"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adjust its front. Tremont Street, moreover, which was now untenable, held much apparatus, and most of this was burned where it stood. Straight up the slope toward Beacon Street and toward the gold dome of the State House the fire errantly went. Blank walls between buildings seemed to make little difference to it; what it could not pierce it ran around. Only at the extreme end of the burial ground did it pause. Here a seven-story fireproof building confronted it, and proved equal to the task. Against the solid walls of this ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... wearing nothing but a shirt, with a prominent stomach and thin legs, the same boy who had been standing before by the peasant woman. He was gazing with open mouth and unblinking eyes at Yegorushka's crimson shirt and at the chaise, with a look of blank astonishment and even fear, as though he saw before him creatures of another world. The red colour of the shirt charmed and allured him. But the chaise and the men sleeping under it excited his curiosity; perhaps ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... which enacted that "This country now being part of the Transvaal, the residents must within seven days leave their homes or enrol themselves as burghers." Nothing was mentioned about fighting, so all there complied with what was required—namely, to sign their names on a blank sheet of paper. By evening all had left for Mosita, as Mr. P. had also mentioned Mr. Keeley's name in his unlucky note. Three, however, remained to keep a watch on myself, and one of these, I regretted to observe, was the jovially-inclined ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... difficulty with one whom I so much despised. Complete satisfaction was entered upon the records of the court, and a certified discharge, under the hand of Perkins himself—which he gave with a reluctance full of mortification—was sent in a blank envelope to Mrs. Clifford. She was thus deprived of the only excuse—if, indeed, such a woman ever needs an excuse for wilfulness—for persecuting her unhappy daughter on the score ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... The next instant she fell forward upon her face, dead to all that was to follow in the next few minutes. Her glazed eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of the figures that seemed to sweep down from the sky, and then all was blank. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... and discovered Mr. Gibney walking solemnly round and round the little capstan up forward. It was creaking and groaning dismally. Captain Scraggs thrust his engine room torch above his head to light the scene and gazed upon his navigating officer in blank amazement. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... but never lives, Who much receives but nothing gives; Whom none can love, whom none can thank; Creation's blot; creation's blank! ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... haughty glower, for he had supposed the ring to be Matilda's. But at sight of Jack and Mary his face went blank with amazement. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... in prose or in poetic form. The tendency is toward prose in comedy and poetry in tragedy, though in the same play both prose and poetry are sometimes used. The most common form for the poetic composition is the unrhymed iambic pentameter or blank verse (heroic measure). Rhymes are in use but usually their purpose is definite and specific and they may occur occasionally in plays which are otherwise in blank verse. Lyrics are often introduced, and in them both rhyme and meter are varied at the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... measurement? Mr. Saltram's queer figure, his thick nose and hanging lip, were fresh to me: in the light of my old friend's fine cold symmetry they presented mere success in amusing as the refuge of conscious ugliness. Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular. In my scrap of a residence—he had a worldling's eye for its futile conveniences, but never a comrade's joke—I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank clear darkness without a stain. "What is our life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Romantic Drama was an extraneous product in English literature. Even the magnificent medium in which it is composed, the decasyllabic blank verse which the genius of Marlowe adapted to the needs of the drama, is ultimately due to the Italian Trissino, and has never kept a firm hold on English poetry. Thus both the formal elements of the Drama, plot and verse, were importations ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... unhappiness.... I know of no case for the elective Democratic government of modern States that cannot be knocked to pieces in five minutes. It is manifest that upon countless important public issues there is no collective will, and nothing in the mind of the average man except blank indifference; that an electional system simply places power in the hands of the most skilful electioneers; that neither men nor their rights are identically equal, but vary with every individual, and, above all, that the minimum or maximum of general happiness is related only so indirectly to the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... presented to the Washington Congress of Public Education Associations in October, 1908, by Commissioner of Health, Dr. Darlington. The bureau's study is entitled A Bureau of Child Hygiene, and, in addition to the story of medical examination in New York City schools, gives the blank forms adopted for use in September, 1908. Important as are the facts given in this study, its greatest value, its authors declare, is in its account of "the method of intelligent self-criticism and experiment which alone enables a public department ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... out this anomaly over and over again, and long before the war I described it in review articles. The well-known German Professor, Hans Delbrueck, replied shortly afterwards, in the Contemporary Review,[38] denying point-blank the truth of my statements, which were drawn from official sources, and confirmed by the evidence of my senses. For I had visited several of the colonies in question. Besides these German settlements, there had also been a number of German industrial and commercial establishments in ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... I refused point blank to see 'Edward' then or at any other time, and said that even if there was a vacancy I should not recommend a stranger. He sighed, and said that I should like Edward, once I knew him. He was 'a noble lad, but misfortune had dogged his footsteps—a brave, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is your life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... known to our anglers, thanks again to Sir Pryse who owns it. It races bubbling round the furze-clad knoll, whose Welsh name is translated Otter's Island, on which stands the church, and then is silenced in a blank straight-cut channel, which conveys it through the marsh into the estuary at Ynyslas. Up the gorge of the Lery runs the railway, which carried us so often past the massive church and steep pine-grown graveyard of Langfihangel-geneur-glyn, and across the broad ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... C. went with them to the mess-room and saw the sergeant, who expressed great regret and said it was the first time any of their men had been guilty of such acts. The Lieutenant was away, and as C. drew paper towards him to report the case in writing, they looked very blank and begged him not to report. After some consideration he concluded not to report them, as he could not see the Lieutenant and they had behaved so well about it, and told them he would not unless some further acts of the kind were perpetrated by their men. They were very grateful, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... flashes next the lightning, The flood's grey breast is blank, And a cattle dog and pack-horse Are struggling up the bank. But in the lonely homestead The girl will wait in vain — He'll never pass the stations In charge of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... opened a camp stool, sat down, and produced a long blank book. In this he inscribed the men's names. Each gave him two dollars and a half as an entrance fee. A referee and scorer were appointed from among ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... her that, in the pillaging of my house, all my accounts with her had been thrown into the Carrousel, and that every sheet of my month's expenditure was signed by her, sometimes leaving four or five inches of blank paper above her signature, a circumstance which rendered me very uneasy, from an apprehension that an improper use might be made of those signatures. She desired me to demand admission to the committee of general safety, and to make this declaration ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in the age-long blank; He filled it in, not in cold language, but in warm life. Many attempts have been made to translate His definition from the terms of life into the terms of language. Only once have those attempts been even approximately successful. The words on the ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... and letters, and figures, in an endeavor to produce a sketch that would pass as a prospector's hastily prepared field map. At last she produced several that compared favorably with her father's and taking a blank leaf from an old notebook she found in the pack sack, drew ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... exclaimed Merrill, solemnly, lifting up his hand. "He's inquiring after my morals," he explained to the men who were crowding about; "and I don't give a blank blank who knows it," continued little Merrill, warmly, "my present magnificent manhood," smiting himself on the breast, "I owe to that same dear old solemnity there," ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... complete understanding of her own wants as you seem to have. I hope you haven't mentioned half the things I'm to bring you, but don't tell me the rest now. I might change my mind about going. But you buy a large blank book and write out all these orders at full length, giving directions just when to cross the Seine and when to cross back again, and I'll promise to do my very best with the ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... that day for examining the pretensions of several who had applied to me for canes, perspective glasses, snuff-boxes, orange-flower-waters, and the like ornaments of life. In order to adjust this matter, I had before directed Charles Lillie of Beaufort Buildings to prepare a great bundle of blank licenses in the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Sir John French's battalions in every case so effectively shattered the German efforts at breaking through the British during the retreat after Mons. The Russians, it is stated, invariably allowed the Germans to come in to well within point-blank range, remaining silent, holding their fire and not showing a light meanwhile. Then, as the enemy got within point-blank range, searchlights were suddenly switched on and a ceaseless fusillade of Maxim and rifle-fire from the Russians literally mowed the Germans down by ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... immortal in Tasso's art was the romance he ruthlessly rooted out. A further step in this transition from art to piety is marked by the poem upon the Creation of the World, called Le Sette Giornate. Written in blank verse, it religiously but tamely narrates the operation of the Divine Artificer, following the first chapter of Genesis and expanding the motive of each of the seven days with facile rhetoric. Of action and of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... beside her, and began talking to him about Paris, where she was intending to go in a few days, of how sick she was of Germans, how stupid they were when they tried to be clever, and how inappropriately clever sometimes when they were stupid; and suddenly, point-blank, as they say—a brule pourpoint—asked him, was it true that he had fought a duel with the very officer who had been there just now, only a few days ago, on ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... depending on the class of vessel and the deck on which it is mounted, it is evident that, when the axis of the bore is horizontal, the shot will have a range proportionate to this height. This range or distance is commonly called point-blank, or point-blank range, and is the number noted in the column marked P.B., or 0 deg., ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... above those large eyes were fluttering. Then with a shake of the head, the Hawaikan blinked up at them. Blank bewilderment was all Ross could read in the stranger's expression until the alien saw Karara. Then a flood of clicking speech ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... face became blank. After a hasty glance about the circle of astonished faces, he went on with his fish story. But he was not allowed to ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... a hasty scrawl, "I have taken your Shelley," signed with initials. Perhaps the owner of the book never sees the note. Perhaps he does not recognize the hand. The borrower is just the man to forget the whole transaction. So there is a blank in the shelves, a gap among the orderly volumes, a blank never to be filled up, unless our amateur advertises his woes ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... that; he wanted if only for a brief hour to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experience. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God, whom to know is life eternal. The roue you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to corrupt innocence and to wallow in filthiness of ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... moment, be gone from my eyes, and not all the efforts of fancy will be able to recall it with exactness. O! what an infinite difference between this moment and the next! NOW, I am in your presence, can behold you! THEN, all will be a dreary blank—and I shall be a wanderer, exiled from my ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... even very queer and imagining things. By way of being prudent, he left a detailed report on the case for me. Well, the report is simply a blank ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... "Cyrus Brooks, Number Blank, Blank Street, ma'am. Before the accident, we lived on Thirty-third Street, in very good shape; but, little by little, we were obliged to sell off, and finally had to move into pretty snug quarters. But we've always got enough to eat, such as it was," added the good woman, trying not to show much ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... known to exist till the sale of Lord Valentia's collection, when Mr. Henry Stevens bought the manuscript here published. Its value seems to have been properly appreciated by him, owing perhaps to the following memoranda written in pencil on the second blank leaf, in the handwriting, it is believed, of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... a blank in Jack Holton, it really didn't bother me so much as you might think. Of course, I was worried and humiliated at times; and there were days when I went into the telegraph office and went through the motions of sending for you to come and fish me out of my troubles. I tore up half ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... friends so long as there is no gold or silver for them to dispute the possession of; exhibit but a copper or two, and peace is broken, truce void, armistice ended; their books are blank, their Virtue fled, and they so many dogs; some one has flung a bone into the pack, and up they spring to bite each other and snarl at the one which has pounced successfully. There is a story of an Egyptian king who taught some apes the sword-dance; the imitative creatures very soon ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... lay the animal on its side on a piece of blank paper, put the feet and legs in some natural position, fasten them in place with a few pins and mark around the entire animal with a pencil. The eye, hip and shoulder joints, and base of skull may ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... and he looked at Toni, but Toni's face was blank. For some reason or other he wished to ignore his instructor who was screaming on the end of ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of eight quaternions or eight leaves folded together and one quinternion or section of five sheets folded together, making in all seventy-four leaves, of which the first and last are blank. The only type used throughout is that styled No. 1 by Mr. Blades. The lines are not spaced out; the longest measure five inches; a full page has thirty-one lines. Without title-page, signatures, numerals, or catch-words. The volume, as already mentioned, begins with a blank leaf, and on the second ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... smiles which brought into play two little round dimples. He ordered his own carriage to take his guests to the grim hill behind the town; he sat by Virginia as they were driven up the white, winding road; and when at last the convict coachman drew up the horses at a great door of black iron in the blank side of a high white wall, it was he who ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... and then between two rolling banks of vapour I saw the high walls and higher towers of the castle looming through the grayness. A little later I distinguished the dull water of the very wide moat, and the three connected bridges, which were formerly blank spaces between low towers, unless the drawbridges ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... written previously to this, knowing, as I do, the anxiety of my friends to know the fate of their adventurer in his wanderings in wild Spain; but believe me that I had several reasons for deferring, the principal being an unconquerable aversion to writing blank letters. At present I have something to communicate besides my arrival, indeed one or two odd things. The courier and myself came all the way without the slightest accident, my usual wonderful good fortune accompanying us. I may well call it wonderful. I was not aware ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the next morning I found Bernibus and Wagner conversing quietly in the corner of my bed chambers, and as I first opened my eyes I saw Wagner looking at me with a blank, glazed expression, while Bernibus' was one of apprehension, apparently on my behalf. It seemed odd to me, but as Wagner became livid again quickly after his split- second lapse and gave me a hearty "Good morning", I thought nothing more of it. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... had a great loss, my Algernon; I will not chide these tears. The death of a kind parent leaves an awful blank in our existence, a wound which ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, to hold hands, and to commune with the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... barren burthen of knighthood and a sermon on predestination were all he could bestow upon the high commissioners in place of the alliance which he eluded, and the military assistance which he point-blank refused. The possessory princes, in whose cause the sword was drawn, were too quarrelsome and too fainthearted to serve for much else than an incumbrance either in the cabinet ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... subsistence and the certain motive to political affiliation that underlies the platform of free-labor society. When indulging in the belief of peaceable secession, they expressed their sentiments truly in the declaration that 'they would not remain in the Union, were a blank sheet of paper presented, and they permitted to write their own terms.' This declaration merely characterized the foregone conclusion. It was the evidence of a previous determination, merely withheld for a season, in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... public library, as I went along the shelves, a volume of mine which gave evidence to have been really read. The record in front showed that it had been withdrawn one time only. The card was blank below—but once certainly it had been read. I hope that the book went out on a Saturday noon when the spirits rise for the holiday to come, and that a rainy Sunday followed, so that my single reader was kept before his fire. A dull patter on the window—if ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... station of Araranca flows definitely to the north. This spring may be said to be one of the sources of the Urubamba River, an important affluent of the Ucayali and also of the Amazon, but I never have heard it referred to as "the source of the Amazon" except by an adventurous lecturer, Captain Blank, whose moving picture entertainment bore the alluring title, "From the Source to the Mouth of the Amazon." As most of his pictures of wild animals "in the jungle" looked as though they were taken in the zooelogical ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... told you,' I replied,—for I had been quite frank with her,—'how I left America,—what a blank life was to me then; and did I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... face was blank. She mumbled something to the effect of, "See you later," directed seemingly to both of them, and went ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the situation persisted. Rodney's strained face and uneasy manner, his uniform, the blank pause when he had learned that Graham was better, and when the ordinary banalities of greeting were over. Beside Clayton he looked small, dapper, and wretchedly uncomfortable, and yet even Clayton had to acknowledge a sort ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to them will certainly be struck by the command of language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But his poetry, like most of the poetry that was written under the Byronic influence, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of a publishing house, and subsequently entered the office of the Philadelphia and Reading railroad company as clerk in the record department. While in the office of the railroad company he wrote and published his first poem. It is called "Satana Victo" and is written in blank verse. Since that time he has been a prolific writer of both poetry and prose, much of which has ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the glittering cavalry sabres crossed upon the dark red wall opposite. The tall windows looked out on the piazza, and it was raining, or just beginning to rain. The great inkstand on the table was made to represent a howitzer, and the count looked as though he were ready to fire it point blank at any intruder. There was an air of disciplined luxury in the room that spoke of a rich old soldier who fed his fancy with tit-bits from a stirring past. De Pretis felt very uncomfortable, but the nobleman rose to greet ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... far-away look, and may be listening to the angels sing, for he is plaintive and inexpressive. He looks so sorry that Americans cannot speak their own language as he speaks English! But there are phrases delivered by Americans that he understands, such as, "Blankety, blank, blank—you all come here." Francisco does not go there, but with humble step elsewhere, affecting to find a pressing case for his intervention, but when he can no longer avoid your eye catching him he smiles a sweet but most superior smile, such as becomes one who speaks English ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... to every subscriber of the Woman's Journal a blank petition to Congress for a XVI. Amendment. Also, in the same envelope, a woman suffrage petition to your own State Legislature—Please offer both petitions together for signature. Thus, with the same amount of labor, both ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... behind. One easy flow of tears, and the claim of the departed was satisfied. In a day, the privation had ceased to be one. Here then, sir, are the seeds of a wilderness of after woe: my father, overflowing with affection, and craving, as it were, for sympathy, turning to my mother, and finding there a blank—nothing to rest upon. 'What is fortune,' says the poet, 'to a heart yearning for affection, and finding it not? Is it not as a triumphal crown to the brows of one parched with fever, and asking for one fresh, healthful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, and thought of the life he had elected to lead in the hope of saving ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... not engaged in fortune-telling or similar methods of commercializing spiritual knowledge will, upon request, receive an application blank from the General Secretary, Rosicrucian Fellowship. When this blank is returned properly filled, he may admit the applicant to instruction in ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... Kitty's meek efforts to induce her to do her best to make the supper-table presentable, and not a shame to them all, she refused point-blank to stir ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... nothing—the dragon had vanished, and he went to sleep again. Again the dragon burst out of the thick darkness, and again Rakush was at the pillow of his master, who rose up at the alarm: but anxiously trying to penetrate the dreary gloom, he saw nothing—all was a blank; and annoyed at this apparently vexatious conduct of his ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his. "He seems," says Dennis, "to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony, that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trissyllable terminations. For the diversity distinguishes it from heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to common use makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... fire!—it has an awful voice that Wind at Midnight, singing in a church!" Of all this and of yet more to the like purpose, not one syllable was there in the Reading, which, on the contrary, began at once point-blank: "High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the town, and far below the clouds, dwelt the 'Chimes' I tell of." Directly after which the Reader, having casually mentioned the circumstance of their just then striking twelve at noon, gave utterance ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Ida lay on her bed, dressed, as she had lain since her return home. For more than an hour she had cried and sobbed in blank misery, cried as never since the bitter days long ago, just after her mother's death. Then, the fit over, something like a reaction of calm followed, and as she lay perfectly still in the darkness, her regular breathing would have led one to believe her asleep. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... from his pocket a blank piece of paper, and pretended to read the following speech, which he made up on ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... her back again. For a moment she was blank trying to recall her senses. And then she remembered. She pointed ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funeral dress of this pessimistic period. We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless silver linen, with top hats as white as wonderful arum ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Painting: The First Stage.—In the history of figure painting it is interesting to study the evolution of the element of background. This element is non-existent in the earliest examples of pictorial art. The figures in Pompeiian frescoes are limned upon a blank bright wall, most frequently deep red in color. The father of Italian painting, Cimabue, following the custom of the Byzantine mosaicists, whose work he had doubtless studied at Ravenna, drew his figures against a background devoid of distance and perspective and detail; and even in the work of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... which aroused in a very peculiar degree the anger of the King and of the King's followers. They saw in a moment the enormous influence that the passing of the measure would place in the hands of Fox. The names of the commissioners were left blank {232} in the bill, but when their time came to be filled up in committee they were all filled with the names of followers of Fox. It was argued that were the bill to become law a set of persons extremely obnoxious to the King would have in their hands for a solid term of years ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... for Caraccas. This young man, whose name it is not worth while to cite, presented himself as agent for a manufacturer of Birmingham goods. There was no need for secrecy with a person of that sort. He questioned Arnold about orchids with a blank but engaging ignorance of the subject, and before the voyage was over he had learned all his friend's hopes and projects. But the deception could not be maintained at Caraccas. There Arnold discovered that the hardware agent ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... poured from lowest, and leave it where dust cannot get at it for four or five days, when it will be found sufficiently hard to be put into a plate box. The transparency may be finished at any time afterward by putting a clean glass of the same size along with it, placing one of the blank paper masks sold for the purpose—either circular or cushion-shaped to suit the subject—between the plates, and pasting narrow strips of thin black paper over the edges to bind them together. This method is very successful, as you may see from the examples. It renders the high ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... like a bee. Fulfilled our hearts were with that music then, And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn, And all the lovers heard it from all the trees. All of the accents upon all the norms! —And ah! the stress on the penultimate! We never knew blank verse could have ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... how to welcome a strange sister, for whose sake the last of the Mervyns was grudged her own inheritance, and still less did she feel disposed to harass her mother with a new idea, which would involve her in bewilderment and discussion. She could only hope that there would be inspiration in Mervyn's blank cover, and suppress ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declining; he will be taught to regret the increasing infirmities of his Papa's temper; and portraits in sepia of his Mamma will be observed by him to excite laughter mingled with dark impulsive words. Thus there will pass into Baby's eyes glances of suspicious questionings, "the blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... sort of last defiance, but every hope she has seems lying dead. In a second, as it were, she seems to care for nothing. What is there to care for? It is so odd. But it is true! How blank the whole thing is! ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... It looked sort of old and lost—but it was going the way we wanted to go. It took us first into a country of little hills; then to the very base of the great range itself; finally into the mountains—and then it ran blank." ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... world's no blot for us Nor blank; it means intensely and it means good To find its meaning is my meat ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... of Dainty Chase were parted in long, gasping breaths; the blue eyes were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly, staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, and the full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor, as though diamonds strewed ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... their track, after all. I was sure of it now; but when I lifted my eyes and saw the dreary expanse of shore before me, a blank feeling of terror took possession of me. They were not in sight! Nothing but cloudy skies and low chalky cliffs, and the surge ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... against the commission of frauds. These, however, have been and may be fabricated, and in such a way as to elude detection at the examining offices. And independently of this practical difficulty, it is ascertained that these documents are often loosely granted; some times even blank certificates have been issued; some times prepared papers have been signed without inquiry, and in one instance, at least, the seal of the court has been within reach of a person most interested in its improper application. It is obvious that under such ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... swift, broad, shallow stream, the Gave, flowing beneath it. It is now cosmopolitan, and therefore undistinguished. As we passed slowly through the crowded streets—for the National Pilgrimage was but now arriving—we saw endless rows of shops and booths sheltering beneath tall white blank houses, as correct and as expressionless as a brainless, well-bred man. Here and there we passed a great hotel. The crowd about our wheels was almost as cosmopolitan as a Roman crowd. It was largely French, as that is largely Italian; but the Spaniards were there, vivid-faced ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... daughter reprovingly, but Miss Warren's eyes were dancing, and I saw she was enjoying my rather blank ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... at Sydney one Christmas, and a select band of the Mulligan sportsmen were going down to them. They were in high feather, having just won a lot of money from a young Englishman at pigeon-shooting, by the simple method of slipping blank cartridges into his gun when he wasn't looking, ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... venerable weather-worn mile-stones, set up in old colonial days, when the Great West, now trailed across with the rubber hoof-marks of "the popular steed of today," was a pathless wilderness, and on the maps a blank. Striking the famous "sand-papered roads " at Framingham - which, by the by, ought to be pumice-stoned a little to make them as good for cycling as stretches of gravelled road near Springfield, Sandwich, and Piano, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... far from her—she might dream of Millicent, and that would be worse than wakefulness and remembrance. To trust herself to the lordship of dreams was to seek refuge in the unknown, and that was dangerous. It was total unconsciousness which she desired, the restful unconsciousness of a blank mind. She remained perfectly still for a little time, asking for rest, asking for the power not to think. She concentrated her thoughts on this one desire; she opened her being for ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... fol. 2 occupied by the title-page; ff. 3, 4 (verso blank) by a letter "To the Reader," signed: "Yours hereafter, If now approved on, R. S.," beginning: "Courteous Reader, I present thee here with the Description of the King of the Fayries, of his Attendants, Apparel, Gesture, and Victuals, which though comprehended in the brevity of so short ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... strong—strong enough to excuse any disheartenment. Scarcely a window pierced its narrow butt-end, four stories high, under which the steps wound. It ended just where they met the towpath, and from its angle sprang a brick wall dead-blank, at least twelve feet high, which ran for eighty or ninety yards along the straight line of the path. Across the canal a row of unkempt cottage gardens sloped to the water, the most of them fenced from the brink of it with decayed palings, a few with elder bushes and barbed wire to fill up ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... terror and pleading. She moved her hands rapidly and stamped her foot. During this pantomime she was forming words with her lips and nodding her head affirmatively. Her efforts at expression were lost upon me, and I could only respond with a blank stare of astonishment. The expression on my face caused Sir George to turn in the direction of my gaze, and he did so just in time to catch Dorothy in the midst of a mighty pantomimic ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... shaft. A bitter return for their loving welcome. Perhaps they were looking older, but he need not have said it so point blank, and before Jan. They turned crimson, poor ladies, and bent to sip their tea, and tried to turn the words off with a laugh, and did not know where to look. In true innate delicacy of feeling, Dr. West and his daughter, Sibylla, rivalled ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... what became of him in a topsy-turvy world. But now all things were changed. Richard Cromwell's brief and irresolute rule had shattered the Commonwealth, and made Englishmen eager for a king. The country was already tired of him whose succession had been admitted with blank acquiescence; and Monk and the army were soon to become masters of the situation. There was hope that the General was rightly affected, and that the King would have his own again; and that such of his followers as had not compounded with the Parliamentary Commission would get back their confiscated ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... confessed, in common with some others of his countrymen, an improper share of pride and spirit. Fired by the lady's coldness, he poured forth a volley of reproaches; and ended by wishing, as he said, a good morning, for ever and ever, to one who could change her opinion, point blank, like the weathercock. "I am, miss, your most obedient; and I expect you'll never think no more of poor Brian O'Neill, and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... natives naturally responded with a blank stare of non-comprehension, gradually merging into a broad smile. Then, seeing that his first attempt had not been exactly a success, the boatswain proceeded upon his usual lines. Assuming an aspect of intense earnestness, and holding his forefinger ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the hotel—scarcely fifty yards from the canal—one saw the blank face of the ancient city of Canton. Blank it was, except for a gate near the bridgehead. Into this hole in the wall and out of it the native stream flowed from sunrise to sunset, when the stream mysteriously ceased. The silence of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... received a laconic note from him, which, notwithstanding its shortness and seeming gayety, I knew well signified that something not calculated for laughter had occurred. I went, and found that his new Majesty had deprived him of the seals and secured his papers. We looked very blank at each other. At last, Bolingbroke smiled. I must say that, culpable as he was in some points as a politician,—culpable, not from being ambitious (for I would not give much for the statesman who is otherwise), but from not having inseparably linked ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... From the west door a pattern, surrounded by a border, stretches as far as the fifth pair of columns. It consists of a central band of a wavy pattern, interrupted by inscriptions and medallions; the easternmost one is blank and has a running border, with the corners of the square (cut off by the band of inscriptions) filled with scroll-work. The side portions are cut up into squares by bands of open interlacings, with ivy leaves in the interstices, and different designs within ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... at 2. bists and a halfe the batman and lesse. 7 Rice at halfe a bist the batman. 8 Gals at halfe a bist the batman, 9 Cloues at 40. shaughs the batman 10 Yew for bow staues, at [Transcriber's note: blank in original.] ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... disappeared, and Horace, turning his head to the left, saw the murky tide sweeping on westward, blotting out Ludgate Hill, the Strand, Charing Cross, and Westminster—till at last he and Fakrash were alone above a limitless plain of bituminous cloud, the only living beings left, as it seemed, in a blank and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... so they wend their ways Back to their beautiful yesterdays; The present is blank — so they wing their flight To future ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very diligently imitated his master; but he, unhappily, pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be sustained by images which, at most, can rise only ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... good lady, in blank astonishment. "Why, I don't s'pose my husband here would be any more dependence if them wild critters should come beseeching our ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... bursts," Mr. Gibney replied. "I'll set my fuse at zero an' at point-blank range I'll just rake everything off that schooner's decks. Guess I'll get half a dozen cartridges set an' ready for the big scene. Up with you, Admiral Scraggs, an' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... experience, which is necessary for the success of a regular plan of education, cannot be preserved. Every body may have observed the effect, which the extraordinary notice of strangers produces upon children. After the day is over, and the company has left the house, there is a cold blank; a melancholy silence. The children then sink into themselves, and feel the mortifying change in their situation. They look with dislike upon everything around them; yawn with ennui, or fidget with fretfulness, till on the first check which they meet with, their secret discontent ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... man I liked had not enough to keep a wife and family; he looked before he leaped. He never leaped at all; he never even proposed to me point-blank, but it came round to me through a friend. But you working-people, you never look, and you always leap, and when you have got your ten children and nothing to feed them on, then you think that the gentlefolks who ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... in the name of the authorities!' shouted the governor, and with the revolver that he held in his hand he fired a shot into the air. The secretary was paralyzed at the sight of us; then the governor aimed the gun at the fellow's chest and fired again point blank; and the man wavered, turned convulsively in the air ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... peacefully with the election, until the said father Fray Lorenso de Leon took control of it. Although he had no right to be present in spite of his being president, he eagerly seated himself so near the clerk who gave out the blank ballots that, whether by fear or affection, he certainly by this, and with his gestures and signs, being himself a candidate, affected and changed the wills and intentions of some of the electors, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... vessel I meet has a license, or is under a neutral flag. Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedes are passing in and out by hundreds, and licensed vessels out of number from the West Indies. I find the licenses are sent blank to be filled up in Boston. This is of course very convenient, and the Portuguese consul is said to be making quite a trade of that flag, covering the property and furnishing the necessary papers for any person ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and a nominal church may admire and glorify him. The man who wins Wisdom succeeds, however bare may be his cupboard, and however people may pity him for having failed in life, because he has not drawn prizes in the Devil's lottery. His blank is a prize, and their prizes are blanks. This decisive subordination of material to spiritual good is too plainly duty and common sense to need being dwelt upon; but, alas! like a great many other most obvious, accepted truths, it is disregarded ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to meting out punishment and providing adequate remedies—are perpetrated, include many variations of procedure by which false certificates of citizenship are forged in their entirety; or genuine certificates fraudulently or collusively obtained in blank are filled in by the criminal conspirators; or certificates are obtained on fraudulent statements as to the time of arrival and residence in this country; or imposition and substitution of another party for the real petitioner occur in court; or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... newspaper press. These facts lead me to conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly was the mistake of a man who tried to do too much; and, secondly, that one of the sides at least, presumably that containing the obituary notice, was printed on a hand-press, on the blank side of a piece of galley proof picked up in some ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... calamities, as frequent, in copious measure. In this world I have repeatedly undergone all those afflictions that flow from a perception of all pairs of opposites. After all this, one day, overwhelmed with sorrow, blank despair came upon me. I took refuge in the Formless. Afflicted as I was with great distress, I gave up the world with all its joys and sorrows.[8] Understanding then this path, I exercised myself in it in this world. Afterwards, through tranquillity of soul, I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... than now, and I will not see him balked for the sake of a few thousand pounds." The amount of the sum for which Scott, on the failure of Constable, became responsible, I have heard various accounts of—varying from fifty to seventy thousand pounds. Some generous and wealthy person sent him a blank check, properly signed, upon the bank, desiring him to fill in the sum, and relieve himself; but he returned it, with proper acknowledgments. He took, as it were, the debt upon himself, as a loan, the whole payable, with interest, in ten years; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... 'translation,' he may be added to the list of other imposters of his ilk. The humbug has been exposed for some time, and we know of no one who, having a right to express an opinion, believes Notovitch's tale, though some ignorant people have been hoaxed by it. If the blank sixteen years in Christ's life ever be explained, it may be found that they were passed in a Zoroastrian environment; but until real evidence be brought to show that Christ was in India, the wise will continue to doubt it. As little proof exists, it may be added, of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... light from the floats makes the stage stare; the only person on it is MR FORESON, the stage manager, who is standing in the centre looking upwards as if waiting for someone to speak. He is a short, broad man, rather blank, and fatal. From the back of the auditorium, or from an empty box, whichever is most convenient, the producer, MR BLEWITT VANE, a man of about thirty four, with his hair ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... am only stating my opinion. If I should find that this woman is unable to say that she did not sign two separate documents on that day—that is, to say so with a positive and point blank assurance, I shall recommend you, as my client, to ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... for suddenly blank spaces appeared in the rows of merchandise. Certain small tools—wirecutters, calipers, surgical scissors—had vanished, and all the coils of wire had disappeared. Blanks equally had appeared in the rows of lenses; all of my tiny, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... to the first on the list and obtained an interview in private with his chief secretary, from which he issued with a large sealed envelope, which contained a handsome parchment in blank, signed "Louis." It was a lettre de cachet, one of those warrants by which a man might, without warning to his friends or any charge laid, be arrested and imprisoned in one of those fortresses whose walls were so many living graves. He took it to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the Professor, Is beginning to read out the roll. How time drags! Am I present? Oh, yes, sir, But, oh, what a blank is my soul. I fear that my cunning has left me, Inspiration refuses to guide, The rouse of her aid has bereft me, And ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... pull against it. We had got out our harpoons from the dead whale, and were putting our gear in order, when, just as we were going to make fast to it, the huge mass sunk from our sight! We looked at each other with blank disappointment. It was gone—there can be no doubt about it, and was utterly irrecoverable. "Don't grumble, my lads. We should have been worse off had we been fast to it with a gale blowing, and unable to cut ourselves adrift," exclaimed Mr Brand. "Let us thank the Almighty that we ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing ought ever to tempt me to neglect my aunt, and I hope nothing ever will. Be assured that I shall beg her to write you to spend the winter with us, for I feel already that without you life is a perfect blank. You indeed must have something to enliven it with a little in your new companions, but here is nobody, just now, but Charles Weston. Yet he is an excellent companion, and does every thing he can to make us all happy and comfortable. Heigho! how I do wish I could see you, my ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... although he had always practiced self-control, had begun to rise, but he checked it, seeing that it would be a mere foolish display of weakness in the face of the blank wall ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and knocking of antlers. The spirits of the three sank to zero. Their breathing became thick. The blood, which a moment before had played like wildfire in their veins, now stirred sluggishly as if it was freezing. Disappointment, blank and bitter, shivered through them ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... throat and replied in her sharp metallic voice, "Mr. Levison and I have at last made up our minds to be married; you see, we have no one to consider but ourselves." This announcement was followed by a blank and paralysed silence. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... someone. When still some distance from the table where sat the Duke Louis, he halted and their eyes met. Those of the Duke, as he inclined his head slightly, stiffly, wore a glint of veiled hostility. Those of Von Ritz, as he returned the salute, no whit more cordially, were blank, except that for the moment, as he stood regarding the party, his non-committal pupils seemed to bore into each face about the table and to catalogue them all ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... power or by his aspirations, the fragility of all which he inherits, and the hollowness visible amid the very raptures of enjoyment to every eye which looks for a moment underneath the draperies of the shadowy present, the hollowness, the blank treachery of hollowness, upon which all the pomps and vanities of life ultimately repose. This trite but unwearying theme, this impassioned common-place of humanity, is the subject in every age of variation without end, from the poet, the rhetorician, the fabulist, the moralist, the divine, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... at once. "I should wish to do that"; and both he and his wife understood from that ready answer more completely than they ever had before how near Stella had come to the big blank wall at the end of life. For seven years she had held her head high, never so much as whispering a reproach against her husband, keeping with a perpetual guard the secret of her misery. Pride had been her mainspring; now even that was broken. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... on the hither side, under a tearing fire from that Spitzberg; can then at last, and do, storm onwards, upwards; but cannot, with their best efforts, take the Spitzberg: and have to fall back under its floods of tearing case-shot, and retire out of range. To Friedrich's blank disappointment: "Try it you, then, Seidlitz; you saved us at Zorndorf!" Seidlitz, though it is an impossible problem to storm batteries with horse, does charge in for the Russian flank, in spite of its covering battery: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... work, work. I must finish my book before poverty crushes me. I am not only writing for my living but for my life. Even to-day my Muse was mutinous. For hours and hours anxiously I stared at a paper that was blank; nervously I paced up and down my garret; bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came. Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another of my Ballads of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... hour and a half ago, that is to say soon after eleven o'clock, it was discovered that the document in question was missing, and in its place had been substituted a number of sheets of blank paper." ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... paper thrown carelessly about, the ink-well open, a file full of letters, a handful of cigarettes, a tray of tobacco ash, a bespattered palette, pens, coloured crayons, a medley of things; a revolving office chair with a worn crimson footrug before it; a many-shelved glass case against the blank wall, crammed to overflowing with shells and coral and strange grasses, with specimens of ore, with Chinese carvings, with curious lacquer-work; a large brass-bound portfolio stand; on the painted walls plaster-casts of hands and arms and feet, boxing gloves, fencing foils, a glaring ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the Abbey and the Victoria Tower form one building. No doubt to the fortunate persons through whose hands one pound notes pass, such awful symbolism conveys a sense of England's greatness and power; but I think it would be far more amusing if the back had been left blank, in case some later Robbie Burns (could this decadent world ever know so fine a thing again) wished to write another ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas |
