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More "Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... police. On the following morning he was smuggled out of Barchester by an early train, and has never more been seen in that city. Rumours of him, however, were soon heard, from which it appeared that he had made himself acquainted with the casual ward of more than one workhouse in London. His cousin John left the inn almost immediately,—as, indeed, he must have done had there been no question of Mr Soames's cheque,—and then there was nothing more heard of the Stringers ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... intend to," he replied. "That is the other point concerning which I wish to speak to you. You may think it very extraordinary, and I offer no explanation, but I do not wish it known to—say, Mr. Crawshay, or any other casual enquirer, that I have any acquaintance ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in their very first origin purely ministerial to his wise, indispensable, and patriotic ambition; and that his revolutionary plans were at all periods of his life a direct and foremost object, but in no case bottomed upon casual impulses. In this there was not only patriotism, but in fact the one sole mode of patriotism which could have prospered, or could have found a ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... be hatched to test my powers in that line. It came at the round-up dinner-hour on the Company's range (New Mexico). A small piece of board was nailed to a fence post and the boys began shooting at it. In a casual way someone asked me to try my hand. Knowing how much depended on it I got out my faithful old 45 deg. six-shooter that I had carried for fifteen years, and taking quick aim, as much to my own surprise as to others', actually hit the centre of the mark! It was an extraordinarily good shot (could ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... been looking at himself in the mirror with a satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion. His cousin's face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab with a piece of burnt cork and ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; which it is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I shall make, and therewith leave it to your candour. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In one of his Delineations, in Meister's Travels it is, the hero comes-upon a Society of men with very strange ways, one of which was this: "We require," says the Master, "that each of our people shall restrict ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... "That's up to you. Remember, you're the master mind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things." He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-out apparatus. "Well, there you are. Go ahead and run ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... uncrossed. Instead of which he called out "Crossed," and I was obliged to show them in that wise, though, as before pointed out, I could easily have defeated him by uncrossing them before revealing my hand. I mean to say, it is not on the face of it a game one would care to play with casual acquaintances, and I questioned even then in my own mind its prevalence in the States. (As a matter of fact, I may say that in my later life in the States I could find no trace of it, and now believe it to have been a pure invention on the part of the Tuttle person. I mean to say, I later ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... they all relapsed into silence, restrained from smoking for fear of a telltale spark or casual fragrance carried by the wind. It was a dark night, the hillsides stood blurry against a blue-black sky in which the stars glittered like metal points but failed to shed much light. Later, much later, toward morning, a ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... plans, yet I had consulted him about them more than once. Of course, it was all done in a purely abstract way. Like the majority of our people, he was a talkative man so I would try to keep him talking shop. By a system of seemingly casual questioning I would pump him on sundry details of the clothing business, on the differences and similarities between it and the cloak trade, and, more especially, on how one started ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... words bearing so melancholy a significance? And would you have to confess, that they excite no interest which would not instantly give place to that of the smallest of your own concerns, occurring to your thoughts; or would not leave free the tendency to wander loose among casual fancies; or would not yield to feelings of the ludicrous, at the sight of any whimsical incident? It would not probably be unfair to suspect such faintness of apprehension, and such unfixedness and indifference of thought, in the majority of any large number of persons, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... an incredible degree of vulgar ugliness. This in the town which still bears the name of Croton. The people are all more or less unhealthy; one meets peasants horribly disfigured with life-long malaria. There is an agreeable cordiality in the middle classes; business men from whom I sought casual information, even if we only exchanged a few words in the street, shook hands with me at parting. I found no one who had much good to say of his native place; every one complained of a lack of water. Indeed, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... heart. The gangsmen gave it a wide berth. It offered an abundance of material for him to work upon, but that material was a trifle too rough even for his infastidious taste. The majority of the permanent indwellers of Pill, as well as the casual ones, not only protected themselves from the press, when such a course was necessary, by a ready use of the fist and the club, but, when this means of exemption failed them, pleaded the special nature of their calling with great plausibility and success. They were ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... sleep in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test. With us, to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with the casual illnesses of our civilization: when he lies down it is to sleep for a few hours, or-for ever. Thus these Sircies had literally kept the war-trail till they died. When the corn-fields were being cut ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... himself, but to kill the snake. If a snake got into the room, as often happens in India, the position should not be estimated by ability to get out of the room one's self, but by power to get rid of the snake. In fact, a very interesting illustration of the true theory of defence is found in a casual remark in a natural history about snakes—that comparatively few are dangerous to man, but that the whole family is protected by the fear those few inspire. If attacked by a dog, safety is not sought chiefly in the means of warding him off, but by showing him the means possessed of hurting ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... hooked to one of the baulks of timber forming the staith was being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a listless fashion leaning their shoulders against the boat itself. With the last 'Heave-ho!' at the shortened tackle the women laid hold of the nets, and with casual male assistance laid them out on the shingle, removed any fragments of fish, and generally prepared them for stowing in the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Richard a sum so large that she knew he must be deeply concerned for her, since, like many men of his type, he had such an abundant sense of the pleasures which can be bought with money that to part with it unnecessarily was a real sacrifice, she thought of him with only such casual pity as she had felt when the yard-dog howled. Well, that had all been set right, long afterwards on that day of which she had ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... picked up one of the papers, and for some moments his attention seemed fairly divided between a casual inspection of the light arabesques that ascended in clouds from his lips and the heavy-looking columns of the morning sheet. Suddenly, however, the latter dissipated his further concern in his pipe; he put it down and spread out the big paper in both hands. Amid voluminous ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... long, so it was decided. We made fashion to plaster up the envelope so as not to show a casual looker that it had been tampered with, and I footed it to Portree in the patched trews of the messenger, not with the lightest heart in the world. The first redcoat I met directed me to the inn where the Duke had his headquarters, and I was presently ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort William impresses the casual spectator. The zooelogical garden is conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have been fitly described as of two kinds—bad and adjectively bad. All that interests the visitor within the modern capital ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... new-comers on the field of sacred music. And holding, as he did, that no good work could be adequately adjudged without a thorough knowledge of it, he was disinclined to be introduced to fresh musical names at all, on the bare chance, that might never occur, of what had been a casual acquaintanceship ripening into intimate friendship. He had in early days found time and opportunity to comprehend certain masters, Corelli, Handel, Haydn, Romberg, Mozart, and Beethoven, but Schubert, Schumann, Wagner ("I cannot recollect ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... you, the schoolbook classic of the noble lad who by reason of his neat dress, and by his use in the most casual conversation of the sort of language which the late Mr. Henry James used when he was writing his very Jamesiest, secured a job as a trusted messenger in the large city store or in the city's large store, if we ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... forward until he stood at the foot of the low steps which mounted to the veranda; and there he stopped, looking up at her, and removed his battered hat. Caleb ranged awkwardly up alongside him and looked up at her in turn. He, searching desperately for a neat and cleverly casual opening speech, could not know that beneath her forbidding manner a peal of soft laughter was struggling for utterance; could not know that, at that moment, she was telling herself that, of the two, Caleb was far ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... remarkable aspect, one that the casual observer even would have noticed, was an extraordinary vitality. He created in the minds of those who saw him a feeling that he lived intensely every moment of his life. Born and-bred in the forest, he was essentially its child, a perfect physical being, trained by the utmost hardship and danger, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule." And this is exactly what happened. The judiciary here assumed the function of the legislative department. Not even a casual reader on examining these laws and the Constitution can feel that the court in this case felt such a clear and strong conviction as to the invalidity of this constitutional legislation when that tribunal, as its records show, had under different circumstances before the Civil ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... behind a perforated curtain, and making them put their eyes at the holes. Not one eye in a hundred can be recognized, even by most familiar and loving friends. But study smiles; observe, even in the most casual way, the variety one sees in a day, and it will soon be felt what subtle revelation they make, what infinite individuality ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... off two similar trios of daughters, and that these were the younger children. Blessings on the children who belong to so well filled a quiver, if they all attain to such a degree of sweetness and decorum as to impress the most casual observer, and one of their own sex, too, with such lasting recollections of their maiden loveliness! I saw them under various circumstances, both flattering and the reverse: saw them, when, with their own servants in attendance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... leave this place without that well-head, the statue of Neptune, and the yellow marble sundial," said Aunt Kathryn in a casual tone which masked a ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... vaguely enough, his past friendship with the murdered girl. He had first met her in London two years before. Their relations, as he depicted them, conveyed a common story of a casual acquaintance developed in the familiar atmosphere of secluded restaurants, with dances and theatres later on. His story of this phase had all the familiar elements which make up the setting of a modern sophisticated love episode, into which a man and a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... before Captain Sam's departure that he spoke of his daughter and young Phillips. He mentioned them in a most casual fashion, as he was putting on his coat to go, but Jed had a feeling that his friend had stopped at the windmill shop on purpose to discuss that very subject and that all the detail of his Wapatomac trip had been in the nature of a ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... forgave Zenobia for her conduct on this occasion. But women are always more cautious in their casual ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Albert, don't you know me? To think that next Tuesday it'll be six and twenty years since you walked out o' the house casual ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... him his assistance in private, in public he extenuated and pitied his error." But there is some reason for thinking this equivalent was only the equivalent of one year's salary, and this assistance casual, not stated; else we are at a loss to understand the continual complaints of utter penury which the poet uttered ever after. Some of these complaints were addressed to his benefactor himself, as in the Dedication to Juvenal and Persius, 1692:—"Age ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... express your sorrow for the injury you have done me to-night." Then she left the room before he had made up his mind how he would continue his address. He was quite sure that he was right. Had he not desired her not to waltz? At that moment he quite forgot the casual permission he had barely given at Lady Brabazon's, and which had been intended to apply to that night only. Had he not specially warned her against this Captain De Baron, and told her that his name and ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... on the patrons; and embryo promotions of modest gentlemen, who know nothing of the matter themselves. It can hint a ribbon for implied services in the air of a common report; and with the carelessness of a casual paragraph, suggest officers into commands, to which they have no pretension but their wishes. This, sir, is the last principal class of the art of puffing—an art which I hope you will now agree with me is of the highest dignity, yielding a tablature of benevolence and public spirit; befriending ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... out of the depot, and wended its way in the most casual manner through the streets of Havre. This so amused Tommy that he roared with laughter. The people who rushed to give the train a send-off, with many cries of "Vive les Anglais," "A bas les Bosches," were greeted with more bleatings ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... opinions to the weight which a more protracted sojourn might have obtained for them; but it is but justice to state, that whilst I was there, I enjoyed opportunities of seeing the negro at all times, and under all circumstances, such as few casual visitors can boast of. My host was not a planter, but a medical practitioner; and one prejudiced rather against the slave system than in favour of it: there was therefore no disposition on his part to cast dust into my eyes, or to present to them only the bright side of the picture. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... on between golf and tennis, and was carried in favor of golf by Cousin Jim. There was unintelligible talk of hazards and bunkers and handicaps for the tournament, of records and of bogey, and then as Johnny turned to her with a casual, "Like the game?" a shadow of misgiving crept ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a lot, all over the world," he explained in a casual way during a talk they had had on the night of their marriage, at the first stopping-place to which their motor brought them. "My mother died when I was a small boy, died in a terrible way I don't want to talk about, and losing her broke ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... long hid amid packs of years, She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight, And the deed that had nigh drawn tears Was done in a casual clearance of life's arrears; But I felt as if I had put her to death that ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... hesitation or mistake, he could pour forth a stream of facts, dates, names, places, accompanied with narrations, anecdotes, reflections and arguments, until the matter was thoroughly sifted and laid bare in all its parts and properties, to the understanding of the most casual observer. The tenacity and correctness of his memory was proverbial. Alas, for the man who questioned the correctness of his statements, his facts, or dates. Sure discomfiture awaited him. His mind was a perfect calendar, a store-house, a mine of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... in a casual way, I slipped my arm around her; With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you), And ready to kiss ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... but undisputed facts over which Rechamp and I, in our different ways, were now pondering. He hardly spoke, and when he did it was only to make some casual reference to the road or to our wounded soldiers; but all the while I sat at his side I kept hearing the echo of the question he was inwardly asking himself, and hoping to God he wouldn't ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... whole work from the charge of vulgar subservience to a vulgar taste for the presentation or the contemplation of criminal horror. Instances of this happy and natural nobility of instinct abound in the casual expressions which give grace and animation always, but never any touch of rhetorical transgression or florid superfluity, to the brief and trenchant sword-play ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a male Virginia's Warbler in Boquillas Canyon in the Sierra del Carmen "in scattered scrubby oak growth with grass and cactus beneath." This species in the Sierra del Carmen is considered "casual" by Miller, ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... two instances, studiously suppressed) easily recognised by many of the present sons of Alma Mater who shared in the perils and glory of the battle. To those who are strangers to the sacred city, and these casual effervescences of juvenile spirit, the admirable graphic view of the scene by my friend Bob Transit (see plate) will convey a very ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of six or seven and twenty, young for his years, yet with a certain stamp of the world and experience, went slowly along, glancing at the visitors in a casual manner. Of course he would know Miss Jasper and Dr. Underhill. It was like looking for a needle in a hay-stack; but Mrs. Jasper had suggested the picture-gallery; and suddenly he saw a small figure ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... ever dreamed that he was head of the great financial house of Volkonski Freres of Petersburg, whose huge loans to the Russian Government during the war with Japan created a sensation throughout Europe, and surely no casual observer looking at that little assembly would ever entertain suspicion that, between them, they could practically dictate to the money-market ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... through the gloom of the world. That I found no peace in these views I need not say. Many an hour have I spent in disconsolate depression, thinking that my existence and that of others is purposeless and unprofitable—perchance only a casual product of creation, coming and going like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the intervals of work. They hate physical exercise; more than that, they despise it as fit only for the ignorant and low. Yet they have not supplied its place with anything intellectual, and the most casual observer cannot fail to notice that China has no national game. Fencing, rowing, and cricket, are alike unknown; and archery, such as it is, claims the attention chiefly of candidates for official honours. Within doors they have chess, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... to be invited to the wedding, but they were miles short of guessing the real state of affairs. Sometimes I noticed her friends putting their heads together and knew they were discussing me, for they stopped whispering when I came up for their fares. But even so I heard casual remarks. Some said it was sweet of her—the way women talk, you know—and democratic, and others said it was no use trying to do anything for that kind ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... disregard of what is commonly called realism, and with its occasional, but quite unblushing, use of methods generally held superseded—such as the casual introduction of characters at whatever moment they happen to be needed on the stage—it has, from the start, been among the most frequently played and most enthusiastically received of Strindberg's later dramas. At Stockholm it ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... prove as prolific of results as Winston confidently expected. Miss Norvell evidently considered such casual conversation no foundation for future friendship, and although she greeted him when they again met, much as she acknowledged acquaintanceship with the others of the troupe, there remained a quiet reserve about ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at the time, might have considered the latter alternative as the more probable. Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own great To-Morrow was now imminent; all thoughts inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners of her brain, previously to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... activity. He passed through one and then the other to the third coach, and sat down when he came to the seat he had formerly occupied. He did not immediately look at the woman across the aisle. He did not want her to suspect that he had come back for that purpose. When his eyes did seek her in a casual sort ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... at least nine-tenths of the residents of this great city. And if people, to the manner born, are unacquainted with the form and manifestations of this particular phase of crime, how much more ignorant must be those casual visitors, who only, at long intervals, are called by business, or impelled by anticipations of pleasure, to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... morning dawned bright and clear on November 5, 1882. The most casual observer would have seen that some unusual interest was commanding attention. Everything wore a holiday appearance. Polling places were gaily decorated; banners floated to the breeze, bearing suggestive mottoes: "Are Women Citizens?" "Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny!" "Governments ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... their knowledge of how much of a given class of work can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation of their men, or at best from records which are kept, showing, the quickest time in which each job has been done. In many cases the employer will feel almost certain that a given job can be done faster than ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... night. At intervals the sun shone out on the reddened foliage, greatly changed in hue since my first visit to Lough Mask. The half-dozen persons I met appeared to be going about their daily work like good citizens; and a casual visitor might, if he could have persuaded anybody to drive him along the road to Lough Mask, have gone away convinced that the whole story of wrong and outrage was the work of a distempered brain. The isolated dwelling itself was by far the most gloomy object in the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... placed so little dependence, that he thought it necessary to wring the truth from them as a lawyer would do from an unwilling witness. His general distrust of others, in all that related to themselves, is well exemplified by a casual remark that has been lately repeated to me by a respectable dignitary of the church, to whom when he was apologizing for his want of skill in the game of chess, at which they were going to play, Darwin answered, that he made it a rule, not to believe either ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... my casual intercourse with H. Truhn rather more entertaining. I used to treat him to a good glass of wine at Lutter and Wegener's, where I went occasionally on account of its association with Hoffmann, and he would then ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... design lies in its nearness to hand and in its appeal to facts, combined with the impossibility of verification. That nature is full of strange and curious examples of adaptation is clear to all, although the significance of these adaptations are by no means so clear. Moreover, a very casual study of these cases show that they are better calculated to dazzle than to convince. The presentation of a number of more or less elaborate facts of adaptation, followed with the remark that we are unable to see how such cases could have ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... theirselves in the world now—forbye the eldest is thinkin' o' marryin' a girl I've never seen, down in Cornwall, which is where 'e be a-workin' in tin mines, an' when I 'eerd as 'ow 'e was p'raps a-goin' to tie hisself up in the bonds o' matterimony, I stepped out in the garden just casual like, an' if you'll believe me, I sees a magpie! Now, Mis' Deane, magpies is total strangers on these coasts—no one as I've ever 'eard tell on 'as ever seen one—an' they's the unlikeliest and unluckiest ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... this for which Antony is in love with her! She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... battle-field; infinite female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, inimitable bon-mots, exquisite millinery, consummate generalship, holy fortitude, refined profligacy, and intoxicating sentiment,—Ude, Napoleon, Madame Recamier, Pascal, Ninon de I'Enclos, and Rousseau. Casual associations and desultory reading thus predispose us to recognize something half comical and half enchanting in French life; and it depends on accident, when we first visit Paris, which view is confirmed. The society ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... we had arranged quarters for them, trying to do everything in a manner that would be in harmony with the Turkish convenances. When the wives were escorted forth to be turned back to their countrymen, they were all weeping bitterly. Whether it was that the Turk in his casual manner decided that one day was as good as another, or whether he felt that he had no particular use for these particular women, we never knew, but at all events twenty-four hours later one of our patrols came upon the prisoners still forlornly ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... words, which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... me something that happened to you—something connected with Mr.—with the rich parishioner." Her tone was steady and casual, but looking at her, he saw that she was ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... back at the road, avoided an oncoming car with a casual sweep of the wheel, and sighed gustily. "Mister," he said, "you don't ask questions, I ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not powerful enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied with all things Canadian because "in the old country we do things differently"—whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If you was a lidy, I'd wipe my boots on you!"—this selfsame janitor, standing by the furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face, and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. "Ye won't go north ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... liking for gold, he regretted that he had no more to offer me, but that as gold was of no value in the country, and was not particularly sought after, it was only occasionally that a stray nugget or a handful of dust was found; and that the contents of the bags represented the casual ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... long enough to finish drinking his tea, and then he left the house with what he privately considered a perfectly casual manner. As a matter of fact, he was extremely self-conscious about it, so that Mrs. Kate felt justified in mentioning it, and in asking Josephine a question or two—when she had prudently made an ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... cannot accurately figure to himself; but neither do they essentially concern him. His business is with their inward man; with their feelings and behavior in certain tragic situations, which engage their passions as men; these have in them nothing local and casual; they are as accessible to the modern poet as ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... would worship has disappeared for ever, like some "solemn vision and bright silver dream," as becomes a minstrel. For him are the traditions and associations, the sights and sounds, which, as he justly says, have no meaning or no existence for the "fashionable lounger" and the "casual passenger." "The Barbican does not to every one summon the austere memory of Milton; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... make his name remembered to all ages is the Declaration of Independence. Besides this document, which is less a state paper than a prose chant of freedom, he wrote a multitude of works, a part of which are now collected in ten large volumes. These are known only to historians; but the casual reader will find many things of interest in Jefferson's Letters, in his Autobiography and in his Summary View of the Rights of America (1774). The last-named work gave Burke some information and inspiration ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... reached a little, white, peaceful house that stood ahead on the plain. They did not look behind at justice pursuing its prey... they had lost all interest in justice and in the race. Presently, when justice should pass them, on full-spreading wing, they would look up with casual glance, and note its flight over the far line—out of sight in the distant west. But now they did not know of ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... the casual dealer in pious phrases and occasional prayers, these revelations do not come. It is when the heart is set upon finding God that realizing ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... but a casual examination on the part of one who had done considerable experimenting with explosives to disclose the fact that it had every characteristic of a dangerous bomb. Only the pulling out of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... Walden was, broadly speaking, one of these moments. It stands out in the casual and popular opinion as a kind of adventure—harmless and amusing to some, significant and important to others; but its significance lies in the fact that in trying to practice an ideal he prepared his mind so that it could better bring others "into ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... he attended the governor's reception to the legislators. He came in late, and after paying his respects to the governor and his wife, wandered rather helplessly toward the hall, seeing many whom he knew, but finding little pleasure in their casual greetings. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... letters are transparently natural. It has been said more than once that the Journal, by the nature of the case, contains no full-length portraits, and hardly any sketches. Swift mentions the people he met, but rarely stops to draw a picture of them. But though this is true, the casual remarks which he makes often give a vivid impression of what he thought of the person of whom he is speaking, and in many cases those few words form a chief part of our general estimate of the man. There ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... at different times in the different States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril; and in the Southern and less temperate climates where the force of gravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to casual and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning Women are naturally much more stringent. But a general view of the Code may be obtained from ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... been paid by an order for meal or food since then?-Not to my recollection, except it may be in the case of the applicants for casual relief, or applicants coming to me seeking relief before the meeting of the Board. In that case, sometimes, but not often, I would give an order for a little meal. I generally do that when I have not sufficient confidence in the economy of the party, and when I think the allowance ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... vigils Mr. Polly had a feeling—A young rabbit must have very much the feeling, when after a youth of gambolling in sunny woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity, in a net—for ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... father," Dick said. "I have no doubt that he has thought all these things over, and has, long before this, made up his mind as to the point at which a descent would be easiest. As at present we know little, except by the casual examination we made last time, we can decide on ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... point of calling the boy "Diavolo" in a casual way, as if he had forgotten the dispute, as early as possible after this, and found that Lady Adeline was right. Diavolo showed not the slightest sign of having heard, but he got out his books at once, and did his lessons ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the civil law of his native State, speaking French and Spanish, soon plunged in the vexatious land litigation of his generation. Mere casual occupancy gave little color of title to the commoner Mexicans. Now, the great grant owners are, one by one, cited into court to prove their holdings; many are forced in by ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... conversation. He has been beset for the last half century, not only by genuine admirers, but by the curious and idle of all ranks and of many nations, and sometimes by envious and designing listeners, who have misrepresented and distorted his casual expressions. Instances of negligent and infelicitous composition are numerous in Southey, as in most voluminous authors. Suppose some particular passage of this kind to have been under discussion, and Mr. Wordsworth to have exclaimed, "I would not give five shillings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... had a closer knowledge of prisons, Nekhludoff found out that all those vices which developed among the prisoners—drunkenness, gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism—were not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the incomprehensible delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff saw that cannibalism did ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of denudation is at once one of the most interesting and one of the most complicated with which the geologist has to deal. While its great results are apparent even to the most casual observer, the factors which have led to these results are in many cases so indeterminate, and in some cases apparently so variable in influence, that thoughtful writers have even claimed precisely opposite effects as originating ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... notable among the tombs of Christ churchyard in being set with the foot due east, as by a mariner's compass. The wide headstones split the plane of the meridian; their edges cleave the noonday sun and the polar star. To the casual observer these three tombstones, as compared with all others in the churchyard, seem quite awry. In reality they alone are meticulously correct, a standing tribute to the exact eye of Joshua Starr, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... as every one who sees admires them, the slugs, no doubt, are more enthusiastic still. Therefore I do not recommend that idea, unless it be supplemented by some effective method of combating a grave disadvantage. My own may not commend itself to every one. Each spring I entrust some casual little boy with a pail; he brings it back full of frog-spawn and receives sixpence. I speculate sometimes with complacency how many thousand of healthy and industrious batrachians I have reared and turned out for the benefit of my neighbours. Enough ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... even so? And are our brethren at such pains to note the infirmities of our natural temper, and the rough precipitance of our zeal, which may sometimes have urged us to issue commands when there was little time to hold council? I could not have thought that offences, casual and unpremeditated like mine, could find such deep root in the hearts of my allies in this most holy cause; that for my sake they should withdraw their hands from the plough when the furrow was near the end—for my sake turn aside from the direct ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... shoulders. The less he liked these rich people naturally the more familiar his resolution to be successfully intimate made him. He put down the names and brief characteristics of their sons and daughters in a little note-book and consulted it before every visit so as to get his most casual enquiries right. And he invited himself to the Garstein Fellows house on ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... visited the famous caverns. As we emerged from the last of these I essayed some casual talk. To tell the truth, I was beginning to feel the want of it, and of course I began on the first topic of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a time when men are slaughtered like pigs in massed formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young girls—and widows!—are forced to bring more males into the world with the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread. Oh, no! The German man's day of any but legal dominion is over. Of course there is always the danger of ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... is obvious that they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Government has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. AS far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that had passed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,—particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,—the appearance or action of the sacrificial ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... hall when they descended. He came forward to meet his fiancee, and her heart throbbed fast and hard at the sight of him. But his manner was so strictly casual and impersonal that her agitation speedily passed, and by the time they were seated side by side at dinner—for the last time in their lives, as the Colonel jocosely remarked—she could not feel that she had ever been anything nearer to him than a ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... rebellion is afoot, it has steadily and powerfully tended to straiten character, to make action mechanical, and to impoverish art. As if there were nothing admirable in a man save unbroken obedience to the letter of the moral law, and that letter read in our own casual and local interpretation; and as if we had no faculties of sympathy, no sense for the beauty of character, no feeling for ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... this," replied the prisoner; "it was not my object to overhear you: an accident conducted me where you discovered me, and I heartily regret that a casual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... revival of these voyages for the discovery of the North Pole and a passage round the northern coast of America to the Pacific Ocean. For this coast was totally unknown at this time. Information was collected from casual travellers, whale-fishers, and others, with the result that England equipped two ships for a voyage of discovery to the disputed regions. These were the Isabella (385 tons) and the Alexander (252 tons), Commander ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... all prepared to set off as soon as the Indians should arrive. Our two hunters who were despatched early in the morning have not returned, so that we were obliged to encroach on our pork and corn, which we consider as the last resource when our casual supplies of game fail. After dark we carried our baggage to the cache, and deposited what we thought too cumbrous to carry with us: a small assortment of medicines, and all the specimens of plants, seeds, and minerals, collected ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... against prowling panthers.—And here's a queer little newspaper cutting that she sent me one blizzardy Sunday telling all about some big violin maker who always went out into the forests himself and chose his violin woods from the north side of the trees. Casual little item. You don't think anything about it at the moment. It probably isn't true. And to save your soul you couldn't tell what kind of trees violins are made out of, anyway. But I'll wager that never ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Euripides in "The Acharnians" and Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... Book VII., he is told that the Revolution is "ended," and the curtain falls. As a matter of real history, this is an arbitrary invention. For the street fight on the day named in the Revolutionary Calendar—13 Vendemiaire, An 4 (5th October 1795), is merely a casual point in a long movement, at which the poet finds it artistic to stop. But the French Revolution does not stop there, nor did the "Whiff of Grapeshot" end it in any but an arbitrary sense. When the poet tells us that, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the wandering Jew till the sixteenth century, when we hear first of him in a casual manner, as assisting a weaver, Kokot, at the royal palace in Bohemia (1505), to find a treasure which had been secreted by the great-grandfather of Kokot, sixty years before, at which time the Jew was present. He then had ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Barney Bill's entrance late on a Saturday afternoon in August. It was not dramatic. It was merely casual. They laid the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... calculated to captivate many readers. In fact, this clever and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and heard the passing discourse like any other casual spectator: when over he would go home to his room, write out in full all that had been said on the occasion, and that entirely from memory. On a certain occasion I hinted to him my incredulity about his ability to report as he had frequently informed me. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... he had so often laughed at in disdain? Could that gay old gentleman in red and gold be the morbid, carelessly clad Duke of Rapp-Thorberg, whom he had grown to despise because he seemed so ridiculously unlike a real potentate? He marvelled and rejoiced as he strolled hither and thither with the casual Baggs, and for the first time in his life really felt that it was pleasant to be stared at—in admiration, too, he may be pardoned ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... death, we cannot but feel a melancholy satisfaction in contemplating it for a while. An ecclesiastic, who was present in the camp, and in attendance on his royal master, records the anecdote in the most casual manner,[117] without a word of admiration or remark to call our attention to it, as though he were relating a circumstance of no unusual occurrence, and such merely as those who knew his master might hear of without surprise; whilst few pages of history bear to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... science found such an amazing exemplification. Much concerning Filmer is, and must remain, profoundly obscure—Filmers attract no Boswells—but the essential facts and the concluding scene are clear enough, and there are letters, and notes, and casual allusions to piece the whole together. And this is the story one makes, putting this thing with that, of Filmer's ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... bore down on him from the west and reined his horse at the intersection of the two roads. He looked up the straight highway toward Pa-Ramesu, then turned in the saddle and gazed toward Tanis. His indecision was not a wayfarer's casual hesitancy in the choice of roads. By the anxiety written on his face, life, fortune or love might be at stake upon the correct selection of route. Once or twice he looked at the soldier, but showed no inclination to ask advice, even had ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the little Adelie penguin. Hundreds of thousands of birds dotted the shore, and there were many thousands in the sea round the ship. As we came to know these rookeries better we came to look upon these quaint creatures more as familiar friends than as casual acquaintances. Whatever a penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away. And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and fighting ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... pass unless timely checked), I suspect that matter possessing very different properties may sooner or later be produced; and although it may have passed that stage wherein the specific properties of the matter secreted are no longer present in it, yet when applied to a sore (as in the casual way) it might dispose that sore to ulcerate, and from its irritation the system would probably become affected; and thus, by assuming some of its strongest characters, it would ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... or the sun blinding her in his warmth and splendour; she knew that it was God who made them all. Did she ponder over the variety of the leaf; did she admire the painting of the flower, or watch the motions of the minute insect, which, but for her casual observation, might have lived and died unseen;—she felt—she knew that all was made for man's advantage or enjoyment, and that God was great and good. Her orisons were short, but they were sincere; unlike the child who, night ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... course, he won't allow it.' Vassily Ivanovitch several times attempted in the most circumspect manner to question Bazarov about his work, about his health, and about Arkady.... But Bazarov's replies were reluctant and casual; and, once noticing that his father was trying gradually to lead up to something in conversation, he said to him in a tone of vexation: 'Why do you always seem to be walking round me on tiptoe? That way's worse than the old one.'—'There, there, I meant nothing!' poor Vassily ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... such. It's just a heavy armed frigate, which is the limit Tranest is allowed to build. Since it's Lyad's private boat, I imagine it's been souped up with everything they could throw in. Anyway, the fact that she sent it here ahead of her indicates she isn't just dropping in for a casual visit." ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... like a Sword-Worlder; I told you that once before." He hesitated, then turned again to Princess Bentrik. "How is little Princess Myrna?" he asked, and then, trying to be casual, added, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... which did not intimidate the lady before him. In the country women have no more apprehension of men who are young and stylish and good-looking than they have in the city; they rather like them to be so, and meet them with confidence in any casual encounter. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... I, as we turns into a cross street just before it ends in the East River. "The main works," and I waves my band around casual. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... had finished eating, the range-rider turned in at the smoking compartment and enjoyed a cigar. He fell into casual talk with an army officer who had served in the Southwest, and it was three hours later when he returned to his own seat in ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... appearance, modified both in voice and dress by considerable contact with the towns. Of sandy complexion, broad features and light-coloured eyes that did not look one full in the face, the man was of the type that attracts upon casual acquaintance but about which there is an indefinable something which, without actually repelling, effectually ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... are tested in various crucibles. In a smoothly-moving world human paths diverge and the grooves are often widened by indifference. In times of stress, the diverse threads of commonplace existence may merge into a single strand. Then it is that casual acquaintances become friends, when man rubs elbow with man and hearts beat together in ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... is not controlled by the arguments they publish—it is controlled by the arguments between the editor and sub-editor, which they do not publish. This casualness is our English vice. It is at once casual and secret. Our public life is conducted privately. Hence it follows that if an English swindler wished to impress us, the last thing he would think of doing would be to put on a uniform. He would put on a polite slouching air and ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... absences had been of late—absences which she attributed to his love for field sports. She remembered how often, when he was absent, Maria Esmond was away too. Walks in cool avenues, whisperings in garden temples, or behind clipt hedges, casual squeezes of the hand in twilight corridors, or sweet glances and ogles in meetings on the stairs,—a lively fancy, an intimate knowledge of the world, very likely a considerable personal experience in early days, suggested all these possibilities and chances to Madame ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... days later he went out to Shotwell Street to see her. Julia met him very quietly, and presented the little Anna with the solicitous interest in the child's manner that she would have shown had Jim been any casual friend. Anna, who was lovely in a pale pink cotton garment a little too small for her, looked seriously at her father, submitted to his kisses, her wondering eyes never moving from his face, and wriggled out of his arms as soon ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... he must sound horribly casual and indifferent; he tried in vain to infuse some enthusiasm into ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... things at a given time, cannot possibly be known by the ignorant many, nor even by the philosophic few. The philosopher, not less than the peasant, may perish through the explosion of a steam engine, or the unsoundness of a ship, or the casual ignition of his dwelling; and that, too, without blame or punishment being involved in either case. On Mr. Combe's theory, it would seem to be necessary that every one should be a man of science, if he would avoid sin and punishment; ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... at once falls in love. They set out upon their travels and encounter her at the Kermesse. She has been left by her brother Valentin, a soldier, in care of Dame Martha, who proves herself a careless guardian. Their first meeting is a casual one; but subsequently he finds her in her garden, and with the help of the subtle Mephistopheles succeeds in engaging the young girl's affection. Her simple lover, Siebel, is discarded, and his nosegay is thrown away ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... personality; a guide or "control," as the Spiritualists know that phenomenon. Fiona Macleod, always referred to by William Sharp as "she," is his own higher Self—the cosmic consciousness of the spiritual man which was so nearly balanced in the personality of William Sharp as to appear to the casual observer as ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... pastimes and the gaiety of the half-Grecian colony, its worship of Isis, its trade with Alexandria, and the early struggles of Christianity with heathen superstition are exceptionally vivid. The creation of Nydia, the blind flower-girl, was suggested by the casual remark of an acquaintance that at the time of the destruction of Pompeii the sightless would have found ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; 175 For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... settled upon the masses below. The commissioners proceed: 'A reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is still badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. Our personal experience and observation during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements; and we ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... him into the room where Sir Thomas was accustomed to receive casual visitors, and where what was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... heart of the Alpuxarras, and ravaged the valleys and sacked and burnt the towns upon which the city depended for its supplies. Scouting parties also ranged the mountains behind Granada and captured every casual convoy of provisions. The Moors became more daring as their situation became more hopeless. Never had Ferdinand experienced such vigorous sallies and assaults. Muza at the head of his cavalry harassed the borders of the camp, and even penetrated into the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... it so tragical. The little vivid touches in which Tacitus excels are used towards this purpose with extraordinary effect; as in the incident of the third legion saluting the rising sun—ita in Suria mos est—which marks the new and fatal character of the great provincial armies, or the casual words of the Flavian general, The bath will soon be heated, which were said to have given the signal for the burning of Cremona. In these scenes the whole tragedy of the Empire rises before us. The armies ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of a hundred, a very sufficient dash of folly is necessary to render a woman piquante, a soft word for desirable; and, beyond these casual ebullitions of sympathy, few look for enjoyment by fostering a passion in their hearts. One reason, in short, why I wish my whole sex to become wiser, is, that the foolish ones may not, by their ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... J. Patterson, coming thus upon Noble's ear, was like an unexpected shrine on the wayside where plods the fanatic pilgrim; and yet Mr. Patterson was the most casual of Julia's uncles-by-marriage: he neither had nor desired any effect upon her destiny. To Noble he seemed a being ineffably privileged and fateful, and something of the same quality invested the wooden gateposts ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... up, beyond the glance of the casual observer, the elaborately-worked tapestry of Maria Fusinata attracted little attention. Those, however, who had the good fortune to notice it were always delighted with the excellent adaptation of the clever designs of Grandville, which the embroiderer had so faithfully rendered. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... always does its work tolerably satisfactorily, but because in the simple matter of looks there is something inviting about the iron. It has a fair amount of loft, and it is deeper in the face than the cleek, and at a casual inspection of its points it seems an easy club to play with. On the other hand, being a little nearer to the hole, the average player deserts his iron for the mashie much sooner than I care to do. Your 10-handicap man never gives a second thought as to the tool he shall use when ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... ever prone to look askance at the casual comer, received him with open arms. Especially was he a favorite with the women. As a promoter of pleasures and an organizer of amusements he took the lead, and it quickly came to pass that no function was complete without him. Not only did he come to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... fields of study, but as parts of a larger whole held together by some central idea. The great systematic thinkers, from Plato down to Herbert Spencer, have aimed at "completely unified knowledge" and have sought to bring order and coherence into what may seem to the casual onlooker as a disunited array of phenomena. Philosophical teaching will be the more fruitful, the more it is inspired by the thought of unity of aim, and the more consciously the teachers of the different disciplines keep this idea in mind. That is the reason why philosophical ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... nobody takes any notice—they are never there long enough. Landlord, landlady, or rent collector—or whatever it is—calls later on; maybe, knocks in a tired, even bored, way; makes inquiries next door, and goes away, leaving the problem to take care of itself—all kind of casual. The business people of North Sydney, especially removers and labourers, are very casual. Down old Blue's Point Road the folk get so casual that they just exist, but don't ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... ranks the tramps were recruited, men who were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work—seeking it in the harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that the job was fleeting. In the early summer they ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... his brother-in-law of his position, he alluded two or three times in a casual fashion to his wife. The skipper hardly listened to him, and patting Miss Harris's cheek in a fatherly manner, regaled her with an anecdote of the mate's boyhood which the latter had spent a goodly portion of his life in denying. He denied it again, hotly, and Miss Harris, conquering for a time ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... was a wise plan, and, after a casual look around the farmhouse and other buildings on Kanker's place and finding nothing to arouse their suspicions, the two left in Ned's speedy ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... stone steps of the residence before which they waited was an almost invisible bundle, apparently shapeless and immovable. Neither of the two gorgeous personages in livery observed it; it was too far back in a dim corner, too unobtrusive, for the casual regard of their lofty eyes. Suddenly the glass doors before mentioned were thrown apart with a clattering noise, a warmth and radiance from the entrance-hall thus displayed streamed into the foggy street, and at the same instant ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... blarney caught him, but anyway Lory buried his muzzle in Jack's pail till he could see nothin' but what Jack said it held, and took the bay at six hundred dollars just on a casual lookover. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... draught that two pale, close-clipped boys served them from either side of the fountain. Then, in the order of their coming, they issued through another door upon the side street, each, as he disappeared, turning his face half round, and casting a casual glance upon a little group ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the table was slightly changed—not enough to attract Mr. Burns's attention, but there was a greater display of silver than usual, and a nicer regard to arrangement. The same might be said of Sarah herself. The casual observer would not notice it, one of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she said to the driver, she would be ready to return to Stans. Then she wandered out into the village street, thinking she might come across some peasant at work alone, or some woman standing idly at her door, with whom she could fall into a casual conversation, and learn what she had come to ascertain. But she met with no solitary villager; and she strayed onward, almost unwittingly in the direction of the cemetery. In passing by the church, she pushed open one ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... spade haphazard into the earth and by that act liberate a small stream which shall become a mighty river. Not less casual perhaps, certainly not less momentous in its consequences, was the first attempt, by some enterprising ecclesiastic, to enliven the hardly understood Latin service of the Church. Who the innovator was is unrecorded. The form of his innovation, however, may be guessed from this, that even in the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... friends—friends, however, being hardly the word to apply to his few casual acquaintances,—were greatly surprised at this. Such an establishment seemed to them the last sort of thing a man of this type would have gone in for. He had seemed such a decent sort, too. Really, a few professed to be quite shocked—they said you ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... yet." Harry King mused a little, then resolved to break his loneliness by accepting the casual acquaintance, and to avoid personalities about himself by asking questions about the town and those he used to know, but whom he preferred not to see. It was an opportunity. "Yes, it is a pretty place. Have you ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... casual traveller can see Victoria Falls from the train is due entirely to the foresight and the imagination of Cecil Rhodes. He knew the publicity value that the cataract would have for Rhodesia and he combined the utilitarian with his love of the romantic. In planning the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... mistake and get "reported," and in that way would not be so likely to reach the third class so soon as the other; but granting that he did so they would still be together, the man inured to guilt and crime would still be beside the new and casual lodger, the man who had never been in prison before would still have the opportunity of learning the evil ways of the confirmed rogue. Again, should the clergyman be fortunate enough in passing into the higher classes ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... more than that Tom. It was as if the Power above had directed it. This man Coll was one of the quartermasters, and only mentioned the Cassowary in the most casual manner to me as we were passing the place where she went ashore. 'I was in her, sir,' he said in the most simple, matter-of-fact manner, 'and me and a poor little boy about four, was the only ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... events which preceded and followed it, but also founded episodes of their own on isolated allusions in Homer, so the Uttarakanda is intended to complete the Ramayana, and at the same time to supplement it by intervening episodes to explain casual allusions or isolated incidents which occur in it. Thus the early history of the giant Ravana and his family fills nearly forty Chapters, and we have a full account of his wars with the gods and his conquest of Lanka, which ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... glowing vision of Michael actually discovering the lost treasure of Akhnaton would vanish and she would see him, just as clearly, alone and ill in the desert, in lack of funds and abandoned by his men. She knew his casual methods of making practical arrangements and his total disregard for his personal ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... little garden with its box borders and were wandering vaguely among the late roses. She paused to look at the roses, stooping to breathe in the fragrance of a tall white cluster: it was an instinctive impulse of hiding: she hoped in another moment to find an escape in some casual gardening remark. But Augustine, unsuspecting, was interested in ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... empty weapon squarely at the blue monstrosity's hideous face. Arlok made no attempt to dodge. The heavy revolver struck him high on the forehead, then rebounded harmlessly to the floor. Arlok paid no more attention to the blow than a man would to the casual touch of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... we looked relentless officers in the face, and they almost yawned in ours as they directed us through swing doors and up stone stairs. There was something even sinister in the casual character of our reception. We had an arctic landing to ourselves for several minutes, which Raffles spent in an instinctive survey of the premises, while I cooled my heels before the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... give Anne a hearty embrace and warn her to be careful of her health, whatever she did. Marilla, brusque and tearless, pecked Anne's cheek and said she supposed they'd hear from her when she got settled. A casual observer might have concluded that Anne's going mattered very little to her—unless said observer had happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora kissed Anne primly and squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had been crying on ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and twenty- two manors in different parts of England [s], which paid him rent, either in money, or in corn, cattle, and the usual produce of the soil. An ancient historian computes, that his annual fixed income, besides escheats, fines, reliefs, and other casual profits to a great value, amounted to near four hundred thousand pounds a year [t]; a sum which, if all circumstances be attended to, will appear wholly incredible. A pound in that age, as we have already observed, contained three times the weight of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... word. How should there be? Aunt Jemima has already drawn tight the purse strings, and it would soon be the casual ward in earnest if it were not for the Daily R. God bless the Daily R. Only think what a thing it is to have all subjects open to one, from the destinies of France to the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... against the wall was a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back; a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat; and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge-belt that slanted across his hips. He had plainly come many miles from somewhere across the vast horizon, as the dust upon him showed. His boots were white with it. His overalls were gray with it. The weather-beaten bloom of his face shone through it duskily, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the salutation, mustering the appearance of a casual meeting; he must keep Alcatrante out ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... had thought she was coming directly to him, and he experienced a shock of surprise when she passed him with no more than a casual glance. Even with her indifferent passing a thrill seemed to go through him; his blood began to sing in his veins, and through his mind there flashed again the lines which had stirred ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... second edition.] These opinions I have not, so to speak, edited into the work of Mrs. Parker. The author herself has remarked that, beginning as a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer in regard to the religious ideas of the Australians—according to that writer, mere dread of casual 'spirits'—she was obliged to alter her attitude, in consequence of all that she learned at first hand. She also explains that her tribe are not 'wild blacks,' though, in the absence of missionary influences, they retain their ancient beliefs, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... ears, sharpened by woodcraft and by constant danger, heard a growing noise coming nearer and nearer. He knew the sound of the footsteps of many people, and among the casual shuffling of feet recognised the ominous tramp ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... "cheer me up". She means well, but her cheering capacities are not great. Her mode of attack is first to enlarge on every possible ill, and reduce one to a state of collapse from pure self-pity, and then to proceed to waft the same troubles aside with a casual flick of the hand. She sat down beside me, stroked my hand (I hate being pawed!) and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "The most casual inquiry," I answered, "if you should care to make it, will confirm every word I have so far spoken. And now I need detain you little longer. It is a terrible thing to say to a lady, but it must be said. It is ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... of art to be philosophically considered, it is indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not an independent or free, but rather a subservient art. That art ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... lobe is grouped into the superior, middle, and inferior convolutions, or groups of convolutions, and the ascending frontal; but the inspection of a brain would show an irregularity of forms in which a casual observer would be puzzled to trace ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... head of a large enterprise, who had been pointed out to me some time previously as the very personification of self-assurance and superiority. A dignified woman of middle age, whose reserve and correct manners impressed one at once; she bore out in career and casual conversation this impression of one whose confidence and belief in herself were not misplaced, in other words, a harmoniously developed egotist. What she came to consult me about, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... while correcting the proofs of this new edition. In Neophytes, Debutantes, and The Baiting of Mrs. Barton, readers would have divined a new story, but the dropping out of the unimportant word 'drama' will not deceive the most casual follower of literature. The single word 'muslin' is enough. Mousseline would be more euphonious, a fuller, richer word; and Bal Blanc, besides being more picturesque, would convey my meaning; but a shade of meaning is not sufficient justification for ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing forth a casual carrot there, meditating on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... observed facts, can only be regarded as the expressed and enforced will of a higher power. And there was no reason why those minute variations themselves, which are the basis of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, should be considered casual. Instead then of natural selection, or sexual selection, let us suppose that the selection took place under the superintending care of the Creator, and was directed towards the carrying out of His designs, and then we shall have no reason to doubt but that all results which consisted only in the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... little casual work of every day goes on, with this thing and that to be done beside; as, for instance, the road down below, that is getting bad one or two places. The ground is still workable, and Isak goes down one day with Sivert, ditching and draining the road. There are two patches ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... internal pressure for explanation, that there is no weathercock at Kilve; this would do for all cases. But persons of real inquiry will see that first, experience does not bear out the asserted frequency of the spectre, without the alleged coincidence of death: and secondly, that if the crowd of purely casual spectres were so great that it is no wonder that, now and then the person should have died at or near the moment, we ought to expect a much larger proportion of cases in which the spectre should come at the moment of the death of one or another of all the cluster who are closely connected with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... his Worship said, amidst an impressive silence, "I greatly fear that you have allowed zeal, my dear Sir, to outrun discretion. Robin Lyth is a young, and in many ways highly respected, parishioner of mine. He may have been guilty of casual breaches of the laws concerning importation—laws which fluctuate from year to year, and require deep knowledge of legislation both to observe and to administer. I heartily trust that you may not suffer from having discharged your duty in a manner most truly exemplary, if only the example had been ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ere her darling was awake, The anxious mother saw the snake, So twin'd around his arm, She begged her husband to convey The fondling serpent far away, For fear of casual harm. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... Macugnaga, or for Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... why should the dream move him still, shattered as it was by the torturing realities of the truth? Why must he needs bring tribute to her powers, flatter her ascendency in his life, by faltering before her casual presence? He rallied all his forces. He silently swore a mighty oath that he at least would take note of his own dignity, that he would deport himself with a due sense of his meed of self-respect. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and tail-feathers. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... in his hand. Passing from this, the visitor may next direct his attention to the fragment of a colossal statue numbered 178. It belongs to one of the pediments of the Parthenon. Hereabouts are various sepulchral urns and columns of no particular interest to the casual observer;—the circular altar from Delos, ornamented in relief with sacrificial bulls and other subjects. 179 may, however, be noticed, together with the column marked 183, which bears the name of Socrates, son of Socrates, a native of Ancyra, of Galatia. The object ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... him to forward the documents without delay. The only thing of note he found was, that Rawdon did not bank his money; he had no bank account anywhere. Where did he stow away the fortune he must have made? There was a note of the casual conversation of an assumed miser with Rawdon, in which Rawdon was represented as saying: "Dry sandy soil, well drained with two slopes, under a rain-shed, will keep millions in a cigar box." That the Squire noted; ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... not know. He will tell you when you see him, I suppose. I am only a casual acquaintance of his, and came on this errand to oblige him, solely because he seemed in great mental distress ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... away, nor did any harsh word come to his lips. He spoke with cold courtesy, as he might have spoken to any casual acquaintance. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... them." The substitution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires it in casual intercourse from an uneducated man ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... social side of education, the aesthetic environment and influences, are all-important. In so far as the work is laid out in regular and formulated ways, so far as there are lacking opportunities for casual and free social intercourse between pupils and between the pupils and the teacher, this side of the child's nature is either starved, or else left to find haphazard expression along more or less secret channels. When the school system, under plea of the ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... brilliant manoeuvres of the battle-field; infinite female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, inimitable bon-mots, exquisite millinery, consummate generalship, holy fortitude, refined profligacy, and intoxicating sentiment,—Ude, Napoleon, Madame Recamier, Pascal, Ninon de I'Enclos, and Rousseau. Casual associations and desultory reading thus predispose us to recognize something half comical and half enchanting in French life; and it depends on accident, when we first visit Paris, which view is confirmed. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wrote "The Young Visiters"—for indeed no one appears to have discovered her then excepting perhaps her parents—at least I had a hand in discovering her on this side of the Atlantic ocean at a time when mention of her name, which now is so famous a name, meant nothing to the casual hearer. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... am obliged to them for certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity—and extravagance. He was so eager to buy, because Cave was so oddly reluctant to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg, for all I know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight—its remarkable functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the idea of such ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him. "Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... talking, simply to entertain and divert his visitor from the lad's own present annoyance, but he little knew how full of import his casual remarks were to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... was tall and fat, and prosperous to the casual eye, as he most surely must have been offensive to the fastidious. One of them was short and fat, with pointed ears that made him look quite fox-faced. And the other was a reporter. From his appearance one would have said I hope, and truly, that only pursuit of his ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Meanwhile we had arranged quarters for them, trying to do everything in a manner that would be in harmony with the Turkish convenances. When the wives were escorted forth to be turned back to their countrymen, they were all weeping bitterly. Whether it was that the Turk in his casual manner decided that one day was as good as another, or whether he felt that he had no particular use for these particular women, we never knew, but at all events twenty-four hours later one of our patrols came upon the prisoners still forlornly ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... her mother and studying the blue prints so intently that a little frown gathered between her arched brows, the spirit and strength were united. The effect of Rosemary on the most casual beholder, was always one of radiance. The mass of her waving hair was bronze, said her friends; it was red, it was gold, it was all of these. Her eyes were like her mother's, a violet blue, but dancing, drenched in tears or black with storm—seldom ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... instructions from Margaret—after she had been carefully taught the ways of the school by Bud himself—rang the big bell. Even then they entered reluctantly and as if it were a great condescension that they came at all, Jed and "Delicate" coming in last, with scarcely a casual glance toward the teacher's desk, as if she were a mere fraction in the scheme of the school. She did not need to be told which was Timothy and which was Jed. Bud's description had been perfect. Her heart, by the way, instantly went out to ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... linden trees, the drip of the fountain, the monumented corner where Goldsmith rests, awake even in the most casual and prosaic a fleeting touch of romance. And the wide steps with balustrades sweeping down in many turnings to the gardens, cause vagrant and hurrying steps to pause, and wander about the library and through the gardens, which lead with such charm of way ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... lack of nervous strength or emotion. The thin lips were quivering, and the eyes were soft with feeling. Somehow, it seemed to Paul that this man's interest in the story which he had come to tell was no casual one; that he himself was mixed up in it, in a manner which as yet he had chosen to conceal. His colourless face was alight with human interest and sympathies. Who was this priest, and why had he come ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a manuscript often throw light upon the history of the text contained in the manuscript. And the palaeographer knows that any scratch or scribbling, any probatio pennae or casual entry, may become important in tracing the wanderings of ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... busy, and she invited him to her private parlour for lunch every Sunday afternoon. It was during one of these chats over cake and wine that the young man spoke of Berene. The Baroness had dropped some remarks about her servants, and Preston said, in a casual tone of voice which hid the real interest he felt in the subject, "By the way, one of your servants has quite an unusual voice. I have heard her singing about the halls a few times, and it seems to me she has ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... strangers were there. He gave no reason for so doing. He did not wish her to go, and that was enough. He expected Marjory's implicit obedience, without question on her part or explanation on his. The truth was that the doctor was afraid that some casual stranger, seeing Marjory, and perhaps hearing her story, might put two and two together, as the saying is, and convey to Mr. Davidson the information which had been so ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... legislators. He came in late, and after paying his respects to the governor and his wife, wandered rather helplessly toward the hall, seeing many whom he knew, but finding little pleasure in their casual greetings. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... and John Dennis, in his heavy handed way, showed some realization of what the issues were both in "The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion" (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?—to declare with effect what kind of sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down,—and probably they themselves will confess it,—do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper's Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not our representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... conscience pricked her that night, or more probably, being rather a casual and careless young woman, a gentle hint from Dinah may have had ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... morning and the coal lay untouched. The board fence concealed it from the notice of casual passers, and so thieves had not been tempted. Those in the house must have seen it, yet not a lump was gone; and the feeble stream of smoke from the chimney had disappeared; nothing rose there to stain the sky. It occurred to Prescott that both the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... door," Renard remarked, in the casual way peculiar to artists. "You are to have the whole house to yourselves, all but the top floor; the people who own it keep that to live in. There's a garden of the right sort, with espaliers, also rose trees, and a tea house; quite the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to his present struggle. Fernando still loved Morgianna. Five years had only added to the intensity of his love; but he had once made a simpleton of himself, and he determined not to do so again. Thus two hungry souls, thirsting for each other's love, acted the cold part of casual acquaintances. Could the veil have been lifted, could the barriers have been broken down, what misery might have been spared! but it is ever thus. Humanity is contradictory and the heart's impulses are ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... facts indicating travel and study set forth in such vigorous, vivid style that the attention is held by a story while most valuable information is being obtained. The casual reader, the pupil in the public school and student in the high school, professional men and women, will all find the book at once highly interesting and instructive. In no other book with which I am acquainted can so much ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... dress and discipline my children I feel sure they would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry woman with a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... time thinking of two days' pay lost, and Ed could hardly believe his own ears. He just set there, swelling up like a toad in a very feverish way. "But 'some distance,'" says Ed in low tones of awe. "You say I was thrown 'some distance,' like it was a casual remark. Is that any way to talk about a man hurled two hundred and thirty-five feet from start to finish?—which I can prove by the man that taped it. Why, any one would think them two cheap box cars was the real heroes of this accident. No one would dream that a precious human life was ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... confound things distinct, requiring distinct plans of study. Such a criticism might have had weight in the days when the mind was supposed to inhabit the body as a tenant a house, and have no relation to it other than that of a casual occupant. But that opinion is antiquated. More than three-fourths of a century ago the far-seeing thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, laid down the maxim that the phenomena of mind and matter obey laws identical in kind;[6-1] and a recent historian of science sums up the result of the latest research ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... years that the war had been carried on, the casual observer could, perhaps, see but little change in the respective relations of the combatants. The Spaniards still continued to maintain their foothold wherever the risings of the patriots had been premature or partial. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... rescued by the police. On the following morning he was smuggled out of Barchester by an early train, and has never more been seen in that city. Rumours of him, however, were soon heard, from which it appeared that he had made himself acquainted with the casual ward of more than one workhouse in London. His cousin John left the inn almost immediately,—as, indeed, he must have done had there been no question of Mr Soames's cheque,—and then there was nothing more heard of the Stringers ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... fight your battles for you every day, The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life. Undaunted by a century of strife, With urgent fingers still they point the way To drawing rooms, in decorous array, And moral Heavens where no casual wife May share your lot; where dice and ready knife Are barred; and feet are ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... of Creation" has been treated in a masterly manner by the Rev. Baden Powell, in his "Essays on the Unity of Worlds", 1855. Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which he shows that the introduction of new species is "a regular, not a casual phenomenon," or, as Sir John Herschel expresses it, "a natural in contradistinction to a ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... day she watched and waited and speculated, hearing of all Clarissa's movements from the obsequious Warman, who took care to question Mrs. Granger's coachman in the course of conversation, in a pleasant casual manner, as to the places to which he had taken his mistress. She waited and made no sign. There was treason going on. The climax and explosion would ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... leaflets and elsewhere. Hundreds of children were interested in the twigs and buds, finding them unusual, every one of them a different story, and yet not difficult to read. These lessons gave meaning to trees and seasons. Such observations have always meant much to me, even when made in the most casual way in the midst of constraining activities. And now in this later day I come back to a bare twig with all the joy of youth. The records of the years are in ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... little accidental about all Lamb's finest work. Poetry he seriously tried to write, and plays and stories; but the supreme criticism of the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets arose out of the casual habit of setting down an opinion of an extract just copied into one's note-book, and the book itself, because, he said, 'the book is such as I am glad there should be.' The beginnings of his miscellaneous prose are due to the 'ferreting' of Coleridge. 'He ferrets me day and night,' Lamb complains ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... from the works of professed tourists—men and women who go to the United States, a perfectly new country, for the express purpose of making a marketable book: these are not the safest of guides. One class goes to depreciate Republican institutions, the other to praise them. It is the casual and unbiassed traveller who comes nearest ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... few were the men who held those positions, how near they were to the trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men were commanded, I am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with interest, not only for the returning volunteer, but for any casual tourist. As it is, the history of the fight and the reputation of the men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The caretaker speaks only Spanish, and, considering the amount of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... prickings of stars were fading. The moon had paled to a ghostly circle. Shuddering, Nissr fled, with vapory horizons seemingly on her own level so that she appeared at the bottom of an infinite bowl. Bohannan, feeling need of speech, tried to be casual as ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... work, I see," began the Baron, with a casual air intended for any witnesses of the interview. "Work," he added, cautiously lowering his voice, "which, if I may be allowed to say so, Sire, can hardly be other than distasteful to his Royal Highness Prince Mirliflor ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... would it not certainly be found at last, and brought out to prove that Llanfeare was not his own? Of what use to him would be the property,—of what service;—how would it contribute to his happiness or his welfare, knowing, as he would know, that a casual accident, almost sure to happen sooner or later, might rob him of it for ever? His imagination was strong enough to depict the misery to him which such a state of things would produce. How he would quiver when any stray visitor might enter the room! How terrified he would ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... the burden of "pulling things up" descended. How far Cards might have helped him here it is difficult to say. Cards had, in his apparently casual contempt of that school world, a remarkably competent sense of the direction in which straws were blowing. That most certainly Peter had not, being inclined, at this stage of things, to go straight for ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view; And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause; And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for him; and, in witnessing to truth, every caution should be observed, lest falsehood should cunningly assume its garb. The Brother who vouches should, therefore, know to a certainty that the one for whom he vouches is really what he claims to be. He should know this not from a casual conversation, nor a loose and careless inquiry, but, as the unwritten law of the Order expresses it, from "strict trial, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... definite sense formulated in the Articles of War. The two are inseparably conjoined. When we reflect upon what human nature is, in the class from which so many of the members of The Army have been drawn, when we think how difficult it is to reconcile the hand-to-mouth existence of the casual labourer with any high standard of conduct, let alone of religion, General Booth's success, partial though it has been, is an astonishing fact. It implies a prodigious strength of character, and a genius for seeing what would appeal to large numbers ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... a single publication appeared that failed to reproduce a comment or criticism upon the subject; but, strangely enough, no single leader, writer or casual contributor remarked upon the oddness of the composition or the absence of the Infant from the Madonna's arms. In the course of time—that is to say, on the eleventh day—the matter passed from the public mind, a circumstance explainable perhaps by the decent interment of the canvas in the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... "Harvard Annex" declares the great need that exists for funds to provide a suitable building, etc., for the numerous women who continue to apply there for admission; and he appeals to the generosity of the public for contributions of money to be used for this purpose. The casual observer might suggest that those women who will hereafter become the benefactors of this university should remember the needs of their own sex, and leave their donations or bequests so that they can be used for the benefit of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... flickered faintly with pleased surprise at the sight of him. Brice came directly to our table. He was bursting with victorious joy. I could feel it somehow, although his face, carefully schooled to betray no emotion, was placid and casual. ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... To the casual observer in a town of this character there was nothing specially noticeable in three horsemen driving a pack-horse, but to those whose eyes were keen the true relationship of the ranger to his captives was instantly ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... doorway as though summoned by some purely casual flicker of the Superintendent's ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... soreness toward America. But the next day he encountered another. On his way to Paris, he stopped at Amiens to see Jules Verne. Here he found special difficulty in that the aged author could not speak English, and Bok knew only a few words of casual French. Finally a neighbor's servant who knew a handful of English words was commandeered, and a halting three-cornered conversation ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... new-found activity: toward an enormous, never-before-witnessed expenditure of intelligent care on children; toward self-support; toward civic service. The character which is neither positive nor negative runs along as a neutral mixture of modern facts and of old ideals of casual idling and of casual child-rearing. The negative character—like Marie's—just yields to the facts and is swept along by them ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... towards France. The chief officer I now, to my astonishment, discovered to be a man of title. Sir John Barraclough was a tall, loose-limbed, good-looking man of thirty something, with a blue eye, and a casual manner. He nodded at me amiably and continued his talk with Legrand, the second officer, who was dark and high-coloured, with a restless expression of face. Lane threw a jocular greeting across the table to me, and I shook hands cordially with Holgate, whom I now saw for the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... smothered the glint of tenderness which, at sight of her, rose to his eyes, and recognized her greeting only in casual fashion, it was because such was the requirement of his stoic code. And to the girl who had been so slow of utterance and diffident with the stranger, words now came fast and fluently as she told her story of the man who lay hurt at the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... of casual and cautious inquiries Mr. Hardy found that his partner's information was correct, he was by no means guilty of any feelings of gratitude towards him; and he only glared scornfully when that excellent ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... during a week of dangerous bad weather. The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought. This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months. The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, he asked me if I had perchance any ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of their work. The division of chapters, the naming of characters, the progress of events, was then decided, so that each lent a hand to the other's work. Then, such deliberations done, the paper would be drawn out, and the casual notes of the day corrected and writ fair; and for an hour or more there would be no sound save the scratching of pens on the paper and the gusty ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Smith. At its close there was nothing in his outward appearance to mark the man of genius. The casual observer could have seen no genius concealed behind the wide face, the massive mouth, the long slanting forehead, and the tall ear that swept up to the close-cropped head. Certainly he couldn't. There wasn't ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... thought you were still at 610, Hotel Buller." With a short laugh and a casual gesture of adieu he turned, leaving the manager of the Trust staring after him, an astonished pucker upon his womanish mouth, a vindictive glare in his eyes. Not until his rival had turned the corner did Willis Marsh ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... piety and learning gave him such an ascendant over me, that I could not refuse to open my heart. There are, said he, few minds sufficiently firm to be trusted in the hands of chance. Whoever finds himself inclined to anticipate futurity, and exalt possibility to certainty, should avoid every kind of casual adventure, since his grief must be always proportionate to his hope. You have long wasted that time, which, by a proper application, would have certainly, though moderately, increased your fortune, in a laborious and anxious pursuit ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Lloyd Morgan, in one of his lectures threw together on the screen pictures of a humming bird and an insect of the same size, the two looking so much alike as to seem to the casual observer to belong to the same order. Yet they are anatomically far more different than the man and the fish. In much the same way we may be led to suppose that a Chinese book and an occidental paper-bound ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... confined, in this country at any rate, to a very limited number of observers, and, except in rare instances, those who possessed astronomical telescopes only directed them to the moon as a show object to excite the wonder of casual visitors. The publication of Webb's "Celestial Objects" in 1859, the supposed physical change in the crater Linne, announced in 1866, and the appearance of an unrecorded black spot near Hyginus some ten years later, had the effect of awakening a more lively interest in selenography, and undoubtedly ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... injury, the part being warm, swollen, and painful. What further proof is necessary? Is it not evident that a fracture has occurred, first superficial—a mere split in the bony structure, which, fortunately, has been discovered before some extra exertion or a casual misstep had developed it into one of the complete kind, possibly with complications? What other inference can such a series of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... as well as Henry, knew that to this Averil would never have consented. He had always been a great reader of travels, and he became absolutely eager in planning their life in the wild, as if where they were he must be, till the casual mention of the word 'rifle' brought him to sudden silence, and the consciousness of the condemned cell; but even then it was only to be urgent in consoling his brother, and crowding message on message ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... received,—and a sight of Miss Meredith would have led the casual observer to opine that the latter was the form of punishment adopted,—the two girls mounted into the big, lumbering coach along with their elders, and were jolted and shaken over the four miles of ill-made road that separated Greenwood, the "seat," as the "New York Gazette" ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... analysis. Some ancient fire had entered his veins, and now ran coursing through his blood; and that he was forty-five instead of twenty did not matter one little jot. Out of all the inner turmoil and confusion emerged the one salient fact that the mere atmosphere, the merest casual touch, of this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness, had been sufficient to stir dormant fires in the centre of his heart, and rouse his whole being from a state of feeble sluggishness to one of ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... enforcing the interests of Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion, which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however, to bring the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Western girl exceedingly. In this it so happened that his immaturity showed more plainly than before. He did not boast openly, but he introduced extraneous details important in themselves. He mentioned knowing Pennington the painter, and Brookes the writer, merely in a casual fashion, but with just the faintest flourish. It somehow became known that his family had a crest, that his position was high; in short, that he was a de Laney on both sides. He liked to tell it ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... me except how we should escape from that green mountain once we had got upon it. This was apparently in the hands of Le ffacase, a realization, remembering his grisly conversation, making me no easier in my mind. Nor did I relish the pilot's casual description of myself as part of a "load"—to be ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... became a vast, all-embracing empire, the individual man felt, more and more, his littleness and loneliness. This feeling, together with the increasing specialization of industry, begat a passion for association, and Collegia of many sorts were organized. Even a casual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading Artes et Opificia, will show the enormous development of skilled handicrafts, and how minute was their specialization. Every trade soon had its secret order, or union, and so powerful did they become that ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... question, had prohibited any kind of motion whatever, had closely laid down the diet and drink. What would my advisers say, were they the medical attendants, and I the patient left their advice, and took the casual adviser's? But the singularity in Legion's mind is this: it never occurs to him that everybody else is doing the same thing, and that I the patient must perforce say, in sheer self-defence, like Rosalind, "I could ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... men who were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work—seeking it in the harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that the job was ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... always to be found there, drinking, smoking cigars, and cracking jokes. To a casual observer he appeared to be a regular boon companion without an object but that of enjoying the passing hour. Among his numerous accomplishments, he had learnt a number of sleight-of-hand tricks from the travelling conjurors who visit the country, and are generally ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of a tree, and the bird in the shelter of the foliage ceased to sing. The only sounds were those of the elements, and the world seemed to have returned to the primeval state that had endured for ages. It was the kingdom of fur, fin and feather, and, so far as the casual eye could have seen, man ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of 'em nods casual, and then I notices Nutt take a closer look. A second later a humorous quirk flickers across ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... fact was seen at once by you In casual conversation, O! Which is most creditable to Your powers of observation, O! -servation, O! -servation, O! Your powers of ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the black billies and cloudy nose-bags are placed on the table. The men eat in a casual kind of way, as though it were only a custom of theirs, a matter of form—a habit which could be left off if it were ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... upon this casual piece of self or sex revelation troubled her head. She did, however, think of her position as the friend of Nevil in utter antagonism to him. It beset her with contradictions that blew rough on her cherished serenity; for she was of the order of ladies who, by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... such that the sewage can safely be discharged at low water, and the works are to be constructed accordingly, it is most important to have accurate information as to the level of the highest low water which may occur in any ordinary circumstances. If the level of a single low water, given by a casual observation, is adopted without consideration of the governing conditions, it may easily be that the tide in question is a low one, that may not be repeated for several years, and the result would be that, instead of having a free outlet at low water, the pipe would generally be submerged, ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... he published his first literary effort. This was a commentary on the two books of Seneca, "De Clementia," originally addressed to the Emperor Nero. The opinion has long prevailed that it was no casual selection of a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... came and sat down beside him. The lesson proceeded as before, but there was a slight difference in Howard's manner of speech, as of an uncle with a favourite nephew. At the end, he pushed the paper into the boy's hand, and said, "No, that isn't good enough, you know; it's all too casual—it isn't a bit like Latin: you don't do me credit!" He spoke incisively enough, but shook his head with a smile. The boy said nothing, but got up, vaguely smiling, and holding the cat tucked under his arm—a ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Raichi Museum's granite walls were much more dignified than the narrow, glass-faced arcade that was the Fane, wide open to the most disrespectfully casual public inspection all the time. Why, even late at night gawking loiterers pressed their noses against the glass; black, clumsy images pinned to the blazing whiteness hurled by radionic tubes against the back wall of snowy ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... shook hands, and exchanged casual remarks as if nothing were amiss, nor was the subject mentioned, except that Mrs. Arthuret contrived to get a private interview ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their eagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, the police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements easy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... some cases sexually hyperaesthetic women have informed me that sexual feeling has been produced by casual contact with pet dogs and cats. In such cases there is usually no real perversion, but it seems probable that we may here have an occasional foundation for the somewhat morbid but scarcely vicious excesses of affection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs or cats. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... If they are capable of these elementary mistakes it is not surprising that they should have failed to ward off the great trade depression, and failed to help Europe to get together. The accessibility of markets in Europe does not interest politicians except in the most casual way. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... Worship said, amidst an impressive silence, "I greatly fear that you have allowed zeal, my dear Sir, to outrun discretion. Robin Lyth is a young, and in many ways highly respected, parishioner of mine. He may have been guilty of casual breaches of the laws concerning importation—laws which fluctuate from year to year, and require deep knowledge of legislation both to observe and to administer. I heartily trust that you may not suffer from having discharged your duty in a manner most truly exemplary, if only the example ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... stealing over him. He could not doubt that she was speaking the truth, for if it were false it could be contradicted at once. There were circumstances too which seemed to confirm it. He recalled now, that often in their younger days his father and mother had asked casual visitors if they saw any likeness between either of the children to them; and he specially remembered how closely Colonel Winterbottom, who had been major in his father's regiment, had scrutinized them both, and how he had said, "No, Clinton, for the life of ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... arrangements were so casual and fortuitous, Bowers's studio was the one fixed thing in Thea's life. She went out from it to uncertainties, and hastened to it from nebulous confusion. She was more influenced by Bowers than she knew. Unconsciously she began to take on something of his dry contempt, and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... expected to grow, except toward the shadows. A youth, who, because of idleness, impulse or dissipation, offends society in some way, is thrown into this pit of moral filth to cleanse himself. Very few men have the fibre of the true criminal; and when a casual lawbreaker sees this dreadful blow leveled at his soul, he is at first bewildered and afraid; then, if he has any spleen, he arrays himself against the force which struck the blow. And, so, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... the seat would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much; and they were eating and drinking rather than talking—Soames with his air of despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy, but both were getting through a good deal of sustenance. The two young ones having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were made picturesque by the coming and going of English soldiery, and the aggressive flourish of British military motors. Then the fresh faces and smart uniforms disappeared, and now the nearest approach to "militarism" which Paris offers to the casual sight-seer is the occasional drilling of a handful of piou-pious on the muddy reaches of the Place des Invalides. But there is another army in Paris. Its first detachments came months ago, in the dark September days—lamentable ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... made casual remarks as to the time of day out loud, and all this day's answers were equally good. I now saw that she had grasped the essentials—so that I could put the clock away, and there is not another in my rooms, the nearest being a big one standing in the kitchen which is on the ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... figure to himself; but neither do they essentially concern him. His business is with their inward man; with their feelings and behavior in certain tragic situations, which engage their passions as men; these have in them nothing local and casual; they are as accessible to the modern poet ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... seen that boat beneath the house, with a single person, and had heard the flageolet. I did not care to press any further questions, for fear of implicating Julia in the opinions of those of whom they might be asked. Next morning, at breakfast, I dropped a casual hint about the serenade of the evening before, and I promise you Miss Mannering looked red and pale alternately. I immediately gave the circumstance such a turn as might lead her to suppose that my observation was merely casual. I have since ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... dead are passed; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... He emerged from the theatre with the first of the crowd; but scarcely had he taken his position on the edge of the sidewalk when the two girls appeared. They were looking for him, he knew; and for the moment he could have cursed that in him which drew women. Their casual edging across the sidewalk to the curb, as they drew near, apprised him of discovery. They slowed down, and were in the thick of the crown as they came up with him. One of them brushed against him and apparently for the first time noticed him. She was a ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... stepping on them. Thus it was that the weather-beaten rainspouts, stained bricks, sagging roof, and blistered window-sashes were no longer in evidence. Indeed, their very shabbiness so enhanced the brilliancy of Todd's handiwork that the most casual passers-by were convinced at a glance that ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... scrupulous morals of my earliest and most disinterested friend, judiciously contrived to join a cautious attention to the capacity of his hearers, and a prudent resolution not to lessen the influence of his learning and virtue, by casual freaks of humour and irregular starts of ill-managed merriment. He did not wish to confound, but to inform his auditors; and though he did not appear to solicit benevolence, he always wished to retain authority, and leave his company impressed with the idea that it was his to teach in this world, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... bag, and wiped the clubs on his handkerchief. With the wet, dripping burden over his shoulder he came across the foot-bridge and into the locker room, while we hastened to remove our faces from the door and windows, and attempted to appear casual. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... journeyed. Fortunately for these ladies, Major Haley, the genial tavern-keeper, had a habit of sending a hack to meet every train that stopped at Little Azalia. It was not a profitable habit in the long run; but Major Haley thought little of the profits, so long as he was conscious that the casual traveler had abundant reason to be grateful to him. Major Haley himself was a native of Kentucky; but his wife was a Georgian, inheriting her thrift and her economy from a generation that knew more ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... fences, tearing off weather boards from the house, and injuring the fruit trees. For this Col. English prosecuted the negro, and on Feb. 9, before a local Justice, ex-Sheriff Wiseman, he got a judgment for $100. On the date stated, during a casual meeting, hot words grew into an altercation, and Col. English shot the negro. Mathis was a powerful man. English is a cripple, being lame in a leg from a wound received in the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... of the faith-state, acquire a character of certainty, assume a new reality, become an object of faith. As the ground of assurance here is not rational, argumentation is irrelevant. But such conviction being a mere casual offshoot of the faith-state, it is a gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of the faith-state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain particular theological conceptions.[133] On the contrary, its value lies solely in the fact ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... annual vote of Parliament; and the immediate object was to avoid thereby the fixing of any fresh debt, for which no estimate could be previously made, upon the Civil List. In 1820 it was determined that nothing whatever should be brought before Parliament, in connexion with the Civil List, that was a casual expense, or for which a regular vote could not ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... with the disappearance of the two principal actors in the scene, the idlers from the street slowly dispersed, each one loudly expressing his opinion as to the merits of the question in dispute. With the dissolving of the crowd, it would have seemed to the casual observer that no further proceedings were to be taken in the matter. The god's face wore its usually placid look, unmoved by the shifting panorama of human life which ebbed and flowed in front of ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... interested in learning exactly what these thousands of Negroes did on free soil. To estimate these achievements the casual reader of contemporary testimony would now, as such persons did then, find it decidedly easy. He would say that in spite of the unfailing aid which philanthropists gave the blacks, they seldom kept themselves above want and, therefore, became a public charge, afflicting their communities ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... Railways held a special meeting at Bar. It was attended by Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, and Mr. John Conacher, Manager of the Company . . . The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly, brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... public examination; and, on the social side, by the straitened circumstances which prevented him from showing hospitality, and the pride which made him unwilling to accept what he could not return. We are left to gather his feelings about Oxford and the system pursued there, from casual references in his critical writings; and these are uncomplimentary enough. When he wishes to stigmatize a proposition as enormously and preposterously absurd, he says that there is "no authority on earth (always excepting the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... restless and uneasy, even the most casual observer would have noted, as he walked through the streets where knots of men and boys were congregated at different points, discussing some subject with bated breath, and moving away ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... she laced herself so tightly that nobody would have thought another creature's life was bound up in hers. The anxiety and distress of the count during this time of expectancy was awful! If any one looked at her attentively he trembled, and if, in the course of conversation, any guest made a casual allusion to some act of dissimulation, he turned pale as he thought they were speaking of him. He imagined smiles and meaning glances in every face, and the most innocent remarks were fraught in his mind with the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... requisite, essential, needed, needful, indispensable inevitable, unavoidable. Antonyms: nonessential, unnecessary, optional, discretional, casual, needless. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... that day, Bill himself came to the Old Timer's ranch, inquiring in a casual way "if the 'boss' ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a possibility of their recurrence; it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... purpose of arriving at definite principles or truths by processes of investigation and comparison. But the largest part of science is found in its method of approaching the truth as compared with religion, philosophy, or disconnected knowledge obtained by casual observation. In many ways it is in strong contrast with speculative philosophy and with dogmatic theology, both of which lack sufficient data for scientific development. The former has a tendency ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... slight movement within he crossed the threshold. Avice was there alone, sitting on a low stool in a dark corner, as though she wished to be unobserved by any casual passer-by. She looked up at him without emotion or apparent surprise; but he could then see that she was crying. The view, for the first time, of distress in an unprotected young girl towards whom he felt drawn by ties of extraordinary delicacy and tenderness, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... is that it is all right and all true; that just in this casual chaotic sort of way the impact of life has struck oneself as one drifted along. But there is no more in it than a clever sort of intellectual photography, no more in it than a more or less moralised version of the ordinary facts of an average ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... follows: 1. That the Number of Sounds in different Languages is not uniform; 2. That of any two Languages compared, one will chance to have several sounds not heard in the other; and, 3. The erroneous impression is made upon the casual and superficial observer that in the aggregate of all Languages there must be an immense number of sounds; whereas, in fact, the total Alphabet of Vocal Sounds in nature, like the Gamut of Colors or Musical Tones, is quite limited, if we attend only to those which distinctly differ, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... As he spoke he laid his hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder. "Didn't I tell you it would be a corker? Out of sight, isn't it? Everything is out of sight around our office." This last remark was directed to Peter in the same casual way. ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had gone out of his heart like a casual ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nineteenth years in this part of the country; and I was curious to ascertain to what extent the man in middle life would verify the observations of the lad,—to recall early incidents, revisit remembered scenes, return on old feelings, and see who were dead and who were alive among the casual acquaintances of nearly a quarter of a century ago. The morning of Wednesday rose dark with fog and rain, but the wind had fallen; and as I could not afford to miss seeing Conon-side, I sallied out under cover of an umbrella. I crossed the bridge, and reached the pleasure-grounds of Conon-house. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... subject the whole Christian world—at least the Protestant world—has maintained a singular reserve. In fact I have never heard the matter even once casually referred to in any Protestant pulpit. It may be that even a casual reference to it might be taken as favoring the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. Such is the craven fear that men have of being supposed to be tainted with Romanism. In other cases it may be that the whole subject is thought to ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... in which I take the likeness, or in the neighborhood through which I pass on my way to work, has suggested the necessary association, or has started the right train of recollections, and then the story appeared to begin of its own accord. Occasionally the most casual notice, on my part, of some very unpromising object has smoothed the way for the relation of a long and interesting narrative. I first heard one of the most dramatic of the stories that will be presented in this book, merely through ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... older recoveries of Brydges, Haslewood, Park, Collier, and others, bring before the student a mass of brilliant and beautiful matter, often mixed with a good deal of slag and scoriae, but seldom deficient in the true poetical ore. The mere collections of madrigals and songs, actually intended for casual performance at a time when almost every accomplished and well-bred gentleman or lady was expected to oblige the company, which Mr. Arber's invaluable English Garner and Mr. Bullen's Elizabethan Lyrics give from the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... reserved for me? Perhaps Welbeck would adopt me for his own son. Wealth has ever been capriciously distributed. The mere physical relation of birth is all that entitles us to manors and thrones. Identity itself frequently depends upon a casual likeness or an old nurse's imposture. Nations have risen in arms, as in the case of the Stuarts, in the cause of one the genuineness of whose birth has been denied and can never be proved. But if the cause ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry woman ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that certainly may, for some readers, justify the publishers' epithet. You will understand therefore that I experience a little natural hesitation about suggesting the intrigue. It is certainly of the simplest—a mere question as to whether Edward and Vivian, casual acquaintances of a restaurant, shall or shall not spend a sequence of week-ends together. The lady is described as on the stage, but she might as well belong to a guild of art-needlework. Edward is the only question of importance, and the week-ends; if you ponder the significance of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... separated from the southern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it is divided by Mount Haemus; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by the Alps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distribution of countries. The limits are marked out by Nature, and in these early ages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in the manners and usages ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... front were being unmercifully shelled by the Germans all the time, and about three times a day the Germans and the French would exchange front trenches. Divisions of French troops kept coming up. They carried on in the most casual way. The cooks took soup down to the front line trenches in broad day. They did not seem to care for shot ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... little interruption for the best part of an hour while measuring her new customer, showing her pattern-book, and exhibiting the ready-made wares she had brought, the greater number of which Hyacinth insisted on buying for Angela—who was horrified at the slanderous innuendoes that dropped in casual abundance from the painted lips of the milliner; horrified, too, that her sister could loll back in her armchair and laugh at the woman's coarse and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... circle. Perhaps, also, a vague desire to placate the "powers that be" had made him pay unusual attention to his face and nails and hair. He was very well groomed—for Teddy—and he tried to assume a perfectly casual air, as he came ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... my heart misgives me that there is something very much amiss with you. Not sickness, for your mamma, Max, and Gracie all make casual mention of you, and say directly that you are well; yet I have not seen a stroke of your pen for three ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... office might have been preserved, and the object of the incumbent's appointment to it attained; but sneak away whithersoever he might—into the heart of the dismal swamp, or anywhere in the Everglades—some vagrom Indian or casual negro was sure to stumble over him before long, and go and tell Halsey, securing a plug of tobacco for reward. Or if he was not found in this way, some company was tolerably certain, in the course of time, to survey a line of railway athwart his leafy couch, and laying his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... "A casual look at it would deceive me, but you did not write it. It lacks several of your individualisms, and has others that ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... summer, when canal malaria and fever are prevalent. Indeed, being almost tideless, they have to be occasionally dammed up and cleaned out. Many of the narrow streets are also singularly unsavoury; and though a foreigner should always be slow to judge of the moral condition of a city by mere casual observation, the presence of a very decided immorality is forced on one's notice in many ways in Venice; it is impossible to doubt that not a few of these streets contain perfect dens of filth and iniquity, judging by the brazen-faced, abandoned-looking females who ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... dogcart, standing with upturned shafts, a pickaxe, three shovels, a rake, two forks, a number of sacks, and a sieve piled anyhow by its side, was most engaging; but, after bestowing a casual glance upon the paraphernalia, Berry passed by without a word. Vandy went a rich plum colour, hesitated, and then plunged on desperately. Tethered by a halter to a tree, a partially harnessed bay mare suspended the process of mastication to fix ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the peat country I might quote a very pretty Dutch proverb: "There is no fuel more entertaining than wet wood and frozen peat: the wood sings and the peat listens". The Dutch have no lack of folk lore, but the casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very much. When there is too much salt in the dish they say that the cook is in love. When a three-cornered piece of peat is observed in the fire, a visitor is coming. When bread has large ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Minister in the Casual Ward," was the heading of an article in the D.T. last Friday, and it turned out to be all about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... surroundings of extreme difficulty, to equip his squadron, and to train to discipline and efficiency the heterogeneous material of which his crews were composed. The only point not satisfactorily covered is his absence when Perry was crossing the bar. In his defence his allusion to this incident is very casual,—resembles somewhat gliding rapidly over thin ice; but the Court raised no question, satisfied, probably, with the certainty that the honor of the flag had not suffered in the action. On the American side, since the history of ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... in the huge plane high above them gave little thought to what passed below, engrossed with their papers or books, or engaged in casual conversation. This monotonous trip was boring to most of them. It seemed a waste of time to spend six good hours in a short 3,500 mile trip. There was nothing to do, nothing to see, except a slowly ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... long interval, during which "Old John" ignored my existence almost as completely as before, he stopped me again as we met in a casual way, and describing the service on which the Rattlesnake was likely to be employed, said that Captain Owen Stanley, who was to command the ship, had asked him to recommend an assistant surgeon ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... almost wild desire to realize, to turn into actual life, the fantasies which were then only the creation of his fancy. How far had he realized them, he wondered? What did this alteration in his exterior denote? From a few casual and half-forgotten inquiries, Rochester knew that he was the son, or rather the orphan of working-people in the neighboring town. There was nothing in his blood to make him in any way the social equal of these men and women amongst whom he now sat with such perfect self-possession. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... however, one drawback in this part of Russia, which, though it does not upset the arrangements of a casual traveller, must seriously inconvenience the natives—the distance of stations from towns. We drank tea, a couple of hours or so before arriving at Baku, at a station situated more than one hundred versts [E] from the town of its name. The inhabitants of the latter ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity—and extravagance. He was so eager to buy, because Cave was so oddly reluctant to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg, for all I know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight—its remarkable functions all ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... playing a somewhat difficult game, and she was playing it well. She was entertaining Mr. Greenfield, the Feltonville member, and she had also as a casual guest for the evening, Mr. Erastus Snaffle, and successfully to work the one off against the other was a task from which the cleverest of society women might be excused for shrinking, even had it been presented to her in ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... this; casual phrases of goodwill, spoken at a moment of conviviality, the outcome of genuine but perhaps not very deep feeling, except for that trifle of the kisses almost an ordinary accompaniment or conclusion of an evening's entertainment. I was a good fellow; the light praise had ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... that he is not speaking "au reel" here, and we accordingly find him talking clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual way that the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that—for a bastard—I have been fairly educated; but not a farthing did his lordship ever pay for that, or even to support his casual. My grandfather Hoyle left his little all to his daughter Winifred; and upon that, and my mother's toil and mine, we have kept alive. Losing sight of my mother gladly—for she was full of pride, and hoped no more to trouble him, after getting her father's property—he married again, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... thereafter widely acknowledged that in the national crisis they played a leading role in the support and defense of the nation. While it is a matter for regret that their war record cannot be chronicled as fully and definitely as can their work for suffrage, nevertheless, even a casual examination will show that it was a heroic one and none the less so because it was frequently merged, through far-sighted efficiency, in the war-service of all American women, of which it ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... to make the attack. He walked forward to a favorable place and took his stand. The position he assumed would have assured the casual observer that he knew something of the art in which ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... York school, one met a similar dash of humor and cynicism more or less pronounced but seldom bitter. Yet even the gayest of tempers succumbs at last to constant friction The old friend was rapidly fading. The habit remained, but the easy intimacy, the careless gaiety, the casual humor, the equality of indifference, were sinking into the routine of office; the mind lingered in the Department; the thought failed to react; the wit and humor shrank within the blank walls of politics, and the irritations ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... writer to be counterbalanced by single expressions, which may be so interpreted as to convey an opposite meaning. Rather we should endeavour to reconcile with that general spirit and pervading tendency of a writer's sentiments any casual expressions which may admit of two acceptations. We adopt this principle in our researches into the remains of classical antiquity; we adopt the same principle in estimating the testimony of a living witness. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... broadly speaking, one of these moments. It stands out in the casual and popular opinion as a kind of adventure—harmless and amusing to some, significant and important to others; but its significance lies in the fact that in trying to practice an ideal he prepared his mind so that it could better bring others "into the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... tales told in that dreamy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sunk deep in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... agate eyes Take a soft large milky haze, And her independent casual glance Becomes a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... of Datchet, coming out of the bank, lingered for a moment on the steps. In one hand he carried a canvas bag which seemed well weighted. On his countenance there was an expression which to a casual observer might have suggested that his grace was not completely at his ease. That casual observer happened to come strolling by. It took the form of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... ground warms and the sun searches into the hearts of the buds, the Norway maple, familiar street tree of Eastern cities, breaks into a wonderful bloom. Very deceptive it is, and taken for the opening foliage by the casual observer; yet there is, when these flowers first open, no hint of leaf on the tree, save that of the swelling bud. All that soft haze of greenish yellow is bloom, and bloom of the utmost beauty. The charm lies not in boldness of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... Casual readers would not miss the word neutrality from Sir Edward Grey's guarantee, because they do not differentiate between the words integrity, independence, and neutrality. Great Britain and her ally Japan, marching through ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... flat. She was annoyed that no one congratulated her upon it. She considered that for a girl of fourteen it was rather a record. Monty would not be able to sneer at "Miss America" again. She strolled in a casual way past the font which he was decorating, and made a final effort to wring from him the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... after her profession, the latter was supposed by Yepes and his followers to have taken place in the previous November. Even if we had no further evidence, the fact that St. Teresa is not always reliable in her calculation should have warned us not to rely too much upon a somewhat casual statement. In the first chapter, section 7, she positively asserts that she was rather less than twelve years old at the death of her mother, whereas we know that she was at least thirteen years and eight months old. As to the profession we have overwhelming evidence that ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... agriculture. His fortune exempted him from the necessity of personal labour. The task to be performed by him was nothing more than superintendance. The skill that was demanded by this was merely theoretical, and was furnished by casual inspection, or by closet study. The attention that was paid to this subject did not seclude him for any long time from us, on whom time had no other effect than to augment our impatience in the absence of each other and of him. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... absolutely happy and contented and satisfied with life in general, we promptly fell to talking horrors, the same as a cook stirs lemon juice into her pudding-sauce, I suppose, to keep its sweetness from being too cloying. That revel in the by-paths of the Poesque began with Dinky-Dunk's casual reference to the McKinnon ranch and Percy's inquiry as to why its earlier owner had given it up. So Dinky-Dunk recounted the story of Andrew Cochrane's death. And it was noticeable that poor old Olie betrayed visible ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Greek quotation was no stumbling-block. Certain of his college companions, men who had come to hold a place in the world's eye, were glad to turn aside from beaten tracks and smoke a pipe at Greystone with Basil Morton—the quaint fellow who at a casual glance might pass for a Philistine, but was indeed something quite other. His wife had never left her native island. 'I will go abroad,' she said, 'when my boys can take me.' And that might not be long hence; for Harry, who loved ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... was a border of lead, however, over the attic window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. It was now the mystic moment to obtain lead, but she must be wary. She strolled through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate, and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... think that nought whiffs on the wind As strong as where some dying steed reclined; That any casual stranger passing by The place, if asked, again ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Russell he threw a casual glance around, and caught the outline of Talbot's figure. He saw—what? Only the priest, as he thought. It was enough for him. A mere priest was a profoundly uninteresting personage. His eyes saw no deeper than the external dress, and he ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... was entirely free from Voltaire's influence, as free as I was before I saw him. He always spoke to me politely, and to a casual observer his demeanour towards me was very friendly. Kaffar, on the other hand, treated me very rudely. He often sought to turn a laugh against me; he even greeted me with a sneer. I took no notice of him, however—never ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... authentic records relating to the enslavement of Africans, as a regular systematized traffic, do not date further back than five centuries ago. It is true that a great portion of ancient literature and many monuments bear distinct evidence, all the more impressive because frequently only casual, that, from the earliest ages, the Africans had shared, in common with other less civilized peoples, the doom of having to furnish the menial and servile contingents of the more favoured sections of the human family. Now, dating from, say, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... oddity and singularity. After some few observations on general matters, O'Flaherty began with a tone of some seriousness to express towards Cudmore the warm interest he had ever taken in him, since his first coming among them; his great anxiety for his welfare, and his firm resolve that no chance or casual inattention to mere ceremonial observances on his part should ever be seized on by the other guests as a ground for detraction or an excuse ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... A casual glance at his essays will reveal some sentences or other testifying to the strength with which this opinion is rooted in his mind. Take this ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... leg while still a sous-lieutenant, had been pensioned, and had thus been interdicted from treading any further the thorny path that leads to glory. For the last fifteen years he had resided under the roof of Madame Bauche, at first as a casual visitor, going and coming, but now for many years as constant there as she ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... all this the place was popular with even respectable working people in consequence of the small size and cheapness of the houses—for there is nothing the poor like so much as a house to themselves; and the bulk of its population consisted of casual labourers, who gathered every morning round the great gates of the docks, waiting to be "called in" as the ships came up to unload. The place was naturally unhealthy, constantly haunted by fever, and had furnished some hundred cases in the last visitation of cholera. The work done among ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... I found my casual intercourse with H. Truhn rather more entertaining. I used to treat him to a good glass of wine at Lutter and Wegener's, where I went occasionally on account of its association with Hoffmann, and he would then listen with apparently growing interest to my ideas as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... as though his thoughts faced a stranger instead of the familiar presence which had so long dwelt in them; and he began to see that the feeling of intelligence existing between Justine and himself was not the result of actual intimacy, but merely of the charm she knew how to throw over casual intercourse. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... said Antony carelessly, and they turned round and continued their walk up to the road. But later on he remembered this casual conversation at the gate, and saw the importance ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... to which the hills of Rajputana belong. Kirana and Sangla were already of enormous age, when they were islands washed by the waves of the Tertiary sea. A description of the different parts of the vast Panjab plain, its great stretches of firm loam, and its tracts of sand and sand hills, which the casual observer might regard as pure desert, will be given in the paragraphs ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... though it was stipulated that the father—and this was a demand the mother made—should accompany the boy upon most of the journey. One-Ear knew Oak's father very well. Oak's father, Stripe-Face, was a man of standing in the widely-scattered community. Stripe-Face was so called because in a casual, and, on his part, altogether uninvited encounter with a cave bear when he was a young man, a sweep of the claws of his adversary had plowed furrows down one cheek, leaving scars thereafter which were livid streaks. One-Ear and Stripe-Face were good friends. Sometimes they hunted together; ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... a yard up, rises for three-fourths its height without branches, after which it divides into a number of limbs, the extremities of which are well covered with foliage, thus giving to the tree a bushy, well-formed, and, I might almost add, rounded appearance. At a casual glance the whole tree might readily be mistaken for the pinaster, but the leaves are shorter, less tufted, and always more erect. The bark of the Stone pine is somewhat rough and uneven, of a dull gray color, unless between the furrows, which is of a bright brown. That on the branches is more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... the courtyard a knot of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... virtue and intelligence—spouse of a patriotic outlaw in a frontierless land. I asked artless questions which brought me into discredit with my teachers, as, for example, who 'massacred' St. Bartholomew. But vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern crowded out of my life and out of my companions' lives (in a convent boarding-school) by the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics when we were learning to skate, and our very ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... legal does not form the whole of the Talmud, nor perhaps the part that would most interest the casual reader or the world at large. It is the dry, prosaic half. There is a poetic half, let us say a homiletic half, what we call Agada, as distinct from the legal portion called Halacha. The term Agada, "narrative," is wofully insufficient to describe the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... filled with worn-out farmers, men with whom my father had subdued the sod in the early days. Osmond Button, William Frazer, Oliver Cole, David Babcock were all living "in town" on narrow village lots, "taking it easy" as they called it, but they were by no means as contented as they seemed to the casual onlooker. Freed from the hard daily demands of the farm, many of them acknowledged a sense of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... prudent and far-seeing as a man all his life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his well-meant, but ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... They were injurious as well as useless and uncalled for, and had a ludicrous side. Acting for Mr. Carey, she dismissed the coachman and the gardener, paying them their month's wages which were unearned. She let the valuable horses take their chance of casual grooming and feeding, till they were sold off. She left the garden at the most critical time of the year, as the old gardener said with tears in his eyes, when the young vegetables were only coming into use, and the whole fruit would be lost unless it were properly seen ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... beautiful woman in the midst of festivity might have been looked upon as suicide, if the jewel had not been missing from her breast and the instrument of death removed from the wound. So far, the casual search which had been instituted had failed to produce this weapon; but the police would be here soon and then something would be done. As to the means of entrance employed by the assassin, there seemed to be but one opinion. The alcove contained a window opening upon a small balcony. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my hands was but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, but casual and fragmentary, of those obliterated repetitions. Man is a creature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so much of the tale untold—to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeat things done, and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... woman was cured of the bloody flux by touching the hem of his garment. The conversion of two considerable Rabbins seemed still a greater miracle. St. Thomas had held a long conference with them at a casual meeting in cardinal Richard's villa, and they agreed to resume it the next day. The saint spent the foregoing night in prayer, at the foot of the altar. The next morning these two most obstinate Jews came to him of their own accord, not to dispute, but to embrace the faith, and were followed by ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... weighty problems faced him. The most urgent of these was the settlement of the Revenue, in regard to which Hyde had again to mediate between two extremes. There were, doubtless, some who wished that the complete supremacy of Parliament should be secured by making the Crown depend entirely upon casual and arbitrary Parliamentary grants. In Hyde's view this was inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, was certain to lead to friction, and would inevitably make Parliament the sole sovereign power in the State. But just as little did he wish to fix a Revenue ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... once correct and civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence. Its routine consists in the continual performance of ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... seemed to have improved since her return to town. Previously, as in her childhood, she had always been more or less ailing. From both father and mother she had inherited an unhealthy body; there was a scrofulous tendency in her constitution, and the slightest casual ill-health, a cold or any trifling accident, always threatened her with serious results. She was of mind corresponding to her body; restless, self-willed, discontented, sour-tempered, querulous. She certainly used no special pains to hide these faults ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... know who the men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be casual, had asked the question. The young doctor ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... walked moodily by her side, replying at random to her casual remarks. It chanced that Ruth was not conversant with the French language, and Madeleine, struck by his abstracted air, inquired in that tongue whether he had any cause ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... secret, asking no permission to, For he knew he wouldn't get it if he did. There is gas and coals and vittles, and the house-rent falling due, And it's more than rather likely there's a kid. There are girls he walked with casual, they'll be sorry now he's gone, For an absent-minded beggar they will find him; But it ain't the time for sermons with the winter coming on— We must help the girl that ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... sofa, where Victoria had just spread a shawl over her. Felicia appeared to be turning over an illustrated paper, but was in reality watching the mother and son out of the corners of her eyes. Everything that was said containing a mention of the Penfolds struck in her an attentive ear. The casual conversation of the house had shown her already that there were three ladies—two of them young—who were living not far from Duddon, and were objects of interest to both Lady Tatham and her son. Flowers were sent them, and new ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spent one night in talking with a very gifted writer, a Jew, who was my casual and most welcome guest. I was trying to convince him that he, a great master of the word, ought to write, but he repeated obstinately that although he loves the Russian language with all his artist's heart, he cannot write ...
— The Shield • Various
... the arrival of the batteau from above, and catching some casual words that were dropped knew there was trouble ahead for the immediate future, since a company of rival fur gatherers had swooped down upon ground that came within the jurisdiction of the Fort Harmony post, though often in dispute, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... the abstract sciences; what is true in one country may be very false in another; what is untrue to-day may become true in another generation, and the truth of to-day be reversed by the judgment of to-morrow. To distinguish the casual from the enduring, to separate the unsuitable from the suitable, and to make progress even possible, are the proper ends of policy. But without actual knowledge and experience, and communion of labor, the dreams ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... see the intensified relief which this brought to our Lord, the keen satisfaction He felt as He heard it distinctly and solemnly uttered as the creed of the Twelve; as He heard what hitherto He could only have gathered from casual expressions, from wistful awe-struck looks, from overheard questionings and debatings with one another. You see how at once, He steps on to a new footing with them, as He cordially, and with intense gratitude, says to Peter, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona." In this Divinely-wrought confession ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men, apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should have been attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make matters worse, one of the wagons had been overturned ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good vocational school. The average boy who leaves school at 15 spends a year or two loafing or working at odd jobs before he can obtain employment that offers any promise of future advancement. These years are often more than wasted, as he not only learns nothing of value from such casual jobs, but misses the healthy discipline of steady, orderly work, which is of so great importance during these formative years of ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... and around the starboard side of the deck house, and thus came upon the scene in a casual manner, as though I had just stepped out of my own foc'sle to see what was wrong. I mingled with my watch mates, who had turned out to a man to watch ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... night's sleep and writing home that they were safe and how comrades had died, might wander about the roads or make holiday as they chose. They were not casual about the fight, but outspoken and frank, Canadian fashion. They realized what they had been through and spoke of their luck in having survived. From the fields came the cry of, "Leave that to me!" as a fly rose from the bat, or, "Out on first!" as men took a rest from shell-curves and high explosives ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... tastes and habits. It was the feeling and the sense of a dismal exhalation from him, an unhealthy and unnatural mental effluvium that served so indelibly to fix the bodily image of him in the brainpans of casual and uninformed passers-by. The brand of Cain was not on his brow. By every local standard of human morality it did not belong there. But built up of morbid elements within his own conscience, it looked out from his eyes and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... they called the hut 'The Nose'—short, Grizzel felt sure, for The Duke's Nose. Her eyes ran quickly down the cliff underneath—yes, she could see the cave quite plainly when she looked hard, though to the casual glance it looked like a ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... that grey-haired man, His sire: then oftentimes the white-armed child Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes And droops above him with her short sweet sighs For Love distraught—for dear Love's faded sake That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost, And careless mutterings, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... a very casual manner; and Evelyn, for no reason that she was willing to recognize, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... she had experienced, was, on the other hand, marred by his inordinate vanity. His extreme courtesy, urban manner and quick instinct for thoughtful attentions to old and young alike, she read truly as superficial, rather than sincere, kindnesses. The casual acquaintance would not have discovered this—but Marian had grown up with him! She could love him, she had more than a hundred times told herself—God, yes! Alone in the nights when his warm bronze coloring of perfect health seemed near to her, she had admitted this. Yet by day she ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... a casual way, I slipped my arm around her; With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you), And ready to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... unjustifiable. Sex impulse then becomes merely a dumb and powerful instinct without in the least awakening the imagination or the heart, nor does it overflow into neighboring fields of consciousness. Every city contains hundreds of degenerates who have been over-mastered and borne down by it; they fill the casual lodging houses and the infirmaries. In many instances it has pushed men of ability and promise to the bottom of the social scale. Warner, in his American Charities, designates it as one of the steady forces making ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... her reverie and prepared her father's supper. How weary he looked, she thought, as she sat and watched him, and listened to his casual talk about his afternoon visit and the auction in the morning. A feeling of resentment filled her heart as she recalled what Farrington had said. To think that he should say such things about her father, who was always so patient and loving; who was ever trying to help others, no matter who they ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... it be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger, more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep leather arm-chair, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... fondness for solitude and books, or the companionship of some one person of congenial tastes and highly cultured mind, Aunt Mary possessed a fund of moral strength and heroism that one might indeed read in the flash of her black eyes, but which a casual observer would think incompatible with her frail figure. It was, however, many times severely tested during uncle's absence when she had no male protector to whom to look for assistance: but then she proved all-sufficient ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... made the world larger and richer to my boyish thought. There was no didacticism on his part; there was, on the contrary, a simplicity so great that I felt entirely at home with him; but he was so thoroughly a citizen of the world that I caught a glimpse of the world in his most casual talk. I got a sense of the largeness and richness of life from him. I did not know what it was which laid such hold on my mind, but I saw later that it was the remarkable culture of the man,—a culture ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... else alike, being presented to us, we incline to one of them and take it." And in his Sixth Book of Duties, having said that there are some things not worthy of much study or attention, he thinks we ought, as if we had cast lots, to commit the choice of those things to the casual inclination of the mind: "As if," says he, "of those who try the same two drams in a certain time, some should approve this and others that, and there being no more cause for the taking of one than the other, we should leave off making ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
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