"Looker-on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that his back was going to be turned upon royalty. He still wore the ragged, patched dressing-gown he always worked in. The painting of Master Betty was amusing at first, but it seemed, in the end, to be but a prolonged and tedious business to the not artistic looker-on. He must divert himself somehow. Certainly Northcote's appearance was comical. Suddenly the painter felt a twitching at his collar. He turned, frowned angrily, but said nothing. The prince persevered. Presently he touched lightly ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... drawn Josiah's money. He was insolent. You need have no anxiety about it—it is all over. I only mention it because I want you to feel that our creeds of conduct in life are not always our masters, and sometimes ought not to be. Let that comfort you a little. You know that to have been a silent looker-on at the return to slavery of a man to whom we owed so much was impossible. My wonder is that for a moment you could have hesitated. It makes me comprehend more charitably the attitude of the owners of men. Now, dear, we won't talk any ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Winnie beside Knockers' Llyn. I sat with my face opposite to the llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi's face peeping round a corner of the little gorge. Winnie's back being turned from the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of that performance was to be looker-on. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of any and of every sort; and a quality of great importance it is, whether the rank in life be high or low. Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an overabundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to a looker-on, seem to be their only difficulty. But while the inconvenience of even these immense masses is not too great to be overcome by a really extravagant woman, who jumps with joy at a basket of strawberries at a guinea an ounce, and who would not give a straw for green peas later in the year than January; ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... had a later chance to recover his ground. The new Assembly made the Privy Council pass an Act rendering signature of the Covenant compulsory on all men: "the new freedom is worse than the old slavery," a looker-on remarked. The Parliament discussed the method of electing the Lords of the Articles—a method which, in fact, though of prime importance, had varied and continued to vary in practice. Argyll protested that the constitutional course was for each Estate to ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... So she cried, "Indeed I will not have him." Then the slave-dealer looked at her and seeing her fix eyes on the young Damascene, for that in very deed he had fascinated her with his beauty and loveliness, went up to him and said to him, "O my lord, art thou a looker-on or a buyer? Tell me." Quoth Nur al-Din, "I am both looker-on and buyer. Wilt thou sell me yonder slave-girl for sixteen hundred ducats?" And he pulled out the purse of gold. Hereupon the dealer returned, dancing and clapping his hands and saying, "So be it, so be it, or not at all!" Then ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... was but too familiar. The little band of Marion, however, seems to have astonished even their American brethren-in-arms. As for the well-equipped British, they always held the ragged American regiments in contempt, till they were soundly flogged by them. An intelligent looker-on at the camp, Colonel Otho Williams, in his narrative of the campaign, speaks of Colonel Marion's arrival, "attended by a very few followers, distinguished by small leather caps and the wretchedness of their attire; their number did not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... are in the Game. I never espoused any Party with Violence, and am resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forc'd to declare myself by the Hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... lace, and that his horses gave Captain Lancaster so little concern that Miss Kennedy had nearly all his attention,—then the vision was gone. Not singing, these two, but the spectators heard her sweet laugh. Flashing past, followed by another and another though not all of equal style. The looker-on in the shade of the fir trees just noticed that Kitty Fisher drove the second,—just caught other familiar voices ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... and misery and misunderstanding; he could not have given them water for their parched throats but he could have given them to drink of the waters of understanding; he could have relieved the drought in their wrung young hearts. He would have seen, as only a looker-on could see, what was happening to them. He would have yearned over Honor, fronting the bright face of danger so gallantly but stunned and crushed by the change in Jimsy, over Jimsy himself, setting out to do an incredibly stupid, incredibly ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the mysteries of being. Writing had added its enduring records to oral tradition, and he was already making roads. Another five or six hundred generations at most bring him to ourselves. We sweep into the field of that looker-on, the momentary incarnations of this sempiternal being, Man. And after ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... such expressions of mankind's moods and intuitions, scientific investigation is scarcely more important than the moods and intuitions of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that I should begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian art by saying that some years ago there met by accident in my mind a certain impression of Lombard twelfth-century art, and a certain anecdote of Lombard ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... let that rabble enter! Mow down four or five hundred of them with cannons and the rest would run away." On August 10, when the tocsin sounds, he regards the people and the king with equal contempt; he rushes to a friend's house on the Carrousel and there, still as a looker-on, views at his ease all the occurrences of the day.[1124] Finally, the chateau is forced and he strolls through the Tuileries, looks in at the neighboring cafes, and that is all: he is not disposed to take sides, he has no Jacobin or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... explorers run. Not the physical risks, which are overestimated, but the psychological dangers. For years he had lived among savages, observing their ways, and owing to this he had fallen into a completely detached mental habit. When he returned to civilization, he had become a confirmed looker-on. He couldn't get back into touch with us. He remained ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... to tease Joe; and he did so the more willingly because he had, for a moment, shared the poor lad's hallucinations; but, not finding any thing in them, he had fallen back into the attitude of a strong-minded looker-on, and turned the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the world kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Evenly her life had slipped along with its measure of work and play, its quiet family loves and losses, entirely devoid of the alarums and excursions of which Fate shapes the lives of some. Hence she had developed the talent of the looker-on. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... door or to other hungry and forlorn wayfarers, or soldiers pausing to eat their rations in the field, or fishermen beside the stream, or the haymakers with their lunch under a tree—in all such incidents there are pictorial elements because the least part of it all to the looker-on is ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Catholics, he shows that among them also the process of theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics have to resort to strange devices—to devices which to a looker-on appear uncandid if not insincere,—in order to patch up a truce between their reason and their faith. This insincerity is the blight of the present age. It is far more serious than indifferentism, or than the open mockery of the 18th century ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... enterprise, which soon revived the broken fortunes of his brothers. A more benign cosmopolite or meek disciple of learning it would be difficult to find; unlike his restless countrymen, he had acquired the art of living in the present;—the experience of a looker-on in Paris was to him more satisfactory than that of a participant in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... looker-on; Judge not the play before the play be done; Her plot has many changes; every day Speaks a new scene. The last act crowns ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... had her second interview with a man who wanted, not herself, but one of her children. It made her feel very old, as if she were becoming a looker-on at life, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... things that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And masterly was ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... and brilliant procession formed by the fourteen knights, each so gallantly mounted, so splendidly accoutred, and accompanied by such a host of gentlemen ushers, pages, yeomen, and grooms, some on horseback, and some on foot; and the eye of the looker-on was never wearied of noticing the diversity of their habiliments,—some of the knights having cuirasses and helmets, polished as silver, and reflecting the sun's rays as from a mirror,—some, russet-coloured armour,—some, blue harness,—some, fluted,—some, corslets damaskeened ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the community; he found the life attractive and genial, the atmosphere was conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and remembered with delight the years he spent there. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in the way of a Roman de Societe in this country; still useful glances may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the looker-on, although they will very likely be ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... see me. I'd give you a roaring time. Tell Geoffrey he is bound to bring you over to see America. I'll think about you on your marriage-day, but I don't know as I'm sorry to do the thinking at a distance. Wedding-days aren't the liveliest occasions in the world for the looker-on. I guess I'd feel pretty 'left,' when you drove off from the gates, and I found myself all by my lonesome with the two old girls. ... I've wired to Liverpool about berths, and may have to start off at a day's notice, so we've got to make the most of the time. Aunt ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... report their Oxford doings to her, and their plans: and she listens eagerly and advises. To me the strange thing is, as she manages it, that her interest does not tie her down to sharing their opinions. She speaks always as a looker-on, and they recognise this. She keeps her own mind, just as she has always held to her own view of her marriage. I have never heard her complain, and to her husband she is an angel: yet I am sure (without being able to tell you why) that her heart condemns ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and three divisions of our infantry were in close proximity, all was as quiet as a Sabbath morning. One of our batteries, some six hundred yards to the right, broke the stillness by fitfully throwing a shell once in a while, but to a looker-on all seemed inaction. Such was the situation at Appomattox at sunrise on the morning of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... thoughtfully, "the looker-on sees most of the game. But I don't think you allow enough for differences of temperament. You are thinking of the best conditions for creative work. You mustn't lose sight of all the active service that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... difference of age. The mighty, seething, intensely concentrated mass in its emphatic tendency to one point is the same, in the utter disregard of mental and physical welfare. The momentary triumphs of transitory possessions impress a casual looker-on with the same fearful idea—that the human race, after all, is savage to the core, and cultivates its savagery in an inflated happiness ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... by a fortunate chance for a looker-on, happened to be in the Turkish capital at the time when the populace were all exulting at the capture of Acre. It was admitted that the British squadron had done more in rapidity of action, and in effect of firing, than it was supposed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... him, and keep the avenue of approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... shouting these words, which brought the watcher to his senses. Why, how silly of him to be crouching there, a mere looker-on, when he ought to be having a ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... fraught with pain: his temper was so irritable, his mind was so weak, his whole being so degraded and sunk by his infirmity, that the progress of his decay was, of all forms of dissolution, the most painful for the looker-on. That he was sinking into a lower depth of degradation, rather than recovering, was sadly obvious to Ida, in spite of occasional intervals of better feeling and rare flashes ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... or the reason, or the ordinary Ego. All these too were Devas, bright apparitions—mere names—yet names meant for something. Much that was most dear, that had seemed for a time their very self, had to be surrendered, before they could find the Self of Selves, the Old Man, the Looker-on, a subject independent of all personality, an existence ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... teachers in the Sunday school were shocked to learn that they had distributed dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great scandal of every looker-on. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... twenty-three tables were buried, being from henceforth converted to board-wages;" and there I learn, that "since this dissolving of house-keeping, his majesty is but slenderly attended." Another writer, who describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single masque, they did not rather make the king rich; and adds, "I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown poor!" This ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the proceedings except as a looker-on. No man could assist Thenard in an operation who was not broken to the job, for, when operating Thenard became quite a different person to the every-day Thenard of lecture room and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was impossible, of course, that she should say what she did without some movement of the organ in her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never could make out. How much was due to the interest which she as a looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a woman, was ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... time of which I speak many were my idle days, in which I was free to seek pleasure. I used to find much enjoyment in frequenting the Casino to watch the people and to play the role of "looker-on in Vienna," which, by the way, is a star role and therefore rather agreeable. One evening while watching the rouge-et-noir I noticed a lady just in front of me, magnificently dressed in all, save that there was ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... ridiculously disproportionate in its extent, when he retired. The gambols of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's pole had far more interest for the moment than all the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even while the looker-on felt angry with himself for this, and wondered how it was, the tumult swelled into a roar; the hosts of objects seemed to thicken and expand a hundredfold, and after gazing round him, quite scared, he turned into Todgers's again, much more rapidly than he came out; and ten to one he told M. Todgers ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... presented a central parting on top and a very much one-sided parting and puffing-out behind, but actually covered both his ears; while his ruddy semi-circle of beard curled inward, instead of out, and greatly surprised, if it did not positively alarm, the looker-on, by appearing to remain perfectly motionless, no matter how actively the stranger moved his jaws. This ball of improbable inflammatory hair and totally independent face rested in a basin of shirt collar; which, in its turn, was supported by a rusty black necktie and a very loose ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself endowed with an insight only possible to, an outsider, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pranced down the street playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... praestigiator threw dice or put coins on a table, then passed them into a small vessel or box, moved the latter about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or less than ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... scenes, the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;—at that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on. The time had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotest association of interest with the living figure before him, would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it perplexed, and not enlightened ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... then bidden to mount a pony at once and ride away after his pale-face friends, with the strongest assurances that the Nez Perces regarded them as so many brothers. Long Bear also sent a handsome cougar-skin to Sile, as a proper acknowledgment of the fact that he had been a looker-on at the rescue of the quadrupeds from the misguiding leadership of the bad old mule. Two Arrows rode gladly away upon his errand, and some of the braves set out at once after the "left baggage." All whom they left behind them had now abundant subject-matter for conversation and for unlimited ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... at Madeira she had not seen a great deal of Vereker Sarle. He had dropped back quietly from the crowd that ringed her in, and become a looker-on, sometimes barely that, for he was a great poker-player, and spent much time in the smoke-room with one or two hard-looking citizens who were plainly not drawing-room ornaments. April had missed him, with a little pain in her heart, for instinct told her that he was one of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sailor sprung aside with an oath, forced from him by his terror; and from every looker-on there broke a groan. They all shrunk away and stood staring with blanched faces. Such a piteous sight as it was, lying doubled up, with the rope pinioning the miserable limbs, the teeth locked, and the right ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... game, you know. And I'm essentially a looker-on." He bit back a quick sigh, and went on hastily: "But I don't think you need worry about our Molly's vagaries. She's too sound au fond to ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... himself to it, "united" with it, the patriot knows his country, the artist knows the subject of his art, the lover his beloved, the saint his God, in a manner which is inconceivable as well as unattainable by the looker-on. Real knowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more or less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic thought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... listen reverently to this good and holy man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps, by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the Messrs. Harper & Brothers for permission to use a small portion of the material in Chapter I., the greater part of Chapter IV., and the Plates which were printed originally in one of their publications; also to the publishers of "The Looker-On" for the privilege of reprinting a portion of an essay written for them ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human nature nor in a heroic fashion: he studies its ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the end of January, Henry Clay, though he had come back to the scene of his many stirring conflicts in the past minded to be "a calm and quiet looker-on," roused himself to one more essay of that statesmanship of compromise in which he was a master. He made a plan of settlement that covered all the controversies and put it in the form of a series of resolutions. It was to admit California with her free-state constitution; to organize the ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... The looker-on can easily spy an error in the actor. If a fault is committed, we are glad it was done by another; besides, it is no new thing for the outs to complain of the ins. It will plead strongly in excuse, to say, the intention ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... and buff waistcoat, ornamented with gilt anchor buttons, stood suddenly in the doorway on the right, smoking solemnly a long churchwarden clay pipe, rilling his mouth very full of smoke, and then aggravating the looker-on by puzzling him as to where the smoke would come from next— for sometimes he sent a puff out of one corner of his mouth, sometimes out of the other. Then it would come from a little hole right in the middle, out of which he had taken the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... scene in the cemetery on the evening of the "Day of the Dead" was one calculated to make an impression not to be readily forgotten by any mere looker-on who witnessed it. Nor was that presented by the road from the gate to the cemetery less remarkable in its way. It is an ugly, disagreeable bit of road, between high walls, deep with mud in wet, and with dust in dry weather, as was the case on the present occasion, and without the smallest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... shoulders, stood close to the entrance of one of the principal playhouses along this Great White Way. He had kept his place since the doors were opened, his hat-brim, pulled over his brow, his keen eye searching every face that passed. To all appearances he was but an idle looker-on, attracted by the beauty of the women, and yet during all that time he had not moved, nor had he been in the way, nor had he been observed even by the door man, the flap of the awning casting its shadow about him. Only once had he strained forward, gazing ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Ballantrae, Rosa Quo Locorum, etc.; see Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, vol. iv. The "long experience of gambling places" is a phrase which must not be misunderstood. Stevenson loved risk to life and limb, but hated gambling for money, and had known the tables only as a looker-on during holiday or invalid travels as a boy and young man. "Tamate" is the native (Rarotongan) word for trader, used especially as a name for the famous missionary pioneer, the Rev. James Chalmers, for whom Stevenson had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... — N. spectator, beholder, observer, looker-on, onlooker, witness, eyewitness, bystander, passer by; sightseer; rubberneck, rubbernecker [U.S.]. spy; sentinel &c (warning) 668. V. witness, behold &c (see) 441; look on &c (be present) 186; gawk, rubber ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the feeling that he had made a handsome morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides. "Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in one; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... were so; but thou hast much the best of the matter, even in the way of amusement, reverend pilgrim, though to the looker-on it would seem otherwise. The difference between us, pious Conrad, is just this—that thou laughest in thy sleeve without seeming to be merry, whereas I yawn ready to split my jaws while I seem to be dying with fun. Your often-told ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his life—the time she could remember best, the peaceful years in Merleville, he had given himself no rest, but watched for souls as one who must give account. Yes, life was a warfare. Not always with outward foes. The struggle need not be one that a looker-on could measure or see, but the warfare must be maintained—the struggle must only cease with life. It had been so with her father, she knew; and through his experience, Graeme caught a glimpse of that wonderful paradox of the life that is hid with Christ in God,—constant warfare— and peace that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... understand or appreciate its fascination. The looker-on sees nothing to inspire such enthusiasm. Only a few feathers and a half-musical note or two; why all this ado? "Who would give a hundred and twenty dollars to know about the birds?" said an Eastern governor, half contemptuously, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... The looker-on was a round, red-faced, sturdy yeoman, with a double chin, and a voice husky with good living, good sleeping, good humour, and good health. He was past the prime of life, but Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Leopold be a mere looker-on, and calmly behold his knights die around him in his own cause? Never! here on my native soil with you I will conquer or perish with my people." So saying, he placed himself at the head of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... concede that the circumstances might require a rather special opportunity. When it should occur she recognized that delicacy, decency almost, demanded that she should be out of the way. She shrank miserably from the prospect of being a daily familiar looker-on at the spectacle of Lawrence Cardiff's pain, and she had a knowledge that there would be somehow an aggravation of it in her person. In a year everything would mend itself more or less, she believed dully and tried to feel. Her father would ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... chance of long life. Let him not be afraid of ennui from idleness. He has a great love of the country and country pursuits, and that is all-sufficient. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. And it is so much better to be a looker-on than an actor in life. Aristotle, in the last chapter of his 'Nicomachean Ethics,' sets himself to consider what can be the happiness of the gods; and he finds nothing in which he can put it but in contemplation. And it might be so, if it ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... emigrants had their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some burden, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you how your history appears to a looker-on? I know it will be painful, but I think it ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mildest state of desperation, the painless stage, as may be seen, when this strange idea entered into his head. He hugged it, though he was a man of the world and might have known better, and it produced a kind of elation which would have been a very strange spectacle to any looker-on who knew what it meant. The thing seemed done when he next thought of it ten minutes later, settled as if it had been so for years. Mr. Copperhead would make it all right for him, and after that he would undertake such risks ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a little disappointed. She had expected to be of some use. Now that she had proved to be a mere looker-on she began to take thought about the lamb's future. There came to her again those words—"The coyotes would get them." She rose at once. A man would carry them back to the corral; why not she? She took the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... over each, and they laughed hysterically and discordantly. Ridiculous and childish as their contest might have seemed to a looker-on, to each the tension had been as great as that of the greatest gambler, without the gambler's trained restraint, coolness, and composure. Uncle Billy nervously took up ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... bread-winning, and therefore his probation must be long. He destines for himself no indolent tarrying in the garden of Armida. His is a "mind made and set wholly on the accomplishment of greatest things." He knows that the looker-on will hardly accept his apology for "being late," that it is in order to being "more fit." Yet it is the only apology he can offer. And he is dissatisfied with his own progress. "I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... have produced in our minds the result we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What can be more amusing than Searle's yard on a fine Sunday morning? It's a Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... all right!" the Inspector assured them, with the easy optimism of the looker-on in domestic tragedy; "your father will see there was nothing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... dances, the rich dainties, the breath of the exotics, the waltz-music, the common contact, the emulation of dress, the unseasonable hours, the twice-breathed air, the everlasting drams. "I saw Florimonde going the round of her half dozen parties the other night," wrote a "looker-on in Venice" toward the close of the last season. "What a resplendent creature she was, the hazel-eyed beauty, with the faintest tinge of sunset hues on her oval cheeks! Her dress was of that peculiar tarnished shade of pink—like yellow sunshine suffusing a pale ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... justly." "Boldly at least," retorted the friar; and then he blamed the duke for leaving the cause of Isabel in the hands of him she had accused, and spoke so freely of many corrupt practices he had observed, while, as he said, he had been a looker-on in Vienna, that Escalus threatened him with the torture for speaking words against the state, and for censuring the conduct of the duke, and ordered him to be taken away to prison. Then, to the amazement of all present, and to the utter confusion of Angelo, the supposed ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... day seems light to them, looking forward to the hour when they sit together in John's old shabby dining-room above the counting-house. Yet a looker-on might imagine such times dull to them; for they are strangely shy of one another, strangely sparing of words—fearful of opening the flood-gates of speech, feeling the ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... absurdly laughable. Life in this wonderful valley was something in the nature of a tragic farce. The worst thing was that the farce of it all could only be detected by the looker-on. There was no real farce in these people, only tragedy—a very painful ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... an expression of profound commiseration. A looker-on would have supposed him interested and sympathetic to the last degree; but in reality, he was furious. Time was passing, and the conversation was wandering farther and farther from the object of his visit. "I am surprised, madame," ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... with a most evident sneer, and the other lads laughed aloud; whereupon the English lad reddened, then his fists clenched, and a looker-on would have expected an immediate outbreak, when suddenly a change passed over his features, as if he were making a ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stranger have taken her place as his counselor and friend? The idea of some personal advantage was, of course, at the bottom of it; but it was clear, not only to sage Mrs. Basil, but even to Harry—since even a moderately skillful looker-on sees more of the game than the best player—that in any contest of wits Solomon would have small chance with his new friend. The opinion of Mrs. Basil was, that some new speculation, in some manner connected with the Crompton ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... played amateur comedy at Malmaison, which was a relaxation the First Consul enjoyed greatly, but in which he took no part himself except that of looker-on. Every one in the house attended these representations; and I must confess we felt perhaps even more pleasure than others in seeing thus travestied on the stage those in whose ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... dressed; and course of treatment prescribed. I looked on at first as a mere spectator; bearing the revelation of pain and suffering with all the fortitude I could muster; but I found in a little while that it would overmaster me if I continued an idle looker-on; and putting aside the attendant nurse at last with a whisper to which she yielded, I offered myself quietly in her place to do her work. Dr. Sandford glanced at me then, but made no remark whatever; suffering me to do my pleasure, and employing me as if I had been there for a month. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was his force of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake, Each seem'd to act that part he came to see, And none was more a looker-on than he; So did he move our passions, some were known To wish for the defence, the crime their own. Now private pity strove with public hate, Reason with ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... was giving occasional premonitory snorts, and the four young ladies who had been so thoroughly discussed were in various stages of unrest, waiting for the moment of departure. A looker-on would have been able to come to marked conclusions concerning the different characters of these young ladies, simply from their manner of dress. Flossy Shipley was the one to look at first. That was a very good description of her usual style—something to look at. She had chosen for ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... His affectionate friend with the pronounced tendency to embonpoint, tried to persuade himself that his head was really covered, although Guy's hat, to do its most generous, could never shield more than the extreme top of his hair. Snatches of their conversation only reassure the looker-on of the absurdity of the situation. The good-natured looking companion, whose name was Morrison Jones, said in the most usual ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Hither, then, the old gentleman skipped with extraordinary expedition, and, being somewhat winded and a good deal shaken, here he lay down in a convenient grove and was presently overwhelmed by slumber. The way of fate is often highly entertaining to the looker-on, and it is certainly a pleasant circumstance, that while Morris and John were delving in the sand to conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep a few hundred yards deeper in ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the credit of it," answered Bradshawe, with easy urbanity. "I am not even a stakeholder in the game; though, as a mere looker-on, I confess having watched it with keen and growing interest." And with a little wave of the hand he passed L'Isle gently over to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... looker-on; seldom an unmoved, and sometimes an angry spectator, but still a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind. I felt how little my opinion was valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exercised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his profession, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the half, boned the turkey, and went on her way quite elated with the brilliancy of her talents in financiering! There's one merit in meanness, if it disgusts the looker-on, it never fails to carry a pleasing sensation to the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... St. James saith, they are as men "that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor." As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all: but when all is done, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a cruel scene that followed. I took no part in it. Though ever so desirous that my life should be saved, I could never have gone to such extremes to preserve it. I was but a looker-on. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... hand and welcomed him with a few kind words. As the boy and girl stood there, no two cousins could have appeared more externally unlike, and yet never were two more alike in their highest tastes and deepest feelings. But an ordinary looker-on would only see the boy so small, and quiet, and weary, and the girl so tall, and active, and healthy, abounding in lively spirits, in the full enjoyment of her young life, with the mother she adored, thinking nothing could be more beautiful than her picturesque old ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... underscored request to please read through, carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to condemn any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of martial law in dealing with manuscripts. The looker-on might have seen her take up the paper, cast one flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence and the last, dip at a venture into two or three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning calculator would add ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at a loss to know in which division to place myself. If I join the young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the role of a looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I know are the burro ciego, the burro con vista, and a little ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... supplicating eyes. His servants, ignorant of what had chanced, With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced, 100 And called their lord Actaeon to the game: He shook his head in answer to the name; He heard, but wished he had indeed been gone, Or only to have stood a looker-on. But, to his grief, he finds himself too near, And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear Their wretched master, panting ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... amusement at this common little girl and her singular companion. This look of hers seemed to affect the women serving, for none came near the little model. Hilary saw them eyeing her boots, and, suddenly forgetting his role of looker-on, he became very angry. Taking out his watch, he went up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to mark the hard winter-beaten turf,—the knotted grass he cut through. I saw him describe the outline of a grave,—the other standing there, silently looking on. When the grave was marked, the one wielding the spade looked up at the silent looker-on, who bowed his head, as if to say, "It is right." Then he began to strike deeper, to hit the stones ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... felt the excitement of it throbbing in my pulses. The gloomy, half-lit auditorium seemed full of strange suggestions. I felt in real and actual touch with the great things that throbbed beneath. I was no longer an auditor—a looker-on. I had become ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir Ulick was "shirking ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... interest this gives to the woods! How you long to explore every nook and corner of them! One must taste it to understand. The looker-on sees nothing to make such a fuss about. Only a little glimpse of feathers and a half-musical note or two—why all this ado? It is not the mere knowledge of birds that you get, but a new interest ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... their mid-day meal, and the birds had hidden themselves away from the sunbeams. The great heart of Nature was pulsating with a joy like that of the lovers, too great for utterance. There was something in the appearance of this youthful pair which would have convinced a looker-on that there was a mystery of some sort surrounding the romance of their love. For the one was in the garb of a nun, her head concealed by a coif, and her person enveloped in a long white veil; while ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... A looker-on would have wondered why he did this, and would have gazed ahead to see what there was to induce him to make so wild a rush in a dangerous place. But he would have seen nothing but rugged path, tree-top, and the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... He hardly knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... The original seat of the stricture becomes so masked by the surrounding disease, and the stricture itself, even if found by any chance, is generally of so impassable a kind, that it must be confessed there are few operations in surgery more irksome to a looker-on than is the fruitless effort made, in such a state of the parts, by a hand without a guide, to pass perforce a blunt pointed instrument like a catheter into the bladder. In some instances the stricture is slightly pervious, the urine ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... The batteries at Meudon appeared to-day to be of opinion that its guns were effectually silenced; shells fell thick and fast on the bastions at Point-du-Jour; and so well aimed were they, that between the bastions a looker-on was in comparative safety. The noise, however, of the duel between the bastions and the batteries was so deafening, that it was literally impossible for two persons to hear each other speak at a few feet distance; the shells, too, which were passing to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of Margot Lorenzi as a saint might have made a looker-on smile, but Victoria and Stephen passed ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the statues in the first act. Against a backing of black velvet the three white figures, carefully posed, strongly lighted, stand out so marble-like that when they slowly turn their faces and point to their chosen master, the effect is uncanny enough to chill the looker-on. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... riding figures suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the Peintres-verriers, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... a marked man everywhere. Every door is closed to you. I shall nominally stick to my post. You must be content to be the actual looker-on, though you had better not abandon your inquiries altogether. I will put you up at the Cercle Anglais. It will serve to pass the time, and you may gain information at the most ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... endeavor to ferret out the various series of events which lie entangled in the confused and apparently unrelated successions of incidents which pass before his observation. When he sees something happen in the street, he will not be satisfied, like the casual looker-on, merely with that solitary happening; he will try to find out what other happenings led up to it, and again what other happenings must logically follow from it. When he sees an interesting person in a ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... on, first one and then the other descending to find that the water was steadily rising, and after each examination there was a thrill of dread as the looker-on asked himself, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... his ease. There is not the slightest indication of his being incommoded by the numerous objects about him; no confusion of ideas, no distraction of mind, no mental distress of any kind; but, on the contrary, in the midst of so much to see and to learn, the young looker-on is not only at his ease, but appears to be delighted. The reason of this is, that he is not by any external force compelled to attend to all that he sees; and Nature within directs him to attend to no more than he is able to group, or reiterate in his thoughts. We shall endeavour to examine ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... in their commercial enterprises. This preference is not uncommon among cultivated men. But it is too much to ask of a nation that it shall exist for the sake of gratifying the aesthetic emotions of travelers. The process of achieving greatness can never be so agreeable to the looker-on as the sight of greatness achieved; but it is unhappily often the case that many things, which the visitor regards as a charm, the native feels to be ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Hodson was staying with friends in Switzerland during the holidays. One morning, as he lay awake, he seemed to see into a room as if the wall of his bedroom had been cut out. In the room were a lady well known to him and a man whom he did not know. The man's back was turned to the looker-on. The scene vanished, and grew again. Now the man faced Dr. Hodson; the face was unfamiliar, and had a deep white scar seaming the moustache. Dr. Hodson mentioned the circumstance to his friends, and thought ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... History of the Union would have become a romance, with that impudent, entertaining rogue, Ker of Kersland, and his bewildered Cameronians, for the heroes: with Hamilton the waverer, and the dark, sardonic Lockhart of Carnwath, and Daniel Defoe as the English looker-on. The study of Highland history led to the reading of the Trial of James of the Glens, and the vain hunt for Alan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on all hands, the devotion of each active member of the community to money-making, the prevailing manners and customs, the iniquitous pursuits of the desperate and dangerous classes, and the readiness of their too willing victims! It is the solitary looker-on who sees more than the actors in the great drama of every-day life. Above all, it is most curious to observe how the lines of barbarism and civilization intersect along these ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the parties met at the appointed place, Dick attended by Edward O'Connor and Egan—the former in capacity of his friend; and O'Grady, with Scatterbrain for his second, and Furlong a looker-on: there were some straggling spectators ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... of missionaries are less exquisite than those of other persons. The pangs they endure are indeed alleviated by soothing considerations drawn from the Gospel; but they are, notwithstanding, deep—deeper than the looker-on may ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... up with bags and loads of faggots, their ant-like activity as orderly and untroubled as if the two armies had not lain trench to trench a few yards away. It was one of those strange and contradictory scenes of war that bring home to the bewildered looker-on the utter impossibility of picturing how the thing ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the civilized world. Is it not obviously true that, while the upper classes and the lower classes of English ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a looker-on who lived to erect a throne in the place of the one that fell that day, and to be the next sovereign who reigned at the Tuileries. In 1813 Napoleon told Roederer that he had watched the scene from a window on the Carrousel, and assured ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... give you a little advice. Give up the idea. They say that lookers-on see most of the game, and so far as I am concerned I'm certainly the looker-on of this party. The Duchess doesn't care a ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... justified, to save his life. We lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we even took our long evening's walk together, when the day's labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens |
