"Half-witted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to see all the furniture moved out into the side yard. At first he thought there must have been a fire, but when he saw Martha with a towel wrapped around her head, and Mrs. Huggins, the scrub-woman of the village, trying to squeeze a wide table through a narrow door, while Noah, their half-witted chore-boy, was beating carpets on the lawn, he knew it was ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... wore the rags in which they had been clothed on the day of their death, and they retained, after their resurrection, a wild and timid air. The sturdiest of the three, Maxime, was the son of a half-witted woman, who followed the soldiers to war, mounted on an ass. One night he fell from the pannier in which she carried him, and was left abandoned by the roadside. From that time forward he had lived solely by theft. ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... snapped the thief, with great earnestness. "When I think how I let a skinny, half-witted boob like you walk right into a clinch with me, and me holdin' a gun, and weighin' forty pounds more than you do, I—Can you hear what ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... also under the same arbitrary control; and so on to the top. If at the head there were God, it would be well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even though it ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... was strolling about the town, a poor, crippled, half-witted fellow came jerking himself across the street after me and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... dark, deserted save for an old woman, half-witted, who was crouching on the floor before the sacred Icon, rocking herself and mumbling. They questioned her, but she was ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... the north there dwells a man mighty in all things and blown up with pride. He is named Ospakar Blacktooth. His wife is but lately dead, and he has given out that he will wed the fairest maid in Iceland. Now, it is in my mind to send Koll the Half-witted, my thrall, whom Asmund gave to me, to Ospakar as though by chance. He is a great talker and very clever, for in his half-wits is more cunning than in the brains of most; and he shall so bepraise Gudruda's beauty that Ospakar will ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... Billings with those darned cool eyes o' his that look's if they'd never blink 'f a cannon went off under his very nose—waited till Billings got good and done, 'n' then said with that high 'n' mighty air of his, f'r all the world's if he was speakin' to some poor, half-witted Swede: 'Two hundred dollars doesn't mean as much to me as you think, Mr. Billings.' Then he stopped a minute, 'n' went on in a little diff'rent tone, 'You needn't concern yourself any further about me and my troubles'—'n' ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the half-witted boy Asa Hall—their faces seemed to stare at me out of the blackness. They must be dead! Why, I had seen Kennedy fall, the heedless feet crunching his face, and Asa Hall tossed into the air and shot at as he fell. Eloise! Eloise! I covered my eyes with the free hand, conscious ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Gentlemen, I think you will agree with me that the woman Pinniger has proved that she is utterly incapable of teaching anybody anything. Twenty-five years, man and boy, I have sailed the Spanish Main, and with the possible exception of a dumb and half-witted negro whom I shipped as cook in '64, I have never met any one so profoundly lacking in intellect. I propose, therefore, that for the space of twenty-four hours the woman Pinniger should be incarcerated in the smuggler's ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... Those half-witted people thought he swore false, I suppose because they imagined that what he told implied that Julian Cox was turned into an hare. Which she was not, nor did his report imply any such real metamorphosis of her body, but that these ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... all Man's Industry and Care To make himself accomplish'd; When the gay fluttering Fool, or the half-witted rough unmanner'd Brute, Who in plain terms comes right down to the business, Out-rivals him in all his Love ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... branches for the firing that autumn, since the wind had strewn the woods with more than they could carry away. Many of our ghosts were scattered abroad, but this time very few came back, all the young men having sailed with Captain; and not only ghosts, for a poor half-witted lad was missing, and we reckoned that he had stowed himself away or perhaps shipped as cabin-boy, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... tell you about my friend Peter, Rebecca Thatcher's half-witted grandson. You know how painfully we were both struck by the poor fellow's listless hopeless manner when we were at the cottage on the moor. I thought of it a great deal afterwards, and it occurred to me that our head-gardener might find work for him in the way of weeding, and rolling ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... critics that I will confine myself to one or two points on which a difference of opinion is possible. To suppose that the Fool is, like many a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to be half-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. There is no difficulty in imagining that, being slightly touched in the brain, and holding the office of fool, he performs the duties of his office intentionally as well as involuntarily: ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... "Bahalul" of D'Herbelot. This worthy was a half-witted Sage (like the Iourodivi of Russia and the Irish Omadhaun), who occupies his own place in contemporary histories flourished under Harun al-Rashid and still is famous in Persian Story. When the Caliph ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... remarking that they were fortunate in not being bothered with doctrine. I am afraid they didn't get much of an idea of our schools, for the only girl they asked to spell happened to be Caroline, whom they met in the street. She is only half-witted, you know, and didn't do her teachers much credit. I should like to see what Mr. Paige has to say about our doings in the Tribune. I asked him not to mention the name of this plantation, for I didn't want to call the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... brake down and laid waste their houses, and fled deeper away into their mountain. They harbour ill-will toward men, and withhold from them their help. That herdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted, and so continued until his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... virility, which belongs to natural prose as the vehicle of strong, graceful, spontaneous thought, than this miserable subjugation of intellect to the-clink of well or ill matched syllables? I think you will smile if I tell you of an idea I have had about teaching the art of writing "poems" to the half-witted children at the Idiot Asylum. The trick of rhyming cannot be more usefully employed than in furnishing a pleasant amusement to the poor feeble-minded children. I should feel that I was well employed in getting up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two years ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... them after a fashion; the one true God was duly adored, and all his saints appealed to in filial faith. That was his nature and past changing; if he could not look upon God as a Jealous God visiting His judgments with fanatical justice upon the witted and half-witted, it was because his was a nature which had never been warped by the various social moral and religious influences brought to ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from the Extract Works on an old bony horse. He brought word that the enemy was at the Kibbard Mill, two miles beyond the Works. People were throwing their furniture into the mill pond, he said. Every one laughed. Mottie Stokes was always telling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... their eyes fixed on him none the less. The eyes which he saw were, in truth, only the two buttons at the back of a frock-coat: perhaps some traditional memory of their meaningless character gave this half-witted prominence to their gaze. The slit between the tails was the nose-line of the monster: whenever the tails flapped in the winter wind the dragons licked their lips. It was only a momentary fancy, but the small clerk found it imbedded in his soul ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Dingaan would have killed Panda, his half-brother, so that the house of Senzangacona, his father, might be swept out clean. Now Panda was a man of gentle heart, who did not love war, and therefore it was thought that he was half-witted; and, because I loved Panda, when the question of his slaying came on, I and the chief Mapita spoke against it, and pleaded for him, saying that there was nothing to be feared at his hands who was a fool. So in the end Dingaan gave way, saying, "Well, you ask me to spare ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... the mountain side, just where the snow line lay, above which there was everlasting ice and snow, was a little rough hostel, where travellers rested and slept before they tried the pass itself. An old half-witted man and his goitred wife kept the place, and provided rough food and bedding for travellers, though interesting themselves in no wise with their concerns. In that rude place several men were now stopping, and had been stopping ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fools is very flattering to any one who happens to know the present ministry. Their coalition goes on as One should expect; they have the name of having effected it; and the Opposition is no longer mentioned: yet there is not a half-witted prater in the House but can divide with every new minister on his side, except Lyttelton, whenever he pleases. They actually do every day bring in popular bills, and on the first tinkling of the brass, all the new bees ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... have given any sort of rational account of this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least whether he was killed or not. This ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... was Carter; it may be as well to explain him. Go into any large English jail on any day in any year you like, you shall find there two or three prisoners who have no business to be in such a place at all—half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatize until civilization shall come ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... was Billy Butler, a poor, half-witted idiot, who lived with his family in a tiny cottage under the side of a hill. Master Sunshine was very pitiful of Billy's sad lot, and many an apple and slice of bread did ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... ninety years old came to the palace to visit the queen, her sister. "Who is this ugly creature?" asked the king. "An old neighbor of mine who is half-witted," replied the queen, quickly. The old woman kept looking at her rejuvenated sister, and asked: "What did you do to become so young and lovely? I, too, would like to be young and pretty again." She kept ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... you that I can counteract it. You tell her that you will write to Mr Jamieson, do you? I will take care he does not get a letter either. Is my authority thus to be set at defiance by a—well, no matter what you are. I know more of your affairs than you do, or than your poor, ignorant, half-witted mother does herself; though she is cunning enough to hide away those documents which would, could I find them, place you and her, and some other persons, too, entirely in my power. I'll find them still, however, some day; but that English minister, by teaching you to read, has made the ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... be knowingly taken into the Colonies, it is fair to assume that there will be a certain number, and also a considerable residuum of naturally indolent, half-witted people, incapable of improvement, left upon our hands. Still, it is thought that with reformed habits, variety of employment, and careful oversight, such may be made to earn their own maintenance, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... man of forty, an idiot and goitrous, came to the door and with sadly imperfectly co-ordinated movements, gestured a message which he could not speak. Almost as soon as he had gone a deaf-mute boy passed. As we sat at our doorway, we saw a half-witted child at play before the next house. Goitre, deaf-mutism, and imbecility, all are fearfully common, and all are relatedly due to the ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings—plain black shoes—appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Foma exclaimed to himself. Beside him stood the hump-backed, one-eyed Pavlin Gushchin—he who, not long before, had turned the children of his half-witted brother into the street as beggars—he stood there and whispered penetratingly as he looked at the gloomy ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... There was old Jevons with one eye gone, and his clothes the colour of mud, his bag over his back, and his brains laid feet down in earth among the violet roots and the nettle roots; Mary Sanders with her box of wood; and Tom sent for beer, the half-witted son of the sexton— all this within thirty miles ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... conspiracy was formed to take his life by secret assassination. A great chieftain, named Guy of Burgundy, William's uncle, was the leader of it, and a half-witted man, named Galet, who occupied the place of jester or fool in William's court, was the means of discovering and exposing it. These jesters, of whom there was always one or more in the retinue of every great prince in those days, were either very eccentric or very ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Bovyne laughed again. Clarges was a mystery to him, as to many others. Half-witted he sometimes called him, though on other occasions he stood in awe of his bright, candid, fearless nature, and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... thing!" said Bruce, looking after her commiseratingly; "and a stranger might think her no more nor half-witted. But she has sense enough, poor crittur! and, I reckon, is just as smart, if she war not so humble and skittish, as any of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... crew was one named Ralph Davidson, a half-witted young fellow who had served two apprenticeships without being able to qualify for the dignity of A.B., that is, he could not pass the necessary examination for admittance into the union. This poor creature was permitted to sail as ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Isabella are full of the practical jokes and witty dialogues and repartees with which he and Messer Galeazzo amused the duchess. The following letter affords a characteristic specimen of the kind of fooling which these great Renaissance lords and ladies carried on at the expense of the half-witted jesters and buffoons who were attached to ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... seemed to worship God. What!—he? The holy man!—the learned!—the wise! How has the Devil tempted him? His fellow-criminals, for the most part, are obtuse, uncultivated creatures, some of them scarcely half-witted by nature, and others greatly decayed in their intellects through age. They were an easy prey for the destroyer. Not so with this George Burroughs, as we judge by the inward light which glows through his ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have handled ten millions of dollars! I'd have made you both so rich," he cried savagely, "that in two years you'd have drunk yourselves into a mad-house. And you couldn't trust me! You've filled this house with fakes and palm-readers. And, now, every one will know just what he is—a senile, half-witted old man who was clay in my hands, clay in my hands—and you've robbed me of him, you've robbed me of him!" His voice, broken with anger and disappointment, rose in an hysterical wail. As though to meet it a bell rang shrilly. Gaylor ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... horror any other situation that Shakespeare created, if we assume that he was not responsible for the like scenes of mutilation in 'Titus Andronicus.' At no point in 'Lear' is there any loosening of the tragic tension. The faithful half-witted lad who serves the king as his fool plays the jesting chorus on his master's fortunes in penetrating earnest ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side, and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as "Tom Saft," receiving his second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom's face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers; but the delight was too strong to continue smouldering ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the part perfectly of one of those half-witted, wholly shrewd mountebanks, who pick up a living by taking advantage of tolerance and good nature. You've all seen the type. It's commonest at race-meetings but you'll find it anywhere in the world where vagrant ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... ancient and the very juvenile. You can't set a man of eighty to dig trenches and you can't make a prostitute out of a girl-child of ten. The only boys were of the mal-nourished variety. Men, women and children—they all had the appearance of being half-witted. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... out words in the Third; fractions was only a dream to him, and he couldn't 'a' told you the difference between a noun and a wild carrot. But through it all he'd been so humble and polite that Leander looked on him as a kind of half-witted lamb." ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her mother existed, save as cook and care-taker. And Mark, the passionate, gross, greedy baby. There were the three walls of the prison where she was shut away ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... has foretold that the war will end in October. People are flocking into Midgeville in lumber wagons from all parts of the country. Jones, who bases his prophecy on the Bible, had hitherto been thought to be half-witted. This is now recognised to have been a wrong estimate of his powers. Business in ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... described by the Seer. Sir Hector Mackenzie, Bart. of Gairloch, was buck-toothed, and is to this day spoken of among the Gairloch tenantry as "An Tighearna storach," or the buck-toothed laird. Chisholm of Chisholm was hair-lipped, Grant of Grant half-witted, and Macleod of Raasay a stammerer. [For full details of this remarkable instance of family fate, see "The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer." - A. & ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Stan', stand. Stane, stone. Stan't, stood. Stang, sting. Stank, a moat; a pond. Stap, to stop. Stapple, a stopper. Stark, strong. Starnies, dim. of starn, star. Starns, stars. Startle, to course. Staumrel, half-witted. Staw, a stall. Staw, to surfeit; to sicken. Staw, stole. Stechin, cramming. Steek, a stitch. Steek, to shut; to close. Steek, to shut; to touch, meddle with. Steeve, compact. Stell, a still. Sten, a leap; a spring. Sten't, sprang. Stented, erected; set on high. Stents, assessments, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... but exceedingly stubborn about choosing the direction in which he went. After numerous changes I came across an excellent syce to look after them. He was a wild, unkempt figure, with a long black beard—a dervish by profession, and certainly gave no one any reason to believe that he was more than half-witted. Indeed, almost all dervishes are in a greater or less degree insane; it is probably due to that that they have become dervishes, for the native regards the insane as under the protection of God. Dervishes go around practically naked, usually wearing only a few skins flung ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... "A poor half-witted fellow, possibly," replied my fellow-traveller. "In your travels through the country, however, Mr. Florence, you must have ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the natures of most voluptuaries, corroded by a cruel indifference to the happiness of others. When all the town was agog for the fete to be given by the Regent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card of invitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this time to walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of all the streetsters. The poor fellow arrived at the entrance of Carlton House, proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a tremendous cheer from the bystanding mob, but when ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... sadly: "Yes, even I! oh, certainly, my lord, even a half-witted child of seventeen can perceive ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... cold, dirt, abuse, still left him a feeble vitality. At six years old his big dark eyes wore so sad a look that mothers of merry children often stopped to sigh over him, frightening the child, for he did not understand sympathy. So unresponsive and dumb was he that they called him half-witted. Three babies younger than he had died by then, and the fourth was little Angelique. They said she would be very like Mini, and there was reason why in her wretched infancy. Mini's was the only love she ever knew. When she saw the sunny sky his weak arms carried her, and many a night he drew ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... final scene in this "sad, eventful history" it should be said that "poor Eddie" was a harmless, half-witted giant who sawed the cord wood and did odd chores about my father's place. This gives significance to the pendant buck-saw and the lonely wood-horse. His lance rusts upon the wall and his steed stands silent in the stall. The reader should not pass ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "Hmm. That half-witted fellow ought not to be allowed to go free. He's done me a lot of mischief, and I guess he injures everybody who befriends him. The last thing he ought to be trusted with is horse-flesh, or mule-flesh either. Well, I'm going your way, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... found their way into the twelfth house, or House of Enemies. Even Lilly himself, not devoting, it would seem, five minutes to inquire into the probable success of the affair, was indicted in 1655 by a half-witted young woman, because he had given judgment respecting stolen goods, receiving two shillings and sixpence, contrary to an Act made under and provided by the wise and virtuous King James, First of England ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... bit his thumb, And coyly blushed like one half-witted, "The pain is in my little tum," ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... said, beckoning to Mr. Palfrey and whispering to him while Jacob's back was turned, "he's a poor half-witted fellow. Perhaps his friends will come after him. I don't mind giving him something to eat, and letting him lie down for the night. He's got it into his head that he knows me—they do get these fancies, idiots do. He'll perhaps go away again in an hour or two, and make ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... prisoners of Arnold was a young half-witted fellow who was condemned to death. His sorrowing mother never ceased her pleading with General Arnold for her son's life. Accordingly one day he proposed to her this expedient: That her son, Hon Yost by name, should make ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... some horrible satiric picture of a world without cause or effect, a mass of 'jarring atoms,' a prolonged mental torture of irrelevancy. The ordinary farce seems a world of almost piteous vulgarity, where a half-witted and stunted creature is afraid when his wife comes home, and amused when she sits down on the doorstep. All this is, in a sense, true, but it is the fault of nothing in heaven or earth except the attitude and the phrases ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... first sight, and she had clasped the little man to her bosom with a motherly caress. She had always loved weak creatures. Kittens and puppies had ever found a welcome and a meal at Rena's hands, only to be chased away by Mis' Molly, who had had a wider experience. No shiftless poor white, no half-witted or hungry negro, had ever gone unfed from Mis' Molly's kitchen door if Rena were there to hear his plaint. Little Albert was pale and sickly when she came, but soon bloomed again in the sunshine of her care, and was happy only in her presence. Warwick found pleasure in their ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the kittens, beginning with the white one. "This is the idiot," she said, "but isn't it a pretty cat? You can see she's half-witted, 'cause only one eye is open, and she has such a general air ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... injured him seriously, and they say that the fright made him half-witted for the rest of his life. Still, he recovered sufficiently to tell others of what he had seen, and to explain the mystery of the miraculous speed with which Buckland ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... without the necessity of detailed explanation or appeal to others, as in the case, for instance, of this mysterious friend or protege whose name was Strangeways. Of the history of his acquaintance with him Palford knew nothing, and that he should choose to burden himself with a half-witted invalid —in these terms the solicitor described him— was simply in-explainable. If he had asked for advice or by his manner left an opening for the offering of it, he would have been most strongly counseled to take him to a public asylum and leave him there; but advice on the subject seemed ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brought. Like all great artists, St. Gaudens held up the mirror and no more. The American layman had lost sight of ideals; the American priest had lost sight of faith. Both were more American than the old, half-witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a mere grave, of money which should have ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... follow his host's lead in the conversation; he was apparently oblivious to the many irregularities of the dinner. In fact, it was one of the rare occasions upon which Hinton took the trouble to exert himself. Something in the dreary old room, with its brave attempt at cheer, in the half-witted little lady who was making such superhuman efforts to be good, and above all in the bombastic, egotistical, ignorant editor who was trying to keep up appearances against such heavy odds, touched the best and deepest that was in Hinton, and lifted him out of himself. Gradually ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... and deaf, and we can get no information from her. The shock has made her half-witted, but I understand that she was never very bright. There is one very important circumstance, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... from the hand of God—made none the easier to bear by the arrival, just a fatal fortnight late, of the money from his brother, a forgetful sort of man, who had mistaken the date of the mail. The tragic irony of the whole is skilfully heightened by the fact that it is half-witted "Clutie," with his penny whistle and his random words, who goads young Andrew to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... heap at the back of the shop. While in this attitude he looked so gaunt and grim that he reminded me of an aged vulture stooping over carrion, and yet there was something pitiable about him too. In a way I was sorry for him; a poor half-witted wretch, whose life had been full of such gall and wormwood. What a different fate was his to mine, I thought. I had endured but one short night of agony; how trifling it seemed compared to HIS hourly remorse and suffering! He hated Nina for an act of thoughtlessness; well, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... in the heat of frenzied passion, and so the prisoner must go unpunished.' My learned friend argued not so, when he appeared in this place against the murder Wiley; poor, ignorant, and half-witted; who with his eyes starting from his head with starvation, entered a farmer's house, and in the extremity of his suffering demanded bread. And on being told by the woman of the house to take himself off to the nearest tavern and get bread, caught up a carving ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... a half-witted lad, who, not knowing what he did, joined the Gordon rioters—the scenes are laid in the "No Popery" times of 1779—because he was permitted to carry a flag and to wear a blue ribbon. The history of that exciting period of English semi-political, semi-religious excitement is graphically ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Hezekiah Butterfield, generally known as Cap'n 'Kiah, an octogenarian who was regarded as an oracle, down to Tready Morgan, a half-witted orphan, the inmates of the poor-house had an enjoyment of living astonishing to behold. It had been hinted at town-meeting that the keeper of the poor-farm was a "leetle mite too generous and easy-going," especially as he insisted upon furnishing the paupers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow, who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but the animal being in such a poor condition, no one ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... of the Court played this pleader a trick by appointing him to defend at the Assizes a half-witted peasant accused of forgery. But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor man's acquittal by proving his innocence and showing that he had been a tool in the hands of the real culprits. Not only did his line of defence ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... broad-minded physiologists would investigate every phenomenon of nature seriously and openly. The phenomena of spiritualism would then transmigrate from the region of materialized "mothers-in-law" and half-witted fortune-telling to the regions of the psycho-physiological sciences. The celebrated "spirits" would probably evaporate, but in their stead the living spirit, which "belongeth not to this world," would become better known and better realized by humanity, because humanity will comprehend ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the attack on the French monarchy and Jewish circles in London is further shown by the curious sequel to the Gordon Riots. In 1780 the half-witted Lord George Gordon (as a Jewish writer describes him), the head of the so-called "Protestant" mob, marched on the House of Commons to protest against the bill for the relief of Roman Catholic disabilities and then proceeded to carry out his plan of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... nor, consequently, her own. It is evident from this house, the furnishings and the books, that he was a gentleman and an educated one. For as long as she can remember they were served and looked after in every way by a woman called Hester Prynne and this half-witted fellow called Caliban. Of course I have no idea what their real names were. The woman died very recently and the girl was left alone. There was a big chest fairly well filled with money under her father's bed, but not a line or word in it to give any clue. Either her father ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... I say. You must expect a body to be suspicious, if you treat him as you're treating me." Loudon must have told this man the story with which he had been fobbed off about the half-witted Kennedy relative. Would Dobson refer ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... silliness, indicating, not his real character, but a cunning developed by his constant dread of a hostile dominance, which he habitually tries to disarm and tempt into unmasking by pretending to be a much greater fool than he really is. Englishmen think him half-witted, which is exactly what he intends them to think. He is clad in corduroy trousers, unbuttoned waistcoat, and coarse blue ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... way which belonged to him, was gentle and obedient to all. But there was one among the Brethren of St. Michaelsburg whom he loved far above all the rest—Brother John, a poor half-witted fellow, of some twenty-five or thirty years of age. When a very little child, he had fallen from his nurse's arms and hurt his head, and as he grew up into boyhood, and showed that his wits had been addled by his fall, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... in the bush, and his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity, under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-witted. He would not ride abreast; but insisted on following; and he screamed with terror, if for an instant he lost sight of ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an officer can sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that makes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had yellow hair, the mere doing of it which for some of us would be the most unlikely, would for them be ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... supplied by Mr. Blair, is an amusing illustration both of the funeral propensity, and of the working of a defective brain, in a half-witted carle, who used to range the province of Galloway armed with a huge pike-staff, and who one day met a funeral procession a few miles from Wigtown. A long train of carriages, and farmers riding on horse-back, suggested the propriety of his bestriding his staff, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... hermit, a saint, dwelling in solitary places and doing good works; or I will brave every danger the narrow earth holds, by sea and land, for you. What? Am I decrepit, or bent, or misshapen, that my white hair should cry out against me? Am I hideous, or doting, or half-witted, as old men are? I am young; I am strong, active, enduring. I have ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... passengers staring down superciliously or pityingly at their poor amusements; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily—I can't say gaily—in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... not until they were at the mouth of the harbor that something occurred which seemed likely to turn this fine setting out into ridicule. This was Daft Sandy (a half-witted old man to whom Robert MacNicol had been kind), who rowed his boat right across the course of the Mary of Argyle, and, as she came ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... happy in Florence as he had hoped to be. The social life there overwhelmed him. In February he wrote: "Our two months in Florence have been the most ridiculous time that ever even half-witted people passed. We have spent them in chasing round after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them. My story isn't finished yet, and what part of it is done bears the fatal marks of haste and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... malice and cruelty in Governor Tryon's character was exhibited soon after the battle. Several prisoners were taken by him, and one of them, a poor half-witted youth named James Few, was, by Tryon's order, hung on the spot without trial. Twelve other prisoners were soon convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. Six of them were hanged almost immediately; the execution of the others ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... many things; not the least, the wonderful influence and control which Antonio had always maintained over his half-witted "left hand," as the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... good standing examined him. They reported him just a shade better than half-witted. He was like a one-ideaed child, his whole being comprised in his ability, and ambition ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to his family—the brave girl and the worthless boy. He believed he had expunged Jasper from his mind, but the recollection had still power to pain him. That was the stuff of which the King's faction was made, half-witted rakes who were arrogant without pride and volcanic without courage.... Not all, perhaps. The good Tony was a welcome enough son-in-law, though Cecily would always be the better man. The young Oxfordshire squire was true to his own ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... there: one is of the deep— It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep; And one is of an old, half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That glass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep; And, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... man lowered his bow and said something in a dialect so uncouth, that the poor girl did not understand him. Indeed, she perceived, to her horror, that he was half-witted, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... ago I attended a meeting of progressive Friends, in Pennsylvania. The subject of Woman's Rights came up for discussion, and opinions were expressed pro and con, when suddenly there came striding up the aisle an awkward boy, half-witted and about half-drunk. He stepped to the platform, flung his cap to the floor, and said that he wanted to give his testimony. "I don't know much about this subject or any other, but my mother was a woman!" The boys ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... after all the actual German is never, like the Frenchman, a natural and instinctive warrior—any more than he is, like the Englishman, a natural and instinctive adventurer. The whole business of Prussian militarism, with the half-witted philosophy by which it is justified, has to be imposed upon him from without by his masters. He fights just as he works, just as he tortures, violates, and murders, because he is told to do so by persons in a superior position, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... in question the infinite superiority of Divine Power and Wisdom, but who have delivered themselves a little too positively about 'monads' and 'atoms,' and ultimate constituents of the universe. They have sometimes been not a little scandalized, as well as laughed at, when some half-witted, muddle-headed followers, glad to escape their trial, pretended to have founded systems of Pantheism, or what is just the same thing, Atheism, on some of their too obscure definitions. One man declared that he could do nothing without the Monads ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... misconception of the instinct or set purpose that led Dickens to introduce these characters into his novels at all. It is perfectly true that he has done so several times. Barnaby Rudge, the hero of the book of the same name, is half-witted. Mr. Dick, in "David Copperfield," is decidedly crazy. Mr. Toots is at least simple. Little Miss Flite, in "Bleak House," haunting the Law Courts in expectation of a judgment on the Day of Judgment, is certainly not compos mentis. And one may concede to M. Taine that ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... on somebody's feet. Somebody yelled and cursed vehemently, stepping on somebody else. A small-sized panic and melee ensued forthwith. More of the animals took alarm, and Algy was frightened half to death. His pony, a wall-eyed, half-witted brute, stampeded in the crowd. Then ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... great Roman nobleman. There was the arcarius, or account keeper, with his stylum behind his ear; the sleek praegustator, who sampled all foods, so as to stand between his master and poison, and beside him his predecessor, now a half-witted idiot through the interception twenty years before of a datura draught from Canidia; the cellarman, summoned from amongst his amphorae; the cook, with his basting-ladle in his hand; the pompous nomenclator, who ushered the guests; the cubicularius, who saw to their accommodation; ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle |
