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More "Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sketched out in a few words the whole policy of my married life. I feel an awful fraud. And I had encouraged you to look forward to years of incessant quarrelling. Do you think you can manage without it? I'm afraid it's going to be shockingly dull for you,' ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... heart beat as I heard the dull rumble of the wheels, and caught the lurid glare of the two lamps coming. By the brief glance I got I saw that the guard (as I had hoped) had crouched in for shelter under the driver's hood, and that the sole occupant of the back coupe was ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... these it were well to lift the veil on the sackcloth of home, where weepeth the faithful, stricken mother, and the bruised father bendeth his aching head; where the bereft wife or husband, silent and alone, looks [10] in dull despair at the vacant seat, and the motherless little ones, wondering, huddle together, and repeat with quivering lips words of strange import. May the great Shepherd that "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and binds ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... who can hire a house and pay for it have his way, and let none be disturbed; the opposers can stay away. But for us, let us be thankful that in such hot weather there is something to amuse us, something to season our insipid dishes, something to spice our dull days with. Mem. It was cooler in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... followers, just escaped from the dull prison of their ships, were intent on admiring the wild scenes around them. Never had they known a fairer May-day. The quaint old narrative is exuberant with delight. The tranquil air, the warm sun, woods fresh ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the straps, and finally having them properly arranged, stepped backward a few feet and raised his left arm as a sign to the Electrocutioner in the closet that everything was in readiness. And then, just as John Convert uttered the words, 'Always Consult Your Soul for Advice,' a terrible, dull, buzzing sound took the place of his voice, his body suddenly expanded, as if about to burst, his limbs were drawn up and distorted, blue flames shot forth with a weird glow, a sickening odor of burning flesh saturated the air, and quicker than it takes to tell, the deadly ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... horseman passing under, would infallibly knock his head against the corner of one of their first floors. But chiefly on donkeys is this risk noticeable—the stubborn brutes which it is much the fashion to ride, and whom none but the drivers can guide. On entering Smyrna by night—those dull streets where gas is not—your only plan is to keep well in the middle of the street, right in the hollow. It is a beautiful quarter of the town; in itself picturesque and variegated in colour, and beset with the fairest embellishments. Look up at that lattice for a moment only, and then prick ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... longer able to overlook and manage the government of the State, he sent to Corcyra and summoned Lycophron to come back and take the supreme power; for in the elder of his sons he did not see the required capacity, but perceived clearly that he was of wits too dull. Lycophron however did not deign even to give an answer to the bearer of his message. Then Periander, clinging still in affection to the youth, sent to him next his own daughter, the sister of Lycophron, supposing that he would yield to her persuasion more than to that of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... close enough he hurled the stone at the wolves, and a dull thud, followed by a shrill, dog-like howl of pain, told him that he had countered on the rib plate of one of the nasty brutes. Then he let out a wild yell, and three of the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a pelican in the wilderness! I observed again to-day the burnt volcanic stones scattered over The Desert. They were of all colours, yellow, black, brown, and red, like so many brick-bats. These stones scattered for miles around, together with the hot-spring of the city, and many of the low dull Saharan hills, like so many heaps of scoriæ and lava, give apparently a volcanic origin to all these regions, or ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... to wait after that. There was a lapse of perhaps a minute and a half, and then a dull, booming roar shook the building, and the burglars ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... earnest man recently said: "I was born and raised upon the farm. I never knew a dull day in my life. I went fishing. I went ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... are born in a thatched cottage by the roadside, or in some narrow lane. This cottage is usually an encroachment. In the olden time, when land was cheap, and the competition for it dull, there were many strips and scraps which were never taken any notice of, and of which at this hour no record exists either in the parochial papers or the Imperial archives. Probably this arose from the character of the country in the past, when the greater part was open, or, as it was called, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Press.—"A story in which there is not a dull page, nay, not even a dull line. The characters are well drawn, the incidents are novel and often astounding, and the language has a terseness and briskness that gives a character of vivacity to the story, so that the reader is never tired going on unravelling ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... fortune, having no understanding of her weariness of more artificial men; but a time comes when the stupidest sees in an eye the glance of his other half; and it came to him, who was quite the reverse of dull. As he gained confidence accidental encounters led to encounters by design; till at length when they were alone together there was no reserve on the matter. They whispered tender words as other lovers do, and were as devoted a pair as ever was seen. But not ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... talk! Why dost thou say that she is illustrious,[FN25] for all she is of the scum of slave-girls and of the refuse of the people? I will not sell her to thee." When the merchant heard this, he knew he was dull-witted and said to him, "Calm thyself, for I will buy her of thee, notwithstanding the defects thou mentionest." "And how much wilt thou give me for her?" asked the Bedouin "None should name the child but its father," ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... was simple, unsuspecting, pure, and extremely modest, she was far from dull—she was not now to learn the difference between the language of ordinary trifling and general compliment, and that to which she now listened, and which, however vague, was still so particular as ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... he spoken than there sounded, high and shrill above the dull rumble of the oncoming cattle, ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... vague and dull enough—something about the Prince of Wales reviewing Yeomanry, and the race for some hunt cup in India. But that peerage! To ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... said no more, but four stout negro men stepped forward, nailed down the lids, and lowered the rough boxes into the ground. Turning to Madam P——, I saw her face was red with weeping. She turned to go as the first earth fell, with a dull, heavy sound, on the rude coffins; and giving her my arm, I led her ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... against the torrent of grief which came rushing over his heart once more, he sobbed aloud in tones which penetrated even the thickness of the prison walls, and made dull echoes awake behind them. Then, tearing off his satin tie, and seizing by the collar, the smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, he stripped the latter ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... very early days. The Great Hall was lighted by tall windows reaching almost to the roof and traversed with shafts of solid stonework; the one immediately opposite Farmer Jocelyn's chair showed the very last parting glow of the sunset like a dull red gleam on a dark sea. For the rest, thick home-made candles of a torch shape fixed into iron sconces round the walls illumined the room, and burned with unsteady flare, giving rise to curious lights and shadows as though ghostly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... overheated room the vitiated air had slowly mounted to the brain; soon a third of the spectators nodded in their chairs scarcely able to keep awake; others moved restlessly with a dull sense of physical discomfort, while the law, expressing itself in archaic terms, wound its way through a labyrinth of technicalities, and reached out hungrily ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... a signal. From behind him there rose a dull murmur. A lad not much older than himself raced up and ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... a small camp by a hospital, and the soldiers came out to examine our papers and warn us to go no farther, as there was fighting in the town. The road was black with frightened civilians carrying away small bundles from the ruins of their homes. Ahead was a great column of dull gray smoke which completely hid the city. We could hear the muffled sound of firing ahead. Down the little street which led to the town, we could see dozens of white flags which had been hung out of the windows in a childish hope ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... of a dull greenish brown, but when excited its back becomes a rich olive green, leaving the head yellowish: the underside of the body is of a very pale blue, almost approaching white. The open mouth exhibits the fauces of an intense vermilion tint; so that, although extremely handsome, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... at the same time he was averse to writing letters home; his father complained once in the holidays that he knew nothing of what the boy did at school. Hugh could not put into words what he felt to be the truth, namely, that he hardly knew himself. He submitted quietly and obediently to the dull routine of the place, and felt so little interest in it, that he could not conceive that his father should do so either. There were of course occasional exciting incidents, but to relate them would have required so much explanation, such a list of personages, such a description of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who were bound to the thwarts below deck, had been listening with dull surprise to the fighting on deck—not that fighting was by any means unusual in that vessel, but they must have known that they were in harbour, and that the main body of the pirates were on shore. Still greater was their surprise when ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... weaver in Edinburgh lost his situation one winter, on account of business being so dull. He begged earnestly of his employer to let him have work; but he said it was impossible. Well said he, "I'm sure the Lord will help." When he came home and told his wife the sad news she was greatly distressed. He tried to ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... except when, as in S. Mark's there is the wonder of dimness too. For Venice is not like other historic cities; Venice, for all her treasures of art, is first and foremost the bride of the Adriatic, and the call of the sea is strong. Art's opportunity is the dull ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... boxful, and two or three were lighted at a time, and held so that the doctor could see the drowned face better than he could in the uncertain moonlight. It was a strange scene. The lonely, weird character of the place; the dark trees scattered about; the dull pond with its bending willows; the swaying, murmuring crowd collected round the doctor and what he was bending over; the bright flickering flame of the match-light; with the pale moon overhead, getting higher and higher as the night ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... doin' her hair Ruby was in a class by herself. No spit curls or French rolls for her! She sticks to the plain double braid, wound around her head smooth and slick, like the stuff they wrap Chianti bottles in, and with her long soup-viaduct it gives her sort of a top-heavy look. Sort of dull, ginger-colored hair it is too. Besides that she's a tall, shingle-chested female, well along in the twenties, I should judge, and with all the earmarks of ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... not experienced it, can know any thing of the suffering such a child endures when deprived of the sweet influences of home. Such an one often appears dull and stupid to a careless observer, when there is throbbing under that cold exterior, a heart of the keenest sensibility. Let the bold, healthy, active boy be sent from home, if necessary; a little hardship, and ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... that creature was the same who had not recoiled before the infamy of an anonymous letter, pretty and sinister Lydia Maitland—that delicate, that silent young woman with the large brown eyes, always smiling, always impenetrable in the midst of that dull complexion which no emotion, it seemed, had ever tinged. The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... why the successive editors of Park's Travels have passed it over, printing only the last page or two, wherein Amady Fatouma relates the explorer's end. One thing I know has been against its adoption, to wit, an insufferably dull style. Seeing that it is difficult to be dull in the Arabic tongue, and that it was impossible for Isaaco to be so in any of the tongues he used, I suspect the English translator (no doubt a mere clerk in Governor Maxwell's Office) of pruning ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... slightest variation in tone, and can detect traits and moods hidden from the eye, because not registered upon the face. There is a strong voice, a brave voice, a voice full of hope and cheer; a tired voice, a crafty voice, a voice full of dull despair. And so here again I do not feel the lack of eyesight in noting differences in my fellow men. I know that there are distinguishing marks, that heads are shaped differently, and that hair and eyes have different colors, corresponding to the various ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... Helen did not falter. She immediately took control of all necessary arrangements. Nothing was forgotten. Ronnie's outfit was managed with as little trouble to himself as possible. They dealt together, in a gay morning at the Stores, with all interesting items, but those he called "the dull things" apparently selected themselves. Anyway, they all appeared in his room, when the ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... innovation in gleeful whispers—for guitar had never twanged in that part of Africa before—they moved on to their work. No consideration could cause them to neglect that. They might fritter away the dull, rough gems when they had found them, but the lust of handling diamonds once was the strongest passion they knew. And so the day's toil was not curtailed; but at the conclusion Miss Musgrave had an application for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... concealment of an ambush. Atinius, having by his scouts discovered only the body of infantry, led his troops into the field, ignorant both of the domestic treachery and of the stratagem of the enemy. The engagement with the infantry was particularly dull, a few Romans in the first rank engaging while the Thurians rather waited than helped on the issue. The Carthaginian line retreated, on purpose that they might draw the incautious enemy to the back of the hill, where their cavalry were lying in ambush; and when they had come there, the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... the door, and watched them wistfully as they ran off. It was dull to turn back into the empty kitchen, and wait there till the old dame came downstairs. If Robbie could have put his feelings into words, he would have said that he would have been happier roughing it with Duncan and Elsie ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... citizens." In vain Harry urged that he was outraging grammar. Mr. Waverton did not believe him, did not want to believe him—the same thing. Mr. Waverton was convinced that he had an insight into the soul of Horace which Harry's pedantic eyes could not share. He explained, as one explains to a dull child, the rare poetic beauty of the sentiment which he had produced. The hero whom Horace was celebrating, you know, was the man superior to the common herd. Now common men (as even Harry might be aware) are all overbearing. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... documents, letters with their edges worn into tatters and addressed in the crabbed writing of a century ago, title deeds discolored and yellow with age, most of them fastened with great red seals, a mass of musty records that looked dry and dull indeed. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... to invariable rules even the slightest actions of their domestic life, they have been rendered stupid by the effort to render them obedient. Their subsistence is in general more certain, and their habits more pacific, but subject to the constraint and the dull monotony of the government of the Missions, they show by their gloomy and reserved looks that they have not sacrificed their liberty ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and dull controversy as to the origin of Scottish folk-songs was due to ignorance of the comparative method, and of the ballad literature of Europe in general. The result of the discussion was to leave a vague impression that the Scottish ballads were perhaps as old as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... reply, in effect, was "What make you here, you little Bulgar boy?" He maintained that, while not as "dull and cautious" as he had meant it to be, the speech referred to in no way bore out Mr. BUXTON'S assertions. Then he proceeded in characteristic fashion to knock together the heads of the pro-Bulgarians and the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... hour or more—she sat perfectly still, staring at a wavering line made on the floor by a stray sunbeam which had forced its way through the window of her hotel sitting-room. At first she looked unseeingly, with the dull, introspective gaze of the melancholic. Then she began to notice the thing, and to fear it, and to watch for outlines of a quivering human face, and to tremble a little. Surely there had been a face—she thought vaguely, and puckered her brow in an effort to remember. It was ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... meantime, had lapsed into a state of dull indifference to everything but her great sorrow. That absorbed her whole mental life. It was the house in which her soul dwelt, the chamber of affliction wherein she lived, and moved, and had her being—so darkly draped that no light came in through the windows. ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... could either amuse or interest us. The necessity of not exceeding the limited distance of one or two miles, lest a snowdrift, which often rises very suddenly, should prevent our return, added considerably to the dull and tedious monotony which day after day presented itself. To the southward was the sea, covered with one unbroken surface of ice, uniform in its dazzling whiteness, except that, in some parts, a few hummocks were seen ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... and stubble, the dull yellow of the waggon, toned down by years of weather, the green woods near at hand, darkening in the distance and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float rather than to grow or stand, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... windy night in late October. The leaves are whirling in dusty spirals and shutters bang with unmelodious emphasis, and all the world seems dreary; yet, to him, with love lighting the way, with the knowledge that the girl he has learned to worship is here within these dull brick walls, there is a thrill and vigor in every nerve. No light burns in the hallway; none in the lower floor of the number to which he has been directed. He well knows it is too late to call, even to inquire for them, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... swiftness they rushed toward me, and in a single second had merged themselves into my own being; and I understood in some marvellous manner beyond the possibility of doubt that they were symbolic of my own soul: the dull animal part of me that had hitherto acknowledged nothing beyond its cage of minute sensations, and the higher part, almost out of reach, and in touch with the stars, that for the first time had feebly awakened into life during ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... ciphers, and yet always with circumspection. He was perfectly satisfied with Pierrette's eyes and relieved that they were not blue, for blue eyes may be cold, and the finest of black eyes are sometimes dull. Gray eyes alone—misty, fathomless gray eyes—share imagination with brown ones. But neither a blue-eyed nor a black-eyed nor a gray-eyed Pierrette was to be thought of. Pierrette's eyes were brown, as he should have known, and what she was saying to him was just what ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... own mouth except to Gawtrey, with whom Philip often observed him engaged in whispered conferences, to which he was not admitted. His eye, however, was less idle than his lips; it was not a bright eye: on the contrary, it was dull, and, to the unobservant, lifeless, of a pale blue, with a dim film over it—the eye of a vulture; but it had in it a calm, heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at the Palazzo Montevarchi, and while Corona was busy with her dressmakers, Prince Saracinesca was dozing over the Osservatore Romano in his study. To tell the truth the paper was less dull than usual, for there was war and rumour of war in its columns. Garibaldi had raised a force of volunteers and was in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, beginning to skirmish with the outlying posts of the pontifical ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... greatly grown meantime, few persons would recognize the hearty, blithesome, genial, and wiry Abraham Lincoln of earlier days in the sixteenth President of the United States, with his stooping figure, dull eyes, careworn face, and languid frame. The old clear laugh never came back; the even temper was sometimes disturbed; and his natural charity for all was often turned into unwonted suspicion of the motives of men, whose selfishness caused ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... waved. Zeal awakened with the assurance that conspicuous merit was sure of its reward, and that no officer who did his duty would now be made a sacrifice, like Admiral Byng, to appease public indignation at ministerial failures. As Nature, languishing in chill vapors and dull smothering fogs, revives at the touch of the sun, so did England spring into fresh life under the kindling influence of one ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... which often involves the murderer in a death more cruel than that he has given, he pointed to the Florentine traitor with his amiable smile and his deadly poison. He indicated certain powders and potions, some of them of dull action, wearing out the victim so slowly that he dies after long suffering; others violent and so quick, that they kill like a flash of lightning, leaving not even time for a single cry. Little by little Sainte-Croix became interested in the ghastly ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... One dull, rainy day, as we sat indoors mending our clothes, and yarning and smoking, we heard the scream of parrots, and, going to the door, saw some twenty or thirty of them, large, fine, green and scarlet plumaged birds, hanging on to and crawling in and out among the branches ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had always four or five boys whom he had taught to swim thoroughly well, and he made them swimming-masters. They benefited by having to give instruction to others, and by learning to keep their tempers. Nothing, perhaps, tries the temper so much as having to teach dull or inattentive boys. Blackall had been made one of the swimming-masters, but at the commencement of the bathing season the Doctor called him up, and without a word of explanation told him that he thought fit to dismiss him from the post. He lost, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... it is a dull, animal happiness, the content of the full belly. The dominant note of their lives is materialistic. They are stupid and heavy, without imagination. The Abyss seems to exude a stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which wraps about ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of air as the heavy chair descended, followed by a dull thud, and a second impact as the soldier fell to the ground with a crushed skull. Colonel Anderson was over the unconscious form in a moment, ready to choke an outcry should his blow not have been true. But there was no need for this. His aim had been true, and the man ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... either of us had much idea where we were or whither we were bound. Our guiding principle seemed to be to get as much sunshine as possible, and to find the easiest road. We avoided dull sandy levels and hard rocky places, with the same instinctive dexterity. We gloomed together through dark dingles, and came out on sunny reaches with the same gilded magnificence. There are days when every stream is Pactolus and every man is Croesus, and thanks to that first and greatest of all ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... that much was introduced by the foreigner in the wake of Christianity which her alert mind recognised as being all to the advantage of women. Even the old Refuge-keeper could read a little, but she was quite dull and slow, whereas without much trouble Mrs. Fan herself could master quite a number of new characters every day, and a few hours had been enough for the initial lesson of ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... haziness and headaches he was quite at a loss to account for his situation. He knew vaguely that he was lying flat on his back and that he was being jolted uncomfortably to and fro. His dazed brain registered sensations of pain both dull and sharp from a score of bruised nerve centers. For some reason he could neither move his hands nor lift his head. His body had been so badly jarred by the hail of blows through which he had plowed that at first his mind was too blank ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... certainly die if he is exposed to this biting wind and constant rain. I intend to tell the captain, but you, Trawl, go and stay with him whenever you can; it will cheer him up, poor fellow, to have someone to talk to, and that dull Horner cannot speak two ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... turned and looked down on the face of this man that I had learned to love, and the full measure of his needed rest was with him; and the rainy day that glowered and drabbled at the eastern window of the room was as drearily stared back at by a hopeless woman's dull demented eyes. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... I knew then. How dull I had been, and stupid! The men caught her meaning, too, and we tramped heavily forward, the girl and ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... And when some one said: "People, you have recovered from the errors which led you astray; you have recalled your kings and your priests," they replied: "We have nothing to do with those prattlers." And when some one said: "People, forget the past, work and obey," they arose from their seats and a dull rumbling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched saber in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then they hastened to add: "Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not seek to harm." Alas! they ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is. Eyes cannot see it—fingers cannot feel it, but he who possess it knows that it is there for it fills his whole breast with a great, wonderful love and worship for something infinitely finer than man's dull senses can gauge—something that guides him into paths far above the plain of soulless ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wein, weib," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever, whether the dull eyes of men could read them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the reign of Taharqa are examples of excellent workmanship. That of Amenertas was over-praised at the time of its discovery; the face, half buried by the wig which we usually associate with the statues of the goddesses, has a dull and vacant expression in spite of its set smile, and the modelling of the figure is rather weak, but nevertheless there is something easy and refined in the gracefulness of the statue as ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by posterity what those authors would be thought if any memory of them or of their writings could endure so long as to another age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been to me, are yet of dangerous example to the public. Some witty men may perhaps succeed to their designs, and, mixing sense with malice, blast the reputation of the most innocent amongst men, and ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... yellowing leaves. How swift were disillusion, were it not That thou art steadfast where all else deceives! Solace and Inspiration, Power divine That by some mystic sympathy of thine, When least it waits and most hath need of thee, Can startle the dull spirit suddenly With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, — Long as the light of fulgent evenings, When from warm showers the pearly shades disband And sunset opens o'er the humid land, Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, — Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes Hung on far isle or ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... no subject of wonder to me. Your inferiors in understanding I know would not act like you; but the weak do not give law to the strong. I own that I have been dull enough, unjust enough, not to suspect your true motive for refusing, as you have done lately, to accompany us to public places. But this is a heavy penalty on you which an act of virtue ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... entrails.[395] But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect. Leave me! There's something come into my thought That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... them, and above them, and behind them, and all around them, there arose a deep, low, dull, rushing sound, which seemed as if all the snow on the slope was moving. Their ears had by this time become sufficiently well acquainted with the peculiar sound of the rushing snow-masses to know that this was the noise that heralded their progress, and to feel sure that ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... objects of his personal dislike. Of these Sir Charles Taylor was one. He was not a welcome member of the Hooks and Eyes, and Jerrold knew it. There was really no reason why Sir Charles should not have been liked, except perhaps that he was dull and prosaic; rather simple than dull, perhaps, for he was always ready to laugh with the rest of us, whether he understood the joke or not. And what could the most brilliant do ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... abruptly, "I see you have let them go out with a neighbor—why not have accompanied them yourself, or let them wait for me, if they wished to take a walk; which is natural enough, this room being so dull. But I am astonished that they should have gone out before they had news of good Mother Bunch—they have such kind hearts. But how pale you are?" added the soldier looking nearer at Frances; "what is the matter, my poor ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for a cry to escape, but his teeth remained fast set, and there was not a sound for the moment. He was conscious of dropping rapidly down without the slightest change in his position, and then there was a dull heavy shock, when the apparently solid piece of ledge, after being exposed to the atmosphere for ages, crumbled into dust and went on downward with a curious whispering rush along a steep slope ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the general irruption of the Congressional ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Do not count on the charms of youth, it is a flower that shall very soon fade, and like a bird on the wing, shall leave no trace behind it. The lustre of your eyes now beaming delight shall soon grow dull; the bloom shall depart from your cheek; the bright hopes that now fill your soul shall give place to sad souvenirs; and your heart which is now the abode of delight shall then be harrowed with sorrow and woe. To-day you are ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... trousers pockets. Little boys, in the costumes of French chefs, paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes. There was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses. Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull gilt of the chandeliers. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, the marks are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to see their big boy who was ill. They had promised to be home for Christmas, but a big snow had blocked the railroad track, and nurse was afraid the train would be delayed until the day after Christmas. What a dull Christmas for two little girls, all alone in the great city house, with only the servants! They felt so lonely that nurse let them play in the big drawing-room instead of in the nursery, so they arranged all the chairs in a row, and pretended it was a snowed-up train. Tita was the conductor, ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... pensionary of the Batavian Republic, was destined by his education for the bar, but by his natural parts to await in quiet obscurity the end of a dull existence. With some property, little information, and a tolerably good share of common sense, he might have lived and died respected, and even regretted, without any pretension, or perhaps even ambition, to shine. The anti-Orange faction, to which his parents and family appertained, pushed him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... houses. I then went to the Pacific Coast, against the advice of friends who gave it as their opinion that my style of plays would not take very well in California. I opened for an engagement of two weeks at the Bush Street Theatre, in San Francisco, at a season when the theatrical business was dull, and Ben DeBar and the Lingards were playing there to empty seats. I expected to play to a slim audience on the opening night, but instead of that I had a fourteen hundred dollar house. Such was my success that I continued my engagement for five weeks, and the theatre was ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... wife should entertain after a fashion that had never yet been known even among the nobility of England. Both in town and country those great mansions should be kept open which were now rarely much used because she had found them dull, cold, and comfortless. In London there should not be a Member of Parliament whom she would not herself know and influence by her flattery and grace,—or if there were men whom she could not influence, they should live as men tabooed and unfortunate. Money mattered nothing. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to find a reader who "twigs" every point as acutely as your brother has done. I told somebody—was it you?—I rather wished the printer would substitute o for e in Irenicon. So far as I have seen any notices, the British critic (what a dull ass he is) appears to have been seriously struck by ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... rush towards the pleasant noise. It was only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have rung in any village church in old England, two thousand miles away. And the hearts of the listeners rose to their throats, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... cheeks with both hands, so as to make their faces as long as possible. Mr. Bunnet informs me that the Australian aborigines when out of spirits have a chop-fallen appearance. After prolonged suffering the eyes become dull and lack expression, and are often slightly suffused with tears. The eyebrows not rarely are rendered oblique, which is due to their inner ends being raised. This produces peculiarly-formed wrinkles on the forehead, which ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... dedication to a book dealing with the gridiron heroes of the past than to a man like Johnny Poe. For football is the abandon of body and mind to the obsession of the spirit that knows no obstacle, counts no danger and for the time being is dull and callous to physical pain or exhaustion. It is a something that makes one see ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... no threat, impatience, or acting in her voice, but he recognized the same dull desperation he had once heard in it, and her eyes, which a moment before were quick and mobile, had become fixed and set. He had no idea of trying to penetrate the foolish secret of her name and relations; he had never had the slightest curiosity, but it struck him now that Stratton ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with the small pox, and looked both dull and savage. Although his English was very bad and broken, yet Alan (according to his very handsome use, whenever I was by) would suffer him to speak no Gaelic. Perhaps the strange language made him appear more backward than he really was; but I thought he had little good-will to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... VIENNA:—a long, and perhaps final farewell! If I have arrived at a moment when this capital is comparatively thinned of its population, and bereft of its courtly splendors—and if this city may be said to be now dull, compared with what its winter gaieties will render it—I shall nevertheless not have visited it IN VAIN. Books, whether as MSS. or printed volumes, have been inspected by me with an earnestness and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... days of the term were terribly dull, because some of us had to do collections, and my papers did not altogether please Mr. Edwardes. I promised again that I would do a lot of work in the vac; but Jack Ward arranged that he would come down and stay with us directly after the 'Varsity match was over, and I could not be expected ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the best sense characteristic—it illustrated, that is to say, the best side of his character. "Believe me," were the words of the dying King, "that I have always been a religious man." It may be admitted, in justice to William, that according to his generally dull and often confused and hazy lights he did always recognize the standard, higher than that of mere expediency, or political compromise, or personal convenience, set up to regulate the conduct ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... an account of a visit a stranger paid to a rich man in Damascus. He went through dull and narrow streets, with no windows looking into the streets. He stopped before a low door, and was shown into a large court behind the house. There was a fountain in the midst of the court, and flower-pots all round. The visitor was then led into a room with a marble ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... had become intense. The storm demon had broken loose in all its fury and was lashing sea and land in wild frenzy. The shrieking wind, the dull, thunderous pounding of the waves upon the rocks and the hiss of driving snow, filled the air with a tumult that was little ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... apply here, my dear friend; for you will show me more indulgence than I have skill to demand. And should you find matter of interest in this book, yours, rather than the author's, will be the merit. As the beauty of nature is from the eye that looks upon her, so would the story be dull and barren, save for the life and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... blinks dull and shy; And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 585 And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, At Christabel she looked askance!— One moment—and the sight was fled! But Christabel in dizzy trance Stumbling on the unsteady ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly on the nurse's ear. That was the voice of the engine on the ten-thirty through express, which ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Roscoe, if you are happier I shall be, too," she said. "I know it must have been very dull for you here. My conscience has troubled me not a little all these years. I realize that a man, a young man like you, needs an interest in life; he wants something more than the care and companionship of a useless creature ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... flattering, I am sorry to say. Dull times, my son, very dull indeed. But I can tell you where you can find employment, I think. My son carries on the printing business in Philadelphia, and one of his men died the other day. I think he would be glad to ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... come here," she said. "It's so dull at the Castle I had to break my leg just to get a change. The Duchess sits reading near the fire with her gold eye-glasses on her nose and Lady Gwendolen plays haughtily on the harp and Lady Muriel coldly ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett
... improvement in quality, as well as for methods of marketing the large production of Harford county. A move in the right direction has been started by the forming of associations, which seek to build extensive warehouses and aid weak packers to carry stock, instead of forcing it upon a dull market. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... vindication of their taste, and have deemed it better to applaud at the Theatre de la Republique, than lodge at St. Lazare or Duplessis.—Thus political slavery has assisted moral depravation: the writer who is the advocate of despotism, may be dull and licentious by privilege, and is alone exempt from the laws of Parnassus and of decency.—One Sylvan Marechal, author of a work he calls philosophie, has written a sort of farce, which has been performed ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... especially here in London, I find there haue bene some false prophets gone before vs, telling strange tales. For as our countrey doeth bring foorth many gallant men, who desirous of honour doe put themselues into the actions thereof, so doeth it many more dull spirited, who though their thoughts reach not so high as others, yet doe they listen how other mens acts doe passe, and either beleeuing what any man will report vnto them, are willingly caried away into errors, or tied to some greater mans faith, become secretaries ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... The woman led them by farm roads, sometimes turning off to the right or left, but keeping her way with a certainty which showed how well she was acquainted with the country. Several times they could hear the dull sound of bodies of cavalry galloping along the roads; but this died away as they got further into the country. The horse had been turned loose a mile from their starting place. Vincent removed the bridle and saddle, saying: "He will pick up enough to feed on here for some time. When he gets ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Catholics, and royal bridegrooms must always have royal brides. There were, however, Protestant princesses in Germany; this was suggested to his majesty, but he replied, with an expression of contempt, that they were all dull and foggy, and he could not possibly have one ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... "I do mean it though. The King does not wish that we should be dull here at Marly, and has ordered me to make everybody play; and, for fear that nobody should dare to begin, to set, myself, the example;" and with this he began to play at brelan; and the salon was soon filled with ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Sea of Galilee. Less stern than Wast Water, less fair than gentle Windermere, she had still the winning ways of an English lake; she caught from the smiling heavens unceasing light and changeful phases of beauty, and with all this brightness on her face, she yet clung so fondly to the dull he-looking mountain at her side, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... court His friends became alert, and whispered to each other with much earnestness, and a vast number of them bowed to him, and shook hands with him, and advised him to be cool, and keep up his spirits. His appearance, however, was any thing but firm; his face was deadly pale, his eyes dull and cowardly, his knees trembled so much that he was obliged to support himself on ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... have a good time, anyway," Dick declared stoutly. "So far, those who have tried to annoy us have succeeded only in furnishing some excitement for us. Although we've been snowbound most of the time here we've had anything but a dull time." ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... be your good fortune, but it's not mine," the girl said, pettishly. "It will be very dull here, without you. I know what it will be. Your mother will always be full of anxiety, and will be fretting whenever we get news of any disturbances; and that is often enough, for there seem to be disturbances, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... generally behaving right this, that and the other withal; but when Yolande, asking Harvanger what will happen to her when he is away, receiveth for answer, "Truly I fear that thou wilt be very dull"; or when Bernlak, the fighter, says of a dead man, "I took over such effects as he left" (very much after the manner of my solicitor), one can't help feeling a little let down. Of such indeed are the perils ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... Goethe, "when I look at these beasts. Their state—so limited, dull, gaping, and dreaming—excites in me such sympathy, that I fear I shall become a sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... gleaming, as is its wont, in translucent ultramarine; its more distant depths slowly surge in blue-black waves, while those nearer to shore are of quite a different hue, and meet their sisters that lie nearer to the horizon in a dull greenish-grey, as dusty plains join darker lava beds. The northeasterly wind, which had risen as the sun rose, now blew more keenly, wreaths of white foam rode on the crests of the waves, though these did not beat wildly and stormily on the mountain-foot, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... romance possessed the field. The Yellow Book and similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better word)—disappeared ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... "Night is dull and dark. The clouds rest on the hills. No star with green trembling beam; no moon looks from the sky. I hear the blast in the wood, but I hear it distant far. The stream of the valley murmurs, but its murmur is sullen and sad. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... side of which the alley for four-corners was erected, gleamed in the darkness of a moonless summer night between the trees; and even farther than the streaming light, pierced the loud oaths and louder laughter, the shouts of triumph, and the yells of defeat, mixed with the dull heavy blows of the large wooden bowl, from the drunken ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the infinite, events poise invisible, awaiting their opportunity to incarnate themselves. They fasten, each after his kind, on these human lives of ours, as germs find the culture soil they love; so it follows that to the commonplace comes a life of dull routine, foolish happenings seek out the sentimentalist, sordid events seek the sordid and on the mystic dawns the mysterious. Calamities wait there, too, until Fate points out a weak spot in character on which they may pounce relentless with the temptation ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... primal man, Grim utilitarian, Loving woods for hunt and prowl, Lake and hill for fish and fowl, As the brown bear blind and dull To the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a dull party; but after dinner Lady Bathurst began talking about the King, and told me one or two anecdotes. When the account of Lord Liverpool's seizure reached the King at Brighton, Peel was at the Pavilion; the King got into one of his nervous ways, and sent for him ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about my heart and stomach, to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... pity's sake subside, Nor thus o'erwhelm me with joy's rapid tide: My beating heart, oppress'd with woe and care, Has yet to learn such happiness to bear: From grief, distracting grief, thus high to soar, To know dull pain and misery no more, To hail each op'ning morn with new delight, To rest in peace and joy each happy night, To see my Lycidas from bondage free, Restored to life, to pleasure, and to me, To see him thus—adorn'd with virtue's charms, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the gleam of water. It was a reservoir, he decided. Probably it constituted the water supply for a considerable section. And then, as he looked, he saw a flash—saw a great column of water rise in the air, and descend, like pictures of a cloudburst. A moment after the explosion, he heard a dull roar. And after the roar another sound. He saw the water fade out and disappear, and it was a moment before he realized what was happening. The reservoir had been blown up. And that meant more than the danger and the discomfort of an interrupted water supply. ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... had not dwelt upon it except in her thoughts was nevertheless filled with a gently uplifting sense of race superiority. Her admiration of Rose was tinged with pity. Poor garden flower, confined for life to the dull walks and prim parterres of a fixed enclosure, when she might roam the wild paths of the forest; condemned to sleep in a close room, on stifling feathers, and bathe in an elongated tub, when she might feel the elasticity ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... pace. For the first time in his life he felt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... tramp, tramp, the noise of hoofs mingling in a dull thud that sounded oddly in the stillness of the night to ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... so independent," says a German woman whose dull silence I had hitherto taken for ill nature. "I'm glad enough to get the money. I was up this morning at five, working. There's myself and my mother and my little girl, and not a cent but what I make. My husband is sick. He's ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... with all their strength in the direction in which the island lay, but before they reached it sharp puffs of wind struck the water, and the steerage of the canoe became extremely difficult. Presently, however, they heard the sound of a dull roar, and knew that this was caused by the slow heaving swell, of which they were already sensible, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... tire the reader, by leading him through every scene of this courtship (which, though in the opinion of a certain great author, it is the pleasantest scene of life to the actor, is, perhaps, as dull and tiresome as any whatever to the audience), the captain made his advances in form, the citadel was defended in form, and at length, in proper form, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... have some conversation together;' and, with a bow of silent excuse to my little companion, I went across to the lame old lady. She acknowledged my coming with the prettiest gesture of thanks possible; and, half apologetically, said, 'It is a little dull to be unable to move about on such evenings as this; but it is a just punishment to me for my early vanities. My poor feet, that were by nature so small, are now taking their revenge for my cruelty in forcing them into ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... much to do to talk," replied Mrs. Libby, smoothing down her shining bands of hair before the hanging glass, and regarding her reflected large, white face and set smile, with dull satisfaction and vanity. "They're used to ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... he still leaned back in a dull, painful lethargy. A faint, disagreeable odor gradually pervaded the room, and at last attracted his attention. The luxurious sybarite could not help the stings of conscience, the odor he might. He ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... any day to hear that a marriage market had been opened on one of the plazas of Rome, the quotations of which would read something after this fashion: Husbands dull and declining; American beauties more active; foreign mammas less firm; American securities in great demand; the market in princes somewhat stronger; holders of titles much sought after; brains without money a drug in the market; "bogus" counts ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... pupils and their teachers with the necessary pictures, leaflets, and outline drawings of birds for colouring, over thirty-one million pages of printed information have been distributed. Pupils have taken hold of this bird study with great zest. Many a dull or inattentive boy, who had been a despair to his teacher and parents, responded to this real nature teaching which took him from his ordinarily uninteresting studies into the wide out of doors. Thousands ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... innocent, but I must discharge you. Business is dull now, and I had decided to part with four of my cash-boys. I won't pass judgment upon you, ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... never made any especial effort to entertain her father that Maria could see. She was fond of fancy-work, and was embroidering a silk gown for herself. She embroidered while Harry read the paper. She did not talk much. Maria used to wonder that her father did not find it dull when he and She were alone together of an evening. She looked at him reading his paper, with frequent glances of admiration over it at his beautiful wife, and thought that in his place, she should much prefer a woman like her mother, who had kept things lively, even without company, and even ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... herself slightly in her eagerness; now she relaxed again with a sigh of relief. Creighton, a dull ache in his heart, waited for her to resume the conversation. He would ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... set upon it, that Louis had never dared to let him know that for himself exile in Paris and the Riviera was vastly to be preferred to authority over a rocky island hung with fogs, and inhabited by dull merchants ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... that he seemed so modest? Was it because people's eyes—Mrs. Morrison's, Lady Shuttleworth's—had been so angry lately whenever they rested on her that his seemed so very kind? No; she did remember thinking them that, even being struck by them, when she saw him first in Kunitz. A dull red crept into her face when she remembered that day and what followed. "It isn't very snug," she said at last, trying to hide by a careful coldness of speech all the strange things she was feeling. "When it rains there are puddles by the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... life he had led, for two years, he felt, on being released from drill, that life in a garrison town was dull and monotonous. The simple habits, in which he had been brought up, did not help him to enjoy heavy meals at regimental mess. Occasionally he and two or three other officers crossed to the mainland, and had some shooting in ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... of defiance, and directly after thud, thud, thud, the dull heavy sounds of well-delivered blows, for the captain was a very truthful man: he said he hit hard, and he did, while his two officers showed that they were worthy pupils; and with such an example before them in the wild excitement ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... completed, he put the paper into a pigeon-hole and forgot all about the matter. That day seemed to be more than usually dull and the hours to drag wearily on. He was conscious of a sort of suspense. He was waiting for something, or for someone. He did not choose to analyse this mental condition. Had he done so, the explanation was simple—and one that ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... hairbrained youths, who would willingly anger him even now. He is still the great duellist of his day; the emaciated fingers might still find their old grip upon a sword hilt, the long, listless arm might perhaps once more shoot out with lightning speed, the dull eye might once again light up at the clash of steel. Peaceable, charitable when none are at hand to see him give, gravely gentle now in manner, Count Spicca is thought dangerous still. But he is indeed very lonely in his old age, and if the truth be ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... been dropping for some five hours by Astronef time, one of them, uttering a sharp exclamation, pointed to an enormous rift about fifty miles away. A dull, red glare was streaming up out of it. The next moment the brown cloud-floor beneath them seemed to split up into enormous wreaths of vapour, which whirled up on all sides of them, and a few minutes later they caught their first glimpse ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... with a violent exclamation he swung abruptly on his heel, flung the cigarette into the fire and left the room. He went upstairs slowly, surprised at the feeling of apathy that had come over him. In the face of direct action the high tension of the last few weeks had snapped, leaving him dull, almost inert, and reluctance to go forward grew with every step. But at the head of the stairs his mood changed suddenly. All that the coming interview meant to him revealed itself with startling clearness. With a deep breath he caught at the rail, for he was shaking ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... in regard to the looks and business appearance of the country. It looked thinly settled, people scarce, and business dull. I could not get a day's work to do, and I could not go much farther on foot, for the snow was eight or ten inches deep, and I was still several hundred miles from my parents in Michigan. So my journey farther east was delayed until spring. The hunting ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... was very low. Polly gazed anxiously at the dull red coals. The damper in the lower door had a bad habit of opening when it was jarred. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... should say so," the other admitted, "and during the night both Toby and myself were awakened by just the same sort of far-off dull roaring sound." ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... what, Shatushka?" She shook her head. "You may be a very sensible man but you're dull. It's strange for me to look at all of you. I don't understand how it is people are dull. Sadness is not dullness. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... course, to find little interest in his monotonous movement. Indeed, I have heard many who live a short distance from town complain of this swinging backwards and forwards, or, rather, going forwards and backwards over the same ground every day, as dull and wearisome; but I cannot sympathise with them. On the contrary, I find that the more constantly any particular line of road is adhered to, the more intimate an acquaintance with it is formed, and the more ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... beat is strong, the first sound is dull, while the second, on the contrary, is sharp. It is evident that the apex has descended and is turned toward the armpit. There is some sclerosis, at least it is very probable. One may live twenty years with ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... society in the first volume of Charles V. Gibbon's incomparable powers of classification and description are wholly awanting. The fire of Napier's military pictures need not be looked for. What is usually complained of in Smollett, especially by his young readers, is, that he is so dull—the most fatal of all defects, and the most inexcusable in an historian. His heart was not in history, his hand was not trained to it; it is in "Roderick Random" or "Peregrine Pickle," not the continuation of Hume, that his powers are to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and black, wherefore it crept out again at the creaking door. A long, straight pencil of snow was flung through a chink, across the earthen floor and against the swaying Christmas-tree, on which the, presents, hanging in readiness for little Skeezucks, beat out a dull, monotonous clatter of tin and wood as ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the hands of genius, realism is apt to be dull. It gives us uninteresting photographs. There are times when we do not care so much for instruction as for amusement and recreation. This fact opens a legitimate field for the imaginative story-teller. There is to-day a decided reaction against realism in the form of what has been called ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... my dear, that I am going to criticise you. I am no judge of sewing,—never set a stitch in my life. It must be a dull way of spending time. Can't you ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... in the dull light of the misty afternoon, leaning against the solid carved table on which refreshments were spread, the old palace at Lucca rose up before her dyed with the ruddy tints of summer sunsets. She trod again in thought those mysterious rooms, shrouded in perpetual twilight. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... untiring patience tried to instil into this dull head the principles of logic, the elements of mathematics, and the rudiments of the mnemonic art; but the pupil hated study, and had no faculty of thought; yet he insisted that Bruno should make science clearly known to him! But ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... kissing, because humanity had touched the garb; there were no longer any menial acts, but only welcome services.... Remember by how much man is the subtlest circumstance in the world; at how many points he can attach relationships; how manifold and perennial he is in his results. All other things are dull, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... am thankful you came up," Cyril said, as they mounted and rode off. "Before you came we were all dull, and the Dame and Mistress Nellie somewhat tearful; Now we have gone off amidst smiles, which ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells— That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... of the great clumsy vehicle, placed a foot on one of the spokes, and was in the act of drawing himself up to climb in, but suddenly let himself drop back, for something leaped out of the interior of the waggon right over his cousin, reaching the earth with a dull thud, and ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... a village situate between Salamanca and Medina del Campo. My father is a tailor, as I have said, and taught me his trade; but from cutting with the scissors I proceeded—my natural abilities coming in aid—to the cutting of purses. The dull, mean life of the village, and the unloving conduct of my mother-in-law, were besides but little to my taste. I quitted my birthplace, therefore, repaired to Toledo to exercise my art, and succeeded in it to ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had in the environs of Ville d'Avray a very beautiful place, with park and coverts and a stream for fishing; but as I was alone I found it dull, and several of these ladies and gentlemen said to me, 'Madame Louchard, why don't you organize parties in the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Hannah, the one servant, was often heard to object to this arrangement. She gave solid reasons for her objections, declaring roundly that human nature was far more agreeable to her than any part of the vegetable kingdom; but though Hannah found her small kitchen rather dull, and never during the years she stayed with them developed the slightest taste for the beauties of Nature, she was sincerely attached to the Mainwaring girls, and took ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... misapprehensions and injustice that had blighted his school career, be kept beneath boys with half his ability, and without generous feeling, and find all his attainments useless in restoring his position. Dr. Hoxton's dull scholarship would chill all pleasure in his studies—there would be no companionship among the boys—even his supporters, Ernescliffe and Larkins, were gone, and Harry would leave him ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... to lofty creations of genius. Men were absorbed in passing events; and literary men generally pandered to the vile taste of the people, or stooped to adulate the monsters whom they feared. Hunting and hawking furnished subjects for the muse of the poets. History was reduced to dull and dry abridgments, and still drier commentaries. The people sought scandalous anecdotes, or demoralizing sketches, or frothy poetry. The decline in letters, like the decline in art, kept pace with the public ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Jimmy and again a gleam of hope shone on his dull features. He had heard that waiters were often to be bribed. "Nice fellow, Henri," he ventured cautiously. "Gets ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... rain: the wind in the east, fretful and cold. All morning long she rocked the child in her arms: now softly singing to him—now vainly seeking to win a smile—now staring vacantly into the mist, dreaming dull dreams, while he ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... In what manner? Lord, Maister Sidney, how can you be so dull? Why, how is any man cured of his love till a wench, but by ganging to bed till her? ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... but the reign of twilight had not yet commenced. After a blustering morning, a sudden stillness had fallen upon the earth. The wild north wind had ceased its moaning in the pine trees, and no longer came booming across the level moorland. The dull gray clouds which all day long had been driven across the leaden sky in flying haste, hung low down upon the sad earth, and from over the water a sea fog rose to meet them. Nature had nothing more cheerful to offer than silence, a dim light, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... stomach. Thus hunger and thirst, whatever delight they may afford while we are eating and drinking, pass both away from us with the plate and the cup; and though we should imitate the Romans, if, indeed, they were such dull beasts, which I can scarce believe, to unload the belly like a dung-pot, in order to fill it again with another load, yet would the pleasure be so considerably lessened that it would scarce repay us the trouble ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... brilliant but indolent; the other though dull, industrious. They set out for the goal of fame with equal opportunities. Before they died the brilliant one was detected in seventy languages as the author of but two or three books of fiction and poetry, while the other was honoured in the Bureau of Statistics of his native land as ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... went back to her chair with a grave face, and for a while they sat again in silence. The fire was burning now a little dull, and about the room were sober shadows. John fell again to handling trifles from the work-basket and the drawer, lifting each to look at it carefully, and laying it ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... changed. He became alert and watchful. He had heard a dull splash. Thinking that some tree had been swept into the flood, he sought to pierce the darkness that lay along the shore. Five or six minutes passed as the raft glided along without sound. He was about to relapse into his former attitude of listless ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... their uncle's earnestness, felt even something of a hidden motive that he had; and the visit, usually rather dreaded, became the visit of their lives instead. It was Aunt Sophia this time who seemed discouraging and dull. ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... and British men in the prime of life have been miserably slain and lie in obscure graves of which the enemy now is the guardian, while others writhe in the agony of lingering wounds or sullenly brood over their fate in the dull routine of military prisons. In every part of the warring countries mothers weep over the sons they shall see no more, and wives over the husbands snatched from them forever. In many a mansion, in many a comfortable home, in many a peasant's cottage, the empty chair is eloquent ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... His eyes were dull, his forehead creased with wrinkles. He seemed to be reflecting and did not appear to reck that Suzanne was there so close to him, her ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... faculties, and for some time deprived me of the power of articulation. Fortunately, the person on the stage with me had to begin the scene, which allowed me time to collect myself. I went, however, mechanically dull through the business of the evening, and, notwithstanding the cheering expressions and applause of the audience, I was ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Diuny M'Divitt; He wore a most beautiful ring That were filed round his wrist wid a rivet. 'Twas the judge, shure, that sintinced him there, An' there all the boys wint til view him, For the jury considhered him dull At discernin' twixt "mayum" and "chuum." So fill up for the toast an' I'll give it: Here's a health ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... this human wretchedness was the elaborate work of one man—one dull, heartless bigot, living, far away, a life of laborious ease and solemn sensuality; and, in reality, almost as much removed from these fellow-creatures of his, whom he called his subjects, as if he had been the inhabitant of another planet. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... way toward the three-quarter mark, and still no sign of the sprightly stranger. Lights were gleaming behind the yellow shades of the downstairs window in the cottage; through the Japanese curtains enveloping the veranda a dull, restricted glow forced its way ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... entrance by the same means as before. He then went on to state that he remained in the Palace the whole of Tuesday night, all Wednesday, and up to one o'clock on Thursday morning, when the inquisitive youth was captured. He was not satisfied with this dull and prosaic account of his entry; but, on the following day, he tried to invent something marvellous, and alleged that he ascended the roof of the Palace, and got down the chimney; but there were no marks of soot on his person, and his first story ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... for they had learnt a great deal in France, while the English had forgotten much of what Alfred and his sons had taught them, and all through the long, sad reign of Ethelred had been getting more dull, and clumsy and rude. Moreover, they had learnt of the Danes to be sad drunkards; but both they and the Danes thought the Norman French fine gentlemen, and could not bear ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Militant if ever any one did, and dearly loved to belabor his enemies with the spiritual weapons too heavy for any but him to handle. Well, it was a temptation to let something fly, be it Bible or brickbat, at the head of the average dullard. How was it that some people did not find the average man dull? There was Winifred Anstice, for instance,—she seemed to find something interesting in every one she met. Perhaps because she did not try to approach them on the intellectual side at all, but took them into her sympathies and soothed their troubles, as he remembered ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Tim presently, "is a bit dull, if you ask me. I came out for some excitement. Let's ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... silent, looking down on her with dull, aching eyes, as he said to himself it was perhaps for the last time. It was the last time she would ever see him as her good son. With her, in her heart and memory, all his life dwelt; she knew the whole of it, with no break or interruption. Only this one hidden ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... you a little news from this side of the water, and then finish. As for us, we are plodding on in the dull road of peace and politics. We, who live in these ends of the earth, only hear of the rumors of war like the roar of distant thunder. It is to be hoped that our remote local situation will prevent us from being swept ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... allows us fine weather for the Regatta. "But when it du break up, after this yer logie [dull, hazy, calm] spell, look out!" ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... up with paper. There were only two people who pretended not to hear it, the gentleman who played the American organ and the lady who dreamt of going to Warsaw. When the neighbours asked them, he shrugged his shoulders, and she sighed and said: 'We should like to sell, it's dull living in the country, but my father in Warsaw has not yet ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... in safety, and the special was approaching a third, when to Ford, track-watching even more anxiously than Hector, a dull red spot appeared in the exact center of the white field of the electric. For a moment it puzzled him, but the explanation came with a vigorous shock an instant later. It was the oil-lamp headlight of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... lighthouse was enveloped in flames nearly to the bottom, for the outside planking, being caulked and covered with pitch, was very inflammable. The top glowed against the dark sky and looked in the midst of the smoke like a fiery meteor. The Eddystone Rock was suffused with a dull red light, as if it were becoming red hot, and the surf round it appeared to hiss against the fire, while in the dark shadow of the cave the three lighthouse keepers were seen cowering in terror,—as they well might, seeing that melted ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... and was grateful to you. I liked you for correcting my faults as a spoiled child, for enlarging my mind, for teaching me to appreciate all that is beautiful, elevated and noble; and all, too, in a joking way by making fun of everything that is ugly and worthless and of everything that is dull or mean and cowardly. You taught me how to play ball and how to endure being bored to death with imbeciles. I have to thank you for much of what I think about, for much of what I am and for a little of any good there is in me. I wanted to pay my debt with a true and lasting friendship, and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... sits all the evening, talking with daddy and looking at Elinor. Poor hand at talking, though,—so dull and heavy both in looks and words. I wonder what countryman he is. Very dark and thick-set. That doesn't seem like any country in particular. Captain Welles would know; for his father picked him up among the wharves in London, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... with a great cart-wheel of a Leghorn hat, drooping in all the right places, and wreathed with pink roses. She was a tall woman with a long neck, therefore could well wear such a hat; and it framed her head like an immense halo of dull gold. Her hair was brown with red lights in it, and her eyes were of exactly the same shade, the colour of ripe chestnuts. She had a beautiful short, rather square face, of a creamy paleness; a square, low forehead, straight dark brows, drawn ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... little scream of delight and cried "Oh!" and "How priceless!" and something that sounded like "Goblins!" But though Oscar looked hard at the curtains to find the goblins, he saw none. Then his eyes strayed over the polished floor and the dull-hued rugs, over ebony and ivory cabinets and stiff-backed chairs, to be fixed, finally, by a huge ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... with a dull intentness at the ground between his feet. "It's an old story, and the less said about it the better. I can't discuss it with you or any one. I think it was a pity you took the trouble to watch me ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... elevated points, looked round frequently to feast his eyes with the ever-changing landscape. Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound, the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads, shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks, were lost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... dear grandma is buried here;" remarked her sister, "and because of all those dear graves. Mamma, I do like those lessons I was speaking of, and so do Eddie and Vi; but Herbert and Meta and Harry don't; they say they think them very stupid and dull." ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... anything was pulling up on the bit and doing something or talking of doing something or other for the country. It was already assured that the season would be insufferably dull—from a social standpoint at least. Evelyn could not suppress a certain resentment. She was not one of those who had found an element of thrill in the suddenly altered perspectives. Her plans for the spring season had been laid; engagements ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... young girls have a dull time of it till they are married, when 'Vive la liberte!' becomes their motto. In America, as everyone knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... yourself,' he replied. 'And, Catherine, don't think or say that I'm very unwell: it is the heavy weather and heat that make me dull; and I walked about, before you came, a great deal for me. Tell uncle I'm in ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... she said presently, and as though en passant, "I have dismissed Tardif to-day—I hope you won't mind these dull domestic ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... His first "struggle of life" was apparently with ill-health, and the career he looked forward to was a speedy journey to another world. In a letter to a friend (November, 1772) he writes: "I am too dull and infirm now to look out for extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months have intimated to me not to expect a long or healthy life; though it may be better with me after some time; but I hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little spirit or elasticity ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... In the early morning he seemed to have more leisure; at that time, the happy young couple stood one each side of the nest, and the silent listener would hear the gentle murmurs of what Victor Hugo calls "the airy dialogues of the nest." Ah, that our dull ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... ever dull and idle," Said the boy, "no wisdom thou'lt attain to; See, I'll straightway paint for thee a figure,— How to paint a ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... been found. Vases, the Etruscan origin of which can not be disputed, have been found at Volterra, Tarquinii (Corneto), Perugia, Orvieto, Viterbo, Aquapendente, and other towns of ancient Etruria. The clay of which they are made is of a pale or reddish yellow, the varnish is dull, the workmanship rather rude, the ornaments are devoid of taste and elegance, and the style of the figures possesses all those characteristics already assigned to that of the Etruscans. The figures are drawn in black on the natural color of the clay; sometimes a little red is ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... say it has got about through Wild Rose,' he continued. 'She was immensely tickled when I told her. I'm afraid she must have been feeling rather dull all these days, by ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the roses out of her hair with impatience, "this is my son's work, not yours. But he will soon forget you. Eat this black bread if you are hungry, and refresh your dull mind with sleep. To-morrow you ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... was going to a match at lord's, and it looked rather dull, so mother told me I'd better take a gamp. I said it wasn't going to rain, and took my cane, but I had just got on the top of a bus when down came the rain in bucketfuls and I tell you I was ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... them thus early to pass a right judgment upon persons and things, and to inform themselves of the abilities or defects of their countrymen. If they had not an answer ready to the question, Who was a good or who an ill-reputed citizen? they were looked upon as of a dull and careless disposition, and to have little or no sense of virtue and honor; besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said, and in as few words and as comprehensive as might be; he that failed of this, or ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... strongly, so frank and boyish and lovable were his glances and his words. But she was vaguely afraid of herself, and though the long ride at the moment seemed hard and dull, the thought of her mother waiting ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... 732. "He will find all, or most of them, comprized in the Exercises."—British Gram., Pref., p. v. "A quick and ready habit of methodising and regulating their thoughts."—Ib., p. xviii. "To tyrannise over the time and patience of his reader."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. iii. "Writers of dull books, however, if patronised at all, are rewarded beyond their deserts."—Ib., p. v. "A little reflection, will show the reader the propriety and the reason for emphasising the words marked."—Ib., p. 163. "The English ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... quite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then. It had begun in fact already upstairs and before the dressing glass that struck him as blocking further, so strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long time been moved to make. He had during those moments felt these elements to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and then had fallen back on ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... is the longest number on the programme. I would dearly love the next number, also, but I must not make the evening too dull and prosy for you. Will you trust me to select your partner for ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... kept in mind in caring for the plants, and every effort made to secure, as far as possible, the first named conditions and to avoid the latter. The frames, whether they be covered with sash or cloth, but more particularly if with sash in sunshine and with curtains in dull days, should be opened so as to prevent their becoming too hot, and so as to admit air. And in a greenhouse full ventilation should be given whenever it is possible to do so without exposure to too low a temperature. If the plants are in boxes and on greenhouse shelves, it is ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... of the barrow and started forward resolutely. As I rounded the curve of the alley, a densely-packed throng appeared ahead. Faces turned towards me and broke into grins; the murmur rose into a dull roar, and, as the people drew aside to make way for me, I plunged into the heart of the throng and raised my voice in a ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... candid, far from being a clever fellow, is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature—opaque, not luminous—in a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... up with the best, who well deserves a halter: though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his observance of the golden rule, 'Do as you would be done by', but are considered ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... hock, but not too high—barely the slender shankbone. Then go all over the ham with a dull knife, scraping off every bit of removable grease or soilure. Wipe afterward with a coarse, damp cloth, then lay in a dishpan and cover an inch deep with cold water. If the water is very hard soften by adding a tiny pinch of baking soda. Leave in soak all night. In the morning ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... surprising. One is disposed to say on occasion, "That boy of yours is a genius, and he is certain to do great things when he grows up;" but past experience has taught us that he invariably becomes quite an ordinary citizen. It is so often the case, on the contrary, that the dull boy becomes a great man. You never can tell. Nature loves to present to us these queer paradoxes. It is well known that those wonderful "lightning calculators," who now and again surprise the world by their feats, lose all their mysterious powers directly they are taught the elementary ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... will never tell the story! Being English, you were such dull-witted fools that you did not even hide the cartridge cases, or the bones of the Masai you shot! Bah-ha-ha-ha-hah! You can escape hanging yet by telling your secret. Jail you can not escape! Try it if you don't believe me! Try ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of dull despair, and so manifest was his lack of ginger and the spirit that wins to success that for an instant, I confess, I felt a bit stymied. It seemed hopeless to go on trying to steam up such a human jellyfish. Then I saw the way. With that extraordinary ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... these isolated lumps of limestone hewn out into high points, with steep cliffs, not to the windward, but to the leeward? What made the steep cliff at the south end of Punta Grande, on which a mangrove swamp now abuts? No trade-surf, no current capable of doing that work, has disturbed the dull waters of the 'Golfo Triste,' as the Spaniards named the Gulf of Paria, since the land was of anything like its present shape. And gradually we began to dream of a time when the Bocas did not exist; when the Spanish Main was joined to the northern mountains of the island by dry land, now ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... A dull, damp November day was losing itself in the sombre twilight, when Edward Claire left the store of Mr. Melleville, and took his way homeward. An errand for his wife led him past his old place of business. As he moved along the street, opposite, he noticed a new sign over ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... a river, Close beside a frozen river, Sat an old man, sad and lonely. White his hair was as a snow-drift; Dull and low his fire was burning, And the old man shook and trembled, Folded in his Waubewyon, In his tattered white-skin-wrapper, Hearing nothing but the tempest As it roared along the forest, Seeing nothing but the snow-storm, As it whirled and hissed and drifted. All the coals were white with ashes, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... laid 'em from chair to chair, so 's everybody had a seat; 'n' then, 's folks come in, he had Billy hand 'em each a fan with his advertisement on one side 'n' two rows o' readin' on the other, so 's no one got dull waitin'. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank; you must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering about with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no fear of cold, for in a few moments you feel ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... could quite easily recognize Sabine. Nothing could be simpler, and there would be no scandal, and he would be sure of things one way or the other. It was only necessary to stay where he was. Among all the confused feelings which had been agitating him he now merely felt a dull need of certain knowledge. But sheer weariness and vacancy began lulling him to sleep under his doorway, and by way of distraction he tried to reckon up how long he would have to wait. Sabine was to be at the station toward nine o'clock; that meant about four hours and a half more. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... rather than in the science itself; for it would be unreasonable to suppose that a subject which occupies the earliest attention of the parent, which is acquired at great expense of money, time, and thought, and is employed from the cradle to the grave, in all our waking hours, can possibly be dull or unimportant, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... trapped, an' so he went out under the plum tree, where the stun was, an' begun t' turn. The scythe was dull an' the young feller bore on harder'n wuz reely decent fer a long time. Rat begun ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... allow our time to be taken up by all the dull-heads who come and offer their services. But now you and I have to talk, and talk very ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... not over-cheerfully, of what you shall do when you get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of making one more in the ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about the cliffs, and sands, and quays; to whom every wharf is but a "wharf of Lethe," by which they rot "dull as the oozy weed." You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade and down another, interminable ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... first time she had entered this bedroom. Just married, in the full flush of her new-found happiness, it had all seemed so beautiful, so ideal. The dull pink color scheme, so chaste and delicate, the gracefully carved furniture, so luxurious and elegant, the cupids flying above the massive beautifully carved bed, a veritable bower of love—all this seemed only a realization of her girlhood ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... too, the sky was dull and gloomy. The Puritans were in no greater favour than they had been, though the Papists were at the lowest ebb. That there was any inconsistency in their conduct did not apparently occur to the authorities, nor that the true way to repress Popery was by cultivating Puritanism. Believing ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... conflict, it would seem, can make no impression upon him save it be colossal. When his men combat, not nature, but other men, they carry over into the business the gigantic method of sailors battling with a tempest. "The Secret Agent" and "Under Western Eyes" fill the dull back streets of London and Geneva with pursuits, homicides and dynamitings. "Nostromo" is a long record of treacheries, butcheries and carnalities. "A Point of Honor" is coloured by the senseless, insatiable ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... worked upon the redoubt which had been located under counsel of Gridley, Prescott, Knowlton, and other officers, the dull thud of the pickaxe and the grating of shovels were the only sounds that disturbed the pervading silence, except as the sentries' "All's well!" from Copp's Hill and from the warships, relieved anxiety and stimulated work. Prescott and Putnam alike, and more than once, visited the beach, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... into Julia's face a wave of colour—not the pink of pleasure, but the dull red of pain. She looked away from Sadie's eyes and down at her shabby boots. The sullen look was in her ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... half-way house where one comes to rest a little between two prolonged absences; it isn't a good place to stay. As it has no soul, it does not speak to yours. Time to eat and sleep, and then off again! Otherwise you become as dull ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... divergence between Moslem and Christian feeling. Rajah Dris lives in a good house, but it is Europeanized, and consequently vulgarized. He received us very politely on the stairs, and took us into a sitting- room in which there were various ill-assorted European things. His senior wife was brought in, a dull, heavy-looking woman, a daughter of the Rajah Muda Yusuf, and after her a number of slave women and babies, till the small room was well filled. The Rajah hospitably entertained us with tea, milk, and preserved ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... own advantage, and for protection against oppression, and strikes may, though in very rare cases, be a painful necessity. It must be borne in mind that there can be no fixed standard of wages. Wages must vary with the state of the markets. Men must be ready to accept lower wages when trade is dull, they must bear their share of the depression as well as the masters, and the true principle is for men and masters, or if you like the expression better, capital and labour to go hand in hand. The success or ruin of the one is the success or ruin of the other. There are of course cases of grasping ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... known by the great Captain Cook. It was in the standing orders of the ship, that on every fine day the deck below and the cockpits should be cleared, washed, aired with stoves, and sprinkled with vinegar. On wet and dull days they were cleaned and aired without washing. Care was taken to prevent the people from sleeping upon deck, or lying down in their wet clothes; and once in every fortnight or three weeks, as ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... Temple of Solomon could not have been more grand. She could scarcely believe Mrs. Delano was wealthy. "She's a beautiful lady," said she to Flora; "but if she's got plenty o' money, what makes her dress so innocent and dull? There's Missy Rosy now, when she's dressed for company, she looks ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... sound,—a dull reverberating sound. It seemed to Miss Terry to come from neither north, south, east, nor west, but from a different world. Ah! She recognized it now. It was somebody knocking on ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... command of themselves, and, forgetting how to behave, sought to please God with strange and childish gestures. On the other hand, Fabri noted some who stood quite unmoved, and merely mocked at the strange display: dull, unprofitable souls he calls them, brute beasts, not having the spirit of God. Their self-contained temperament misliked him, especially as thereafter they held aloof from those who had given way to such enthusiasm or, as they felt ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... wool fibre, says with regard to boiling with water. "Wool which looked quite bright when well washed with tepid water, was decidedly duller when kept for some time in water at a temperature of 160 deg. F., and the same wool, when subjected to boiling water at 212 deg. F., became quite dull and lustreless. When tested for strength, the same fibres which carried on the average 500 grains without breaking before boiling, after boiling would not bear more than 480 grains." Hence this third enemy ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... if I do," he grumbled. "I have lost some money; the stock market is very dull. And nobody is buying real estate. I—I am quite at my wits' ends, I assure ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... exaggeration:—"The past week has been the calmest which we have had since the revolution. We have had no forced illuminations, no planting of trees of liberty, no physical-force demonstrations, no great display of any kind; in fact, we have been decidedly dull. But in some parts of the city, our sovereign lord and master, the Mob, has been graciously pleased to afford us a little interesting excitement by bullying the landlords into giving receipts for their rents, without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... asserting that the Government should be required to bring over consignments of perfectly trained Indian cooks, and thus trim the balance between dining room and kitchen; and to the other Mrs. Gradinger, a gaunt, ill-dressed lady in spectacles, with a commanding nose and dull, wispy hair, was proclaiming in a steady metallic voice, that it was absolutely necessary to double the school rate at once in order to convert all the girls and some of the boys as well, into perfectly ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... copy-holder, his page. Cerizet's intelligence naturally interested David; he won the lad's affection by procuring amusements now and again for him, and comforts from which he was cut off by poverty. Nature had endowed Cerizet with an insignificant, rather pretty little countenance, red hair, and a pair of dull blue eyes; he had come to Angouleme and brought the manners of the Parisian street-boy with him. He was formidable by reason of a quick, sarcastic turn and a spiteful disposition. Perhaps David looked less strictly after him ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... with something like excitement to the window. 'Twas but seldom he had chance to tell his story, and 'twas a thing he dearly loved to do, life being but a dull thing at the Cow at Wickben, and few travellers passing that way. A pair so friendly and gay and ready to hearken to his chatter as these two he ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... indignant Bard composed this furious ode, As tired he dragg'd his way thro' Plimtree road![27:2] Crusted with filth and stuck in mire Dull sounds the Bard's bemudded lyre; Nathless Revenge and Ire the Poet goad 5 To pour ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... heard footsteps approaching, Then came a peculiar dull thump, As if some one was heavily striking An ax in the top of a stump; And then, in another brief moment, There came a light tap on the door, When quickly I undid the fast'ning, And in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... and independence, which aided Nat so much in his studies, enabled him to perform this act. An irresolute, dull, stupid, inefficient youth, would not have braved the current of feeling that had set against the girls. In this way it is, that the leading elements of character hitherto discussed assist a youth in all circumstances. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... apprehension in the mother's voice did not dull the gleam in Thorpe's eyes. He even began a smile in the shadows of his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... along the harbor-road in the direction of the palace, and the jostling crowd respectfully made way for them to pass. The gleams of festal splendor seemed interwoven with the laborious bustle on the quay like scraps of gold thread in a dull work-a-day garment. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "If people cannot travel in drawing-rooms, why do they travel at all?" The safety of his nine hundred dollars worried him; he knelt up to look in the inside pocket of his jacket, and bumped his head, a dull, solid bump. Pale golden stars, shaped like the enlarged pictures of snow-flakes, streamed across his consciousness. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... past and gone. Somehow the sun does not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in Arcadia ego,—I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... large. Confinement and hard labour is what most of them need; for the majority of them in this particular Siberian prison are not revolutionists, offenders against the government, sent there for some petty or trumped-up charge, but cold-blooded murderers, fiendishly cruel assassins, wife-beaters, dull, degraded brutes. But the regime, as our novelist describes it, does not improve them; the officers are as brutal as the men, and the floggings do not make for spiritual culture. One cannot wish, after reading the book, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... on one side, and by the final terrace running to the basement wall on the other. Here and there along the wall gigantic brazen pots sat, filled with evergreens, whose color seemed to have gradually dropped down and entered into the marble beneath them. The bronze had stained with rich, dull green each pedestal and irregular sections of the marble ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... entrusted to his care. "Now," said he to himself, "will I repose At least this burthen on a brother's breast." His brother stood before him. He, amazed, Reared suddenly his head, and thus began: "Is it thou, brother! Tamar, is it thou! Why, standing on the valley's utmost verge, Lookest thou on that dull and dreary shore Where many a league Nile blackens all the sand. And why that sadness? when I passed our sheep The dew-drops were not shaken off the bar; Therefore if one be wanting 'tis untold." "Yes, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... without replying. The fire within him had burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He had failed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for God to answer his prayer.—But his waiting was not to be an inert lingering in the place where ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and so had an overcurious sentry who peeped just an inch too far above a parapet. A shell had burst in a trench, knocking the telephone connection out of gear and half burying a squad of sleepers under a lot of earth. Otherwise, things were drowsily dull. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... said as much for me, but I reflected that I had not been two hundred years old to begin with, and consoled myself as I could in my consciousness that I was really not so young by twenty odd years as I once was. Yet I think it must be a dull and churlish nature which would wish to refuse the gentle contemporaneity offered by the unaging antiquity at Hampton Court. I should at this moment be glad to share the youthful spirit of the sunken garden which I passed on my way to the famous vine, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... contain neither more nor less than five acts? Or hath any one living attempted to explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by that word low; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all humour from the stage, and have made the theatre as dull as a drawing-room! Upon all these occasions the world seems to have embraced a maxim of our law, viz., cuicunque in arte sua perito credendum est: for it seems perhaps difficult to conceive that any one should have had enough of impudence to lay down dogmatical rules in any art ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... had not needed to take any precautions against hearing anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... long, dull hours wore on—how long and how dull only prisoners know. But noon came at last, and with it came Sarah, carrying a second tray. Mollie was on the watch for the door to open. She had some vague idea of making a ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of the peasant alone, until I enter ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... play makes Jack a dull boy. And it is this same lack of play that produces so many dull men and women; for the spirit of play is the spirit of youth and spontaneity and joy. Yet work and play have so much in common that it seems unfortunate indeed that all of us have not learned to retain our youth ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... don't know when this letter will go. I shall send it by the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then. It is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be glad to read all these dull details. We heard Mass on Easter Day. All the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I could hardly keep my legs. If I had dared, I think I should have had myself lashed fast. I shall not soon forget ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... perhaps it may have been the original of those caricatures of our compatriots by which French comic artists have sought to avenge Waterloo. It was stiff, haughty, contemptuous. It had prominent front teeth, a high nose, a long upper lip, a receding jaw; it had dull, cold, stupid, selfish green eyes, like a pike's, that swerved neither to right nor left, but looked steadily over peoples' heads as it stalked along in its pride ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the great attraction of the season! And his mind was filled visions of overflowing houses and showers of gold. Alas! if the representations went beyond the single one of Vautrin, they did not exceed twenty; and his share of profits was insignificant. The play is not dull to read, with its flavour of Moliere's comedies, and the keenness of Balzac's observation. But its colour and poesy do not compensate for the diffuseness of the plot and ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... acquainted the Wazir with all the kindness and good turns which the Stoker had done him; and he found that the wight had waxed fat and burly with rest and good fare, so that his neck was like an elephant's throat and his face like a dolphin's belly. Moreover, he was grown dull of wit, for that he had never stirred from his place; so at first he knew not the King by his aspect. But Zau al-Makan came up to him smiling in his face, and greeted him after the friendliest fashion, saying, "How ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fender-stool of dull red velvet, her hands clasped about her knees, her head raised in expectation. A dress of softly flowing white silk, and a single row of pearls at her throat, intensified her fragile freshness, as of a lily of the field, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the maze passed from me. I had but been stunned by the fall from my horse, and now seemed little the worse, save for sickness and dull weight of weariness. I had been an hour or two thus, as it would seem, for now the Danish host was gone, and only a few men sought for friends on that hillside, as Thrand had sought for me. My horse was dead, slain by the spear thrust that made him rear. It was that one which Earl Wulfnoth ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... her a spoke or two in silence; his eye, as it skirted from the needle to the luff of the foresail, passed the man by without speculation. But Huish was really dull, a thing he could support with difficulty, having no resources of his own. The idea of a private talk with Herrick, at this stage of their relations, held out particular inducements to a person of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always wanted to do something of the kind," says Auntie. "True, I may not look like that sort of a person, and I suppose that I do lead rather a dull, commonplace existence. Not from choice, however. Once I was ship-wrecked in the Mediterranean, and I found it a thrilling experience. Also I once spent nearly a week on a snow-bound train in the Rockies; I would ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope lay dull, dead, lusterless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous congress, coming and going in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... light of two brilliant flashes illuminated the night for a moment: then two deafening reports, that could be produced only by a weapon of heavy calibre. So easy to pick out the dull thunder roar from those other crackling splutterings that followed ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... upward, forgot time and danger, while she reveled in the wonder of the forestland. Birds and squirrels fled before her; whistling and wheezing of alarm, or heavy crashings in the bushes, told of frightened wild beasts. A dull, faint roar, like a distant wind, suggested tumbling waters. A single birch tree, gleaming white among the black trees, enlivened the gloomy forest. Patches of sunlight brightened the shade. Giant ferns, just tinging with autumn colors, waved tips ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... of the forest and stood knee deep in discoloured ferns, listening. The sombre beech-woods spread thick on either hand, a wilderness of crossed limbs and meshed branches to which still clung great clots of dull ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife is ground upon a wheel, the sparks fly fast from the edge held down upon the swiftly-revolving emery disc, but that is the only way to sharpen the dull blade. Friction, often very severe friction, and heat are indispensable to polish the shaft and turn the steel into a mirror that will flash back the sunshine. So when God holds us to His grindstone, it is to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... solace only in making his mind a blank. Sullen, dull, he watched the sunset, watched the bellying cumulus clouds mimic the Grand Canyon. He had to see the Grand Canyon! He would!... He had turned the corner. His clammy heart was warming. He was slowly coming to understand that he was actually free ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Margrave. He had heard with surprise, and still greater joy, that Lord Elmwood had once more shut his doors against his daughter. In this her discarded state, he no longer burthened his lively imagination with the dull thoughts of marriage, but once more formed the idea ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... she exclaimed. "And it was you who first showed me the way. Who showed me how common and dull and unambitious I had been all my life? Think what leaving here would mean to me. What would Miss Dusante think? I had almost arranged to take dancing lessons of her. Think of Mr. Holway. Is there a young man like him in Trumet? Think ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... novel effect was shown some time ago in the Vitagraph Company's production of Arthur Stringer's story, "Mortmain." Just as Mortmain was put under ether the scene proper faded out, giving place to a dull blur in which the faces of the doctor and his attendants were brought right up to the lens of the camera and then withdrawn for several feet, the action being extremely rapid, and being repeated several times, by means of the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... intensely calm and still character that invariably accompanies intense frost, so that the merry jingle of the sleigh-bells that struck on Mr. Kennedy's listening ear continued to sound, and grow louder as they drew near, for a considerable time ere the visitors arrived. Presently the dull, soft tramp of horses' hoofs was heard in the snow, and a well-known voice shouted out lustily, "Now then, Mactavish, keep to the left. Doesn't the road take a turn there? Mind the gap in the fence. That's old Kennedy's only fault. He'd rather risk breaking ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... man from that of the Ballads: as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791. As a whole, The Excursion is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy its ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... flushed cheeks and sparkling black eyes proof of an excitement all too great for one in her frail health. She had the unusual gift of relating in an easy, simple way what she read; and many a book far too abstruse and dull for my boyish taste became an absorbing story from her lips. One of her chief characteristics was the love of flowers. I can scarcely recall her when a flower of some kind, usually a rose, was not within her reach; and only periods of great ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... her. But as she drowsed she thought of the article he had written about her Margaret, and it was the desire to read it again that awoke her. Stretching out her hand, she took it from the table at her bedside and began reading. He liked the dull green dress she wore in the first act; and the long braids of golden hair which he admired were her own. He had mentioned them and the dark velvet cape, which he could not remember whether she wore or carried. As a ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to a fourth year of exile and of school. Her mind was at once made up. Since the morning—how long ago it seemed!—an ardent wish to return to England had begun to glow in her imagination. She wanted her real life to begin. These dull, monotonous school-days were only a prelude which had gone on long enough. Therefore she said, with brief consideration, that her choice would be to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... alongside of him. But there,—it's all over now! I wouldn't have let on a word to you only I couldn't bear to take YOUR THANKS for it, and I couldn't bear to have you thinking me a brute for dodgin' them." He stopped, walked to the fire, leaned against the chimney under the shallow pretext of kicking the dull embers into a blaze, which, however, had only the effect of revealing his two glistening eyes as he turned back again and came towards her. "Well," he said, with an ineffectual laugh, "it's all over now, it's all in the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... must be known thoroughly—that is his first care; the movement of her mind is to be watched at work in all the ardour and the poverty of her imagination. How she creates her makeshift romances, how she feeds on them, how they fail her—it is all part of the picture. And then there is the dull and limited world in which her appetite is somehow to be satisfied, the small town that shuts her in and cuts her off; this, too, is to be rendered, and in order to make it clearly tell beside the figure of Emma it must be as distinct and individual, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... enable it to act in all the occurrences of life, in the way in which our reason enables us to act. Again, by means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and brutes. For it is highly deserving of remark, that there are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood; and that on the other hand, there ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... in the prospect of meeting you in Paris; yet I fear that you will find it dull. All that I hear from the great town shows me that never, at least during the last two hundred years, has intellectual life been ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... it from her. No! She must find another way. There must be a way out if she were only quick enough to see it—some way by which she could cover up his disgrace so that none should know of it. There was a way—surely there was a way! Ronnie's dull stare became intolerable. She went ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... scene that the island presented, slumbering langorously under the brilliant rays of the tropical moon, more enchanting in some respects than when viewed in the garish light of the sun; and so strong was the enticement of its beauty upon me that, but for the dull cramping influence of the doctrines accepted by the settlers upon which to frame the guiding rules of their lives, I could without very much difficulty have reconciled myself to the idea of a sojourn there for ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... been for many generations of boys a book even more terrible than Caesar's Commentaries or the Aeneid of Virgil—the dull thud of a mysterious cudgel upon the shoulders of youth which you bore as ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... stopped immediately in front of the place, where the scratching noise continued to grow worse and worse, and said in a strong solemn voice, such as I had never before heard from his lips, "Daniel, Daniel! what are you doing here at this hour?" Then there was a horrible unearthly scream, followed by a dull thud as if a heavy weight had fallen to the ground. "Seek for pardon and mercy at the throne of the Almighty; that is your place. Away with you from the scenes of this life, in which you can nevermore have part." And as the old gentleman uttered these words ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of how to proceed. The first three slices came off readily enough, though they were somewhat ragged, and Irving was aware that Westby was surveying his operations with a critical interest. The knife seemed to grow more dull, the meat more wobbly, more tough, the bone got more and more in the way; the maid who was passing the vegetables was waiting, all the boys except the three who had been helped first were waiting, coldly critical, anxiously ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... the most cheerful things in this world. Some one has remarked "that to be well-dressed gives a feeling of satisfaction that religion fails to give;" but to us, to sit before a blazing wood fire on a dull, cold evening, gives a feeling of comfort and delight which surpasses anything we know of. What charming companionship in a wood fire! Better than the company of ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... coachmaker's shop, and the little balcony upon which I had stood with my grandfather, and railed in a boyish tenor at Mr. Hood. The sun cast sharp, black shadows. And it being the middle of the dull season, when the quality were at their seats, and the dinner-hour besides, the town might have been a deserted one for its stillness, as tho' the inhabitants had walked out of it, and left it so. I made my way, Banks behind me, into Church ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... irrelevant episodes would be less reprehensible were it not that such episodes are for the most part either dull or a fresh excuse for bombast or (worse still) a display of erudition.[296] He devotes no less than 170 lines in the first book to a description of the prodigies that took place at Rome on the outbreak of the Civil War, and of the rites performed ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. 'How long, O Lord, how long?' were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable passion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very early in the morning. From the streets, far below, a dull rumbling was drifting in at the small, dim windows. On the couch, behind some faded curtains, a man turned and yawned, grunted and rubbed his eyes. The noise of the heavy timber, stone, and merchandise wagons hastening out of the city before daybreak,[25] jarred the room, and made ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... thought Gluck, "that my brothers never ask anybody to dinner. I'm sure, when they have such a nice piece of mutton as this, it would do their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them." Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up. "It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... station he had a foreboding of the truth. "Aunt Mary is dead?" ... "Not dead yet, but unconscious, and there is no hope. This morning when Susan was in the breakfast-room, waiting for her sister, she heard a stamping overhead, followed by a dull, heavy thud, and on rushing upstairs found Mary stretched on the floor and moaning, but unconscious. She has been put to bed and attended by doctors; but there is nothing to be done, and they say that she does not suffer." Mournfully my husband ascended alone, in the dark ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... her smile and found utterance upon her lips. I could have died at her word, happy to know it was her pleasure. Yet, as I know now, all the love-making between us was no more than play to her; she merely sought to amuse herself with my passion through a dull season. No, not quite all, for back of her smiles lurked a purpose so dark, so diabolical, 'twas not strange I failed to fathom it. 'Tis hard to associate crime with such young womanhood, to feel that evil thoughts lurk behind eyes soft with love and lips breathing tenderness. Yet behind the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... I suppose," he told her, and his voice was dull and tired. After a minute he looked up at her impatiently. "Is it fun to stand and watch a man—What do you want, anyway? It ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... With a loud wail I threw myself upon the corpse. The people came running round us, but as soon as the dreaded cry 'The pestilence! the pestilence!' was heard, they scattered and flew apart in terror. At the same moment I was seized by a dull numbing pain, and my senses ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... everlasting misery into that pit that has no bottom; yea, it turneth again, and, as with a hammer, it riveteth every fearful thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be loosed again for ever and ever. Alas! now the conscience can sleep, be dull, be misled, or batter, no longer; no, it must now cry out; understanding will make it, memory will make it, fancy or imagination will make it. Now, I say, it will cry out of sin, of justice, and of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up that has lost ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and adventured into democracy, Milt was in the garage. He wore union overalls that were tan where they were not grease-black; a faded blue cotton shirt; and the crown of a derby, with the rim not too neatly hacked off with a dull toad-stabber jack-knife. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... moreover, of German extraction) regarded herself as a woman of sentiment; she lived in constant fear of something, never seemed to have had quite enough to eat, and wore tight velvet gowns, a turban, and dull bracelets of hollow metal. Varvara Pavlovna, the only daughter of Pavel Petrovitch and Kalliope Karlovna, had just passed her seventeenth birthday when she came out of the * * * Institute, where she had been considered, if not the greatest beauty, certainly the cleverest girl ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Esop, though a Phrygian, rose, And ev'n derived from Scythian snows; If Anacharsis could devise By wit to gain th' immortal prize; Shall I, who to learn'd Greece belong, Neglect her honour and her song, And by dull sloth myself disgrace? Since we can reckon up in Thrace, The authors that have sweetest sung, Where Linus from Apollo sprung; And he whose mother was a muse, Whose voice could tenderness infuse To solid rocks, strange monsters quell'd, And ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... Mr. Barbour, "to get rid of a dull home, you are determined to fly in the face of fate, and are going to Washington after a husband. Ah! Miss Ellen, beware of these young men that have nothing but their whiskers and their epaulettes. Let me tell you of a young friend of mine, who would marry the man ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... both ends meet, and there were drilled into his character many good lessons of plain commonsense—a rather unusual equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... broad arches across the track. The still summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere—the sweet ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the bureau had many pretty silver ornaments, but they were dull and shabby, and Margaret had to get the silver polish and a bit of chamois and make them shine before they could go on the fresh bureau-cover the aunt put on, and she was given a bit of velvety stuff to tuck in a corner of a drawer, ready to use every day or two, ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... feel a sort of all-overishness, a kind of lassitude and sleepiness, with a slight headache, and a dull pain which appears to be creeping up ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... valuable was lost. The insurance companies paid me enough to replace every damage, and the office was renewed better than before. The Lord sends me business enough to pay for my debts, yet others are dull. I cannot tell why it is, except that I always pray for my business, and ask the Lord to bless it for the good of others, and that the means which come from it may be used for his cause. When I stop giving, business stops coming. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... red and green hills, was dull and warm till the cool morning easter, which usually set about eight a.m., began to blow. The effect of increasing altitude showed itself in the vegetation. We now saw for the first time the Kidd (Astragalus), ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... departure. He heard his feet move heavily to the gate, and the dull clang of the latter closing behind him. Then, after a protracted pause, there came the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... sigh of relief, and he went on in a new voice, a dull, business-like voice if I may so ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... gave them the lie by arranging a first-class murder straight away,' said George, with a shrug. 'But why everybody should be in such a state I can't see. The palace is like an undertaker's establishment when business is dull. The only person who seems at all ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the chief, followed by his two attendants, stepped within. The door was closed again. Then Little Black Fox signed to Wanaha for a light. The squaw took the oil-lamp from a shelf and lit it, and the dull, yellow rays revealed the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... dear Bristles. In spite of all efforts to assume an intellectual expression, the donkey, depend upon it, preponderates—the long visage, the dull eyes, the crooked legs—it is impossible to perceive any grace in such a wretched animal. I can't help thinking that if it had been a young girl you had brought me—say, a sleeping nymph—full of youth and beauty, 'twould have been a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and woods, All still and silent—far and near! Only the Ass, with motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turns round his long left ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... He began to like this. A young man must find pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is; and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation with a girl whom ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... safety so much disturbed his repose, that if he did but drop into an instant's slumber he started from it in a vague fright. So the small hours of the morning wore on and brought the dull, drizzly, wintry daylight. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... omit all facts that are non-essential: To Havre we were bound, and passengers there were four of us, Three men and a lady—not an individual more of us. The month was July, the weather warm and hazy, The sea smooth as glass, the winds asleep or lazy. Dull times of course, for the sea, though favorable to the mind's expansion, Yet keeps the body confined to a very few feet of stanchion. Our employments were nought save eating, drinking and sleeping, Excepting the lady, who a diary was keeping. She was a very pleasant person ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... broad-minded statesman. His sermons on special occasions, as at Thanksgiving and on public anniversaries, were noted for their directness and power in dealing with the greater moral questions before the people. On the other hand, there was a saying then current, "Dull as Dr. Bacon when he's nothing but the Gospel to preach"; but this, like so many other smart sayings, was more epigrammatic than true: even when I heard him preach religious doctrines in which I did not at all believe, he seemed to me to show ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff. It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead. Gradually the heavy atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind blew smartly from ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... sense characteristic—it illustrated, that is to say, the best side of his character. "Believe me," were the words of the dying King, "that I have always been a religious man." It may be admitted, in justice to William, that according to his generally dull and often confused and hazy lights he did always recognize the standard, higher than that of mere expediency, or political compromise, or personal convenience, set up to regulate the conduct even ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... reigned—creeping in upon us with such pictures as we painted under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend to leave the beaten ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... sea—it is the same. I look around, and perceive men and women moving mechanically about me; I even take part in their proceedings, and seem to float along the tardy current upon which they swim, and become a part—an insignificant portion—of the dull and stagnant scene; and yet, often and often, in the busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, or some festivity from which Mora had left him out because of the scandal caused by his last adventure. And his anxiety augmented when, after crossing the court of honor amid the tumult of slamming carriage-doors and a constant, dull rumbling on the gravel, he had ascended the steps and found himself in the vast reception-room filled to overflowing with a great throng who were allowed to pass none of the inner doors, but whose anxious steps centred about the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that under a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new life, material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley had not wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of William Pitt roused it ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the early miniature "heads" of her Majesty in the little dull red stamp! These myths ranged from the panic that the adhesive gum caused cancer in the tongue, to the romance that a desperate young lady was collecting a huge supply of used stamps for the purpose of papering a room of untold dimensions. This feat was the single stipulation ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... have gone if he had had any idea what a wonderful service it was going to be. If he had even dreamed that Jesus would be there, of course he would not have missed it; but he expected the meeting to be a very dull affair. He felt confident that whoever else was there that there would be no Christ. He expected that Peter and James and John and the rest would meet there and talk of a glorious past that had gone forever. He would have said, "Yes, I know what they will say. They will ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... at once he was conscious of the flashing of two lights and the dull rattle of wheels coming through the deep sand of ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... scarf knotted about his hips. The high priest dismissed the subject of the sacrilege from his mind, now that his nephew was dead. The people of Memphis who knew Kenkenes mourned with Mentu; the festivities were dull without him, and there were some, like Io and the Lady Senci, who went into retirement and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... asked to take part in such a quarrel. He could not himself even act to the best advantage unless he knew the truth . . . he took the letter from the envelope and held it before the lamp, the paper fluttering as though in a breeze from the trembling of his hand. Leonard looked on, the dull glare of his eyes brightening with malignant pleasure as he beheld the other's concern. He owed him a grudge, and by God he would pay it. Had he not been struck—throttled—called a liar! . ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... inserting itself in everything near it, as if it were fire. The effects of philosophy, however, are different according to the difference of inclinations in men. If indeed it lights on one who loves a dull and inactive sort of life, that makes himself the centre and the little conveniences of life the circumference of all his thoughts, such a one does contract the sphere of her activity, so that having only made easy and comfortable the life ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... just making out where his cousin sat when there was a flash like sheet-lightning running along the upper part of the canvas, reaching from end to end. He felt himself thrust violently back, as he seemed to be struck with something heavy and soft; then there was a deep, dull report, as of thunder, and all was dark, while from where the marquee had stood there came wild shrieks, cries for help, and a strange babel of sounds, which, issuing from beneath what in the darkness looked like a chaotic sea, were for the most ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... tied up in the bush. One of them I could get with perfect safety. I ran round the end of the store and into the thicket, keeping on soft grass to dull my tread. There, tied up to a merula tree, were two of the finest beasts I had seen in Africa. I selected the better, an Africander stallion of the blaauw-schimmel, or blue-roan type, which is famous for speed and endurance. Slipping his bridle from the branch, I led him a little way ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... prevent her. He did several things and he ordered Peter and Ann to do a good many others, but all of them felt glad the False Hare was not there to compliment them on their seamanship. At last there came a dull shock and a jar, and the Merry Mouser ran her nose into a sand-bar, quivered all ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... thousand thanks," the voice cried, passionately. "To be looked upon as 'dead,' to be near to the rascal who smiles to think that I am in my grave.... And everything so dull and prosaic on the surface! Yes, I have friends who will aid me in the business. Some day I may be able to thank you face to face, to tell you how I managed to see ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... new 'sound' books that I have met are just what my mother and sister like—either dull, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was not at all as I had pictured it. We were now on those great plains which stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The country was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich and various, and breathed an elegance peculiar to itself. The tall corn pleased the eye; the trees were graceful in themselves, and framed ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lived and still live who write for what they call fame! —For my part I write for more substantial food—beef and mutton are the objects of my ambition." —Reynold's Preface to Begone Dull Care.