"Vaguely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up these private books; but that was because Clark had been in a sort of muddle last winter,—his wife was sick, or one of his dozen children had met with an accident,—or something,—Livingstone vaguely remembered. ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... of the control-cabin opened, and Juan Murillo, the seismologist, entered, followed by an assistant, who was not human. He was a biped, vaguely humanoid, but he had four arms and a face like a lizard's, and, except for some equipment on belt, he ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... Pine-cone,' was originally a sort of stopper which closed the round aperture in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible, though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about fourteen ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... him both needless and offensive. His spleen rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible language, wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco. 'A queer lot!' he thought. The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure, without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon. The cafe was the bier-halle of the 'Fifties, with a door at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the page to know that his lady was above all need of him; yet men are wont to love so. But why should they always choose the page's part? He had not, in his dreams of love. . . . And all at once, as he vaguely ponders the song, the deep mysterious import of its sounding in ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... that he was in the Navy. But Tom told me that Lieutenant Lawton was working on a wonderful invention. I think it is something about a torpedo-boat destroyer that will go twice as fast as any other torpedo boat," Phil went on vaguely. "Lieutenant Lawton has a work-shop near Fortress Monroe. It is kept absolutely private through fear that some one will steal the model for the boat before Lieutenant ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... the familiar objects of the barnyard assumed grotesque and distorted shapes. The manure heap near the doorway presented an effect of unreality, the pig-pen seemed to have suffered witchery since the evening before, and the haystack, looming vaguely in the drab distance, appeared to be woven of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... there was a little stir as the old lady departed. Josephine watched John as he bowed and opened the door of the room to let the visitor out. She wondered vaguely whether she would like him, whether he might not really be a remarkable man—a fact she doubted in proportion as her aunt assured her of its truth; she liked his looks and tried to determine whether he was handsome ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... chronicler. So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had to run; no other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of all, then to England, and he "got Northumberland as earldom," I vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his queen, with her children, went back to the Orkneys in search of refuge or help; to little purpose there or elsewhere. From Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her poor eldest boy as foster-child; but ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... doorway and from the barrels and kegs in profusion outside. From the doorway issued four men, wiping their mouths and shouting hilariously. Four horses stood tied to a fence near by. They were so instantly passed, and so vaguely seen, that he could not be sure in the least, but those four men reminded him strongly of the four who had ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... we see, Loom up so mistily— So vaguely fair, We do not care to break Fresh bubbles in our wake To bend our course for there. Where ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal—a dog, a pig—he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this object—something in the awkwardness of its approach—told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of money from another source. It was plain he was not fated ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Sylvia a new and miraculous thing, a self-made woman. I must have been the first "common" person she had ever known intimately. She had seen us afar off, and wondered vaguely about us, consoling herself with the reflection that we probably did not know enough to be unhappy over our sad lot in life. But here I was, actually a soul like herself; and it happened that I knew more than she did, and of things she desperately needed to know. So all the luxury, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and romantic, although, like many other critical expressions, sometimes abused by those who have understood them too vaguely or too absolutely, yet define two real tendencies in the history of art and literature. Used in an exaggerated sense, to express a greater opposition between those tendencies than really exists, they have at times tended to divide people of taste into opposite camps. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... so frightened, so loath to let me go? I wondered vaguely and flicked up the horse so that it plunged sharply forward. The vast blue-black sky was like an inverted gold-pan and the stars were flake colours adhering to it. The cold snapped at me till my cheeks tingled, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... he wrote his Rasselas[1020], Prince of Abyssinia; concerning the publication of which Sir John Hawkins guesses vaguely and idly[1021], instead of having taken the trouble to inform himself with authentick precision. Not to trouble my readers with a repetition of the Knight's reveries, I have to mention, that the late Mr. Strahan the printer told me, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... fell with a deeper breath. The young engineer was utterly in the dark. "Great what?" he muttered, vaguely. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... seems a haven of refuge. Gould, who was wounded in the leg during a battle on the Somme, crawled into a shell-hole. It was a blessed relief to be lying there, even though the bullets were whistling overhead. At first he felt no pain, and he wished, vaguely, that he had brought a magazine along to read! All through the burning summer day he stayed there, waiting for the night. As soon as it was dark he wriggled back to our trenches, tumbled over the parapet of the front-line trench, and narrowly escaped ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... But finding, soon, that no such means of employment were likely to present themselves, and dreading the consequences of delay, he drew up a short advertisement, stating what he wanted, and inserted it in the leading newspapers. Pending the receipt of the twenty or thirty answers which he vaguely expected, he reduced his wardrobe to the narrowest limits consistent with decent respectability, and carried the overplus at different times to the pawnbroker's shop, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... behavior indicated, I must do my best at telling. So I told him that he never looked better, and asked him how I looked. He would look at me presently, he said, and decide. Mrs. Bliss skimmed by us with nods and smiles; as she vanished our eyes followed her, and we talked vaguely on various matters, sounding ourselves and each other. When a furious redowa set in which cut our conversation into rhythm he pushed up the window ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... Demeter and the meadow flowers she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous ravines and chasms breathing vapour from the pit of Hades. What were the Cyclops—that race of one-eyed giants—but the many minor cones of Etna? Observed from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken of by the natives, who had reason to dread their rage, these hillocks became lawless and devouring giants, each with one round burning eye. Afterwards the tales of Titans who had warred with Zeus were realised in this spot. Typhoeus or Enceladus ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day, but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated I say; she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound. Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and ear. Everything ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... is the means by which the soul learns in a direct manner the will and the teaching and the mind of Christ, and it is by this means she gains such wisdom as it is God's will she shall have. The soul seeks this telepathy during the second stage, vaguely, not knowing or understanding the mode of it, receiving it ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... for sensibility, James felt at once that something was wrong. He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed, ignorant of the nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sat with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Peres, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her strange ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the sudden affirmation, "It is a boy," did not seem to him pertinent to the thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?" vaguely, and, as it were, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now vaguely stated as 'the close of the cretaceous period'. The 'steps', or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great distances, are explained as being 'due to the outcrop of the harder basaltic strata, or of those beds which ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... road, that keeps the travellers from toppling over the face of the cliff. They are training-walls, as our hydro-graphical engineers talk about, which, built in the bed of a river, wholesomely confine its waters and make a good scour which gives life, instead of letting them vaguely wander and stagnate across great fields of mud. Freedom consists in keeping willingly within the limits which God has traced, and anything else is not freedom but licence and rebellion, and at bottom servitude of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... center of the residential section of the town is a big, unsightly, hummocky vacant place, vaguely known as the park—or the place where they are going to have a park, when the city gets around to it. At present it is a convenient spot wherein to dump tin cans, empty bottles, broken crockery, old shoes, and other residue. When the wind blows, in the spring and fall, a ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... sending flowers and jellies to the hospital, distributing old clothes wisely, and packing generous Christmas baskets meet all obligations. Social service—of which one may, and generally does, hear a great deal in the women's clubs—is vaguely supposed to be something which has to do with great cities and factory towns, not with the small community. Yet one reason that social problems are so acute in great groups of men and women is that they are so poorly met in small and scattered groups. There is the same need of industrial ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Very vaguely Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain—to take away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... wise intention of binding him to life more securely, he felt that all was not yet lost for him. In his little room while the night was still young, he opened an old volume at the play of Hamlet and read the story through. Surely he had never read this play before? He recalled vaguely that it had been studied in college, that some great actor had played it for him, that he had believed it a wonderful thing; memories now less real than dreams. For in reading it this night he entered into the very soul of Hamlet, lived his tortures over again, wept and raved in dumb show ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... of mind, with his new responsibility and the carrying out of a plan which he had vaguely conceived might remove the terrible idea that had taken possession of him, Madison Wayne was even relieved when his brother also announced his intention of going to ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... assist men in their attempts: preparation, vanity and sentiment. The first includes all the force of discipline and training. The soldier has for years contemplated the possibility of being under fire. He has wondered vaguely what kind of an experience it would be. He has seen many who have gone through it and returned safely. His curiosity is excited. Presently comes the occasion. By road and railway he approaches daily ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... borrowed from Monboddo, who got it from Mr. Hans Stanley, who, 'about twenty-six years ago,' heard it from the subject of the story, Madame de Laval. 'I have the memorandum somewhere in my papers,' says Mr. Stanley, vaguely. Then we have two American anecdotes by Dr. Flint and Mr. Rush; and such is Sir William Hamilton's equipment of odd facts for discussing the unconscious or subconscious. The least credible and worst attested of these ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... people of Verona whisper of Dante, "Yonder is the man who has been in Hell?" Simply because of this power. Dante saw the place of torment in his imagination, not as any of us might see it, vaguely terrible, but clear in every dread and horrid detail. And, having so seen it, he lends to that seeing the gift of expression, and with a few simple verbs and nouns and plain forceful similes he makes his readers see what he had seen. So did it come about ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... ascertain the causes of her secret sorrow, and sent the details to his government. He wrote to von Stadion: "In many of my previous reports I have had the honor of speaking to Your Excellency about the long current rumors regarding the approaching divorce of the Emperor. After circulating vaguely in the last two months, they have become the subject of general and public discussion. It is true of these rumors, as of all not stamped out at their birth, that they rest on some foundation of truth, or they would be promptly silenced, if they were not directly tolerated." Then the clear-sighted ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... sure to know the way. I had taken especial pains to remember it; for even on the day of my snake-adventure, some half-defined thoughts—something more like a presentiment than a plan—had passed through my mind, vaguely pointing to a contingency like the present. Later events, and particularly my design of escaping to the city at once, had driven these thoughts out of my mind. For all that, I still remembered the way by which the Bambarra had guided me, and could follow it with ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... being married. So that although they sang the captain's praises to their friends, speaking highly of his personal attractions, crediting him with a brave and generous heart, testifying to his riches, as if they managed his exchequer, and vaguely referring to certain influential patronage which would put him, sooner or later, in the way of the distinctions of a general, they certainly never forgave ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... said the colonel thoughtfully. "You're a pretty clever girl, Lollie, and I'm going to make it worth your while to get close to that fellow. He's the one man in Scotland Yard that we want to put out of business. Not that we've anything to be afraid of," he added vaguely, "but ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... often be impossible to distinguish between the different degrees of consanguinity, but wherever possible the degree will be specified. It is probable that where a number of marriages are vaguely given as consanguineous, few are more distant than second cousins, for in the United States especially, distant relationships are rarely traced except by genealogists. In designating degrees of relationship the common terminology will be used, as in the following ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... perhaps, really, but very patient. After the first fortnight he slipped away from her again—and now more than ever before. He went off for long walks with Hamlet, refusing to take her with them; he answered her questions so vaguely that she could see that he paid her no attention at all; he turned upon her and rent her if she complained. And it was all, she was sure, that horrible dog. Jeremy was always with Hamlet now. The free life that the farm gave them, no lessons, no set hours, no care for appearances, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... board he had already engaged John Milton Harcourt as assistant editor of the "Clarion" at a salary that seemed princely to this son of a millionaire! The young wife meantime had taken active part in the discussion; whether it was vaguely understood that the possession of poetical and imaginative faculties precluded any capacity for business, or whether it was owing to the apparent superior maturity of Mrs. Harcourt and the stranger, it was certain ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... proof of this couple's happiness. It is that I have always taken it for granted. Simple, is it not? And absolute. Often in their presence I catch myself imagining their mutual lives and seeing vaguely the graces that each brings to each. "How she must delight him!" I say. "How his eyes speak to her!" "They can never come to the end of each other," and so on. The ordinary married couple so often brings a sense of distressed surprise: "How can these two foot it together?" "How did it happen?" ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the dreamy Messenger of Destiny, in this pompous, bustling, self- important, little great man of the village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his mother's thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm-tree, his eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand, pointing downward at the half-obliterated ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his day and the guide of his feet, the divine wisdom whose glory pales all meaner stars. The conception of a poem in which Dante's creed in politics and morals should be picturesquely and attractively embodied, and of the high place which Beatrice should take in it, had begun vaguely to shape itself in his thought. As he brooded over it, of a sudden it defined itself clearly. "Soon after this sonnet there appeared to me a marvellous vision[180] wherein I saw things which made me propose not to say more of that blessed one until I could treat of her more ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... further on we saw a horse that had been hurriedly cut out from a gun or waggon team. It needed but one glance to tell us that shrapnel had done its deadly work there, and we wondered vaguely what had become of its rider, for the saddlery and harness were ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... which I believe Khudadad belongs), only it is usually the king's wives who eat the seeds or fruit.[FN399] A few parallels to the opening of our tale from Indian sources may prove somewhat interesting, both to students of popular fictions and to those individuals who are vaguely styled "general readers." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... found in authorised excavations; and sometimes it is the stealing of fragments smashed from the walls of the ancient monuments. All these forms of robbery, except the last, may call for the sympathy of every reader of these lines who happens not to have cultivated that vaguely defined "archaeological sense" which is, practically, the product of this present generation alone; and in the instances which are here to be given the point of view of the "Theban thief" will ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... were charming drives and inconvenient distances, and where a horse would be very desirable, if not quite necessary. But as a horse seemed at first an extravagant if not sinful desire, he began by talking vaguely round, and rather hinting than declaring that he thought somewhat of buying. The professor to whom he first intimated his purpose flung himself from his horse's back to the grassy border of the sidewalk where my friend stood, and said he would give him a few points. "In the first place don't buy ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... Orinoco and the Amazon are identical, and derived from the same plants. Orfila, therefore, in his excellent work On Poisons, has very judiciously separated the wourali of Dutch Guiana, the curare of the Orinoco, the ticuna of the Amazon, and all those substances which have been too vaguely united under the name of American poisons. Possibly at some future day, one and the same alkaline principle, similar to morphine and strychnia, will be found in poisonous plants belonging ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in bed when the recollection of Francesca which, since the evening before, had been floating vaguely through my mind, haunted me with strange persistency. I thought of her nearly the whole night, and by degrees the wish to see her again seized me, a confused desire at first, which gradually grew stronger and more intense. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to crawl back to safety among the trees I can remember only vaguely. I finally got down to the bottom of the canon, but felt weak and sick and it was half an hour before I could climb up to the place where my wife was waiting. She was already badly frightened for she had not seen me since I left her an ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... of Mexico, limited by the traditional and vaguely defined boundaries of an ancient Indian empire or confederation of that name previous to the Spanish conquest. The word is said to signify "country by the waters'' in the old Aztec language; hence the theory that Anahuac was located on the sea coast. One of the theories relating ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... date of a pious foundation—the name of some monkish imagier or copyist— the price of a loaf, of an ox, or of a field—some judicial or administrative enactment—all that, and yet something more, a Something vaguely mysterious and sublime which excited my enthusiasm. But for sixty years I have been searching in vain for that Something. Better men than I—the masters, the truly great, the Fauriels, the Thierrys, who found so many things—died at their task without having ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... clicks, and guttural utterances, I gave them to understand that it was against my faith to have anything whatever to do with the horrid orgy they contemplated. The Great Spirit they dreaded so much yet so vaguely, I went on to say, had revealed to me that it was wrong to kill any one in cold blood, and still more loathsome and horrible to eat the flesh of a murdered fellow-creature. I was very much in earnest, and I waited with nervous trepidation to see the effect of my peroration. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off the revelation with instinctive recoil—dismissed it, smiled at it to have done with it. For such ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... my father had represented a county constituency in the House of Commons, and therefore I possessed that very useful advantage which is vaguely termed family influence, that I had been appointed assistant physician at Guy's. My own practice was very small, therefore I devilled, as the lawyers would term it, for my chief, Sir Bernard Eyton, knight, the consulting ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... been upon him and driven him thus far, like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up and pall. "Why should I go on? It's no use," he thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects. There were a few of the town boys playing cricket, their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground—a sin about equal to sacrilege ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... blowing hair they flew up and down between sky and water, bestriding the ends of yard-arms, crouching on foot-ropes, embracing lifts to have their hands free, or standing up against chain ties. Their thoughts floated vaguely between the desire of rest and the desire of life, while their stiffened fingers cast off head-earrings, fumbled for knives, or held with tenacious grip against the violent shocks of beating canvas. They glared savagely at one another, made frantic signs with one hand while they held their ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... back in her carriage; the rain lashed the carriage-blinds. The passers-by seemed merely shadows wavering in the mire of the street; and, pressed close to each other, they observed all these things vaguely with a calm disdain. Under various pretexts, he would linger in her room for ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... down again by her, she saw that a decisive moment had come, and blanched almost to the colour of her dress. Oh! what to do! Her heart cried out vaguely to some power beyond itself for guidance, then gave itself up again to the wayward thirst ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this smooth scene—mark well!—were the shocks whereof the times gave token Vaguely to us ere last year's snows shut over Lithuanian pine and pool, Which we told at the fall of the faded leaf, when the pride of Prussia was bruised and broken, And the Man of Adventure sat in the seat of the Man ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen, which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... whether wilful or involuntary, with almost any form of bloodshed, with persons of inferior caste, with dead animal refuse, e.g. leather or excrement, with leprosy, madness and any form of disease. Among all races in a certain grade of development such associations are vaguely felt to be dangerous and to impair vitality. In a later stage the taint is regarded as alive, as a demon or evil spirit alighting on and passing into the things and persons exposed to contamination. In general, water, cows' urine and blood of swine are the materials ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that a naturalist might" arrive at the theory of descent, straightforward readers took him to mean that though this was conceivable, it had never, to Mr. Darwin's knowledge, been done. If we had a notion that we had already vaguely heard of the theory that men and the lower animals were descended from common ancestors, we must have been wrong; it was not this that we had heard of, but something else, which, though doubtless a little like it, was ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the book and I felt vaguely stirring in my memory some forgotten words of the past. The spirit of doubt hanging over my head had injected into my veins a drop of poison; the vapor mounted to my head and I staggered like a drunken man. What secret was Brigitte concealing from me? I knew very well that I had only ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... full-grown, two yard-long moondog. He looked like an oversized comma of something vague and luminous. At the head end he was a fat yellow balloon, and the rest of him tapered vaguely to a blunt apex of infinity. Whatever odd forces composed his weird physiology, he was ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... him so vaguely terrible to us was the common rumour in the village that Thatcher Ellery had served once under his Majesty's colours, but had deserted and was still liable to be taken and shot for it. Now this was true and everyone knew it, though why and how he had deserted ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... yet found Anna, but it was their advance, their soft stir at her back as they came upon their fallen leader, that had hushed her cries. At the rift in the wood she had leaned on a huge oak and as body and mind again failed had sunk to its base in leafy hiding. Vaguely thence she presently perceived, lit from behind her by sunset beams, the farther edge of the green opening, and on that border, while she feebly looked, came suddenly ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... no more questions it seemed to him best to say nothing, and he was silent a long time, of the duration of which he was only vaguely conscious. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... Lady Bassett required her to see Nick she would probably have refused to do so, and listlessly dismissed the matter from her mind. But there was that in Lady Bassett's manner which roused her antagonism almost instinctively. But vaguely understanding, she yet resented the soft-spoken words. Moreover, a certain perversity, born of her weakness, urged her. What right had Lady Bassett to deny her to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... gained sufficient headway to enable her to run over, and not be run down by the seas. As she careened and plunged, racing down a frothing dark billow, the convict, relieved of his burden, clung to the lower gunwale. By a desperate effort he drew himself up, when a face vaguely remembered—as part of a bad dream—looked into his, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... upon the long line of little homes lying along the banks of the river like peaceful watchmen in a pleasant land, with corn and wine and oil at hand. The tall cross on the spire of the Parish Church was itself a message of hope. He did not define it so; but the impression vaguely, perhaps superstitiously, possessed him. It was this vague influence, perhaps (for he was not a Catholic), which made him involuntarily lift his hat, as did Nicolas, when they passed a calvary; which induced him likewise to make the sacred gesture when they met ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I had but vaguely understood before, that there is a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into the newspapers. All children love beauty and beautiful things. It is the spark of the divine nature that is in them and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... entered I was startled: I thought she was dead. There seemed no life present until she opened her eyes, and even then they rested upon us vaguely, as though she did not know who we were. But as I approached a light came into them: she recognized me, and this sudden revivification, this return of the soul to the almost deserted bod, was the most wonderful ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried. He wondered what for—whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they would do with him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death—nothing would have surprised Jurgis, who knew ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... see me, but even to her I could not hint my troubles, as the good understanding then existing between Austria and England and the Turks, was a very sore subject to a Montenegrin. So I replied but vaguely to her inquiries after my lord and master, and begged to know why hers had not ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... recognised the whispering shadow that fled by, in Villette, the forger. How could he recognise a fugitive shade vaguely beheld in a dark wood, on a sultry and starless night? If he mistook the girl d'Oliva for the Queen, what is his recognition ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... says, a man is never so happy as when he is talking about himself. From Otis Yeere's lips Mrs Hauksbee, before long, learned everything that she wished to know about the subject of her experiment; learned what manner of life he had led in what she vaguely called "those awful cholera districts"; learned too, but this knowledge came later, what manner of life he had purposed to lead and what dreams he had dreamed in the year of grace '77, before the reality had knocked the heart out of him. Very pleasant are the shady ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... carriage would have been an object of surmise and curiosity at every station. Therefore Priscilla was put into the carriage labelled Frauen, and found herself for the first time in her life alone with what she had hitherto only heard alluded to vaguely ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the world, were passing! It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down in their vaults the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely.... ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... understand if we are to follow Jesus in the way of life, seem enveloped in a haze. The ordinary man sees clearly only Christ's law of love and the golden rule. This book seeks to bring to a point what we all vaguely know. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... in his sleep vaguely aware of an unfamiliar sound, a faint tapping, insistent, disturbing. He wakened sharply and sat bolt upright, conscious of the fact that he was ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... to finish this thing quick!" he thought vaguely, for the roaring in his ears had increased, and it was hard to fill his lungs with the vitiated air. "If I can only settle him, I can cut off these weights and take a chance on shooting up to the top. It'll be a mighty slim chance, but ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... me we are being swayed by some kind of destiny which impels us here or there, with neither rhyme nor reason, and whether we will or no. Such homeless, aimless, purposeless, wandering individuals are rarely seen. From one hour to another, we do not know what is to become of us. We talk vaguely of going home "when the Yankees go away." When will that be? One day there is not a boat in sight; the next, two or three stand off from shore to see what is being done, ready, at the first sight of warlike preparation, to burn the town down. It is particularly unsafe since the news from ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... and intimidations force Tubbs to do his bidding if the occasion arose. Tubbs's mental calibre was 22-short; but Smith needed help, and Tubbs seemed the most pliable material at hand. That Tubbs had pledged himself to something the nature of which he knew only vaguely, was in itself sufficient to receive Smith's contempt. He had learned from observation that little dependence can be placed upon those who accept responsibilities too readily and lightly, but he was confident that he could utilize Tubbs as long as he should need him, and after that—Smith ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... higher consecration awaited her. She had to drink of the cup of which our Lord drank, and to be baptised with the baptism with which He was baptised. It was involved in every step of the progress that it should be so. And she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. What else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl of eighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touch her, was a benediction? ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... her head vaguely. She did not seem to take his remark very seriously, but then, she had learned never to take any of his remarks seriously. She had been puzzled at first by his manner of treating everything with a half-joking ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... went by and then the weeks and at last the Widow, with a sigh of vexation, put up her gun and retired within. Now that the episode was over she felt vaguely regretful that he had failed, after all, in his purpose. If he had procured his option, under cover of her blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least have had the satisfaction ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... authorities as a feather in the school's cap, and was commemorated during the campaign by the display in the exhibition hall of a large picture of the candidate festooned with an American flag. It was vaguely remembered that he had been under Miss Willis, among other teachers, but the whole truth was unknown to anybody, and Marion's New England conscience shrank from obtaining glory and sympathy through brag. She hugged her secret, and bore it with her intact when she took her departure for ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... walk from the Canal Street station to Marcus Flachs's place of business, he wondered vaguely if there were such a thing as double plate, and when at last he opened the door of the pawnbroker's sales store in question he approached the counter with his ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... an instant, exercised over his susceptible temperament that magnetic influence to which he was so strangely subject. In the heart of the wilderness and in the person of his victim, the young Emir suddenly recognised the heroic character which he had himself so vaguely and, as it now seemed to him, so vainly attempted to realise. The appearance and the courage of Tancred, the thoughtful repose of his manner, his high bearing amid the distressful circumstances in which he was involved, and the large views which the few words that had escaped ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Baron. "You are a medical man, and I shall have to trust you. There is something—wrong—here." With a spasmodic gesture he vaguely indicated ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the house was thus left to the sole occupancy of Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth and the invalid—a fact only dimly suspected by the latter, who had become vaguely conscious of Josephine's anxiety, and had noticed the absence of light and movement in her room. For this reason, therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in the porch to await her return, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... all right," said Annie rather vaguely. She gazed up at the weave of leaves and blossoms, then down at the wavering ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... certain development in the English novel of which I have long seemed to be vaguely conscious. At one time I hoped to set myself the task of tracing it, though I have since relinquished all thought of this as too ambitious. The movement—if, indeed, there be such a movement—has always ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... close to the sea," replied Carder. "There is what they call the mountain, though, over yonder." He jerked his head vaguely. "Pretty good-sized hill. Makes a water-shed that favors ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... lay upon his own slightly bowed shoulders; that the thing would fast crumble upon his severance from it. But I questioned whether this were adequate. I felt him to be a man of sorrow if not of tragedy. Vaguely he reached me as one who ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the bottom of the slope. Kirsty followed close behind, but he was already on his feet when she joined him. He grasped her arm eagerly, his face turned from her, and his eyes gazing fixedly into the depth of the gallery, lighted so vaguely by the candle on ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... vaguely. "But that is not the question to be considered now. I must beg you to understand, Perpetua, that your staying here ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... stranger, vaguely. "I seem to have——" He broke off, and his lips smiled. It was a friendly, understanding smile, and the girl, fighting hard the shy impulse to drop his shoulders, and flee into the kind masking of the bushes, was ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... addressed to woman—the recognition of her cleverness, and the enhancing of it by adroit and suggestive questions—and yet all his manner was tinged by a certain insincere gallantry, rather than by a manly, honest respect. She vaguely felt this, though she could not distinctly point it out. He puzzled her. What did he mean, and at ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... unknown the criminal attorney plays whenever possible. It is his strongest asset, his stock in trade. The civil lawyer, vaguely believing that there must be a criminal law to cover every obvious wrong, retains him to put the screws on the evil-doer and bring him to terms. The man who has done a dirty business trick—in reality a hundred miles from being a crime— engages the shyster to keep him out of jail. The practical ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... repeated Harrigan vaguely. "I'm weak. You've had me in hell an' sweated me thin, McTee. If I was my old self, I'd jump ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... think the wedding has taken place," St. George replied vaguely. "The servants would know if it had—they know everything—and Aunt Jemima would be the first to have told me. The house being lighted up is no evidence. They have been giving a series of entertainments this winter and there were more to come ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exquisite Pater! He reminds me, in the disturbed midnight of our actual literature, of one of those lucent match-boxes which you place, on going to bed, near the candle, to show you, in the darkness, where you can strike a light: he shines in the uneasy gloom—vaguely, and has a phosphorescence, not a flame. But I quite agree with you that he is not of the little day—but of the longer ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Stout said vaguely, his eyes wandering from face to face, "that they have a special tough technique for hard case trouble makers." For those who knew him, the vague look was a veil over some thought which pleased him. ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Ruggiero as at all improbable that Beatrice might some day wish to be rid of the Conte di San Miniato, and might express such a wish, ever so vaguely, within Ruggiero's hearing. He had the bad taste to judge her by himself, and of course if she really hated her betrothed she would wish him to die. It was a sin, doubtless, to wish anybody dead, and it was a greater sin to put out one's hands and kill the person in question. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... morning and the wounded. We knew by this time that at 3:30 that morning the Highland Brigade had made a frontal attack on the Magersfontein lines and had been repulsed with terrible loss. The accounts which were vaguely given of the disaster were frightful, but accurate details were still lacking. Yes, here we were within four miles of the nearest point of Cronje's lines and we did not know half as much about the fight as people in Pall ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... "—you are Stephen Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly well—" Her straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips compressed, following an elusive train of thought which vaguely, persistently, coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... retract what he had said about me; and, further on, I had a dim sense of an initiation into ideas, familiar enough, but which had only been words to me hitherto—power, purpose, seriousness. They had been ideas which before this had just vaguely troubled my peace, clouds hanging in a bright sky. I had the sense that there were some duties which I ought to perform, efforts to be made, ends to fulfil; but they had seemed to me expressed in rather priggish phrases, words which oppressed me, and ruffled the surface ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the lift was a striking-looking woman of foreign appearance, dressed in a way that made Archie feel that she must be somebody or she couldn't look like that. Her face, too, seemed vaguely familiar. She entered the lift at the second floor where the tea-room is, and she had the contented expression of one who had tea'd to her satisfaction. She got off at the same floor as Archie, and walked swiftly, in a lithe, pantherist way, round the bend ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... stood over the register, and vaguely held his hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the shadow ahead emerged something only vaguely outlined in the dark. Whether wild animal or human being it would be hard to say there in the darkness. Indeed, the slight sound caused by its progress close to the road had more to do with warning Dick and his friends than anything ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... coming to the country was like the landing of the Swiss Family Robinson upon that little world of theirs in the midst of the sea. Town life had become a subtle persecution. We hadn't been wrecked exactly, but there had been times in which we were torn and weary, understanding only vaguely that it was the manner of our days in the midst of the crowd that was dulling the edge of health and taking the bloom from life. I had long been troubled about the little children in school—the winter sicknesses, the amount of vitality required to resist contagions, mental ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the remotest semblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon and employed in vain attempts to realize that instrument, the theory of whose construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of glass containing these oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as "bull's eyes" were ruthlessly destroyed, in the hope of obtaining lenses of marvellous power. I even went so far as to extract the crystalline humor from the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... without further speech, she nervously fingering the card, her eyes veiled by lowered lashes. I glanced cautiously across at her, conscious of my cheap clothing, and vaguely wondering why my usual off-hand address had so suddenly failed. I felt embarrassed, unable to break the silence by any sensible utterance. My eyes rested upon her hands, white, slender, ringless. They were hands of refinement, and my gaze, fascinated by the swiftly recurring memory of other ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... on my shoulder; it was the child's. In his eyes there was a sort of lofty pity and tenderness, such as that with which we may gaze on some suffering bird or butterfly. I shrank from that touch—I shrank from that eye. I was vaguely impressed with a belief that, had he so pleased, that child could have killed me as easily as a man can kill a bird or a butterfly. The child seemed pained at my repugnance, quitted me, and placed himself beside one of the windows. The others continued ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that the shadows were being withdrawn from his eyes, just as a curtain is pulled back from a window. As consciousness became a more certain quantity he wondered vaguely why he did not feel drenched and uncomfortable, instead of cozy and warm. He was aware of a pinkish-gray blur hanging above his head; this slowly resolved itself into a human face. While he could not distinguish the features in the darkened light ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... his conversation during the meal was so fluent, so aristocratic in flavor, and yet so friendly, that Serena became more and more taken with him. With the captain he was not quite as much at his ease. But he did his best to be agreeable, and Daniel, still vaguely suspicious, found nothing tangible upon which to base distrust. There was so much to be done in the afternoon that, acting upon a hint so delicate that it could scarcely be called a hint, Mrs. Dott urged him to send to the hotel for his bag and stay at their home overnight. He ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... The sky was vaguely red, the air stifling, heavy with a dense mist of dust and steam. Petra went up Carretas Street, continued through Atocha, entered the Estacion del Mediodia and sat down on a bench to wait ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... rich, musical voice, and descanted on their beauties with discriminating taste and fervent poetic feeling, a new light fell on the page. Through his eyes I learned to behold in nature a richness, a grace, a harmony, a meaning, only vaguely felt before. It was as if I had just received the key to a mysterious cipher, unlocking deep and beautiful truths in earth and sea and sky, by which they were invested with a life and splendor till now unseen. But it was his noble sentiments, his generous human sympathies, his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... away, leaving behind them absolutely nothing but mounds, such as those now lying all about thee, and fragments of recollections, and half-forgotten names, like the dreams of the night which morning obliterates and drives away, vaguely hanging in its memory like wreaths of mist curling and twisting on the black still surface of a pool in some dark valley screened from the early sun by one ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... 'their porcelain eyes, their crimson cheeks,' and orders a heavy English dinner, which he washes down with ale and porter, seasoning his coffee, as he imagines we do in England, with gin. As time passes, and the hour of the train draws near, he begins to reflect vaguely on his project; he recalls the disillusion of the visit he had once paid to Holland. Does not a similar disillusion await him in London? 'Why travel, when one can travel so splendidly in a chair? Was he not at London already, since its odours, its atmosphere, its inhabitants, its food, its utensils, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... mountains!" said Rita, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of the horizon. "It is a search; we must look for him, without doubt; but he is—here—somewhere. Come, Manuela, do not look so despairing. I tell you, we shall meet friends, it may be at any turn. The mountains are full of the soldiers of Cuba; ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... about the great pastoral farms of Southern Italy. If a man invested his capital in a comparatively small estate of olives and vineyards, such as that which Cato treats of, and which seems to have been his own; or even in a latifundium of the kind which Varro more vaguely pictures, containing also parks and game and a moderate amount of pasture, he would need slaves mainly of a certain degree of skill. But on the largest areas of pasture, chiefly in the hill districts of Southern Italy, where there was little cultivation except what was necessary for ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... not a peripatetic in any sense, not a person of wide circumference, but a nucleus of pure imagination that never stirred or shifted, but scintillated in all directions. The function of Gabriel Rossetti, or at least his most obvious function, was to sit in isolation, and to have vaguely glimmering spirits presented to him for complete illumination. He was the most prompt in suggestion, the most regal in giving, the most sympathetic in response, of the men I have known or seen; and this without a single touch of the prophetic manner, the air ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... her life a patchwork of conditions made and affected by these things which she saw—wealth and force—which had found her unfit? She had evidently been born to yield, not seek. This panoply of power had been paraded before her since childhood. What could she do now but stare vaguely after it as it marched triumphantly by? Lester had been of it. Him it respected. Of her it knew nothing. She looked through the grating, and once more there came the cry of "Indianapolis, Louisville, Columbus, Cincinnati, and points ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... exasperated, with a fiery look and purple face, had stretched his body half out of the lodge, and leaned his contracted hands on the lower half of the door, while the figures of Mrs. Seraphin and Anastasia could be vaguely seen in the background, in the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... gesture of dismissal. "Now, I am an Immortal, and you are an Immortal. The background to life has changed. Formerly, the idea of death lurked constantly in the depths of the unconscious mind, and by its vaguely-felt influences spurred us on to continual exertion. That is all changed. We have, at one stroke, removed this dire spectre. We ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... sightseers ate their dinner. Then, the desert was comparatively empty; and, more important still, instead of having the moon on her head, and her face in shadow, the Sphinx received its full blaze in her farseeing eyes. Of this advice I meant to avail myself, feeling vaguely guilty as I thought of the giver, who was absent from the feast: Anthony Fenton, one of the finest young soldiers in Egypt, who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would "stand for it"! Anthony who, would he but accept the repentant overtures of that tyrannical old prince, his ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... told me this was no deceit. The strange craft swept past, so far out that those on board no doubt believed themselves beyond sight from the shore, heading apparently for a point of land, which I vaguely remembered as jutting out to the northward. Even my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, and strained to the utmost, could detect scarcely more than the faintest shadow gliding silently by, yet sufficient to recognize the outlines of a small keel boat, propelled by a single lug sail, and even imagined ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... at the moment, and drawing my cutlass from its sheath, crept cautiously and noiselessly down the companion-ladder. The moment that I entered the companion-way I was saluted by a whiff of moist, hot air loaded with a powerful, foetid, musky odour, of which I had already become vaguely conscious, accompanied by a deep, murmuring sound that seemed to proceed from the vessel's hold; and although this was my first experience with slavers, I knew in an instant that the brig had her human cargo on board, and that the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... upon the mass—not that they feared the walls which another shock might bring upon their heads, but that they shuddered lest their own added weight should crush some live human creature they could not descry. Three or four who had received little or no hurt, were moving about the edges of the heap, vaguely trying to lift now this, now that, but yielding each attempt in despair, either from its evident uselessness, or for lack of energy. They would give a pull at a beam that lay across some writhing figure, find it immovable, and turn with a groan to some farther cry. How ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... as they passed called out their numbers. From time to time the shipping clerk who was an Irishman tried to joke with one of them, tapping sharply upon his desk with a pencil as though to compel attention. "They are no good," he said to himself, when in response to his sallies they only smiled vaguely. "Although they get but a dollar and a half a day they are overpaid!" Like McGregor he had nothing but contempt for the men whose numbers he put in the book. Their stupidity he took as a compliment to himself. "We are the kind ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... applies it more or less effectively as a guide to his own conduct. To the feeble-minded child, all but lacking in the power of abstraction and generalization, the situation conveys no such lesson. It is but a muddle of concrete events without general significance; or even if its meaning is vaguely apprehended, the powers of inhibition are insufficient to guarantee that right ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... latches, and all those brass applications with broken screws, because it rattled, it clattered, it jingled; and produced also the sound as of thunder rolling in the big, empty hall. It was deafening, distressing, and vaguely alarming as if it could bring the house down. At the same time the futility of it had, it cannot be denied, a comic effect. The very magnitude of the racket he raised was funny. But he couldn't keep up that violent ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Supervisor was calmly leading the way upward, vaguely conscious of the magical air and mystic landscape in which his young folk floated as if on wings, thinking busily of the improvements which were still necessary in the trail, and weighing with care the clouds which still lingered upon the tallest summits, as if debating whether to go or to stay. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... much subject to inundation, like the flat borders of their own rivers in the East. HEBREW (car) a pasture, is found in Isaiah, xxx. 23. Psalm lxv. 14, &c., and although HEBREW (kicar) is simply translated "plain" in the established version, and Gesenius would, still more vaguely, render it "circuit, surrounding country," (from HEBREW, in Arabic, to be round,) yet I suspect the words come from the same root, and have the same meaning. Thus, Genesis xiii. 10. HEBREW might ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep." Or we smoked, conversing lazily ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... may, the spot in question was, at all events, so situated as to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain witching conditions ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville |
