"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his fingers tremulously back and forward along the top of the mantelpiece, like a man in search of something, and continued so, looking along it, feebly and vacantly, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... pretty," he repeated in a meditative manner; and stared so long and vacantly at a fricandeau which a footman was just offering him, that any less well-trained attendant must have left ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of supreme power the prince felt profound contempt for men and became apathetic. He lay two days on a couch with his hands beneath his head gazing vacantly at the ceiling. He did not wonder that his sacred father passed his time at the altars of the gods, but he could not understand how Herhor was able to manage the avalanche of business, which, like a storm, not only surpassed the strength ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Monnier's wisdom, and thought it not inexpedient to go downstairs, after the doctor's departure, and give her customer a word of exhortation. He was seated at the table as before, twirling the glass in his fingers, and gazing vacantly out of window. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... at her husband, but he was slouched in his chair, his eyes staring vacantly over ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them fall slowly and looked vacantly with her brows drawn—as if waiting for the return of some sharp pain—in the direction of Shorne Mills. The lights had gone out; so also had died the light of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the window-sill. One dry, agonized sob racked her; and then she sat on the floor, to stare vacantly at the dingy walls ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the detective walked quickly away, and left the captain in the centre of the garden staring vacantly before ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... who had been touched by her Grace's melancholy, stood talking to her. In the opposite corner of the room sat Mr. James Sydney, the celebrated wit, his pasty face wearing an air of settled melancholy, while he gazed vacantly at a curious old Turner, which glowed like an American sunset against the stamped-leather ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the girl, looking vacantly into the fire, and then passed her hand over her eyes ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... from Jawleyford, of 'Beautiful! beautiful!—never saw better hounds!—can't be a finer pack!' not a sound disturbed the stillness of the scene. The waggoners on the road stopped their wains, the late noisy ploughmen leaned vacantly on their stilts, the turnip-pullers stood erect in air, and the shepherds' boys deserted the bleating flocks;—all was life and joy ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... mean?" he asked vacantly, and then: "Look-ut here, Munsher D'Himecourt, one of uz is ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... back on the wall. He was sure now. As sure as he was that the little biochemist and his wife and quintet of daughters would not want for neo-hyperacth or anything else any longer. He giggled a little, thinking of Jason crouched on the bench, glaring vacantly, utterly unconscious of Lonnie passing across the grass ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... was, with outstretched arms, feeling in the air, helpless in her blindness to do more. Slaughter, with his arms dropped to his sides, stared vacantly at them. Only ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... took the picture, and Weasel slipped up behind him and looked over his shoulder. The colonel looked at the picture, abruptly handed it back, looked at the young lady, and then gazed vacantly into space, and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... words were screamed more loudly. The effect was to drive all he knew out of Philip's head, and he looked at the printed page vacantly. Mr. Gordon began to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... as he looked at Clifford. The latter gazed vacantly into space, as though reflecting, and finally said: "I do ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and with a cry which might have melted a heart of stone, fell back upon the bed. For a moment he lay like one stunned, then began to utter incoherent ravings, and gazed vacantly around, as one who ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... person in an exceedingly shabby blue suit with the collar turned up, with a muffler round his neck and large, bulging boots on his feet, comes and sits beside him. I perceive an earnest young lady, probably a typist in search of extra culture, look at him long and vacantly from over her copy of Emerson, and can almost see her mind gradually collecting conclusions about him. The attendant, too, as he asks for his paper, eyes him shrewdly and suspiciously, and waits till the three halfpence are actually handed ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the wild drummer who had turned the tide of battle in the bicker on the Castle Brae. A small stone which I dislodged now rolled down the rock, and tumbled into the abyss close beside him. He turned his head, and after looking at me for a moment somewhat vacantly, he resumed his former attitude. I drew yet nearer to the horrible edge; not close, however, for fear was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... been heard by Pao-y, he gazed vacantly for some time, feeling the while very unhappy; but raising himself impetuously: "Well!" he exclaimed, "if you don't notice me, all right, I too will go to sleep," and as he spoke he got up, and, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... giving him to understand that I was ready to take my leave, but he motioned me to resume my chair. After gazing vacantly out the window for a moment, he covered his face with his ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... Lloyd Fenneben's face, and his black eyes held a strange light. He stared vacantly at the landscape until he suddenly noted the slender wavering pillar of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Garry had left it, upon a table, and while he was loosening the latter's clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered glass made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... his haste to be gone, it was plain that he thought little of where he was going. For when he came to the foot of the valley, where the paths divided, he stood between them staring vacantly, without a desire to turn him this way or that. The imperative of choice halted him like a barrier. The balance of his mind hung even because both scales were empty. He could act, he could go, for his strength was untouched; ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... vacantly up the street until the gathering excitement of his neighbours aroused new feelings. Vanity stirred within him, and leaning casually against the door-post he yawned and looked at the chimney-pots opposite. A neighbour in a pair of corduroy trousers, supported by one brace worn diagonally, ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... serious one, and the young oarsman was decidedly sober in mind as he sat there, staring vacantly ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... do. But no hurry. No hurry, lad." Here he pulled out a watch, which he wound up, staring vacantly about the decks as he did so. "Tell me, boy," he said gently. "Is Lane come over with you?" To tell the truth, it flashed across my mind, when he pulled out his watch, that he was making me unready for a difficult question. I was not a very bright boy; but I had ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... West End staring vacantly into shop windows, but her thoughts were far away. It was only when, towards one o'clock, she began to feel hungry the sudden idea came to her that she ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... that," replied Miss Wren, "you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes!" Then, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her, she said in a changed tone: "Talking of ideas, my Lizzie, I wonder how it happens that when I am working here all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers. This is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything but that. And yet as I ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... round upon the Jew. But the old gentleman's shoulders were shrugged up to his ears; and his eyes were vacantly staring on the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Adister. He turned to the virgin Adiante, sat down and shut his eyes, fetching a breath. He looked vacantly at Patrick. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hill the weird old Etrurian nurse of Florence, withered, superannuated, feeble, warming her palsied limbs in the sun, and looking vacantly down upon the beautiful child whose cradle she rocked. Fiesole is perhaps the oldest Italian city. The inhabitants of middle and lower Italy were Pelasgians by origin, like the earlier races of Greece. The Etrurians were an aboriginal stock,—that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... black hats. By and by, when this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she smacked her thigh energetically, lost all ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... me that every man I talk to prates vacantly about impossibilities. Damn it, when I need a train I need a train.... You ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs Fred, screaming and terrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on the table gave a certain air of squalid tragedy to the ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the image; and pretty .. soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page —as I fancied —stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... from his arm-chair. The president and vice-president followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... as he stared vacantly around the room, he could realize nothing save a dull, leaden weight of pain. In this dreary obscurity of suffering, distinct causes of trouble and fear began to shape themselves. There was a mingled sense ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the call. His blue eyes clouded with anxiety and he fumbled the adjustments, coaxing the current into perfect action before he called again. Answer came, and Swan bent over the table, listening, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the opposite wall of the dugout. Then, his fingers flexing delicately, swiftly, he sent the message that told how completely his big heart matched the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... close together, Pepeeta light and graceful, the doctor heavy and awkward, both of them thoroughly embarrassed, they ascended the steps as a bear and gazelle might have walked the gang-plank into the ark. They entered unobserved save by a few of the younger people who were staring vacantly about the room, and took their seats on the last bench. The Quaker maidens who caught sight of Pepeeta were visibly excited and began to preen themselves as turtle doves might have done if a bird of paradise had suddenly flashed among them. One of them happened to be seated next her. She ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... hastily obeyed the summons which I had received from her mother. What a commotion was that bustling family thrown into. The physicians pronounced her sickness a brain fever. When I reached her bedside, she was raving, and her beautiful eyes gazed vacantly on the nearest and dearest of her friends; even the mother that bore her hung over her unrecognized. She had retired as usual the night before, her mother said, apparently well; but at midnight the family had been awakened by her shrieks and cries. I watched ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Thompson said no more, but stood there in the doorway with McNab's rum under his arm. He did not stir, nor did he seem to notice the "good-bye" that came down the winding trail through the pines, but remained there stolid and immovable, gazing vacantly at the writing-paper on the rough table. Suddenly he straightened himself up to his full height, and taking the bottle from under his arm, held it out at arm's length and apostrophized it in terms which Mr. McNab would have regarded as a personal insult, and which the community on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind—but the day clouds it. We shouldn't believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains into it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and through at a glance to-day, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Eh?" said Micky vacantly; the words opened the door of memory, and he sat up with a start. It was New Year's Day, and last night ... ye gods! what had not happened last night? Micky tingled to the tips of his fingers as he remembered the letter ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... and down the river bank in a terrible excitement, or sitting in some solitary place with his eyes staring vacantly, or with head buried in his trembling hands, through which the tears would trickle, a man might have been seen haunting the neighborhood of Blackrock. It was Mr. Morton, so altered that those who knew him best almost failed to recognize ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... belonging to a very different class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the Dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man, in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... surprise in his haggard, bloodshot eyes; I saw him stare at me half vacantly, then with a crafty yet wondering look; and then I saw the devil of murder begin to peep forth from those hideous eyes, and the lips to part as in a sneer, and the wolfish teeth to bare themselves. But I was not what I had been. Fear gave me a new and a desperate ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... lids, and surveyed the room vacantly. Her glance passed over the medical man as if he were not within the range of her vision. She gazed at Lafe only, with but a faint glimmer of recognition, then on to Peg wavered the sunken ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Vacantly lingering with the hours, The sacred hours that still remain From that rich month of fruits and flowers Which brought you near me once again, By thoughts of you, though roses die, I strive to ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... a tug came off from the transport with a picket to collect deserters—he had to go. She sobbed and wailed, imploring the sergeant in vain; and she clung to her poor senseless husband as though she would never leave him. He hardly knew her; he laughed vacantly in her face when with streaming eyes she begged him to speak her name; then they took him away from her. As the tug steamed ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... drowsiness of autumn is a lethargy in the true sense of that word—a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly eyeing the human scene, living in a gentle simmer of the faculties like a boiling kettle when the gas ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... trundled a small keg from one pile of freight to another, wiped his hands on his trousers, took a dry pipe out of his pocket, and looked vacantly up the river before he replied ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the leaves of the blocks, gazing vacantly at the lines of writing while he pondered his problem when his attention was attracted to a slight difference of color in the ink of an entry on one of the blocks. The consignment was a mixed one, containing different kinds of spirituous liquors. The lowest entry was for ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... then spring with impatience to her feet, stretch out her white arms, clasp her hands behind her neck, roll up the coils of golden hair that had fallen on her shoulders, and then walk up to the window, where she gazed vacantly out upon the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... the centre light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat—a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... fact, if not the details, that so weighed down her father's heart. She pressed his hand with silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep- drawn sigh to break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof without, Mary could bear it no longer. Anything to rouse her father. Even ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the words, however. In the wearily dreamy manner which, when first he had seen her, had aroused Soames' respectful interest, she raised her thin hand to her hair, slowly pressing it back from her brow, and directed her big eyes vacantly upon him. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the Prospector, 'they found him lying in the hot sand away off on the desert, with his head propped up against a rock, nearly dead for want of water. When they tried to rouse him he stared at them vacantly. They gave him a little water, and as soon as he had swallowed it he fought like a wild animal for more. It took three or four of them to hold him. He cursed and swore at them because they would not give him ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... the ladies had retired to their blankets under their shelter-tent; poor little Grigg lay asleep at the table, his tired, ugly head resting among the unwashed tin plates; Speed sprawled in his chair, smoking a short pipe; Byram sat all hunched up, his head sunk, eyes vacantly following the movements of two men who were washing dishes in ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... bills, invites, "bits of pasteboard" pencilled with a mystic "wine," and other odds and ends: - no private letters though! Mr. Larkyns was too wary to leave his "family secrets" for the delectation of his scout. Over the mirror was displayed a fox's mask, gazing vacantly from between two brushes; leaving the spectator to imagine that Mr. Charles Larkyns was a second Nimrod, and had in some way or other been intimately concerned in the capture of these trophies of the chase. This supposition of the imaginative ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... nothing more. She gazed vacantly at the opposite wall, a knee between her hands, and swaying slightly to and fro. Her face, bloated with drink, had become almost pale, and was the picture of long-settled grief. It was as if she were in fresh mourning for the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... bright, dark eyes of the Jew, which had been staring vacantly before him, fell on Oliver's face; the boy's eyes were fixed on his in mute curiosity; and, although the recognition was only for an instant,—it was enough to show the man that he had been observed. He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash; and, laying his hand on a ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the paper on his companion's lap, his face was almost as pale as hers. For a moment he gazed fixedly and vacantly before him, and a half-suppressed curse escaped his lips. Then his eyes reverted to his neighbor. After some hesitation, during which he allowed the reins to hang so loose that the horse lapsed into a walk, he touched her gently on ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... vacantly gaping, the little chairs seemed lonely about the hearthrug, even the sofa where the invalid ladies sat was unoccupied, and the perforated blinds gave the crowds that passed up and down the street a shadow-like appearance. The prospect was not inspiriting, but not ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... silence and listen to the remarks of Mrs Fotheringham and Miss Munnion. Opposite to Iris there was a long low window, through which she could see part of the lawn and a path leading to the kitchen-garden. She sat gazing vacantly out upon this, when suddenly she ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... lamp, liable at a moment to become extinct; but the endeavours of those present supplied the needful oil, and by slow degrees the cadaverous hue disappeared from Fred's face; his breathing became firmer and more regular; and at last his eyes opened, staring vacantly at the ceiling, and those bending over him; but, after another lapse of time, a light seemed to be added to the vacant look, and, to the intense delight of all, a smile came over his pale face as he recognised Mr and Mrs Inglis. It was thought better that the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... accommodating about 600 sleepers; bathrooms, lavatories, extensive hot-water and warming apparatus, great kitchens, and butteries, and so forth. In the sitting and smoking-rooms, numbers of derelict men were seated. Some did nothing except stare before them vacantly. Some evidently were suffering from the effects of drink or fatigue; some were reading newspapers which they had picked up in the course of their day's tramp. One, I remember, was engaged in sorting out and crumpling up a number of ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... does not come to him—he reads it again. Edith is dying. And then a grayish pallor comes over his face, from brow to chin, and he stands for a moment, staring vacantly at the paper he holds, seeing nothing—hearing nothing but these words: "Edith is dying." In that moment he knows that all his imaginary hardness and indifference have been hollow and false—a wall of pride that crumbles at a touch, and the old love, stronger ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... near the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody was kind to me. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... he painted, but in a fit of gloomy disgust destroyed everything. So it went on for a few weeks. Miss Marston was more regular than an alarm-clock; sometimes she brought some work, but oftener she sat vacantly watching the young man at work. Her only standard of accomplishment was quantity. One day, when Clayton had industriously employed a rainy afternoon in putting in the drapery for the figure, she was so much pleased by the quantity of the work accomplished that she praised ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... I did not dare to look that way, or to inquire who lived there. A little dog, that had been Rosamund's, was yelping in my path. I laughed aloud like one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone from him—I stared vacantly around me, like one ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... a furtive glance at the interlocutor, then stared vacantly, but with head erect, before him. His eyes were glassy and without ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... his newspaper, might have passed them, if his horse had not shied and snorted. He pulled the cart crossways, and held down his whip. "Hallo? Where are you going to?"—Pigling Bland stared at him vacantly. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... little I've ever understood, how little I've ever known myself," she thought, staring vacantly at a severe spinster, with crimped hair and a soured expression, who sat before the opposite window. "I've gone on in the dark, making mistakes and discoveries from the very beginning, undoing and doing over again, creating illusions and then destroying them—always moving, always ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the example, and the Kolimsk men, to whom such scenes were not new, followed his advice; but Ivan walked up and down before the tent. A huge fire had been made, which was amply fed by the wood of the river bank, and it blazed on high, showing in bold relief the features of the scene. Ivan gazed vacantly at everything; but he saw not the dark and glancing river—he saw not the bleak plain of snow—his eyes looked not on the romantic picture of the tent and its bivouac-fire: his thoughts were on one thing alone. He it was who had brought them to that pass, and on his head rested all the misery ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of history. 'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... little while she was silent—vacantly contemplating the bare floor. There had been no revelation. She was not taken unaware. She had watched his purpose form. Long before, she had perceived the issue approaching, and had bravely met it. But it was all now definite and ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... judicially, but she seemed to take in only what Mr. Peck had thought of the dance and supper; at the end she said, rather vacantly, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... into the house, and Liza remained talking to Mrs. Stanley, she, too, had to go in, and Liza was left alone. Some while she spent thinking of nothing, staring vacantly in front of her, enjoying the cool and quiet of the evening. But Liza could not be left alone long, several boys came along with a bat and a ball, and fixed upon the road just in front of her for their pitch. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... youth as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things, I became sadder and sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire till my ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the daily food of the humbler classes. These boats seemed to be almost entirely rowed and managed by women, always with the inevitable baby at their backs, sometimes sleeping, sometimes gazing vacantly about, but always quiet ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... something she had not done, some teasing, unimportant thing, she ought to finish before going on with the letter. She looked up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it was. Her eyes fell on Toucle. Toucle was looking at her, Toucle who so seldom looked at anything. She felt a momentary confusion as though surprised by another person in a room she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... had a warm and pearly tone, that her abundant hair was of a dark reddish tinge, and that her eyes, of turquoise blue, gleamed with a strange, impenetrable hue. He was still gazing vacantly at her, but his mind was working furiously, striving to answer the harrowing questions that presented themselves in tumultuous succession ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... you were strange to me, Where it stood blazoned bold with many more; I passed it vacantly, and did not see Any great glory ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... looked at him vacantly. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he said, in a high, thin voice. "I added up figures in the old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I added up figures in the old warehouse—Don't you remember ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... many people about, mostly in groups chatting with each other; but he recognized no one. Perhaps he was looking out for Colonel and Mrs. Ross; perhaps for a slender figure in black, with blue beads; at all events, he was gazing somewhat vacantly around when some one turned close by him. Then his heart stood still for a second. The sudden light that sprang to her face when she recognized him blinded him. Was it to be always so? Was she always to come upon him in a flash, as it were? ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... these physical defects which compelled Mavis's attention. The girl kept her lips open as she ate, displaying bloodless gums in which were stuck irregular decayed teeth; she exhibited the varying processes of mastication, the while her boiled eyes stared vacantly before her. She compelled Mavis's attention, with the result that the latter had no further use for the food on her plate. She even refused rice pudding, which, although burned, might ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... But no. In Wyoming there is a law that no herder shall be sent out alone to tend flocks; men must go in pairs. More than that they must have little traveling libraries of a few books. The reason for that is to prevent them from sitting with their eyes fixed vacantly on the moving sheep all the time. It is a good law. Some time, likely, they will have it in ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... lay fast asleep close by, with his blanket falling away from him. The man's face was half buried among the withered needles which were thick in his unkempt hair, and he lay huddled together, grotesque and unsightly in ragged disarray. Weston vacantly noticed the puffiness of his cheeks, and the bagginess beneath his eyes. The stamp of indulgence was very plain upon him, and the younger man, who had led a simple, strenuous life, was sensible of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... slowly, vacantly, like a prolonged Sunday. On Saturday the morning post brought a note from Mrs. Van Sideren. Would dear Julia ask Mr. Westall to come half an hour earlier than usual, as there was to be some music after his "talk"? Westall was just leaving for his office when his wife read the note. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... been heard by Pao-yue, he gazed vacantly for some time, feeling the while very unhappy; but raising himself impetuously: "Well!" he exclaimed, "if you don't notice me, all right, I too will go to sleep," and as he spoke he got up, and, descending from the couch, he betook himself to his own bed and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Moses Shoos: stout enough about the chest, where a man's strength needs lie, big-shouldered, long-armed, but scrawny and crooked in the legs and of an inconfident, stumbling gait, prone to halt, musing vacantly as he went. He was bravely clad upon his courtship: a suit of homespun from the Quick as Wink, given in fair dealing, as to quality, by Tumm, the clerk, but with reservations as to fit—everywhere (it seemed) unequal to its task, in particular at the wrists and lean shanks. His visage was in ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... and hardly knew why he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the shore and the fisher's cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather heavily back to the ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... the corner, circled a block, and met her. She was childishly swinging the basket on her arm and humming a song. She smiled vacantly into his face. He caught the look of shrewd intelligence and saw through her masquerade. A single word from her lips now would send her to the gallows and certainly lead to ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... say of her, was manifested in her squalid appearance and total neglect of personal neatness. The pride of the girl's heart had vanished with her self-respect, and she stood before the strange group with a bold front and unbending brow; yet her eye wandered vacantly from face to face, as if perfectly unconscious of the real meaning ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... gazing vacantly on the averted face of the merchant's daughter, and muttering inly to himself: this conference, with which he had hitherto only trifled, amusing himself with the credulity and vanity of his visitor—might it not minister to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... direction, and then turned to open the door. As I did so I noticed a man standing on the pavement close beside me looking vacantly across the street. For an instant I wondered where I had seen him before; then quite suddenly I remembered. He was the man we had passed in Edith Terrace, lighting a cigarette under the street lamp—the man who had reminded me of one of the prison warders. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... signs. The Chinese langage and manner, however, are difficult to an addle-pated foreigner. I, poor foolish fellow, endeavoring to treat the Chinese in a manner identical to that which he would have employed had conditions been reversed, stared vacantly and woodenly into a seemingly bewildering infinite, and timidly remarked, "O t'ing puh lai." Knowing then that my "hearing had not come," he requisitioned my boy, for the aide-de-camp by this time was glumly peering into ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... vacantly. "What was he saying?" she wondered. From a sea of grief she seemed to be passing onto an archipelago ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... are crowded with a softly-rustling, humming, buzzing crowd, coming and going perhaps, taking little heed of the nominal attraction, but sauntering from room to room, or ensconcing themselves in colonies or clusters of chairs, and lounging vacantly in cool lobbies. At energetic sight-seers, who are labouring away, catalogue and pencil in hand, they stare languidly. They really thought everybody had seen the pictures; they know they have: they have stared ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... Arthur could also be seen to stare vacantly at the distance while they strained their ears to listen. As for Hugh himself he found it hard to believe his senses, for the absolute quiet and dead calm brooding all day long over that retired spot in the wilderness had been rudely shattered by a most astonishing ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... "I'm going back there, now, for particulars. It sounds as though the 'phone message might have been intended to get me away." He stared down at the pencilled slip which the Assistant Commissioner had handed him, but stared vacantly, and: "Do you mind if I call someone up, sir?" he asked. "It ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... she took her hands within her own, and gently pressed them to her breast and lips and forehead in token of gratitude, but she seldom gave utterance to any words, and would remain with her eyes fixed vacantly on some object which seemed unseen or to awaken no idea in her mind. At such times the face of the young squaw wore a dreamy apathy of expression, or rather it might with more propriety have been said, the absence of all expression, almost as blank as that of an infant ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... scribbling hasty notes in dog-eared notebooks, he, a human statue of Amaze, gazed at the open window, continuously and vacantly. Jostled by the crowds of curious and interested visitors, he stood, the most surprised man ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... no answer for a space. Somebody was singing in the room behind them, and through the open window he could see the stars in the soft indigo above the great sweep of prairie. He noticed them vacantly and took a curious impersonal interest in the two dim figures standing close together outside the window. One was a young English lad, and the other a girl in a long white dress. What they were doing there was no concern of his, but any trifle that diverted ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... matter, William?" she asked tenderly, as loving hands lay him upon the lounge before her. But the tongue which had bid her good-bye so fondly that morning could not utter a word, and the eyes that had gazed so sweetly into hers bespoke the bitter anguish of his soul as they stared vacantly at her. "He's done fer," said one of the men, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. "The doctors seen him and says he ain't fer long." "Speak to me, William," cried Mrs. Sikes, bending low and pressing her cheeks against her husband's. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... reply, but looked round vacantly. The light of the lamp, coming suddenly out of the darkness, the finding herself face to face with the marchesa, dazzled and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... but for once he looked puzzled, and stared at me vacantly. When I endeavoured to explain to him my question, he simply knitted his brows and scratched the back of his head. This latter movement is the Russian peasant's method of accelerating cerebral action; but in the present instance it had no practical ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... late at his employment, and John Smith slowly felt his way to his own door. His wife, already up, opened it. "Thee varmint! thee never gi'ed I that shilling last night for the baker." Smith felt hopelessly in his pocket, and then looked at her vacantly. "Thee drunken, nasty old——," said the infuriated woman, almost unconsciously lifting her hand. Perhaps it was that action of hers which suggested the same to his mind, which was in a mechanical state. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and the ever lengthening Hapsburg chin. But the line of Austria ends with the utmost limit of caricature in the face of Charles the Bewitched! Carreno has given us an admirable portrait of this unfortunate,—the forehead caved in like the hat of a drunkard, the red-lidded eyes staring vacantly, a long, thin nose absurd as a Carnival disguise, an enormous mouth which he could not shut, the under-jaw projected so prodigiously,—a face incapable of any emotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic mask ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... her calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their familiar and prosaic quality made his adventure appear by ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... persons' footsteps coming up the stairs. She fixed her eyes on the door... the steps drew nearer. The door opened and Nejdanov, supported under the arm by Pavel, appeared in the doorway. He was deadly pale, without a cap, his dishevelled hair hung in wet tufts over his forehead, he stared vacantly straight in front of him. Pavel helped him across the room (Nejdanov's legs were weak and shaky) and made him sit ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... winter. The rough door of such a cellar appeared in the side of this small declivity, and as Caius came round the back of the byre in sight of it, he was surprised to see the farmer's wife holding the latch of its door in her hand and looking vacantly into the dark interior. She looked up and answered the young man's greeting with apathetic manner, apparently quite indifferent to the scene she ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... smoked, staring vacantly at the half-empty shelves, and all but shivering in the damp room. There was no heater in the store at any season, and the one in the office, if used, emitted spurts of smoke through every aperture except the chimney. It had not ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... now out on the dunes, and she sat down behind one of the largest tussocks, on the warm sand. He ventured to place himself by her side, and looked vacantly around him. Every now and then he cast his eye upon her, but still doubtfully. It was clear that he did not grasp the situation, and at length he appeared to her so absurd that she sprang up, and cried, "Come, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... ten. The winter sunshine slanted now on roof and pane, flooding the western side of the shabby boulevard, dappling the snow with yellow patches. He had stopped in the chilly shadow of a gateway and was looking vacantly about. He saw the sunshine across the street and shivered where he was, and yet he did not leave the shadow. He stood and watched the sparrows taking bold little baths in the puddles of melted snow water. They seemed to enjoy the sunshine, but it ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there was no human power within ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... conversations with them on platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)—one simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her "in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the best." Another hectored him by ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... head, stared vacantly for a second, saw the proffered orange, and at the sight of it the thought of "the childer" and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared his dazzled wits, and he took to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... eyes and looked timidly around the dim ward. All was strange and unaccountable. She feared that she was in another world. But as she raised her hand to her head, as if to clear away the mist of uncertainty, a sparkle from the diamond caught her eye. For a long time she stared vacantly at it, with the weak, vague feeling that in some sense it might be a clew. Its faint lustre was like the glimmer of a star through a rift in the clouds to a lost traveller. Its familiar light and position remind him of home, and by its ray he guesses in what direction to move; ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... ground (of about a month ago) at Commando Nek. Instead of recognising familiar landmarks and houses, everything seemed strange and new to me. Said the man on my left in the ranks, "There's the farm where those Tommies got the porkers." To which I remarked vacantly, "Oh!" Then, further on, "Haven't the oats come on in that field?" Again, I helplessly "Er—yes." Then, "I wonder if they've got any fowls left in that shanty over there?" I, dissembling knowledge no longer, at last observed, "Really I don't understand ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... reply; he shrunk into himself. Shame filled his soul. He looked at them vacantly. His forehead was wrinkled as with a great effort to remember something, but he could think of nothing but a huge millwheel turning under red, smooth waves. Suddenly he remembered: it was the young Cossack who had ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... and the young man were alone, there was a silence of some moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly at the dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... servants' part of the bungalow, she found the other servant fast asleep, ready to stare at her vacantly and wonderingly as she was shaken into wakefulness. The woman had to be spoken to by her fellow-servant before anything could be got from her; and then it was only to learn that the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... on my hand again, and stared vacantly as before. Exhaustion had almost become stupor, and it was in a sort of dream that I watched the stout figure moving softly to and fro, lighting the fire, and bringing an air of comfort over the dreary little parlour. Then ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hand holding the staff, the other groping out vacantly in front of him, as though to touch the prisoners. Behind him, the dull blue light cast its vague glow. Stern, seeing his bald and shaking head, lean, corded hand, and trembling body wrapped in its mantle of coarse brown stuff, could ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... inscription. Then he fell to speculating upon what was behind it. His creative imagination presented him a vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed an obstacle to his vision and he saw the livid corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave-clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks—the maculations of decay. By some mysterious ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... fountain. In the afternoon, there they sat, and Bellerophon had thrown his arm around the child, who likewise had put one of his little hands into Bellerophon's. The latter was lost in his own thoughts, and was fixing his eyes vacantly on the trunks of the trees that overshadowed the fountain, and on the grape vines that clambered up among their branches. But the gentle child was gazing down into the water. He was grieved, for Bellerophon's sake, that the hope of another day should be ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... asking me a question. 'I beg your pardon?' I said. The stranger was a tall man, bronzed and bearded. He repeated his question. In answer, I pointed silently to the ruin. 'That?' he gasped. He stared vacantly. I saw that his face had become pale under its sunburn. He looked from the ruin to me. 'You're not joking with me?' he said thickly. I assured him that I was not. I assured him that this was indeed the club to which he had asked ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... where they stood; and, as the Donagh lay upon the table, the black ribbons with which it was ornamented fluttered with a melancholy appearance, that deepened the sensations of the people into something peculiarly solemn and preternatural. Denis at length revived, and stared wildly and vacantly about him. When composed sufficiently to distinguish and recognize individual objects, he looked upon the gloomy visage and threatening eye of his brother, and shrunk back with a terror almost epileptical. "Oh!" he exclaimed, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... solemn, neither smiling at the general hilarity, nor at the absurd changes which are being rung on the harmonium. They may be described as clothed only in boots, for their clothes are torn to rags. They stare vacantly. They have neither seen a woman nor slept under a roof for six months. Negro songs are being sung, and before that "Yankee Doodle" was played immediately after "Rule Britannia," and it made every ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the fact that he had never meant nor cared to see it again, there was something pleasant to Sarp in the face of the sleeper upturned in a moonbeam. He stooped and lifted her tenderly, and laid her head on his shoulder. The young girl opened her eyes vacantly, but heard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... a hundred threads of far-reaching association. And suddenly I had expected to create this kind of intense personal tie between myself and a roomful of new cold alien presences—things staring at me vacantly from the depths of unknown pasts! Can you fancy a more preposterous hope? Why, my other things, my own things, had wooed me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus Callipyge, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... were still fixed vacantly on the printed page, but he saw nothing now. Something in the still air of the room had arrested his attention—something faintly fresh—an ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the blue ax. He floundered down uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still. Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the waning day ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... voice, and in the innocence of the general spirit of the words, trite as might be the image they conveyed, there was something that contrasted so fearfully their own thoughts and minds that they sat silent, looking vacantly into each other's faces, and shrinking perhaps to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