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... I disgust you with this very dull narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford. Indeed the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... hall-table; there was something unconquerable, sumptuous, genial, undaunted yet about the man. He had the courtesy of a prince, this poor American who had lived by the exercise of his sharper wits on his neighbor's dull ones, if report said rightly. And yet Anderson, as he sat opposite Carroll, and they were both smoking in a comrade-like fashion, doubted. There was something in the man's face which seemed to belie the theory that he was a calculating knave. His face was keen, but not cunning, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... must run," Mrs. Lawrence recalled herself to say suddenly. "But why won't you and Miss Lord run up to see Chrissy for a few moments, Miss Brown? The poor kiddy is frightfully dull. And you'll be here in the morning as usual, Miss Lord? That's ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... clouds had now spread over the horizon—except to the southward, where it was still clear, and from which a short sharp gust of wind came every now and then, filling out the loose folds of the courses, and then, as it died away, letting them flap against the masts with a heavy dull sound as of distant thunder, an occasional streak of pale lightning darting across the sky to the north-west, where the heavens were most obscured, as if to bear ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... young nobleman had been, I confess, some of the loosest; and perhaps the truth is, I DID neglect the brat. He was of so wild, savage, and insubordinate a nature, that I never had the least regard for him; and before me and his mother, at least, was so moody and dull, that I thought instruction thrown away upon him, and left him for the most part to shift for himself. For two whole years he remained in Ireland away from us; and when in England, we kept him mainly at Hackton, never caring to have the uncouth ungainly lad in the genteel company in the capital ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were still popular, though they were celebrated in books which have long been forgotten. Everyone who has studied the Troy legend of the Middle Ages knows how great a share in the popularization of the legend belongs to the Sicilian lawyer, Guido delle Colonne, who summarized, in the dull style of a Latin chronicle, and without acknowledgment, the brilliant Roman de Troie which the French poet, Benoit de Sainte-More had written for Queen Eleanor of England. Guide's matter-of-fact compilation had an enormous vogue; ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted him to childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony himself furnished the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder—a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—"Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!" I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... contempt, best adapted to the nature of the feelings Razumov suffered from at the time. He was boiling with rage, as though he had been grossly insulted. He walked as if blind, following instinctively the shore of the diminutive harbour along the quay, through a pretty, dull garden, where dull people sat on chairs under the trees, till, his fury abandoning him, he discovered himself in the middle of a long, broad bridge. He slowed down at once. To his right, beyond the toy-like ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... swooned away. His system, weakened by overwork, succumbed, nervous prostration followed, and on November 4 he died. Sudden death had carried off his grandfather, father, mother and favorite sister; and he had a presentiment that his end would come about in the same way. During the dull half-sleep preceding death he spoke but once, and then to Cecile in answer to her inquiry how he ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... entirely in white, having soon discarded the dress of their former masters; and it was a pretty sight to see them turning out of the gates on the occasion of a sortie, their arms glittering, pennons flying, and their whole appearance presenting a gay contrast to the dull, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left her. It was too bad, but there was nothing to do. Once or twice in his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness, realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping over him, too, and that he had no ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland: occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange: that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler's error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the guns, which on some days roared very loudly, and made the wooden huts shake and tremble, although one got used to that, after a fashion. The hospital was very close to the war, so close that no one knew anything about the war, therefore it was very dull inside the enclosure, with no news and no newspapers, and just quarrels and monotonous work. As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly thorn gave out or gave way, stout stakes and stout boarding took ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... shower of rain fell about three o'clock A.M.; it detained us in our camp until five, when we embarked. Why should I relate to you our dull progress through fields of rice—through intricate channels, and amidst myriads of ducks and wild water fowl. This day has been hot, beyond any experience on the journey. I sank back in my canoe, in a state of apathy ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... all the other youths of his age. He went to evening parties and learned to dance a quadrille and a polka. On holidays he came home drunk, and always suffered greatly from the effects of liquor. In the morning his head ached, he was tormented by heartburns, his face was pale and dull. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... can hold off for to-night," she said. "Sometimes things get kind of dull—you know, when there's nothing doing, and this keeps me lively. How old ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lovable race that fight like fiends, argue like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the world over. At the end of six months - the seed always falling on good ground - Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... might have got anxious about our little Sta, who is with me and the nurse at Hymettus. But I'm glad it was only a lark. I shouldn't wonder," he added, with a laugh, "although she always declares she isn't one of those 'doting, idiotic mothers,' that she found it a little dull without the boy, for all she thought it was better for ME to take him somewhere ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... with an occasional attendance at a ball or archery meeting, thought his fair companion an enthusiast, a perfect heroine of romance, though he did not tell her so. She possibly considered him somewhat dull and phlegmatic. Jack's notion of duty was to gain as much professional knowledge as possible; to obey the orders he might receive, and to carry them out to the best ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand, pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... barbarism; this is the land of the green valley and barren mountain, of the boundless plain and the broken sierra, now of Elysian gardens of the vine, the olive, the orange, and the aloe, then of trackless, vast, silent, uncultivated wastes, the heritage of the wild bee. Here we fly from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe, to the racy freshness of an original, unchanged country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council. Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart with the empty cup, having words ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... There are two ways of using it. One way it's a deadly poison. The other makes those who take the stuff stupid. But even so it's dangerous. I've seen one or two victims of that experiment who didn't come back to their senses, but remained dull and melancholy, caring for nothing ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tired, like the rest of you, of this dull camp life," said the old drummer; "and seeing you pack your knapsack has stirred a little youthful blood in my veins which I didn't suppose was there. I'm off for the war with the rest of you, my boy;" and he poked a coal from the fire to light his cigar, hiding ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... add very much. I will only say, therefore, that the "sensation" produced in me by this novel is one of the most disagreeable I ever experienced. The characters are, for the most part, inordinately dull, preposterously conceited, and insufferably brutal. As for Dick Heldar, the hero, no more disagreeable and hateful bully-puppy ever thought and talked in disconnected gasps through ninety-seven pages. The catastrophe moves no pity. Mr. KIPLING seems to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage. Every sentence that this master has produced may ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... in despair any attempt at looking natty and had now no ambition for herself but to have something "decent" to go out in. Once it was her ambition also to have a "I room." She had scraped and saved and pared in dull times for this "room" and when once Joe had a long run of steady work she had launched out into what those who know how workingmen's wives should live would have denounced as the wildest extravagance. A gilt framed mirror and a sofa, four spidery chairs and a round table, a wonderful display ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the strangers went on to the ancient dull little town of Lancaster, and drove to the castle, where the keys were presented, and an address read under John O'Gaunt's gateway. The tower stairs were mounted for the view over Morcambe Bay and the English lake country on the one ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... were lengthening in the Corral where the supper fires were gleaming. Across the low bluff the imprisoned sun was sending a dull red glow along the waters ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... degeneracy the aristocratic rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system; the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal had been vanquished, continued to glow—although somewhat dimmed and dull—in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed, and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime and the new monarch impossible. A large portion of the constitutional party submitted at least outwardly, and recognized the monarchy so far as to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with your story, Hare," I repeated. "You are becoming metaphysical and therefore dull. The time is short and I want to ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... camels as they knelt down before her father's but to rest before the journey into the yellow plains of sand beyond. She saw the seller of sweetmeats go by calling—calling. She heard the droning of the children in the village school behind the hut, the dull clatter of Arabic consonants galloping through the Koran. She saw the moon—the full moon-upon the Nile, the wide acreage of silver water before the golden-yellow and yellow-purple of the Libyan ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and wandered on a little towards the farther end of the room. There was a sofa there. He leaned heavily on the back of it, with his left hand—then roused himself, and returned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes. They were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the sieve. Then she went back into the bedroom, and pulled down the green slat curtains with a shaking hand. Twice her father called her to bring his sermons, but she only answered, "Yes, father!" in dull acquiescence, and did not move. She was benumbed, sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another woman held his vows, and she ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... not touched, but he was scared by Hope's solemnity, and went to his own corner muttering, and as he crouched there there came over his dull brain what in due course follows the horrible meal he had made—a ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... bloodthirsty anecdotes that one wonders how other countries exist without the excitement of the vendetta. Then the intercourse with noted murderers and assassins makes a mere ordinary man whose hands are not stained with the blood of his fellow-beings seem dull and tame. Our eagerness pleased our friend and we adjourned to the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... agree, but he's dull," answered Dyck. "For an Irishman, he's dull—and he's a tyrant, too. I suppose I deserve that, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bricks is very thick and solid; it adheres strongly to the clay, and even when brought to our comparatively humid climates it preserves its brilliancy. It is not so with bricks from Khorsabad and Nimroud, which rapidly tarnish and become dull when withdrawn from the earth that protected them for so many centuries. Their firing does not seem ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... upbraidings: Unquiet meals make ill digestions; Thereof the raging fire of fever bred; And what's a fever but a fit of madness? Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls: Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy,— Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,— And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life? In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest, To be disturb'd would mad or man or beast: The consequence is, ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... running like mad. The single little light seemed twinkling and hazy and he brushed his streaming face with his sleeve so that he might see it the more clearly. But it looked dull, more like a little patch of brightness than a shining light. Either it ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless fatigue ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Jura, that country of reverie and energy, as mountainous countries always are. This young man loved war like a soldier—the Revolution like a thinker. He charmed with his verses and music the slow dull garrison life. Much in request from his twofold talent as musician and poet, he visited the house of Dietrick, an Alsatian patriot (maire of Strasbourg), on intimate terms. Dietrick's wife and young daughters shared in his patriotic ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of her simple words on Barnes was almost magical. The dull colour streamed into his sallow cheeks, he shook all over with excitement. His voice, when he spoke, was almost hysterical. He had been so near to despair. This indeed had been almost ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... felt for some reason antagonistic to every other town. Both were convinced that Moscow was a remarkable town, and Russia a remarkable country. In the Crimea, in the Caucasus, and abroad, they felt dull, uncomfortable, and ill at ease, and they thought their grey Moscow weather very pleasant and healthy. And when the rain lashed at the window-panes and it got dark early, and when the walls of the churches and houses looked a drab, dismal colour, days when one doesn't ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and lilacs in her hand, Christine, raising her head, saw the Vicomte de Chagny in his box; and, from that moment, her voice seemed less sure, less crystal-clear than usual. Something seemed to deaden and dull her singing... ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... indeed she would put out her tongue repeatedly when asked to do so in order to have a pin stuck into it. She very often wet and soiled, once even immediately after she had been taken to the closet, on which occasion she did not urinate. Her face was usually dull, vacant and immobile, but sometimes, when questioned or when something obtrusive happened, a little puzzled. Occasionally she looked slowly about or followed people with her eyes. There was no evidence of any affect ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... more of the extraordinary beauty that had made our morning ride so charming. Bruchsal seemed a dull place, as seen from the station; and Durlach had not much greater attractions. Carlsruhe is quite a place, has some repute for its baths, and is the capital of the grand duchy of Baden. Off to the south of this town ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... peculiarly; valuable and interesting by Sir Richard Burton's intimate knowledge of the language. To all who understand the ways of the East, it is as witty, and as full of what is popularly called "chaff" as it is possible to be. There is not a dull page in it, and it will especially please those who delight in the weird and supernatural, the grotesque, and the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... which we have had since the revolution. We have had no forced illuminations, no planting of trees of liberty, no physical-force demonstrations, no great display of any kind; in fact, we have been decidedly dull. But in some parts of the city, our sovereign lord and master, the Mob, has been graciously pleased to afford us a little interesting excitement by bullying the landlords into giving receipts for their rents, without the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... may have been happily forgotten for a few moments), I have removed the barrier, given the opportunity desired, and the flood rushes in. "I knew you were not well," they cry, triumphantly. "Your complexion is very sallow; your lips are pale; your eyes look dull, and have dark rings under them; and surely you are thinner than when I saw you last"—concerning all which I may have doubts, though I have none that a frantic desire is taking possession of me to get away, and investigate these charges; and when, finally, I am released ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly entered road of apprenticeship ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... to Durham, she was so greatly disquieted in the first few miles of her uneasy and troublesome journey, that they would proceed no further than Highgate. The physician returned to town to report her state, and declared that she was assuredly very weak, her pulse dull and melancholy, and very irregular; her countenance very heavy, pale, and wan; and though free from fever, he declared her in no case fit for travel. The king observed, "It is enough to make any sound man sick to be carried in a bed in that manner she ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Draw two circles, one at each end. Draw a line a short distance from each circle. The drawing can be done with a pin, pocket-knife, diamond, axe, friend's razor or other edged or pointed instrument. I give no dimensions because they are dull things and I hate guessing. Talk of the circles at each end as "houses" and the lines as "hogs," and you are well on the road ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... outlived my youthful dream. Roland had disappeared as entirely as if he had never been. What had become of him I knew not—not even if he were alive. I went about my duties in a dull, wooden way, as an image might do, if it could be made to move so as to sew or paint without a soul. Life was worth nothing to me—only to get it over. My love was dead, or it was my heart: which I knew not. Either came to the same thing. There were duties I disliked, and ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... sound of the knock he raised his head, an expression, which was a mixture of fear and senile cunning came into his lined and pallid face, his dull eyes peered from under their lids with a flash of sudden alertness, and with one motion of his long hands he hurriedly folded the deed before him, crammed it, with the others, into the box, locked it with a hurried and trembling hand, and placed it in a cupboard, which he also ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... speed over the iron highway past the second-story windows of Allen Street, a cellar door yawns darkly in the shadow of one of the pillars that half block the narrow sidewalk. A dull gleam behind the cobweb-shrouded window pane supplements the sign over the door, in Yiddish and English: "Old Brasses." Four crooked and mouldy steps lead to utter darkness, with no friendly voice to ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... little boy's suit made for me; and thus emancipated, at this tender age, I worked unwearyingly at his side all day long and day after day. No doubt it was due to him that I did not casually saw off a few of my toes and fingers. Certainly I smashed them often enough with blows of my dull but active hatchet. I was very, very busy; and I have always maintained that I began to earn my share of the family's living at the age of five—for in return for the delights of my society, which seemed never to pall upon him, my new friend allowed ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... is the most elaborate English work of the kind. Heavily ballasted with facts and rather dull reading for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when eulogizing the Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, composite clippers of wood and iron, afloat in 1870, which it declares to be "the fastest sailing ships that ever ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... is so," said I. "Sometimes, dear Henriette, you will find the most beautiful flowers growing out of the blackest mud. Perhaps hid in the dull residuum of my poor but honest gray matter lies the seed of real genius that will sprout the ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... on the Central, or Fredericksburg road, en route for Manassas. Constantly, at gray dawn the dull, rumbling sound, cut sharply by the clear note of the bugle, told of moving batteries; and the tramp of cavalry became so accustomed a sound, that people scarcely left their work even to cheer the wild and rugged-looking ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... great magnolia, And has a patina Of flower bloom Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook's cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall— Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... pleasant exercise and to get a glimpse of what was going on out of doors; this is amusing and sometimes instructive; lastly I would go for the sake of the walk; there is always something in that. A sedentary life is the source of tedium; when we walk a good deal we are never dull. A porter and footmen are poor interpreters, I should never wish to have such people between the world and myself, nor would I travel with all the fuss of a coach, as if I were afraid people would speak to me. Shanks' mare is always ready; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... she, one evening several days after the commencement of her illness, "how provoking to be obliged to lie here moping with the dullest of all dull company, when there's Mrs. Russell's party next week, and I've such a lovely dress to wear. Why ain't I as strong and healthy as you? though I wouldn't be so ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... of your reading now!" said somebody; "it's supper-time." "What sort of an article is it? For a paper? Probably it's very dull," said another. But the prince's timid gesture had impressed ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the chimney, waiting most patiently for what seemed a very long time. He suspected that the woman might still be hesitating, but determined to wait until she should make her appearance. At length he heard a noise, which seemed to come from the passage above. It was a soft, dull, scraping, sliding noise of a very peculiar kind, the cause and the nature of which he could not conjecture. The sound came, and then stopped, and came again, and again stopped, for three or four times. Harry listened and waited. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... acted as genius does; she jumped across every obstacle, both feet at once. I will not speak of the little happiness which shed its gilding on the beginning of my misfortunes. Dismayed at my failure, I decided that Italy was not intelligent enough and too much sunk in the dull round of routine to accept the innovations I conceived of; so I thought of ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... Their gods could not marry and beget children, like those of the Hellenes; they did not walk about unseen among mortals; and they needed no nectar. But that they, nevertheless, in their spirituality—which only appears tame to dull apprehension—gained a powerful hold on men's minds, a hold more powerful perhaps than that of the gods of Hellas created after the image of man, would be attested, even if history were silent on the subject, by the Roman designation of faith (the word and the idea alike foreign to the Hellenes), ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... With a dull ache in his bones, Wayland crept out to the fire and set to work fanning the coals with his hat, as he had seen the Supervisor do. He worked desperately till one of the embers began to angrily sparkle and to smoke. Then slipping away out ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... time, had accurate knowledge of the whole circumstances. The late celebrated Dr. Macknight, a learned and profound scholar and commentator, was nevertheless, as a preacher, to a great degree heavy, unrelieved by fancy or imagination; an able writer, but a dull speaker. His colleague, Dr. Henry, well known as the author of a History of England, was, on the other hand, a man of great humour, and could not resist a joke when the temptation came upon him. On one occasion when coming to church, Dr. Macknight ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... thought of the article he had written about her Margaret, and it was the desire to read it again that awoke her. Stretching out her hand, she took it from the table at her bedside and began reading. He liked the dull green dress she wore in the first act; and the long braids of golden hair which he admired were her own. He had mentioned them and the dark velvet cape, which he could not remember whether she wore or carried. As a matter of fact, she carried it on her arm. His forgetfulness ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... treatise, is said to have studied that treatise to purpose. Questioned regarding the meaning of a text, it behoveth one to communicate that meaning which he has comprehended by a careful study. That person of dull intelligence who refuses to expound the meanings of texts in the midst of a conclave of the learned, that person of foolish understanding, never succeeds in expounding the meaning correctly.[1618] An ignorant person, going to expound the true meaning of treatises, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sensation in what had been a dull session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop turned a look of quiet gravity upon the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... her at all, still fixing his gaze far out to sea, which the sun had now resigned to the shade. In high places it is not long from sunset to night, dusk being in a measure banished, and though only evening where they sat, it had been twilight in the valleys for half an hour. Upon the dull expanse of sea there gradually intensified itself into existence the gleam ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... armed men, simulating the battle of Karbala; and the public funeral of the saints, represented, not by an effigy of their bodies, but by a model of their tombs. Loving spectacle and excitement, with the love of a rather idle and illiterate population whose daily life is dull and torpid, the people of India have very generally lost sight of the fasting and humiliation which are the real essence of the Moharram, and have turned it into a diversion and a show. But there was no show nor diversion for the citizens of Dehli that year, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... less warmly: "We can hardly give too much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has given to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... camp-fires, and, startled by his tone, I looked eagerly in the direction pointed out; but there were the piles of grey stones looking dull and shadowy, but no sign ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... constructiveness; then reading and learning; I well remember the coming on of the desire to know. In a tale, false or true, I had by no means, the common share of pleasure—Smith's Key to Reading was more to my taste. Poetry I have ever loved. History I am very dull at; a chain of events is far more difficult to follow, than a chain of ideas—causality comes more to my aid than eventuality. Well, the age of learning came: in it I learned this, that, and the other; but, alas! order, the faculty in which I am so deficient, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... of syphilis, the muscles may be the seat of dull, aching, nocturnal pains, especially in the neck and back. Syphilitic contracture is a condition which has been observed chiefly in the later secondary period; the biceps of the arm and the hamstrings in the thigh are the muscles more commonly affected. The striking feature ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... accompany them, since Florence would be so dull when they were gone. Indeed, she had stayed on instead of seeking the warmer, more southern cities simply ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... up their motives in specious expressions of concern for my health, but stated their point of view with brutal frankness, as is their wont. I was an old dear, they conceded, and of course Kitty was Kitty; but a sister and brother-in-law were, to put it quite plainly, a hopelessly dull couple to live with: and the visits of Mesdames Dolly and Dilly to our roof-tree would, it was hinted, be more frequent and enduring if the establishment was strengthened by the addition of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and spoke. "My brother Thorvid, who is considered to be the wisest of us brothers, holds the words 'quarrelsome, greedy, jealous, dull,' to be one and the same thing; for it applies to him who is weary of peace, longs for small things without attaining them, while he lets great and useful things pass away as they came. I am deaf; ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... into the room, drawing the secret door to behind him. Desmond heard his heavy step and the dull thud of the partition swinging into place. The sound seemed to break the spell that ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... earlier performances of the Neo-Persian sculptors. It may be doubted whether, among all the reliefs of the Sassanians, there is one which is so entirely devoid of artistic merit as this coarse and dull production. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... saw my cousin; also, I saw his charge. I tried to look at it with Leonard Reeve's eyes, recalling to my remembrance that delirious night of his. Yes, though it was not South London, it had a drab look on a dull June day. There was a Warwick Arms, if no Surrey Arms. There was a shop with the authentic fragrance only two or three doors off. I knew that bishop, and I found him in, and in a listening mood, on the following day. He wanted to hear ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... was fairly housed, he had not escaped the fangs of allegory; for, while he sat at supper refreshing his exhausted frame after so much personification and metaphor, a symbolical personage, attired to represent the town corporation made his appearance, and poured upon him a long and particularly dull heroic poem. Fortunately, this episode closed the labors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... husbandless,—a phase of life which after her twelve years of bliss she regarded as anything but desirable. But the upshot was,—the upshot of so many fears and such small means,—that Hetta and Susan Bell had but a dull life of it. ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... call him, is running the next largest boarding establishment in Europe after the Kaiser and the Tsar. And he has a happy family. It seemed to me that life ought to have been utterly dull for this characteristic group of poilus, living crowded together all winter in a remote village. Civilians sequestered in this fashion away from home are inclined to get grouchy ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... justice for the chance of being liked. They would rather have their heads broken, or accept a bribe, than be the objects of a dispassionate judgement, however kindly. They feel this so strongly that they experience a dull discomfort in any relationship that is not tinctured with passion. As there are many such relationships, not to be avoided even by the most emotional natures, they escape from them by simulating lively feeling, and are ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... dying out at sunset, as it usually did, the wind increased to a gale as darkness set in, and Mr. Elmer cast many troubled glances at the dull red glow in the southern sky before ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... dystyll the dewe of influence Vpon my brayn so dull and rude And to enlumyn me with his sapyence That I my rudnes may exclude And in my mater well to conclude Vnto thy pleasure and to the reders all To whome I ...
— The Example of Vertu - The Example of Virtue • Stephen Hawes
... had an overcurious sentry who peeped just an inch too far above a parapet. A shell had burst in a trench, knocking the telephone connection out of gear and half burying a squad of sleepers under a lot of earth. Otherwise, things were drowsily dull. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... will see the entire fittings of the cabin the Prince occupied on his journey to India, in the vessel of the above name. One thing you may rest assured of—that neither on this evening nor at any other time while at Sandringham will you know a dull moment. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... storm the thick mantle of clouds which covers the sky breaks suddenly apart, disclosing an almost imperceptible portion of the azure canopy. Only for a moment the blue spot is visible, after which the dull vapoury mass closes over it, and ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... proves your ignorance. The small town smart set is deadly serious about its smartness. It likes to take six-hour runs down to the city to fit a pair of shoes and hear Caruso. Its clothes are as well made, and its scandals as crisp, and its pace as hasty, and its golf club as dull as the clothes, and scandals, and pace, and golf club of its ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... set in to rain harder than ever, and the black clouds soon shut out what little was left of daylight. Wet to the skin, and shivering from the cold, he moved on as well as he was able. Again he called Henry's name, but only a dull echo came back, partly drowned by the rushing ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... last plumbed the depths of Johnny's soul, and showed him where grew the root of his unalterable determination to combat Mary V's plan to have him at the ranch. Much as he loved Mary V he would hate going back to the dull routine of ranch life. (And after all, a youth like Johnny loves nothing quite so much as his air castles.) As a rider of bronks he was spoiled, he who had ridden triumphant the high air lanes. He had talked of paying his debt to Sudden, he had talked of his ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... sounds, thought no other thoughts than those which accompany physical suffering and weariness. To my memory these weeks seem years; I have no measure of their monotony. The lodgings were bare and yet tawdry; out of dingy windows we looked from a second storey upon a dull small street, drowned in autumnal fog. My Father came to see us when he could, but otherwise, save when we made our morning expedition to the doctor, or when a slatternly girl waited upon us with our distasteful ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the brown fields, where the green was beginning to prick in little points here and there, I began to feel the life strong in me once more. The dull cloud of depression seemed to drop away, and instead of seeing always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Withered garlands and the ashes of once fiery hearts drift on; shattered wrecks, with torn sails and broken masts, driven and tossed by eternal whirlwinds, appear and vanish in the river's rush; but the old remain motionless above. The hot rain of stars forever falling there dies out with dull moan, while the glad waves and white foam laugh as the ruined wrecks toss helplessly in the strong winds; but the aged heed it not: they have grown into one with the rock of the past, they build air castles over the roaring depths, they look ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with a sore heart it trudged homeward, its hands filled to overflowing with the pebbles that shone in the sun on the sea-shore. Now, however, they seemed dull. And because of this, the child did not seem to regret it so much if now and then one fell. "There are still some left ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... this childish expectation of mine. To the north there was a long low cape, the name of which has now escaped me. In the evening light it had been of the same greyish green tint as the other headlands; but now, as the darkness fell, it gradually broke into a dull glow, like a cooling iron. On that wild night, seen and lost with the heave and sweep of the boat, this lurid streak carried with it a vague but sinister suggestion. The red line splitting the darkness might have been a giant half-forged sword-blade ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is a section of vast possibilities and in it the Motor Cycle Chums meet adventures even more unusual and exciting than many of their experiences on their tour around the world. There is not a dull page in this lively narrative of clever ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... this new species of confederation has been the cause which has brought all Unions to Civil War, to subjection, or to a stagnant apathy, and the peoples which formed these leagues have been either too dull to discern, or too pusillanimous to apply this great remedy. The American Confederation perished by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... labors in this hospital, and with her ready sympathy with the suffering or wronged, had ministered to many needy ones the balm of comfort and healing. Her quick wit and keen repartee has served to brighten up many an hour otherwise dull and unhomelike in our little circle of workers, gathered in our quarters ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... began a hoarse murmur, confused and dull at first, but growing louder, until it swelled into a deafening roar. "Long live Boulanger!" "Down with Ferry!" "Long live the Republic!" As the great wave of sound rose over the crowd and broke sullenly against the somber masses of the Palace of the Bourbons, a thin, shrill cry from the extreme ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... stature he was, of course, greatly superior to Gervaise; but he had been spoilt from his childhood, was averse to exercise, and dull at learning, and while Gervaise was frequently commended by his instructors, he himself was constantly reproved, and it had been more than once a question whether he should be received as a professed knight ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... slender for a dancer, and her arched feet in heelless black slippers. In contrast to her red frock was a string of sparkling green stones which fell low on her breast. Her long, brown fingers blazed with rings, and in her ears, swinging against her olive cheeks, were great hoops of dull gold. Her black shining hair was gathered low on her neck, her unsmiling lips were scarlet as a pomegranate flower, and exquisitely cut; and the fainter, duskier pomegranate bloom on her oval cheeks faded into delicate stains ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Mr. Charlton? No! No small vices, I s'pose. Couldn't live without my cigar. I'm glad smoking isn't offensive to Kate. Ah! this window's nice, I do like fresh air. Kate knows my habits pretty well by this time. By George, I must try another cigar. I get so nervous when trade's dull and I don't have much to do. Wish you smoked, Mr. Charlton. Keep a man company, ha! ha! Ever been here before? No? By George, must seem strange, he! he! It's a confounded country. Can't get anything to eat. Nor to drink neither, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... sitting on the arm of her brother's chair and, despite the freckles across her nose, presented a charming picture of a pretty girl in a dull ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... The dull, monotonous ache of hunger had now become a sharp and insistent pang. He hobbled back to the tent and fried a slice of meat. After that he smoked two whole pipefuls of dried tea leaves. Then he fried another slice of moose. He was aware ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... escort read a magazine: They were young, and trains are dull at night; All the passing signals, red and blue and green, Counted up the ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... her interview with Jim, Evelyn sat in front of a writing-table by a window at Whitelees. She had meant to tell a friend about her lover, but now did not know if she would or not. For one thing, the morning was cold and dreary and she felt dull. Composition was difficult; the glowing phrases she had thought to use would not come. It was raining outside, the lawn was strewn with wet dead leaves, and the bare trees tossed their branches in the wind. Shallow pools spread about the terrace and the hills were blurred by mist. Winter ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... sat. Oh, how dark and dull it was there! And they told him: 'To-morrow you are to be hanged.' Hearing that did not exactly cheer him, and he had left his tinder-box in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Henry was born in Virginia in 1736. As a youth he was dull and indolent and gave no sign of coming greatness. After two failures as a storekeeper and one as a farmer he turned in desperation to law, read a few books, and with difficulty passed the examination necessary for admittance to the bar. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... slumber lie, 'Tis plain as plain can be, For clouds have hidden all the sky— A mist is on the sea, They laid the brooms of wind away Before the day was done, And left a curtain, dull and grey, To hide the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in steamy darkness. Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled an insipid smell. And every few moments tiny gusts of wind swelled the window curtains. The window opened on the boulevard, whence rose a dull ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... fellow; a dull tedious narrator, a bore; also a set of gentlemen, who (Bailey says) used to meet near the Charter House, or at the King's Head in St. John's-street, who had more of pleasantry, and less of mystery, than ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... play, makes Jack a dull boy, We were not made to be delving forever with tools in close rooms. The fresh air is good for us. Come, William, you will feel better for a little recreation. You look pale from confinement. Come; ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... It is a dull period, but complacent; for it was not an unprosperous time. Agriculture and commerce both were abundant; and the increasing development of towns shows us that the Industrial Revolution loomed in the near distance. The eager continuance of the deistic ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the direction in which it is circling the ring, or in any other way taking the players unaware. A leader or teacher should see that this element of sport is put into the game, or else it may be very dull ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... politician, for instance, that his oratory has an "electric effect," or that he is "full of personal magnetism," or that he "can sway an audience to tears or laughter at will." A Free Paper telling the truth about him says that he is a dull speaker, full of commonplaces, elderly, smelling strongly of the Chapel, and giving the impression that he is tired out; flogging up sham enthusiasm with stale phrases which the reporters have already learnt to put into shorthand ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... of those opening to the ground, he threw aside the half of the warm crimson curtain. It all looked dull and dark outside. Mr. Carlyle could see little what the weather was, and he opened the window ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Dubois, and the Regent, had suddenly disappeared from the stage of the world. To these men, a striking group for different reasons, notwithstanding their faults and their vices, was about to succeed a discreet but dull and limp government, the reign of an old man, and, moreover, a priest. The Bishop of Frejus, who had but lately been the modest preceptor of the king, and was quietly ambitious and greedy of power, but without regard to his personal interests, was about to become Cardinal Fleury, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... while others made ready the forage and grain-bags; infantry fires were lit; the provisions turned over; detachments came meekly forward for rations, and the lifting aroma of coffee enchanted the warm winds. Cairns remembered all this when the sharp profile of battle-fronts grew dull in memory. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... than tracing out the origin of words by the aid of a second-hand dictionary. It's the next funniest thing to grubbing after stumps in a ten-acre lot. Dentists make capital philologists—: they are so much accustomed to digging for roots. It's rather dull work to shovel around in the Anglo-Saxon stratum, but, as soon as you strike the Sanscrit, then you're off, and if you don't find big nuggets, it's because—well, it's because there are none there. Sometimes you dig down to about the time when NOAH went on ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... what a sweet little prize I have found! A Robin that lay half-benumbed on the ground: Well hous'd and well fed, in your cage you will sing, And make our dull winter as gay as the spring. But stay,—sure 'tis cruel, with wings made to soar, To be shut up in prison, and never fly more— And I, who so often have long'd for a flight, Shall I keep you prisoner?—mamma, is that right? No, come, pretty Robin, I must ...
— Sweets for Leisure Hours - Amusing Tales for Little Readers • A. Phillips
... know, Gouger, I almost doubt if I have really been in love at all. I feel a queer sense of relief at being out of it, though there is a dull pain, too, that isn't exactly comfortable. I told Archie coming in that she should have married him. Upon my soul I wish she would. She's an awful nice little thing, and he has a heart that is genuine enough for ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... he has for five years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors, however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the political theorists ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... examined the mass. While in the air it appeared to be about four feet in diameter, was surrounded by a luminous circle of colors like a rainbow, and its fall was accompanied by a noise like the discharge of artillery. Upon inspecting the substance, he found it weighed 59 lbs., was extremely hard, of a dull, metallic color, and of a specific gravity considerably greater than that of common marble. Having only this solitary instance of such an occurrence, Gassendi concluded that the mass came from some ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... she said. 'Of course I shall be glad to see you and your boy. On what day would it suit you to come, and how long would you like to stay? I fear you will find me and your father but dull companions after the life you are now used to. If Mr. Caldigate would like to come with you, your father bids me say that he will be glad to see him.—Your ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... he, "but the hiss of the waves is apt to dull the hearin' a bit, an' one don't naturally look for enemies ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... "I fear I have shocked you," he said tenderly. "But one thing I have never blasphemed—Life. Is not enjoyment an implicit prayer, a latent grace? After all, God is our Father, not our drill-master. He is not so dull and solemn as the parsons make out. He made the kitten to chase its tail and my Nonotte to laugh and dance. Come again, dear child, for my friends have grown used to my dying, and expect me to die for ever—an inverted immortality. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... had swept across sheep-grazing uplands and grassy knolls, now began to thread deep rushy bottoms, with here and there a quaking spot of quagmire, or a mantled stream, which I knew by the cold water running sharp below, and by the thick, dull gathering of the weeds about my legs—for the mist made all so dark, that I can only give a blind man's description. The way now became more intricate and broken, but still I followed Aleck cheerily, pushing through all obstacles, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... soul is like a dry light." Earthen jars, if you strike them, will sound; but if they be full, they perceive not the strokes that are given them. Copper vessels also that are thin communicate the sound round about them, unless some one stop and dull the ambient stroke with his fingers. Moreover, the eye, when seized with an over-great plenitude of humors, grows dim and feeble for its ordinary work. When we behold the sun through a humid air and a great quantity of gross and indigested vapors, we see it not ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... without delay, so as to hurry back to me the supplies I had called for, as indispensable for the prosecution of the next stage of the campaign. I was quite impatient to get off myself, for a city-life had become dull and tame, and we were all anxious to get into the pine-woods again, free from the importunities of rebel women asking for protection, and of the civilians from the North who were coming to Savannah for cotton and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... four o'clock in the afternoon of a dull winter day that Mr. H. sat in his counting room. The sun had nearly gone down, and, in fact, it was already twilight beneath the shadows of the tall, dusky stores, and the close, crooked streets of that quarter of Boston. Hardly light enough ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pommel. The gray walls flashing by him, the whip of twigs, the rush of wind, the heavy, rapid pound of hoofs, the violent motion of his horse—these vied in sensation with the smart of sweat in his eyes, the rack of his wound, the cold, sick cramp in his stomach. With these also was dull, raging fury. He had to run when he wanted to fight. It took all his mind to force back that bitter hate of himself, of his pursuers, of this race for his ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... by stages, coming surely on. Presently she could hear the tramp of many feet, accompanied by the clanking of chains. There was a dull knocking of heavy wheels. There was the sharp crack of the whip-lash again, a quicker trampling of hoofs, a louder sound of wheels and chains and a still louder vociferation of commands. Janet could hardly have felt ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... wave not thy disdainful head, Bethink thee of the discord dread, That kindled when at Beltane game Thou ledst the dance with Malcolm Graeme; 320 Still, though thy sire the peace renewed, Smolders in Roderick's breast the feud; Beware!—But hark, what sounds are these? My dull ears catch no faltering breeze, No weeping birch, nor aspens wake, 325 Nor breath is dimpling in the lake, Still is the canna's hoary beard, Yet, by my minstrel faith, I heard— And hark again! some pipe of war Sends the bold pibroch ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... nature of his farewell to his horse, it was to be forever. Like a stab from a cold blade a pain shot through Madeline's heart. The wonder of it, the incomprehensibility of it, the utter newness and strangeness of this sharp pain that now left behind a dull pang, made her forget Stewart, her surroundings, everything except to search her heart. Maybe here was the secret that had eluded her. She trembled on the brink of something unknown. In some strange way the emotion brought back her girlhood. Her mind revolved swift queries and replies; ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... husband and child; but she was ashamed to let her real feelings be known. So she kept up a show of indifference, all the while that her heart was fluttering. The "good-bye" was finally said, the driver cracked his whip, and off rolled the stage. Gray turned homewards with a dull, lonely feeling, and Lucy drew her veil over her face to conceal the unbidden tears from ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... wont to prove Hope's liberal feast, the holiday of Love: But now, upon his spirit's ebbing strength Came each dull hour's intolerable length. The next had scarcely dawn'd when Walter hied O'er hill and dale, Affection for his guide: O'er the brown Heath his pathless journey lay, Where screaming Lapwings hail'd the op'ning day. High rose ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... "I'm dull enough to find you take an odd way to show your sympathy for him," murmured Mrs. Marshall-Smith, with none of the acidity the words themselves seemed to indicate. She seemed indeed genuinely perplexed. "It's not been exactly ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of this eminently lawless example was instantaneous. The splendid regulation blankets and flannel shirts were at a premium among the natives, and the market was never dull. They could be coined into pesos on sight. There was a grand rush, and soon the blankets and spare articles of clothing went forth into the night, lugged by their respective owners. Shortly the darkies, wet and steaming, began to stamp back into the quarters, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... be surprised any day to hear that a marriage market had been opened on one of the plazas of Rome, the quotations of which would read something after this fashion: Husbands dull and declining; American beauties more active; foreign mammas less firm; American securities in great demand; the market in princes somewhat stronger; holders of titles much sought after; brains without money a drug in the market; "bogus" counts at a discount; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 3, April 16, 1870 • Various
... Hastings is an accomplished horsewoman. Her fine physique is poised so as to give that individual movement which makes for type; her colour—wonderful red hair and the complexion which goes with it—are set off by a dull gold background; a gown in another tone of gold, relieved by a note or two of turquoise green; and the same green appearing as a shadow on the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... feudal possession was soon so far forgotten, that their descendants pretended that they held the lands, which they had really usurped regardless of their oath, from heaven and their swords. It is needless to say, that at that time the domestic life in these castles must have been dull and monotonous; although, according to M. Guizot, the loneliness which was the resuit of this rough and laborious life, became by degrees the pioneer ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run out of his mouth. His son and his son's wife were ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... after Dinner, lest you spoil her Appetite. Soe Dick sayd he shoulde goe and look after the Horses. I sayd then, brisklie, I see somewhat is the Matter—pray tell me what it is. But Rose looked quite dull, and walked to the Window. Then Mr. Agnew sayd, "You seem as dissatisfied to leave us, Cousin, as we are to lose you; and yet you are going back to Forest Hill—to that Home in which you will doubtlesse be happy to live all your Dayes."—"At ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... the rock and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag, struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came the tide of forest sounds—the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of wings, the cries of night birds—all the low and stealthy notes of the earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the lullabies of his childhood. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... in the outer harbor of Provincetown, Mass. It is ten o'clock at night. Dense fog shrouds the barge on all sides, and she floats motionless on a calm. A lantern set up on an immense coil of thick hawser sheds a dull, filtering light on objects near it—the heavy steel bits for making fast the tow lines, etc. In the rear is the cabin, its misty windows glowing wanly with the light of a lamp inside. The chimney of the cabin stove rises a few feet above the roof. The ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... simple ideas, seem to be either dull organs; or very slight and transient impressions made by the objects; or else a weakness in the memory, not able to retain them as received. For to return again to visible objects, to help us to apprehend this matter. If the organs, or faculties of perception, like wax over-hardened ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Day broke—a dull smurr of gray in an interval between two sleet-laden squalls. In the cheerless light of it the Commandant, who, albeit numb with cold, had had not yet found time to feel fatigue, caught sight of Dr. Bonaday's face, and was smitten with ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... fair of shape and of disposition while he is young and tender, or he pass into age. For the elder the ass is, the fouler he waxeth from day to day, and hairy and rough, and is a melancholy beast, that is cold and dry, and is therefore kindly heavy and slow, and unlusty, dull and witless and forgetful. Nathless he beareth burdens, and may away with travail and thraldom, and useth vile meat and little, and gathereth his meat among briars and thorns and thistles.... And the ass ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... a sheet in the wind's eye, sir, once—once only, since I reached this place," retorted the Admiral. "And even then I was fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers, lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and cod's eyes—and are dull, upon the back of it—not even mirth for the money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I say ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though important details. But we are upon a subject which, like some of a higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying instruction. I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... no question in those far-away days of my being asked to meet such a brilliant star; but it amused me often to hear the dull and uninteresting people of some standing in the University, whom Jowett had not favoured with an invitation, declaring that nothing would have induced them ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... over her fan, who really appears in this dull light nearly as young as she is. The look is a cruel one, hideously cruel. Even Marian Bethune, whose bowels of compassion are extraordinary small, changes colour, and lets her red-brown eyes rest on the small woman lounging in the deep chair with ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... settled down in London after their marriage, where, notwithstanding fogs and smoke and dull monotony of brick and smut, so many beautiful things are created; where Turner's rainbow lights were first reflected, where Tennyson's 'Princess' sprang from the fog. It was a modest and quiet installation, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... their notions of Gipsy life upon the strength of the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent. Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... his works are now as completely forgotten as if they had never been born, except so far as this, that some one may take up one of the works as of heretical character, and lay it down in disappointment, with the reflection that it is as dull as orthodoxy. For a person who was once in some vogue, it would be difficult to pick out a more fossil writer, from Aa to Zypoeus, except,—though it is unusual for (,—) to represent an interval of more than a year—his unknown opponent. This opponent, in the very year of the Des ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... help for it, however. Judy was a schoolroom child, and back to the schoolroom and to Miss Mills' dull society she must go. Swinging her hat on her arm she walked slowly down the long, cool stone passage which led from the principal hall to the schoolroom regions. A maidservant of the name of Susan hurried past her with the ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... with Charlotte upon these occasions; she is in league with the hen-wife, the natural protectress of these pirates; and I have only the inhuman consolation that I may one day, like a cannibal, eat up my enemies. This is but dull fun, but what else have I to tell you about? It {p.010} would be worse if, like Justice Shallow's Davy, I should consult you upon sowing down the headland with wheat. My literary tormentor is a certain Lord of the Isles, famed for his tyranny of yore, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... shrivelled him up; he showed it in every line of his body. His shoulders were much more bent; his timid, pipe-stem legs the more shaky; the furrows about his face deeper; the thin nose more transparent. All during the war he had literally lived in Richard. The cry of the "extras" and the dull tramp of marching troops, and the rumbling of cars laden with army supplies had jarred on his sensitive ear as would discordant notes in a quartette. Days at a time he would hide himself away in Richard's workshop, helping him with his bellows or glue-pot, or piling ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... discussing hobbies not more important. Speaking as an interested but not infatuated collector, it seems as if the mere gathering together of rarities of this sort would soon become as tedious as the amassing of dull armorial ex libris, or sorting infinitely subtle varieties of postage-stamps. But seeing the intense passion such things arouse in their devotees, the fact that among children's books there are not a few of real intrinsic interest, ought not to make ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... "No one can be dull who has a novel by Miss Braddon in hand. The most tiresome journey is beguiled, and the most wearisome illness is brightened, by any one ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... father had never made a public profession of faith in Christ. He had "kept aloof," as the village people said, whatever had been his reasons. But it came into Jacob's mind—moved and stirred out of its usual dull acceptance of things as they seemed—that to eyes looking deeper than the surface, his father's life might count for more as "evidence" than his own profession could do. And as the minister put it, would even his father's life count for much as "evidence" ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... so sorry not to have come up before, dears, but I have been very busy. Has it been a very dull afternoon for my poor ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... It would blow hard awhile, then lull for a few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and persistence until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a bare, flat, gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead she could see a dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a duststorm and it was sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley remembered that somewhere along this flat there was a log cabin which had before provided shelter for her and Flo when they were caught in a rainstorm. It seemed ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... know her. Perhaps—but here he happened to lift his eyes, and there, standing between the two blue velvet curtains, was Madeline, now a woman in the full splendour of a remarkable beauty, and showing as yet, at any rate in that dull November twilight, no traces of her years. There she stood, her large dark eyes fixed upon him with a look of wistful curiosity, her shapely lips just parted to speak, and her bosom gently heaving, as though ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... great artist's death or misfortune did a fine violin return to the marts. But the rejected fiddles had sounded musically enough for him and looked as if they were well up in the society of select fiddles. The fiddle Hawksley now held in his hands was dull, almost black. The maple neck was worn to a shabby gray and the varnish had been ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... not rest until he knew how this might be, and yet he dared not read his letter in the street. He thought he would find out a quiet spot in Kensington Gardens and read it there; alone—quite alone. He hurried on, with a dull irritation that the High Street should be so long and so crowded, and that everybody should make such a point of getting in the way; the shock had affected his body as well as his mind; he was cold to the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... hesitate to say that all our best lecturers have two or three old lectures at the back of every single point in their best new speeches; and this means that they have spent a certain number of years plodding away at footling little meetings and dull discussions, doggedly placing these before all private engagements, however tempting. A man's Socialistic acquisitiveness must be keen enough to make him actually prefer spending two or three nights a week in speaking and debating, or in picking up social information even in ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... a striking illustration of the real object of all these elaborate movements. The male albatross, an ugly and dull-coloured bird,[66] during courtship stands by the female on the nest, raises his wings, spreads his tail, throws up his head with the bill in the air, or stretches it straight out or forwards as far as he can, and then utters a curious cry.[67] But the most interesting ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... place," said Lord Hastings, "the life would begin to pall on you when it settled down to dull routine. Now in active service, of course, it's different. I know, because I've tried both. No, my advice to you Jack, is to ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... of courage try Henley. Or Stevenson. I could tell you some stories abut these two, but they would not be dull enough for a rectorial address. For courage, again, take Meredith, whose laugh was 'as broad as a thousand beeves at pasture.' Take, as I think, the greatest figure literature has still left us, to be ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... into the habit of calling for her. But he found it dull to sit on a chair in the goods department and have the porters knocking against him. He was always in the way. And when he tried to talk to her as she sat at her desk with the penholder behind her ear, she interrupted him with ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... to be 'up against it,' as Ted says." Laura was always using her brother for an excuse for her own slang. "I can't think of a single person jolly enough to please us and dull ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... and yelling something else he couldn't understand; pointing skyward. And then he saw it; the Nomad, with its sleek, tapered cylinder of a body nosing down toward them with the silvery aura of its propulsive energy gleaming like a beacon of hope against the dull clouds of the satellite of terror. And there was something else: one of the ovoids of Titan, clinging there to the vessel's hull plates, alongside the open manhole. Nazu had not failed them after all. His mind refused to question ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... words over again and again before he seemed to have the least comprehension of what they meant: then, in a stupor of dull despondency, he read on to the end, and learnt that all his hopes were over, that his life was a blank, and that the thing he had dreaded so much as to cheat himself into the belief that it could never happen had come to pass. And yet he was still Reuben May, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... I have beaten you, but beaten one that will be beaten: one whose dull bodie will require launcing: As surfeits doe the diet, spring and full. Now to your swordmen, what come they for ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... much from competition in the north. Some considerable contracts for girders, bridges, gasometers, etc., are under execution at the works devoted to constructive ironwork; but the merchant iron trade, as a whole, is very dull. Unmarked iron is weak and variable, and to this circumstance may be attributed the reduction, announced this week, in various ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... have been but dull affairs had only the residents of Richmond been present; but leave was granted as much as possible to officers stationed with regiments within a railway run of the town, and as these eagerly availed themselves of the change from the monotony of camp life, the girls had no reason to complain of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... appeared like two islands. From whatever quarter Two-headed Point was viewed, it had the appearance of being an island, or else it is a peninsula, on each side of which the shore forms a bay. The wind still continued westerly, a gentle breeze, the weather rather dull and cloudy, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... States then rising into importance and beginning to cast their shadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to us now to read of King George's directions to his minister—"To crush the Czar immediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person." The courageous and dull old King had not the faintest perception of the part which either the Czar or the Czar's country was destined to play in the history of Europe. At present we are all inclined, and with some reason, to think that French statesmen, as a rule, are wanting in a knowledge of foreign politics—in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the patience of the wild, for he knew not what. Then there came a clanking of chains, a trampling of heavy feet, and around the turn appeared the man again, with a pair of big brown horses harnessed to a drag-sled. The calf backed away as the man approached, and watched with dull wonder as the great log was rolled aside and his mother's limp, crushed form was hoisted laboriously upon the sled. This accomplished, the man turned and came to him gently, with hand outstretched. To run away would have ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that he became blind through having been suddenly brought out of the darkness into a great light: accustomed to behold ordinary beauties, a celestial beauty was suddenly presented before his eyes—a sun-god—in this manner his sight became dull and the twin lights which shine at the prow of the soul were put out: for the eyes are like two beacons, which guide the ship, and this would happen to one brought up in Cimmerian obscurity if he fixed ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... is seen as something overbeautiful for daily use, even more than as something dull, inactive, over-prudent; if vice, on the other hand, is conceived as easy, brilliant, gay, gallantly reckless, in opposition to the too ethereal or merely stupid and prosaic aspects of life (though in reality seldom do the dissipated and ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Palm and Mohl, who have discussed the spiral twining of plants, maintain that such plants have a natural tendency to grow spirally. Mohl believes (p. 112) that twining stems have a dull kind of irritability, so that they bend towards any object which they touch; but this is denied by Palm. Even before reading Mohl's interesting treatise, this view seemed to me so probable that I tested it in every way that ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... at the present day require no notice, except to 32 insist that they should be well harmonized in the manner of their date, and generally have the long initials and finals of all their lines observed. They are much finer than any one would guess from their usual dull presentment. Their manner, as loved and praised by Burns, is excellent, and there is no call to ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... of laughter, so loud that even Mr. Brithwood opened his dull, drunken eyes and stared ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... breeze a gale now, the throb of the big motor a continuous moan, the cloud of dust behind them a dull brown bank against the sky. On they went over convex grades that tilted gently first to the right, then to the left, over culverts that spoke one single note of protest, over tiny bridges that echoed hollow at the impact; past dazzling green cornfields ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... in 1820 or 1821. The remains of Clemence were placed at first in Pere Lachaise, but afterwards were disinterred, incinerated and sent to Jules Desmarets by Bourignard, assisted by twelve friends who thus thought to dull the edge of the keenest of conjugal sorrows. [The Thirteen.] M. and Mme. Desmarets were often alluded to as M. and Mme. Jules. At the ball given by Cesar Birotteau, Mme. Desmarets shone as the most beautiful woman, according to the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... stables were an abiding refuge. She was never dull there. Apart from the never-failing welcome in Bobs' loose box, there was the dim, fragrant loft, where the sunbeams only managed to send dusty rays of light across the gloom. Here Norah used to lie on the sweet ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... so, I can't imagine. If he had only—gone to his rest"—said the good woman, "Sophia and I could join our forces and live together in clover. And how we should enjoy it! We could talk together, read together, sew together. No more long, dull evenings and lonely nights listening to the mice. But a friend, a dear sister, constantly at hand! Sophia was the gentlest young woman, the prettiest,—oh, how I loved her in those days! She was a part of my youth. I love her just ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... Bazarov, 'reminds me of my childhood; it grows at the edge of the clay-pits where the bricks were dug, and in those days I believed firmly that that clay-pit and aspen-tree possessed a peculiar talismanic power; I never felt dull near them. I did not understand then that I was not dull, because I was a child. Well, now I'm grown up, the talisman's lost ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... drew the curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the window, in the full glow of the light, leaning forward toward the open air, and I, with a beating heart, gazed upon her superb beauty. Shall I ever forget it? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... horses' hoofs, bicycle bells, people's footfalls. His sense of vision, on the contrary, was absorbed in consciousness of this white blanket of cloud wherein he was lifted above the earth, in the midst of a dull incessant hammering. On the surface of the cloud there seemed to be forming a number of little golden spots; these spots were moving, and he saw that they were toads. Then, beyond them, a huge face shaped itself, very dark, as if of bronze, with eyes burning into his brain. The more he struggled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me about the eyes, and like—him—in the honey color of her hair. Hers is as brilliant and curly as mine is dull and smooth. And she's so big. So golden and burstingly big. I can't look at her without fairly gasping, 'can this ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... in horrible fury. But already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downwards like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull, purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it. I was safe out of the deadly jungle of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he dreamt again that Asgard lay in darkness, and that her bright flowers and radiant trees were withered and lifeless, and that the Asa folk, dull and withered also, were sorrowing as though from ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... cellars, or in the immense vaults which extend under the Kremlin; and driven out by the fire like wolves from their lairs, when we re-entered the city nearly twenty thousand inhabitants were wandering through the midst of the debris, a dull stupor depicted on faces blackened with smoke, and pale with hunger; for they could not comprehend how having gone to sleep under human roofs, they had risen next morning on a plain. They were in ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... The sun still stood quite high but was rolling in the direction of the lake. The salty waters of the latter began to glitter with gold and throb with the reflection of peacock feathers. On the Arabian bank as far as the eye could reach, stretched a tawny, sandy desert—dull, portentous, lifeless. Between the glassy, as if half-dead, heaven and the immense, wrinkled sands there was not a trace of a living being. While on the Canal life seethed, boats bustled about, the whistles of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... could be established, the river of life would overflow with happiness. The faces of prisoners, of slaves, of the deserted, of the diseased and starving would be radiant with smiles, and the dull eyes of despair ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Mrs. Brander said, "and you know we have agreed on that subject for a long time, but it is no answer to my question. I have been content to live all these years in this miserable dull place, because I was fool enough to believe your promise that you would in time give up all this work and take a position in ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... our parents, as well as we, wisely rate our proficiency by the books we are advanced to, and not by our understanding of those we have passed through. But, in my uncle's illness, I had the curiosity, in some of my dull hours, (lighting upon one in his closet,) to dip into it: and then I found, wherever I turned, that there were admirable things in it. I have borrowed one, on receiving from Mrs. Lovick the above meditation; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... requisite effort of attention, and you will distinguish, little by little, many things. First, in general, a black background. Upon this black background occasionally brilliant points which come and go, rising and descending, slowly and sedately. More often, spots of many colors, sometimes very dull, sometimes, on the contrary, with certain people, so brilliant that reality cannot compare with it. These spots spread and shrink, changing form and color, constantly displacing one another. Sometimes the change is slow and gradual, ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... the sky became overcast; the water was of that dull leaden hue, striped with white foam, which gives so gloomy an aspect to the ocean; and heavy squalls compelled us to shorten sail as fast as all hands could get through the task. For the greater part of the day ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Borage and Hellebor fill two scenes, Sovereign plants to purge the veins Of melancholy, and cheer the heart, Of those black fumes which make it smart; To clear the brain of misty fogs, Which dull our senses, and Soul clogs. The best medicine that e'er God made For ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... large, dull room. Emaciated forms of narrow, antique sofas were seen dimly in the musty-smelling twilight. Screens worked in red and green wools stood in the vicinity of the fireplace, the walls were lined with black pictures, and the floor, hidden in dark shadow ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... told him he had been a fool! Yes—told him that he ought to have sold his wife's honor and lived by it!—And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate—that brief story which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull indifference! The poor little fellow, with his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the snow—his wailing voice rang in Jurgis's ears, as he lay there in the darkness, until the sweat started on his forehead. Now and then he would quiver ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... way of the older girls. Moreover, the notion of being officers was attractive to such temperaments as Winnie's, Biddy's, and Daisy's. They thought they should rather enjoy training the younger ones, and giving their opinions at committee meetings. It was so dull simply to form audiences while the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... a certain grandeur, therefore, of immobility about the English beauty, a statuesque perfection which no doubt has great merits of its own. But it must be owned that it is not amusing, and that it is only the intensity of our worship which saves us from feeling it to be dull. Beauty is apt to be a little heavy on the stairs. A shade of distress flits over the loveliest of faces if we stray for a moment beyond the happy hunting-grounds of the ball-room or the Opera, the last Academy or the next Horticultural. Beautiful beings are made, they feel, not to amuse, but ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of sugar will now bring thirty pounds, which, a short time ago, was only worth twelve. Let any unprejudiced individual look at the return now before us, and say whether our prospects are not deplorably dull and obscure. If we take the four years immediately preceding the passing of Mr. Canning's resolutions, say 1819, 20, 21, and 22; we will find the average to be 105,858 hogsheads, and if from this we even deduct one fourth for the time now lost, there will ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... remarked. "You had better use it, if you are determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... The assertion of his superiority was only another benefit conferred on her. All this was a matter of course, but he told her all this so as to bring vividly before her the greatness of her loss. She was so dull of understanding that she would not grasp it else. And now it was at an end. They would have to go. Leave this house, leave this island, go far away where he was unknown. To the English Strait-Settlements perhaps. He would ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... dreams came over Diccon of possible royal honours to Queen Bridget; and then what glories would be reflected on the house of Talbot! His father and mother were too old, no doubt, to bask in the sunshine of the Court, and Ned—pity that he was a clergyman, and had done so dull a thing as marry that little pupil of his mother's, Laetitia, as he had rendered her Puritan name. But he might be made a bishop, and his mother's scholar would always become any station. And for Diccon ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the nature of the movement. For a few minutes they were unmolested, then the course was again changed, and Charlie was beginning to think that, in the darkness, they would yet make their escape, when a dull heavy sound ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... Presidio, an' Angel Island, an' Alcatraz, an' Benicia. Los Angeles was beginnin' its boom. The corner-lot sharps wanted something by way of varnish. An' so they dazzled Eastern investors with advertisin' Tulare frawgs clear to New Orleans an' New York. 'Twas only in Sacramento frawgs was dull. I expaict the California legislature was too or'n'ry for them fine-raised luxuries. They tell of one of them senators that he raked a million out of Los Angeles real estate, and started in for a bang-up meal with champagne. Wanted ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear. unstrengthened &c 159 [Obs.], unsupported, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to conclude, and while I stood grinding my teeth upon the certainty that the whole plot—from the kidnapping to the spreading of the slanders—had been Master Domenico's work, and his only, the air thudded with a distant dull concussion: whereat she broke off, lifting her head ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... interested in Bradlaugh, I bought both the Knowlton pamphlet and Mrs. Besant's population book. I found the physical details in scientific language so dull that I could not peruse them. By reading the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... my heart," said the stranger. "I, too, am alone, and I hold myself more than fortunate in making your acquaintance. It's a devilish dull world when one can't share a bottle—or a brace of them, for ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... devoirs—he would go back and live according to his habit in his wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be "called out," and who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red, and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the air with a rustling sound ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Sitting with his back to a small tree, he closed his eyes and folded his thick arms over his head. Of course, he would soon be found, and he would have to go back to the hunt. But this forester was a dull, soft fellow. He could be made to believe Flor's excuse that he had become lost for a time, and had been searching the woods for the ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two Macaulays, a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic Macaulay who was almost invariably right. All that was small in him derives from the dull parliamentarism of men like Sir James Mackintosh; but all that was great in him has much more kinship with the festive ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... opossums here which often damaged the garden produce in the night. There were various dull-plumaged small birds, with hawks, crows, and occasionally ducks, and one abominable croaking creature at night used to annoy me exceedingly, and though I often walked up the glen I could never discover what sort of bird it was. It might have been a raven; yes, a raven ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... schoolboy days, would have beguiled from her sovereigns and bank-notes. However, his civilities were less amiably received, and he met with nothing but hits in return. He hoped that her winter had not been dull. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... surroundings stood out sharp and clear-cut. The street was insufficiently illuminated, but the light of a full moon cut across the buildings on one side, half way between roof and sidewalk. Cavendish perceived, with a kind of dull surprise, that the pavements were thronged, and that almost every window framed a figure or two. A hoarse murmur pulsed in the air, and his quickened ear was greeted on every side by foul jests and grumbled oaths, broken now and again by drunken imprecations, scuffles, or the shrill ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... us, I looked upon my fellow-citizens in this new country, with a dull emotion not unlike gratitude for their existence; but I felt little curiosity about them. I was too unhappy to be so easily diverted. It seemed to me that the memory of my wife would become a mania to me, if I could in no way make known to her how utterly ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the shoulder]. This wreck's the first announcement of my spring; No more behind drawn curtains I will sit, Making pen poetry with lamp alit; My dull domestic poetising's done, I'll walk by day, and glory in the sun: My spring is come, my soul has broken free, Action henceforth shall be ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream—'twas but a breath— Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... top of the dull street looking forlornly about him, when he came to that conclusion, and when he realised it, he burst into a sudden fit ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... I should find these rambles dull, but that their utter lack of interest amuses me. I will be honest with the reader, though, and any Master Pliable is free to forsake me at this point; for I cannot promise to be really livelier than my walk. There is a Slough of Despond in full ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... and Walter chose three light and active men—archers—to attempt the enterprise. These stripped off their steel caps and breastpieces, so that they might move more quickly, and when the French fires burned low and all was quiet save the creak of the machine and the dull heavy blows of the stones against the wall, the three men were lowered by ropes at different points, and started on their enterprise. A quarter of an hour later the garrison heard shouts and cries, and knew that a vigilant watch had been set by the French, and that one, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... councillors themselves headed the popular rejoicings. It was an African carnival, brutal and full of colour. People got tipsy, pretended they were mad. For the sport of the thing, they assaulted the passers and robbed them. The dull blows on tambourines, the hysterical and nasal preludes of the flutes, excited an immense elation, at once sensual and mystic. And all quieted down among the cups and leather flagons of wine, the grease and meats of banquets in the open air. Even in a country as sober as Africa, the pagan feasts ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the first class get one nowhere. They are delightful and entertaining, but one feels their irresponsible authorship. Books of the second class get one nowhere, for one cannot read them; they are too didactic and dull. The only people who might read them do not read them, for they also are possessed of deep, fundamental knowledge of China, and their views agree in no slightest particular with the views set forth by ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the statesman, the educator, the vocational expert, the student of the neurotic and of genius, of delinquents, deficients and criminals, the explorers of the exceptional and the commonplace, the understanding of the poetic and kinetic, base and dull types, as well as of those two master interests of mankind, Sex and War, are manifest. The mystery of the individual, in all his distinct uniqueness, begins to be penetrated. And so every phase of social life, in which the individual is at bottom the final determinant, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... take one of the boys with you?" the leader of the expedition asked. "It is dull work for them here, and a little exercise ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... escape me) as the most touching and disinterested of all earthly affections." She looked the other way, and discovered the lawyer. "How do you do, Mr. Troy? It's a pleasant surprise to find you here The house was so dull without Isabel that I really couldn't put off seeing her any longer. When you are more used to Tommie, Miss Pink, you will understand and admire him. You understand and admire him, Isabel—don't you? ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Milt was in the garage. He wore union overalls that were tan where they were not grease-black; a faded blue cotton shirt; and the crown of a derby, with the rim not too neatly hacked off with a dull toad-stabber jack-knife. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... up as though smitten, his face a dull red. The dancing heat mist blurred before his eyes. He said nothing. They turned presently and strolled down toward the foot of the arroyo. Barkley pushed his hat back on ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... masters, happy, care-free, halcyon days! To waken to the glory of a summer's morning, and shaking off dull sleep, like a mantle, to stride out into a world all green and gold, breathing a fragrant air laden with sweet, earthy smells. To plunge within the clear, cool waters of the brook whose magic seemed to fill one's blood with added life and lust ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... waltzing in the sunlight that filtered through the green sun-blinds. This hour, before he rose, was his creative moment, when he could best see the form of music and feel inspiration for its rendering. Of late, he had been stale and wretched, all that side of him dull; but this morning he felt again the delicious stir of fancy, that vibrating, half-dreamy state when emotion seems so easily to find shape and the mind pierces through to new expression. Hearing the maid's knock, and her murmured: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... once more and looked again out of the coach window. The same silence prevailed. The children were still in front of the house, with their fingers in their mouths staring at the carriage. At a distance the dull lowing of the cows in their stables and the barking of dogs were to be heard. No human being, except the few children, was to be seen; even the superintendent did not make his appearance, although he knew that the queen was waiting at his door. Just then, however, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Break dull November skies, and make Sunshine over wood and lake, And fill your cells of frosty air With thousand, thousand welcomes to the Princely pair! The land and the sea are alight for them; The wrinkled face of old Winter is bright for ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... reason for the strange movements of the smack in question, except that there was at the helm a man who had rendered his reason incapable of action. With dull, fishy eyes, that stared idiotically at nothing, his hand on the tiller, and his mind asleep, Georgie Fox stood on the deck ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... When business is dull in this locality, the "merchants" resort to many artifices to fill their coffers. One of their manoeuvres is called a "forced sale." A man walking along the street, will be seized and dragged into a clothing shop. He may protest that he does not wish to buy anything, but the "merchant" ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... and graceful the Duke is," she thought. "How heavy this man, and dull and slow. The Duke's face is at once kindly and spirited, the Count's brooding and awkward. The Duke is a man, the Count ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... at him with wide eyes for a moment. It seemed hardly possible that one could be so dull of comprehension, and yet there was no doubting Steve's ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... and dark, she returned with many a tale to tell of what she had seen and heard on the mainland, and we may be sure that, on some evenings during the next winter, her reminiscences kept the household from being dull. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... whistled past my ear, so closely as almost to touch it—and struck with a dull thud upon the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... party returned last night after enduring for five weeks the hardest conditions on record. They looked more weather-worn than any one I have yet seen. Their faces were scarred and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frost-bite were very few ... to-day after a night's rest our travellers are very different in ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Major, "Gibraltar is rather a dull post for the officers stationed here; but we have a large library, billiard and club rooms, courts for tennis, and ground for polo. We have also many dances and riding parties, and occasionally attend the Spanish bull fights which take place in the large bull ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... the Shifty Lad's mother knew anything of all this, she may have thought that by this time her son might be tired of stealing, and ready to try some honest trade. But in reality he loved the tricks and danger, and life would have seemed very dull without them. So he went on just as before, and made friends whom he taught to be as wicked as himself, till they took to robbing the king's storehouses, and by the advice of the Wise Man the king sent out soldiers to catch the ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... of children who had been meeting at the house of Mr. Parris began to perform wonders. In the dull life of the country, the excitement of the proceedings of the "circle" was welcome, no doubt, and it was always on the increase. The human mind requires amusement, as the human body requires food, exercise and rest, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... better woman and a better mother. It should make every child a truer, holier child. Every home should have its sacred friendships between parents and children. Thus something of heaven will be brought down to our dull earth; for, as Mrs. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Nothing, a dull gray nothing! Something must have gone wrong with their assembly work. Ross touched Ashe's shoulder. But now there were shadows gathering on the plate, thickening, to sharpen into ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... the same, the evening at the Little Manor seemed to be a very dull one; and when, quite late, the carrier's cart stopped at the gate, and cook got down, Vane felt no interest in knowing what she would say about the alterations in her kitchen, nor in knowing whether Aunt Hannah had spoken to her about not ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... its vacant aspect to one full of cunning, as the party from the cutter moved off, but it became dull and semi-idiotic again, for Gurr ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This city now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... went and said it was a "beautiful day," and she said "it didn't show in the woods, but the pastures needed rain." Then she kissed me. Well if I ever! I sank on the throne and sat there. They went on talking like that, until it was too dull to bear, so I slipped out and wandered away to see what I could find. When I grew tired and went back, Laddie was sitting on the Magic Carpet with his back against the beech, and the Princess was on the throne reading from a little book, reading such interesting ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... village gatherings, for the Yorkshiremen have a keen relish for intellect; and it likewise procured him the undesirable distinction of having his company recommended by the landlord of the Black Bull to any chance traveller who might happen to feel solitary or dull over his liquor. "Do you want some one to help you with your bottle, sir? If you do, I'll send up for Patrick" (so the villagers called him till the day of his death, though in his own family he was always ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... looked puzzled, at a loss. Then under the lash of Lessard's bitter tongue the dull red stole up into his weather-browned cheeks, glowed there an instant and receded, leaving his face white under the tan. His left hand was at its old, familiar trick—fingers shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the knuckles and wrist—a never-failing ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the greater part of the pueblo was built. Through a low gateway in the wall he passed on to the crest of the one straggling street of Todos Santos. On either side of him were ranged the low one-storied, deep-windowed adobe fondas and artisans' dwellings, with low-pitched roofs of dull red pipe-like tiles. Absorbed in his fanciful dreams, he did not at first notice that those dwellings appeared deserted, and that even the Posada opposite him, whose courtyard was usually filled with lounging muleteers, was empty ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... have no padding, so that most of the members of her circle were types. Still, as she had a perfect passion for entertaining, there remained, of course, a residue; distant elderly connections with well-sounding names (as ballast), and a few vague hangers-on; several rather dull celebrities, some merely pretty and well-dressed women, and a steadily increasing number of good-looking young men. Hyacinth was fond ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... no God at all. What avails me to have risen unto more knowledge, more clearness in the sense of the divine, if it is to plunge me into such an abyss as this? Would I had never been awakened from my sleep—the dull stupor of materialism into which I was fast sinking. Then I might, in the end, have conquered even the last fear, that of 'something after death,' and have perished like a soulless clod, satisfied that there was no hereafter. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... those, who live in the country, would but half enjoy the spring. So, if by means of any unparalleled pestilence, the children of a certain growth were to be swept away, and we were to lose this infantile link in the chain of age, those, who were left behind, would find the creation dull, or experience an interruption in the cheerfulness of their feelings, till the former were ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Marie's eyes. Leon Roussel has seemed her own special property, and he has not been to her mother's house for a fortnight. "And if he had been at market to-day, he would have been content with me: poor Nicolas must be ill indeed to stay away from market. Ma foi! I have been dull alone. Elise Lesage was civil, for a wonder: I hope she will give old Marais's note safely to his nephew. I wonder why she goes to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a collateral Dutch ancestry by the Van Hook, tucked in between her non-committal family name and the Julia given her in christening, was of the ordinary slender make of American girlhood, with dull blond hair, and a dull blond complexion, which would have left her face uninteresting if it had not been for the caprice of her nose in suddenly changing from the ordinary American regularity, after getting over its bridge, and turning out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... cried Charley and his two friends in the same breath. "If we had not heard this, we might easily have overlooked such a spot. We might have run past it at night, or within ten miles, and not have seen it. What a dull and solitary life the poor fellow must have dragged out in such ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... this moment on English politics. This was the conversion of his brother and presumptive successor James, Duke of York, to the Catholic faith. Though finally completed in the spring of 1672, this had for some time been imminent. The dull, truthful temper of the Duke hindered him from listening to his brother's remonstrances against this step; but Charles was far too keen-witted to be blind to the difficulties in which it was certain to involve him. That either Churchman or Presbyterian should ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... of this malady met daily in one of the cells of a great art beehive called "Raphael's Rooms," and devoted their shining hours to modelling fancy heads, gossiping the while; for the poor things found the road to fame rather dull and dusty without ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Hopalong Cassidy and Mr. Red Connors, both of whom were at Cactus Springs, seventy miles to the east. Mr. Cassidy and his friend had just finished a nocturnal tour of Santa Fe and felt somewhat peevish and dull in consequence, not to mention the sadness occasioned by the expenditure of the greater part of their combined capital on such foolishness as faro, ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... nephew, de Attorney General of Arizona. Uncle Pompey took his text 'bout Paul and Silas layin' in jail and dat it was not 'ternally against a church member to go to jail. Him dwell on de life of labor and bravery, in tacklin' kickin' hosses and mules. How him sharpen de dull plow points and make de corn and cotton grow, to feed and clothe de hungry and naked. He look up thru de pine tree tops and say: 'I see Jacob's ladder. Brother Wash is climbin' dat ladder. Him is half way up. Ah! ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... else in that direction, except the summit of a distant mountain, behind which, at midsummer-time, the sun went down. From the other side, the road was seen, and a broken field, over which a new street or two had been laid out, and a few dull-looking houses built; and to the right of these streets lay ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... besought mercy at his hands. His lips moved, but this was not the place in which to utter the cruel words which rose to them. And then the stern man wiped away a tear as he remembered the long nights, in which he had sat with the reed in his hand, by the dull light of the lamp, carefully painting every sign of the fine hieratic character in which he committed his ideas and experience to writing. He had discovered remedies for many diseases of the eye, spoken of in the sacred books of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Christ-child, or even of the Christ-man, as the giver of anything. Birth is the one standing promise-hope for the race, but for poor John this Christmas held no promise. With all his humour, he was one of those people, generally dull and slow—God grant me and mine such dullness and such sloth—who having once loved, cannot cease. During the fortnight he had scarce had a moment's ease from the sting of his Alice's treatment. The honest fellow's feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... mentioned to him a saying of his concerning Mr. Thomas Sheridan, which Foote took a wicked pleasure to circulate. 'Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.' 'So (said he,) I allowed him ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Pros. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, 285 Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... size of a starling, black and rich claret colour with white shoulder stripes, and a very large and broad bill of the most pure cobalt blue above and orange below, while the iris is emerald green. As the skins dry the bill turns dull black, but even then the bird is handsome. When fresh killed, the contrast of the vivid blue with the rich colours of the plumage is remarkably striking and beautiful. The lovely Eastern trogons, with their rich-brown backs, beautifully ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... but we are learning the true art value of the simpler denims (plain and fancy), reps, cotton tapestries, rough, heavy linens, and monk's cloth—a kind of jute—for door hangings. The plain goods in dull, soft greens, blues, and browns, with conventional designs in applique or outlining, are not only inexpensive but artistic to a high degree, and are easily fashioned by home talent. Plain strips, too, are used for trimming, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... man who had lived almost every moment of his life in the open,—that such a man could settle down to the uneventful life of a student and a teacher, could shut himself up within the four walls of a classroom, could find anything to inspire and hold him in the dull presentation of facts or the dry elucidation of theories,—this seemed to be a miracle not to be expected in this realistic age. But, miracle or not, the thing actually happened. He remained nearly four years in the school, earning his living ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... boys the dull routine of ranch work went heavily forward. The horse breaking continued, vaqueros rode the range looking after the calf crop, while I had to content myself with nursing a crippled foot and hobbling about on crutches. Had I ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... and the lake was without ripple. It lay like one of the metal mirrors that we sell the Indians, a lustreless gray sheet that threw back twisted pictures. I looked off at the east, and thought of the dull leagues that lay behind me, and the uncounted ones before, and I realized that the morning air was cold, and that I hated the dark, secret water that led through this strange land. Yet, even as I scowled at it, the disk of the sun climbed over the island's rim, and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... responsibility can be properly discharged under industrial conditions that take both father and mother out of the home the whole day and leave them too weary to stay awake in the evening, too poor to furnish decent conditions of living, and too apathetic under the dull monotony of labor to care for life's finer interests. The welfare of the family is tied up with the welfare of the race; if progress can be secured in one part ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... Catherine. "I really think my life is rather dull, anyhow. Of course, having the girls here is quite an event, but I wish there were big, exciting things I had to do or see to. Mending, and helping Inga make salads and beds, and even going to college is tiresome. Just what every one else does. And the worst of it is that every one expects ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... a tear; but I had persuaded him to lie down on the sofa, and the table, swinging up and down as the vessel pitched and rolled in the trough of the sea, obstructed sometimes my view completely. I rose to trim the dull lamp that burned on the table; and seeing that the blanket had fallen to the floor I approached King to spread it over him again. Poor fellow! he lay on his back with his mouth wide open, gasping for breath, and his sunken closed lids, his ruddy complexion and round face ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... And then he shouldered the box and ran up the path. When he came back Priscilla was gone, and the spring day seemed commonplace and dull to Jerry-Jo; the adventure was over. Priscilla had filled her pails and had carried them and the book to the house. Something had happened to her, also. She was out of tune with the sunlight and warmth; she wanted to get close to life again and feel, as she had ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... she could, Elmer!" remarked the tall boy, nodding his head, "just like Samson did long ago when he yanked the temple down, and kicked the bucket himself, with all his enemies. But I don't think this dull-witted creature's got sense ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... was a reservoir, he decided. Probably it constituted the water supply for a considerable section. And then, as he looked, he saw a flash — saw a great column of water rise in the air, and descend, like pictures of a cloudburst. A moment after the explosion, he heard a dull roar. And after the roar another sound. He saw the water fade out and disappear, and it was a moment before he realized what was happening. The reservoir had been blown up! And that meant more than ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... finally coming out on the lowest floor of the valley at Enrile, two or three miles from the river. Night was falling as we made our way through its grass-grown streets, finding the air heavy, the people dull-looking, and everything commonplace: we had already begun ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... he said in sullen tones to Ethne; "my senses are dull with sleep from long watching at the Samhain fire. For the first time since I slew the hound of Culain my right arm has failed me. My eyes are clouded, and strange music murmurs ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Alexandrian or Paschal Chronicle, which introduces this haughty message, during the lifetime of Theodosius, may have anticipated the date; but the dull annalist was incapable of inventing the original ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... display of any individual characteristics. Balls are doubtless the same in "society" all over the world; a certain amount of black cloth, kid gloves, white muslin, epaulettes if they can be procured, dancing, music, and ices. Every one acknowledges that dinner-parties are equally dull in London and Paris, in Calcutta and in New York, unless the next neighbour happens to be peculiarly agreeable. Therefore, it is most probable that balls and dinner-parties are in New York exactly the same as in other places, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... with an overture representing chaos. Its effect is at first dull and indefinite, its utterances inarticulate, and its notes destitute of perceptible melody. It is Nature in her chaotic state, struggling into definite form. Gradually instrument after instrument makes an effort to extricate itself, and as the clarinets and flutes struggle out of the confusion, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... am now. I do not believe, however, that a natural affection and veneration for the poet deprives us of the right of judging. It is well said that love is blind, but love also strengthens and sharpens the dull eye, so that it sees beauty where thousands pass by unmoved. If one reads most of our critical writings, it would almost appear as if the chief duty of the reviewer were to find out the weak points and faults of every work of art. Nothing has so injured the art of criticism ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... say to this people: Hear and hear again, but understand not; See and see again, but perceive not. Make fat the heart of this people, And their ears dull, and besmear their eyes, Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears And their heart should understand and ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to hatch courage out of the dull fury ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... highest line of ridges, winding much, and following the dimplings of the earthy hills. Here and there a solitary castello, rusty with old age, and turned into a farm, juts into picturesqueness from some point of vantage on a mound surrounded with green tillage. But soon the dull and intolerable creta, ash-grey earth, without a vestige of vegetation, furrowed by rain, and desolately breaking into gullies, swallows up variety and charm. It is difficult to believe that this creta of Southern Tuscany, which has all the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... was still conducting in 1901 the campaign of education begun when it was organized in 1870, as fully described in Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage. It seemed at times a deadly dull process and there rose bolder spirits occasionally who suggested more vigorous and spectacular means of bringing the cause to the attention of the general public and of focusing the suffrage sentiment, which evidently existed, on the members of the Legislatures and putting them into a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... for the first moment. Then in a lower window, which she knew to be the window of Blake's den, two dull red points of light appeared—glowed—subsided—glowed again—then vanished. A minute later one reappeared, then the other; and after the slow rise and fall and rise of the glow, once more went out. She stood rigid, wondering at the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... some of the other patients who were frightened by him. Indeed, I can quite understand the effect, for the sounds disturbed even me, though I was some distance away. It is now after the dinner hour of the asylum, and as yet my patient sits in a corner brooding, with a dull, sullen, woe-begone look in his face, which seems rather to indicate than to show something directly. I cannot quite ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... day for at least two weeks. At the end of that time her interest began to flag, and she thought it better to read the debates every morning in the Congressional Record. Finding this a laborious and not always an instructive task, she began to skip the dull parts; and in the absence of any exciting question, she at last resigned herself to skipping the whole. Nevertheless she still had energy to visit the Senate gallery occasionally when she was told that a splendid ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Monopostiac is neither more nor less than a gigantic rock of obsidian, of a dark greenish hue, having its flanks irregularly furrowed by vertical fissures and ridges. This peculiar kind of rock, under the sun, or in a very bright moonlight, gives forth a sort of dull translucence, resembling the reflection of glass. The vitreous glistening of its sides, taken in conjunction with the mass of thick white fog which usually robes the summit of the mountain, offers to the eye an aspect at once fantastic ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... certainly the queen of the devils. I remember when you read "Paradise Lost" to us at Morony Castle, which I thought very dull. Milton arranged the ranks in Pandemonium differently; but there has been a revolution since that, and Mrs. Beelzebub has everything just as she pleases. I am beginning to pity Mahomet, and pity, they say, is akin to love. She urges him,—well, just to make love ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... That lifts to thee its voice, and strives to find Aught that may raise it from the servile throng Who seek on earth but living to prolong. For them no goddess, no fair poets reign, They hear no singing, as the earth along They move to their dull tasks; they live, they wane, They die, and dying, not a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... on the Georges; the first reading had only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him. Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last moment refuses to sing (probably ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... away at once; there were no objects of interest near me, within the limits of a day's excursion on foot, and the weak state of the horses, prevented me from making any examinations of the country at a greater distance on horseback; I felt like a prisoner condemned to drag out a dull and useless existence through a given number of days or weeks, and like him too, I sighed for freedom, and looked forward with impatience, to the time when I might again enter upon more active and congenial pursuits. Fatigue, privation, disappointment, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Gascon; and Queen Marie Leczinska is famous for the splendour of her volumes bound by Padeloup. Even the libraries of the daughters of Louis Quinze, three diligent and well-instructed princesses, are only known apart by the colours of the moroccos employed by Derome. The dull contents of the Pompadour's shelves would hardly be noticeable without her 'three castles,' or the 'ducal mantle,' by Biziaux; and no one but Louis Quinze himself would have praised the intelligent choice of Du Barry, or cast a look upon her collection of odd volumes and 'remainders,' ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... 'fakes' palmed off on you by the dealers," for she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical faculty, and had no great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in conversation, would avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull preciseness, not only when he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most minute details, but even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him about art. When challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... very pessimistic, and believed that the world was sinking fast into dull materialism, petty selfishness, and moral anarchy. He had less opportunity of knowing what was going on in the world than most people, in his sheltered and secluded life, with his court of friends and worshippers. And indeed it was not a rational pessimism; ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... felt under Klesmer's demonstration that she was not remarkable enough to command fortune by force of will and merit; it was what she would feel under the rigors of Mrs. Mompert's constant expectation, under the dull demand that she should be cheerful with three Miss Momperts, under the necessity of showing herself entirely submissive, and keeping her thoughts to herself. To be a queen disthroned is not so hard as some other down-stepping: imagine one who had been made to believe in ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the taking of such things as will make detection difficult. No doubt they steal now and then a little, and a gaping marvel would it be if they did not. Why should they not follow in the footsteps of their masters and mistresses? Dull scholars indeed! if, after so many lessons from proficients in the art, who drive the business by wholesale, they should not occasionally copy their betters, fall into the fashion, and try their hand in a small way, at a practice which is the only permanent and universal business carried ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... white flowers could be seen in the dark, when all the gay reds and yellows and blues and purples were dim and dull. ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 15, April 12, 1914 • Various
... history of the French Press—set himself, during several years of his career, to prove the truth of the axiom that in France "tout finit par des chansons." During those anxious siege days he was for ever striving to sound a gay note, something which, for a moment, at all events, might drive dull care away. Here is an English version of some verses which he wrote ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... dawned upon the apparently dull mind of Elizabeth Hand, for she watched her youngest mistress intently, from kitchen to parlor, and from parlor back to kitchen; and once when Miss Hilary stood giving information as to the proper ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... has a bad look," he said. "The neighbours look pityingly at a man. I won't have that. Not that there is any harm in Thorstan. He is the son of a friend of mine, and a very honest young man, though I call him dull. A man ought to be able to talk. I think him hot-tempered, too. He killed a lover of his sister Freydis once, and might as well have left it alone. She could have looked after herself. Besides, we are not so handy ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... a more definite and a more cordial invitation. Issuing into Albemarle Street, he looked vaguely about him, and wondered how he should get through the rest of the afternoon. A dull sky hastened the failure of his spirits; when, in a few minutes, rain began to fall, he walked on under his umbrella, thoroughly cheerless and objectless. Then it struck him that he would go presently to Pont Street; Mrs. Toplady might help him ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... please, our wondering eyes. Betwixt you both is trained a nobler piece, Than e'er was drawn in Italy or Greece. Thou from his source of thoughts even souls dost bring, As smiling gods from sullen Saturn spring. When night's dull mask the face of heaven does wear, 'Tis doubtful light, but here and there a star, Which serves the dreadful shadows to display, That vanish at the rising of the day; But then bright robes the meadows all adorn, And the world looks as it were newly born. So, when your ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... peculiarly to my taste; clothing them with the language of poetry, and throwing round them almost the magic hues of fiction. "How charming," thought I, "is divine philosophy;" not harsh and crabbed, as dull ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... said Harry, "and you can see the dull, somber red of the sun trying to break through. Look, George, unless I'm mistaken the fog's ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... left town, and the villas along the shores of the Hudson had long been occupied. Mr. Hardinge, too, pined for the country and his flock. The girls had had enough of town, which was getting to be very dull, and everybody, Rupert excepted, seemed anxious to go up the river. I had invited the Mertons to pass part of the summer at the farm, moreover, and it was time the invitation should be renewed, for the Major's physicians ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... meanwhile, the night passed slowly away, the moon, diminished to a ghastly crescent, rose over the woods, looking down with a sickly smile upon the prisoner,—an emblem of his decayed fortunes and waning hopes; and a pale streak, the first dull glimmer of dawn, was seen stealing up the skies. But neither moon nor streak of dawn yet threw light upon the little glade. The watch-fire had burned nearly away, and its flames no longer illuminated the scene. The crackling of the embers, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... heightened with some additional touches of the rake or coxcomb, betrays itself in everything they do. The Temple, however, is stocked with its peculiar beaux, wits, poets, critics, and every character in the gay world; and it is a thousand pities that so pretty a society should be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submit to puzzle themselves with cases and reports, and have not taste enough to follow the genteel method of studying the law." Cowper at all events studied law by the genteel method; he read it almost as little in the Temple as he had in the attorney's office, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other ladies as a mirror for their mental complacency she was sometimes troubled by a doubt of her worthiness to join in their debates. It was only the fact of having a dull sister who thought her clever that saved her from a sense of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... have lost all powers of interesting its readers. It is as dull as political economy; it suspects a stylist, questions the accuracy of its authorities, tends to minimise personal influence on events, specialises on a narrow period, emphasises constitutional development, insists on the "economic interpretation" ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... long, low house of Sigurd Syr, at Vigen, all is excitement; for word has come that Olaf the sea-king has returned to his native land, and is even now on his way to this, his mother's house. Gay stuffs decorate the dull walls of the great-room, clean straw covers the earth-floor, and upon the long, four-cornered tables is spread a mighty feast of mead and ale and coarse but hearty food, such as the old Norse heroes drew their strength and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... this is such a pleasure," she said; "the sound of the step of the horses even has its effect, as we feel they go easily to themselves. There is the succession of change of place and scene, fresh green meadows after dry and dusty roads, and, after a dull bit, there comes a pretty prospect of a country house, with its woods and lake. The coming also to a fresh place every night has its interest. I cannot think of a more pleasant way of travelling. Do ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... of the low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied by a native lad, I set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the equatorial ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... and in reward be Minister of Agriculture, which is cooler. But if he overthrow not the government, but by compromise become Minister of Military and Internal Peace, then my Georgio will be in innocence a victim, and perhaps will have to hide, which is hot and dull, or go to the dungeons of La Libertad, which is dull and wet; or we would escape from the country in the distinguished ship of the Senor Buckingham, or in the Imperial Company of Senor Flannagan, which ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... distance to the next falls. As was the case above, he had to listen to diverse and widely different opinions, with the usual result, that he took his own course, and succeeded in reaching Nashua in safety at ten o'clock. The next day dawned dull and rainy and he had a tiresome pull on a sluggish stream until he reached Tyngsborough. Nearing a crowded bridge at that place, volleys of questions were fired at him. He was choking with thirst and without looking up, asked: "Is there ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... was able to obtain of the town and its inhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when from office to office he went in quest of something to do. After many failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an opportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept our journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year 1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... which is sometimes found wanting inside a better coat than he possessed, Joseph never again referred to that part of Marie's life which seemed to hang like a shadow over her being. Instead, he set himself the task of driving away the dull sense of care which was hers, and he succeeded so well that Jack Meredith, lying between sleep and death in his bedroom, sometimes ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... finished his story in a whisper,—it was just as well. He went on to say he hardly ever saw her now that she was with Monsieur Didier, of the Credit Bourguignon. The financier had sent the artists to the right-about; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fellow, a dull, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... man were facing each other in a dull green room. The latter's back was toward me, and a table was between them, but they were not at cards. The young man's profile was half-turned so I could see, and he moved restlessly in his chair. He lit a cigarette as I stood there, and the Senor observed that it was sad to be old. You ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... forward with economic and political reform. For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life. Short-changing these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country. I urge members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
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