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Vacant   Listen
adjective
Vacant  adj.  
1.
Deprived of contents; not filled; empty; as, a vacant room. "Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form." "Being of those virtues vacant." "There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair."
2.
Unengaged with business or care; unemployed; unoccupied; disengaged; free; as, vacant hours. "Religion is the interest of all; but philosophy of those... at leisure, and vacant from the affairs of the world." "There was not a minute of the day which he left vacant."
3.
Not filled or occupied by an incumbent, possessor, or officer; unoccupied; as, a vacant throne; a vacant house; a vacant apartment; a vacant parish. "Special dignities which vacant lie For thy best use and wearing."
4.
Empty of thought; thoughtless; not occupied with study or reflection; as, a vacant mind. "The duke had a pleasant and vacant face." "When on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood."
5.
(Law) Abandoned; having no heir, possessor, claimant, or occupier; as, a vacant estate.
Vacant succession (Law), one that is claimed by no person, or where all the heirs are unknown, or where all the known heirs to it have renounced it.
Synonyms: Empty; void; devoid; free; unemployed; disengaged; unincumbered; uncrowded; idle. Vacant, Empty. A thing is empty when there is nothing in it; as, an empty room, or an empty noddle. Vacant adds the idea of having been previously filled, or intended to be filled or occupied; as, a vacant seat at table; a vacant office; vacant hours. When we speak of a vacant look or a vacant mind, we imply the absence of the intelligence naturally to be expected there.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vacant" Quotes from Famous Books



... happened Charles passed through that city, accompanied by Nell Gwynn, when Dr. Ken refused to receive her beneath his roof even at the king's request. This proof of integrity so pleased his majesty, that he gave him the next vacant bishopric by way of reward. And now, his lordship being at hand, he read prayers for the Sick from out the Common Prayer Book for his benefit, until coming to that part where the dying are exhorted to make confession of their sins, when the bishop paused and said ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... urge me to come down to the Shack, and to say that I was an agreeable surprise, because four times in two hours youths had called up to ask if Alison West was stopping with him, and to suggest that they had a vacant day or two. "Oh—Miss West!" I shouted politely. There was a buzzing on the line. "Is she there?" Sam had no suspicions. Was not I in his mind always the Great Unkissed?—which sounds like the Great Unwashed and is even more ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... do good work. You may enter first year, and if it is too difficult, we will find it out speedily. Your teachers will tell you the list of books you must have, and if you will come with me I will show you the way to the auditorium. It is now time for opening exercises. Take any seat you find vacant." ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember," concluded he, "that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air." It was on this ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... Polyphemus female, a giant indeed, was clinging to a twig with her feet, and from her shoulders depended her wings, wet, and wrinkled as they had been cramped in the pupa case. Even then she had expanded in body until it seemed impossible that she had emerged from the opening of the vacant cocoon. The second one had its front feet and head out, and was struggling frantically to free its shoulders. A fresh wet spot on the top of another cocoon, where the moth had ejected the acid with which it is provided to soften the spinning, was ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... practically in the gift of the Glasgow professors, were naturally the prize of the best student of Glasgow College at the time they fell vacant, and they have been held in the course of the two centuries of their existence by many distinguished men, including Sir William Hamilton and Lockhart, Archbishop Tait and Lord President Inglis. They were originally founded by an old Glasgow student, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... tune to turn and look at him. A child here and there in the back row twisted a curious neck but twisted back again as parental fingers tugged at its ear. The minister tiptoed to a dark corner and took his stand in front of a vacant settee. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... upon the transformed scene. Howard and the Everett boys, who had finished their share in the program, had come out into the audience in order to get a better view of the stage. After a little hesitation, they had discovered some vacant seats behind Wang Kum and his friends, who were sitting spellbound in their admiration of the scenes before them. For a time the boys listened attentively; but a constant attendance at the rehearsals had made the play an old story to them, and their interest began to flag. Grant was lazily leaning ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... age of groping, the heavy scents of shrubs and flowers stole to us on the night air, and we came out at the hedge into what seemed a blaze of light that flooded the rows of color. Here we paused, breathless, and looked. The bench under the great tree was vacant, and the garden ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... thunderstricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen, and, after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully, and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... blasphemy, and I thought that Kitty herself might consider it wicked. Besides, if she should chance to accept me, there was nothing I could do, in a cathedral, to relieve my feelings. No; if she ever accepts me, I wish it to be in a large, vacant spot of the universe, peopled by two only, and those two so indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one to the casual observer. So I practiced repression, though the wall of my reserve is worn to ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Is there no help, no comfort—none? No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains Where others drive their loaded wains? My vacant days go ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... have forgotten the circumstances of the crime. The Committee had custody of him, however, and condemned him, as well as Hetherington. Notice was publicly given that the two would be hanged the afternoon Of July 29th. The gallows was erected on a vacant half block on Front street, as I remember, between California and Sacramento streets, west side. It was at least twenty feet high, with a ladder from the ground to the platform. From the top cross-beam dangled the ropes. The platform afforded standing ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... to return into action, that I may worthily employ those talents which I have cultivated from the earliest days of my youth. Toils and cares fright not me; they are the exercise of my soul; they keep it in health and in vigour. Give me again the fields of Troy, rather than these vacant groves. There I could reap the bright harvest of glory; here I am hid like a coward from the eyes of mankind, and begin to appear comtemptible in my own. The image of my former self haunts and seems to upbraid me wheresoever I go. I meet it under the gloom of every ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... when it was found that the water in the schooner's hold had so far lowered, as to leave a vacant space of quite a foot between the lowest part of the deck and its surface. Toward the two extremities of the vessel this space necessarily was much increased, in consequence of the sheer. Men were now sent into the hatchway with orders to hook on to the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... temporary hospitals opened at the time of the cholera in every quarter of Paris, one had been established on the ground-floor of a large house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc. The vacant apartments had been generously placed by their proprietor at the disposal of the authorities; and to this place were carried a number of persons, who, being suddenly attacked with the contagion, were considered in too dangerous a state to be removed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... noisily established in the farm-house at two long tables piled with bucolic viands already being violently depleted. Johnnie Watson had kept a chair beside himself vacant for William. Johnnie was in no frame of mind to sit beside any "chattering girl," and he had protected himself by Joe Bullitt upon his right and the empty seat upon his left. William took it, and gazed upon the nearer foods with ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... these words he turned himself full towards Lena, but without any marked expression. Leaning back with folded arms, the girl stared before her as if she had been alone in the room. But under that aspect of almost vacant unconcern the perils and emotion that had entered into her life warmed her heart, exalted her mind with a sense of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... embrace of death. Poor fellows, the madman had caused both to perish, when, by keeping quiet, they might have been washed safely ashore in time. I tried myself to regain the raft then, it being now vacant and ample enough to support me alone comfortably; but the waves were too much for me, so I had to give up that hope and strike out once more for the shore, although the latter was so far off and low down too in the water that I couldn't ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... government. They have named this lower country Virginia, out of regard to Queen Elizabeth. It has been the most populous, though not the best land, and a government was established in Virginia distinct from that of Maryland. A governor arrived while we were there, to fill the place made vacant by the ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... Lady Steventon, the other Mrs Vincent. Some minutes ago, not for all the world would he have stood alone upon that piece of carpet in front of this sofa. No courtier, assured of the most smiling reception, could have drawn his chair with more ease to the vacant spot beside Mrs Vincent, than did now Mr Simpson. He immediately entered into conversation on the subject that at the moment engrossed all his thoughts; he reminded her of the confidential intimacy which had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... hands forward towards the man and lowering them towards the ground, she paused with greedy expectation, whilst the possessed stood still with vacant stare, and naught was heard but the barking ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... antagonist, Freeman, who had been Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford since Stubbs's elevation to the Episcopal Bench in 1884, died suddenly in Spain. The Prime Minister, who was also Chancellor of the University, offered the vacant Chair to Froude, and after some hesitation Froude accepted it. The doubt was due to his age. "There are seventy-four reasons against it," he said. Fortunately he yielded. "The temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable way," he wrote to ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... "his dearly beloved brother Joseph Napoleon, King of Naples and Sicily, to the crowns of Spain and the Indies." By a subsequent decree, 15th of July, he appointed "his dearly-beloved cousin, Joachim Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, to the throne of Naples and Sicily, which remained vacant by the accession of Joseph Napoleon to the kingdoms of Spain and the Indies." Both these documents are signed Napoleon, and countersigned by the Minister Secretary ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... strolled about Black Hawk, looking at everything, and with them was a dark, stout woman who wore a long gold watch chain about her neck and carried a black lace parasol. They seemed especially interested in children and vacant lots. When I overtook them and stopped to say a word, I found them affable and confiding. They told me they worked in Kansas City in the winter, and in summer they went out among the farming towns with their tent and taught dancing. When business ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... pictures. But her interest flagged. She tried to read, but soon cast the book from her and leaned back upon the great couch, her hands clasped behind the great bronze-red coils at the back of her head, her dull-blue eyes fixed and vacant. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... noble scenery, woods, and waters; deer parks and old houses, Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, stately and beautiful, full of art treasures; ancient monuments and historical associations. There were none of these things; there was nothing here but that wide, vacant expanse, very thinly populated with humble, rural folk—farmers, shepherds, labourers—living in very humble houses. England is so full of riches in ancient monuments and grand and interesting and lovely buildings ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... resembling a private house. As for the rest, there are generally everywhere about St. James's Park very good houses, which is a great addition to it. There is also before the semicircle of the trees just mentioned a large vacant space, where the ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... CONSCRIPTION,' laid down and defined the rights and services of the peasants, and the amount of land to be held by them. The nobles henceforth were obliged to find new tenants of the peasant class in the event of the 'session-lands' becoming vacant. Likewise their unjust impositions on the serfs were restricted, and the rights of the latter, in respect to wood-cutting and pasturage on the lord's lands, were ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... Garden, said this in a grave, cold tone, sufficient to freeze the heart of any ordinary lover; and, pressing his niece's arm as if to prevent her from escaping, he dragged her through the crowd towards a seat which he found vacant. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... I was right. Mr. Jameson was the proprietor of the hotel, and Mr. Jameson was a pleasant, refined, quiet man of middle age. He appeared from somewhere or other, ascertained our wants, stated that he had a few vacant rooms and ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... was between fifteen and sixteen years of age when he entered the house of the Magnificent, and he stayed with him until his death, which was in ninety-two,(14) a space of two years. During that time an office in the customs fell vacant which could only be held by a Florentine citizen; so Lodovico, the father of Michael Angelo, came to the Magnificent and spoke for it: "Lorenzo, I can do nothing but read and write; the comrade of Marco Pucci in the Dogana is dead. I should like to have his place. I believe I shall be able to ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... a letter to Congress dated November 26, 1777, mentions this affair with commendation, and suggests, as he had repeatedly done before, Lafayette's appointment to one of the vacant divisions of the army, and on the same day that this letter was received Congress voted that such an appointment would be agreeable to them. Three days afterward Washington placed Lafayette in command of the division of General Stephen, who had been dismissed from the army for having been intoxicated, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... forward and took the boy's hand, and looked up into his face as he sat upon his horse. "We will meet again," said he, with his strange, vacant smile, "but maybe it will be in Paradise, and there perhaps they will let us lie in the father's belfry, and look down upon the angels in ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... holding the door open as a tactful hint that she'd better go. But Janet had no intention of leaving. She had a woman's curiosity about a vacant house, and she was frankly looking things over, craning her neck to glance down the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... from his pocketbook a tiny silken bow in the Norwegian colours and began to tear it to pieces. He sat there quietly and plucked the threads apart. When he had finished he stared at the shreds with a fixed, vacant stare. The engine gave a hoarse blast; the train started. Coldevin opened the window slowly and emptied his hand. And the tiny bits of red and blue whirled away behind the train, fluttered and sank to the gravel, to be ground in the dust ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... of sober criticism. In the realm of contemporary English prose he has left no adequate successor; [Footnote: The nearest being the now foremost prose writers of our time, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude.] the throne that does not pass by primogeniture is vacant, and the bleak northern skies seem colder and grayer since that venerable head was laid to rest by the village churchyard, far from the smoke and din of the great city on whose streets his figure was long familiar and his name ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... gathered in cheerful, laughing, chattering groups to discuss the week's march with the heroes of the day. The Wolf Patrol was a member short. No. 6 had left the town during the week, and his place was vacant among Dick's followers. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... money," said Irene, slowly and more seriously than she had before spoken, "it is necessary for us to go into business. The other day, when I was riding with Alora, I noticed that the store between the post-office and the Citizens' Bank is vacant, and a sign in the window said 'Apply to Peter Conant, Agent.' Peter Conant being my uncle, I applied to him that evening after dinner, on behalf of the Liberty Girls. It's one of the best locations in town and right in the heart of the business district. The store has commanded a big rental, ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... through his brain with fearful rapidity. He thought he was beginning to be seized with brain fever. And this dismal ceremony kept coming before him with the same chants, the same words repeated, and the same faces appearing. The houses seemed to fly before his vacant eyes. To stop this nightmare he tried to count the gas-lamps: one, two, three, four, five—but the same ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... to glance up at the windows. I surely expected to see a face at one of them. Certainly she would care to know who was slain or who was hurt. She would be watching, I fondly hoped, to see who returned on his legs. But the front of the inn stared at us, chilly and vacant, like ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... has prevailed against him and his family only determine the Duke the more to do him justice. The question was how? First, his brother Richard, who was Secretary to the Treasury before, will have the same office now; but the Duke intends to give him one of the first offices which falls vacant, of about L1000 a year for life in the customs, and he will then resign the Secretary to the Treasury, which, however, in the meanwhile is worth L3000 a year. Edmund Burke is to have the Pay-Office, L4000 a year; but as that is precarious and he can leave no provision for his son, it would, in ...
— Burke • John Morley

... with him?' she asked in a sort of vacant trepidation. 'He doesn't look very ill. I never did see ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... would play such tunes as she knew by the hour together, till the poor instrument, subject to the sea air and away from any tuner's skill, was discordant with its limp strings. But still, with all this, her mind would become vacant and weary. "Mother," she would say, "is it always ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... sister, Lady Augusta, stood before them. M. de Bois instantly rose, and Bertha invited Lady Augusta to take the vacant place. Lord Linden had already seized Gaston's arm, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... sides of it were occupied by well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, carrying shawls, greatcoats, and small travelling bags upon their arms, and exhibiting other similar indications of their being travellers. Mr. George and Rollo took seats at a vacant place upon one of the sofas. In a few minutes an officer came and informed the company, in a very respectful manner, that the train was ready; whereupon they all rose from their seats and walked out upon the platform ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott

... we don't keep that prop pretty firmly against the down-stairs door. I met Mr. Robin while I was out, and he tells me that a new Mr. Bear has moved over into the edge of the Big Deep Woods, into that vacant cave down there by the lower drift. His name is Savage—Aspetuck Savage—one of those Sinking Swamp Savages, and he's hungry and pretty fierce. They've had a harder winter in the Swamp than we have had up here, and ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the old martinet. "Sticks to his point. Dog was out walking with me day before yesterday. Crossing a vacant lot on next square. Chased a rat. Rat ran into a heap of old timber. Dog nosed around. Gave a yelp and came back to me. Had spasm. Died in fifteen minutes. And hang me, sir," cried the old man, bringing his fist down on Average Jones' knee, "if I see how the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... arrived just in time, for I have the last vacant room. I have arranged myself as well as I can in my cell; I am not very badly off; I have a stove; I sent for a good arm-chair; I make three long repasts; I digest, I walk and sleep. Saving the inquietude which Alexandrine ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... made to them for David, of the situation as junior clerk in the bank of which Mr Oswald was managing director. There was no immediate necessity of deciding about the matter, as the place would not be vacant till spring, and the father and mother determined to take time to look at the matter in all its lights, before they said anything about it to David. He was already nearly fitted to enter the university, and they hoped that some time or other, means would be ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... colleague of Wilkes in the representation of the county, died. Serjeant Glynn, who had made himself conspicuous as the champion of Wilkes and the advocate of the popular cause, came forward to contest the vacant seat, and carried the constituency in spite of the most determined efforts on the part of the royal faction to defeat him. There were more riots, more deaths on the popular side, more trials, more convictions for murder and more pardons of the condemned men. The agitation which ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... me lie here— Gazing with vacant sadness on this weed. The cricket near Will utter all my heart can bear to heed. Another voice Would swell the noise And surge, that ever sound ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice

... secret negotiations between Bismarck and Marshal Prim had leaked out, the French ambassador at Berlin, Benedetti, had warned Bismarck that France would oppose the election of a Prussian prince to the vacant throne of Spain. Bismarck had treated the information as an improbable rumour, yet he had carefully abstained from a formal assurance that the king would forbid Prince Leopold to accept any such offer.[43] It was therefore quite certain that in 1870, when the relations between France and Prussia ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... sure it is quite true, for my father was talking about it last night, and of course I understood how it was that Mabel's place was vacant this morning," continued Ethel. ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley

... had been packed from end to end, and he had barely got to his seat, the only one vacant in the whole room, when Miss Sylvia Falbe appeared, followed at once by her accompanist, whose name occurred nowhere on the programme. Two neighbours, however, who chatted shrilly during the applause that greeted them, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... him with a stupefied look, like that of a trapped wild beast, in which rage, shame, suspicion, and fear, were mingled with the vacant glare of the opium-eater's eye. Then his eye drooped beneath Campbell's steady gentle gaze, and he looked uneasily round the room, still like a trapped wild beast, as if for a hole to escape by; then up again, but sidelong, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... clear eyes lifted, Dreaming, lighting, swift and quelling On all darkness drifted From this earth, a vacant dwelling,— With her haste flashing, flowing Bright above all fear or scorning,— I have seen my darling going Up the ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... of a sound to be heard. Satisfied that all was well, Timothy went back to the bedroom, and lifted the battered clothes-basket, trucks and all, in his slender arms, carried it up the alley and down the street a little distance, and deposited it on the pavement beside a vacant lot. This done, he sped back to the house. "How beautifully they snore!" he thought, as he stood again on the threshold. "Shall I leave 'em a letter?... P'raps I better ... and then they won't follow us and bring us back." So he scribbled a line on a ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... bad critics. They see everything too much through a particular medium. What does not fall in with their own bias and mode of composition strikes them as common-place and factitious. What does not come into the direct line of their vision, they regard idly, with vacant, 'lack-lustre eye.' The extreme force of their original impressions, compared with the feebleness of those they receive at second-hand from others, oversets the balance and just proportion of their minds. Men who have fewer native resources, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... mangled large divisions of foot-soldiers belonging to thy army. Beholding then thy host extensively slaughtered by Subhadra's son single-handed with his whetted shafts like the Asura host by Skanda (the celestial generalissimo), thy warriors and thy sons cast vacant looks on all sides. Their mouths became dry; their eyes became restless; their bodies were covered with sweat; and their hairs stood on their ends. Hopeless of vanquishing their foe, they set their hearts on flying away from the field. Desirous of saving their lives, called one another by their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... earl's patent, granted for services rendered ten years ago, for fear of exciting the jealousy, forsooth, of C— and M—. But you were very right, Edward, to refuse the situation of aide de camp. There are two vacant, indeed, but Clanronald and Lochiel, and almost all of us, have requested one for young Aberchallader, and the Lowlanders and the Irish party are equally desirous to have the other for the Master of F—. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... or two men in the room, his face betraying no surprise that he found them there. He bade the dark-haired Greek girl bring wine and two cups. While she was gone a man and a woman slipped away through one of the several side doors, leaving vacant the place next to Wardo. At once Wulf possessed himself of it, without glancing at his neighbor. The Greek returned, and he pulled her down beside him, had her drink with him, kissed her arms and hands with his red-bearded mouth, made love to her with jests and laughter unnecessarily loud. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... vacant, there is a strong feeling amongst many that it would be nice to name the Duke of Sussex. It is said that it would be popular in Ireland, that the name of one of the Royal Family would do good there, and that it would afford to O'Connell ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... boys, who were still on the shore of the lake, watching for the return of the boat, did not have any notice of the arrival of the prisoner. I was conducted to the hall of the principal's apartments first, and then to a vacant chamber on the third floor. Mr. Parasyte performed this duty himself, being unwilling to intrust my person to the care of one his subordinate teachers. A suit of clothes belonging to a boy of my own size was sent to me, and I was directed to put it on, while my ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... days after, the princess Badoura made him lord-treasurer, which office was then vacant, that he might be nearer her person. He behaved himself in this new charge with much integrity, and was so obliging to every body, that he not only gained the friendship of the great, but also the affections of the people, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... quest, a place foretold Should be—and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round—a place of bliss In the purlieus of Heaven; and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught Than this more secret, now designed, I haste To know; and, this once known, shall soon return, And bring ye to the place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster. Our precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's conduct, she who had been so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... last of the Captain, as it happened. Five minutes later she caught sight of him sauntering about near the entrance with a vacant eye and a restless manner. Simultaneously there approached her corner a short, enormously fat, overdressed woman, barging aggressively ahead towards the vacant table, her huge bosom well in advance like ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... distinguished part that you offer me. After Mademoiselle Zozo, after Mademoiselle Lilie, Mademoiselle Tata, you have the audacity to offer to your wife—to Madame de Sallus—the place left vacant, asking her to become her husband's mistress for ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... that they scarcely come in competition. Alfieri's play is short, and the characters are few. He describes no scene: his personages are not the King of Spain and his courtiers, but merely men; their place of action is not the Escurial or Madrid, but a vacant, objectless platform anywhere in space. In all this, Schiller has a manifest advantage. He paints manners and opinions, he sets before us a striking pageant, which interests us of itself, and gives a new interest to whatever is combined ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... next morning they left port, with only a few first-class passengers. The heavy travel was coming from the west, not going that way. The series of cabins under his stewardship were vacant. Therefore, with the thoroughness of his breed, he set about to learn "ship"; and by the time the first bugle for dinner blew, he knew port from starboard, boat-deck from main, and many other things, some unknown to the chief-steward ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... are only to be paid to the bishop during his incumbency in the same see; if he changeth it for a better, the purchasers of the vacant see lands, are to come immediately into possession of the see he hath left, and both the bishop who is removed, and he who comes into his place, are to have no more fines, for the removed bishop will find his account by a larger ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... however, I placed Laura Rice—I believe it was Laura Rice—in the vacant niche. The new idol was more cruel than the old. The former frankly sent me to the right about, but the latter was a deceitful lot. She wore my nosegay in her dress at the evening service (the Primroses were marched to church three times every Sunday), ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... was building the members of the church were vaguely disturbed by noticing, when the structure reached the second story, that at that height, on the side toward the vacant and unbought land adjoining, there were several doors built that opened literally ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... place for you to sit,—said the little gentleman, pointing to the vacant chair next his own, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... houses roofed with bark and protected by fences of strong round pickets. The trader enters the gate and sees before him an extensive square area, surrounded by high palisades. Numerous houses, barracks, and other buildings form a smaller square within, and in the vacant place which they enclose appear the red uniforms of British soldiers, the grey coats of the Canadians, and the gaudy Indian blankets mingled in picturesque confusion, while a multitude of squaws with children of every hue stroll restlessly about the place. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... had been watching him in a dull, vacant way, lost him for a moment or two; then she heard his voice near her, and saw him dimly ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... its powers from being mixed and surrounded with colored bodies. In its own nature, it cannot be considered as a color. Black bodies, reflecting none, or but a few rays, with regard to sight, are but as so many vacant spaces, dispersed among the objects we view. When the eye lights on one of these vacuities, after having been kept in some degree of tension by the play of the adjacent colors upon it, it suddenly falls into a relaxation; out of which it as suddenly recovers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... first noticed by Bode, and is known as Bode's law, no explanation can yet be given. It was of course at once observed that between Mars and Jupiter one place is vacant, and it has now been ascertained that this is occupied by a zone of Minor Planets, the first of which was discovered by Piazzi on January 1, 1801, a worthy prelude to the succession of scientific discoveries ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... who think the stature all in all, Nor like a hero if he is not tall. The feeling sense all other wants supplies— I rate no actor's merit from his size. Superior height requires superior grace, And what's a giant with a vacant face?'" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... now and then, when Lucy insisted, did he ascend to the first floor, which was her particular abode. Here was the drawing-room, the dining-room and Lucy's boudoir; here also were sundry bedrooms, furnished and unfurnished, in one of which Miss Kendal slept, while the others remained vacant for chance visitors, principally from the scientific world. The third story was devoted to the cook, her husband—who acted as gardener—and to the house parlor maid, a composite domestic, who worked from morning until night in keeping the great ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... other hand, one and that the least faulty of the two MSS. witnessing for the omission confesses mutely its error by leaving a vacant space where the omitted verses should have come in; whilst the other was apparently copied from an exemplar containing the verses[260]. And all the other copies insert them, except L and a few cursives which propose a manifestly spurious substitute for the verses,—together ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... though I repeatedly was sent into that A room to dust it, or to put it in order, I remarked that the glass case was vacant, and no signs were to be found either of the nun or of the way by which she had left it; so that a solemn conclusion rested upon my mind, that she had gone on one of her ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... cardinals of the Curia. The /servitia minuta/, amounting to about 3 1/2 per cent. of the /servitia communia/, was given to the lower officials, who prepared the letters of appointment. The revenues of vacant Sees and the property of deceased bishops were also claimed by the Holy See. From England the Pope received yearly the Peter's Pence, and from all countries that acknowledged his feudal jurisdiction he was entitled ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... was extended beyond the country. On the 26th of August, Bonaparte united the island of Elba, and on the 11th of September, 1802, Piedmont, to the French territory. On the 9th of October he took possession of the states of Parma, left vacant by the death of the duke; and lastly, on the 21st of October, he marched into Switzerland an army of thirty thousand men, to support a federative act, which regulated the constitution of each canton, and which had caused disturbances. He thus furnished a pretext for ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... and cross her arms upon her ample bosom, while her kindly, rounded, eminently Russian face evinced the ghost of a shy smile. At the same time, it was a face wherein not a single feature was of a kind to remain fixed in the memory, a face as vacant as though nature had forgotten to stamp thereon a single wish. Hence, even when the woman smiled there seemed to remain a doubt whether ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... Cannae; when the dictator, Marcus Junius, being with the army, they chose at Rome Fabius Buteo dictator, that he might create new senators, to supply the numerous places of those who were killed. But as soon as, once acting in public, he had filled those vacant places with a sufficient number, he immediately dismissed his lictors, and withdrew from all his attendance, and, mingling like a common person with the rest of the people, quietly went about his own ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... at least the negative invitation of desuetude. It showed no lights; had not an open window—so far as could be determined by straining sight aided only by a faint reflection from the livid skies. One felt warranted in assuming the premises to be vacant. Encouraging surmise! If such were in fact the case, he might hope soon to be counting his spoils in the privacy of his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... in a circle, and the boys stand outside, one boy behind each girl's chair. One chair is left vacant, but a boy stands behind it, and by winking at the girls one at a time, tries to get ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... for he would at times repeat mechanically the last word of every sentence spoken in his hearing, and even a single word, e. g., when some one asked "Warum?" (why) he likewise said warum without answering the question, and he continued to do it for days again and again in a vacant way, with and without the tone of interrogation (which he did not understand). From this we see again plainly that the imitation of sounds is independent of the understanding of them, but is dependent ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... Jennings upon these mysterious events, which, however, he plainly saw had lamentably shaken the long-since failing man. On the afternoon of the fourth day, Mr. Lisle walked, or rather tottered, into Caleb's stall, and seated himself on the only vacant stool it contained. His manner was confused, and frequently purposeless, and there was an anxious, flurried expression in his face, which Jennings did not at all like. He remained silent for some time, with the exception of partially inaudible snatches of comment or ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... who thus attracted to himself the wandering curiosity of all his neighbors had come in late, had taken the first vacant place he could find near the door, and had sat there listening and looking about him very quietly. He drank and smoked like the rest of the company; but never applauded, never laughed, never exhibited the slightest symptom of astonishment, or pleasure, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... accompanied by Arthur Lovell, whom they looked upon with no very great favour; for he had been silent and melancholy throughout the drive from Maudesley Abbey to Lisford Church, and had stared at them with vacant indifference, while handing them out of the carriage with a mechanical kind of politeness ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... spoke up John, "that Nature doesn't have to make every fellow seven stories high to leave his topknot vacant. Sam thinks those fellows ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... however, had no serious doubts as to their policy. The inadmissibility of a female ruler had already been determined at the accession of both Philip V. and Charles IV., and it was clear that the nearest male heir was Philip, Count of Valois, who had recently succeeded to the great appanage left vacant by the death in 1325 of his father, Charles of Valois, the inveterate enemy of the English. As the next representative of the male line, the French at once recognised Philip of Valois as regent. When his cousin's widow gave birth to a daughter, the regent was proclaimed as King Philip ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... must be sent, and nothing but illness, accident or death should prevent us from presenting ourselves. If such obstacles intervene, immediate notice should be given the hostess, that she may supply the place at her table thus made vacant. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... entertained them. Then Una herself had revived those doubts three months ago, when she had suggested that Ned Tremayne, who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher, was the very man to fill the vacant place of military secretary to the adjutant, if he would accept it. In the reaction of self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O'Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter—in ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... Charley had gone to his room and fallen asleep. If his ward chose to sleep at meal time it was no fault of his. He ate leisurely, and when he was through lighted a cigar, and, prompted by compunction perhaps, looked into Charley's room. It was vacant. A sudden anxiety seized him, and nervously and excitedly he searched the deck and the smoking room. Charley was nowhere to be found, and in a state of panic he reported the disappearance ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... the bank, and the earth which had been thrown on the side giving under my feet, I fell forward up the bank on my hands, recovering myself instantly. I gained the road, and stood in the exact spot where the group had been, but which was now vacant, there was not the trace of anything; it was impossible for them to go on, the road stopped at a precipice about twenty yards further on, and it was impossible to turn and go back in a second. All this flashed ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... Mrs. Scott visited London, where they were introduced to many distinguished literary men. On their return to Edinburgh, the office of sheriff depute of Selkirkshire having become vacant, worth L300 a year, Scott received the appointment, which increased his income to about L700. Although his labors were light, the office entailed the necessity of living in that county a few months in each year. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... brown paws again, We bid thee to thy vacant chair, We greet thee by the window-pane, We hear thy scuffle ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... tree appeared in the extreme distance on the right. Under this arrangement there would be progression into the picture. A still better arrangement would have been direct movement from the mass of trees to the houses placed on the right, with the space now occupied by them left vacant. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... exchanged a few greetings with friends, accepted without comment or without the slightest tinge of gratification a little chorus of chafing congratulations upon his latest triumph, and left the room without any inclination to play, although there was a vacant place at his favourite table. From sheer purposelessness he wandered back again into the hall, and here came his first gleam of returning sensation. He came face to face with his most intimate friend, Andrew Wilmore. The latter, who had just ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... route by which she was brought to a point about ten miles from Cowfold. She found affection and peace, and Andrew, who had lost his taste for whisky, was quietly at work in his father's shop at his old trade. There was at the same time no vacant space for her in the household. There was nothing particular for her to do, and after a while, when the novelty of return had worn off, she grew weary, and longed unconsciously for something on which fully to ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... him without ceasing; and, as she was desirous to approach still nearer, he would have pierced her breast with the wounding spear. Omnipotent {Jove} averted this, and removed both them and {such} wickedness; and placed them, carried through vacant space with a rapid wind, in the heavens, and made ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... the Youth forbore Divulging where, and how, he liv'd before; And seem'd to strive his History to hide, Till fair Esteem enlisted on his side. The Miller saw, and mention'd, in his prajse, The prompt fidelity of all his ways; Till in a vacant hour, the Dinner done, One day he jokjng cried, 'Come here, my Son! 'Tis pity that so good a Lad as you Beneath my roof should bring disorders new! But here's my Phoebe,—once so light and airy, She'd trip along the ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield

... Indians. In the other range, precisely similar in construction, were quartered Ensign Ronayne and the surgeon Von Vottenberg, who each, however occupied but one apartment. The central and largest serving as their mess-room. The other half of the building was vacant, or rather had been so, until the doctor obtained the permission of the commanding officer to use it as a temporary surgery—the hospital being a distinct edifice between the two block-houses. These latter, capacious for the size of the fort, accommodated the non-commissioned ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... folded arms over a low railing before him. How long he sat there, allowing the subtle influence to transfuse and possess his entire being, he did not know. The faint twitter of birds suddenly awoke him. Looking up, he perceived that it came from the vacant square of the tower above him, open to the night and suffused with its mysterious radiance. In another moment the roof of the church was swiftly crossed and recrossed with tiny and adventurous wings. The mysterious light had taken an opaline ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... time a more restrained mode of acting was evidently considered good taste; witness de Off. (I. 36. 130): "Histrionum non nulli gestus ineptus non vacant, et quae sunt recta et simplicia laudantur."[74] But the passages cited above bear ample testimony to the vigor of histrionic gesticulation even at this later and far more cultivated epoch. Again we repeat, what must have been the energy and abandon ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... one who should think that he had discovered a new central force would naturally begin to investigate it on the hypothesis that it conformed to the same law as gravitation or light. A Chemist again, who should believe himself to have discovered a new element, would expect it to fill one of the vacant places in the Periodic Table. Conformity, in such cases, is strong confirmation, and disagreement is an ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... himself into the crowd, and managed, after a while, to get near to her. He went from one group to another, throwing a word to each one, gaining thus, insensibly, and without affectation, a small chair, which was vacant, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... under a thirty-five per cent tariff on farm implements, and complained of the retention by the Dominion of the vacant lands in the province. And her {96} grievances in respect to transportation would not down. The Canadian Pacific Railway had given the much desired connection with the East and had brought tens of ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... the house, Bud looked about. The place felt vacant. It had an atmosphere of emptiness. The furniture in the rooms had a tossed-about appearance, as though the occupants had made a hurried exit. A cheap vase lay on the floor by the mantel, broken. Rugs were ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker

... niece, came with him. Perrot, anxious to turn to account the influence of his wife's relative, looked about him for some post of honor and profit, and quickly discovered that the government of Montreal was vacant. The priests of St. Sulpice, feudal owners of the place, had the right of appointing their own governor. Talon advised them to choose Perrot, who thereupon received the desired commission, which, however, was revocable at the will of those ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... very dilapidated launch from Manila I waited at the government dock while the native boy I had brought with me went to the village to find, if possible, a vacant house. He soon returned, with another boy to help carry our baggage, (there was not a cart or wagon of any sort in the place) and with the information that he had engaged a house for our use. A whole ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... think of trying to get back to-night!" cried the doctor's wife, quickly. "There are plenty of vacant rooms here, and I'll see to it that my cousin gives you ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... empty warehouse to the obedience required by their parents, and for days these boys will live on the milk and bread which they steal from the back porches after the early morning delivery. Such children complain that there is "no fun" at home. One little chap who was given a vacant lot to cultivate by the City Garden Association insisted upon raising only popcorn and tried to present the entire crop to Hull-House "to be used for the parties," with the stipulation that he would ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... next door was vacant. Even in the darkness, he could discern the real estate agent's sign in the front window. Hence his surprise in beholding a man pressing the doorbell of the empty house—for that, he discerned, was what the person who sneezed ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... which she must accommodate any other guest that might arrive. The traveller replied that he would pay for both beds, guest or no guest; and taking out a gold crown he gave it to the hostess, on condition that no one should have the vacant bed. The hostess, well satisfied with such good payment, promised that she would do as he required, though the Dean of Seville himself should arrive that night at her house. She then asked him if he would sup. He declined, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... make one whole, though the designs of different architects were selected and these different architects employed, I imagine that considerable alterations must have been made in the original drawings. There are three buildings, forming three sides of a quadrangle; but they are not joined, the vacant spaces at the corner being of considerable extent. The fourth side of the quadrangle opens upon one of the principal streets of the town. The center building is intended for the Houses of Parliament, and the two side buildings for the government offices. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... and was surprised to find the table in the hall laid out for a banquet, and a gaily dressed company, including a gentleman with a red feather in his cap, already assembled. This person offered Wesley a vacant chair and invited him to join them, an invitation which he accepted; but before he took a bite or a sup he rose from his chair, and said, "Gentlemen! it is my custom to ask a blessing on these occasions," and added, "Stand all!" The company rose, but as he pronounced ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... turbulent lieges. The dukes of Bavaria and Franconia, with Lorraine, and with the support of Louis IV., king of France, rose in arms against him. He subdued them; and the great duchies which had revolted against him becoming vacant, he placed in them members of his own family. He confirmed his authority by extending the power of the palsgraves, or counts palatine,—royal officers who superintended the domains of the king in the several duchies, and dispensed justice in his name. He favored ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... mean to us, who gather in this 37th annual convention where sits the woman whose chair has never been vacant in all these years of hope deferred; whose heart has continually glowed with perennial youth; whose soul has burned with a vivid flame of love and freedom; whose brain has been the inspirer of herculean service; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... the most part, composed of men, who were not only united by family connections and private friendship, but who were nearly allied, as members of one influential family. No sooner had they been invested with power, than they dismissed all civil and military officers, and filled the vacant situations with their own friends, relations, and dependents, without consideration as to their talents or qualifications, thus equally exciting discontent amongst the Brazilians—who were excluded, and the Portuguese—who ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... elements in Mexico and Central and South America show a constant tendency to die out, much as the population of Spain fell from 30,000,000 to 17,000,000 during the nineteenth century. As this goes on, in the Western hemisphere, the places left vacant are gradually filled by the more progressive Anglo-Saxons, so that it looks as if the study of ethnology in the future ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... Christian and Mussulman enemies. Palaeologus engages to impose on his clergy and people the same spiritual yoke; but as the resistance of the Greeks might be justly foreseen, he adopts the two effectual methods of corruption and education. The legate was empowered to distribute the vacant benefices among the ecclesiastics who should subscribe the creed of the Vatican: three schools were instituted to instruct the youth of Constantinople in the language and doctrine of the Latins; and the name of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... veiled woman, a pretended lay-sister of Sainte-Petronille at Perugia, came to him while he was at table, offering him a basket of figs. Did it conceal an asp like Cleopatra's? The fact is that on the morrow the Holy See was vacant. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... attending her. Behind stood a plainly dressed woman, evidently her maid, carrying a flat dressing-case. There was a brief colloquy between the three. It ended in dressing-case, a pile of books, a reading lamp, and a formidable array of hat-boxes, and milliner's parcels being placed upon the rack and vacant seats in my compartment, and immediately afterwards Mrs. Smith-Lessing herself entered. I heard her tell her maid to enter the carriage behind. The door was closed and the guard touched off his hat. A minute later and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and set that part of the city on fire which lay nearest to it. The fire burned for six days, and opened a large area, which afforded the Roman troops room to act. When the troops were brought up to the area thus left vacant by the fire, and the people within the citadel saw that their condition was hopeless, there arose, as there always does in such cases, the desperate struggle within the walls whether to persist in resistance or to surrender ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... what was effected in these three expeditions, served only to shew how large a field was reserved for future and more persevering examination. Their results had, indeed, enabled geographers to diversify the vacant uniformity of former charts of this ocean by the insertion of some new islands. But the number, and the extent of these insertions, were so inconsiderable, that they may be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... triangular composition of man's heart, that no orbicular thing such as this world can fill it exactly without vacuity, but only the blessed and holy Trinity.(236) Truly we may conceive, this fulness of joy, excluding all the latent griefs of the heart and filling up all the vacant corners doth flow from that blessed fellowship of the Father and the Son. Now, though these two be only mentioned yet the Holy Ghost must not be excluded, for the apostolic prayer doth attribute chiefly our fellowship with God ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are for the most part vacant: the great lawyers are giving grand dinner-parties at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts; the agreeable young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their respects to Mr. Kewsy's excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine's accomplished daughters the uninvited ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... much given to staring out over the desert. Senor Johnson, appreciatively, thought he could understand this. Again, she gave much leisure to rocking back and forth on the low, wide veranda, her hands idle, her eyes vacant, her lips dumb. Susie O'Toole had early proved incompatible and ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... years, until his father being reduced in circumstances from the failure of many of his enterprises, he returned home to watch over the interests of his family. He had, I should have said, offered himself as a candidate for a scholarship then vacant at Merton, but Sir Henry Saville, the warden, who delighted in tall men, objecting to him on account of his height which fell below his standard of manly perfection, refused to admit him, and the admiral, after he had been summoned to the death-bed ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... generally tell an Auld Licht in Thrums when you passed him, his dull, vacant face wrinkled over a heavy wob. He wore tags of yarn round his trousers beneath the knee, that looked like ostentatious garters, and frequently his jacket of corduroy was put on beneath his waistcoat. If he was too old to carry his load ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... sooner had they sung this verse than the Plum-pudding Flea began to hop and skip on his one leg with the most dreadful velocity, and came straight to the tree, where he stopped, and looked about him in a vacant ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... of the weather confined the girls to the house the following day. Harvey was absent at breakfast, and at dinner the chair opposite Irene's was still vacant. The afternoon wore away, and at dusk Louisa opened the piano and began to ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... considered a certain indication that no swarming will take place during that season; but the retention of the drones after August, is a very bad sign, as the swarm must certainly perish in the winter, unless their vacant throne is supplied ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn

... to agree aloud with what his silent hand had expressed? Those inaudible taps on the stone spoke clearly enough; they said: "Here lies Kings Port, here lives Kings Port. Outside of this is our true death, on the vacant wharves, in the empty streets. All that we have left is the immortality which these historic names have won." How could I tell him that I thought so, too? Nor was I as sure of it then as he was. And besides, this was ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to stay on here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant, and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's true. But the monks make an exception for me, and I hope they won't turn me out for some time. You know I ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... without him! The corded trunks and book-boxes were there in his empty study. Laura asked leave to come and sleep in her aunt's room: and when she cried herself to sleep there, the mother went softly into Pen's vacant chamber, and knelt down by the bed on which the moon shone, and there prayed for her boy, as mothers only know ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... still she stood in the gateway, looking down the vacant road as if dazed. Was it in truth awkward, bashful Zeb Jarvis who had just left her? He seemed a new and distinct being in contrast to the youth whom she had smiled at and in a measure scoffed at. The little Puritan maiden was not a reasoner, but a creature of impressions and swift intuitions. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... just long enough to leave an indelible impression of her simple genuineness upon the life of the child, who had come to take in her heart the place left vacant by the death of her own baby girl. Since the loss of her second mother the girl had lived with no woman companion save the Indian woman Ynez, and it was the Seer rather than Jefferson Worth to whom she turned in fullest ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... by which his ruin had been procured, rendered the worthy magistrate peculiarly anxious. It was one of those cases that the public might question, especially when it became known that the principal witness was to receive the place made vacant by Chester's ruin. He found most men willing to redeem some fragment of a lost character by resignation, and thus had craftily frightened many an honest man from his place whom he would not have ventured to condemn openly. The Mayor had summoned Chester ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... president. "For the moment I feel too stunned by the sad news to act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three leading colleges for a locum tenens and sent out a few advertisements announcing the chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace McTeague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of culture, ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... indication the secretary had suffered the most severe shock of his experience. His face was ghastly, his eyes vacant; his knees shook beneath him; one hand pressed convulsively the bosom of his waistcoat. His endeavours to reply evoked only a husky, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... and abundance. The valleys run with water from the mountains to irrigate the lands, and furnish vast power, much of it undeveloped. Hills in the western part of the county are timbered and all the vacant lands are grass covered. Over 1,000,000 fruit trees have been planted in the last three years in ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and of its joy secure, 40 The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook 45 Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and unless I now Confound my ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... country from New England forty years before. At that time it was considered well out in the country. Since then the town had crept to it, so that the row of grand old maples in front shaded a stone-guttered street. A little patch of corn opposite, and many still vacant lots above, placed it, however, as about ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... in the region on the south side of the Blackwater River and in Pamunkey Neck had requested in 1688 that colonists be allowed to settle across the boundary line in the area now made vacant by the gradual dying out of their tribes. The basis for the request seems to have been a desire for relief in their precarious economic condition and the fear of invasion by hostile Indians, whom they regarded ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... might wash his feet there, and rid himself of the earth of the grave. They kept a candle lit all that day. They stretched a petate, or reed mat, on the floor and sprinkled ashes on it, so that the deceased might leave the marks of his feet there. At meal time they left the best place at table vacant for the dead guest. They ate and drank, as at the most splendid banquet; and then spent the balance of the day in relating and singing the prowess of the deceased; then each one went home. This ridiculous ceremony is called tibao. The Indians even yet retain the oldtime ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... country, during the excitement, which then prevailed respecting an invasion. In the spring of 1799, the parishes of Lochmaben and Ruthwell, both in the gift of the Earl of Mansfield, became simultaneously vacant, and the choice of them was accorded to Mr Duncan by the noble patron. He preferred Ruthwell, and was ordained to the charge of that parish, on ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the Boy Scouts have worked so silently, without making a fuss about what they were doing. In many of our large cities they have planted "war gardens" on every vacant lot they could get. In most cases all they raised in these gardens was given to the Red Cross. Furthermore, they have been the best friends the farmers have had. These scouts in large numbers have left their comfortable ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford



Words linked to "Vacant" :   vacate, vacancy, vacant lot



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