"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 Tuesdays ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... 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
... 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 from ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... 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
... casual wit of a born Parisian, called Golden Mouth a dolt. It was all right not to get drunk all the time or chase women, but still, a man must be a man, or else he might as well wear skirts. Coupeau teased ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 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
... 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 of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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
... casual survey of this when he heard the door of the bedroom click behind him. He turned round, jumped for the door, turned the handle and pulled, but it did not yield. As he did so he thought he heard ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... 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
... the trees. 'Murder! murder!' he kept repeating, as though iteration 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 passer-by, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... 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 |
