"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it to the dignity of his puppydom to know what it was. Once already, when he tried to push his nose into that linen package, he had been baulked. Rearing himself on his hind legs, his forepaws on the edge of the Dauphin's chair, he stretched his neck inquisitively. But the chair was blank, and with an effort he scrambled upon the seat, his ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... while studying Cicero's life, found that I was not dealing with a pagan's mind. The mind of the Roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a God. Horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. Ovid does so still more constantly. They are both full of allusions to "the gods." They are both aware that it is a good thing ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... as she might. Just so far they were comrades—beyond, Chip walked moodily alone. The Little Doctor did not like that overmuch. She preferred to know that she fairly understood her friends and was admitted, sometimes, to their full confidence. She did not relish bumping her head against a blank wall that was too high to look over or to climb, and in which there ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... short pay or bad conditions and he will hate you. All of this pointed to the love of men and women. I tried to draw him out on this. I do not know what the lack of his mind was, whether of subtlety or imagination. At any rate it was a realm of thought to which his face was a blank, and to which his mind ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... single long line of them appeared to welcome the big vehicle. It went on into the town. It reached the business district. There were side streets, utterly empty, and then the main street divided. The truck bore to the right. There were three and four-story buildings. Every window was blank and empty, reflecting only the white street lamps. No living thing anywhere. There had been no destruction, but the town was dead. Its lights shone on streets so empty that it would have seemed better to leave them to ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... The statement seemed to call up pleasing reminiscences, for Uncle Remus laughed in a hearty way. And when his laughing had subsided, he continued to chuckle until the little boy wondered what the source of his amusement could be. Finally he asked the old negro point blank what had caused him to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... coming from such a source, which in another than Mr. Pett might well have provoked a blank stare of amazement. Such, however, is the almost superhuman intelligence and quickness of mind engendered by the study of America's national game that he answered ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... wearily on his truckle-bed. He could not lie down because of his cough, and, since there were no extra pillows to prop him up, he had to rest his head and shoulders against the wall. There was a gas-burner in the tiny cell, and by its light he looked round the bare walls of his prison with a blank, hopeless, yet wistful gaze; there was the stool, there was the table, there were the clothes he should never wear again, there was the door through which his lifeless body would soon be carried. He looked ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... number two," said her father, putting a flat, square parcel in her lap. Lloyd looked puzzled as she opened it. There was only a blank book inside, bound in Russia leather, with the word "Record" stamped on ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at him in blank amazement. "I haven't been worried by anything, except the business which brought me here. I want ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Duke of Hereward is living in Paris, at Meurice's. I will make the correction," said Mr. Setter, drawing from his pocket a lead pencil and a blank-book, upon a leaf of which he re-wrote the message. He tore out the leaf, and read what he ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... 1st, The improved machine, substantially as described, for effecting the several operations of notching, slotting, boring, and burring a knitting machine needle blank, in the order ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the more relish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you know I had him AGAIN? If I hadn't I'm a clam! His face was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match. He turned to an ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... best when at home to write in a blank book; and when I go off on a summer vacation I leave that diary safely at home, and take a portfolio with some sheets of blank paper upon which to write the diary, and mail them as fast as written. These answer for letters to the friends at home, and save writing any ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... from time to time of Maria Consuelo. He intended to go and see her in the afternoon, and he, like Contini, planned what he should do and say. But his plans were all unsatisfactory, and once he found himself staring at the blank wall opposite his table in a state of idle ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... world and never had a romance. No romantic episode in my whole life, so that I only know by hearsay of rendezvous, 'avenues of sighs,' and kisses. It's not normal! In town, when one sits in one's lodgings, one does not notice the blank, but here in the fresh air one feels it. . . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you as much as it did me, I suppose, and I would not believe it, only Cousin Sallie says she is to be bride's maid." (Jones ceases to play and listens intently.) "It is nobody else than Mr. —— and Miss 'Blank.'" ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... not been lost. It had been transferred to her husband. She wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up the stairs to Kennicott's office. On the door was a sign advertising a headache cure and stating, "The doctor is out, back at——" Naturally, the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down to the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the Town Hall, and after berating the city officials listened to the speeches of welcome. As he and his wife were departing a Serbian student, named Prinzip, who was later arrested, rushed out from the crowd and fired point-blank at the couple with a revolver. Both were hit a number of times and died some hours later from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... serene, for I can look forward even to the very worst result with the feeling that there is no one to meet me over there to whom I've done any wrong. And while I haven't done my best, my score hasn't been blank. I honestly believe I've added a farthing or two to the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue[128] (in blank verse) or Drama, from which 'The Incantation' is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons—but two ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... from the country espied some little blank books lying on the counter. He had already made up his mind to have one, in which to keep his accounts; and he thought, while he was waiting, that he would purchase one. He meant to do things methodically; so when he picked up one of the blank books, it was with the intention ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... protest from the Italian Ambassador to the State Department thus depicted the same scene: "Without any warning whatever, without even a blank shot, without observing any of the formalities accompanying the right of search, the submarine encountered by the Ancona opened fire upon the unarmed passenger liner, relentlessly shelling not only the wireless apparatus, side, and decks ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... breakfast, when Perker, by wave of encouraging his client, uttered some dicta as to the chances of the Jury having had a good breakfast "Discontented or hungry jurymen, my dear Sir, always find for the Plaintiff." "Bless my heart," said Mr. Pickwick, looking very blank, "What ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... necessities of the present, which make children's company so soothing, quieted her now; and by the time she had watched the little fellow run away, dragging his cart and horse down the oak floor, shouting "Gee- ho!" and turning round often to laugh at her, Christian felt that life looked less blank and dreary than it had ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... few. If you have one or two to whom you can explain part of your being, thank God. You will find that {141} one man understands one side, another appreciates another side. It is a comfort that there is One who knows us through and through. What a terrible blank life would be if we had no God to whom to pour out our whole soul! There are sides of our being which no one but God seems to be able to apprehend. I am feeling now comfort at nights in simply telling Him all—feelings which I cannot explain to any one else, asking Him to interpret, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... the whole world, in his booth of theatrical boards, after the rhythm of drumming decasyllabon and bragging blank-verse. In his dramas, great conquerors pass the frontiers of kingdoms with the same ease with which one steps over the border of a carpet. The people's fancy willingly follows the bold poet. In the short space of three hours ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... had predicted. Charming elderly women, most of them, all of them gracious and friendly with that generous friendliness which is of the West. But each fell into one of two classes—the placid, black-silk, rather vague woman of middle age, whose face has the blank look of the sheltered woman and who wrinkles early from sheer lack of sufficient activity or vital interest in life; and the wiry, well-dressed, assertive type who talked about her club work and her charities, her voice always taking the rising inflection at the end ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... At sight of Big Bill and his two companions the prospector closed the oven and straightened with alert suspicion. He was not on visiting terms with any of these men. Why had they come to see him? He asked point-blank ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... of his mordant humor. They denounced the Examiner without stint, but they subscribed to it, and read it every morning. "Have you seen the Examiner to-day?" asked the friend whom you met on the street. "John M. Daniel is down on Blank!" said A to B, rubbing his hands and laughing. Blank may have been the personal acquaintance and friend of Mr. A, but there was no resisting the cartoon of him, traced by the pen of the satirist! The portrait might be a caricature, but ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... glimmer rewarded him. Blank darkness enclosed him on every hand. It was right above, below, to the right and left and to ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... lover with such atrocities that she shocked the Borgia pope.[2263] The artists of the late Renaissance were absorbed in admiration of carnal beauty. There was vulgarity and coarseness on their finest work. Cellini's work is marked by "blank animalism."[2264] There was a great lack of all sentiment. "Parents and children made a virtue of repressing their emotions." "No period ever exhibited a more marked aversion from the emotional or the pathetic."[2265] There was no shame at perfidy or inconsistency, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... unchanged, save for the death of Dan and the marriage of Reuben; but the sailor had been so little at home, that there was no great blank left by his absence, and Reuben was too close at hand to be greatly missed. Janet had not returned to service. Her mother had been rather horrified at the manner in which the poor girl had been treated by her mistress when the plague had appeared in the house. She did not care to send her back to ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was indistinctly traced with a burnt stick, on a blank leaf torn out of a book. In the first moment of indignation, I felt disposed to seek Balty Mahu, the great enemy of my life, and wreak my vengeance on him for all his persecutions; but the conviction that such a course would ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the Bridgeboro station was a congestion of trunks and other luggage bespeaking the end of the merry play season. And saddest of all, the windows of the stationery stores were filled with pencil-boxes and blank books and other horrible reminders ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... strange state of coma where the mind refused its functions. They talked and cried and shouted at each other in frenzy without knowing what they said—some with tears raining down their faces, others with blank countenances, no sign of emotion upon them other than in their wild, dilated eyes. Here and there they rushed without volition, their throat-noises rising above them, floating through the still air in a sound that no ear had ever heard ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... and shrank away from her, regarding her with that blank gaze which shows that the mind sees not the material form toward which the eyes are turned, but is taken up with its ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... through the narrowing alleys, proceeded through a maze of blank walls, down a damp stone stairway, and rapped upon a black iron door. It opened instantly, and a long clawlike hand reached forth, accepted the yellow envelope from the operator's hand, and slowly, silently withdrew, the door ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and possibly for a little while an old grandmother at Quinto—these were the people to whom that child belonged. The little life of his first decade, unviolated by documents or history, lives happily in our dreams, as blank ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... and others in proximity to the French near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they sent him a blank sheet of paper ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the lust of rule, (the object of a fatal ambition in all Moslemite countries,) and the right and power of bastinading a man when they please, reconciles them to The Desert, and to its weary, dreary, blank mode of existence. For what toys do men sacrifice the best days of their life, and the most noble ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... message from the general, "that he had nothing to do with the governor, that his business was with Gen. Moultrie; and as the garrison was in arms, they must surrender prisoners of war." At this answer, the governor and council looked blank; and some were for submitting even to this degrading proposal: but Moultrie cut the conference short, by declaring, "that as it was left to him, he would fight to the last extremity." Laurens, who was present, and sitting, bounded to his feet at the expression, raised his hands, and thanked ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... only fumigation may be performed under the supervision of the attending physician; provided he follow accurately the directions given in the following rules and regulations. Upon request a blank will be provided upon which he must state the manner and extent of the work performed under his orders and supervision. If satisfactory to the Department, this will be accepted in place of fumigation by the Department. It ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... only lend it a somewhat deceptive appearance of costliness, with which was usually coupled whatever attraction there might be in the restriction of this special edition to a very few copies. So they paid many dollars a pound for mere blank paper and fancied that they were getting their money's worth. The most inappropriate books were put out in large paper, Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, for instance. At the other extreme of size may be cited the Pickering diamond classics, also in a large-paper ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... for example, not to have ridden in which at some time of one's life was to have left one page blank. The procession of "Horribles," otherwise known as "Ragamuffins," usually started at about six in the morning, marching through the streets until nine;—by which time the endurance of a youth who had been out all night usually came to ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... dispatching a note of excuse to Miss Brewster on the plea of personal business, he slipped out into the city. Wandering idly toward the hills, he presently found himself in a familiar street, and, impelled by human curiosity, proceeded to turn up the hill and stop opposite the blank door. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... In the American pamphlet the name of Pinckney (American Minister in England) is left blank in this paragraph, and the two concluding sentences are omitted from both the French and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... they told me at the office my number was not yet out. I had hoped and wished that it might come to give us a setting up in the world; but gardener Redman said to me as I went a second time towards the office: 'Poor Philip—a blank.' Huzzah! I have won! Now I will buy a large garden and marry you. How much ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... practicable for after life, and so, with that Dutch stolidity that, once fixed, knows no altering, he refused to copy his writing lessons. Of course trouble immediately ensued between Edward and his teacher. Finding herself against a literal blank wall—for Edward simply refused, but had not the gift of English with which to explain his refusal—the teacher decided to take the matter to the male principal of the school. She explained that she had kept Edward after school for as long as two hours to compel him to copy his Spencerian lesson, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... court condemns Jerome Morel to pay to Pierre Petit-Jean, merchant,[Footnote: The crafty notary incompetent to proceed in his own name, had got from the unfortunate Morel a blank acceptance, and had introduced a third party's name.] by all his goods, and even with his body, the sum of thirteen hundred francs, with lawful interest, dated from the day of the protest; and he is besides condemned to pay all other and extra costs. Given and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "Madame le Blank! ye know! Got cut about the head down at the fete at South Park! Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on some champagne bottles. See? Wants ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... hear you say that it was to be expected that Miss Blank should marry Mr. Blank?" her husband asked. "In this case I think it is ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... accustomed to associate hunting with pleasant runs; but there are days when covert after covert is drawn blank and a fox not found until late. Sometimes, but very rarely, we have an entirely blank day. A lady with only one hunter out should use her own judgment about participating in a late run. A great deal would depend on the distance ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Beclere, that an unhappy man who dare not take his life could not do better than to lose himself in the desert. Death would come easily, for seeing nothing in front of him but an empty horizon, nothing above him but a blank sky, and for a little shelter a sand dune, which the wind created yesterday and will uncreate to-morrow he would come to understand all that he need know regarding his transitory and unimportant life. Does Nature care whether we live ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... words to convey ideas at times! If you could have obtained one glance of Rose and Jeff at that moment, reader, words would not be required. No peony ever blushed like that Rose—to say nothing of the blank amazement in those wide blue eyes. Jeff, still seated ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... everybody connected with Messrs. Garnett's establishment. "Those sort of people have no more idea of accuracy than—than—" than he had had of heirlooms, his conscience whispered to him, filling up the blank. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Tosca yields, Scarpia promising to liberate her lover at the price of her honour. He suggests however that Mario must be supposed dead, and that a farce must be acted, in which the prisoner is to pretend to fall dead while only blank cartridges will be used for firing. Tosca begs to be allowed to warn him herself and Scarpia consents and orders Spoletta to accompany her to the prison at 4 o'clock in the morning, after having given the spy private instructions to have Mario really ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... out of or into this locality either by climbing the cliffs or by navigating the rivers is a difficult feat, and to trust oneself to the current blindly rushing down toward the sea is even worse, more especially so on the occasion of this first descent when all beyond was a complete blank. But the party faced the future bravely and cheerfully. They climbed out at two points on tours of inspection of the country above, while some took the opportunity to overhaul the supply of rations, which, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... lay the map of Australia before him, and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask him if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... bad effect on his character, which was already bad enough. People used to give him documents upside down to see him pretend to read them. He would make a show of doing so, and then, on the first blank space he found, would fill in some sprawling characters which, I may say, represented him very accurately. The natives continued to pay their taxes, but kept on ridiculing him. He fairly raved with anger and worked himself up to such a frame of mind ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... who prettily alludes to it as a "defect" from which other music composed at the time suffers; but the truth is, you might as well call rhyme a "defect" of the couplet or the absence of rhyme a "defect" of blank verse. It is an integral part of the music, as inseparable as sound from tone, as atoms from the element they constitute. But the question, why did Purcell write thus, and not as Mozart and Beethoven, brings ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Garden is one of the happiest efforts of didactic verse, containing the purest elements of horticultural taste, dignified by freedom and virtue, rendered interesting by episode, and given in those energetic and undulating measures which render blank verse excellent; whose unowned satires, yet certainly his, the heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers, and its postscript, are at once original in their style, harmonious in their numbers, and pointed in their ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... Denzil, scornfully. "What's the good of Society? The Individual is before all. The mass must be sacrificed to the Great Man. Otherwise the Great Man will be sacrificed to the mass. Without great men there would be no art. Without art life would be a blank." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... how heavily he leaned against the tree, and noting the extreme pallor of his face and the blank gaze of his sunken eyes, I touched ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... patient is sitting up, except the husband and the mother. This should be made an absolute rule in every confinement. This is a period that demands the maximum of uninterrupted rest and repose. The world and all its concerns should remain a blank to a woman during the whole period of her confinement. This is the only successful means of obtaining mental rest. The husband and mother [104] should be instructed to present themselves just often enough to demonstrate their interest ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... carry further and perhaps repeat again as springing from their own acute judgment, he began to talk the most arrant nonsense he could think of, or to fire off some of his stinging sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but blank and embarrassed faces around him—everybody thinking the man was mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, but they had already sufficiently sown the seeds of fresh ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... by the same name. It was conquered and happily united to the Spanish crown on May nineteen, one thousand five hundred and seventy-one (the same year of the establishment of the tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico) by the valiant Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, native [of Guipuzcoa: blank space in MS.], and a former citizen of the said City of Mexico, whom his Majesty honored with the title of adelantado of the said islands. The city lies in fourteen degrees of north latitude. The governor lives there, who is the captain-general ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... has been forbidden by the Government. However, firing goes on more or less continuously all over the city both on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday, and the cartridges used on this occasion are not always blank. The shots are aimed at Judas, but sometimes they miss him and hit other people. Outside of Athens the practice of burning Judas in effigy still survives in some places. For example, in Cos a straw image of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... were accordingly arranged in a double rank, fore and aft the deck, and lots drawn—each man choosing a folded slip of paper from a bundle, fifty of which were marked, the remainder being blank. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... "Ye blank, blank chink—I'll fix ye fer that!" he bawled at the top of his voice, and heaving his fellow white men right and left he laid vicious hands on the helpless cook and, dragging him down, went at ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... his, regardless of what the world might say, now that a happiness such as he had never dreamt of was possible, how could he do it? In that moment Paul Stepaside seemed to live an eternity. Whichever way he turned, he was met by blank impossibilities. How could he enter into happiness, knowing that in order to do so he had sent his mother to the gallows? Rather a thousand times that his tongue should be paralysed than that he should utter a word to fasten the crime upon ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the blank wall opposite my house were three silent figures. They were a little distance apart, and they leaned against their support with the composure of three cabinet ministers on their green benches on the night of a great debate. Their feet were slightly ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... drifted lazily down the stream. The boating season was over for the most part—the season of picnics and beanfeasts, and Cockney holiday-making, and noisy revelry, smart young women, young men in white flannels, with bare arms and sunburnt noses. It was the dull blank time when everybody who could afford to wander far from this suburban paradise, was away upon his and her travels. Only parsons, doctors, schoolmistresses, and poverty stayed at home. Yet now and then a youth in boating costume glided by, his ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Jones. I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change of physician; but there was something else to consider before deciding who that physician should be. I was bound, as your confidante, to consult your own scruples of honour. Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs. Ashleigh, 'Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter, would you object to him as a son-in-law?' Of course I could not touch at all on the secret with which you intrusted me; but I have not the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reason unknown, Chaucer held this lucrative office little more than two years, quitting it before the 16th of September 1391, at which date it had passed into the hands of one John Gedney. The next two years and a half are a blank, so far as authentic records are concerned; Chaucer is supposed to have passed them in retirement, probably devoting them principally to the composition of The Canterbury Tales. In February 1394, the King conferred ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... clear. Waiting for the two-bit elevator was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... winter now, the short gray days had come, and with them piercing cold and storms of sleet and ice. It seemed as if the elements alone would finally disperse the feeble body of men still gathered about the commander-in-chief. Congress had sent him blank commissions and orders to recruit, which were well meant, but were not practically of much value. As Glendower could call spirits from the vasty deep, so they, with like success, sought to call soldiers from the earth in the midst of defeat, and in the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of the human race were engaged in another part of the great task of human improvement. For them the most incumbent task was that of developing the spiritual consciousness of men for which the Catholic Church provided an incomparable organization. But the interval was not entirely blank on the scientific side. Our system of arithmetical notation, including that invaluable item the cipher, took shape during the Middle Ages at the hands of the Arabs, who appear to have derived it in the main from India. Its ...
— Progress and History • Various
... I would not marry him. I would refuse point-blank. But I am two-and-twenty, and though 'tis true some people say I am handsome, 'tis not all who think so. I believe the truth is, I am like to be large and heavy and go off soon. 'Tis dangerous to refuse so good a match. Therefore tell ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... received from a certain Captain Kuhn, who had been lately from New York, where he had been a prisoner, and that this deponent understood and believed it was a permission or pass to go to New York with any vessel, as it was blank and subscribed by Admiral Arbuthnot: that he does not know that the said Robert Harris ever made any improper use ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... actually lick their chops, there was hunger in their eyes and a strange wistfulness as they watched Harrigan strip off his shirt, but when they saw the wasted arms, lean, with the muscles defined and corded as if by famine, their faces went blank again. For they glanced in turn at the vast torso of McTee. When he moved his arms, his smooth shoulders rippled in significant spots—the spots where the driving muscles lay. But Harrigan saw nothing save the throat of which he ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... in envelopes, ruled or blank books, wall paper, paper for wrapping and packing, for cigarettes, in cardboard, boxes, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be deposed.[705] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... seemed to be suggested by nothing, assented with a modest air, and, shaking his head and his wig, began to talk to some one else. But M. de Gesvres had not commenced without a purpose. He went on, addressed M. de Villeroy point-blank, admiring their mutual good fortune, but when he came to speak of the father of each, "Let us go no further," said he, "for what did our fathers spring from? From tradesmen; even tradesmen they were themselves. Yours was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... report of a gun hundreds of times, but his experience had never gone so far as holding the piece when it was fired; and when, after being carefully shown how to take aim, he was treated to a blank charge and pulled the trigger, the result was that I threw myself on the ground and shrieked with laughter, while the doctor seated himself upon a stump and held his sides, with the tears ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... no vain dream of moody mind, That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing; That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain, And beholds her tears in the gushing rain; When low clouds congregate blank and blind, And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging Round ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... "A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Poor Blind Margaret," a story of which Lamb wrote in the following year: "Rosamund sells well in London, malgre the non-reviewal of it," and in 1798 also, Lloyd and Lamb published a joint volume of "Blank Verse." ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... quiet life. Mrs. Kinloch, always pursued by anxiety, was one day full of courage, fruitful in plans and resources, and the next day cast down into the pit of despair. Now she clung to her first hope, believing that time, patience, kindness, would soften Mildred's resolution; then, seeing the blank indifference with which she treated Hugh, she racked her invention to provide other means of attaining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... pair of now shaking little hands had felt quite sure that no one could possibly see what they were engaged in doing—for the window on the ledge of which the medicine bottles were standing looked out on what was practically a blank wall. But the man whose long, surprised whistle had so suddenly scared her, happened at that moment to be sitting astride the top of the blank wall, engaged in the legitimate occupation of sticking bits ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... death, books have been found in his library which had long resisted the power of closing: a mode more easy than useful; for after a length of time they must be again read to know why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by those who note in a blank leaf the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds: by these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may learning obtain its authorities, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that when Mr. Methuen, the greatest fish-curer in Scotland, was able to give certain price to his men, they ought to get the same and that was the price I always paid until three years ago. Since then the herring fishing has been almost a blank; it has been a ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... alien; or as a once powerful courtier, removed from the presence of his sovereign, to a perpetual expatriation. Strawberry Hill had for ever lost its interest to him; the only treasure it contained held out no prospect of possession. In his heart there was a blank, which nothing short of his idol could fill; but it was empty, and seared; and vacant was his mind, and miserable his feelings, as he leisurely journeyed on his way to Fern Vale. They were, in fact, such as can be better imagined than ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... greatly distinguished), and both officers and men were made to feel the necessity of success. [Footnote: Ibid.] At the same time Crook succeeded in bringing a light howitzer of Simmonds's mixed battery down from the hill-tops, and placed it where it had a point-blank fire on the further end of the bridge. The howitzer was one we had captured in West Virginia, and had been added to the battery, which was partly made up of heavy rifled Parrott guns. When everything was ready, a ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in these manuscripts, we seem to see Casanova thinking on paper. He uses scraps of paper (sometimes the blank page of a letter, on the other side of which we see the address) as a kind of informal diary; and it is characteristic of him, of the man of infinitely curious mind, which this adventurer really was, that there are so few merely personal notes among ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... made a dry camp and early the following morning went on, not being able to see any landmarks because of the clouds. Half an hour after starting a thick snow-storm set in but we kept going, till in about a mile and a half the world seemed suddenly to end. Above, below, and around us was a great blank whiteness. Dismounting and cautiously advancing on foot we discovered that we were on the brink of a very high cliff. As we did not know which way to turn we threw off the packs and stopped where we were. Spreading out blankets we scraped the snow from them into the kettles to melt for ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... ahead, apparently in the direction of Bear Haven. At a glance he recognized the Thunderbolt, notoriously the lame duck of the Reds, lagging three or four miles behind the rest. Smith slowed down to quarter speed as he passed the leading ships, and a few blank shots were fired at him for form's sake, for the guns were incapable of an inclination that would be dangerous to him at his height of 3,000 feet, even if they ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... change the scene. Its dreary monotony shall not test your fortitude like one of our actual New England winters, which leaves so large a blank—so melancholy a death-spot-in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time. Here, at least, I may claim to be ruler of the seasons. One turn of the crank shall melt away the snow from the Main Street, and show the trees in their full ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stars glisten faint as mica. Shadow fills half the street, etching a silhouette of roofs and chimneypots and cornices on the cobblestones, leaving the rest very white with moonlight. The facades of the houses, with their blank windows, might be carved out of ice. In the dark of a doorway a woman sits hunched under a brown shawl. Her head nods, but still she jerks a tune that sways and dances through the silent street out of the accordion on her lap. A little saucer for pennies is on the step beside her. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Austrian consulate. The Italian was there. Neither had any news. If I left, I wanted to go to Austria. But unless a gunboat came for the consul that was not now possible. Neither of them had any idea England would be dragged in, and assured me I should be all right anywhere. I asked the Italian point-blank: "Are you going to war as Austria's ally?" He replied: "The Triple Alliance is a secret one. I do not know its terms. But I have my own ideas about them. My opinion is that we are not obliged to fight, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... I met were the same faces I had passed by the thousand, stamped with the seal of the trail, seamed with lines of suffering, wan with fatigue, blank with despair. There was the same desperate hurry, the same indifference to calamity, the same grim ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... been sick at all." "But are not people sick in Quarantine?" "Stafferillah!" he exclaimed; "they are always in better health than the people outside." "What is Quarantine for, then?" I persisted. "What is it for?" he repeated, with a pause of blank amazement at my ignorance, "why, to get money from the travellers!" Indiscreet guardiano! It were better to suppose ourselves under suspicion of the plague, than to have such an explanation of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the west door a pattern, surrounded by a border, stretches as far as the fifth pair of columns. It consists of a central band of a wavy pattern, interrupted by inscriptions and medallions; the easternmost one is blank and has a running border, with the corners of the square (cut off by the band of inscriptions) filled with scroll-work. The side portions are cut up into squares by bands of open interlacings, with ivy leaves in the interstices, and different ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Blank silence followed this tragic denouement. Wingenund, a cruel and relentless Indian, but never a traitor, pointed to the small bloody hole in the middle of Miller's forehead, and then nodded his head solemnly. The wondering Indians stood aghast. Then with loud yells the braves ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Night and the Blacks, and Maum Buckey and her Negro Washerwomen, and my Campaign against the Maroons, and some Other Things that had befallen me during those fifteen years which I have chosen to leave a Blank in my life, and which I scorn to deny did—some of them—lie heavy on my Conscience. All these were mixed up with the old Gentleman at Gnawbit's, and my Lord Lovat with his head off, and my Grandmother in Hanover Square; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... therefore, being so sudden and so total, ought to signalize itself externally by a commensurate break in the narrative. A new chapter, at the least, with a huge interspace of blank white paper, or even a new book, ought rightfully to solemnize so profound a revolution. And virtually it shall. But, according to the general agreement of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to the unity of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in some fevered dream, during which he was back home at the Devon rectory, telling his father and mother of his adventures with the slaver. Then he was bathing in a beautiful river, whose water suddenly grew painfully hot and scalded him. After that there was a long blank time, and imagination grew busy again, his brain dwelling upon the chase of the slaver, and he saw through his glass the splash in the moonlit water, as one of the poor wretches was thrown overboard to stay the progress ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... deaf to every proposition of the 'Squire, who was ready almost to double on the purchase money; till at last the latter declared point blank that he meant to stick to the property himself; that the agreement was verbal merely, and he would have ownership in writing, in spite of what Major Davis or anybody else could do. It was in vain that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... listen. The book was incomplete, but I had studied Mabel Harrington's writing well in my youth; she had left blank pages here and there in her journal; I filled them up; he read them; all would have gone well—she would have been degraded, turned out of doors, but for the mad generosity of James Harrington. I listened, and saw that all was lost; that the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... mit him!" cried Morris, deserting his fish and throwing himself upon his teacher. "Don't you do it, Teacher Missis Bailey. He ain't no friends for a lady." And then, in answer to Teacher's stare of blank surprise, ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... are some kinds of verses that do not rhyme. These are called blank verse. Here is an example of blank verse: ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... her, but there were nights when he lay awake long after she was asleep and looked ahead into a future of unnumbered blank evenings. He had formerly taken an occasional evening at his club, but on his suggesting it now Nina's eyes would fill with suspicion, and he knew that although she never mentioned Beverly Carlysle, she would neither forget nor entirely trust him again. And in his ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... banks of the Ayr, where, standing on each side of a little brook, they laved their hands in its limpid waters, plighted their troth, and exchanged Bibles,—she giving him her copy, which was a small one, he giving her his copy, which was a large one in two volumes, on the blank leaves of which he had written his name and two quotations from the sacred text, one being the solemn injunction to fidelity in Leviticus:—"And ye shall not swear by my name falsely. I am the Lord." They parted. She returned to her relatives, among whom she died a few months ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... interest further to observe that voting is declared by the Belgian constitution to be obligatory. Failure to appear at the polls, without adequate excuse made to the election officer, is a misdemeanor, punishable by law. The citizen may, if he likes, evade the law by depositing a blank ballot. But he must deposit a ballot ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg |
