"Rambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some hesitation, one June day, "I've been thinking—with all our rambling rooms and great big yards, and we with never a chick nor a child to enjoy them—I 've been thinking—that is, I went by the orphan asylum in town yesterday and saw the poor little mites playing in that miserable brick oven they call a yard, and—well, don't you think we ought to have ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... "canker-worm" to embitter the lives and unite the sympathies of large classes against their rulers or local governors, and make them think that they cannot shake it off without rebelling and becoming martyrs. I must pray your Lordship to excuse this long rambling ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... cannot describe, and locked and bolted my door as if a lion had been at the other side. D—n him or it; curse the portrait and its original! I felt in my soul that the rat—yes, the rat, the RAT I had just seen, was that evil being in masquerade, and rambling through the house upon some ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... feels that Dr. Granville has left him nothing to say which may not be found in his two great big books; yet the Cholera and the Polish war have supplied him with two topics throughout the whole book; and, dull as these subjects are in themselves, they have enabled our tourist to produce a rambling, rattling, frolicsome work of seven or eight hundred pages. His attentions to the softer sex sparkle every where. At Hamburgh, "we dined at a most excellent table d'hote, but thought the ladies plain and dowdy." "We laughed much at the Holsteiner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized with convulsions, and immediately lost all perception and feeling. I pressed her hand and spoke to her; but she neither saw me, heard me, nor seemed in the least sensible; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... lawn, leading through a small ante-room where boots and coats and cricket bats and tennis rackets could be kept; the drawing-room had a luxurious ingle nook with cushioned seats, and all the bedrooms but two had a southern aspect. As for the big rambling garden, it was full of delightful old-world flowers that came up year after year: daffodils and violets and snow-flakes, and clumps of pinks, and orange lilies and Canterbury bells, and tall Michaelmas daisies, and ribbon grass and royal Osmunda fern, the sort of flowers ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of society, will be sufficiently apparent, from the circumstance of his having thought fit to make his chief prolocutor in this poetical dialogue, and chief advocate of Providence and Virtue, an old Scotch Pedlar—retired indeed from business—but still rambling about in his former haunts, and gossiping among his old customers, without his pack on his shoulders. The other persons of the drama are, a retired military chaplain, who has grown half an atheist and half a misanthrope—the wife of an unprosperous weaver—a servant girl with her infant—a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... you were indeed young, and long before you took your degree in morality at the rambling court of the second Charles, did I ever counsel you to do aught that your—that, in short, you might not do with perfect honour? I know too well what it is to sacrifice honour to interest ever to wish you to make the trial. As for me, I am ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... days," the grandmother said (Nodding her head, Where cap and curls were as white as snow), "In my young days, when we used to go Rambling, Scrambling; Each little dirty hand in hand, Like a chain of daisies, a comical band Of neighbours' children, seriously straying, Really and truly going a-Maying, My mother would bid us linger, And lifting ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The rambling operations of the naval war till the close of 1780— directed by the allies to such secondary objects as the capture of West Indian islands, or of Minorca and Gibraltar, and by Great Britain to defensive movements—began to assume a degree of coherence in 1781. Holland having now joined the allies, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... visible from the Close, but can be seen through a doorway in the cloisters. It is set in the midst of delightful gardens, a rambling picturesque building dating from many periods. Bishop Poore began it—Bishop Beauchamp built its great hall; within its walls are portraits of all the bishops of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... escape. Those who beg without shame, who cheat and steal, who are greedy and drunken have a share of his wrath. Yet Langland is not all harshness. His great word is Duty, but he speaks of Love too. "Learn to love, quoth King, and leave off all other." The poem is rambling and disconnected. Characters come on the scene and vanish again without cause. Stories begin and do not end. It is all wild and improbable like a dream, yet ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... were shorter visits to various relatives—to his brother-in-law's house, close to Leith Hill, and to his son near Southampton. He always particularly enjoyed rambling over rough open country, such as the commons near Leith Hill and Southampton, the heath-covered wastes of Ashdown Forest, or the delightful "Rough" near the house of his friend Sir Thomas Farrer. He never was quite ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime—these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... back in England than George Gascoigne's Steel Glass, which preceded Hall's Virgidemiarum by twenty years, and is interesting not only for itself but as being ushered in by the earliest known verses of Walter Raleigh. It is written in blank verse, and is a rather rambling commentary on the text vanitas vanitatum, but it expressly calls itself a satire and answers sufficiently well to the description. More immediate and nearer examples were to be found in the Satires of Donne and Lodge. The first named were indeed, like the other poetical works ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... in borders from day to day, to see what they require. When the shoots of rambling flowers interpose with each other, they should be shortened, so that every plant may stand singly, as they always appear to best advantage when they stand clear of ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... wedding in a small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio, they had spent their tiny capital in building a small story-and-a-half cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and fancy turning popular in 1872, and this had been the nucleus of their present rambling, picturesque, many-roomed home. Every step in the long series of changes which had led from its first state to its last had a profound and gratifying significance for the Emerys and its final condition, prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of wood work in every room that showed, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... the short pasture grass and scattered ox-eye daisies, they looked at each other suspiciously, and each felt that somehow it was the other fellow's fault. Aggrieved and miserable, they went rambling off, each his own way, to face alone what Fate might have in store for him. And Young Grumpy, looking up from a melancholy but consoling feast which he was making on a mushroom, found himself alone in ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... employes, it is difficult to conceive that any revision whatever can have been bestowed on the rough notes of the writer, since they were first hastily committed to paper amidst the scenes which they describe. The style is as rambling and unconnected as the incidents to which it refers; but wherever the author's devious footsteps lead us, from the jungles of Bundelcund to the holy ghats of Hurdwar, the principal figure is always that of the colonel himself, who, in the portly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... both spoke the French language. We were made welcome by one of them, who proved to be the master, and who helped us to alight. A long, and latterly a wet journey, had completely fatigued us—and after mounting up one high stair-case, and rambling along several loosely-floored corridors—we reached our apartments, which contained each a very excellent bed. Wax candles were placed upon the tables: a fire was lighted: coffee brought up; and a talkative, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... his surprise, Hervey was picking his way along the rocky ledge at the base of the mountain, apparently oblivious to all that had happened, and intent upon a rambling quest for tracks. It was quite characteristic of him that he based his search upon no hint or well considered plan, but went looking for the tracks of a wild animal as one will hunt for ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rambling story, how Edwin always would needs go to Winchester, to see the queen, for she would stand his friend, and do him right. And how they could not get to Winchester, for fear of the French, and wandered in woods and wolds; ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... meets a young singer, feels the sensations of a pure love pulsing in her veins and sends him out of her presence uncontaminated. Here are poetry and beauty; but not matter for three-quarters of an hour of a rambling musical dialogue, such as the librettists and composer of "Cavalleria Rusticana" have strained and tortured it into. A drawing-room sketch of fifteen minutes' duration might have been tolerable. To add to the dulness of the piece, Mascagni, actuated by a conceit which would have ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... timbered house, long, low, and rambling, with a yard by its side full of barrels, anchors, and other marine stores such as rope, that had to do with the trade I carried on ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... rambling, houseless sailor is commonly a great liar—at least so have I always found him. Most of their log-books will not do to read; or, for that matter, to be written out, in full. But if this man's name is really Daggett, he must come from the Vineyard. There are Daggetts there in scores; yes, he must ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... monntains [sic]; but those that live near the Mahometan countries are mostly Mahometans. The Southern provinces lie in a temperate climate, and would produce all manner of corn and vegetables; but the inhabitants pay no regard to it, and lead a rambling life, driving great herds of cattle before them to such parts of the country where they can meet with the best pasture, and here they pitch their tents, but seldom remain long enough in a place to reap a crop of corn, even ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... inhaled; all dust, glare, noise, with a chandler's shop, perhaps, next door? Sidney armed with a pair of scissors, was cutting the pictures out of a story-book, which his mother had bought him the day before. Philip, who, of late, had taken much to rambling about the streets—it may be, in hopes of meeting one of those benevolent, eccentric, elderly gentlemen, he had read of in old novels, who suddenly come to the relief of distressed virtue; or, more probably, from the restlessness that belonged to his adventurous ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very magnificent, it is true, consisting of but a parlor and two bedrooms on the ground-floor, and two low chambers under the roof, with a kitchen in the rear; but compared with the rambling old stable-like building we now inhabited, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... the old man asked in a rambling manner, "how did you ever come to marry him? I've wanted to ask you that from ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Therefore it is necessary that the human soul should have the light, the genius, and the instruments suitable for its pursuit. And here contemplation comes to aid, and logic, the fittest mode for the pursuit of truth, to find it, to distinguish it, and to judge of it. So that one goes rambling amongst the wild woods of natural things, where there are many objects under shadow and mantle, for it is in a thick, dense, and deserted solitude that Truth most often has its secret cavernous retreat, all entwined with thorns and covered ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... he on his better hand Smote full the cup-bearer; on the hall-floor Loud rang the fallen beaker, and himself Lay on his back clamouring in the dust. Strait through the dusky hall tumult ensued Among the suitors, of whom thus, a youth, With eyes directed to the next, exclaim'd. Would that this rambling stranger had elsewhere 500 Perish'd, or ever he had here arrived, Then no such uproar had he caused as this! This doth the beggar; he it is for whom We wrangle thus, and may despair of peace Or pleasure more; now look for strife alone. Then in ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... is travelling fast on while I am rambling after the wind, he has puzzled the artists a good deal I should say, for with all their skill at representation they have never hit upon any better idea of him than an old Man with wings. An old man with wings! Can you fancy anything so unnatural! One can quite understand beautiful young Angels with ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Brandhoek, the Ten Hundred marched to Brake Camp, a rambling collection of huts built in a wood near the main road running between Poperinghe and Ypres, within a ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... road, in the widest place, where the coaches used to turn (there were many of old, but the traffic of Broadway was blown to pieces by steam, though the destroyer has not come nearer than half a dozen miles), a great gabled mansion, which was once a manor or a house of state, and is now a rambling inn, stands looking at a detached swinging sign which is almost as big as itself—a very grand sign, the "arms" of an old family, on the top of a very tall post. You will find something very like the place among Mr. Abbey's delightful illustrations to, "She Stoops to Conquer." When the ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... night, and as my head rested on his shoulder our conversation was the rambling sort that may be ticketed "all rights reserved," so I won't repeat it as the postmaster-general would refuse me stamps in the future if I sent it through the mail. In Chicago they'd take out my phone if I squeaked it over the wires. Carlton is deeply interested in ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... he; "but I am not acquainted with the position that illustrious person holds in relation to Hawai." The Portuguese then made a very long, rambling, and not very lucid statement, from which Jack gleaned the following details. About a hundred years before, during the reign of one of the first kings, there lived a great warrior, whose name was Rono. This chief was very popular, but he was very jealous. In a moment of anger he killed his ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Street as upon the other; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother over the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles and balsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the opposite side of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home, had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to this lone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. A stranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understood it—he had seen that same thing ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... am past the age of romance, for I am in a fine situation for mysterious and imaginary horrors, could I but feel again as I did at gay sixteen; but, alas! ces beaux jours sont passes! and here I am on the top of a dreary black mountain, in a rambling old inn which looks like a ci-devant hospital or dismantled barracks, in a bed-room which resembles one of the wards of a poor-house, one little corner lighted by my lamp, and the other three parts all lost in black ominous darkness; while a tempest rages without as if it would break in the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and his wife, the turning-point was passed, and Dr Portman pronounced their child out of danger—all he needed now was good nursing, sea-air, and proper nourishment. During the ravings of the fever his mind was often rambling on the scene in the ruins—at one time he would be chiding the dog, at another he would be urging Mary to cling firmly to the ivy; and there was a tone of tenderness in these appeals which convinced Lady Oldfield that her son's heart ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... of screening my mother's castle from them—for a castle I called it from the first moment, though it was to be much more like a cottage—I need fear no observation from other quarters; for the avenue was broad, and on the other side from us there was a range of low, rambling buildings—an engine-house and a long liquor-saloon were two—which had but one story. Most of them bad been built, I suppose, only to earn something for the land while it was growing valuable. The church had no windows in the rear, and that protected my castle—which ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... individual pews and seats. If they belonged to a family of five hundred each, and if every one of them had to go to Church every Sunday, they would want their respective seats, Prayer Books, footstools, and all that sort of thing. They don't like to see strangers rambling about, in search of a resting place; they are particularly solemn-looking, and give symptoms of being on the border of some catastrophe, if an unknown being shows any disposition to enter their pews. And some of them would see a person ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many shorthand writers would be out of a job. The best shorthanders and the holders of good positions are those who can take a lot of rambling, incoherent stuff and make a rattling ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a rambling chapter, I will here record an incident showing his feeling toward Robert E. Lee. The very morning of the day on which he was assassinated, his son, Capt. Robert Lincoln, came into the room with a portrait ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the fable who doubled his strength every time he touched the ground, Booker Washington seemed to renew his strength every time he came in contact with the plain people of his race, particularly the farmers. No matter how pressed and driven by multifarious affairs, he could always find time for a rambling talk, apparently quite at random, with an old, uneducated, ante-bellum black farmer. Sometimes he would halt the entire business of a national convention in order to hear the comment of some simple but shrewd old character. He had a profound respect for the wisdom of ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... Souilly, too," said Dook. "Hell, yes.... A funny thing happened there. The hospital was in a big rambling house, looked like an Atlantic City hotel.... We used to run our car in back and sleep in it. It was where we took the shell-shock cases, fellows who were roarin' mad, and tremblin' all over, and some of 'em paralysed like.... There was a man in the wing opposite ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... white like sentinals of the past in the winter's moonlight. But the sound of other days had died away. The creek bed had long since yielded up its treasure and lay neglected, exposed to the heat and frost. The old brick buildings rambling up the street were still left, but were fast tottering to decay. Side by side with the occupied buildings, stood half-fallen adobes and shattered blocks filled only with the ghosts ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... pretentious about the place; it was a rambling, lazy-looking house built largely of native stone, stretching its length comfortably in the shade of the big maples. Perrin, Vic's man-of-all-work, came hurrying out of the house to greet me as I locked my wheels on ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... their favourite pastime, then they made enemies for themselves among the neighbouring clans, or else crossed over to Holland to keep their hands in there till fortune favoured them once more at home. The old castle, with its rambling towers, and walls, and buttresses was a sort of rallying-point for all the pugnacious spirits of the time, and its bluff walls showed many a scar and many a dint where hostile guns had played upon them, not, you may ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... dairy at Dinas, and in and out of the rambling old kitchen, she was busy with her preparations for the guests who would fill the house during the Sassiwn. She bustled about, with Marged Hughes in attendance, looking very different, but every bit as charming, in her ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... life, are driven irregularly hither and thither by different individual needs and desires, to act under one impulse with one feeling for one object. It introduces order and connection, at least occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances correspond in more than ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the Order of Words.— The syntax— or order of words— of the oldest English was very different from that of Norman-French. The syntax of an Old English sentence was clumsy and involved; it kept the attention long on the strain; it was rumbling, rambling, and unpleasant to the ear. It kept the attention on the strain, because the verb in a subordinate clause was held back, and not revealed till we had come to the end of the clause. Thus the Anglo-Saxon wrote (though in different ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... make a blaze of colour against the forest background, or glow amidst the dusky shadows of palm-thatched sheds, where thirsty travellers imbibe pink and yellow syrups, the favourite beverages of the Malay race. The ascending road commands superb views of the mountain chain, and the rambling two-storied hotel, widened by immense verandahs, stands opposite cloud-crowned Gedeh, half-veiled by the spreading column of volcanic smoke. The misty blue of further hills leads the eye to the three weird peaks of the Tangkoeban Prahoe, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... that Miss Trevor was alarmed, and imagining that she had brought herself and her young cavalier into some difficulty, she became more incoherent, nervous and rambling than usual. Repeating herself over and over again, she related, in such a confused manner, the story of her encounter with Hannah, and of how the latter had entrusted her with the money for Percy; of how she had intended to return to Sylvandale at once when ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... through opposing clouds. Pois'd by their wings the eastern gales they pass, Which started with them: but their burthen light, Small felt the pressure on the chariot seat: Not what the steeds of Sol had felt before. As ships unpois'd reel tottering through the waves, Light and unsteady, rambling o'er the main; So bounds the car, void of its 'custom'd weight, High-toss'd as though unfill'd. This quick perceiv'd, Fierce rush the four-yok'd steeds, and quit the path Beaten before, and tread a road unknown. Trembling the youth nor knows to pull ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... understand French a good deal better than I can some of Jessie's United States," said Evelyn, plaintively, and so they laughed their way out onto the broad, picturesque porch of the rambling old inn and stood gazing curiously ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... stupid French innovation, which all the ingenuity of a Dryden defended in vain. It was cast into the shape of a dialogue,—the Duke of Dorset being one of the respondents,—and formed the first specimen of Dryden's easy, rambling, but most vivid, vigorous, and entertaining prose. No one was ever more ready than he to render reasons for his writings,—for their faults as well as merits,—and to show by more ingenious arguments, that, if they failed, they ought to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the Three Bears" is perhaps the only instance in which a piece of literature by a known English author is found among accepted folk tales. It appeared in Robert Southey's rambling miscellany, The Doctor (1837). He may have taken it from an old tale, but no amount of investigation has located any certain source. In the most familiar versions the naughty old woman gives place to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... at school, he found interest in reading other books than those required in his school course—various English classics contained in his father's library. Like the delight that he felt in such reading, was that which he found in rambling through the woods on the outskirts of the town and about the farms of his two grandfathers and of his uncle Stephenson. He liked the quiet of natural scenes, and was moved with deep wonder by the ever-changing beauty of the woods and fields, the ocean and the mountains. Because of this ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... down a wise saying that came from Dauvit. A rambling and ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night. Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my word for it, ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... brick street of New York, with one catalpa-tree in it,—a poor, vegetable fakir, standing on his one leg at a distance of about three blocks from "our corner," and sprawling out all round with his shrivelled hands, as if to catch the passing robe of some rambling breath of fresh air. With a trustful hope that this statement may be accepted in extenuation of the inevitable platitudinism down the gently inclined plane of which I feel myself impelled to slide ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Eustace been about?" said Paul to me last night, after we had all returned from rambling round and round the moonlit Piazza, and he had been describing to me his talk with her. "He ought to have seen farther ahead. That creature is only just beginning to live—and it will be a life worth having! He has kindled it, too, as much as anybody. Of course we have not seen ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... One day, when rambling over the mountain in search of game, I put up and fired at a hare; she was evidently hit, and I gave chase, yet though puss had but three legs effective I ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... said the American. "Nice rambling ark, two stories high, and no two rooms on the same level. Architect built right out into the country till he got tired, and then turned round and came back. Obliged to have a valet to show you to your room whether you're ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... despatch held out no hope of a reconciliation. There came with it, however, a long and rambling letter from Maret to Miles, which was intended partly to threaten, partly to cajole the Ministry. In its more dulcet passages the hope was set forth that the Scheldt affair could be settled, and even that Chauvelin might be replaced by the estimable Barthelemy. Miles, highly elated, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... much needless trouble; there would be room made for her in some carriage, of course. No doubt; but no kind of carriage could make its way in the woods; and, but for this pony, Miss Young would have to sit in a carriage, or under a tree, the whole time that the rest of the party were rambling about; whereas, this quiet active little pony would take care that she was nowhere left behind. It could do everything but climb trees. It was to be taken over to Dingleford the evening before, and would be waiting for its rider on the verge ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... happier and more at his ease when rambling in his splendid park and gazing on Table Mountain from his stoep than amidst the luxury of his richly furnished rooms. Sometimes he would sit for hours looking at the landscape before him, lost in a meditation which ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of doubt and astonishment which had seized every faculty of Cecilia, now changed into certainty that Delvile indeed was present, all her recollection returned as she listened, to this question, and the wild rambling of fancy with which she had incautiously indulged her sorrow, rushing suddenly upon her mind, she felt herself wholly overpowered by consciousness and shame, and sunk, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... so, on the Sunday evening preceding the celebration of Father Letheby's first Christmas in Kilronan, I spoke to him at length on my ideas and principles in connection with this great day; and we went back, in that rambling, desultory way that conversation drifts into,—back to ancient prophecies and forecastings, down to modern times,—tales of travellers about Bethlehem, the sacrilegious possession of holy places by Moslems, etc., etc., ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... it going out of his dug-out to attend to a man of his company who was hit by a sniper in an exposed place, one of his subalterns told me. His own account, of course, was a rambling story leaving that ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... He fought his little adoptive brothers and sisters; he kicked and cuffed his father and mother; he fought the cat, stamped upon the kittens, was worsted in a severe battle with the hen in the backyard; but, in revenge, nearly beat a little sucking-pig to death, whom he caught alone and rambling near his favourite haunt, the dung-hill. As for stealing, he stole the eggs, which he perforated and emptied; the butter, which he ate with or without bread, as he could find it; the sugar, which he cunningly secreted in the leaves of a "Baker's ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... begin to despair of ever gratifying my longing after a rambling life. It is probably all for the best. I dare say I would have become a mere vagabond. But I had embraced a wide field in my contemplated travels: romantic Spain, la belle France, classic Italy, and that dreamy, misty ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... proud, and keenly felt how mortifying it would be to present his mother to his fashionable acquaintances; but that was in the future—many miles away—he wouldn't trouble himself about it now; so he passed his time mostly in rambling through the woods and over the hills, while his mother, good soul, busied herself with the preparations for her journey, inviting each and every one of her neighbors to "be sure and visit her if they ever came that way," and urging some of them to come on purpose and ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... of the year 1684, he was prevented, by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he amused himself with experiments on the properties of mercury. His temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knowledge dawned upon the invalid, and he called his companion to his side. Shivering there beneath the thin tent, Captain heard a story, rambling at first, filled with hatred and bitterness toward the men who had scoffed at him, yet at the last he listened eagerly, amazedly, and upon its conclusion rose suddenly, gazing at ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... other, playing the joyous mountain melodies which I had not once played since my departure from Marienberg. God knows what brought them into my head again; but it did my heart good to play them, and a feeling came over me, that I should like once more to have a home, and to leave the weary rambling life I had so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... rambling comments on the weather, the rains and the dust, the execrable food and the lack of drinking-water. The man who eventually received this letter never reached that part ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... end of his journey by this time. The Grange stood in front of him—a great rambling building, with many gables, gray lichen-grown walls, and quaint old diamond-paned casements in the upper stories. Below, the windows were larger, and had an Elizabethan look, with patches of stained glass here ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... his clew as he had hoped, and instead of lifting the fog grew heavier. He found himself at last no longer striving for any end, but rambling along mechanically, feeling like a man in a dream—a nightmare. Once he recognized a weird suggestion in the mystery about him. To-morrow might one be wandering about aimlessly in some such haze. He ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will be to see Miss Magin sitting up like a forsaken owl, calling out A, and A you will softly say; then B, and C, and so on. If you had learned to read, you would have to pore over books all the time. Nothing but books! I could learn more, rambling about three days, than I could in books in half a century. When lessons are over, mother will come in and ask if you have been good, and as you will not have had any novels or poetry hidden away, Miss Magin will answer, "Yes, madam, she has been so." Then mother will give you ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... love, and went mad! I wot she was ever sighing and rambling about the house, and would seldom venture out alone, looking as though she were in jeopardy, and dreaded some ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and galleries and empty rooms! Small wonder that my games were played alone; Half of the rambling house to call my own, And wooded ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... appearance. One day the Dowager happened to see in a newspaper a mention of the fact that there was in Sydney a man named Cubitt, who kept what he called a "Missing Friends' Office." To Cubitt accordingly she wrote a long rambling letter, in which, among other tokens of her state of mind, she gave a grossly incorrect account of her son's appearance, and even of his age; but Cubitt was to insert her long advertisement in the Australian papers, and he was promised a handsome reward. Cubitt, in reply, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... delightful Swiss village, the town reposing in a beautiful valley, near the upper end of Windermere Lake; "no two houses being alike either in form or magnitude," and the entire place laid out in a rambling irregular manner, adding to its peculiarity and beauty. The pretty little chapel which ornaments the place was erected in 1812, on the site of an older structure. The neighbourhood is studded with attractive villas; but the most interesting of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... After considerable rambling conversation, I managed to grasp the fact that the woman had been sick in the house three days, but now was well. She considered her illness a mere "claim" her "mortal mind" had made which she had ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wide rambling structure, and, though burnt to cinders, much of its general shape, and the great logs which had formed its walls, still remained to testify to all it had been under the hands of those who had ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture—say, a third—was as old as the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century. I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the wall, round the corner, down the round slippery stones of the rambling farmyard, behind the buildings, did Sylvia trip, safe and well-poised, though the ground wore all one coating of white snow, and in many places was so slippery as to oblige Kinraid to linger near Kester, the lantern-bearer. Kester did not lose his opportunity, though ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... she was, according to her custom, rambling round about the courts and yards of the palace to see if she could smell any fresh meat, she heard, in a ground room, little Day crying, for his mamma was going to whip him, because he had been naughty; and she heard, at the same ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts: my father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free-school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... wappenshaw, with a Sheffield gardener's knife, which he happened to have with him, for prize! When at last Yule emerged from the wilds and on 25th March marched into Prome, he was taken for his own ghost! "Found Fraser (of the Engineers) in a rambling phoongyee house, just under the great gilt pagoda. I went up to him announcing myself, and his astonishment was so great that he would scarcely shake hands!" It was on this occasion at Prome that Yule first met his future chief Captain Phayre—"a very young-looking man—very ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... lean man, with all his limbs rambling—no way to reduce him to compass, unless you could double him like a pocket rule—with his arms spread, he'd lie on the bed of Ware like a cross on a Good Friday bun—standing still, he is a pilaster without a base—he appears rolled out or run ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... small cottage—true, it was somewhat larger than was generally supposed by any casual observer who might look at it. The place was rambling, and built chiefly of wood; but in it lived the ferryman, his wife, and family; among these was a young girl about seventeen years of age, but, at the same time, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... have been rambling all the night, And almost all the day; And now returned back again, We have brought ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... it all now. Several nights ago, returning from the Alamo, I met her on the bridge alone; she seemed excited, I thought, and impatient at meeting me, for I questioned her rambling so late." ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... low, rambling building, still it was a high jump, even for a man, and Locke was astounded that they should attempt such a thing, even in their undoubted state ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... believed it would be the better for us, and that nature has given them a just and moderate temper both to pleasure and pain; neither can it fail of being just, being equal and common. But seeing we have enfranchised ourselves from her rules to give ourselves up to the rambling liberty of our own fancies, let us at least help to incline them to the most agreeable side. Plato fears our too vehemently engaging ourselves with pain and pleasure, forasmuch as these too much knit and ally the soul to the body; whereas I rather, quite contrary, by reason ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... plot of lawn on which our cottage stood was backed by the wild purple swell of the common, and that was crested by a fine fir wood, a beautiful rambling and scrambling ground, full of picturesque and romantic associations with all the wild and fanciful mental existences which I was then beginning to enjoy. And even as I glide through it now, on the railroad that has laid its still depths open to the sun's glare and scared its ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... to attribute everything to the dog. It seemed to her then that she met the animal everywhere. Cow Farm was a rambling building, with dark, uneven stairs, low-ceilinged rooms, queer, odd corners, and sudden unexpected doors. It seemed to Mary as though in this place there were two Hamlets. When, in the evening she went to her room, hurrying through the passages for fear of what she might see, stumbling ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... he said; "but just tell her that my time is precious, and that I don't want to listen to long rambling stories, so whatever she has got to say, let her say it ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... is but a very small place indeed, now-a-days,—yet it possesses a church, grey and ancient, whose massive Norman tower looks down upon gable and chimney, upon roof of thatch and roof of tile, like some benignant giant keeping watch above them all. Near-by, of course, is the inn, a great, rambling, comfortable place, with time-worn settles beside the door, and with a mighty sign a-swinging before it, upon which, plainly to be seen (when the sun catches it fairly) is that which purports to be a likeness of His Majesty King William the Fourth, of glorious memory. But alas! the colours have ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... December 14, 1840, in the rambling one-story shack that accomodated the fifteen slaves of his Old Marster, [HW: Harry] Beattie Goforth, on a farm in Claiborne County, North Carolina. His tall frame is slightly stooped, but he is not subjected to the customary infirmities of the aged, other than poor vision and hearing. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Mistriss, 'tis your High-fed, Lusty, Rambling, Rampant Ladies—that are troubl'd with the Vapours; 'tis your Ratifia, Persico, Cynamon, Citron, and Spirit of Clary, cause such Swi—m—ing in the Brain, that carries many a Guinea full-tide to the Doctor. But you are not to be Bred this way; No Galloping abroad, ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... territory, as we do persons infected with disease. Such is the situation of our country. We have most abundant resources of happiness within ourselves, which we may enjoy in peace and safety, without permitting a few citizens, infected with the mania of rambling and gambling, to bring danger on the great mass engaged in innocent and safe pursuits at home. In your letter to Fisk, you have fairly stated the alternatives between which we are to choose: 1. licentious commerce and gambling ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... nearly half a century, having grown out of the recollection of almost all the inhabitants of the village. She had long been a pensioner of Mrs. Aubrey's, by whom alone, indeed, she was supported. Her great age, her singular appearance, and a certain rambling way of talking that she had, had long earned her the reputation, in the village, of being able to say strange things; and one or two of the old gossips knew of things coming to pass according to what—poor old ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... from their hospitable hosts, followed by an abundant breakfast. Then at Mrs. Lanham's earnest solicitation they turned over their dress uniforms to her to be repaired and pressed. Then they went out into the streets again, and spent the whole day rambling about, enjoying everything with the keen and intense delight that can come only to the young, and after long abstinence. Richmond was not depressed. Far from it. There had been a wonderful transformation since those dark days when the army of McClellan was near enough ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with her usual high hand, feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance; and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to plant her points where ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... a gun with us in these excursions, we often fall in with deer or partridges, which makes the way not only seem less fatiguing, but even pleasant, unless during the season of musquitoes and black flies, when rambling through the Bush is ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... first code of Canadian laws. Although it was desirable to maintain peace, it was also necessary to prepare to resist the attacks of the Iroquois, who were becoming more and more active. A party of the Iroquois had approached Quebec, and were observed to be rambling in the vicinity of the Recollets' convent, on the north shore of the River St. Charles. They finally made an attack, but they were repulsed with loss by the French and the Montagnais, whose chief was Mahicanaticouche, Champlain's friend. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... this time?" He shut his eyes, like a child suddenly awakened in the dark and afraid. "Somehow I hadn't expected that at all, hadn't planned on it. I suppose it was childish of me; but I've been taking things for granted, on the strength of the past, and—and—" Of a sudden the rambling tongue halted. The eyes opened wide, unnaturally wide; and in their depths was again that new look of terror, but now magnified. "Tell me that you don't mean it, Elice, really," he pleaded. "I was just beginning to live and hope ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... face and a light, scandent little beard, belonged to those kindly, merry and simple fellows, of which there are sufficiently many in any university. He divided his leisure—and of leisure he had twenty-four hours in the day—between the beer-shop and rambling over the boulevards; among billiards, whist, the theatre, reading of newspapers and novels, and the spectacles of circus wrestling; while the short intervals in between he used for eating, sleeping, the home repair of his wardrobe, with the aid ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... over my rambling remarks, that I classed "Ivanhoe" as the second historical novel of the century. I dare say there are many who would give "Esmond" the first place, and I can quite understand their position, although it is not ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hoped still to join Morgan a little later, and then it would be needed as he had planned. Christmas morning my father was so much better that my mother went to church, taking me, and leaving little Philip, then four years old, to amuse him. What happened that morning was the point of all this rambling; so now listen hard, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... he did in everything else. His mind began to wander from the present back to bygone days; Maren knew well what it meant. He went further and still further back to his youth and childhood. Strange it was how much he could remember things which otherwise had been forgotten. And it was not rambling nonsense that he talked, but all true enough; people older than he who came from the hamlet to visit him confirmed it, and wondered at hearing him speak of events that must have happened when he was but two or three years old. Soeren ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is well for thee that thou art not a young beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that rambling vein of thine would often bring thee under the lash of the whipper-in! Off thou art and away in pursuit of the smallest game that rises ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have a home of her own, and later perhaps—Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for her all these years, that he still ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... old rambling "Home" in Commercial Street, built originally for warehouses, then used as a cholera hospital, and now the Arab Refuge, presented a strange appearance during the week before the departure of the chosen hundred. On the ground-floor were the packages of the young passengers; on the first floor ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... bridal party was out of sight, crept away to her own chamber, and cried as if her heart would break; but nothing except the natural love of mischief, inherent in even the sweetest of children, could have tempted 'Toinette, after visiting her, to go straight to Mr. Brown,—strolling in the rambling old garden,—and say,— ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... could always be trusted for something of amazing delightfulness. Once, when Osgood could think of no other occasion for a dinner, he gave himself a birthday dinner, and asked his friends and authors. The beautiful and splendid trooper-like blaring was there, and I recall how in the long, rambling speech in which Clemens went round the table hitting every head at it, and especially visiting Osgood with thanks for his ingenious pretext for our entertainment, he congratulated blaring upon his engineering genius and his hypnotic control of municipal governments. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... up trumps. "Have you been to the opera lately?" may discover an ardent musician, and pave the way for a long "sit-out" gossip on things musical. "Have you been in town long?" may lead to any amount of pleasantly rambling talk about places and people in the counties, or recollections of continental travel, perhaps the most fascinating of all kinds of "shop." Of course, if the partners are old friends, or even tolerably familiar acquaintances, the surface-fishing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... He must die. The Queen intercedes for him, as do all honest men: but in vain. He has twenty-four hours' notice to prepare for death; eats a good breakfast; takes a cup of sack and a pipe; makes a rambling speech, in which one notes only the intense belief that he is an honest man, and the intense desire to make others believe so, in the very smallest matters; and then dies smilingly, as one weary of life. One makes no comment. Raleigh's life ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... you are rambling through the country, denotes that you will be oppressed with sadness, and the separation from friends, but your worldly surroundings will be all that one could desire. For a young woman, this dream promises a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... latticed belfry against the sky. There was the lodge, with its iron gates shut, and the wall which Nick had threatened to climb. As I passed the great square of the new barracks, a sereno (so the night watchmen were called) was crying the hour. I came to the rambling market-stalls, casting black shadows on the river road,—empty now, to be filled in the morning with shouting marchands. The promenade under the willows was deserted, the great river stretched away under the moon towards the forest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called "The Devil's Drive" the notion of which I took from Person's "Devil's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... old Roman was gone, and John Burnham looked with sad eyes at the last stronghold of him and his kind—the rambling old house stuccoed with aged brown and covered with ancient vines, knotted and gnarled like an old man's hand; the walls three feet thick and built as for a fort, as was doubtless the intent in pioneer days; the big yard of unmown blue-grass and filled with cedars and forest trees; ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... this Christmas evening, in the thickening twilight of the rambling old house, through long galleries, crooked passages, queer little turns at right angles, rooms opening out of rooms, half a dozen in succession, Squire Dan led the games, ordered about all the time by Papillon, whom he talked of admiringly as a high-mettled filly, declaring ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding of Lovin Child's talk—and incidentally doled out information ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... moment some new delight or charm to meet his wishes. At every turn she was upon him, and let him escape her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, and when he exercised in arms she was there to see. At night she would go rambling with him to joke with people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant woman, for Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he always came home very scurvily answered, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and fairly tasteful in details. But it is significant that a temple could always be enlarged by the addition of parts not contemplated in the original design. The result in such a case was a vast, rambling edifice, whose merits consisted in the imposing character of individual parts, rather than in an organic and symmetrical ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... the map he located a number of small wooden carvings, which were really very ingenious. They represented churches, an hotel, a mansion, three ordinary houses, a rambling building like a public institution, and a nondescript structure difficult ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... white clover or a grass-root. These two seem native to the soil, and will come in and take possession, smothering and routing out the strawberries, unless cut up as fast as they appear. When attacked early, before their rambling, but deeply penetrating roots obtain a strong hold, they are easily destroyed. I consider, therefore, that watchfulness may be made an effective substitute for labor, really preventing all necessity for hard work. This watchfulness we could generally exercise, though physically unable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... "Mr. Gordon, rambling throw the town, offered to abuse the women. At night, they came a mile further to the Easter-Seat, to Robert Muir's, he being also under hiding. Gordon's comrade and the two servants went to bed, but he could sleep none, roaring all night for women. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by a succession of the merest trifles; and when I got your kind letter and present this evening, I suddenly thought, Now for a complete confession and protest. I know you will forgive me for having victimized you, and that as soon as you have thrown this rambling epistle into the fire you will try to forget all the nonsense it contains and will believe that I hope ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... favoured the improvement and formation of new breeds. Pigeons, I may add, can be propagated in great numbers and at a very quick rate, and inferior birds may be freely rejected, as when killed they serve for food. On the other hand, cats, from their nocturnal rambling habits, cannot be matched, and, although so much valued by women and children, we hardly ever see a distinct breed kept up; such breeds as we do sometimes see are almost always imported from some other country, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... country. Jonathan acts the only rational part on the subject. He gives his ambassador a sum on which a private gentleman can live, and no more. He has not the slightest sense of giving superb feasts, furnishing huge palaces, supplying all the rambling Jonathans with balls and suppers, or astonishing John Bull by the tinsel of his appointments. Yet he is at least as well served as others. His man is a man of business; his embassy is no showy sinecure; his ambassador ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... rambling, let me tell you, that she does not much favour that;—for two reasons, I believe:—One, that I don't shew her all that passes between us; the other, that she thinks I harden your mind against your duty, as it is ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... their fanciful pleasure, rambling long jaunts when they rode or walked unattended, and romanced like children, eating their simple food under broad greenwood trees or on the wide moors with a whole world of heather, as it seemed, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as great friends as could be, and would go in swimming together where there was a bit of sandy strand along the East River above Fort George, and that in the most amicable fashion. Or, maybe the very next day after he had fought so with his fellows, he would go a-rambling with them up the Bowerie Road, perhaps to help them steal cherries from some old Dutch farmer, forgetting in such adventure what a thief ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... that a little group of peasants come into the court, and ask to see the "master." The master goes to the door, and generally finds that they have some favour to request. In reply to his question, "Well, children, what do you want?" they tell their story in a confused, rambling way, several of them speaking at a time, and he has to question and cross-question them before he comes to understand clearly what they desire. If he tells them he cannot grant it, they probably do not accept a first refusal, but endeavour by means of supplication to make him reconsider ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... light upon the present puzzle. In the rambling years that had led him to this spot upon the old Virginia, he had lost touch with the science that had interested him during his college days. He had heard nothing of the results of the Hunter expedition. But this island had been ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the window-sill. What a Hermes is thought! Like a vanishing dream fled the consciousness of surrounding objects, and she was with Eugene. Now, in the earlier years of his absence, she was in Heidelberg, listening to the evening chimes, and rambling with him through the heart of the Odenwald. Then they explored the Hartz, climbed the Brocken, and there, among the clouds, discussed the adventures of Faust and his kinsman, Manfred. Anon, the arrival of the Grahams ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... All this seemed to be rambling farther and farther from "Roderick Hanscom." Potter relieved his anxiety, however, after a thoughtful sigh, by saying abruptly: "Well, well, we can't go into a big production like that, this late in the year. We'll have to see what can be done with 'Roderick Hanscom.'" He looked at ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... his mother; and on his father's entrance he hid his face in the pillows and trembled, of course to their exceeding distress and perplexity; and when he believed no one present but Bernard and Mrs. Halfpenny, he became more and more rambling, sometimes insisting that his father must not know, sometimes abusing all connected with the racing bet, and more often fancying that he was going to be arrested for robbing the firm, the enormity of the sum and of the danger ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cheerful fire, the friends talked in rambling fashion until drowsy, when they wrapped their blankets around them and lay down to sleep. Some risk was involved in the proceeding, inasmuch as the fire was likely to attract wild animals to the spot, but providentially none disturbed the young pioneers, who slept ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis |
