"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost vacantly at the monk who told his story with a kind of terrified gusto, and once or twice his lips moved to speak; but he was silent, and dropped his chin upon his hand again ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... making a feeble effort to lick her lips, whereupon I held the pannikin to them and allowed a little water to trickle into her mouth. This she endeavoured to swallow, but the effort was so painful as to extort a low groan from her. Then she opened her eyes and looked about her vacantly, as though she did not recognise her surroundings; but when she found me bending over her she smiled faintly—a smile which ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... not heed his ironical remarks; she sat gazing vacantly into space, but the look on her face was not ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... ottoman stood vacantly gaping, the little chairs seemed lonely about the hearthrug, even the sofa where the invalid ladies sat was unoccupied, and the perforated blinds gave the crowds that passed up and down the street a shadow-like appearance. The prospect was not inspiriting, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... in vain; and his heart beat quick, for he was fearful that they were dead from previous exhaustion. He applied his foot to one of them, and it was not until he had used force, which in any other case he would have dispensed with, that the negro awoke from his state of lethargy and looked vacantly about him. Francisco had some little knowledge of the language of the Kroumen, and he addressed the negro in that tongue. To his great joy he was answered in a language which, if not the same, had so great an affinity to it that communication became easy. With the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers on one ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the slender, dimly seen figure. Then he went to his own rooms, and began briskly enough to move about between the mirrors and dressing room, windows and bed. But two or three times he stopped short, and found himself staring vacantly into space, all movement arrested, even thought arrested for whole ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... puzzled when he observed the abstraction of the warrior, but without losing time in studying the question, he cocked his rifle and slowly brought it to his shoulder, keeping his eyes fixed on the warrior up the ridge, whose arms were still folded, and who was gazing vacantly in the direction of the setting sun. There could be no mistake about it: the Pawnee meant to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... and I went ben the house. In another two minutes we were a group of four in the kitchen, staring vacantly. Death could not have startled us more, tapping thrice that quiet night on ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... man could not get no further than this idea—and the idea itself was a mere truism—no response was drawn from his companions, who sat with clenched fists, staring vacantly before them. Probably the first stage of incipient madness had set in with ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... fed, his eyes half-sheathed in their membraneous lids, he gazed out vacantly across the waving herbage of the shallows, across the slow, pale tides whose surface boiled from time to time above the rush of some unseen giant of a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he painted, but in a fit of gloomy disgust destroyed everything. So it went on for a few weeks. Miss Marston was more regular than an alarm-clock; sometimes she brought some work, but oftener she sat vacantly watching the young man at work. Her only standard of accomplishment was quantity. One day, when Clayton had industriously employed a rainy afternoon in putting in the drapery for the figure, she was so much pleased by the quantity of the work accomplished that she praised him gleefully. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... to slow down. Signs of returning animation began to be noticeable among the sleepers. Aunty's eyes opened, stared vacantly round, closed, and reopened. The niece woke, and started instantly to attack a sausage roll. Albert and ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... the birds advance and retire and pursue each other, and after this exhibition they were put back into their baskets and covered with hay. So you are the Heeler? Joseph asked. The man grinned vacantly, and the woman answered for him. There is none like him in this country for fixing a pair of spurs, for cutting the tail and wings and shortening the hackle and the rump feathers. You see, young Master, the comb is cut close so that there shall be no mark for t'other bird's bill. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind—but the day clouds it. We shouldn't believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains into it at a tender age. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... towards Notting Hill. Still I loitered, spellbound... I was aware of some one at my side, some one asking me a question. 'I beg your pardon?' I said. The stranger was a tall man, bronzed and bearded. He repeated his question. In answer, I pointed silently to the ruin. 'That?' he gasped. He stared vacantly. I saw that his face had become pale under its sunburn. He looked from the ruin to me. 'You're not joking with me?' he said thickly. I assured him that I was not. I assured him that this was indeed the club to which he had asked to be directed. 'But,' he stammered, 'but—but—' ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... head, about half an inch in width, with eye-sockets staring vacantly, and grisly mouth gaping in a wide and horrible smile, made the more horrible by the two rows of protruding teeth. The girl almost dropped the letter, as full realization of the significance of ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things I became sadder and sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire until my eyes closed ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... observe the pallor that overspread his features, nor the expression, not of anger, but of anguish, that settled upon his face, for she had turned half away from him, and was gazing vacantly across the river. There was an unpleasant pause, which was broken by the noise of voices in alarm near the house, the trampling of hoofs, and the rattle ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... looked into the depths of his desk, staring vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again sagged with sympathy. "Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in this life—take smiles without testing 'em with acid—take words-current ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... told that the areas open for selection were not on the Geelong side, and one of the obliging officials placed a plan before him, showing the lands on which he was free to choose a future home. The selector looked vacantly at the map, but at length became attracted by a bright green allotment, which at once won his capricious fancy, indicating as it did such luxurious herbage; but, much to his disgust, he found that 'the green lot' had already ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... adorned with kohl, whose hands were dyed a deep orange-colour with the henna, and who rattled and clinked as they moved and the barbaric ornaments of silver and gold which circled their arms and ankles shifted upon their small-boned limbs. The blind man was singing loudly. The women, staring vacantly, held the corners of their cloaks mechanically to their already covered faces. The man with the bristling beard talked violently with friends, and occasionally, interrupting himself abruptly, joined ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the way-bill which accompanied the pouch, and were duly checked off. The poor messenger was thunder-struck, and for a time acted like an idiot, plunging his hand into the vacant pouch over and over again, and staring vacantly at the way-bill. The Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Division was in the Atlanta office when the loss was discovered, and at once telegraphed to Maroney for an explanation. Receiving no reply before the train started for Montgomery, he ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... a step, and covered his face with his hands. For a full minute there was absolute silence. Rathbawne had returned to the table, and, with his fore-arms across the back of a chair, and one foot on the lower cross-bar, was staring vacantly at his autographs, his hands moulding and remoulding each other into an infinity of forms. Natalie was at the window, her face in the crevice between the curtains. The same impulse had prompted both father and daughter. There are some things ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... by its piquancy and grace; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter of surprise!) upon whatever subject you may suggest. You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring when she is looking for reply. The regard you feel for her resolves itself into an exquisite mental love, vastly superior, as you think, to any other kind of love. There is no dream of marriage ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... He stood looking vacantly up the street until the gathering excitement of his neighbours aroused new feelings. Vanity stirred within him, and leaning casually against the door-post he yawned and looked at the chimney-pots ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... by Fellow-natures, she might wait On the poor labouring man with kindly looks, And minister refreshment to the tired Way-wanderer, when along the rough-hewn bench The sweltry man had stretched him, and aloft 150 Vacantly watched the rudely-pictured board Which on the Mulberry-bough with welcome creak Swung to the pleasant breeze. Here, too, the Maid Learnt more than Schools could teach: Man's shifting mind, His vices ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vacantly about the familiar river upon whose banks she had been born and bred, and, finally noticing the sun had gone down, closing the short day, she once more drew her cloak closely about her and resumed ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... who had been wandering about from the bar to the office, from the office to the veranda, and occasionally entirely around the exterior of the road-house, came in on tiptoe and looked rather vacantly at them both. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... Willie!—there he stood lounging against the door-sill, enormously grown and developed, to be sure, but with restless eyes and ever-open mouth, and every now and then setting up a strange kind of howling cry, and then smiling vacantly to himself at the sound he had made. As the two old labourers passed him, they looked at each other ominously, and ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... woman took the paper and looked vacantly upon it, while her thoughts dwelt upon the many comfortable things that one dollar would buy for the approaching winter. Jessie's life, to be sure, was most precious to her, but to what purpose would it be saved, if, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... say "Thank you" with a sense of being a profound hypocrite. Wholly at ease though you could be, for your own part, you find that your sympathies will not let you. You see young gentlemen feeling whether their ties are properly adjusted, looking vacantly round, and considering what they shall do next. You see ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... study of history. 'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... exceedingly shabby blue suit with the collar turned up, with a muffler round his neck and large, bulging boots on his feet, comes and sits beside him. I perceive an earnest young lady, probably a typist in search of extra culture, look at him long and vacantly from over her copy of Emerson, and can almost see her mind gradually collecting conclusions about him. The attendant, too, as he asks for his paper, eyes him shrewdly and suspiciously, and waits till the three halfpence are actually handed across under the brass wire partition ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... his will as if she had none of her own left. She passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined it. He read on the back of the package: "Withers Estate—old papers—of no ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... like Don Mathias, he was fond of champagne suppers with actresses, and would always postpone a battle for a ball or a horse-race. About five years ago we were lying off Lisbon in a steamer in our way from Spain. The morning was fine, and we were upon deck staring vacantly about us, as is our custom, with our hands in our pockets, when a large barge with an awning, and manned by many rowers, came dashing through the water and touched the vessel's side. Some people came on board, of whom, however, we took but little notice, continuing with our hands in ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... her bonnet strings, and alter looking vacantly for some moments into a little black teapot that was set forth with the usual homely service on the table, shook her head and a tin canister, and began unasked to make ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... mood had turned to dull despair and grief that would be more poignant in the morning, when he would be better able to comprehend the fell blow that had shattered his happiness and crushed his ambitions and dreams. He refused pipe and cigars. Until three o'clock he sat staring vacantly at the floor, seemingly oblivious of Jimmie's presence, and occasionally helping himself to brandy. At last he fell asleep in the chair, and Jimmie, who had with difficulty kept his eyes open, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... had recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there was no human power within reach or call that could interfere. The ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... before Polydectes's guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering something that could not ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... her vacantly. It was some time before he answered. Then his answer showed vagueness; for what with the howl of the wind and the eternal presence in the closet of his soul of the skeleton of despair, his mind had become a little erratic ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... not reply, did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Observation: 1. For five months the patient presented a marked stupor. She was for the most part very inactive, totally mute, staring vacantly, often not even blinking, so that for a time the conjunctivae were dry. She did not swallow, but held her saliva; did not react to pin pricks or feinting motions before her eyes. Sometimes she retained her urine, again wet and soiled the bed. Often there ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... newspaper, might have passed them, if his horse had not shied and snorted. He pulled the cart crossways, and held down his whip. "Hallo? Where are you going to?"—Pigling Bland stared at him vacantly. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... Mr. Bilkins, with his wig pushed back from his forehead, and his eyes fixed vacantly on The Weekly Chronicle, which he held out at ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... opened and Dounia came in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost vacantly at her. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... oh no! never! I never really meant it; did I?" She stared at herself in the glass for a few seconds, and her face was very pale. Then she bent over her hands again, and the tears came and wetted them a little, and at last she sat down as she had sat before, and stared vacantly at the fire. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... that ensued the others smiled vacantly, breathlessly, and expectantly, until Corbin advanced and held out his hand, when Julia Jeffcourt, drawing hers back to her bosom with the palms outward, uttered an inarticulate cry and—and spat ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... garden in the middle of the square, and he walked round and round it. He gazed vacantly at a statue in the middle of the garden, and then walked round the rails again. The darkness was gathering fast, the gas was beginning to blaze, and he was like a creature in the coil of a horrible fascination. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,— Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore. All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records of the westward caravans, Where silent heaps of wreck and nameless graves Make milestones for the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... slid a dark red card into the mouth of his office stamp, jerked down the lever, and swung his head quickly toward the sounder chattering hysterically behind him. His jaw slackened as he listened, and he turned his eyes vacantly upon Ford for a moment before he ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... his face relaxing to a serious expression in which a trace of sadness and gloom spread like an elusive twilight. He took out his letter, but did not glance at it, simply holding it tightly gripped in his sinewy right hand. Then his old eyes stared vacantly, as eyes do when their sight is cast back many, many years into the past. The missive was from beyond the sea—he knew the handwriting—a waft of the flowers of Avignon seemed to rise out of it, as if by the pressure of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... resident here is too small to call for a place of general recreation, and the Turk never feels a want of this kind. The most he does is to saunter slowly from the bath to the coffee-house, and there to kill his time with the help of a pipe and a cup of coffee, staring vacantly on the ground before him. Although the coffee- houses are more frequented than any other buildings in the East, they are often miserable sheds, being all small, and generally ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... stable as a giant in all that appertained to nature and life outside humanity, was a mere pupil in domestic matters. He was quite awed by her firmness, and looked vacantly at her for a time, till she closed the window. Then he mechanically turned, and went, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it—while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he to pass the time till the house was ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... do easily what others could not do at all. Her arms trailed limp. Mr. Haim and Mr. Prince jointly raised her lower limbs. George staggered backwards up the remainder of the stairs. As they steered the burden into the bedroom, where a candle was burning, Mrs. Haim opened her eyes and, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, murmured ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... before the store and emitted her call, which flavoured of friendliness and the North, Greeley was vacantly looking into space, hugging his bony knees, and listening to an indignant fly buzzing on the dirty glass of the back window, protesting against any exit being barred to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... while with her fingers upon the window sash; and when she turned to old Tamar, who brought in her tiny tea equipage, it seemed as if the shadow of the dell, into which she had been vacantly gazing, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... passing his fingers tremulously back and forward along the top of the mantelpiece, like a man in search of something, and continued so, looking along it, feebly and vacantly, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Susan stepped back, feeling suddenly breathless. Courant made a movement as if to follow her, then stopped, his face rived with lines and red with rage. He was shaken by what to her was entirely inexplicable anger, and in her amazement she stared vacantly at him. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... his feet with an oath and then fell back into his chair, staring round him vacantly, at a loss as to where he might be. His eye fell upon the bottle of Hollands, which was now nearly empty, and he held out his hand to it with an ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... still gazing vacantly into the varying flames, performed anew the journey, not from Kennons to Troy on the Hudson, but from the latter city, via New York, back to his Virginian plantation. His sister and Ellice Linwood were his companions, for it had been arranged that, though ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he lit the lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, and danced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like stage fireflies. He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at the pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that he started up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained—a Medusa-face, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to the servants' part of the bungalow, she found the other servant fast asleep, ready to stare at her vacantly and wonderingly as she was shaken into wakefulness. The woman had to be spoken to by her fellow-servant before anything could be got from her; and then it was only to learn that the expected ones had ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... soldier weakly tried to wrench himself free. "Huh," he said vacantly. He stared at the youth for a moment. At last he spoke as if dimly comprehending. "Oh! Inteh th' ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the dingle, and strolled round the wood that surrounded it; for a long time I was busied in meditation, looking at the ground, striking with my foot, half unconsciously, the tufts of grass and thistles that I met in my way. After some time, I lifted up my eyes to the sky, at first vacantly, and then with more attention, turning my head in all directions for a minute or two; after which I returned to the dingle. Isopel was seated near the fire, over which the kettle was now hung; she had changed her dress—no signs of the dust and fatigue of her late excursion ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... complied with, and Louis resumed his former seat, and fixing his eyes vacantly on the sweet prospect before him, ruminated with a full heart on the recent discovery; and, strange to say, though he had voluntarily promised to screen Ferrers a little longer from his justly merited disgrace, he felt as if ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... pertaining in an indifferent way to the above household, but Virgie had read enough, and the letter fell from her nerveless fingers, while she sat staring vacantly before her, her brain almost turned by the heartless words she had just read, her heart broken with its weight of woe, while a feeling of utter wretchedness and desolation made her long for death to steep ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... bosom, where she held them pressed; and they saw her face turn of a deathly white, even to her lips, as the blood flew to her heart. Then she uttered a low sigh and sank down in a chair, where she was still seated, gazing vacantly before her into the future, when her father returned and ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... tail of my coat threw down a little tray containing pens and pencils, which had been left close to the edge of the table. Slight as the noise of the fall was, it disturbed Mr. Gracedieu. He looked round vacantly. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... stared vacantly at her for a while and then said, "Though I don't see why I didn't leave years and years ago; I knew all this then, as well as I do now." The wife looked away from him as she replied: "Yes, I should have known you would know. I knew your ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... dying friend behind him; and there before him, right against the wall, lay the sailor Ralling, that fine chap from Maryland who was one of the men who had won the gig-race at Newport News; now he stared vacantly into space, his mouth covered with blood and foam. "Shot in the lung!" thought Meade, hurrying on and trying, oh so hard, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... could not avoid it, and as she recalled Mrs. Grayson's remark concerning her appearance on the previous day, her countenance reflected her intense mortification. She pressed her face against the window-pane and stared vacantly out. The elevated position commanded a fine view of the town, and on the eastern horizon the blue waters of the harbor glittered with "silvery sheen." At any other time, and with different emotions, Beulah's love of the beautiful would have been ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... uncoiling an enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among the trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point, and found the marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowful solemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as he steered his light craft down the broad stream ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... . . " Bella paused, and for a long minute her small fine teeth, still perfect, showed deep in her underlip as she sought and won control and sent her gaze vacantly out across the far blue horizon. As she relaxed, her eyes came back to ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the lowest boy in the day-school, too idle to learn or even play. See how vacantly he stands gaping at the men clearing the snow from the house-tops, with his hand in his pocket because he has lost his glove, having placed the hot shoulder of mutton down in the cold snow. No wonder the ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... kindly brown bear who pleads humanly for buns, and her I have fed into a sort of friendship. I stand vacantly in front of the cage finding in the beast an odd companionable sympathy. She turns her head on one side, regards me with melting brown eyes, and squatting on her haunches thrusts her paws beseechingly through the bars. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and the young man were alone, there was a silence of some moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly at the dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with the tambour-frame ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... fatigue. On the contrary, my mind was unusually alert, and in a more receptive condition than usual. I made a new and determined effort to read, and for a short time succeeded in giving my whole attention to my subject. But in a very few moments again I found myself leaning back in my chair, staring vacantly ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... no answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley allowed a sneer to twist at his lips ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... snuffed out of him like the switching off of an electric current. The dull heavy cloud descended on him again. He stared vacantly at the others, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned his ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... different class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Negro, Colon—paused as they pushed their way over the uneven road, and stared at him vacantly where he stood. There was something in his attitude, in his look, which swept over them, seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in the excited fire in his eyes, that arrested all—from the dullest muleteer, plodding on with his string of patient beasts, to the most ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... from his hand dropped the blue ax. He floundered down uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still. Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the waning day ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... by the circumstances that surrounded him, and gazed vacantly at the judge and jury. He was a dull, stupid fellow, and did not readily comprehend ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings, stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but this morning she flushed ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... your forgetfulness, dares a wilder beauty, and enthralls with a yet more unearthly and incredible enchantment. It is in the Piazza, and the Austrian band is playing, and the promenaders pace solemnly up and down to the music, and the gentle Italian loafers at Florian's brood vacantly over their little cups of coffee, and nothing can be more stupid; when suddenly every thing is changed, and a memorable tournament flashes up in many-glittering action upon the scene, and there upon the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Mary looked at him vacantly. "What was he saying?" she wondered. From a sea of grief she seemed to be passing ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... the hall and stared vacantly at the pond and the village, and the sound reached me of "A piece of cheese ... God sent the crow a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... been heard by Pao-yue, he gazed vacantly for some time, feeling the while very unhappy; but raising himself impetuously: "Well!" he exclaimed, "if you don't notice me, all right, I too will go to sleep," and as he spoke he got up, and, descending from the couch, he betook himself to his own bed and went to sleep. Hsi ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... they had missed something; for, to judge by his attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. He still sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk; but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher was known in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievably dull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had a long, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... answer for a space. Somebody was singing in the room behind them, and through the open window he could see the stars in the soft indigo above the great sweep of prairie. He noticed them vacantly and took a curious impersonal interest in the two dim figures standing close together outside the window. One was a young English lad, and the other a girl in a long white dress. What they were doing there was no concern of his, but ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... rain-water butt, mewing peevishly at a sparrow which had perched upon the clothes-line. The young master was in his room, coughing; he had already gone to bed. Pelle bent over the edge of the well and gazed vacantly over the gardens. He was hot and dizzy, but a cool draught rose from the well and soothingly caressed his head. The bats were gliding through the air like spirits, passing so close to his face that he felt the wind of their flight, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their familiar and prosaic quality made his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... why, and passed his hand over his high forehead. "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly. "But you, mademoiselle—you—I have ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... which the flask contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. "Have I been dreaming?" he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan's face. His eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight of them, and hid his face on Allan's knee. "No dream!" ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... forget herself utterly as she inhaled the light and air and warmth, passionately and with a sort of feverish joy. Her distended lips would part to admit the fresh, clear air. Her eyes burned, but did not move; and in the light shadow of the silk umbrella her gaunt, wasted, haggard face stared vacantly into space like ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... girl was not asleep—she lay with her eyes wide open, staring vacantly at the white wall. She looked at them, when they entered, with a half-frightened, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... then, and I know just what to do; I've been through this kind of thing with lots of fellows in California. I know the haughty and self-helpful stage. You're all right, Roberts. But don't lose time. What's the matter now?" Roberts has come back from his dressing-room and is staring vacantly at Campbell. ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... of course, Colonel," he answered, lifting his chin from his breast, upon which it was resting, "arranged, quite satisfactorily arranged." Then he looked about rather vacantly, for his mind, it was clear, was far away, and added, "Do you want: I mean, were you talking about the new drainage mill for the salt marshes?" Mary interrupted ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... which was a rash presumption on my part, however, for he only said, "to submit to you the result of our careful investigation into the affairs of your late lamented father." I nodded a quiet assent, my step-mother pressed a deep-bordered handkerchief to her eyes, and Fred looked vacantly at the pattern ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... indeed, his small black eyes shone with that fire which a pretty woman or an "affair of honor" could alone kindle. The visitor stared vacantly at him, and said slowly, "And what good is that goin' to ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Nek. Instead of recognising familiar landmarks and houses, everything seemed strange and new to me. Said the man on my left in the ranks, "There's the farm where those Tommies got the porkers." To which I remarked vacantly, "Oh!" Then, further on, "Haven't the oats come on in that field?" Again, I helplessly "Er—yes." Then, "I wonder if they've got any fowls left in that shanty over there?" I, dissembling knowledge no longer, at last observed, "Really I don't understand it. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... intimacy with all the cattle-markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... hand holding the staff, the other groping out vacantly in front of him, as though to touch the prisoners. Behind him, the dull blue light cast its vague glow. Stern, seeing his bald and shaking head, lean, corded hand, and trembling body wrapped in its mantle of coarse brown stuff, could not ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... head on my hand again, and stared vacantly as before. Exhaustion had almost become stupor, and it was in a sort of dream that I watched the stout figure moving softly to and fro, lighting the fire, and bringing an air of comfort over the dreary little ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his seat, and looked vacantly out of the window, with a vague dissatisfaction at heart. Unrecognized fully as yet, the great law of nature, which brings to each a distinct and separate existence, was beginning to operate. As she had said to Mara, vital interests were looming up, new experiences coming, of which ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its sombre associations. But the back bedroom, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. At night-time, this "alcove"—as ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... could, boy!" he said, so earnestly that I was startled, and the more so that at the same moment the man slowly opened his eyes, and stared at us vacantly. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... in a large room which served in winter as a kitchen and in summer as a sort of sitting-room, smoking a pipe and gazing vacantly into the pine-branches in the open fireplace before him. He had been out all day on his marsh, but he had been home a couple of hours. His wife—kindly soul—received Captain Pelham at the door, wiping her hands upon her apron, ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Griffith rested vacantly on the treasure that the other valued so highly, but his hand seized eagerly the open letter which was laid on the table for his perusal. The reader will at once understand that it was in the handwriting of a female, and that it was the communication ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... recognised it: it was the wild drummer who had turned the tide of battle in the bicker on the Castle Brae. A small stone which I dislodged now rolled down the rock, and tumbled into the abyss close beside him. He turned his head, and after looking at me for a moment somewhat vacantly, he resumed his former attitude. I drew yet nearer to the horrible edge; not close, however, for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... with me, I rode back until I had placed him beyond the danger of the straggling plunderer, when we shook hands and parted. As he left me, I turned to look after him. He still sat in that attitude that betokens deep dejection, his shoulders bent forward over the neck of his mule, while he gazed vacantly on the path. My heart sank at the spectacle, and, sad and dispirited, I rode at a lagging pace ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Spunyarn shakes his head reprovingly, fusses over Tom, turns him over on his wales, as he has it, and finally gets him on his beam's ends, a besotted wreck unable to carry his canvas. "Lost yeer reckonin', eh, Tom?" he continues as that bewildered individual stares vacantly at him. The inebriate contorts painfully his face, presses and presses his hands to his burning forehead, and says they are firing a salute in his head, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... on the side of the bed, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her gaze fixed vacantly on the floor,—"Poor baby! Dead,—thank God!" was all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... came and went, scribbling hasty notes in dog-eared notebooks, he, a human statue of Amaze, gazed at the open window, continuously and vacantly. Jostled by the crowds of curious and interested visitors, he stood, the most surprised man in the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... looking vacantly out across the city walls to where the sea birds dipped on the rippling waves, was apparently oblivious. Nor did he manifest the slightest interest in the animated scene before him until a tall, heavy-set young priest emerged from the entrance of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in his conjecture, for presently Ethne left the group and hesitatingly approached the giant warrior, who was still gazing vacantly at the glassy surface of the water. She touched him timidly on the shoulder. Slowly he raised his head, and still half dazed by his long staring, listened while she made her request. He rose to his feet sleepily, throwing out his brawny arms and expanding his chest as he cast a keen glance ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... remaining space on the card was left blank to receive the statement of regimen, etc. A nurse was giving the patient an iced drink. After swallowing feebly, the man relapsed into a semi-stupor, his eyes opening and closing vacantly. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... when the old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canyon into which Bruce ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... but Ivan walked up and down before the tent. A huge fire had been made, which was amply fed by the wood of the river bank, and it blazed on high, showing in bold relief the features of the scene. Ivan gazed vacantly at everything; but he saw not the dark and glancing river—he saw not the bleak plain of snow—his eyes looked not on the romantic picture of the tent and its bivouac-fire: his thoughts were on one thing alone. He it ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... more glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death of God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence. All the forward men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists said he was cursing ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Lieutenant Devereux—I—I—dear me! yes. Gentlemen, your most obedient,' murmured Loftus vacantly, and knocking his head smartly on the top of the window frame, in recovering from a little bow. 'I'll be wi' ye, gentlemen, in a moment.' And the hen's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in turn and stared vacantly at her sister. It was so blurred and swollen with incessant crying that if Maud had not known it was her sister who lay crouched there before her, she ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... table at her husband, but he was slouched in his chair, his eyes staring vacantly over ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stared vacantly for a second, saw the proffered orange, and at the sight of it the thought of "the childer" and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared his dazzled wits, and he took ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... lids, and surveyed the room vacantly. Her glance passed over the medical man as if he were not within the range of her vision. She gazed at Lafe only, with but a faint glimmer of recognition, then on to Peg wavered ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... his eyes, and was looking vacantly and sleepily round him. "I'll go home," was all he said. He got up and walked rather shakily, but without assistance, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... could keep him. Presently a tug came off from the transport with a picket to collect deserters—he had to go. She sobbed and wailed, imploring the sergeant in vain; and she clung to her poor senseless husband as though she would never leave him. He hardly knew her; he laughed vacantly in her face when with streaming eyes she begged him to speak her name; then they took him away from her. As the tug steamed out I heard ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... lounge away your leisure hours in a room which is chiefly furnished, as far as I can see, with scrubbing brushes. And when the human race has progressed to the stage where seventeen thousand chairs are manufactured on every day except Sunday—" he paused. Rose and Key regarded him vacantly. "Will you tell me," went on Peter, "why you choose to rest yourselves on articles, intended for the transportation of water from ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... join vacantly in the laugh, when a sound in the doorway caused me to lift my eyes from my plate, and the next instant I sat paralysed by the figure that towered there over ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... swab the deck. It was only with difficulty that he could limp along, and every move caused him violent pain. He grew listless and dejected, and sat all day on the vessel's side, eagerly straining his eyes to catch any sight of land, or gazing vacantly into the weary sameness of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Augustus contrive to drop a shell from the howitzer upon Ute Jack and explode him—a shrewd and deadly conception; the shells went beyond, except one, that ripped through the canvas, somewhat near the ground; and Augustus, dripping, turned at length, and saying, "It won't go down," stood vacantly wiping his white face. Then the two chiefs got his leave to stretch a rope between their horses and ride hard against the tepee. It was military neither in essence nor to see, but it prevailed. The tepee sank, a huge umbrella wreck along the earth, and there ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... thought it time to wake up. He opened his eyes, stared at her vacantly, and asked if it were raining, which indeed it might have been, for her big tears were falling on his face. She uttered a ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... violently that she could not utter a word. His wife, Elizaveta Trofimovna, a flabby, overfed woman, with her grey hair hanging loose, was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room quivering all over, and vacantly rolling her eyes as though she were drunk. Her elder son, Vassily, a high-school boy, pale too, and extremely agitated, was fussing round her with a ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Don vacantly. He remembered then that Lawton roomed in Number 20 Billings, directly above Number 6. "What about ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Vacantly lingering with the hours, The sacred hours that still remain From that rich month of fruits and flowers Which brought you near me once again, By thoughts of you, though roses die, I strive to make it ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... gazed vacantly about her with an air of indifference. She seemed scarcely to realize that through the yellow vagueness the eyes of a hundred persons were centered ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Cameron had anything so surprising happen to him. He looked at the girl, whom he managed to carry to the couch; he turned to the dog whose faithful eyes rather steadied him, then he applied all the remedies that one does at such times. Eventually Joan revived, but she stared vacantly at the face above her and did ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... nervousness he unconsciously grasped a small object on the table upon which his left hand had been lying. It was a miniature daintily painted on ivory. He looked vacantly upon it; his mind at first quite absent from his eyes. But as he gazed, something familiar in the lovely face depicted there fixed his attention. Before long he was examining the picture with the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the bookshelf stared vacantly at them. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... in his haggard, bloodshot eyes; I saw him stare at me half vacantly, then with a crafty yet wondering look; and then I saw the devil of murder begin to peep forth from those hideous eyes, and the lips to part as in a sneer, and the wolfish teeth to bare themselves. But I was not what I had been. Fear gave me a new and a desperate ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... elder Mr. Morey settled back and looked vacantly at the ceiling. They were seated now in the conference room of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell |
