"Dumbly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that it is the sleeping room of your own sister that has been thus invaded and desecrated. At last from one of the older and more trusted servants you hear the truth, and while he speaks, you listen dumbly, wonderingly." ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... evening deepens, and the gray Folds closer earth and sky; The world seems shrouded far away; Its noises sleep, and I, As secret as yon buried stream, Plod dumbly ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... however, that the chime failed less of its effect outside the city than it did within; but there again it depended upon the hearer. When the mellow tones floated above the heath where the gipsies camped, only one, perchance, might listen, lifting her bright eyes with pleasure and longing in them, dumbly, as a child might, yet showing for a moment some glimmering promise of a soul. But to many in the village close at hand the chime brought comfort. It seemed to assure the sick, counting the slow hours, that they were not forsaken, and helped them to bear their pain with patience; it ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Forrester nodded dumbly. Vulcan's tone hadn't been unfriendly; he had merely been warning a stranger, in the shortest and clearest manner possible, against the dangers of feeling the merchandise. Not, Forrester thought, that the warning was necessary. He would as soon have thought of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... speak with Steward Griffin," said she again. "Can you go for him?" this time obviously limiting her language to the attendant himself, and carefully excluding Mr. Blakely from the field of her recognition. The attendant dumbly shook his head. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... into an implacable sternness which struck fear to the childish heart of his wife, and she obeyed him dumbly. Dropping weakly upon a chair, she added her sobs to those of Fanny, which had begun to break plaintively upon ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... climbed panting and dumbly resisting the sentries up beside the first Jews. They were citizens who dared not rejoice aloud. They followed the young Roman with brightened eyes, saying each ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... may have of that. Thereby with diligence he may produce for himself some faint twilight notion of the Flight of Time in remote Brandenburg,—convince himself that remote Brandenburg was present all along, alive after its sort, and assisting, dumbly or otherwise, in the great ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs. MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and overflowed now outward to the street door. He found himself bowing with the others to receive the sprinkled holy ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... not control them, but McCoy's gentle presence seemed to rebuke and calm them, and the muttering and cursing died away, until the full crew, save here and there an anxious face directed at the captain, yearned dumbly toward the green clad peaks and beetling ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten something—some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his heart dumbly. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... million upon the East, and though they died dumbly like flies before the German walls of steel at Thorn and Bromberg, they swept the Germans back over the Vistula and out of East Prussia down to the line of the Warthe and Oder. Austria, torn by internal dissension, was ringed in the upper basin of the Danube, where the Tyrol, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... been struck a merciless blow. She was a little consoled by Perigal's letter, but, in her heart of hearts, something told her that, despite his brave words, the marriage was indefinitely postponed; indeed, it was more than doubtful if it would ever take place at all. She suffered, dumbly, despairingly; her torments were the more poignant because she realised that the man she loved beyond anything in the world must be acutely distressed at this unexpected confounding of his hopes. Her head throbbed with dull pains which gradually ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... turned to hating As I saw him dumbly waiting, For it was my true likeness that he wore And ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... anecdotes, made epigrams, asked ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit: "Badsome," "Hugeous," "Thank you most dumbly," and so on. ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... calloused skin under each finger. Not one word came from the tightened white lips. The dumb agony was worse than a child's frantic scream of fear. Somehow, Ben's mind went back to the toad, when it also had borne its misery dumbly. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... surely not meditate an attempt on his weapon, for he had, a few minutes before, told him a story about a prisoner who escaped in exactly that way. Stoliker was suspicious of the good intentions of the man he had in charge; he was altogether too polite and good-natured; and, besides, the constable dumbly felt that the prisoner was a ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... like a breath of sadness and longing, was a theme in minor, full of question and heartbreak; of appeal that was almost prayer. And over it all, as always, hovering like some far light, was the call to which Rose answered. Dumbly, she knew that she must always answer it, though she were dead and the violin itself mingled with ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... head. She longed to retrieve herself in the public gaze, longed to shine as Tess shone, but not for worlds could she have essayed that high, dizzy seat again. So she shook her head dumbly and Arthur grinned at her not unkindly. Missy liked Arthur Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim apron and had red hair and freckles—not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?" But alas! he had no choice: Mr. Tatler, whose career, he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly implored "the bringing home of bell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in horror around their unhappy comrades. As for me, I was so amazed at the news that Cornelys Jensen was alive that I stood for awhile like one stunned, and could say nothing, but only stare at those pale faces and wonder dumbly. When after awhile the power of speech did return to me I strove with many questions to find out how Jensen was thus restored to life and to evil deeds, but as to that they none of them knew anything. If the marvel of Jensen's reappearance ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... away! But carry hence The lesson she has dumbly taught— That bright young creature kneeling there With ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... the first spring morning that ever dawned upon the world. The depth of them was laid bare to her, and, with that depth, the depth of her own heart. The paralysis of anguish passed from her. She no longer looked to Nature as one dumbly seeking help. For they led her to herself, and made her look into herself and her own love and know it. "When frightened it is not disturbed—it securely passeth through all." That was absolutely true—true as her love. She looked down into her love, and she saw there the face ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... earlier years, certain sides of my character had offered a sort of passive resistance to his ideas. I had let what I did not care to welcome pass over my mind in the curious density that children adopt in order to avoid receiving impressions—blankly, dumbly, achieving by stupidity what they cannot achieve by argument. I think that I had frequently done this; that he had been brought up against a dead wall; although on other sides of my nature I had been responsive and docile. But now, in my tenth year, the imitative faculty ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... uncontrollably. She knew now what he was doing. It had flashed upon her in that moment of horrible suffering. He was probing for a bullet in her left hand. Dumbly she shut her eyes and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... night he got out of the road and walked completely around a cornfield. He counted the stalks in each hill of corn and computed the number of stalks in a whole field. "It should yield twelve hundred bushels of corn, that field," he said to himself dumbly, as though it mattered to him. He pulled a little handful of cornsilk out of the top of an ear of corn and played with it. He tried to fashion himself a yellow moustache. "I'd be quite a fellow with a trim yellow moustache," ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... dumbly in the rector's desk chair and looked out of the window. After a time there was a knock at ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... words were as blasphemy, for they contradicted the whole spirit of the teaching which she had received. But she did not dare to contradict her mother's opinions. She looked down, and reflected dumbly that her mother knew more about the subject than she could possibly do. The good Sisters had talked to her about heavenly love; she had made no fine distinctions in her mind as to the kind of love they meant—possibly ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of privacy, and made his life as common as a tavern-threshold to every blockhead in the parish,—or that any Pharisee who kept carefully to windward of his virtues, out of the way of infection, has thereby earned the right to mismoralize his failings after he is dumbly defenceless. The moral compasses that are too short for the aberration may be, must be, unequal to the orbit. We would not deny that Burns was a chamberer and a drunkard because he was a great poet; but we would not admit that whiskey and wenches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the protection that should be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... looked at him dumbly. Already her heart was heavy because of her own disappointment. Her mouth was dumb and pathetic. But he did not notice, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... a week, and she still fascinates me. She is installed in the annex, and seems calmly satisfied with her surroundings. She brought everything she owns tied up in an oat-sack. I have given her a few of my things, for which she seems dumbly grateful. She seldom talks, and never laughs. But I am teaching her to say "yes" instead of "yaw." She studies me with her limpid blue eyes, and if she is silent she is never sullen. She hasn't ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... boat. I had noticed these dumbly before, but now I drew them eagerly forth from the bottom, and quickly fitted them into the oarlocks. They were stout, ashen blades, unusually large for the craft in which they had been stowed, yet workable. The boat itself was a mere ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Captain Kennor, he held on almost dumbly. He seldom spoke, his eyes mournfully regarding the woman whose battle for life ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... tried to moisten her lips again, made an effort to speak, and her voice broke in her throat. She nodded dumbly. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... he knocked at her door with a formal proposition: Would that do?—dumbly. She changed a point or two: That would do, and signified good night. Sam, looking at her face, turned away from it, hesitated, turned back, broke. Fear increased his admiration, and, to do him justice, the fear was not wholly for conventions and comforts; the man had certain ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... paralysed with terror, incapable of movement, staring dumbly—but Godfrey swept me aside so ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... fragrant blossoms, for, in the cottage, the dreaded small-pox had once raged. 'It seemed,' says Jefferies, 'to quite spoil the violet bank. There is something in disease so destructive; as it were, to flowers.' And as the violets shared the scourge, so the creatures shared the curse. And as they stared dumbly into the eyes of the Son of God they seemed to half understand that their redemption was drawing nigh. 'In Nature herself,' as Longfellow says, 'there is a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown something. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... thin, and one day they come to him where he sits before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying. He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards him, pleading dumbly. But the man's face never changes, and the little arms fall feebly back upon the tumbled coverlet, and the wistful eyes grow still, and a woman steps softly forward, and draws the lids down over them; then the man goes back ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... mountains! 'Silence—silence!' now is aye your soundless voice, Lifted in an awful patience o'er the world's uproarious noise; O'er its jarrings and its greetings—o'er its loving and its hate— Silence! Bare thy brows all dumbly to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... instinctively that she could count upon him though he never reverted to the matter. Somehow she could not bring herself to speak to him of the strange avoidance of her husband that was being practised by the rest of the station either. She endured it dumbly, holding herself more and more aloof in consequence of it as the days went by. Ever since the days of her own ostracism she had placed a very light price upon social popularity. The love of such women as Mary Ralston—and ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to study stenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did not have a dream-like or an Ann-like sound—but a very Wayne-like one!—but had entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable to enter protest ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Dumbly she followed his pace until they reached the hotel. The place was in confusion and the proprietor at his wits' end. In the midst of it, Monte was the ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... better employed; he was quietly taking Villon's purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he had been making a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom of his gown. In many ways an artistic nature unfits ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hidden, disorganised, undiscovered, unsuspected even by themselves, the samurai of Utopia are in this world, the motives that are developed and organised there stir dumbly here and stifle in ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... hammer and nail, And the slow-rising framework hinteth a tale Of mournful and sombre seeming. 'Tis the gibbet that rears its brow on high, And the morn-breezes pass it with many a sigh, As it stands gazing up to the fair blue sky Like a spectre dumbly dreaming. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... her when she herself returned from a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied him on the mountain-side leaning against a projecting ledge in an attitude so rapt and immovable that she felt compelled to approach him. He appeared to be dumbly absorbed in the prospect, which might have ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... throng struggling clumsily all about it. The doctor sprang to his apparatus and turned in four batteries at once. We shot up swiftly in a long curve, and from my window I could see the circle of amazed Martians, standing dumbly with their hands still held up in front of them, as they had been when the projectile left them, while they gazed open-mouthed into the sky ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the institutions or the follies of this earth. What strikes one with a sort of awe is just this something inhuman in its character. It is like a visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East or ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the truths of Heaven are visible with a special clearness and authority to the dying. It was for this moment, either in herself or in him, that Catherine's unconquerable faith had been patiently and dumbly waiting. Either she would go first, and death would wing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not their own; or, when he came to leave her, the veil of doubt would fall away perforce from a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curiously darkened, so that we moved as through an obscuring veil; and I dumbly wondered whether this was night (had it been morning or evening when I started for the pond?) or whether I was dying myself. I peered and again made out the sober, stern faces hedging me, but they gave me no answer to ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a word, four determined bare legs ploughing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reach high-water mark—six ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... whither he went after occasional voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger, there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would say: "A man, thon! He could ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Twice for one step I'll groan, the way being short, And piece the way out with a heavy heart. Come, come, in wooing sorrow let's be brief, Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief. One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part; Thus give I mine, and thus take ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... organism was instinctively making to continue in its wonted ways. All the world and all his desires, save a longing for his fair young wife, were lost out of his mind, and he thought of Bertha only in a dim and formless way—feeling his need of her and dumbly wondering why she did not come. In final, desperate agony, he lifted the phial of strychnine to his lips, hoping that it might put an end to his suffering; but before this act was completed a sweet, devouring flood of forgetfulness swept over him, his hand dropped, and the unopened ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... dumbly a minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it was broken by a pink dot, which they knew to be the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... paying her back in her own coin? Sylvia stared dumbly, but could see no hidden meaning in the glance which met hers so frankly. "Thanks awfully. You are kind!" she cried with enthusiasm, but in her heart she thought the kindness the most cruel treatment she had ever experienced. As soon as she could leave ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sound of the cave-in. For a few minutes he had stared sullenly, not grasping the situation. Then very slowly it dawned on him that his prison walls had fallen. Yes, surely, there at last lay his way to freedom, his path to the great open spaces for which he dumbly and vaguely hungered. With stately deliberation he marched down from his knoll ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest.— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... sensation of dread; but before a second could swoop down upon us I had staggered half-blinded to the arch, and put down Olivia in the small, secure cave within it. She had not spoken once. She did not seem able to speak now. Her large, terrified eyes looked up at me dumbly, and her face was white to the lips. I clasped her in my arms once more, and kissed her forehead and lips again and again in a paroxysm of passionate love ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Arriving there, she looked at him heavily, dumbly, and laid her head on his shoulder. He held her fast as he looked round. They were safe enough from all but the small, lonely cows over the river. He sunk his mouth on her throat, where he felt her heavy pulse beat under his lips. Everything ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Nicholas as an impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dumbly the Admiral gazed down at that drooping head. Could this be Petronella—confident, imperious, the daughter of a ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... a worse thing had befallen. He had no voice. It had gone. He knew that, try he never so hard to speak, he would not be able to utter a word. A nightmare feeling of unreality came upon him. Had he ever spoken? Had he ever done anything but sit dumbly on that rock, looking at those sea ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... head toward the house. Trembling with excitement she hurries little Frank into his wagon and telling Hattie to bring me, sets off up the road as fast as she can draw the baby's cart. It all seems a dream to me and I move dumbly, almost stupidly like one ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the men directly, he sent him up to the main-topgallant cross-trees with a spy-glass to carefully "sweep the offing," as he termed it, and then as Smith brought down the guns with a very inquiring look which said dumbly but plainly enough, "You won't leave me behind, will yer, gents?" the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... his shoulder. McEachern glared dumbly. This was the crowning blow, that there should ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads, And his big blessing downward ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... hands, looked over his shoulder, and begged to thank Miss Landless for her vindication of his character. Then he fell to dumbly playing, without striking the notes, while his little pupil was taken to an open window for air, and was otherwise petted and restored. When she was brought back, his place was empty. 'Jack's gone, Pussy,' Edwin told her. 'I am more than half afraid ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... He shook his head dumbly, looking at his splayed fingers with the vacant stare of an invalid just recovering consciousness. "I want only the coffee; make it strong, please. I really am not hungry. The thought of food, somehow, is sickening. I've worked hard ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... at him dumbly. She began to realize that the knightly spirit of those gallant, long dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago lighted ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... having all the imagination. I ask from her nothing of this—I do the whole thing with her, as she has to do it with them; and of this, au fond, as Lorraine again says, she is ever so subtly aware—just as, FOR it, she's ever so dumbly grateful. Let these notes stand at any rate for my fond fancy of that, and write it here to my credit in letters as big and black as the tearful alphabet of my childhood; let them do this even if everything else registers meaner things. I'm perfectly willing to ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... over the rough wood to make it more comfortable, and she submitted dumbly to his ministrations. It seemed terrible and strange to her that one so gentle should be the object of so much hate—such deadly hate as the members of Nick's gang felt for him. And now that he was sitting before her she could see that he had indeed ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... if its aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay himself, it drew and satisfied your ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... as she saw the stern expression on his face a sudden sense of fear ran through her nerves like the chill of an icy wind and she waited dumbly for his next word. He gripped her hand ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... a, b, c's of it—and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... bed, unable to speak a word. His eyes were tearless. The room was full of serving-maids and nurses. Here and there a stifled sob was to be heard. He neither saw nor heard anything. He only gazed dumbly, stonily, at the dying woman. On each side of the bed a familiar form was kneeling—Flora ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the sound of his pen, and watched him dumbly. He had apparently dismissed her and her small affairs from his mind. His hand travelled with swift decision over the paper. He was evidently immersed in his own private concerns. He wrote ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... from the cliffs you came, Flew thro' the snow to me, Facing the icy blast There by the icy sea. How did I reach your feet? Why should I—at the end Hold out half-frozen hands Dumbly to you my friend? Ne'er had I woman seen, Ne'er had I seen a flame. There you piled fagots on, Heat rose—the blast to tame. There by the cave-door dark, Comforting me you cried— Wailed o'er my wounded knee, Wept for ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... protested against these austerities and decisions. It told him dumbly that she did want, very much, to please him; but that ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... temple, half-gorged by the facade of a hideous Renaissance church; then a height of vaulted brick-work, and, leading on to the Coliseum, another arch, and then incoherent columns overthrown and mixed with dilapidated walls—mere phonographic consonants, dumbly representing the past, out of which all vocal glory had departed. The Coliseum itself does not much better express a certain phase of Roman life than does the Arena at Verona; it is larger only to the foot-rule, and it seemed not grander otherwise, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the minutes passed, seemed to him the prospect of keeping the resolution which he had made when still pusillanimous, of acting on the determination to flee out of this night of miracle dumbly, unrecognized, like a thief. With the infallible conviction that he must be the bringer of delight even as he was the receiver of delight, he felt prepared for the venture of disclosing his name, even though he knew all the time that he would thus play for a great stake, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Dumbly he saw the rosy-tinted Bliss When Zamperina kissed her maiden Kiss, Her Innocence betraying in the Cry, "Oh, how can ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... what I am dumbly groping for—some way of thinking about the War that will make it seem (to future ages) a purification for humanity rather than a mere blackness of stinking cinders and tortured flesh and men shot to ribbons in marshes of ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... it you, perchance, who ache to strain us Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast, Or with tragic gesture would detain us From the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... of sleep and fight barehanded against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed, helpless and living victims are thrown aside to await slow death. Children are torn from their mothers' arms—but there—memory revolts ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... now impatient. He could not see the drift of this, and he was about to whisper to Parpon, when the little man sent him a look, commanding silence, and he fretted on dumbly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eye began to roll—to Cis's face, seeing the truth written there, and the story of her long hours of suffering; to the countenance of the priest, to ask, dumbly, if any living man had ever heard anything more outrageous than this; then, "By the Great Horn Spoon!" he breathed, and again stomped one foot, like an ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... said good-naturedly. "So you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other arrangements for—hum, hum—ordinary cases." And as she looked at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at The Avenger inquest—a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to say nothing ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Adams tries dumbly to express in his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to him not to be so blatantly discreet. If there were a Sherlock Holmes about the place ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Katherine nodded dumbly. "But, how am I going to 'pass on the light that has been given to me,' if I am to be away from people?" she said sadly after ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... over again she repeated dumbly Mr. Carlyon's words. How could she doubt that David had spoken them when he had tried with loving unselfishness to say them to her! Would she ever forget the tender ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bones there ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a silver dime. He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of pain it was. He did not reach for the money—he did not know what it was. There were dozens of such children in this particular mill. A physician who was with me ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... stock, and the royalty from the shipments of ore; and—yes, it had to do with Virginia. It was going to make her rich, and both of them happy; but he could not recall it, at the moment. He was worn out, weary with the seething thoughts which had rioted through his mind all day, and he turned back dumbly to his office. It was dark and cold and as he groped for his matchbox his hand encountered a strange package. And yet it was not so strange—he seemed to remember it, somehow. He struck a hasty match and looked. It was the package of stock that he had sent to Virginia, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less dark than this,—"Where is God?" I saw the tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless life-boat from slipping back into the whirlpool wherein ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... And the blows were three That time ensured On her, which she dumbly endured; And one on me - One ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... breakers and by-laws regulating the costume of bathers, merely exasperated my nerves. How far more subtle the appeal of these grey and dun-coloured opacities, these tent-cloths of fog pressed out into uncouth, dumbly pathetic shapes by the struggle for existence that seethes below it always—always! Decidedly I must begin to-morrow to practise walking. It seems a necessary step towards acquainting myself with the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that beyond the sea The people, growing ever wise, Turn to the west their serious eyes And dumbly strive ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... feel for them and let them have it. The jeune premier went off, and half an hour later returned with a bottle of brandy and some castor-oil. Shtchiptsov was sitting motionless, as before, on the bed, gazing dumbly at the floor. He drank the castor-oil offered him by his friend like an automaton, with no consciousness of what he was doing. Like an automaton he sat afterwards at the table, and drank tea and brandy; ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and watching for the hour for which she longed, yet dreaded, had proved too much. Only the day before she had fainted suddenly, and, honestly glad of an excuse, the local doctor had ordered her to bed forthwith. Valerie had obeyed dumbly. She knew that she had come to the end of her tether, and so to that of her wit; and since, to deal at all hopefully with Anthony's return to consciousness, her understanding must be on tiptoe, she knew that she was better away. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... mouth drew into harder lines, and the cold, domineering tone, weighted heavy with sneering emphasis, grated on me till I wanted to reach over and slap his handsome, smooth-shaven face. But MacRae stood at "attention" and took his medicine dumbly. He had to. He was in the presence, and answering the catechism, of a superior officer, and his superior officer by virtue of a commission from the Canadian government could insult his manhood and lash him unmercifully with a viperish tongue, and ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... all who dumbly suffered, His tongue and pen he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... said she would. Then she turned her face to the wall and went into a convulsion out of which she never came. While the Peters family refused Kate's plea to lay Polly beside her grandmother, and laid her in their family lot, Kate, moaning dumbly, sat clasping a tiny red girl in her arms. Adam drove to Hartley to deposit one more paper, the most precious of all, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, she took up her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... along Mary was in a fever of discomfort. She wished dumbly that the man would go away, but for the wealth of the world she could not have brought herself to hurt the feelings of so big a man. To endanger the very natural dignity of a big man was a thing which no woman could do without a pang; the shame of it made her feel hot: he might ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... She sat dumbly wondering; it was most probably Dr. Withers, the new doctor. The monotonous hum of their voices suddenly ceased and he was walking past her toward the door, pursing his lips in an odd sort of way. He looked at her as he passed, and reached for his hat. She did not hear the door close after him. Mrs. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... and the squires, the king about, Hear him, and dumbly stare Into the wild sea's tumbling rout; But to win the beaker, they hardly care! The king, for the third time, round him glaring— "Not a soul of you ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... to Amy and Grace, who were still standing dumbly in the middle of the road. A moment later he had thrown himself with all his might against the machine, striving to push it out of the path ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... usual Miss Ffrench to bewilder any one. Bailey dumbly followed her back across the park, carrying his hat in ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Its palm caught the side of her face in a hefty slap. Trigger staggered dumbly sideways, got her balance and stood facing him again. She didn't even feel anger. Her cheek began ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... disappointed and spiritless when she reached the ranchhouse, and very tired, physically. Agatha's questions irritated her, and she ate sparingly of the food set before her, eager to be alone. In the isolation of her room she lay dumbly on the bed, and there the absurdity of Levins' story assailed her. It must be as Corrigan had said—her father was too great a man to descend to such despicable methods. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... note-book and a pencil from his vest-pocket and gave them to Hen, who looked at him dumbly, worked his Adam's apple violently and retreated to his horse, fumbled the mail which was tied in the bottom of a flour sack for safe keeping, sought a sheltered place where he could sit down, remained there ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... last out of the summer haze, he had laid his instrument aside and was lying with his head on his arms and his face to the rising glory. They watched it dumbly in the silence of goodfellowship, till at last it topped the willows and shone in a broad, silver streak across the lake right up to the prow ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Harry nodded dumbly and Dixie's feet beat the rhythm of her matchless gallop down the quiet street. The sensitive little mare seemed to catch at once the spirit of her rider. Her haunches quivered. She tossed her head and champed her bit, but not a pound did ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... down, her cheeks pale. It was a good long walk from the door to the table, and Bob made a full inspection of her as she came up to a chair at the remotest corner, in the direct rays of the morning light, where she dumbly sat ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... work of the men of his party, elegant and brilliant as it often is, is the work of men essentially unresponsive to the appeal of their compatriots. For them, as it is for every Russian musician, Russia was without their windows, appealing dumbly for expression of its wild, ungoverned energy, its misery, its rich and childish laughter, its deep, great Christianity. It wanted a music that would have the accents of its rude, large-hearted speech, and that would, like its speech, express its essential reactions, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... more alarmed now than when he saw the flames of the burning oil threatening the destruction of the building, and he dumbly wondered why Gladys did not make ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... moment his reply dazed her; then she threw both arms about his neck, and burst into tears, sobbing as if her heart would break, while he dumbly sought to soothe her sorrow, by cuddling her head on his shoulder and rubbing his quivering cheek against hers, for he could not trust ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... fingers—only to feel her silken garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that! As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting dumbly for the next move—quite non compos by this ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... him, telling what he knew, Fenwick all the time dumbly vexed that this good-looking, prosperous fellow, this Academician in his new fur coat, breathing success and commissions, should know more of his best ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... horror and his mourning were? The outward signs were few, some minutes dumbly gazing at the place with downcast, draggled look, and then a change at the thought of their helpless brood. Back to the hiding-place he went, and called the well-known 'Kreet, kreet.' Did every grave give up its little ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand, She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... He looked dumbly at the man who addressed him, a stout, black-haired captain, who fixed him menacingly with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, turmoil, and danger of the great battle. Voltaire was ever in the front and centre ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various |
