"Vigil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who were wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon these same gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used to come down here to repent—if she ever did repent—of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of dawn were paling the eastern sky, and all the multitudinous sounds in the neighbourhood of the water-hole had long subsided into complete silence, that the watchers felt at liberty to cease their vigil and snatch an hour or two of much-needed rest. Meanwhile, Grosvenor remained completely sunk in the lethargic sleep which had resulted from the saturation of his ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... After my long vigil on the previous night I speedily fell asleep, but even in my slumbers I heard the occasional serenades of bears and wolves, who seemed to be the principal inhabitants of that wild region. I awoke more than once, and was convinced that ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... by the moonlight; the trees on the lawn threw long shadows on the grass, and far away, in their mysterious and majestic silence, stood the eternal mountains; like gigantic watchers, they kept their vigil over the placid scene beneath—the vigil of untold centuries. Cloudless, unsympathizing, changeless, they had no part in the busy drama of human experience their loftiness overlooked, and now they loomed with shadowy outline, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a great part of the Song is embodied, with other Scripture odes, in what is styled "the Canon at Great Matins in the All Night Vigil" (Euchology, translated by G.V. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... saw Gisbert's Death of the Comuneros reproduced as a chromo. For a long, long while, I always seemed to see that picture hanging in all its variety of colour on the wall before me at night. For months and months after my vigil with the body of the man who had been garroted outside of Pamplona, I never entered a dark room but that his image rose up before me in all its gruesome details. I also passed through a period of disagreeable dreams. Some time would elapse after I awoke before I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... swept in her carriage to take the air in the Plaza; at night, when she slept, some high-ceilinged, iron-barred room of that house had sheltered her. He had pictured himself prowling outside the empty mansion and uncared-for garden, thinking of the exile, keeping vigil in the shadow of her home, freshly resolving to win back her ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... did not want to walk. She did not want to eat. She was scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her long vigil in the chair. She was not conscious of herself and her problems, any more. Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the little mite she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured with bitterness that was left ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... through avarice, with feigned words shall they make merchandise of you. This is specially the way of all false teachers, that they preach from avarice, that they may fill their belly, just as we see that not one of them has held a mass or vigil gratis. So, too, there is never a cloister or monastery built, whereto there must not fall a full measure of tribute. So, too, there is not a cloister in the world that serves the world for God's sake. It is all of it done merely for gold. But if any one really preaches faith, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... could scarcely be supported, at length went back to her room. Madeline still slept, with unusual calmness. The vigil was resumed, and nothing again disturbed it until white dawn began to glimmer ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... The day following Coryndon's vigil outside the lonely house by the river was dull and grey, with a woolly sky and a tepid stillness that hung like a tangible weight in the air. Its drowsiness affected even the native quarter, but it in no way lessened ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... two men (who, like Aaron and Hur so steadily sustained the hands of Darwin in his long vigil), behind the two authors of Natural Selection themselves in their devotion to Lyell. How touching is Hooker's tribute of affection on the death of his friend, 'My loved, my best friend, for well nigh forty ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... the Omaha youth was taught the Tribal Prayer. He was to sing it during the four nights and days of his vigil in some lonely place. As he left his home, his parents put clay on his head; and, to teach him self-control, they placed a bow and arrows in his hand, with the injunction not to use them during his long fast, no matter how great the temptation might be. He was bidden to weep as he sang the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... case of anyone else in Glen St. Mary. Life had taught her to be brave, to be patient, to love, to forgive. She had watched the ship on which her lover went sailing out of Four Winds Harbour into the sunset. But, though she watched long, she had never seen it coming sailing back. That vigil had taken girlhood from her eyes, yet she kept her youth to a marvellous degree. Perhaps this was because she always seemed to preserve that attitude of delighted surprise towards life which most of us leave behind in childhood—an attitude which not only made ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... happened to me to be tempted once in this way; and I remember it was on the day before the vigil of Corpus Christi,—a feast to which I have great devotion, though not so great as I ought to have. The trial then lasted only till the day of the feast itself. But, on other occasions, it continued one, two, and even three weeks and—I ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... "Chack! chack!" but occasionally she tried to screech like her ebon consort, her voice breaking ludicrously in the unfeminine effort. The evening before, I had flushed a youngster about which a great hubbub was being made, but on the day of my long vigil in the meadow, I could not, by the most careful search, find a single bantling, either in or out of a nest. It is odd how effectually the young are able to conceal themselves in the short grass and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... when all but one ceased suddenly from wine; that one, who still continued to drink as he saw fit, was the host. He knew the reason of their abstention; he had heard the trumpet in the harbour that told the hour and proclaimed the fast and vigil, and he felt, as all did, that at last the figure and the presence of which none would speak—the figure and the presence of the Faith—had entered that room in spite of its dignity and its ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... him so, war existed as yet only as a spiritual conflict in which men proved themselves heroes or cowards: and he meant to be a hero. For him everything lay in the will to dare or to endure. He recalled tales of old knights keeping vigil by their arms in solitary chapels, and he questioned the far hill-tops and the stars—What substitute for faith supported him? Did he believe in God? Yes, after a fashion—in some tremendous and overruling ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... atmosphere of the Imperial study for the repose of the quiet corridor. Its perfect tranquillity was as balm to my quivering nerves. Of the man in green nothing was to be seen. Only the trooper continued his silent vigil. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the little town when the three Americans took up their vigil opposite the open face of the Pueblo along the river. All that night they stood on guard but not a human being ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... His vigil lasted but a quarter of an hour. At twenty-five minutes to eleven, Helen Cumberly came running down the steps of the hotel and hurried toward the Strand. Like a shadow, Gianapolis, throwing away a half-smoked cigarette, glided around the corner, paused and so timed his return that ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Pasqual without feeling himself accursed. Never again could he bear to sit on his high stool at the lunch counter in the railroad eating- house, where he had boarded for ten years, and watch a stranger taking cash. He had watched Donna's mother so long that the vigil had become a part of his being—a sort of religious ceremony—and in this little tragedy of life no understudy could ever star for Harley P. Her beautiful sad eyes were closed forever now and the tri-daily joy of his sordid ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... burst the vanished hero's lofty mound; Far on the solitary shore he sleeps; He fell, and falling nations mourned around; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps: Is that a temple where a God may dwell? Why, e'en the worm at last disdains ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Eve when they moved him, and late that night Beth kept her vigil by him, sitting over the fire with her elbows on her knees and her face between her hands, listening dreamily to the clang and clamour of the church-bells, which floated up to her over the snow, mellowed by ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... our nightly vigil draws to a close. Still we move forward, amid the jangling rivalry of a thousand bells. Soon the Proctor adds yet another to the list of victims. This one leads us a pretty dance from Carfax to Summertown, and then declares he ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... also understand why he elected to sleep here. The loneliness and grandeur of the environment, with its absence of any sign of human life and habitation, convey that sense of aloofness which, in a man like Rhodes, is the inevitable penalty that true greatness exacts. The ages seem to be keeping vigil with his spirit. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of chill in the air, Selwyn rose at seven, and dressing himself quickly, left the house for a walk before breakfast. His body was fatigued from the long vigil of the mind which had kept at bay all but a short hour of sleep, but he felt the necessity of exercise, as though in the striding of limbs his torturing thoughts ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... boldest glances fail, Contemplating each hurrying mood Of thought that to that aspect pale Sent up the heart's o'erboiling flood Through that vast vigil, while his eyes Watch'd till the slow reluctant skies Should kindle, and the vision dread, Of all his livelong years be read! In youth, his faith-led spirit doom'd Still to be baffled and betray'd, His manhood's vigorous noon consumed Ere Power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... than once he had gone two nights without sleep. Also, he assumed that the hunt would be less spirited during the night. Members of the posse would themselves be drowsy, but they could spell each other and in that way maintain their vigil and secure a few hours ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... at a definite and drastic decision. Weighing in his mind the importance of the matter, and the significance of our relation to it, he insisted that we both test—and if possible destroy—the horror of the house by a joint night or nights of aggressive vigil in that musty and ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the most mediocre to be its governors. The force of the human mind was in other things.—So there was nothing to be done but to trust to the declivity down which they were moving. This both governors and governed were doing. Europe looked like a vast armed vigil. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... new life began. In the midst of these troubles, while he was still writing his vain letters and receiving the vain sympathy of his friends in the injury he had felt, his mother fell into serious illness, and it was plain that the end of her long vigil was near. With that strange impulse which led Hawthorne, out of his sensitive reserve and almost morbid seclusion, to make an open book of his private life, writing it all at large in his journals, he spent the hours ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... its incorporation charter was not granted until 1899, when it was created a municipal borough. In 1200 King John granted the prior of Bridlington a weekly market on Saturday and an annual fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Henry VI. in 1446 granted the prior three new fairs yearly on the vigil, day and morrow of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the Deposition of St John, late prior ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of her vigil toward dawn, four-and-twenty hours almost to the minute after the Zeppelin and its crew had been brought down. Suddenly Eagle opened his eyes and fixed them on the nurse. At first he stared as if dazed by what he saw; then came a flash of ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... never lucky when Christmas came without a wolf-hunt: but that year it was like to be so; for, as I have said, the snow kept falling at intervals, with days of fog and thaw between, till the night before the vigil. In my youth, the Lithuanians kept Christmas after the fashion of old northern times. It began with great devotion, and ended in greater feasting. The eve was considered particularly sacred: many traditional ceremonies and strange beliefs hung about it, and the more ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... have doubtless done during your lives. Your sentence is that ye be hanged at cockcrow to-morrow, which was the hour when, if your teachings cling to my memory, the first of your craft turned traitor to his master. If, however, you tire of your all-night vigil, you can at once obtain release by crying at the top of your voices 'So die all Christians.' Thus you will hang yourselves, and so remove some responsibility from my perhaps overladen conscience. The hanging ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... those two were keeping their lonely vigil, while the rest followed the example of the men who had not yet been awake, and sought in sleep and in simple trustfulness for the rest which was to give them strength for the labours of ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... have given something for a peep-hole in the partition, to be able to study the countenance of Dupont unaware that he was under scrutiny. But he had to content himself with keeping vigil at the windows, making sure that Dupont did not drop off at some one of those many way-stations which the train was so scrupulous ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... "was such a lovely girl. Her grandfather was my mother's cousin. What does that make her? Anyway, my cousin, Gregory Vigil, is her first cousin once removed—the Hampshire Vigils. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on her lips—I recognised the gesture she had addressed me in the afternoon—and, though the nurse was about to go to rest, had not encouraged her sister-in-law to relieve her of any part of her vigil. But certainly at that time the boy's state was far from reassuring—his poor little breathing so painful; and what change could have taken place in him in those few hours that would justify Beatrice in denying ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call'd the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, And rouse him at the name of Crispian, He that outlives this day, and sees old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say to-morrow is Saint Crispian: Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars; And say, these wounds I had on Crispin's day Then shall our names, Familiar in their mouths as household words,— Harry, the king, Bedford and Exeter, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... seemed below them. They had brought some simple food with them, and they laid it behind a jutting bit of rock. When the sight-seers boarded the laboring little train again and were dragged back down the mountain, their night of vigil would begin. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... On the Vigil of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, and in the year of our Lord 1395, was consecrated the first chapel on the Mount of St. Agnes the Virgin, and the first altar therein was dedicated in honour of that saint, and of the most blessed Mary Magdalene, by Hubert, ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... at four; he saw the sun rise for the first time in his life. He neither enjoyed nor appreciated the novelty. Never had he witnessed anything so mournfully depressing as the first grey tints that crept up to mock him in his vigil; never had he seen anything so ghastly as the soft red glow ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... almost the entire night taking turns in our tireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeply moved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thought that wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with the sidereal universe than with ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... of Pentecost come round, and many were the knights that Arthur had made since first he founded the Order of the Round Table; yet no knight had appeared who dared claim the seat named by Merlin the Siege Perilous. At last, one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... him with the genial heartiness of a man who knows that he has finished his vigil and that he can now lie down to rest. The guarding of a large herd at night is always an anxious time. Cattle are strange things to handle. A stampede will often involve a week's weary scouring ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... "patient toil and vigil long" of poor Glazier went for nothing. The Confederate authorities seem to have treated the matter very good-humoredly, frankly expressed their surprise at the ingenuity and patience of the subterranean engineers, and manfully set about the task of recapturing the fugitives. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... attempt to communicate with the detective (or detectives) who shared our vigil; we took up a position close under the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... so startling that I had many an hour of anxious conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. But ten days later I was summoned to my uncle's room. He implored me once more to wed Dudley—to listen to the appeal of an old and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... sight Bud and the others had caught of a stray bunch of steers being hazed over toward the river, across which lay open range. The cowboys who relieved Babe reported nothing out of the ordinary as having happened during their night vigil. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... duty, and marks a higher grade of intrinsic worth than pervades whites of like advantages and conditions. We are told in the Old Testament Scriptures, "four days and four nights should the fires burn," &c. In fulfillment of this sacred injunction, we find the midnight vigil carefully kept by these Indians four days and four nights at the graves of their departed. A small fire is kindled for the purpose near the grave at sunset, where the nearest relatives convene and maintain a continuous lamentation till ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... we going to do, little dog?" he whispered. "What are we going to do if—if our captain should—if he shouldn't—" he had no words to finish. Kamiska took her place again by his side, and the two resumed their vigil. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... all honesty, that I had no inclination to sleep. I put on my dressing-gown, threw a rug over his knees, and took my place opposite to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early spring-time, which even the birds do ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... disgustedly. It was poetry. This man Pett appeared to have a perfect obsession for poetry. One would never have suspected it, to look at him. Jimmy had just resigned himself, after another glance at the shelf, to a bookless vigil, when his eye was caught by a name on the cover of the last in the row so unexpected that he had to look again ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... swiftly up the road, and straight to the railway tracks. She entered the house, the dark, wrecked house, where from the second story window, a perpetual look-out was kept, like the watch of the Vestal Virgins. They came to the open door, and heard her ascend to the room of the vigil. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... carried with slim to Tusculum, where he used to pass the summer season; and having consecrated it in an apartment of his house, he ever after worshipped it with a monthly sacrifice, and an anniversary vigil. Though but a very young man, he kept up an ancient but obsolete custom, and now nowhere observed, except in his own family, which was, to have his freedmen and slaves appear in a body before him twice a day, morning and evening, to offer him ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... brain of Mary Fawcett during that long vigil. Her mind for the first time dwelt with kindness, almost with softness, on the memory of her husband. Beside this awful Dane his shadow was god-like. He had been high-minded and a gentleman in his worst tantrums, and there was no ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... progress, from the earliest yellow glimmering of the lamp in the darksome wynd, till the last little twinkling light in the dwelling of the widow that sits and sighs companionless with her distaff in the summits of the city. And we continued our vigil till they were all one by one extinguished, save only the candles at the bedsides of the dying. Then we twined a portion of our clothes into a rope, and, having fastened it to the iron bar, soon drew it from its place in ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... grate, and there was a tin bucket full of coals beside the fender from which to replenish it. She was very cold, so she drew her single chair up to the blaze and held her hands over it. It was a lonesome and melancholy vigil, while the wind whistled through the branches of the trees and moaned drearily in the cracks and crannies of the old house. When were her friends coming? Perhaps something had occurred to detain them to-day. This morning such a thing would have appeared to her to be ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friend—I may not weep. My soul goes out to Him who bled; I pray for Christ's compassion deep On mothers, lovers—all who keep The woeful vigil, having read The joyous letters of ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... if I could weep, My tears might well be shed To think I was not near, to keep One vigil o'er thy bed: To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, To fold thee in a faint embrace, Uphold thy drooping head; And show that love, however vain, Nor thou nor I ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the sky, You'd hear his hasting step go by, To gain the bridge beside the deep, That where its wildest torrents leap Hangs thread-like o'er the surge, Just there, upon its awful verge, His vigil-hour to keep. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of emotions, firmness of purpose, cheerfulness of outlook and vigor of thought and memory, then the tired man, worn out by work or a long vigil, is changed in character. Such a person in the majority of cases is irritable, showing lack of control and emotion; he slackens in his life's purposes, loses cheerfulness and outlook and finds it difficult to concentrate his thoughts or to recall ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... devoted Don Juan looked with a sad eye upon that desolate chamber—upon the dresses of his beloved mistress scattered over the floor; upon the cradle of the young Count, where he had so lately slept, rosy and smiling, under the vigil of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... brave heart and a courteous tongue on Betty's part. Coming toward her all in dainty gray and white was a lady she would have recognised anywhere. That face, that had been the Madonna of her dreams, both waking and sleeping, since the first night it had kept its smiling vigil above her little bed, could belong to no one but her ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he stole across the road and wound his way through the scraggly hedgerow and into the brambles beyond. Just as he was settling himself down for his vigil, a most astonishing ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... should think the long sleep better than the agonised vigil. But men, miserable as they are, cling so to any thing like life, that they probably would prefer damnation to quiet. Besides, they think themselves so important in the creation, that nothing less ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... lies quiet like a child asleep, The deep heart of the Heaven is calm and still, Must thou alone a restless vigil keep, And with thy sobbing all the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... making up for the vigil of the night before. The submarine rested on the sea floor, in a hollow of the undulating Bank, and one of the crew kept watch in case a "trawl" should come ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... wheel your sacred dances through the glade with flowers bedight, All ye who are partakers of the holy festal rite; And I will with the women and the holy maidens go Where they keep the nightly vigil, an ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... softly, keeping his chest covered from the air, giving him his medicine at the proper intervals, and putting drink to his lips when he needed it. But never trusted her eyelids to close for a moment. Jenny shared her vigil by nodding in an easy chair; and Solomon Weismann, a young medical student, by sleeping soundly on the wooden settee in the hall. So passed the night. After midnight, to Edith's great relief, his fever began to abate, and he sank into a sweet sleep. In the morning Solomon roused himself, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... second by second, the dreary night had worn away. It was full morning when the train had halted inside the familiar station. After his vigil, the healthy stir of the streets appeared to Weldon like the confused picture of a dream, and it had been like a man in a dream that he had been driven away to the hospital. Then, on the steps, he had seen Ethel, and the dream had been shattered, giving way, for the instant, to ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... passed in this strange vigil. Harney still lay on the bed, motionless and with fixed eyes, as though following his vision to its bitter end. At last he stirred and changed his attitude slightly, and Charity's heart began to tremble. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... most convenient to his hand. Female animals were forbidden the monastery. A monk was not allowed to kiss his mother, not even at Easter, under penalty of excommunication for fifty days. Daily he attended seven services, and had often to keep vigil all night long. There was only one set meal a day; anything more in the way of food consisted of the fragments which a monk laid aside from that meal. No meat was eaten unless by special permission ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... The vigil began. The nurses were in waiting. The family physician would not leave the house. He was a man of great repute in his profession. Dr. Seftel's name was well known to me, but I had never met him before; a man past middle life, smooth shaven, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... took up his vigil. He left his chair at nine o'clock to telephone Charley Abbott that the Secretary had gone to New York, then he returned to his place. Noon came, afternoon waned. As dusk drew on again, Jonas went once ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in the thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in coming to me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he made a better man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And he knew nothing of common Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believed ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Although I could see nothing the situation in the hall was clear. Confident escape was impossible in any other direction the determined girl had taken up her position opposite the door, prepared for a long vigil. All feeling of anger, even of irritation, had by this time left me. The slight falter, the womanly softness of her voice, had robbed me of all resentment, and I was conscious merely of admiration for her courage and loyalty. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... speculation, felt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that are ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an apparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil, haunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre, listeners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding; and painters followed the impulse ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... into the darkness and Dr. Bird settled himself for a long vigil. For an hour nothing broke the stillness of the night. Suddenly the doctor was on his feet, peering downstream. A faint purring murmur came over the water, so faint that no one with less sensitive ears than the doctor's could have detected ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... Mrs Killer and Bellthorp. Then Mrs Riller, whose husband had gone home three hours before, drove away with Bellthorp, and Kitty went into Madame's room, while the sleepy servant, thankful that his vigil for the night was over, went to bed. Kitty found Madame's door ajar, and went in softly, fearful lest she might wake her. She did not know that Selina was in the room, and as she heard the steady breathing of the sleepers, she concluded that Madame ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Indian words which Shad had acquired had not been sufficient to permit him to carry on connected conversation with Manikawan or the other Indians. Denied this privilege for so long, he talked almost incessantly to the three trappers, while the four sat through the hours until daybreak, keeping vigil with Death. He talked of the prospect of continued life, and what a blessed thing it was to know that he was still to be in and of the great and glorious world; of his trying experiences since ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... closed behind him, and once more she took up her solitary vigil at the window. If John would only come! The precious minutes were slipping away. They would never be able to make that train. She wondered what had detained him. Suddenly, a cold chill ran through her. Suppose he had met some one downtown ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... of dawn are in the East. Our vigil is over, and we must fly home to welcome in the holidays. Before we part, join with me, brothers, in resolving that through the coming year we will with ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the question, I am sorry to say. To bring a foreigner (as I am supposed to be) would rouse the clan to rebellion. No, Baron, you have a chance of paying a graceful compliment to your host which you must not lose. Ask Mr. Gallosh to share your vigil." ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... tropic afternoon, the green of sunbright foliage, stared into that shady place through door and window; and Herrick, pacing to and fro on the coral floor, sometimes paused and laved his face and neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long arrears of suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and the harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point when pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and death and life appear indifferent. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his answer. After hours of agony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke's bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! when he remembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in love. "Why not?" He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old life was done with. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should the disseizin of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... for me to commit the child to your care. I appreciate your kindness, but am too much interested in the boy to leave him when the disease is at its crisis, and a cup of coffee will strengthen me for the vigil. You have been to the Asylum this afternoon; tell me something ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... scanning him from the dense bush, under cover of which it was noiselessly approaching. In such a case the leopard would retreat as silently as it had advanced, and the watcher would return home from a fruitless vigil, under the impression that the leopard had never been within a mile of his position. One of the cleverest birds in creation is the ordinary crow of all tropical countries, which lives well by the exercise of its wits; nothing escapes the observation of this bird, and it is the first to discover ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... convent-chimneys seem almost The trumpets of some heavenly host, Setting its watch upon our walls! Where it listeth, there it bloweth; We hear the sound, but no man knoweth Whence it cometh or whither it goeth, And thus it is with the Holy Ghost. O breath of God! O my delight In many a vigil of the night, Like the great voice in Patmos heard By John, the Evangelist of the Word, I hear thee behind me saying: Write In a book the things that thou hast seen, The things that are, and that have been, And the things that shall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... kitchen fire tells me, that last Sabbath only the Auld Lichts held service. Other people realized that they were snowed up. Far up the glen, after it twists out of view, a manse and half a dozen thatched cottages that are there may still show a candle light, and the crumbling gravestones keep cold vigil round the grey old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the sky to the north. A flake trembles against the window; but it is too cold for much snow to-night. The shutter bars the outer ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... "the Ten" 290 (Joined with the Doge) decided his destruction, Met the great Duke at daybreak with a jest, Demanding whether he should augur him "The good day or good night?" his Doge-ship answered, "That he in truth had passed a night of vigil, In which" (he added with a gracious smile) "There often has been question about you."[76] 'Twas true; the question was the death resolved Of Carmagnuola, eight months ere he died; And the old Doge, who knew him doomed, smiled on him 300 With deadly cozenage, eight long months beforehand— Eight ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of their house to her beloved Lady Marina. Possibly she reflected, with a shudder, as she laid the relic on the altar of the oratory of the palazzo Giustiniani, that the remembrance of the constant dangers of Santa Beata had incited the Lady Marina thus to peril her life. Of the long nights of vigil on the floor of the oratory and of many other austerities which had filled those last sad days since the quarrel with Rome had begun, the Lady Beata was forced to give faithful account to the physicians who were summoned in immediate consultation to the bedchamber of the Lady Marina. These practices ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... was to us, timid in the crush, and they were shouldered out. It was not inhumanity; at least, it was not meant to be. It was the way of the city, with every one for himself; and they accepted it, uncomplaining. So they kept their vigil on the stone steps, in storm and fair weather, every night taking turns to watch all who passed. When it was a policeman with a little child, as it was many times between sunset and sunrise, the one on the watch would start up the minute they turned the corner, and run to meet them, eagerly ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... more empty, more dead—the very desolation of slumbering respectability. At the sight of the two lighted windows, very conspicuous from afar, I had the mental vision of Mrs. Haldin in her armchair keeping a dreadful, tormenting vigil under the evil spell of an arbitrary rule: a victim of tyranny and revolution, a sight ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... crept along the narrow plantation lanes, crept past the level cornfields and into the wide pasture, where sunburnt mares were grazing with their wild-eyed, unkempt colts; crept past the marsh, where the heron, disturbed in her solitary vigil, rose upon silent wing and sought some more secluded haunt amid the ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... down on a bench. The prospect of a long vigil brings to his mind a well-known room in which at that hour the lamp burns low on a table laden with humming-birds and insects, but that vision passes swiftly through his mind in the chaos of confused thoughts to which the delirium of ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... devotion and realizing the futility of trying to drive him from his vigil, Terry lay back on the pillow, the rhythmic beat of the propeller in his ears. Asleep, he dreamed, and the chug of the screw became the beat of an engine bearing him away from the home ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... realized that they were snowed up. Far up the glen, after it twists out of view, a manse and half a dozen thatched cottages that are there may still show a candle-light, and the crumbling gravestones keep cold vigil round the gray old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the sky to the north. A flake trembles against the window; but it is too cold for much snow to-night. The shutter bars the outer ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... began to dance hornpipes for his special gratification, or glowered at the shadows until they became instinct with life, and all but induced him to rouse the camp twenty times in the course of his hour's vigil. True to time also, like his predecessor, Disco roused Antonio and immediately ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... was passed in bitter, painful thoughts. With the dawning the bird's innocent songs jarred on her overwrought senses. She looked out of the window by which she had kept her vigil, inhaled the dewy freshness of the air and then ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... heart refuses to be satisfied of the certainty which it knows only too well, they turned away, and each sought his own room. Afterwards, when all was prepared and the room decently arranged, they returned, and alternately through the long night kept their vigil beside the corpse. It is strange, that, in those quiet hours of communion with the loved dead, no thought of relenting towards each ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... phrase "ministers of God." What a remarkable service for God is this wherein we must endure so much suffering, so much affliction, privation, anxiety, stripes, imprisonment, tumult or sedition, labor, watching, fasting, and so on! No mass here, no vigil, no hallucinations of a fictitious service of God; it is the true service of God, which subdues the body and mortifies the flesh. Not, indeed, as if fasting, watching and toiling are to be despised because ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... step! the burden bears you down almost to the ground to-day—into the ground to-morrow. Here stands the Judge to give you rest. Yes, mother of sad eyes and broken spirit! whose long life is a sorrowful vigil, waiting upon the coming of wicked sons, of deceitful daughters—weary, weary, and heavy laden with tribulation, here is the Comforter who shall give you rest. And you, young man, and you, young maiden, sitting here to-day in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... this description may be seen in the cortili of S. Cecilia and SS. Apostoli at Rome. It used to be blessed on the vigil or festival of the Epiphany, as it is now in the Greek and even the Roman church. When churches were built without atria, a vessel of blessed water was placed inside the church: in some of the older churches there is even a well. See Nibby, Dissert. ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... earlier than usual, with unwonted severity; and, week after week, Electra went continually from one sufferer to another, striving to alleviate pain, and to kindle a stray beam of sunshine in the darkened mansion. Unremitted vigil set its pale, infallible signet on her face, but Mr. Clifton either could not or would not see the painful alteration in her appearance; and when Mrs. Young remonstrated with her niece upon the ruinous effects of this tedious confinement ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... comes out from the room. His face is furrowed with the fatigue of his long vigil. But as he speaks the tone of his voice is as that of one who has fought ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... short, we put our hearts into the dressing-up. By nightfall all is completed, and I turn the children out, reserving some few last touches which I invent to surprise them when they come again on Christmas morning. Afterwards I celebrate the Mass for the Vigil, and then always I follow what has been a custom in this parish, I believe, ever since the church was built. I blow out all the candles but two, and remain here, seated, until the day breaks, and the folk assemble to celebrate ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the night wore on apace, while they kept together that customary vigil which it was thought necessary to hold over the lifeless casket from which an immortal jewel ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whom I have not yet ceased to devise all the good I can, entertain such sentiments about me. Why? I am no renegade or runaway slave, you have got hold of. If you carry out what you say, be sure you will have done to death a man who has passed many a vigil in watching over you; who has shared with you many a toil and run many a risk in turn and out of turn; who, thanks to the gracious gods! has by your side set up full many a trophy over the barbarian; who, lastly, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... daily. A week before Vigil (Christmas Eve) he mounted his horse for the first time, and although he felt that he could not do this in his armor, nevertheless he gathered confidence. Besides, he did not expect soon to be obliged to put on the coat of mail and helmet. At the worst he hoped ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... awe. Eberhard, though treating it more as a matter of business, was like enough to his brother to enter into the force of the vows they were about to make; and if the young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform the night-watch over their armour, yet they kept a vigil that impressed their own minds as deeply, and in early morn they went to confession and mass ere the gay parts ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down the road, he retraced his steps; and the moonlight, striking across his great forehead as he came, revealed the furrows ploughed there by an anxiety of which I guessed the cause. The creaking of the wooden stairs and gallery and the whine of an old door announced that he had returned to his vigil. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... let it be dearly understood, are the two tall poplar-trees that keep ceaseless vigil by my gate. I state this fact baldly and unequivocally at the very outset in order to set at rest, once and for ever, all controversies and disputations on that fascinating point. Historians will reach down the ponderous ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... warfare he was now, for the first time, able to form some sort of opinion. The remarkable boldness of the spy at the Garrison home left room for considerable speculation as to his motive. What was his design and what would have been the ending to his sinister vigil? Before Quentin slept that night he came to the drowsy conclusion that luck had really been with him, despite his wound and Courant's escape, and that the sudden exposure of the spy destroyed the foundation for an important ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... collecting their water pots preparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising goats made tentative forays through gaps in the ill-kept fences of neighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats showed that here at least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. Behind a hut perched on a steep hillside, just opposite to the rest-house, two boys were splitting wood with a certain languid industry; further down the road a group of dogs were leisurely working themselves up to quarrelling pitch. Here and there, bands of evil-looking pigs roamed about, busy ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... heart there was a secret, unacknowledged feeling of relief that she was going to try to see Professor Green in spite of Miss Fern. It was a relief, too, to find herself in the outdoors after her long vigil of study. The rain beat on her face and the fresh wind nipped her cheeks ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... their long vigil and arduous labors, the group were glad to find the Kaiser disposed to snatch a few moments of rest. The maps were folded, the dispatch boxes closed, and all prepared to find positions where ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... The Vigil service was being performed in the large church on the eve of the feast of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and there were many visitors. The Abbot himself was conducting the service. Father Sergius was standing in his usual place and praying: that is, he was ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... self-education, and once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a coma vigil, an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a dream. BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six weeks ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... fountains of ineffable purity and blessedness. Of some moonlight nights we feel that if we did what our spirits prompt us, we should pass them on our knees, as in some chapel of the Grail. To attempt to realize in thought the rapture and purification of such a vigil is to wonder that we so seldom pay heed to such inner promptings. So much we lose of the best kind of joy by spiritual inertia, or plain physical sloth; and some day it will be too late to get up and see the sunrise, or to follow the white feet of the moon as she treads her vanishing road of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... at last, half ashamed of spying upon her lonely vigil, yet withal curiously heartened. Wesley Elliot was right: Lydia Orr needed a friend. He resolved that he would ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... just then, would only let herself feel that she was glad. She drew down Evelina's hands and kissed her, and they held each other. When Evelina regained her voice she had a tale to tell which carried their vigil far into the night. Not a syllable, not a glance or gesture of Ramy's, was the elder sister spared; and with unconscious irony she found herself comparing the details of his proposal to her with those which Evelina was imparting with ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... who climbed the storm-swept steep, She who the foaming wave would dare, So oft love's vigil here to keep, Stranger, albeit, thou think'st I dote; I know, I know, she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... harp-strings' music when Brage playeth. I'll list no more when the harp is tried, I will not think of my faithless bride; Where storms are raging there will I follow, Till blood thou drinkest, thou ocean billow. Where swords sow seeds for pale death to reap, On mount or vale I my vigil keep. If king I meet and to combat dare him I smile to think how my sword shall spare him. But if in battle a youth I meet, With heart enamored and visions sweet, Deluded fool who on faith relieth, I'll hew him down e'er the vision flyeth, Will kindly slay him ere yet he be Deceived, disgraced ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... the idea of spending the night patrolling the grounds, but it was imperative that the house be protected. Then it occurred to me that the man for the vigil was Smooth Sam. If the arrival of Mr MacGinnis had complicated matters in one way, it had simplified them in another, for there was no more need for the secrecy which had been, till now, the basis of my plan of action. Buck's arrival made it possible for me to come out and fight in the open, ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... were communicated by Guapo; and when he had finished talking, all the others went to sleep, leaving Guapo to his midnight vigil. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Her vigil was full of thoughts, and not unprofitable ones. Her best feelings were stirred up, and she could not see Arthur, in this new light, without tenderness untainted by jealousy. Percy had brought her to a sense of her injustice—this was the small end of the wedge, and the discovery ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... created, Made a full and prudent answer: "I myself have many sorrows, For your son I cannot trouble, 170 For my lot's indeed a hard one, And an evil day awaits me, Wandering lonely in the night-time, In the frost for ever shining, In the winter keeping vigil, But in time ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous |
