curses, and the sharp whip-snap, lines upon lines of men in striped suits, with cropped heads, and faces branded by despair, filed up. Faintly a mutter of sobs and groans echoed, "But for you." The clanking ceased; there came the slow shuffling of many feet, and a procession of men, bearing stretchers on which lay shrouded figures, advanced into view. Like ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... seen in that uncertain light, looked not unlike a monstrous bat with extended wings. The sound of the busily working machinery grew louder constantly. No wonder Bud had been so perplexed when he heard all this, though more faintly, on the previous night and asked whether it could be possible to catch the sound of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... sail, which threatens to knock you overboard every moment. The weather earing is passed, and then, "Light out to leeward;" you have your point barely tied when the yard gives a terrible swing, and you faintly hear the order, "Lay down from aloft, for your lives; the braces ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but she was an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive motion of the bat, she looked in all directions, but saw nothing, and only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be anything more dreadful than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the eyes of travellers in country towns, that is the most unpleasant. It is too repulsive to laugh at. This particular ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... calm heavens the murk of flying atmosphere—I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could SEE the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air;—these faintly hinted at intense movement rushing down through space. A roar of sound filled the hollow of the sky. Occasionally it intermitted, falling abruptly in volume like the mysterious rare hushings of a rapid stream. Then the familiar noises of a ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the draperies, the window showed nothing to the eye except a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance of the sky. There was nothing to see; nothing to hear. But gradually I became aware of a hideous odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp decay that loaded ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... how the noble animal responded! The pace he settled into dazed me; I could hardly distinguish the deer trail down which he was thundering. I lost my comrades ahead; the pinyons blurred in my sight; I only faintly heard the hounds. It occurred to me we were making for the breaks, but I did not think of checking Satan. I thought only of flying on ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... and one or two of the more openly skeptical had left when the first roar came faintly from above. Colonel Boynton led the others to the open ground before the building. "I have always found Blake a man of his word," he said quietly, and pointed upward where a tiny speck was falling from a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... And very faintly, like music heard across the water in the evening, blurred into strange harmonies, his old watchwords echo a little in his mind. Like the red flame of the sunset setting fire to opal sea and sky, the old ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... without stopping to take a view of the towering mora. Its topmost branch, when naked with age or dried by accident, is the favourite resort of the toucan. Many a time has this singular bird felt the shot faintly strike him from the gun of the fowler beneath, and owed his life ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... seemed to owe nothing but to nature and his own genius. But, in a short time, the applause became unanimous, every one wondering how so many pictures, and pictures so familiar, should have moved them but faintly to what they felt in his descriptions. His digressions too, the overflowings of a tender benevolent heart, charmed the reader no less, leaving him in doubt, whether he should more admire the Poet or ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... The Rat had been stabbed in the back just below the left armpit. He glanced sharply around the room. There was no sign of struggle, except—yes—there were bruises on the man's neck, as though a hand had grasped it fiercely, and—he bent over—yes, faintly, but nevertheless distinctly enough, two blood-stained finger prints were discernible on the Rat's collar. He lifted the Rat's hands and examined them critically—it might perhaps have been the man himself clutching his own throat, as he choked and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... shrank from it. Among them there may have been a handful who could scan the unshaped wilderness as the sculptor does his block, and body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away, and the long toil of drill and chisel only in too much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... look at it in this light. Music is merely background, and ought to be kept in its place. I am no enemy of music, George. The air in a room should be melodious, for the same reason that it should be faintly pleasing to the olfactory sense, and neither hot nor stuffy. Just as the walls should be delightfully coloured and softly lit, and the refreshments pleasant and at the moment of need. But surely we meet for human intercourse. When I go to see people I go to ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... of this person shadowed his brow faintly with a scowl, not unobserved by his host and hostess. "But," he added, "he became a worse thing; he is now an ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... wave the god of day Had now five times withdrawn the parting ray, When o'er the prow a sudden darkness spread, And, slowly floating o'er the mast's tall head A black cloud hover'd: nor appear'd from far The moon's pale glimpse, nor faintly twinkling star; So deep a gloom the low'ring vapor cast, Transfix'd with awe the bravest stood aghast. Meanwhile, a hollow bursting roar resounds, As when hoarse surges lash their rocky mounds; Nor had the black'ning wave nor frowning heav'n The wonted signs of gath'ring tempest giv'n. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... said the night before; "I have a little surprise for you." When he arrived at her house that day, just as the distant church bells were faintly calling, he found her dressed for a ride, ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... defiance. Presently he drew from the bosom of his hunting coat a dark parcel, and springing into the rigging of the main-mast, ascended with incredible activity to the point where the English ensign was faintly floating in the breeze. This he tore furiously away, and rending it into many pieces, cast the fragments into the silver element beneath him, on whose bosom they were seen to float among the canoes of the savages, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... been obliged to decide to quit Verona on account of her husband, to whom the excessive heat was unendurable. Her husband, in the same breath, protested that the heat killed him. He adorned the statement with all kinds of domestic and subterranean imagery, and laughed faintly, saying that after the fifteenth—on which night his wife insisted upon going to the Opera at Milan to hear a new singer and old friend—he should try a week at the Baths of Bormio, and only drop from the mountains ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pleasant Yuk-stees wind blew more faintly, and as it passed away, over those calm inland waters swelled again the sound of many voices chanting ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly became faintly ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... The man smiled faintly: the smell of the flowers choked him: he laid them aside. God knows he was trying to wring out this bitter old thought: he could not look in Dorr's frank eyes while it was there. He must escape to-night: he never would come near them again, in this world, or beyond ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... now for a cluster of faintly brighter lights on the far side of the great open space. They enlarged as they grew nearer. ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... itself as if it were young. But it is best to discourage this fondness; and Mrs. March joined her husband in mocking it, when he made her observe how fit it was that their silver wedding journey should be resumed as part of his after-cure. If he had found the fountain of youth in the warm, flat, faintly nauseous water of the Felsenquelle, he was not going to call himself twenty-eight again till his second month of the Carlsbad regimen was out, and he had got back to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... indolence, the men in negligee shirts and white flannels, the women in light dresses. Rose—who had, the day before, officially declared herself "off" the case; but had stayed on, a guest, at the general solicitation—wore a white dimity faintly sprinkled with ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled faintly. Ruth began ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... excellent. The power which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots almost bewildered ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... heart. It has no balance in which to weigh the good against the evil; and when a great Burns, or a Mirabeau comes before it, it can but tremblingly count up the offences committed, and then, looking to the end, and finding its own terms not to have been complied with, it faintly mutters its anathema. Sin only it can apprehend and judge; and for the poor acts of struggling heroism, "Forasmuch as they were not done, &c., &c., it doubts not but they have the nature of sin." ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... three minutes, Edith stood as motionless as the statue of a saint which receives the adoration of a worshipper; and when she recovered herself sufficiently to withdraw her hands from Henry's grasp, she could at first only faintly articulate, "I have taken a strange step, Mr Morton—a step," she continued with more coherence, as her ideas arranged themselves in consequence of a strong effort, "that perhaps may expose me to censure in your eyes—But I have long permitted you to use the language ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... candle. It was a still night, and therefore not very cold, although icicles hung from the mouth of the horse, and here and there from the eaves. They stood by the marble basin, and the dim lights and scarce dimmer shadows from many an upper window passed athwart them as they stood. The chapel was faintly lighted, but the lantern-window on the top of the hall shone like a ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... 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, and suddenly the air was ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... had swallowed! Have the waters given up their dead?"—he faintly exclaimed, almost gasping ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby |
