"Faint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... books—a "great part being formed by an eminent and curious collector in the last century"—viz. the aforesaid Narcissus Luttrell. (See the title to the Catalogue of his Library.) His books were sold by auction in 1786; and, that the reader may have some faint idea of the treasures contained in the Bibliotheca Wynniana, he is presented ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... tests those powers in our presence, we can be audience and admire her histrionic talents," said the Prince, pleasantly, though with some faint, growing sign of constraint or perhaps impatience. "There's no doubt in my mind, whatever may be the lady's conception of her part, about the final tableau. And after all, it's with that alone ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... lay waste the country and take refuge in the towns. Hence the mobs so prejudicial to public safety, that crowd of smugglers and vagrants, that large body of men who have become robbers and assassins, solely because they lack bread. This gives but a faint idea of the disorders I have seen with my own eyes[5336]. The poverty of the rural districts, excessive in itself, becomes yet more so through the disturbances it engenders; we have not to seek elsewhere for frightful sources of mendicity and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hung back. Perhaps they guessed that the garrison were in want of provisions, and had wisely determined to starve them out. Their proceedings were evidently conducted by chiefs who well understood the art of savage warfare. Midnight arrived; the faint moon, though it had lasted longer than on the previous night, had disappeared. Archie proposed again leading out a party to obtain water, and he was on the point of starting, when one of the sentries cried out, "The enemy are coming!" The warning was repeated by others, and a black ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... and hang upon the faint chance of one publisher more. It is my only chance,—and such a chance! I find myself calculating, wondering; yes, famous books have been rejected often, and still found their mark. Can I still believe that ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... faint glimmer of light over the sea as they neared the shore, and they saw anchored at a little distance a small ship, and could see the men moving about her deck; for the wind had risen. Mr. Brenton found a man whom he knew, in whose charge he ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... when the evening's cooler wings Fan the afflicted air, how the faint sun, Leaving undone, What he begun, Those spurious flames suck'd up from slime and earth To their first, low birth, Resigns, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... brokenly and weakly, "oh, faither, I've come back. Jist let me lie here near you. I jist want you to clap my held, to lean against you, an' gang to sleep. Are you angry wi' me, faither? Are you—" and Mysie's eyes closed in a faint, as she ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief, grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hiding the handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping as much of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of the little chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... touching the man on the shoulder, while Jagger smiled some faint amusement, "does ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... Desp'rate fate, The bastard sons of Mars endur'd of late, Induc'd me thus to minute down the notion, Which put my risibles in such commotion. By yankees frighted too! oh, dire to say! Why yankees sure at red-coats faint away! Oh, yes—They thought so too—for lack-a-day, Their gen'ral turned the blockade to a play: Poor vain poltroons—with justice we'll retort, And call them blockheads ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... confidence in the ways of God and in his special providence,—did we not feel that he is too wise to err, too good to be unkind,—our hearts would often faint as we hear of our devoted missionaries falling into the grave ere they have been permitted to labor to any considerable degree for the conversion of the heathen. Did we not feel perfectly satisfied in relation to the wisdom and mercy of the great ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... you and I, Gegi, must take him warning!" Rosette cried, springing to her feet; and Gegi signified his entire approval in a couple of short barks. "I will take the sheep," his little mistress murmured; "'tis slower, but they will be so pleased to see them. Poor Jean Paulet!" she thought, with a faint smile. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... flag-staff a celestial ape of form fierce like that of a lion or a tiger. Stationed on high, the ape seemed bent upon burning everything it beheld. And upon the (other) flags were various creatures of large size, whose roars and yells caused the enemy's soldiers to faint. Then Arjuna, accoutred in mail and armed with the sword, and his fingers cased in leathern gloves, walking round that excellent car adorned with numerous flags and bowing unto the gods, ascended it like a virtuous man riding in the celestial car that bears him to heaven. And ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... It would be almost impossible to conceive a more grotesque and gruesome picture than some of these Sabbaths were supposed to be: every impossible and inconceivable thing that man's mind could invent was apparently attributed to these meetings. In order to form some faint idea of men's beliefs in those days, I quote the following, supposedly from a more or less contemporary account, of what ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... that he had succeeded ill in his determined effort of forgetting her; yet now he found her as truly a revelation in the vividness of her charm and the radiance of her beauty as though he had brought faint memories—or none—to the meeting. His blood was tingling in his arteries with a rediscovery which substituted for the old sense of loss a new and more poignant realization. It would have been better ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... chief of courage, recently speaker of the Assembly, voiced a faint protest; and later he summoned Marinus Willett from his retirement to preside at an opposition meeting. It was, no doubt, an inspiring sight to see this venerable soldier of the Revolution, who ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... cross-piece, she handing him the necessary nails one by one. Then once more, and for the second time, everything was ready. She watched him again outlining the work, standing behind him the while, till she felt faint with fatigue, and finally dropping to the floor, where she remained squatting, and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... longer remain and gaze when fighting and plunder were in sight. With blankets fastened to cut saplings for banner-poles, they ran down to the conflict. The King saw them, and well knew that the moment had come: he pealed his ensenye—called his battle-cry—faint hearts of England failed; men turned, trampling through the hardy warriors who still stood and died; the knights who rode at Edward's rein strove to draw him toward the castle of Stirling. But now the foremost knights of Edward Bruce's division, charging on foot, had fought their way to the English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... through me. His remark rang true: I knew that nothing had ever turned up for him. I felt faint at looking into such an abyss of hopelessness. Instantly I saw that the truth of this delirious statement concerned me more than all the wisdom of ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... child as if she could not move her feet longer, a faint light shone out in the distance. The camp of the white men ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... very faint hopes of recovery, and as Mrs. Thrale was no longer devoted to him, it might have been supposed that he would naturally have chosen to remain in the comfortable house of his beloved wife's daughter, and end his life where he began it. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the Tuileries and Luxembourg. Beside him glided Caderousse, whose desire to partake of the good things provided for the wedding-party had induced him to become reconciled to the Dantes, father and son, although there still lingered in his mind a faint and unperfect recollection of the events of the preceding night; just as the brain retains on waking in the morning the dim and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forward unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul away. And so they sat there in the deepening shadow, whispering in faint low whispers, thrilling with a great rapture, their lips meeting in long kisses. Why should he think of Lilian? Never once had he touched her mouth like this, had his arms closed round her so, had he felt the sighing of her breath. As a pale white rushlight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... The cottages were all dark. A single faint light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour. It broke like ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... this man cannot speak of health when he sees the canker in the rose which blooms upon the cheek, when he perceives that, despite the appearance of strength and vigour, "the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint." He has not told us pleasant things to-day, though we would have liked to hear them, and he would have been glad to tell them, because he is too deeply concerned for us to prophesy golden groves at the end of a journey whose every ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... who believe in nothing sometimes do, because after all they must believe in something, I suppose. Got your hat and coat? So have I, come on," and he switched off the light, so that the room was left in darkness except for the faint ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... lambs, harried by brutal drovers, with shouts and blows,—terrible processions of innocent creatures going to die under the poleaxe and the knife in order to provide the "pleasures of the table" for dainty votaries of "sweetness and light." Before the fair faint dawn made rosy the eastern sky over the houses, you might have heard on every side the heavy thud of the poleaxe striking down the patient heifer on her knees,—the heifer whose eyes are like the eyes of Here, say the old Greek song-books, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... stood on the edge of the dock and peered into the darkness. He could hear the faint sound of someone rowing across the lake, ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... He is such a nice young gentleman, and so popular in society. If he should turn out to be somebody else? He has been such a favorite at our house, you know. I am sure I should never survive such a scandal as that. I am sure it would kill me—at least I should faint; I feel as if I should faint now!" "Pray don't faint, pay dear," interrupted Chapman, submissively, as she handed him a letter she had received that day from Mr. Romer. And as she did so, she got up and paced the room in a state ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... in a manner different from mankind in general. Thus, some persons cannot eat strawberries without a kind of urticaria appearing over the body; others are similarly affected by eating the striped bass; others, again, faint at the odor of certain flowers, or at the sight of blood; and some are attacked with cholera-morbus after eating shellfish—as crabs, lobsters, clams, or mussels. Many other instances might be advanced, some of them of a very curious character. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... I knew not where the Dutch settlement was situated; but I had a faint idea that it was at the S W part of the island. I therefore, after day-light, bore away along shore to the S S W, and the more readily as the wind would not suffer us to go towards the N E ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... he stared wildly at us, with pale face and eyes opened wide with a look of helpless fright. Restraining with difficulty a shout of laughter, I said to him: "Did you leave Jaffa to-day?" but so completely was his ear the fool of his imagination, that he thought I was speaking Arabic, and made a faint attempt to get out the only word or two of that language which he knew. I then repeated, with as much distinctness as I could command: "Did—you—leave—Jaffa—to-day?" He stammered mechanically, through his chattering teeth, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... most extraordinary horror came over me as I lay there, powerless to move, propped up on my elbow, watching. The purposeful deliberation with which the woman finished her work; the dead silence about us, broken only by an occasional faint lapping of the river against its bank; the knowledge that this was a deed of revenge—all these things produced a mental state in me which was as near to the awful as ever I approached it. I could only lie and watch—fascinated. But it was over at last, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would let them touch him, though he ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... with a faint laugh, "but what shall we do here in the dark all night long, and all day to-morrow? We ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... shout was heard above them. "There they are at last," cried Hawkstone, and he sent a loud halloo up the cliff, which was immediately responded to by those at the top, though the sound seemed faint and far off. After the lapse of about five minutes, a basket attached to two ropes descended slowly ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... collected, oil of vitriol, diluted with twice its bulk of water, is added, one workman pouring it in gradually while another stirs the contents of the tank vigorously. At short intervals, the liquid is tested by means of litmus paper, and when it shows a faint acid reaction, by turning the blue paper red, the addition of acid is stopped. The acid has then combined with the alkali of the soap, while the fatty acids formerly in combination with the alkali are liberated, and float to the surface of the liquid, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... "Don't faint," I snapped, "and don't let's play tennis." I was shaking. I reached into the crib. My hands closed around something that put ice-water in my vertebrae. It was ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... she said, "and forget it—and all that has gone before. Believe me," she added, with a faint sigh, "it is best. Our paths diverge from this moment. I go to the summer-house, and you go to the Hall, where my father is expecting you." He would have detained her a moment longer, but she ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... billiard room of the hotel stood Mrs. Bentley, leaning against a wall and looking ready to faint. Laura Bentley, far more beautiful than when we saw her last, had caught up a chair, with which she was threatening a dark-haired young Mexican who sought to reach her. Belle Meade, her dark beauty unmarred by the look of anger ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... strangers, as the rising young man, so devoted to his master's great merits, who had won young Tom's place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals he was spirited away? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby buildings, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... they fetched a walk one day, They met a press-gang crew; And Sally she did faint away, Whilst Ben he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to submit them to the public attention. In so doing, he has preferred giving them in their original state, with all their defects, to moulding them into a connected narrative; his object being not to "make a book," but to offer his desultory remarks as they arose; to present the faint outline he sketched upon the spot, rather than attempt to work ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... have had than his own life's history, with its alternating chapters of triumph and defeat. Even then there was report of a pronunciamento in one of the northern cities of the Republic—the State, by a polite euphemism, being still so designated. Only a faint "gritto" it was, but with a tone that resembled the rumbling of distant thunder, which might yet ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... proud and charming face of which he had before obtained only a hurried glimpse; that rounded neck, at once delicate and powerful, whereon Aphrodite had traced with the nail of her little finger those three faint lines which are still at this very day known as the 'necklace of Venus'; that white nape on whose alabaster surface little wild rebellious curls were disporting and entwining themselves; those silver ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... rubbed his arms and legs, and held ammonia under his nose. Slowly he opened his eyes, and in a faint voice asked: ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... of modern science naturally opens with Astronomy. The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great increase in knowledge, there remain just as many which are ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... twelve o'clock," said Mrs. Wykoff; drawing out her watch. "Mary! Mary! This will not do. I don't wonder you were faint just now." ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... the "one great question to which we should look in all our arrangements: What is to be their final result on the character of the people?" The following passage in that remarkable document may be commended to our faint-hearted doubters of to-day: ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... misty, sleepily musical, than a waking reality, on which the sun shone. Tremulous blue clouds lay down all around upon the mountains, and lazy white ones lost themselves in the waters; and through the dozing air, the faint chirp of robin or cricket, and ding of bells in the woods, and mellow cut of scythe, melted into one song, as though the heart-beat of the luscious midsummer-time had set itself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... collapsed and shrinking, as if already withered by the curse; a ghastly whiteness overspread the cheek, usually glowing with the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained—still, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suddenly and he crouched forward watching intently. His eyes were staring wide-open and startled at the Wondership. Its bulk lay blackly against the faint, phosphorescent glow ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... answered the young man—he was this side of thirty. His long, artistic fingers were trembling, and he felt weak and faint. "But if there has been a robbery they didn't get much. The safe hasn't been opened, and the best of the goods—all the diamonds and other stones—are in that. Nothing seems to be gone from the cases, though ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... when the Morning Star goeth forth to herald light upon the earth, the star that saffron-mantled Dawn cometh after, and spreadeth over the salt sea, then grew the burning faint, and the flame died down. And the Winds went back again to betake them home over the Thracian main, and it roared with a violent swell. Then the son of Peleus turned away from the burning and lay down wearied, and sweet sleep leapt on him." [Footnote: Iliad xxiii. p. 193.—Translated ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... to work, while the vapors of the mornes fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,—clayey odors,—grassy smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the water of the river is very chill. One by one they arrive, barefooted, under their burdens built up tower-shape on their trays;—silently as ghosts they descend the steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold and immerse their washing. They greet each other as they come, then ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... separates a rational process, resulting in manly resolve, from a weakly sentiment that finds occasional hysterical utterance. The Monroe Doctrine, as popularly apprehended and indorsed, is a rather nebulous generality, which has condensed about the Isthmus into a faint point of more defined luminosity. To those who will regard, it is the harbinger of the day, incompletely seen in the vision of the great discoverer, when the East and the West shall be brought into closer ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... he will not only feel that disappointment in the ultimate result, but also in every step of his progress. When he has done his best, exerted his utmost industry, and consecrated every power of his soul to the energies he puts forth, he may close every day, sometimes with a faint shadow of success, and sometimes with entire and blank miscarriage. And the latter will happen ten thousand times, for once that the undertaking shall be blessed with ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the sky, the sea, and the waves. They had not brought one morsel of food with them, and thirst and hunger began now to torment them. Three days did they toss about in this state of misery, and Aslog, faint and exhausted, saw nothing but certain ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... his eyes there was a faint glint of humor. That was the only soft touch about him. He was in that hard age between thirty and thirty-five when people are still young, but have lost the illusions of youth. And, indeed, that was exactly the word which people in haste ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... ran through the world when Texas, a free country, was transformed into slave territory as the result of the victory of the United States; multiply the crime of Texas by ten, by twenty, and you will have a faint image of the impression of disgust that the Southern republic is about to call forth ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... am ill. I don't know what is the matter with me!' she exclaimed in a tone of suffering. 'Oh! Oh!' she groaned, falling back on the bench. And strange to say she really felt that her strength was failing, that she was becoming faint, that everything in her ached, and that she ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... her eyes with her hand. The Oklahoma sun was pitiless. Far up the road that ran straight away from the bunk house a faint cloud of ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... beaten down by the world and its inheritors, I should have succumbed to many things years ago. You must not mistake my not bullying for dejection; nor imagine that because I feel, I am to faint."[80] ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... plunge deep into the ocean of life; but it is not without losing sometimes all sense of the axis and the pole, without losing myself and feeling the consciousness of my own nature and vocation growing faint and wavering. The whirlwind of the wandering Jew carries me away, tears me from my little familiar enclosure, and makes me behold all the empires of men. In my voluntary abandonment to the generality, the universal, the infinite, my ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... both Murray's and the lieutenant's breasts, he seemed to be so long gone that the latter expressed it as his belief that he had tricked them and escaped; but this opinion had hardly been whispered in the middy's ear before there was a faint rustling as of bare feet heard, and then, breathing hard, the black ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... God of missionaries. If this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life" of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint unsuccessful refraction. He has been introduced by Europeans, it is argued, but is not in harmony with his new environment, and so is ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... it make?" she asked in her slightly husky voice, with faint surprise. "It is only the old love-story of a village girl you will hear. My mother was different from these people, but I had never known anything beside this life, except books. Of course you can understand how much else than love the ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... waiting at the House of Commons on the following day. He was ushered at last into Mr. Hebblethwaite's private room. Hebblethwaite had just come in from the House and was leaning a little back in his chair, in an attitude of repose. He glanced at Norgate with a faint smile. ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... almost—in the spectacle of these figures, the women in white, the men in black, moving through this wan light; and their voices sounded strangely in the dead silence; but ere long a soft saffron tinge began to show itself in the east; one or two scraps of cloud in the violet skies caught a faint touch of the coming dawn; there was a more generous tone on the masses of foliage, on the flower-beds, and on the grass; and now the cheerful chirping of the birds had begun among the leaves. And what more beautiful surroundings could have been imagined for ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... below, like the drawing of a match across a stone; then a faint bit of glimmer flickered a moment. I couldn't see where they were. I bent forward a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... observe it's no easy thing Making the journey to Bumpville, So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring An end to this ride to Bumpville; For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint, The calico mare must be blowing and faint— What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't! So play we have ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... There was a faint smell of perfume in the room, a heavy voluptuous smell in which the odour of sandal-wood mingled with the pungency of myrrh. It was very silent, so that when Grantham mixed a drink the pleasant chink of glass upon glass rang ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... said Ben, who had detected a faint pulsation of the heart; "but why didn't some of you send for a doctor when ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... faint and thirsty, 'neath the shadow of His wing There is cool and pleasant shelter, and a fresh and crystal spring; And my Saviour rests beside me, as we hold communion sweet: If I tried, I could not utter what He ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... tapping sound on the pavement. It is faint but growing nearer. In another moment a man tapping on the pavement with a cane passes. A blind man. And I think of a plot for a fiction story. If a terrible murder were committed in a marvelous fog that hid everything the chief of police would summon a blind man. And the blind ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... seemed as if it would never come, and it was not until hours upon hours had passed that there was a cessation of the high wind, and a faint line of light just over the water, seaward, proclaimed that the dawn could not ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the living pictures and legendary tales of the country. They have been written during the short intervals allowed from domestic toils, and may, perhaps, have little claim to the attention of the public, save that of throwing a faint light upon the manners and customs of that little-known, though interesting, appendage of the British empire. A long residence in that colony having given me ample means of knowing and of studying them in all their varying hues of light and shade. ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... his way through the baggage-coach, climbed on the express car, and jumped on the coal of the tender. He cast his eye up the track and saw glimmering in the distance, like a faint wavering star, the headlight of No. 6. Looking down into the cab he realized the situation in a glance. The engineer, with fear in his face and beads of perspiration on his brow, was throwing his whole weight on the lever, the fireman helping him. Saggart leaped down to the floor ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... from the earth at his very feet came a faint answer to his call, and Custer, forcing his way through a rank growth of weeds and briers, stood on the brink of a deep gully that a small brook had worn for itself on its way to the river below. In the bed of this brook was a dark object that ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... them now—barely see them through the snow. He watched their faint outlines, and then the swirling snow hid them, and the ice floe and only black ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... well nigh unnerved her. When that young man had caught her from stone to stone as she passed over the ford at Bolton, she was almost ready to give herself to him. But then had come upon her the sense of sickness, that faint, overdone flavour of sugared sweetness, which arises when sweet things become too luscious to the eater. She had struggled to be honest and strong, and had just not fallen into the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... clear, and the stars in the vicinity of the Moon were distinctly visible in the telescope." After more than half an hour's search, Wargentin at length discovered the whereabouts of the Moon by means of a faint light, which was visible at the Eastern edge of the disc. A few minutes afterwards, some persons of acute vision were able to discern, with the naked eye, a trace of the Moon, looking like a patch of thin vapour, but more than half the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... fallen upon a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... multitudes are addicted to it without the shadow of a suspicion that they are so. Thousands and thousands of young women whose hearts would recoil at the bare recital of deeds of butchery and blood—nay, who would faint at the sight of the severities, not to say cruelties, which, under the guise of parental discipline, or on the plea of authority, are often and hourly inflicted on the bodies of young and old—who will yet rob and murder their unoffending neighbors. For there is no ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... my son!" said Mrs. Graham, somewhat sternly; but little Meggie murmured, in a sweet, faint voice, "O Cousin Archie, why did you tell? Maybe I would have died, and nobody but us would ever have ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... so much as the sense of deep respiration, as if the earth slept and sent up an invocation to the watching heavens. The banks were thickly weeded at the water's edge with nipa, and behind that were knolls of bamboo with here and there a gnarled and tortured tree shape silhouetted against the faint sky. Occasionally we came to a convention of fireflies in that tree which they so much affect, the name of which is unknown to me, but which in size and outline resembles a wild cherry. Millions of them starred its branches, and in the surrounding gloom ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... on a smooth boulder, nearly fell, but recovered himself with a violent effort, at the same time uttering a sharp exclamation of pain. He seemed faint and dizzy and put out his free hand while he reeled, as though seeking support against the air. When he had steadied himself he stepped forward, but reeled again and nearly fell. Then he stood still and looked at the other man, who had ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... confronted with the rack, let us say, or the gallows; and perceived that she knew with exactness what her behaviour would be: She would do all that was required of her with out speeches or protest; she would place herself in the required positions, with a faint smile, unwavering; she would suffer or die with the same tranquil steadiness as that in which she lived; and, best of all, she would not be aware, even for an instant, that anything in her behaviour was in the least admirable or exceptional. She resembled, to Marjorie's ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... but went, trailing music deliciously into the distance. Emeline knew how he rode, with the bridle looped over his bow arm. She was quieted and lay in peace, sinking to sleep almost before the faint, far notes ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... these journeys, but I seem to see him now, and he is somewhat dizzy in the odd atmosphere; in one hand he carries a box-iron, he raises the other, wondering what this is on his head, it is a hat; a faint smell of singed cloth goes by with him. This man had heard of my set of photographs of the poets and asked for a sight of them, which led to our first meeting. I remember how he spread them out on his ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... rays fell aslant through the boughs of the noble oaks, and the scent of the grass and bracken trodden by the horse-hoofs of that company went up into the warm summer air. A while he sat musing but awake, though the faint sound of a little stream in the dale below mingled with all the lesser noises of the forest did its best to soothe him to sleep again: and presently had its way with him; for he leaned his head back on ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... view, anything more interesting than the manner in which these defects have been provided for by implanting in the very organization of every man the means of constantly admonishing him of these facts—of recalling them with an unexpected vividness before even after they have become so faint as almost to die out? Let him be as debased and benighted a savage as he may, shut out from all communion with races whom Providence has placed in happier circumstances, he has still the same organization, and is liable to the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... almost mechanically that Alec pressed the bulb of his camera at just the very second when that wall was toppling over. He had a faint recollection afterwards of doing so, though only filled with horror ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... it with a heap of those limy incrustations wherewith certain springs in the neighborhood cover the dead clump of rushes. It is light, full of holes and gives a faint suggestion of a coral reef. Moreover, it is covered with a short, green, velvety moss, a downy sward of infinitesimal pond weed. I count on this modest vegetation to keep the water in a reasonably wholesome state, without driving me to frequent renewals ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Stars and Stripes moving to and fro, and we knew the Federals were making preparations for the mighty contest. We could hear but the rumbling sound of heavy guns, and the distant tread of a marching army, as a faint roar of the coming storm, which was soon to break the ominous silence with the sound of conflict, such as was scarcely ever before heard on this earth. It seemed that the archangel of Death stood and looked on with outstretched wings, while all the earth was silent, when all at once ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... had been all mine were but a short period of time when compared to the years that lay before him. From the description I had of her, the Van Wyck girl was not at all the kind of female that I thought Jerry would like. She was an exotic, and was redolent, I am sure, of faint sweet odors which would perplex Jerry, who had known nothing but the smell of the forest balsams. She was effete and oriental, Jerry ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Pierce about this period, and catching from him some faint reflection of the zeal with which he was now stepping into the political arena. My sympathies and opinions, it is true,—so far as I had any in public affairs,—had, from the first, been enlisted on the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... They fasten themselves in the memory by the very flow and cadence of the verse, and they minister to that sense of melody that dwells in every human brain. What the world owes to its great poets can never be fully measured. But some faint idea of it may be gained from the wondrous stimulus given through them to the imaginative power, and from the fact that those sentiments of human sympathy, justice, virtue, and freedom, which inspire the best poetry of all nations, become sooner or later incarnated in their ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... times, and sometimes more than a million of times. Even under such intense magnifications, it can be seen only with great difficulty, since it is colorless in life, and it is hard to color or stain it with dyes. Its spiral form and faint staining have led to its being called the Spirochaeta pallida.[4] It is best seen by the use of a special device, called a dark-field illuminator, which shows the germ, like a floating particle in a sunbeam, as a brilliant white ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands. I pushed back his sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm. Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm. It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips. I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation, if ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... I liked it too; but perhaps if you 'faint with joy' whenever your feet touch a platform, it will be more prudent for you to keep ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shouted, and he thought he heard a response. "Hello!" he repeated, and he was sure of a faint, faint cry, towards which he bounded, shouting, "Benny, Benny!" and presently directly over his head he heard a voice which seemed ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... they; Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs Or pleasures, hung upon him, play'd with him And call'd him Father Philip. Philip gain'd As Enoch lost; for Enoch seem'd to them Uncertain as a vision or a dream, Faint as a figure seen in early dawn Down at the far end of an avenue, Going we know not where: and so ten years, Since Enoch left his hearth and native land, Fled forward, and no news ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... was very black. After we had entered the woods its darkness seemed at first to hang in front of my eyes like a filmy curtain, so that I fairly groped, as one would when blindfolded. In the open a faint starlight helped us, but after we had entered the pines we had fairly to proceed by instinct. I remember feeling a shock of surprise once, when we skirted the river, at seeing plainly the whiteness of the rapids, as though the water were giving off ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... brain, so that the whole effort had to begin over again. The heat was suffocating. At last the faces went further away; she fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea. There she lay, sometimes seeing darkness, sometimes light, while every now and then some one turned her over ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... married, my charmer?' returned the Jackal eagerly. 'I would go and fetch the barber to begin the betrothals at once, but I am so faint with hunger just at present that I should never reach the village. Now, if the most adorable of her sex would only take pity on her slave, and carry me over the stream, I might refresh myself with those plums, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... all the old English idioms displaced, every rough corner smoothed and every crooked place made straight—would not that be something far worthier our respect, better entitled to our allegiance, than this book full of far-away echoes, and faint bell-notes ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... morning of May 23 the prisoners had been permitted to breathe fresh air in a narrow paved courtyard; but the archbishop was too weak and ill for exercise; he lay half fainting on his bed. In addition to his other sufferings he was faint from hunger, for the advance of the Versailles troops had cut off the Commune's supplies, and the hostages were of course the last persons they wished to care for. Pere Olivariet (shot three days later in the same party as Paul Seigneret, in the Rue Haxo) had had some cake and chocolate sent ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... the open at the crew house. Jose and Julio were locked in a death grapple. No other living man, except Knowlton, still stood upright. Stooping, he peered into the red-dyed face of McKay. Then he laid a hand on the captain's chest. Faint but regular, he felt ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... teetotal craze. I say nothing against the lady's renouncing, an she choose, the light dinner claret, the cider, the port (pale with long maturing in the wood) which her table afforded of yore: nor do I believe that the Vicar, excellent man, repines deeply—though I once caught the faint sound of a sigh as we stood together and conned his cider-apple trees, un-garnered, shedding their fruit at random in the long grasses. For his glebe contains a lordly orchard, and it used to be a treat to watch him, his ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that half-hour, we topped a rise that gave a view of the country ahead an' showed it to be broken an' bad travelin'. I shouldn't have liked the look of it at any time, but with a storm brewin' an' the Indian wantin' to go back, it sure did look ugly. But the faint roarin' of the distant storm sounded no louder, the sky was no heavier, the air no colder, the wind no higher,—an' I built my hopes upon a delay in its comin', an' plunged on. We were makin' good time; the dogs were keepin' up a fast lick, an' the Indian ahead, workin' to break the trail, ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to say—all the conditions being considered—that as to a vast majority of them, crime is no proof of special depravity. It is the genuine humanity that is there—not base metal. It came from the common mint—somewhere you will find upon it a faint scar of the Divine Image—but the coin was pitched into this bonfire of appetite and blasphemy, and it has come out a cinder. Thus, proud and happy Mother, might your boy have been a defaced and distorted being, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... turn aside the full-fraught eye, Lest those faint orbs perceive the tear! To bear the weight of every sigh, Lest it should reach that ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... fit coming on, they waited. Nor did they care very much. When the Mad Fakir arrived, they would fight and kill the infidels. In the meantime there was no necessity to deprive them of their ponies. And so with motives, partly callous, partly sportsmanlike, and not without some faint suspicion of chivalry, they warned the native grooms, and these taking the hint reached ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... glimpses now and then into the riven gorge of a noble river. But I didn't even realise to myself that these were Canadian hills—those were the heights of Abraham—that was the silver St. Lawrence. It all passed by like a living dream. I sat still in my chair, as one stunned and faint; I gazed out, more dead than alive, on the unfamiliar scene that unrolled itself in exquisite panorama before me. Quebec and the Laurentian hills were to me half unreal: the inner senses alone were ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... judge a star's distance by its brilliancy. This is not the case, however. Some of the more brilliant stars are far more distant than some of the fainter ones. There are stars near and remote and an apparently faint star may in reality be larger and more brilliant than a star of the first magnitude. Vega, for instance, is infinitely farther away from us than the sun, yet its brightness is more than 50 times that of the sun. Polaris, still farther away, has 100 times the light ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... eyes. A faint gleam of returning colour gave her at once a more natural appearance. So far as the eye could reach, the white level road, with its fringe of elm-trees, was empty. Away off in the fields the blue-smocked peasants bent still at their toil. They had heard nothing, seen nothing. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood by to count them for him. When he had licked me for some time he sat down to take breath; then after resting, he beat me again and again, until he was quite wearied, and so hot (for the weather was very sultry), that he sank back in his chair, almost like to faint. While my mistress went to bring him drink, there was a dreadful earthquake. Part of the roof fell down, and every thing in the house went—clatter, clatter, clatter. Oh I thought the end of all things near at hand; and I was so sore with the flogging, that ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... gallery gods would be contemptuously ignored by the ICONOCLAST were not the Advertiser's betters indulging in the same unmitigated bosh. Our Alabama contemporary is but an anile echo of the New York Tribune, a faint adumbration of the Chicago Inter-Ocean. The bigwigs cut out the work for the journalistic wiggletails. They pitch the tune and all the intellectual eunuchs come in on the chorus. The editorials of all ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lookout, in the long echoing call of the old-time whaler, and stretching out his hand, he pointed to a spot in the ocean about three points off the starboard bow. Colin's glance followed the direction, and almost immediately he saw the faint cloud of vapor which showed that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to recover his senses; he felt himself about to faint, when the Bishop approached and said to him, in a ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... answer for which she had hoped and her eyes dropped at the curt monosyllable. She put the cup back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap with a faint little sigh of disappointment, her head drooping pensively. Craven knew instinctively that he had hurt her and hated himself. It was like striking a child. But presently she looked up again and gazed at him soberly, wrinkling ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... MORE looks straight before him with a faint smile. On one shoulder and on his bare head two sparrows have perched, and from the gardens, behind, comes the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... went, climbing up—up—up; our strong mules straining against the precipitous path. It was daybreak. There was a faint glimmer of light under our tapojos. At length we could perceive a brighter beam. We felt a sudden glow of heat over our bodies; the air seemed lighter; our mules walked on a horizontal path. We were on the ridge, and warmed by the beams ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... great bulk of them. It was to be expected that in work such as ours, demanding, as it does, not only arduous toil and constant self-denial and often real hardships of one kind or another, some should prove unworthy, some should grow weary, and others should faint by the way, whilst others again, though very excellent souls, should prove unsuitable. It could not be otherwise, for we are engaged in real warfare, and whoever heard of war without wounds and losses? But even of those who do ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good, Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. They built them forts from bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, They flashed ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... this with so much warmth, and yet with so much assurance of our fate, that I began to think a little of the risk I was going to run. I had no more mind to be murdered than he; and yet I could not for my life be so faint-hearted in the thing as he. Upon which I asked him if he had any knowledge of the place, or had ever been there. He said, No. Then I asked him if he had heard or read anything about the people ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... silent. The faint, passing interest she had experienced died out of her face, and the rather sulky, unsatisfied ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... such as riper scholars and other advocates wait long for, by confiding important matters to my untried hands; how they encircled my first tremulous efforts by an atmosphere of affectionate interest, roused my faint heart to exertion, absorbed the fever that hung upon its beatings, and strengthened my first perceptions of capacity to make my thoughts and impressions intelligible, on the instant, to the minds of courts and juries. The impulse thus given to my professional success at Reading, and in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... the victory.' My friend expected me to faint or moan, or make some sign of distress. No, I felt a great joy within, and I believe he will do better. I inclose to you some verses he sent me at the time he wrote me the terrible letter of want and despair. They had their effect, as I told you. Monday I leave for the South; I shall ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell |
