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More "Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general discontinued his fitful overseering. He rose early and spent his long days sitting upon the front porch, smoking an old briar pipe and reading the Richmond papers. Occasionally he would ride at a jogging pace round the fields, giving casual directions to the workers, but as his weight increased he found it difficult to mount into the saddle, and, at last, desisted from the attempt. He preferred to sit in peace in his cane rocking chair, looking down the box walk into the twilight of the cedar avenue, or gazing placidly beyond ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... semi-military organisation and called themselves the National Volunteers. Gorman and his friends did their best to suppress them and kept all mention of their existence out of the English papers as far as possible. It surprised me to hear him speak in a casual way of organising these declared enemies ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and heard the passing discourse like any other casual spectator: when over he would go home to his room, write out in full all that had been said on the occasion, and that entirely from memory. On a certain occasion I hinted to him my incredulity about his ability to report ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... anyone could have nursed a lifelong hatred as old Mason did (personally I cherish the belief that hatred is too evanescent an emotion for a life-tenancy of the human mind; but I may be wrong); whether he would have bribed a casual tramp to marry and torment the reputed daughter who was the object of his loathing, or whether Day and Helen herself would actually so have played into his hands, are all rather questionable problems. Far more real, human and moving is the wild passion of Helen for Martin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... 'of' here is probably casual, not partitive, as the Authorised Version has it; 'travail' is not to be understood in the sense of childbirth, but of toil and suffering; 'soul' is equivalent to life. This fruit of His soul's travail is further defined in the words which follow. The great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... love with her! She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that can war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries, in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... but it is seldom that we see any mention made of the garden in the back-yard. One would naturally get the idea that the only garden worth having is the one that will attract the attention of the stranger, or the casual visitor. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is." As Tennyson said in 1890, "So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book without further consideration." As a rule, the said books are worthless. The number of versifiers makes it hard, indeed, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... their names. But among them was a spirit, apparently a "living one,"[83] which obstinately refused to be transmitted to the third party. It caused her great suffering, and seemed not to be of a casual nature, but a permanent hostile influence. Some imagined this to be the effect of fearful jealousy of some one who was intimately known to Genji and who had most influence over him; but the spirit gave no information to this effect. Hence some even surmised ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Any casual student of sociology can prove that marriage and the family have not always been what they are today. Lewis J. Morgan, in his ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... to be a varying aptitude to experience the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations before puberty. I find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; in other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early years; in yet other cases complete sexual anaesthesia until the age of puberty. That the latter condition is not due to mere absence of peripheral irritation is shown ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and what a help her sympathy had been to him in his studies, and they had spoken of Willie and his troubles, and Archie forgot the sour face that had sent him away from the carriage, and thought only of the boy's crippled fate, so like his own. Like, and yet unlike—to the casual observer there was a vast difference between the forlorn, poverty-stricken, ragged Archie, and the petted, and pampered, and richly-clad Willie; but to the eye of the unwearied watcher who had witnessed the patience and the goodness of the sick lad, and contrasted ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... have troubled the casual observer at first to discover, in the variety of Lunette's official capacity, which was post-office and which was sand-peeps, so agreeably and informally did these two elements ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... [Forcing herself to speak in a casual voice] I happen to have a little money, Bill—I think it would be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... made themselves acquainted with the relative merit of each division, and could tell which arm of the service most contributed to the result of any particular battle. They collected information from all sources,—from accounts in newspapers, from army letters, from casual conversation with some maimed straggler fresh from the scene of war. Each boy, as he made his periodical visit to his family, brought back something to the general fund of anecdote. The fire that burned in their young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... time there were to be found in the company's day book the names of 120 customers, nearly all of them heads of families. Of these, 25 were residents at Portland Point, 20 lived across the harbor in Conway, 45 belonged to Maugerville, 20 to other townships up the river and ten were casual ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... be days before we really get to work," said Venning, when the vastness of the Congo was forced on his attention by a casual ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... nothing of interest to a casual observer about the city except its population, and they are interesting from their strange, cosmopolitan character, and as being the most unscrupulous and keenest people for money one can well imagine. The city seems a seething nest of hard characters, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... friendless outcast as Jo in Bleak House, of the struggle of Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend and her determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... I get the feeling they could switch from casual conversation to mayhem without batting ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... anomalies. 658 Specific characters occurring in other cases as casual anomalies. Papaver bracteatum monopetalum. Desmodium gyrans and monophyllous varieties. Peltate leaves and ascidia. Flowers on leaves. Leaves. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... chapter in the story of evolution—the establishment of different kinds of parasites, casual and constant, temporary and lifelong, external hangers-on and internal unpaying boarders, those that live in the food-canal and depend on the host's food and those that inhabit the blood or the tissues and find their food there. It seems clear that ichneumon grubs and the like ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... mother had not deceived her. The next instant Harry Woodburn entered the room, and, with a gloomy, abstracted air, proceeded to divest himself of his wet coat and muddy boots, without uttering a word, or bestowing any thing more than a casual glance towards the bed, to which he supposed his mother had just retired, as was usual with her, about this hour, and not suspecting that she was more indisposed than when he left her. But as he now turned and approached ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... it was decided. We made fashion to plaster up the envelope so as not to show a casual looker that it had been tampered with, and I footed it to Portree in the patched trews of the messenger, not with the lightest heart in the world. The first redcoat I met directed me to the inn where the Duke had his headquarters, and I was ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Indeed it was too aimless even to have been prompted by a conscious effort of the will. But this book is one of the least results of that momentary sweep of the eye. Another was, that Van Berg did not enjoy the symphony at all, and was soon in a very bad humor. That casual glance had revealed, not far away, a face that with his passion for beauty, at once riveted his attention. His slight start and faint exclamation, caused Ik Stanton to look around also, and then, with a mischievous and observant twinkle in his eyes, the bon vivant ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to me to be perhaps the more modest way. The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where the worshippers jangle a bell to call the attention of the gods to their prayers or offerings, seems out of place where the god is merely the casual man in the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... meet him; banquets were given in his honor, and everything seemed gay and joyous. But Roger was low and depressed. To him the whole thing appeared a mockery. He seemed to see blood everywhere, and the fact that, as he learned from the casual remark of one of the envoys, numbers of victims were offered upon the altars on the evening before his arrival at each town, in order to please the gods and bring about favorable omens, added to his depression; and he thought that ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... probably, forty; yet, in the full and faultless perfection of her form—in her graceful and yielding motions—in her statuesque bust, rounded cheek and night-black hair, she would, to the casual observer, have indicated hardly the half of that age. Her figure was tall and dignified, yet mobile as a willow; her eyes were dark and luminous, and, in their profound depths, slept a world of melancholy meaning. Her hair was simply parted on ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... had escaped, in his revery, from Richard Avenel altogether. Even as the slightest incident in the daytime causes our dreams at night, but is itself clean forgotten, so the name, so the look of the visitor, might have sufficed but to influence a vision, as remote from its casual suggester as what we call real life is from that life much more real, that we imagine, or remember, in the haunted chambers of the brain. For what is real life? How little the things actually doing around us affect the springs of our sorrow or joy; but the life which our dulness calls romance,—the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is to become a Dissenting Minister, and adjure politics and casual literature. Preaching for hire is not right; because it must prove a strong temptation to continue to profess what I may have ceased to believe, "if ever" maturer judgment with wider and deeper reading should lessen or destroy my faith in Christianity. But though not right in itself, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... scarcely worth consideration; it cannot be an object of competition to any reasonable person; but in early education nothing must be thought beneath our attention. A child does not retain much affection, it is true, for every casual visiter by whom he is flattered and caressed. The individuals are here to-day and gone to-morrow; variety prevents the impression from sinking into the mind, it may be said; but the general impression remains, though each particular stroke is ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... anyone made a home of a tar-paper shack. To hear Mrs. Dunn's casual remarks, one would think it no more of a problem than redecorating ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... into the family circle. Perhaps, also, a vague desire to placate the "powers that be" had made him pay unusual attention to his face and nails and hair. He was very well groomed—for Teddy—and he tried to assume a perfectly casual air, as ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... distance from it he got out again, took off a wheel, left it lying on the ground, unhitched the horse, and rode away on the back of the animal. The vehicle, to a casual observer, would suggest the ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through the woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk, adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes and dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a baby, but at the sight of Bert ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... importance and of many natural attractions and fine public buildings. It is, however, a place of decided contrasts, imposing streets of residences being not far distant from as wretched a native quarter as may be seen in any other Indian city. To the casual tourist Calcutta seems a large English city (eight hundred thousand inhabitants), especially so in the life on the Maidan, the centre of attraction and fashion. Eden Park is also greatly frequented, and the race-course is the finest in ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the fate reserved for me? Perhaps Welbeck would adopt me for his own son. Wealth has ever been capriciously distributed. The mere physical relation of birth is all that entitles us to manors and thrones. Identity itself frequently depends upon a casual likeness or an old nurse's imposture. Nations have risen in arms, as in the case of the Stuarts, in the cause of one the genuineness of whose birth has been denied and can never be proved. But if the cause be trivial and fallacious, the effects are momentous and solid. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... burdens with his usual energy and light-heartedness, but J. P. missed a familiar note of joyousness in his tone, and Archie Blair noticed that Ed did not go up the steps of his office in one leap now as he had always done, but walked up like other people. But to the casual observer, Lawyer Ed was the same. He was here, there and everywhere, making sure that this one and that was going to vote the right way. And Roderick, watching him, remembered how anxious he had been over the effect the campaign would have upon his business. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... upon the broad piazza, after the boys, by a casual look, were satisfied that no intruder was about the grounds. Belle kept close to Ed—he was the largest of the young men—but Cora and Bess showed no ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... Five years ago she had been gawky. Now ... Well, he was proud of her. She had called him great-stepuncle, thus conferring on him a sort of part-proprietorship in her; and he was proud of her. The captain of the bowling-club came along, and James Ollerenshaw gave him just such a casual nod as he might have given to a person of no account. The nod seemed to say: "Match this, if you can. It's mine, and there's nothing in the town to beat it. Mrs. Prockter herself hasn't got more style than this." (Of this Mrs. Prockter, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... is a pretty place, and what's more—for dozens of houses and gardens are pretty—it's artistic!" In front of him stretched a miniature avenue of chestnut trees, which was rendered striking, even to the most casual observer, probably, not only on account of the irregular mounds of moss-covered stones that occupied its intervening spaces, but also, by reason of the masses of wild flowers (great clumps of which were springing up in the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... fully as tall and as broad as Ivan himself, and his great arms hung below his knees. He was the personification of rugged strength and brutality. From Nicolas the lads turned their eyes to Ivan. There was scarcely a noticeable difference in the stature of the two men and from casual observation it would have been hard to choose between them in the matter of strength. But the one noticeable difference was ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... be made to speak of the quarrel with Maddox. He merely mentioned to Jewdwine in the most casual manner that he had left The Planet. As for his grounds for that abrupt departure Jewdwine was entirely in the dark. It was Lucia that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... characteristic fully appreciated by the English King. When taken to task for burning the Cathedral at Cashel, he is reported to have said that he would not have done so, only the bishop was inside. His casual announcement on a previous occasion that he could not obey the royal summons to England because the country could not get on without him was paralleled either in 1493 or 1495 —it is uncertain which—by his defence against the Bishop of Meath's charges. He said he must be represented by Counsel; ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... I could not gather whether he placed greater or less value on the suspicion of the hotel clerk. He had been making a casual examination of the body on the bed, and finding nothing he looked intently about the room as if seeking some evidence of how ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... visit, and to whom he had given this distinguished name,) to secure his good services,—they had only one remaining for their future resources; and it was by no means satisfactory to be thrown upon the casual generosity of the natives. It is true, they had with them some salt beef and biscuit, and it was understood, when they quitted the ship, that Captain Owen had engaged to compensate the King for ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... to put it as considerately as possible, "that a casual observer, who didn't know your father, might mistake him, at first sight, for—for some ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... with several public and social agencies has given us close acquaintance with his record during this time, and earlier. Our attention was first called to Adolf in New York, when he was a boy under arrest in the Tombs. A fine young lawyer, a casual acquaintance of Adolf's through court work, asked us to study the case because he felt that perhaps grave injustice was being done. Before his arrest the boy, who seemed to be most ambitious, had been about the court rooms looking into the ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... appeared to be asking Blizzard the rather poetical question, eyed the gruesome monument with a half smile. Bullet holes marked it here and there, testifying that many a passer-by with more marksmanship than respect had used it for a casual target. The empty sockets seemed to glare spitefully, and the shattered upper jaw grinned in mockery at the singer. It was as if the grisly relic had heard the song and laughed. Kid Wolf's smile flashed white against the copper ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... it was the old familiar act, expressed by the Evangelist by the old familiar words, that opened the disciples' eyes, and they knew Him. How simply the process of discovery is told! It was quite natural that a casual stranger upon the road should not say who He was; it was quite as natural that when He entered into the closer relationship of sitting with the disciples at the table, and sharing their hospitality, they should expect, as indeed they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... To the casual observer he was merely a picturesque old street-peddler, standing like a time-stained statue beside a carefully arrayed exhibit of his wares. This exhibit, which invariably proved more interesting than his own person, consisted of a frame ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... distance in mind and spirit which is the true isolation of the foreigner, and which even an identity of tongue and kindred cannot annul. Looking keenly into the mountaineer's half-averted, angry, excited face, he could not for his life discern how its expression might comport with the tenor of the casual conversation which had elicited it. He did not even dimly surmise that his allusion to the finances of the government could be construed as a justification of the whiskey tax, generally esteemed in the mountains a measure of tyrannous ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... looking over some sheep, Nic walked about a mile out of his way going back, and had just finished his casual inspection when he came upon Brookes, gun on shoulder, who immediately stood his piece against a bush and began to examine some of the flock, throwing so much energy into the task that Nic felt suspicious, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... ignorant of it; I desired only that which I possessed, and if I enjoyed from your looks, and words, and most innocent caresses a rapture usually excluded from the feelings of a parent towards his child, yet no uneasiness, no wish, no casual idea awoke me to a sense of guilt. I loved you as a human father might be supposed to love a daughter borne to him by a heavenly mother; as Anchises might have regarded the child of Venus if the sex had been changed; ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... for us that upon this vast and unknown sea of life, God's winds and waves are wiser and stronger than the pilots, and often bring our frail crafts into havens which we never sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... address. He threw the responsibility of the failure of the measure which had been taken to adjust the financial disputes, upon Lord Ripon. Not content, he said, with advancing a claim to the appropriation of the casual and territorial revenues to the purposes of civil government without the consent of the house of assembly, that noble lord had thought fit to propose to make them over to the clergy; a step which was at once novel and preposterous, and only ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... some casual word occurr'd Which somewhat moved the lady's bile; From less to more her anger wax'd— How sheepish look'd her swain the while!— And now upon their faces twain There is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... draw a distinction between the deed and the box containing it, Sir Duncan. Or, to put it more accurately, betwixt that deed and its casual accompaniments. It happens to be among very old charters, which happen to be wanted for certain excellent antiquarian purposes. Such things are not in my line, I must confess, although so deeply interesting. But a very learned man seems ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... (Rich) I came to serve him at a time when many of his best actors had deserted him; that he might now have the refusal of me; but I could not afford to carry the compliment so far as to lessen my income by it; that I therefore expected either my casual pay to be advanced, or the payment of my former sallary made certain for as many days as we had acted the year before. No, he was not willing to alter his former method; but I might chuse whatever parts I had a mind to act of theirs who ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... self-absorbed—by being centripetal, not centrifugal. It cannot be. Now this is worth saying to you, because you know here at school what a united social life is. All girls do not know this. You do. There is distinctly here a school life, a school feeling, a house feeling. No casual visitor to your playing fields and hall can mistake this. And you know that this enlarges and draws something out of your nature that would never have been suspected had it not been for school life. ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... smuts, rusts and mildews are known to even the casual observer, because they are of evident size. Their plant-like nature can be more readily understood from their general structure and habits of life. The bacteria, however, are so small, that under ordinary ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, and had kissed her—not the quick, resounding smack of casual leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... House. The Duke had very indiscreetly called the distress 'partial' in the Speech, and the consequence was an amendment moved by Knatchbull declaring it to be general. The result shows that Government has not the slightest command over the House of Commons, and that they have nothing but casual support to rely upon, and that of course will only be to be had 'dum se bene gesserint.' For a long time Holmes and their whippers-in thought that they should be in a minority; but Hume and a large party of Reformers supported them (contrary ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "The Fisherman's Rest" at Dover, was a prosperous man, was of course clear to the most casual observer. The pewter on the fine old dressers, the brass above the gigantic hearth, shone like silver and gold—the red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window sill—this meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true artist-life. Rome is the shrine of many a dreamer, the haunt of countless inefficient enthusiasts. But there, as elsewhere, will must intensify thought, action control imagination, or both are fruitless. Those melancholy ruins, those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... matter—and I fancy it is not exclusively characteristic of the Anarchist party—was the amount of invective and hatred, which both factions ought properly to have expended on the common enemy, but which instead they spent most of their time in levelling at one another. A casual witness of these internal strifes might have imagined that the two parties were at the antipodes in their ideas and objects, rather than comrades and participators in a common belief. Their dissensions were alone forgotten in a common hatred of government and existing society. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... a charmingly pretty busybody, outwardly just like Miss IRIS HOEY, comes to Peter Keppel's studio and hears that this casual youth has got into a deplorable habit of putting off his marriage with her friend Milly. She (Judy) will see to that! She assumes the role of a notorious Chelsea model, whom proper Peter has never seen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... with the best spirit of ancient learning, and poetically cast, becomes of right our teacher; and commands always the profound respect, if not always the assent, of the accomplished Greek. Not unfrequently, on such casual remark of the Queen, the reading is thereupon suspended, and discussion between her and the philosopher, or conversation upon topics suggested in which we all take part, ensues. But, however this may be, all moves ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... he premised that there are many varieties of great men. Daddy LAMBERT was a great man, so was the living skeleton, yet even a casual observer could perceive the difference in their greatness. The greatness of the fleshy world is one thing; the greatness of the no-fleshy world is another. Also, strange as it may seem, a man may be great and yet not be great. HOOD was a great General, so was NAP 3, but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... small, cracked mirror, while dangling from nails driven into the warped and twisted timbering of roof and walls hung a great variety of baskets, large and small and variously shaped, of rush or bent withies, many of which seemed in course of manufacture. These and many other objects I took casual heed of as I lay, but often my gaze would rove back to the six books standing so orderly amid the pots and pans; indeed, these so stirred my interest that I began to wonder what manner of books these might be and what should bring them in such a strange and desolate place, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... different. They vanish and reaeppear at different times; they have no actual, permanent existence. The crow of a cock or the sign of the cross is enough to drive them back to their hiding-places. They shun daylight and fixed, customary spots. They generally surprise casual travelers, and upon them in lone, romantic spots, practice all their arts of enticement and seduction. There is always something of magic, of the supernatural, connected with them. The Greek sirens are not like common women; but once conceive of their physical existence, and you understand them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... approached them with a casual air as if he had drifted their way by accident. He was one of those oppressively quiet men who possess the unhappy knack of appearing wholly out of touch with all social surroundings. There was a reticence ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... one may be attained by the sacrifice of the other;—the result is a failure to arrive at either. One to whom nature has given a true sensibility, but denied the plastic imaginative power, will be a faithful painter of the real; he will adapt casual appearances, but never catch the spirit of nature. He will only reproduce to us the matter of the world, which, not being our own work, the product of our creative spirit, can never have the beneficent operation of art, of which the essence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... their looks, and also by their childish voices, if thou lookest well upon them and if thou listenest to them. Now thou art perplexed, and in perplexity art silent; but I will loose for thee the strong bond in which thy subtile thoughts fetter thee.[6] Within the amplitude of this realm a casual point can have no place,[7] any more than sadness, or thirst, or hunger; for whatever thou seest is established by eternal law, so that here the ring answers exactly to the finger. And therefore this folk,[8] hastened to true life, is not sine causa more and less excellent ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the casual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise and relief, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the interests of Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion, which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however, to bring the disputed questions to his Majesty's notice ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... lies beyond endeavour; neither prayer Nor fasting, nor much wisdom winneth there, Seeing how many prophets and wise men Have sought for it and still returned again With hope undone. But only the strange power Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour Can build a bridge of light or sound or form To lead you out of all this strife and storm; When of some beauty we are grown a part Till from its very glory's midmost heart Out leaps a sudden beam of larger light Into our souls. All things are seen aright Amid the ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's references, he invited Travail to ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... more than that Tom. It was as if the Power above had directed it. This man Coll was one of the quartermasters, and only mentioned the Cassowary in the most casual manner to me as we were passing the place where she went ashore. 'I was in her, sir,' he said in the most simple, matter-of-fact manner, 'and me and a poor little boy about four, was the only ones ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... country on the borders of Essex and Suffolk, not ten miles in length, and but two or three in breadth, presenting to the casual observer few features more striking than are to be seen in many other parts of England, but hailed with delight by painters for its simple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modern landscape painting than all the noble scenery of Switzerland or the glories of Italy; for ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... followed them up-street, and sat down in full view with their backs against a wall. Yet I could see quite plainly the scabbard of a bayonet projecting through a hole in the ragged cloak of the nearest of those casual wayfarers. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... appreciate milder or more civil treatment, and are inclined to despise a master or mistress who uses the Portuguese equivalent to "please," or who acknowledges a service with thanks. I am inclined to doubt this, both from my personal observation and from a casual remark made to me by the landlady of a hotel at Cintra, that her waiters and servants much preferred English to native visitors, because of the greater politeness and consideration shown to them by the former. Of course, as in all other countries, servants are described ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... them, the casual noises of the night, she gave ear anxiously, while above her the fight raged direfully and all unheard. At one time she truly saw naked Kafirs go up the hill,—the light of the fire glinted on the points of their assegais and threw a dull gleam on the muscle-rippled skin of them. Next, stones ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... constant good humour, his indomitable energy, threw a glamour about him. His happy laughter, which attested the deep peace of his heart, rang everywhere, through his home, in social meetings with his friends, in casual encounters ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... with politics at the time), attention was drawn to Lady Arthur Castletown's charming and witty romance of modern life. Alp called to Alp, and deep to deep, throughout Satan's invisible world; "Kathleen's Sweethearts" was dragged in (apparently with ten men pushing behind) for casual allusion in "Our Weekly Note-book;" Lady Arthur's smart sayings were quoted in the gossip attached to this or that monthly magazine; the correspondent of a country journal would hasten to say that it was not necessary to inform his readers that Lady Arthur Castletown ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... But while, to a casual glance, the Day-Star Mission is all out of place, it has, nevertheless, its following. On Monday and Thursday afternoons a troop of black-eyed, jet-haired Portuguese women, half of whom are named Mary Jesus, flock in to a sewing-school. On ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... their peace, and presently the two girls went off together, and the minister and his wife engaged Mrs. Ellsworth in conversation, leaving the pair of lovers free to mingle with the gay crowd of young and old strolling beneath the trees. They spoke little to the casual acquaintances they met, preferring ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... latter is striving to introduce for her countrywomen a new style of dress, in which all the garments are bifurcated, but so skillfully adjusted in generous plaits and folds, that while the wearer enjoys the utmost freedom, the casual observer is quite ignorant of the innovation. We attended one of their public meetings for the discussion of that question, at which Miss King, Mrs. Charles McLaren, and Lady Harberton appeared in the new costume. All spoke in its defense, and were very witty ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said to be the "bare subsistence" wage for women. The wide prevalence of this wage and its independence of conditions of locality, time, nature of work, have made it generally recognised as a "customary wage," and for any casual work, or any new employment requiring ordinary feminine skill or exertion, 10s. is regarded as sufficient remuneration for a woman. The basis of this custom is the knowledge that women can always be induced to work for a bare subsistence measured at 10s. or ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of a curious forked appendage, resembling a fish-tail, which overhangs the orifice. This orifice is so concealed that it can be seen and approached only from below, as if—the casual observer might infer—to escape visitation. But dead insects of all kinds, and their decomposing remains, crowd the cavity and saturate the liquid therein contained, enticed, it is said, by a peculiar odor, as well as by the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... uncertain, wandering, unfertile way of life still left possible, and cheerily making the most of it. A genial, pious and harmonious fund of character was in her; and withal an indolent, half-unconscious force of intellect, and justness and delicacy of perception, which the casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit for. Sterling much respected her decision in matters literary; often altering and modifying where her feeling clearly went against him; and in verses especially trusting to her ear, which was excellent, while he knew his own to be worth little. I ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... up to Ralph the next few minutes before starting time. He asked a few casual questions about the mechanisms of No. 999, and then seemed tremendously interested ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... sequence, without an eye to what went before or should come after. If something beyond or beside what he was saying occurred to him, he invited it into his page, and made it as much at home there as the nature of it would suffer him. Then, when he was through with the welcoming of this casual and unexpected guest, he would go back to the company he was entertaining, and keep on with what he had been talking about. He observed this manner in the construction of his sentences, and the arrangement of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books—big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting—and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw—glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping being them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... length became a roaring torrent, passing through a narrow gorge between perpendicular cliffs, with a tremendous current. In some places the great river was pent up between rocks, which confined it to a width of about 120 yards, through such channels the rush of water was terrific, but to a casual observer approaching from the north, the volume of the Nile would have been underrated, unless calculated by the velocity ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... nephew it would be impossible to say. She had been skilled for many years in telling which way the wind was blowing; nay, more, in foreseeing from which quarter it would presently blow; so perhaps the two or three casual references to the American girls which she had gleaned from the letters which the Prince dutifully wrote her had been enough to awaken her suspicions. Or, it may be, that some one of the many persons at Weet-sur-Mer ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... that the lady from Nantucket had never referred, except in a casual way, to her past history. She had never told how she came to answer the advertisement in the Nuptial Chime, nor to explain how so matter-of-fact a person as she was had ever seen that famous sheet. As ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Railways held a special meeting at Bar. It was attended by Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, and Mr. John Conacher, Manager of the Company . . . The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly, brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter and buzz of conversation ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... examine the beginnings of punitive law. After all, even under the sway of custom, casual outbreaks are liable to occur. Some one's passions will prove too much for him, and there will be an accident. What happens then in the primitive society? Let us first consider one of the very unorganized communities at the bottom of the evolutionary scale; as, for example, the little Negritos ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... letters many proofs of this power of disposing equally the hardest and the most sensitive people to open their hearts, on very short acquaintance. Any casual rencontre, in a walk, in a steamboat, at a concert, became the prelude ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... might have received the homage to which his talents were entitled. He spent his time in study, or in working for the public welfare; his relaxations being in his fields and garden, or in the conversation of casual visitors who, uninvited, occasionally resorted to his unceremonious and hospitable roof. Ardent as he was in political discussions, prone as he was to enter into controversy, the feelings of animosity which he expressed died in their utterance. The adversary of to-day was the welcome ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... refolding the wills as the Governor finished reading them, marveled at this unexpected revelation of his friend's profession let fall in the most casual fashion, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... toward new-found activity: toward an enormous, never-before-witnessed expenditure of intelligent care on children; toward self-support; toward civic service. The character which is neither positive nor negative runs along as a neutral mixture of modern facts and of old ideals of casual idling and of casual child-rearing. The negative character—like Marie's—just yields to the facts and is swept along by them into final irresponsibility ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the fact that the guard had his gun, and if he saw us would shoot, but the shady lane was deserted and still, and we pushed on with an unconcerned stride that covered the ground, but would not attract the attention of the casual observer. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... so deep that the casual observer would not at first recognise their colour. But when you had perceived that they were blue, and had brought the fact home to your knowledge, their blueness remained with you as a thing fixed for ever. And you would feel, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... most pleasant papers arose from "the casual sight of an old playbill which I picked up the other day; I know not by what chance it was preserved so long." It was but two-and-thirty years old, however, and presented the cast of parts in "Twelfth Night" at Old Drury Lane Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1809. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was more than consoled by the caressing sympathy with which he was assured that his broken trunk could not be mended till the day after to-morrow; he had quite forgotten about the festas and the sympathy. That night the piazza on which he lodged seemed full of snow to the casual glance he gave it; then he saw that it was the white Italian moonlight, which he had ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... herself, before she discovered, by a casual glance over the prospect, and at some distance, a youth, who seemed to advance with hasty steps towards the castle. At first she was tempted to turn away her eye with carelessness and inattention. There was however something in his figure, that led her, by ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... from time to time as to what they were doing in the way getting their teams ready, looking around the premises, but without taking more than a casual glance at the rear of the house, however, and ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... whether I should be able to ford the next real watercourse, when we came to a broad bottom down the middle of which ran a swift shallow stream which rose over the young grass. For a few rods the road ran directly down this casual river of flood water, and as I looked back it all at once came into my mind that I might follow this flood and leave no track; so instead of swinging back into the road I took instantly the important resolution to leave the Ridge Road. By voice and whip I turned my cattle down the stream ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... pink-cheeked, star-eyed, in a frock of dull blue linen made with wide white pique collar and cuffs. Her hair waved and rippled and curled, despite its loose braiding, almost to her waist. Rosemary was simply going to the station to meet the 4:10 train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly—going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a familiarity with the style and the train of observation and reasoning which characterized the principal speakers. It happened also that I was not absent a single day, nor more than the casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... doesn't know himself.' 'Has he any resources?' 'Well, yes,' said Barillaud, laughing; 'just now he is talking of buying land among the savages in the United States.' I carried away with me the drop of vinegar which casual gossip thus put into my heart, and it soured all my feelings. I went to see my old master, in whose office Mongenod and I had studied law; he was now my counsel. When I told him about my loan to Mongenod ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Southern Europe. The northern part is everywhere separated from the southern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it is divided by Mount Haemus; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by the Alps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distribution of countries. The limits are marked out by Nature, and in these early ages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in the manners and usages of the nations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hover and lodge in your hair Bird-like, bird-like—You're aware Anacreon had a bird— A bird! and filled his bowl with roses. Ha ha! ye laugh in ghastlywise, And the smoke comes through your eyes, And you're looking very grim, And the air is very dim, And the casual paper flare Taketh ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... most brilliant of all constellations to the casual star-gazer, but it contains the richest mines that the delver for telescopic treasures can anywhere discover. We could not have made a better beginning, for here within a space of a few square degrees we have a wonderful variety of double stars and multiple stars, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... the 23rd of December an ambulance train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men, apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should have been attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make matters ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fact of what we are; the rest is drifted to us, uninvited, undeserved, upon the tides of chance. When disasters overwhelm us, the fault is sometimes in ourselves, but at other times is merely in our stars. Because so much of life is casual rather than causal, the theatre (whose purpose is to represent life truly) must always rely on melodrama as the most natural and effective type of art for exhibiting some of its most interesting phases. ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... a lot, all over the world," he explained in a casual way during a talk they had had on the night of their marriage, at the first stopping-place to which their motor brought them. "My mother died when I was a small boy, died in a terrible way I don't want to talk about, and losing her broke up my father and me for a while. He never got ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... all and everything, it drew in a line with me. Not once did its eyes meet mine, O'Donnell; not once did it glare at the natives who were hiding on the banks of the cutting; but it stole silently on its way with a something in its movements that left no doubt but that it was engaged in no casual venture. I remembered, O'Donnell, that my wife had promised to come with Eric to meet me along the cutting, as she was sure no tiger would be there. I ran as fast as I could, and yet somehow my feet seemed weighted down. I cursed my folly for not forbidding ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask itself had made her the ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... as we turns into a cross street just before it ends in the East River. "The main works," and I waves my band around casual. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince started ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... of the trial, Mr. Stead curdles our blood by talking of the eleven women who stood up upon oath to testify to the ill-treatment which they had received at the hands of our troops. Taken with the context, the casual reader would naturally imagine that these eleven women were all complaining of some sexual ill-usage. In the very next sentence he talks about 'such horrible and shameful incidents.' But on examination ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The casual observer of life in England would find himself forced to write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Lantee?" The question was painfully casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... as you; and the weight attached to all you say and do (you two I mean) in your several occupations seems at all events one hopeful sign among not a few gloomy ones. I suppose you and Mr. Keble little estimated the influence which even a casual word or sentence of yours exercises upon a man of my age, predisposed (it is true) to hearken with attention ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Daisy had placed herself and her baby in the hands of his half-brother formed a connecting link which could not always be ignored. She always dropped into silence when a reference was made to him. Not in the most casual conversation had Daisy ever heard her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... finding them unusual, every one of them a different story, and yet not difficult to read. These lessons gave meaning to trees and seasons. Such observations have always meant much to me, even when made in the most casual way in the midst of constraining activities. And now in this later day I come back to a bare twig with all the joy of youth. The records of the years are ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... accounts have appeared about my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... guess you didn't," admitted Bud. "Dad sort of mentioned, casual like, that you'd be along sooner or later, but he didn't get any ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... of them are effaced. I saw none very old. A quarter of a century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is merely cut "The burial place of" so and so; on others there is a long list of half-readable names; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all minds not forejudging, the testimony of Miss Anna E. Surratt, and various friends and servants of Mrs. Surratt, relative to physical causes, might fully explain and account for such ocular remissness and failure. In times and on occasions of casual meeting of intimate acquaintances on the street, and of common need for domestic uses, the eyesight of Mrs. Surratt had proved treacherous and failing. How much more liable to fail her was her imperfect vision on an occasion of excitement and anxiety, like ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Then, grounding arms, he began to feel in his pocket, and dragged out a soda-water-bottle, which felt soft, for it had been carefully stitched up in very thick flannel to guard it from the consequences of casual blows. On his twisting the cork, the neck emitted a peculiar squeak, followed by a gurgling sound, which lasted till the bottle was half-empty, by which time the thirsty private had become fully conscious ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the world's history through which we pass complacently is of no light portent, its happenings no casual concern, but, in point of crucial fact, a virtual "rending of the sphere"—a cosmic upheaval such as never yet before has racked the tense life sinews of the world, confounding the wisdom of the wise and wrecking in one fell climax of contempt the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... to-night in a place where the miners congregate, listened to their talk, and put a few casual questions to them, more as if we were only asking out of idle curiosity, we might ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... clergyman of that name, and is five thousand six hundred feet in height. But the Three Brothers, with an average height of less than four thousand feet, and Sentinel Dome, measuring four thousand five hundred feet high, seem to the casual observer to be quite as prominent, while El Capitan, which is about three thousand three hundred feet in height, appears from its more favorable position to be the most striking and effective of them all. ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... by casual critics that Maupassant lacked one quality indispensable to the production of truly artistic work, viz: an absolutely normal, that is, moral, point of view. The answer to this criticism is obvious. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... must be, the result of some law, be a coincidence whence, simply because we do not know all the circumstances, we have no ground to infer an uniformity. When neither Deduction, nor the Method of Difference, can be applied, the only way of inferring that coincidences are not casual, is by observing the frequency of their occurrence, not their absolute frequency, but whether they occur more often than chance would (that is, more often than the positive frequency of the phenomena would) account for. If, in such ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... reopened his eyes and unbent his brows, his gaze happened to be directed toward a row of curious big photographs which ran like a pictured frieze round the upper side of the wall of the room. A casual observer might have thought that the little man had been amusing himself by photographing the explosions of fireworks on a Fourth of July night; but it was evident by his expression that these singular pictures had no connection with civic pyrotechnics, but must represent something ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... careful to maintain an attitude toward him, at once correct and civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence. Its routine consists in the continual performance of "duties" ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... bit further on," said Caroline, striving to make her voice sound casual. "Don't you ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Christ, the Son of the living God." You see the intensified relief which this brought to our Lord, the keen satisfaction He felt as He heard it distinctly and solemnly uttered as the creed of the Twelve; as He heard what hitherto He could only have gathered from casual expressions, from wistful awe-struck looks, from overheard questionings and debatings with one another. You see how at once, He steps on to a new footing with them, as He cordially, and with intense gratitude, says to Peter, ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... doing there? Mr Verloc asked himself. What's the meaning of these antics? He looked dubiously at his brother-in-law, but he did not ask him for information. Mr Verloc's intercourse with Stevie was limited to the casual mutter of a morning, after breakfast, "My boots," and even that was more a communication at large of a need than a direct order or request. Mr Verloc perceived with some surprise that he did not know really what to say to Stevie. He stood still in the middle of the parlour, and looked ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... reasonably hope for or expect; and more—that its officers and professors are entitled to great credit and much praise, for securing under so much discouragement, that degree of success which is apparent here even to the casual observer; and claim of us, and are entitled to receive at our hands, a proper and just recognition of their valuable services, and the fidelity with which they have ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... Wraysford and Greenfield were concerned, this absence of goodwill had ripened into something like soreness, by the way in which Loman had made use of his own position as a monitor, on a casual reference by Oliver to the probable coming of Stephen to Saint Dominic's, to secure that young gentleman as his fag, although he quite well knew that Wraysford was counting on having him. Though ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... hard winter, a team of eleven fine dogs, I was enabled to become better acquainted with their good qualities than could possibly have been the case by the casual visits of the Esquimaux to the ships. The form of the Esquimaux dog is very similar to that of our shepherds' dog in England, but it is more muscular and broad-chested, owing to the constant and severe work to which he is brought up. His ears are pointed, and the aspect of the head ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sat in his library before a brisk wood fire with the day's papers in a heap on the floor beside him. In repose, the one dominant expression of the judge's face was pride, an austere pride, which manifested itself even in the most casual intercourse. Yet no man in Mount Hope combined fewer intimacies with a wider confidence, and his many years of public life had but augmented the universal respect in which he ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... me, after being so closely confined, the ever-present attendant seemed a companion rather than a guard. These excursions into the sane and free world were not only a great pleasure, they were almost a tonic. To rub elbows with normal people tended to restore my mental poise. That the casual passer-by had no way of knowing that I was a patient, out for a walk about the city, helped me gain that self-confidence so essential to the success of one about to re-enter a world from which he had ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... my casual intercourse with H. Truhn rather more entertaining. I used to treat him to a good glass of wine at Lutter and Wegener's, where I went occasionally on account of its association with Hoffmann, and he would then listen with apparently growing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... apology which I have neither the wit nor the desire to invent for myself. With the best will in the world to speak in praise of cities it must be owned that the epic and lyric moments of London are infrequent. As a casual resident in London, a student and spectator, free to leave it when I willed, I could have been heartily content; but I, in common with some insignificant millions of my fellow-creatures, was bound to live in London as a means of living at all. He ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... A casual observer even, would have decided that these four maidens were bound together by an unusual bond of friendship—an incongruous friendship it might have seemed, and ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... occasions are useful, as promoting the general feeling of reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is generally essential to ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can reasonably imagine a time when it may not be; and even now, for the casual service of holding a horse or brushing off the dust, a hearty "thank you" is perhaps on the whole better ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the Romans were his own. He reminded one sometimes of Hawthorne's saying that "in these days men are born in their clothes," although Dr. Holmes's conventions were more easily shuffled off than a casual observer would believe. Nothing could be farther from the ordinary idea of the romantic "man of genius" than was his well-trimmed little figure, and nothing more surprising and delightful than the way in which his childlikeness of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... man might need, but in addition there were a box of books—big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting—and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw—glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping being them in. Out ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... desires to grant to her beloved servant the cardinal. This suggestion was rendered practicable by one of those mere coincidences which are found though rarely in history, and which are too improbable to put into a novel—the casual discovery of a young woman of loose character who looked much like the Queen. Whether her name was d'Essigny or Gay d'Oliva, is uncertain; she is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught; and with immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... expenses and complications above enumerated, would be avoided, and the king's revenue no longer exposed to any other deficiencies than those arising out of the insolvency of the sub-collectors and their sureties, or casual risks, and the trifling charges paid for the conveyance of the money. If in opposition to this it should be alleged that it would be advisable to except some of the provinces from this general rule, owing to the advantages the government might derive ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... be a varying aptitude to experience the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations before puberty. I find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; in other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early years; in yet other cases complete sexual anaesthesia until the age of puberty. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to be of a very inferior kind and know it to be incapable of sound, deep application, I should have been very foolish if I had attempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts but never with industry sufficient to make me apply to any thing solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Miss Cornelia, and subsided into silence over a complicated arrangement of tucks until Captain Jim deliberately stirred her up again by remarking in a casual way: ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thoroughly forgave Zenobia for her conduct on this occasion. But women are always more cautious in their casual hospitalities than men. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... friendship, and the rights of friendship. How else could he justify the scene at Field, when he had so brusquely probed her secret anxieties for Philip? Her pride rebelled when she thought of it, when she recalled her wet eyes, her outstretched hand. Mere humiliation!—in the case of a casual or indifferent acquaintance. No; on that day, certainly, he had claimed the utmost privileges, had even strained the rights, of a friend, a real friend. But his behaviour since had almost revived her ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more, when a casual man told us that our straight line to the Foire de Fondeurle lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and showing no ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... coloured birds as the sun-birds of Africa are, according to an excellent observer, often protectively coloured. Mrs. M.E. Barber remarks that "A casual observer would scarcely imagine that the highly varnished and magnificently coloured plumage of the various species of Noctarinea could be of service to them, yet this is undoubtedly the case. The most unguarded moments of the lives ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and pace up and down my narrow room, restless and unhappy. I knew that I could not long delay revealing to Penelope the paramount fact, and in revealing it to her I seemed to say that after all she was only a casual friend, that all my life's interest was bound up in Gladys Todd, and my life's ambition expressed in a room with an easel by the window, a bird's-eye-maple mantel, and around the walls a rack for odd lots of china and black-framed prints. It was hard to tell ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of them, by the grace of God, of a humorous disposition. Outwardly, there is not much resemblance between them: Pa[vs]i['c], the picture of a benevolent patriarch, letting fall in his deep voice a few casual words which bring down his critics' case, hopelessly down like a wounded aeroplane, and Radi['c] the fervid little orator, the learned man, whose life has been devoted to the Croat peasants and who is said to find it difficult to make a speech that is under eight hours in length. Last year when ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... submissive was not the remarkable element in Nina's nature. She usually resisted advice, and resented anything like dictation from any quarter. Indeed, they who knew her best saw that, however open to casual influences, a direct show of guidance was sure to call up all her spirit of opposition. It was, then, a matter of actual astonishment to all to perceive not only how quietly and patiently she accepted Walpole's ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... remarkable power, not only in his own college, but among the finer spirits of the University generally. He had the gift which enables a man, sitting perhaps after dinner in a mixed society of his college contemporaries, to lead the way imperceptibly from the casual subjects of the hour—the river, the dons, the schools—to arguments "of great pith and moment," discussions that search the moral and intellectual powers of the men concerned to the utmost, without exciting distrust ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wander in the snow or seek the temporary shelter of some remote farm-house or Indian wigwam in the woods. Some wandered for days in the adjacent dismal "Black Swamp," feeding on frost-bitten cranberries, or on a casual ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... given for salvation of the soul would have seemed to Baxter or Bunyan; indeed, there was an element of Puritan severity in his attitude towards statesmen both ecclesiastical and civil. He was no "light half-believer of a casual creed," but had a sense of reality more like Dante ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... age, when they were islands washed by the waves of the Tertiary sea. A description of the different parts of the vast Panjab plain, its great stretches of firm loam, and its tracts of sand and sand hills, which the casual observer might regard as pure desert, will be given in the paragraphs ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... have met, in the works of a lady novelist (but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir 'Theocritus.' The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek Testament, "worth its weight in gold." Casual remarks of this kind encourage a popular delusion that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable price. When a man is first smitten with the pleasant fever of book-collecting, it is for Elzevirs that he searches. At first he thinks himself in ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... kindly, "To the trained eye, Miss Calhoun, much is apparent that escapes the casual observer. But you can understand that the taste displayed in the wall decoration, shows a refined and cultured nature. A woman of the adventuress type would prefer more garish display. Of course, I am generalizing, but there is much to bear me out. Then, I see, by certain tiny marks and cracks, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... pocket have they gone," answered Otto, simply as if stating the most casual fact. "They are all ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... perfect cheval-de-frise of fallen and peeled hemlocks, and, entering the dense woods above, began to look anxiously about for the wood-road. My companions at first could see no trace of it; but knowing that a casual wood-road cut in winter, when there was likely to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of this Thomas Young, a Scotchman, and one of the authors of the Smectymnuus. This, however, is a misreading of Milton's mind—a mind which was an organic whole—"whose seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be accounted for by contagion or casual impact. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... which immediately succeeds, the narrative is inelaborate, casual, secondary; the dialogue is simple and touching. The agony of the fratricide and his remorse are better expressed by his own lips than could be done by any skill of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance appetite, or every casual incident. Morality must be constituted of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency, surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... cheering capacities are not great. Her mode of attack is first to enlarge on every possible ill, and reduce one to a state of collapse from pure self-pity, and then to proceed to waft the same troubles aside with a casual flick of the hand. She sat down beside me, stroked my hand (I hate being pawed!) and set ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... many peculiar customs among the Indians of an earlier period, some of which tended to strengthen the character of the people and preserve their purity. Perhaps the most unique of these was the annual "feast of maidens." The casual observer would scarcely understand the full force and meaning ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... by conflicting emotions and could not make up her mind how to act. Act, however, she did, in a literal sense, for although her heart was still throbbing wildly and her mind was in a whirl, she managed somehow to assume an almost casual air. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... it strange that none of his fellow-convicts appeared to suspect him, or if they did, they kept it back from the jail authorities; and certainly to any casual observer the deception was complete, and it was the best case of feigned blindness we have ever known ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... could dim the horror of the word. The sound of his own voice made him shudder, yet he almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake the slumbering city from its dreams. He felt a mad desire to stop the casual ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... mentioned that he knew her—mentioned it in casual conversation," answered Fullaway. "She and I being fellow Americans, the subject interested me, of course. But—he only said that he had met her ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... Other Powers also—Powers at that time regarded as less friendly to Britain than Germany was supposed to be—started in the race for overseas dominions, international commerce, and strong fleets. It became evident to the most casual observer that sooner or later British command of the sea might be challenged, Britain and the Dominions attacked, and the future of the Empire put to the issue of war. Hence prudent patriots, who in course ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... the widow of an officer of German extraction, was herself a native of Mittau, where she had spent the first years of her childhood and where she had numerous poor relations, about whom she concerned herself very little, especially after a casual visit from one of her brothers, an infantry officer of the line. On the day after his arrival he had made a great disturbance and almost beaten the lady of the house, calling her "du lumpenmamselle," ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... it may seem to the casual visitor rather a sleepy place to-day, appears to have been pretty lively in Anna Seward’s day. “Plays thrice in the week, balls and suppers at our Inns, cards and feasting within our houses.” And again, “Lichfield has been of late wondrous gay. Six private balls were given, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... been looking at himself in the mirror with a satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion. His cousin's face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab with a piece of burnt cork and made ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the ways of dogs. With them he employed a superior reason where Le Beau had used the club and the rawhide. So he came up openly and boldly, and, as if by accident, dropped the end of the pole between the bars. With his hands against the cage, apparently unafraid, he began talking in a casual way. He was different from Le Beau. Miki watched him closely for a space and then let his eyes rest again on the darkened cabin window. Stealthily Durant began to take advantage of his opportunity. A little at a time he moved the end of the pole until it was over Miki's ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... form. Here, from first hand, are three words, which we may take to be the essence of the whole. Grumkow reporting, in a sordid, occasionally smutty, spy manner, to his Seckendorf, from Berlin, eight or ten months hence, has this casual expression: "He [King Friedrich Wilhelm] told me in confidence that Wreech, the Colonel's Wife, is—to P. R. (Prince-Royal); and that Wreech vowed he would not own it for his. And his Majesty in secret is rather pleased," adds the smutty spy. [Grumkow to Seckendorf, Berlin, 20th August, 1732 ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... involved in the Breakdown as it affected Anvhar, since the planet was completely self-sufficient. Once they had made the mental adjustment to the fact that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection of casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued unchanged. Not easy—living on Anvhar is never easy—but at least without difference ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... drove on, and the most casual observer might have remarked the strained tightening of the lips and the two red spots which came and went in the damask-peach cheeks. But it was not until she had reached Mereside, and had gained the shelter of the deserted ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... through a snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket. "Suthin' ought to be done," he growled, "to make Meary a little more careful o' them Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big Bend." "God bless my soul!" said a casual passenger, looking up hastily; "I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married." Jim winked diabolically at us over his glass. "No more did I," he responded gloomily, "but you can't tell anything about the ways o' them ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... accustom us to the separation of art from life. Our methods of studying art, making a beginning of art-study while traveling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is only on reflection, after long experience, that we come to perceive that the most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual and unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where nature, art, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R———, but had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied the post of Inspector of Nuisances,—a rather puffy and consequential man; gracious, however, and affable, even to casual strangers like myself. The great contrast betwixt him and the American lies in the narrower circuit of his ideas; the latter talking about matters of history of his own country and the world,—glancing over the whole field of politics, propounding opinions and theories of his own, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... On the wall next to this map and at right angles to it, is a large-scale map of the entire region over which the squadron operates. On this map are numerous conventional markings which would have no meaning to the casual observer. ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... principal actors in the scene, the idlers from the street slowly dispersed, each one loudly expressing his opinion as to the merits of the question in dispute. With the dissolving of the crowd, it would have seemed to the casual observer that no further proceedings were to be taken in the matter. The god's face wore its usually placid look, unmoved by the shifting panorama of human life which ebbed and flowed in front of him from morning till night. The ghastly-looking policemen, ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... pause at the big round, rugged doorway that admits you to what is now the drawing-room. The massive step by which you ascend to the threshold is a trifle crooked, as it should be: the lintels are cracked and worn by the myriad-fingered years. This strikes your casual glance. You look up and down the miniature cloister before you pass in: it seems wonderfully old and queer. Then you turn into the drawing-room, where you find modern conversation and late publications and the prospect of dinner. The new life and the old have melted together: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... very like boiling a kid in its mother's milk, but I had the gratification of remarking once or twice with casual superiority during conjugal conversation, that revolutions were expensive things, and ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... kinds of finding. There is a casual stumbling upon a thing that you were not looking for, and there is a finding as the result of seeking. It is the latter which is here. Christ did not casually stumble upon Philip, upon that morning, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... decidedly not the town to visit for an hour or two or for half a day. No one can possibly gain a correct impression of these smaller English towns by a casual call, as it were, between trains. A short stay, or two or three day visits (not on "early closing" day) is the least one can do before ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... of the school. The janitor, a highly efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied with all things Canadian because "in the old country we do things differently"—whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If you was a lidy, I'd wipe my boots on you!"—this selfsame janitor, standing by the furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face, and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. "Ye ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... two other dimly seen faces about her and introduced their owners in a most casual manner while she compounded a hot drink for ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... They are no more expensive than many a thoroughbred dog. Yet we shall not have one. Not only is the climate of Westchester County, New York, too unlike that of their native India for them to thrive, but consider the task of soothing terrified tradesmen and casual visitors. One may explain that although appearances are against him he is not really a leopard but just an overgrown cat. They will not believe it. They will not even hear because they will be a mile down ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... either knowledge or experience, could not be as prudent and far-seeing as a man all his life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and in elocution Emerson was a practised and consummate artist, who knew how both to command his effects and to conceal his means. The casual, practical, disarming directness with which he writes puts any honest man at his mercy. What difference does it make whether a man who can talk like this is following an argument or not? You cannot always see Emerson clearly; he is hidden ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone. Darling could not know that the thought of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... this resolution occupying her mind the talk presently ran rather thin, her contribution to it for whole minutes drying up entirely. It was after a rather blank silence that he said he supposed Paula was lying down, resting for to-night's performance. His inflection struck Mary as a little too casual and reminded her that it was his first mention of her stepmother's name. This roused ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... manipulation to be thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and tail-feathers. Reptiles and fish, on the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... construction trains also arrived, and the quiet little siding was soon a scene of wild bustle and excitement. The R.E. went to work on the broken bridge, and made a most excellent job of it in a surprisingly short time, though a casual inspection of the temporary structure they built for trains to pass over gave the lay mind the impression that an extra strong puff of wind would blow the whole thing over. However, it answered its purpose very thoroughly, and reflected ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Marianne seemed of casual importance to her now. We seldom think of our best friends in time of love. Yvonne cried for his kisses which at first she did not wholly understand, but which she grew to hunger for, just as when she was little she craved for all she wanted to ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... said St. Luc. "It was merely a casual reference to the changes that affect us all. I shall come to Albany some day, Mr. Lennox. It is an interesting town, though perhaps somewhat ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... very slender and aristocratic nose, with a note from Lee Greenfield which had just come to her, asking her to go with him in his car over to Hillsboro to spend the day with Tom Pollard's wife, a visit he knows she has been dying to make for two months, for she was one of Pet's bridesmaids. He made casual and dastardly mention that there would be a moon to come home by, but ignored completely the fact that Tuesday was the day on which he had been invited by the League, of which he knew she was a member, to meet and rally around ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with the conviction that it was an utter failure. Captain Elkanah and the gracious Miss Annabel, his daughter, had been kind enough to express gratification, and their praise alone saved him from despair. Then, to his amazement, the call had come. Of casual conversation at the church and about the Daniels's table he could recall nothing. So there was another religious organization in town and that made up of seceders from his own church. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... left the tent together. He led me about the camp, and then we walked upon the surrounding hills overlooking the great city of white tents and sleeping soldiers. Very little was spoken between us, beyond a few words as to the pleasantness of the morning or similar casual observations. Lincoln seemed to be peculiarly serious, and his quiet, abstract way affected me also. It did not seem a time to speak. We walked slowly and quietly, meeting here and there a guard, our thoughts leading us to reflect on that wonderful situation. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... legendary records, and artistic remains. The evidence from language is treated scientifically, and not as a kind of ingenious guessing. Senor Lopez first combats the idea that the living dialect of Peru is barbarous and fluctuating. It is not one of the casual and shifting forms of speech produced by nomad races. To which of the stages of language does this belong—the agglutinative, in which one root is fastened on to another, and a word is formed in which the constitutive elements are obviously distinct, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the Irishman was off, with an oath at the major's stupidity in forgetting to order his men forward. Presently the battalion came creeping up, silently enough, I thought, but the adjutant made the excuse of a casual 'ouch' from a man on whose heels Hrsthzschnoffski had casually trodden, to shriek out his favorite 'Stop 'at talken'!' 'Do you command this battalion?' asks Captain Pipes, sternly; and straightway there would have been a dire altercation, but for the major's gentle interference. The bridge began ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... than "interesting"—it is as a poem distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often far from truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem, where proportion and harmony are of more importance than casual exfoliations of beauty, yet to a certain extent they do serve as musical keys that give the fundamental tone. One certainly would have to search in vain to find in the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... boast of an enormous population for there were endless rows, or rather groups of houses, crowded together, face to face, back to back, and side by side, giving the idea of a casual conglomeration of several villages. All these were scrupulously clean and neat, and fenced round with little bamboo rails. Nearly every house had a tiled roof, and all were of a superior class to the majority of those up country in the Peninsula. ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... hold myself responsible for the often severe and sometimes scornful judgments pronounced by my friends in the provinces upon public men at Paris. But I had no right to modify or withhold them. In the case of conversations held with friends, or with casual acquaintances, I have used names only where I had reason to believe that, adding weight to what was recorded, they might be used without injury or inconvenience of any ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... patient and constant, sprightly and tender, consuming and passionate. We find, getting over the inexperienced beginning, that the style of the work is noble and accomplished, and that—far from being a half-hewn and casual fancy, a head surmounting a trunk of stone—its plan is thought out with scientific exactness, no line blurred, no clue forgotten, the work of an intense and poetic temperament whose vision is ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... certainty of finding him in the same mood in which she had left him,—as some bright wayward vine of Southern forests puts out a tendril to this or that enticing point, yet, winding back, will find its first support unchanged. Shut out, as Mr. Raleigh had been, from any but the most casual female society, he found a great charm in this familiarity, and, without thinking how lately it had begun or how soon it must cease, he yielded himself to its presence. At one hour she seemed to him an impetuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... his coat hurriedly, there came a knock at the door. "Come in," said Von Barwig rather impatiently, thinking that it was Poons. He did not feel in the mood just at that moment for casual conversation. "Come in," he repeated in a louder voice, and to his utter amazement in ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... miles from Haynes' and the soldiers reached Boone's place about 1:30 o'clock P.M. and their horses looked, to a casual observer, like they had been ridden fifty miles. They were all covered with dust which the crafty soldiers had thrown upon them and were flecked with sweat. One soldier went forward and asked politely to be given ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches—nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning—a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance—twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... abbeys and cathedrals, factories, brick-yards, foundries, timber-yards, docks, and railway works. On this occasion Yule, contrary to his custom, kept a journal, and a few excerpts may be given here, as affording some notion of his casual talk to those who ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the necessaries or conveniencies of life. There is no way of living without the need of foreign assistance, but by the product of our own land, improved by our own labour. Every other source of plenty is perishable or casual. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... but had no character; she described the stickiness of his collar; and because she was always readily responsive to her surroundings, she found it natural to be humorous in a somewhat spiteful way; and at a casual mention of the Battys, she became amusing at the expense of Charles and felt a slight regret when she had roused Christabel's laughter. It seemed unkind; he had confided in her; she had betrayed him; and Rose completed her discomfiture by saying, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... kettle. We have worked too hard without knowing why we were doing it, or what our work would do with us. We were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop and glance casually around for our bearings. We went blindly on. Consider the newspapers, as they are now! A casual inspection of the mixture of their hard and congested sentences is enough to show that what is wanted by our writers famous for their virility, their power of "graphic description" as their outpour ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... off Clement's heart. For a moment he had feared that the man knew something; but now he began to suspect Grimbal's question to be what in reality it was—casual interrogation, without any shadow of knowledge behind it. Hicks therefore breathed again and trusted that his own emotion had not been very apparent. Then, taking the water, he shot a thin shower into the air, an operation often ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... You have enough to do without that. Leave it to those professionally trained in such mysteries. If a man is responsible for this atrocious thing, then it should be within the reach of man's wits to find him. We failed before; but this time no casual examination of this place, or the antecedents of your son-in-law's life, will serve the purpose. We must go to the bottom, or, rather, skilled minds, trained to do so, must go to the bottom. They will approach ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a casual: "I dare say," and only then went on to explain that old Dunster, during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where he stayed with the Moorsoms—he meant the father and the girl. The professor had been a widower for ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... on this line, which, whether true to the subject or not, is very characteristic of the writer: "If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech."—/soothsayer./ By derivation, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... jetty clearly almost below their feet, and in the distance the glittering lights of Pierside. Vague forms of vessels at anchor loomed on the water, and there was a stream of light where the moon made a pathway of silver. After a casual glance the three men proceeded down the slope to the jetty. Three of them at least had revolvers, since Hervey was an ill man to tackle; but probably Date, who was too dense to consider consequences, was unarmed. Neither did Don Pedro think it necessary to tell the officer ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... and boldly thrust his hand into his breast, withdrew it, and burst out into a wild hysterical laugh as he gave a casual glance at his hand before passing it cautiously into his left breast-pocket and bringing out, bit by bit, the fragments of the bottle of preparation which the doctor had dispensed, and that it had been his mission to ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... is obvious that they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Government has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. AS far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head and with each other. But there is still ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that there are many varieties of great men. Daddy LAMBERT was a great man, so was the living skeleton, yet even a casual observer could perceive the difference in their greatness. The greatness of the fleshy world is one thing; the greatness of the no-fleshy world is another. Also, strange as it may seem, a man may be great and yet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... each reader in succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation. But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the fact is undeniable. The general principles ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... height, intervene between the present and the supposed ancient level of the stream. To assent to this suggestion, would be to admit an almost immeasurable antiquity to the structure under consideration." The casual observer would say that it was intended to afford an ascent from one terrace to the other. But as the height was only seventeen feet, we can not see why it was so necessary to have a long passage way of easy grade from one terrace to the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... in their chairs and tried to keep their guilty eyes off the overturned basin. 'Two slices, Annie?' said Mr. Knight in a loud tone, elaborately casual. 'Yes, please,' said Aunt Annie. Mrs. Knight began to pour out coffee. They all three looked at each other, joyous, naughty, strategic; and the thing of which they were least conscious, in that moment of expectancy, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... years in the country. Good God! would not one rather have expected to hear him put all these travellers to shame by the authority of a man who had resided so long in the supreme situation of government,—to set aside all these wild, loose, casual, and silly observations of travellers and theorists? On the contrary, as if he was ignorant of everything, as if he knew nothing of India, as if he had dropped from the clouds, he cites the observations of every stranger who had been hurried in a palanquin through the country, capable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him, and in particular, while treating him with engaging attention, as if a friend, he brought him into the house where all his weapons were stored, a numerous and exceedingly noteworthy array. Thereupon they say that the weapons shook of their own accord and gave forth a sound of no ordinary or casual sort, and then it seemed to Gizeric that there had been an earthquake, but when he got outside and made enquiries concerning the earthquake, since no one else agreed with him, a great wonder, they say, came over him, but he was not able to comprehend the ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... never a chance to shake a foot with anybody or buy a drink for somebody in the inner circles of Viennese night life. He is emphatically on the outside, denied even the poor satisfaction of looking in. At that I have a suspicion, born of casual observation among other races, that the Viennese really has a better time when he is not trying ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a manner as casual as she could contrive, "let's keep this Mister Higgins on board. He's bound for New York, but in no particular hurry. We'll get him ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... its windows open to the lake and river; with its muslin curtains, very clean and white, its duster-rose too, just outside the window; with Mrs. Weston, who in her friendly flurry had greeted the bride as 'Miss Nelly,' and was bustling to get the tea; even, indeed, with Bridget Cookson's few casual attentions to them. Mrs. Sarratt thought it 'dear' of Bridget to have come to meet them, and ordered tea for them, and put those delicious roses in ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an ox" is a very common expression, dating back as far as my memory goes. In fact, the ox is not so "dumb" as a casual observer might think. Dave and Dandy knew me as far as they could see; sometimes when I went to them in the morning, Dave would lift his head, bow his neck, stretch out his body, and perhaps extend a foot, as if to say, "Good morning ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... said the sculptor, shocked at his own casual production. "It were a sin to let the clay which bears your features harden into a look like that. Cain never wore ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a sportin' chance now and then before; but I was only kiddin' myself. Believe me, this gettin' married act is the big plunge. Uh-huh! Specially when it's done offhand and casual, the way ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... walked together in the town of Reading: she was evidently pleased at what I said. I soon escorted her to Oxford Street, from thence down Bond Street, and through all the most frequented parts of the metropolis. The dress naturally drew upon her the casual glance of the passengers, but her extreme beauty turned the glance to an ardent gaze, and long before we had finished our intended walk, Susannah requested that I would go home. She was not only annoyed but almost alarmed at the constant and reiterated scrutiny which ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... yoke under Mrs. C., as her most efficient and reliable maid-servant. She had been at her mistress' beck and call as seamstress, dressing-maid, nurse in the sickroom, etc., etc., under circumstances that might appear to the casual observer uncommonly favorable for a slave. Indeed, on his first interview with her, the Committee man was so forcibly impressed with the belief, that her condition in Virginia had been favorable, that he hesitated to ask her if she did not desire her liberty. A ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... this Averil would never have consented. He had always been a great reader of travels, and he became absolutely eager in planning their life in the wild, as if where they were he must be, till the casual mention of the word 'rifle' brought him to sudden silence, and the consciousness of the condemned cell; but even then it was only to be urgent in consoling his brother, and crowding message on message for his sisters; begging Henry not to stay, not to consider him for a moment, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Poland through greed, and through greed endures snow till St. Nikolay's day; when he dies his daughter, who was born at Ishim, will remain here for ever and so will multiply the black eyes and soft features in Siberia! This casual intermixture of blood is to the good, for the Siberian people are not beautiful. There are no dark-haired people. Perhaps you would like me to write about the Tatars? Certainly. There are very few of them here. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... joined the first, and that twice the force anticipated confronted them. When this discovery was made, the Mormons were too close to escape observation. Members of Smith's party expected that their leader would now make some casual inquiry and then ride on, as if his destination were elsewhere. Smith, however, decided differently. As his force approached the camp-fire that was burning close to the wagons, he noticed that the rear of his column was not distinguishable ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... southern skies with greater results than even he himself had anticipated. Those unfamiliar constellations which, to the casual beholder, are at most a new arrangement of ordinary points of light, were to this professed astronomer, as to his ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Templeton almost long enough," the young man resumed, laughing, "to set up as a candidate for the public favour, if I rightly understand the claims of a denizen. By what I can gather from casual remarks, the old proverb that 'the new broom sweeps clean' applies with singular fidelity throughout ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... be as casual, but could not disguise the excitement that filled me. "Shall—the guns—" and I stopped, startled at the tone of my own voice. It sounded as if it were coming from some person a dozen feet away. And as I stood there a sense of elation, that was possibly partly fear, swept over ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... to that time from a happier present, I am filled by a genuine awe of J. Rodney Potts. Reflecting upon those benign ends which the gods chose to make him serve, I can but marvel how lightly each of us may meet and scorn a casual Potts, unrecking his gracious and predestined office in the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... "repentance to salvation not to be repented of." The hypocrite may put on the outward badges of mourning merely with a view to regain a position in the Church, whilst the sincere penitent may "anoint his head and wash his face," and reveal to the eye of the casual spectator no tokens of contrition. As repentance is a spiritual exercise, it can only be recognised by spiritual signs; and the rulers of the ancient Church committed a capital error when they proposed to test it by certain dietary indications. Their ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... name upon the programme ever chanced to be defined, It was Otto Heinrich Ollendorf, or something of the kind, But his casual conversation served surprisingly to show That the accent of Vienna much resembled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... those early days of journalistic experience, inclusive of what she terms the "Positivist Episode," blossomed in her later, more mature years, and all the harvest she brought and applied to the organization of women. To the casual observer an organized body of women differed in no particular form from any ordinary assembly of women. What it was to her one can only realize by a careful perusal of her writings on club formation, and the moral awakening that ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... a laugh in return: "It is the weather, I guess." He tried to speak with casual ease. "The atmosphere is full of electricity this morning. We'll have a thunder-storm before ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... air about Miss Penelope that might suggest to the casual observer an early and disastrous love-affair. But all such imaginings on his part would be vain. No winged cupid ever hid in Miss Penelope's ear, or played bo-peep in her virgin bosom, or nestled in her sandy locks: she is free from all taint of ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the place was popular with even respectable working people in consequence of the small size and cheapness of the houses—for there is nothing the poor like so much as a house to themselves; and the bulk of its population consisted of casual labourers, who gathered every morning round the great gates of the docks, waiting to be "called in" as the ships came up to unload. The place was naturally unhealthy, constantly haunted by fever, and had furnished some hundred cases in the last visitation of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... I hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches—nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning—a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance—twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from each other to talk, and I dare not even look at you because ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... tea, dear," Maud said, and he was obliged to content himself with the prospect of seeing her and acquainting her with Saltash's energetic interest on their behalf after the visitors had gone. He had never felt less in the mood for entertaining casual friends than he felt on that sunny afternoon in September as he lounged in the wide stable-yard and waited for them. He had always liked Sheila Melrose, they had a good deal in common. But curiously enough it was that very fact that made him strangely reluctant to meet her now. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... rose in Isabella's sallow cheeks, but she said no word. Was this the message she had waited for so long? Casual words repeated with a cruelty that was quite unconscious ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... all—comprises those who may almost be said to drift into literary work and literary fame, whose first production is not merely tentative and unoriginal, but, so to speak, accidental, who do not discover their real faculty for literary work till after a pretty long course of casual ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the millions of black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so fatefully bound up with that of the nation. And yet the casual observer visiting the South sees at first little of this. He notes the growing frequency of dark faces as he rides along,—but otherwise the days slip lazily on, the sun shines, and this little world seems as happy and contented ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing," we find no indulgence in any instance, or in the slightest degree, granted to "covetousness, which is idolatry" (Col. iii. 5; no casual association of terms, observe, but again energetically repeated in Ephesians, v. 5, "No covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ"); nor any to that denial of God, idolatry in one of its most subtle forms, following ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... York! He'd been to see her this afternoon—and left a card! And the note he'd written after his second visit was what Howard West might have written, or any other quite casual, slightly over-polite acquaintance. And it was from ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... she suffers much from the supposed ignominious fate of her husband is certain, but it is only occasionally; her spirits are good, and she is cheerful, except when reminded of it by any casual observation. That it would prove a great consolation to her to know that her husband did not forfeit his life on the scaffold is true; but what then? he is said to have entered the King's service under another name, and, of course, there is every probability ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... up to Piccadilly, and climbed on top of a Chelsea omnibus, a dejected figure even to the casual eye. He was more than disappointed at the upshot of his wild speculations, and in himself for the false start that he had made. His feeling was one of positive shame. It was so easy now to see the glaring improbability of the conclusion ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... from him that the pistol-shot fired in the cabin had attracted only the most casual and momentary notice of the few Frenchmen on deck; the majority of them, indeed, scarcely rousing themselves sufficiently to do more than merely turn their heads to send a single inquiring glance aft. This was good news, as, although ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... skinning it, and had hung it upon one of the copper hooks. The only use intended to be asked of this renowned batrachian was the making of a little broth. Another part of the skinned anatomy touched the iron rail below, and the anatomist observed that this casual contact produced a convulsive twitching of the dead reptile's legs. He groped about this fact for many years. He fancied he had discovered the principle of life. He made the phenomenon to hang upon the facts clustering ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... altogether. Even as the slightest incident in the daytime causes our dreams at night, but is itself clean forgotten, so the name, so the look of the visitor, might have sufficed but to influence a vision, as remote from its casual suggester as what we call real life is from that life much more real, that we imagine, or remember, in the haunted chambers of the brain. For what is real life? How little the things actually doing around us affect the springs of our sorrow or joy; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French people of a certain class that one never sees in any other nationality. Such refinement and charm of manner—a great desire to put every one at their ease and to please the person with whom they are thrown for the moment. That, after all, is all one cares for in the casual acquaintances one makes in society. From friends, of course, we want something deeper and more lasting, but life is too short to find out the depth and sterling qualities of ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... no more than uttered this casual wish than there sounded, from all sides of where they sat, screeching whoops. The naked brown men who suddenly appeared seemed to materialize from right out of the excavations. As they yelled they raised their weapons. The air ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... pipes, the beds in either case being covered with frames. Where the demand for forced Asparagus is constant, there can be no doubt the hot-water system is the cheapest as well as the cleanest and most reliable; for a casual supply forcing in frames answers very well, but it is attended with the disadvantage that when the crop has been secured the roots are worthless. The practice of forcing may be said to commence with the formation of the seed-bed, for if it is to be carried on in a systematic and profitable ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... oft-repeated, meagre hospitality of the Akheskaia, by giving a birthday supper to Sergius, on the night of the 10th. The idea had been born in him through some mention of the date by Irina, and a casual regret that their recent contribution towards Burevsky's new chemical outfit must preclude any hope of even the simplest celebration. Whether her speech had been ingenuous or not, it did not occur to Ivan to inquire, so pleased was he at thought of an opportunity of doing something for his new friends ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... on the plateau towards Jarvis Pass would perhaps have attracted no attention from tourist or casual looker through a field glass, but to him—an old trooper, Indian fighter and mountaineer, it conveyed a world of meaning. Against the dark background of that distant ridge and upon the dun-colored flat along which the road meandered, the old corporal could just make out a number ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make a casual inquiry ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... there, and enjoyed talking over the old times. Otherwise I did not take particularly to the man, and as I came to know him better I noticed that he never mentioned that part of his life which lay back of the years in Chicago. I asked a casual question once or twice as to his home and family, but he evaded me every time, and would not give a direct answer. He was evidently a German by birth and education, a man with university training, and one who knew life thoroughly. He had delightful manners, and ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... I intend to," he replied. "That is the other point concerning which I wish to speak to you. You may think it very extraordinary, and I offer no explanation, but I do not wish it known to—say, Mr. Crawshay, or any other casual enquirer, that I have any acquaintance with ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... being proof against them. They are not seen at the surface, as they never touch the outer shell of the wood whose heart they are consuming. A beam or rafter which has been attacked by them looks as good as when new, to the casual observer, until it is sounded and found to be hollow, a mere shell in fact. Even in passing from one piece of timber to another, the red ant does so by covered ways, and is thus least seen when most busy. The timbers of an entire roof have been ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the Globe was established to advocate responsible government, and the time when the provinces were confederated and the bounds of Canada extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The ordinary political contests in which Mr. Brown and his newspaper engaged have received only casual notice, and the effort of the writer has been to trace Mr. Brown's connection with the stream of events by which the old legislative union of Canada gave ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Arthur's name, Guly looked anxious, but expressed his willingness to accede to this proposition. So, taking the lamp, the head clerk turned his steps toward the gloomy room at the stair-head, first taking a casual view of the confusion manifest ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... played a leading role in the support and defense of the nation. While it is a matter for regret that their war record cannot be chronicled as fully and definitely as can their work for suffrage, nevertheless, even a casual examination will show that it was a heroic one and none the less so because it was frequently merged, through far-sighted efficiency, in the war-service of all American women, of which it ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... are notable among the tombs of Christ churchyard in being set with the foot due east, as by a mariner's compass. The wide headstones split the plane of the meridian; their edges cleave the noonday sun and the polar star. To the casual observer these three tombstones, as compared with all others in the churchyard, seem quite awry. In reality they alone are meticulously correct, a standing tribute to the exact eye of Joshua ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... whose acquaintance now seemed not without value to him. I am still touched at recollecting the repeated and eager attempts he made to change my opinion of him, even before he knew any of my works. He acted not from any artistic sympathy, but led by the purely human wish of discontinuing a casual disharmony between himself and a fellow creature; perhaps he also felt an infinitely tender misgiving of having hurt me unconsciously. He who knows the terrible selfishness and insensibility in our social life, and especially in the relations ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... straight road toward the ruins of Vermelles with a young soldier-guide who on the outskirts of the village remarked in a casual way: ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... easy as usual. I yelled at him, but he didn't move, jest sat there an' looked at me with them unwinkin' eyes, tryin' his best to figger out the way things stood. Every onct in a while his eyes would leave mine, an' he'd glance casual-like around him, but they always ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... not need to be told that this was a man hunt, destined perhaps to be one of a hundred unwritten desert tragedies. Some subtle instinct in him differentiated between these hurried shots and those born of the casual exuberance of the cow-puncher at play. He had a reason for taking an interest in it—an interest that was more ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... of that ancient conflict. Latin declensions were taught the child by rhymes concocted by his father as memory-easing devices. Stories and even lessons were made intelligible and vivid by colored maps and comic drawings. Until the boy was fourteen, his schooling was of the most casual sort, his only formal training being such as he received in the comparatively unimportant three or four years he spent, after he was ten, at Mr. Ready's private school. His real education came, through all his early life, from his home. What would ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... in my newspaper an announcement that enraged me. It was made in the driest, most casual way, as though nobody would care a rap; and this did but whet the wrath I had in knowing that Adam Street, Adelphi, was to be undone. The Tivoli Music Hall, about to be demolished and built anew, was to have a frontage of thirty feet, if you please, in Adam Street. Why? Because the London County ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... window of Mrs. Wade's cottage, where it showed beyond the iron railing, Lady O'Gara glanced that way. The interior of the room was no longer visible to the casual passer-by. Curtains were drawn across it, but through the parting of the curtains one caught a glimpse of fire-light. It would be a pleasant rosy window in the desolate road when the lamps were lit. But probably Mrs. Wade shuttered ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... gayest and the most terrific of my experiences rose again after years of slumber, armed with preternatural power to shake my dreaming sensibilities; sometimes, as in the slight case of Miss Fanny on the Bath road, (which I will immediately mention,) through some casual or capricious association with images originally gay, yet opening at some stage of evolution into sudden capacities of horror; sometimes through the more natural and fixed alliances with the sense of power so various lodged ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... inadequate ideas—'eatenus patitur'—it is passive and in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice: in so far as its ideas are adequate—'eatenus agit'—it is active, it is itself. While we are governed by outward temptations, by the casual pleasures, by the fortunes or the misfortunes of life, we are but instruments, yielding ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on by its appetites, or the inanimate matter by the laws which bind it; we are slaves—instruments, it may be, of some higher purpose in the order of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... others than Pansy, however, who commented on what they called her superiority—the young men who appeared in the evening. A number of them, cousins of the Feldt dinner parties or more casual, tried to engage her sympathies in their persons and prospects. It was a society of early maturity. But, without apparent effort, she discouraged them, principally by her serene lack of interest. It ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... light-minded, casual, and good-hearted. Their great labour over, and their sacrifices buried, they have come out this day to celebrate the occasion with hilarious and ironic gaiety. They have won the Greatest of Wars, so they ride in motor-lorries and make delirious noises with ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... stared at him ruefully, puzzled more and more, but beginning to think, after all, it might be a casual meeting. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... exception of a casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... clearly wishing he had not made his last remark. My immediate desire, on witnessing his discomfiture, was to put him at his ease by pretending that I saw nothing unusual in the words. So I quickly evolved a very casual question. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the line of male and female succession: [123] but the children of the first conquerors, [124] a motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a casual event. The service of the feudal tenures [125] was performed by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of two hundred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers on horseback. [126] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... that he was master, and still would harm her not at all. But he shut his teeth, and watched her. Among mountain women the girl was more than pretty; elsewhere only her hair, perhaps, would have caught the casual eye. She wore red homespun and coarse shoes; her hands were brown and hardened. Her arms and shoulders looked muscular, her waist was rather large-being as nature meant it-and her face in repose had a heavy look. ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... but what strikes us more in the study of history is to see human sacrifices retained in a state of civilization somewhat advanced; and that the nations who hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the rudest and most ferocious. (* Some casual instances of children carried off by the negroes in the island of Cuba have led to the belief, in the Spanish colonies, that there are tribes of cannibals in Africa. This opinion, though supported by some travellers, is not borne out by the researches of Mr. Barrow ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... if she might be dreaming a maiden's dream of love. He hazarded a tentative remark. Her eyes moved, touched him indifferently, and passed back to the sky, and an unformed murmur, interrogation, acquiescence, casual response, anything he pleased to think it, escaped her lips. He watched her as he could when she was not looking at him. A loosened strand of her hair lay among the lupine roots, one of her hands rested, brown and upcurled, on a tiny weed its weight had broken. She turned her head with ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... his uniforms and martial paraphernalia as he had been allowed to retain in camp—for one can't house a ton of kit in a hut—he had given to his batman. His one desire now was to escape from the eyes of his fellow-men. He felt that he bore upon him the stigma of his disgrace, obvious to any casual glance. He was the man who had been turned out of the army as a hopeless incompetent. Even worse than the slacker—for the slacker might have latent the qualities that he lacked. Even at the best and brightest, he could only be mistaken for a slacker, once more ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... once correct and civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence. Its routine consists in the continual ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... fight over the establishment principle forms an essential factor in the social and political life of Canada between 1839 and 1854, the year in which it was finally settled. It is first necessary to discriminate between what may be called casual and incidental support to churches in Canada, and the main Clergy Reserve {48} fund. When Dr. Black challenged, in the interests of Presbyterianism, certain monies paid to Anglican churches in Upper and Lower Canada, he was able to point to direct assistance given by the Imperial Parliament ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... his apparently casual questions about the time of the Mongolia's sailing and whether she was to be armed became annoying that "I woke up," and looking attentively at this over-curious visitor, I encountered a look of such cold hostility that with a shock I realized I was dealing with a spy, one who ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... unusual. The curtains were also down at both windows. These curtains were half-curtains only. They fell from the upper edge of the lower sash, and were simply meant to protect the inmates from the casual glance of persons in front. The house was on an elevation of two or three feet from the ground. It was impossible to see into the apartment unless I could raise myself at least that much above my own stature. I looked around me for a stump, bench, block—anything; but there was nothing, or ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... critical and descriptive survey of the building in all its detail; sufficiently accurate from the archaeological point of view to furnish a trustworthy record of the building in its past and present condition, and not too technical in its language for the occasional use of the casual visitor. Brief biographical accounts of the bishops and other notable men connected with the Diocese ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... the fourth hypothesis, therefore, for explaining the apparent inconsistencies of the Executive, we not only assent to it heartily as involving part of the truth, but we have endeavoured to show earnestly that the truth is a great truth; no casual aspect, or momentary feature of truth, depending upon the particular relation at the time between Ireland and the Horse Guards, or pointing simply to a better cautionary distribution of the army; but a truth connected systematically with the policy for Ireland ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... affectation of mannishness. The very first thought that struck me was the incongruousness of a girl of her type suffering from an attack of "nerves," and I felt sure it must be as Craig had said, that she was concealing a secret that was having a terrible effect on her. A casual glance might not have betrayed the true state of her feelings, for her dark hair and large brown eyes and the tan of many suns on her face and arms betokened anything but the neurasthenic. One felt instinctively that she was, with all her ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... now the die was being cast less than a mile away across the roofs. The soil of Rome is the most deeply laden in the world with human memories, which somehow exhale a subtle fragrance that even the most casual stranger cannot escape, that condition the children of the soil. The roots of the modern Italian run far down into the mould of ancient things: his distant ancestors have done much of his political thinking for ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... men and boys, bearing teapots and billies, came and went about a huge copper, steaming over a fire, where the racing club dispensed hot water free of charge, a generosity chiefly intended to prevent the casual lighting of fires by the picnickers. All over the paddock people were hastening through the business of the midday meal; the men anxious to get it over before the real excitement of the day began with the racing, the women equally keen to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sight, than there appeared, "snooping" up the street, that sheep in wolfs clothing, Long John Butterfield. Instantly Yetmore's resolution was taken. Seizing a broom, he stepped outside and made pretense to sweep the sidewalk, and as Long John, with a casual nod, sauntered past, the angry storekeeper caught his ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... so far from wishing to organize the states-general, sought to annul them. It preferred the casual resistance of the great bodies of the nation, to sharing authority with a permanent assembly. The separation of the orders favoured its views; it reckoned on fomenting their differences, and thus preventing ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... that casual turning, had seen what none aboard the Stellar, even the lookout above, had seen. The airplane, which had neither wheels nor pontoons, had risen, as Aphrodite is said to have risen, out of the waves! He had seen the wings come ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... pretty busybody, outwardly just like Miss IRIS HOEY, comes to Peter Keppel's studio and hears that this casual youth has got into a deplorable habit of putting off his marriage with her friend Milly. She (Judy) will see to that! She assumes the role of a notorious Chelsea model, whom proper Peter has never seen. Peter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... instinct and the intellect will mar the full power of the spiritual life: and that an essential part of the self's readjustment to reality must consist in the uniting of these partners, as intellect and intuition are united in creative art. The noblest music, most satisfying poetry are neither the casual results of uncriticized inspiration nor the deliberate fabrications of the brain, but are born of the perfect fusion of feeling and of thought; for the greatest and most fruitful minds are those which are rich and active ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... Dennis, in his heavy handed way, showed some realization of what the issues were both in "The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion" (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698) ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... themselves in their ponchos on the bare floor in a corner of the habitation, they are soon asleep. But sleep does not visit me so easily. An uncomfortable impression remains, which has not been lessened by the casual remark of the owner of the hut regarding the habits of the scorpions. "Very knowing creatures, senor," he says, as he obsequiously helps to arrange my couch in the middle of the floor—a position chosen by myself—"they have a habit of dropping from the roof on to ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so successfully practised by the two. Moreover, as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... circumstances might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet's eyes in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his estimation of a character ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... without some peculiarity of manner: but that manner may be good or bad, and a little care will at least preserve it from being bad: to make it good, there must, I think, be something of natural or casual felicity, which ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... his followers to have taken place in the previous November. Even if we had no further evidence, the fact that St. Teresa is not always reliable in her calculation should have warned us not to rely too much upon a somewhat casual statement. In the first chapter, section 7, she positively asserts that she was rather less than twelve years old at the death of her mother, whereas we know that she was at least thirteen years and eight months old. As to the profession we have overwhelming evidence that it took place ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... of education as a means of earning a material livelihood later, and, if possible, rearing a mansion and stocking its larder and garage. It is, I repeat, a grandly materialistic age, wherein, to the casual observer, spirituality is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dressed, happy-go-lucky fellows enter together. One is fingering a guitar without playing any particular tune, and the other has his hat cocked over his eyes in a burlesque, dude-like manner. There are casual greetings.) ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... faced maitre d'hotel, who presided over our portion of the room, came up smiling, with an inquiry as to our coffee. He exchanged a casual sentence or two with Mr. Parker, bowed and passed on. Mr. Parker, a moment later, with a little smile lifted the newspaper. The packet had disappeared. He noticed my look ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a week Coryndon had slipped into the ways of Mangadone, slipped in quietly and without causing much comment. He went to the Club with Hartley and made the acquaintance of nearly all his host's friends, and they, in return, gave him the casual notice accorded to a passing stranger who had no part or lot in their lives or interests. Coryndon was very quiet and listened to everything; he listened to a great deal in the first three days, and Fitzgibbon, a barrister, offered to take him round ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... great pipe organ was to be installed in Festival Hall, and that orchestras and bands were to be engaged, the early speculative musical labors of the directorate ended. Casual indeed was the attention paid to music during all of the early part of the pre-Exposition period. Material interests—and there were millions of them—cried for consideration, while the still, small voice of music was drowned ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... shared by the prudent housewife in charge of the writer's domestic affairs. Jessie contributed to and participated in our work in this wise: She would sit and admiringly watch the writer at his work, wagging her abridged tail cordially whenever he bestowed a casual glance upon her, threatening violence to every intruder, warning her master of the approach of every garrulous visitor, and oftentimes, when she felt lonely, insisted on climbing up into her master's lap and slumbering there while he wrote and wrote away. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... characters occurring in other cases as casual anomalies. Papaver bracteatum monopetalum. Desmodium gyrans and monophyllous varieties. Peltate leaves and ascidia. Flowers on ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... with a casual air which had a good deal of tact in it. "And black makes you so wonderfully fair and aerial. You scarcely look quite real in it; you might float away. But you ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... opposing the entry of the Germans from Belgian territory. The plea therefore that has been put forward that the British have now dealt the Germans 'a felon's blow' can only be put forward by persons who are either ignorant or heedless of what has been a matter of casual conversation all over England these last three years; and Sir Edward Grey himself was so convinced that the German Government knew what the consequences of a violation of Belgian neutrality would be that he informed Sir Francis Bertie on July 31st that the 'German ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... said, with a deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for not thinking. The ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... avoided looking at Miss Falconer, but at this point, turning my head a trifle, I gave her a casual glance. Her eyes had blackened as they had done that night on the deck; her face had paled, and her breath was coming fast. But as I looked, her gaze fell, and her lashes wavered; and I knew that whatever came she did not mean ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... supernatural agency, or in the influence of casual occurrences, or of natural phenomena on the destinies of man which has no foundation in ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... could not comprehend such a man, and he gave to her but the casual, respectful sympathy which he thought due to a gentlewoman who had lost much like so many other thousands in the South. After a brief call he hobbled away on his crutches, forgetting Mrs. Hunter and, indeed, almost everything ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... confusion of ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan, without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result of modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated. Divine intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But while the system was taking wing, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of the Revenue, in regard to which Hyde had again to mediate between two extremes. There were, doubtless, some who wished that the complete supremacy of Parliament should be secured by making the Crown depend entirely upon casual and arbitrary Parliamentary grants. In Hyde's view this was inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, was certain to lead to friction, and would inevitably make Parliament the sole sovereign power in the State. But ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... especially when it be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger, more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep leather ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the beginning. My own conversion to spiritualism came about, like that of so many others, through the more or less casual remark of a Friend. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... shock. Altogether, Diana felt that her deed of daring had fallen very flat. She was annoyed that no one congratulated her upon it. She considered that for a girl of fourteen it was rather a record. Monty would not be able to sneer at "Miss America" again. She strolled in a casual way past the font which he was decorating, and made a final effort to wring from ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... indefinable horror, more awful to their imaginations than the great cataract itself, thought not so much upon the means by which they were brought into their present painful position, as upon the impossibility of escape from it. To the eye of a casual wayfarer these handsome young people, driving abroad through the dewy freshness of the morning, with the long lovely day before them, could not be considered objects ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the departed roam, she falls, Here learns her destin'd path. Soon as the place Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams, Distinct as in the living limbs before: And as the air, when saturate with showers, The casual beam refracting, decks itself With many a hue; so here the ambient air Weareth that form, which influence of the soul Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where The fire moves, thither follows, so henceforth The new form on the spirit follows still: Hence hath it semblance, and is shadow ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... married the one woman in the world, and you find you have married a host—that is to say, a hostess. Instead of making a home for you she makes you something between an ethnographical museum and a casual ward. You find your rooms littered with people and teacups and things, strange creatures that no one could possibly care for, that seem scarcely to care for themselves. You go about the house treading upon chance geniuses, and get tipped by inexperienced guests. And even when she does not ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... more nearly balanced than many may be disposed to admit: for in estimating them we are very apt to forget how large an amount of our present physiological knowledge respecting the functions of these organs has been the immediate result of casual observations made on the effects of disease." William James expressed the same thought some decades later, when he emphasized that the abnormal was but the normal exaggerated and magnified, played upon by the limelight, and therefore the best teacher and indicator of the exact definition ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... then; small things, but significant. A casual eye glancing over the ranks of the Black Fleet as it lay around the scene of the tragedy, waiting for orders, would not have noticed any difference. The launch containing the fleet's admiral, which had been fussing about with its load of officers ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... view of all the valley. When he reached the first of these places the rider looked back and down and saw the posse skirting rapidly on his side of the river, behind him and close to the cliff. They rode at an easy lope, and he could see that their heads were bent to watch the ground. Even at this casual gait they would reach the point at which he and the gray must swing onto the floor of the valley before him unless he urged Molly to top speed. He must get there at a sufficient distance from them to escape close rifle fire, and certainly beyond point-blank revolver ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... understood, and how dutifully the casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame of success remains when the motives of attempts are forgotten; and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprized to be reminded that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in which, while all Europe ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Even those who live in "residential parks" are sometimes forced (albeit with a curious sense of personal injury) to accept the idea that they who have greatly suffered find relief in "queer" ways. Mockwooders, assisting at the Heartholm tea-hour, and noting Berber among other casual guests, merely felt ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Lady Glencora had left her that she began to understand the subject fully, and to feel that she might possibly have been of service in a great danger. But it was too late now. Then she strove to comfort herself with the reflection that a casual meeting at an evening party in London could not be perilous in the same degree as a prolonged sojourn together in a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... as to this peculiar growth of the vegetation do not depend upon the results of a few casual observations, for he has given the matter most systematic and prolonged attention, and noted upon hundreds of charts the dates when the vegetation has first appeared in various places and latitudes after the passage of the water down ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... always tried to keep my promises and to guard the secrets of others. For these reasons I proposed, in case I neglected or forgot to destroy them myself, to leave a direction that this should be done by my executors. Further, I have been careful to make no allusion whatever to them either in casual conversation or in anything else that I may have written, my desire being that this page of my life should be kept quite private, something known only to myself. Therefore, too, I never so much as hinted ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... that he had no more to offer me, but that as gold was of no value in the country, and was not particularly sought after, it was only occasionally that a stray nugget or a handful of dust was found; and that the contents of the bags represented the casual findings of many years. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... them were now alive, he could not guess. He had to remind himself that they were the people who had burned Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne alive; that two of the three bombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had been made in Keegark, by Keegarkans, and that, with a few casual factors altered, he was seeing what would have happened to Konkrook. Perhaps every Terran felt a superstitious dread of nuclear energy turned to the purposes of war; small wonder, after what they had ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... standing and both gentlemen reached for it; but it was into the secretary's hand she put it, though her husband's was much the nearer. As Mr. Steele received it he gave it the casual glance natural under the circumstances,—a glance which instantly, however, took on an air of surprise ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... from attic to cellar in the early nightfall, when every young Murchison tore after every other, possessed, like cats, by a demoniac ecstasy of the gloaming. And the garden, with the autumn moon coming over the apple trees and the neglected asparagus thick for ambush, and a casual untrimmed boy or two with the delicious recommendation of being utterly without credentials, to join in the rout and be trusted to make for the back fence without further hint at the voice of Mrs ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of these cases may perhaps be accounted for by solitary birds not finding one of their own species to pair with. With other birds, as Mr. Jenner Weir has reason to believe, hybrids are sometimes the result of the casual intercourse of birds building in close proximity. But these remarks do not apply to the many recorded instances of tamed or domestic birds, belonging to distinct species, which have become absolutely fascinated with each other, although living with ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... art to be philosophically considered, it is indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... felt a chill underlying her most casual words to-day. What had become of the freemasonry between them they had both so readily recognized ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... their helpers men more happily endowed than themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of the world-stage ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this theme exhaustively, Dwight usually speaking in the third person and always with his shoulder turned a bit from his wife. It was inconceivable, the gusto with which they proceeded. Ina had assumed for the purpose an air distrait, casual, attentive to the scene about them. But gradually ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... five minutes all I did was to sit back and breathe. Then I lit my pipe, that was dry because it was inside my shirt; bailed the unnecessary water out of the canoe and the immediate neighborhood of my legs; and, without meaning to, turned a casual eye on the ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... did its eyes meet mine, O'Donnell; not once did it glare at the natives who were hiding on the banks of the cutting; but it stole silently on its way with a something in its movements that left no doubt but that it was engaged in no casual venture. I remembered, O'Donnell, that my wife had promised to come with Eric to meet me along the cutting, as she was sure no tiger would be there. I ran as fast as I could, and yet somehow my feet seemed weighted down. I cursed my folly for not ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... could, to any serious extent, be amongst the causes of war, then it would become a hopeful duty to combine personal influences that should take an opposite direction. If casual causes could be supposed chiefly to have promoted war, how easy for a nation to arrange permanent and determinate causes against it! The logic of these anecdotes seemed to argue that the whole fountains of war were left to the government of chance and the windiest of levities; that war was not ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... soundness of her reflections on many incidents and characters in history. Accounts of chivalrous deeds had an especial charm for her. Hume was still her favorite author. And it happened that, while the gallantry of the loyal champions of Charles I. was fresh in her memory, a casual conversation threw in her way an opportunity of doing honor to the self-devoted heroism of a French soldier whom the proudest of the British cavaliers might have welcomed as a brother, but whose valiant and self-sacrificing ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... of a Territorial government for the District of Columbia the improvement of the condition of the city of Washington and surroundings and the increased prosperity of the citizens are observable to the most casual visitor. The nation, being a large owner of property in the city, should bear, with the citizens of the District, its just share of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... her trucks, on the wearer's treelike neck; weird serpents and smoke-breathing dragons writhed about his arms from wrist to shoulder, and a red star on the back of one gnarled hand kept watch and watch with a blue star on its opposite member. Barry chuckled audibly as, in a casual flourish, one great arm was half turned, showing the comparative white of the underarm upon which was blazoned a pair of gory hearts in collision, impaled on a harpoon apparently. Around this work of art a flamboyant motto announced to the world: "I ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... such an out-of-the-way corner of the world that it requires quite unusual energy to get here at all, and I am thus delivered from casual callers; while, on the other hand, people I love, or people who love me, which is much the same thing, are not likely to be deterred from coming by the roundabout train journey and the long drive at the end. Not the least of my many blessings is ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... and evinced no curiosity about his world. She had touched it on the extreme edge, and she was content with that, satisfied probably that this unexpected renewal of their connection was most casual—too fortunate to happen again. So she took him into a perfectly easy intimacy; it was the nearness that comes between two people when there is slight ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... about it. She winced a little as she thought of the faint expression of surprise the knowledge would call up in his impassive face and cold grey eyes. She could well imagine the slight difference in his manner to her afterwards, scarcely noticeable to the casual observer, impossible to be overlooked by her. She told herself she did not care what he thought; but she did. Pride was grasping at a desired, but impossible, equality with this man, and here, were the means used only known, was ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... common chord of kinship of character between the races, was told me by a well-known American painter of naval and military subjects. He was the guest of the Forty-fourth (Essex) at, I think, Gibraltar, when in the course of dinner the British officer on his right broke a silence with the casual remark: ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... failed to excite the attention of the monarch, ventured to hint that his majesty would do well to seek repose; a gesture of the king retained him in his place. The physician, in his turn, hazarded a casual observation on the injurious tendency of late hours. The significant innuendoes were, however, thrown away on Charles, who replied to them by muttering between his teeth, "You may remain; I have no wish to sleep." This permission, with which the drowsy courtiers would willingly have dispensed, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... left alone, helped himself to a cigar and strolled about the room. The pile of letters on the table caught his attention. Idly he turned the envelopes over, examining the addresses. All at once his interest became less casual; one of the written names ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Santa Clara as a university as well as a church necessitated the adaptation of the old cloisters to meet the modern conditions. Therefore the casual visitor would scarcely notice that the reception-room into which he is ushered is a part of the old cloisters. The walls are about three feet thick, and are of adobe. In the garden the beams of the cloister roofs are to ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... By this casual, spontaneous outbreaking, as it might be, the deacon got another clue to the stranger's knowledge, that gave him increased uneasiness. He was now convinced that, by means of the masters of the brig and ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Strange beasts, entrapped in the swamps and forests, passed through the capital on their journey to Cairo and Europe. Complex and imposing reports of revenue and expenditure were annually compiled. An elaborate and dignified correspondence was maintained between Egypt and its great dependency. The casual observer, astonished at the unusual capacity for government displayed by an Oriental people, was tempted to accept the famous assertion which Nubar Pasha put into the mouth of the Khedive Ismail: 'We ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... happiness have in a manner colored all the rest of my life, memories that are all the fairer and fill the greater space in my thoughts because since then it has been my fate never to be understood. To this day there are scenes of no special interest for a casual observer, but full of bitter significance for a broken heart, which recall those vanished days, and the love that is not ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... make the undergraduates draw, he made them dig. He had noticed a very bad bit of road on the Hinksey side, and heard that it was nobody's business to mend it: meanwhile the farmers' carts and casual pedestrians were bemired. He sent for his gardener Downes, who had been foreman of the street-sweepers; laid in a stock of picks and shovels; took lessons in stone-breaking himself, and called on his friends to spend their recreation times in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... parting words of the president, and resolved upon "hanging on to his trust," whatever happened. But he was agreeably surprised to find that he was received at the office with a certain respect not usually shown to the casual visitor. "Your caller turned up to-day"—Randolph started—"from the Eureka bank," continued the clerk. "Sorry we could not give your name, but you know you only left a deposit in your letter and sent a messenger for your key yesterday afternoon. When you came you ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and tail-feathers. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... provincial town; an unemployed philosopher gazing sternly over his long beard; a regiment of foot-soldiers or a squadron of cavalry on the move; a horseman scouring along with a despatch of the emperor or the senate; a casual traveller coming at a lively trot in his hired gig; a couple of ladies carefully protecting their complexions from sun and dust as they rode in a kind of covered wagonette; a pair of scarlet-clad outriders preceding a gorgeous but rumbling coach, in which a Roman noble ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... magic destiny de Mauprat figured for her. It did not elate her, it did not disturb her; she scarcely realised it. She loved animals, and she saw no reason to despise a stalwart youth. It had been her fortune to know two or three in the casual, unconventional manner of villages, and there were few in the land, great or humble, who did not turn twice to look at her as she passed through the Vier Marchi, so noble was her carriage, so graceful and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an easy matter to secure a text for such an occasion as this; not because the texts are so few in number but rather because they are so many, for one has only to turn over the pages of the Bible in the most casual way to find them facing him at ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... fastening them by a hook of his own contrivance, on the inside; for Evan had made this wardrobe do service before. Then he laid himself down as comfortably as possible, and applied his eye to some small holes punctured in the dark wood, and quite invisible to casual outside observation. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
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