"Absent-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at her, his hands in his trousers pockets. In one of them his fingers grasped a folded bit of paper. He drew it out unthinkingly—a very dirty bit of paper. In his absent-minded way he threw it towards the fire, but it fell on the tiled hearth. In moments of great strain the mind seizes with pitiful eagerness on the trivial. Emmy looked at the paper. Something familiar about its shape struck her. She leaned forward, picked it up ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... evident to Bob the next morning that his uncle was worrying about something; he was not only absent-minded, but he was short and crusty and found fault with everything ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... is by far the best preacher we ever had in Glen St. Mary church," said Miss Cornelia, veering a tack or two. "I suppose it is because he is so moony and absent-minded that he never got a town call. His trial sermon was simply wonderful, believe ME. Every one went mad about it— ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the captive raised one limb and gave an absent-minded tug to the belt it wore. Shann, noting that gesture, was struck by a wild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowing for the alien structure of bone, the nonhuman skin; this creature was delicate, graceful, in its way beautiful, with a fragility of limb which backed up his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation. George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity. When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting. Horses ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the absent-minded old man. The two gurgled out some sounds which were intended for words and doged ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... statue of the Virgin. The contrast was striking: after the grey-headed monks and pale novices came brilliant young captains, affronting heaven with the points of their moustaches, riddling the latticed windows with killing glances, following the procession in an absent-minded way, and interrupting the holy hymns with scraps of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... mouth and waiting for his money. I think he borrowed a small amount from the managing editor. He lounged about the office most of the time, and I frequently encountered him going in and out of the cheap restaurants on Tenth Street. When he was at the office he talked a good deal in a wandering, absent-minded fashion, and his conversation was uniformly frivolous. If he could not evade a serious question by a joke, he bolted. I cut my classes to lie in wait for him, confident that in some unwary moment I could trap him into serious ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... a very quiet frame of mind that she went out upon the cool, broad piazza, and, taking one of the large willow chairs standing there, began to rock back and forth and wonder what had so changed her husband, making him silent and absent-minded, and even irritable at times, as he had been that morning. Was there insanity in his veins as well as in his brother's, and would her children inherit—her darling Maude, of whom she was so proud, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... I locked it away with my jewels, but as the days ran into a week I felt I could not live with it in my apartment any more, and I felt almost ill, until it occurred to me I could seal it and take it to my bankers. I felt as dreamy and absent-minded and paralyzed as if you had just treated me." Nevertheless the effect was on the whole the desired one and she returned to America with a wholesome freedom of mind. I hypnotized her twice again and she writes in her last letter: "I can never ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... meanderings in the border-land were listened to without scorn. They might be ever so absent-minded and yet have stumbled upon something which wiser men had missed. No one was more keen to criticize the hard-and-fast dogmas of the wise and prudent or more willing to learn what might, by chance, have been revealed unto babes. The one thing he demanded ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... it, sir, you must look out and not hit the man behind you and knock the bomb out of your hand. That has happened before to an absent-minded fellow who was about to toss one at the Boches, and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when you ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... any one quite so definite in my life as that young man," said Felicity as she ate her toast, holding the Daily Mail upside down. She and Savile were sitting rather late over a somewhat silent breakfast. He appeared rather absent-minded and replied to ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... with an amazingly close fist, and he is very absent-minded. I had met Annie, his wife, and their six children. She told me of his absent-mindedness. Her remedy for his trouble when it came to household needs was to repeat the article two or three times in the list. People out like we are buy a year's supply at a time. So a list of needed things ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... turned away unwillingly towards the house, full of a sense that something wonderful had happened to him. He was absent-minded, but he stopped to pat a little dog whose attentions he usually ignored, and he picked a creamy-white rose as he crossed the lawn and wondered why it should remind ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... abbe fails! Did you notice that he slept? He does not know what cards he holds; he is getting very absent-minded." ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... misleading, pot-bellied animals that Casey hazed before him toward the Tippipahs. They never showed more than slits of eyes beneath their drooping lids, yet they never missed seeing whatever there was to see, and taking advantage of every absent-minded moment when Casey was thinking of the Injun Jim, perhaps. They were fast-walking burros when they were following a beaten trail and Casey was hard upon their heels, but when his attention wandered they showed a remarkable amount of energy in finding blind trails and following ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn't be misled by analogies. The Dutchman hadn't any good old Al to lose telegrams in an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it's the time-worn case of electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We'll take the adult mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail'll have to go with the hide.... But we won't lose, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... tantum. Mr. CHAPLIN'S victim on this occasion was a well-dressed foreign gentleman of perfect manners but fiery temper, who was compelled to suffer a series of dreadful indignities. We left him struggling silently but furiously against an adhesive lobster salad which Mr. CHAPLIN had, in an absent-minded moment, plastered over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... the parlor-maid, from the threshold, roused her with a dubiously worded inquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their jokes that Trimmle announced luncheon as if she were divulging a state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured an absent-minded assent. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... take our spears and bows to procure food, but not to fight, for I go to make friends with the Fire-spouters and the white traders. So, if any one wants to fight,"—he looked at Raventik here, but that fire-eater happened to be absent-minded at the moment, and sat with downcast eyes,—"to fight," he repeated with emphasis, "he will have to remain at home and ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a poor shoemaker, taught in a charity school at the dawn of puberty; vividly animated Bible stories from pictures painted on the wall; was dreamy and absent-minded; told continued stories to his mates; at confirmation vowed he would be famous and finally, at fourteen, left home for Copenhagen, where he was violently stage-struck and worked his way from friendship with the bill-poster to the stage as page, shepherd, etc.; called on a famous dancer, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... vice which held me fast, I should have been in love with Noemi two or three years later; but I was a slave to reasoning, and my whole time was devoted to religious dialectics. The flow of abstractions which rushed to the head made me giddy, and caused me to be absent-minded and oblivious of ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... doing that. Confusing them...." He dropped the tray where it belonged, shoved his hands into the chef's cleaning recess and waved them around, then came back, still looking absent-minded, and stopped before Trigger's chair. He studied ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... pretty well used to it by this," replied Miss De Courcy, with the same joyless little laugh, giving the lace skirt an absent-minded kick with her red morocco toe. "I lived in the country before—when ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... The Emperor was absent-minded, and often forgot where he had put the petitions which were handed to him, and thus they were sometimes left in his coats, and when I found them there I carried them to his Majesty's cabinet and handed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... anyway, and see how she'd take it. But as a matter of fact I never could seem to find just the right openin' until, there one night after dinner, as she finishes a new piece she's tryin' over on the piano, I wanders up beside her and starts absent-minded tearin' little bits off a ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... without wanting to make such selfish terms for it. She avoids society and lives quite alone, seeing no one but a horrible French sister-in-law. Do let me hear that you've made her patience a little less absent-minded. Make her WANT to forget; ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... this speech as if he had been expecting to hear those very words, or else did not mind at all what Heyst might say. He muttered an absent-minded "Ay, ay," played with a bit of biscuit, sighed, and said, with a peculiar stare which did not seem to carry any distance, but to stop short at a point in the air very near ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Anko calmly, "I was a little absent-minded and ate an anchor. There was a long chain attached to it, and as I continued to swallow the anchor I continued to eat the chain. I never realized what I had done until I found a ship on the other end of the chain. Then I bit ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer in stead of the letter-box, an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming, bizarre, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... falsehoods,—mainly the consequence of the severity of the parental discipline and the desire to escape the punishments I had to endure when transgressing the sometimes whimsical injunctions laid on me,—morbidly conscientious. I was absent-minded and often forgot my duties, feeling, however, always the sting of remorse for any omission, but, beyond taking apples or nuts for my own eating, I do not think that I ever transgressed a commandment deliberately ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... party was over for him, though he wandered about for a while, was attracted again by the music to the ballroom, and did find there a dinner acquaintance with whom he took a turn. The lady must have thought him a very uninteresting or a very absent-minded companion. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was so absent-minded at the moment, so absorbed in admiration of the garish scene before him, that he addressed the chief in French, of which Knife-in-the-Wind knew but one word, cache, which all ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the majority of novels because they were made chiefly to set forth desperate love scrapes. Much reading of love stories makes one soft, insipid, absent-minded, and useless. Affections in life usually work out very differently. The lady does not always break into tears, nor faint, nor do the parents always oppose the situation, so that a romantic elopement is possible. Excessive reading of these stories makes fools ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... you waiting, sir," said he. "You should not have considered me, I am so absent-minded. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the revolving figures appeared and vanished like the colours of a kaleidoscope. Near the door he became aware of the resplendent form of his hostess, stationed appropriately against a background of peonies; and after she had greeted him with absent-minded cordiality, he passed with Margaret in the direction of the thundering sounds which came from the bank of ferns behind which ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... but only the other day. It was a most unexpected windfall. I was delighted to hear about it." Jean looked at him and wondered if he were well. His long holiday did not seem to have improved his spirits; he was more absent-minded ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... absent-minded scream, The little nervous trick Of rolling in the grate, with eyes By friendship's ...
— Greybeards at Play • G. K. Chesterton
... reply; possibly because he did not hear it; his eyes were still closed, as if absent-minded, and in reality it was obvious that he ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... few moments the customer neglected the fashion magazine which she had found—apparently a souvenir of some other absent-minded patron—on the seat of the chair next that one of her ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... a steady, subconscious way, I think we are all wondering how we are going to get down when the time comes. One will hop, like a great sparrow; another will turn round and descend backward; another will come down with an absent-minded little wave of the foot, as if he were quite used to having his shoes shined and already thinking of more serious business; another—but this is sheer nervousness and lack of savoir-faire—will step off desperately, as if into an abyss, and come down with a thump. Sometimes, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... food set on snowy cloths. Here and there a lobster struck a note of colour, or a ray of sunlight striking through the red or gold translucencies of wine in a glass: which distracted my attention from my orchestral duties and caused an absent-minded ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... "SLUKER," continued the long-haired man in an absent-minded manner, "was a corker! there ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... interviews with Eleanor, meager diet for a person with an omnivorous appetite; but to-night there was the prospect for a long, uninterrupted evening. Since the day of Miss Enid's wedding he had found her perplexed and absent-minded; but the fact that she always had a smile for him, and that nothing was seen or heard of Harold Phipps, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... who was always rather absent-minded, and had a dreamy way of looking far ahead even when he was most roused, scarcely noticed Hilda's tears. He talked on in a monotonous sort ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... man whom he supposed he had killed in India; Julia beheld her lover; and Lucy Bertram at once recognised the person who had fired upon young Hazlewood. Each one remained silent, not knowing what to say, when the absent-minded dominie, looking up from a book he had been studying in ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... running the gamut from comedy to tragedy. Some of these masks grew dusty between ships, but could quickly be made presentable. Sometimes, when large touring parties came into port, he confused his masks, being by habit rather an absent-minded man. But he possessed a great fund of humor, and these mistakes gave ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Media at length threw himself back, and said: "Babbalanja, not ten minutes since, we were all absent-minded; now, how would you like to step out of your body, in reality; and, as a spirit, haunt ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... spoke to her was on the doorstep. She had forgotten her latch-key, and he said, 'Will you allow me to let you in?' She stepped aside, but did not answer him. Hubert thought her rude, but her strange eyes and absent-minded manner had piqued his curiosity, and, having nothing to do that night, he went to the theatre to see her act. She was playing a very small part, and one that was evidently unsuited to her—a part that was in contradiction to her nature; but there was something behind the outer ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... it. You'll know them right away when you see them. There's paper and strings and ribbons, and cards for the names, besides the big boxes to send them in. Seems as if you ought to do it right, only—well, you know how utterly irresponsible and absent-minded ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... noon, and all the afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent an hour with the governor tonight—at my club. In fact, I supped with him in one of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but the major went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... in some of the stage-business. Thus, Ophelia pauses in her exit and comes up quietly behind the absent-minded Prince as if to play bo-peep with him: then, later on, after his apparently brutal treatment of her, Hamlet returns, and, while he is stooping and in tears, he kisses her hair and runs away noiselessly as if this also were another part of the same game. Then again, in the Churchyard, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... unspoken thought: it was not until some while afterward that Florimel told Jurgen of her humiliating misadventure with the absent-minded Sultan of Garcao's sceptre. Now she only replied that jewels might, conceivably, seem ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... he said, in an absent-minded way, as already his thoughts had rushed off to something else. And ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... absent-minded. "Do? Oh, they can do things all right. But," with quite unnecessary emphasis, "their worst efforts won't be a patch on the things you will do to them. Why, you'll add ten years to the age of everyone over twenty and make the others feel like babes in arms. You'll ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... room at the end of a Schumann song and just after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But women were curious creatures, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... minute or two after our arrival, without speaking. Then he demanded, in a sort of grunt, 'Eh bien, qu'est ce que c'est?' always without pausing in his work or looking round. Nina gave two little ahems, tense with suppressed mirth; and slowly, indifferently, Chalks turned an absent-minded face in our direction. But, next instant, there was a shout—a rush—a confusion of forms in the middle of the floor—and I realised that I was not the only one to be honoured by a kiss and an embrace. 'Oh, you're covering me with paint,' Nina protested suddenly; ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... the morning even Riddell could hardly harbour any thoughts outside the event of the day. Morning school that Wednesday was a farce all over Willoughby. Even the doctor seemed absent-minded, while one or two of the junior masters gave up ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... hardly out of sight when along came Bobby Coon. Bobby Coon was absent-minded, or else he was so sleepy that he didn't know what he was doing, for Bobby Coon had been out all night. Anyway, when he reached Unc' Billy Possum's hollow tree, he began to climb up it just as if it were his own. He looked in at Unc' Billy's door. There was the most ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... the sibilation of his 'Yes,' in the way of absent-minded men. He liked little Bobby, but had to class the boy second for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with mild interest at the head that had been until that moment submerged. "Shows how absent-minded a man gets. I was thinking about how he tried ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... mock at such affection. But he, still thinking of her, neglected his cases and his clients, his robberies and everything. He went to the palace like a miser searching for a lost sixpence, bowed down, melancholy, and absent-minded, so much so, that one day he relieved himself against the robe of a counsellor, believing all the while he stood against a wall. Meanwhile the beautiful girl was loved night and day by the king, who could not tear himself from her embraces, because in amorous play she ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... it, though none confessed the fact. Mr. and Mrs. March looked at one another with an anxious expression, as their eyes followed Meg. Jo had sudden fits of sobriety, and was seen to shake her fist at Mr. Brooke's umbrella, which had been left in the hall. Meg was absent-minded, shy, and silent, started when the bell rang, and colored when John's name was mentioned. Amy said, "Everyone seemed waiting for something, and couldn't settle down, which was queer, since Father was safe at home," and Beth innocently wondered why their neighbors ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... did not display a trace of irritation. From his appearance one might have judged that the niggers had returned to their work, and that everything was going well. At times he appeared absent-minded, and at times he wore a gloomy but triumphant look, as though some business which had unpleasant memories attached to it had at last been settled ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... it was in rather an absent-minded manner, for she felt puzzled about Kate, and her strange anxiety lest she should talk about this situation she ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... to drop one's daily agnosticism and attempt rerum cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil. The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all that had happened, and ever and again broke out into rejoicing over their reunion. Who would have thought, to see them there, that any thing could be wanting to the perfect happiness of these four people? But Rico knew another tale. In the midst of all the merriment, he became absent-minded, and fell into one of his old dreamy moods. It did not last as long as formerly, however. He must have reached a satisfactory conclusion pretty soon; for suddenly his reverie was over, and he said these words, with the utmost decision, "Stineli must be my wife this very moment, or else she will have ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... found no favour in Mrs. Tiralla's eyes. She finished the dance with him; but just as he, with laboured breath and beating pulse, was about to commence an intimate, low-toned conversation with her, she nodded an absent-minded "Thanks," without listening to what he was saying, and was immediately carried off by Mr. Rozycki, ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... as that," with a feeble attempt at a pun. He paused to light a cigar, and absent-minded as usual, continued ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the morning Mamma had been absent-minded, and Grisha's presence, words, and actions seemed ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... found interpreters amongst the Austrian prisoner orderlies. These prisoner orderlies had really proved useful and had done their best to help us. Naturally they had their faults. One of our Lady Doctors had as orderly a Viennese Professor, willing but somewhat absent-minded. One morning she sent for him and asked him: "Herr Karl, can you tell me what was wrong with my bath water this morning?" "I really don't know, Fraulein, but I will ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... went into the bed-room and began singing to the children again, although they had long been asleep; she sang various songs, but most of all the waltz to which she had danced with John. John listened to her as if bewildered, and seemed to be absent-minded when he spoke. Rose went into the room, and told ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... play with the contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... "must be in love, I cal'late, though I don't know who with. Ketury, I s'pose, 'cordin' to law and order, but—Well, anyhow, he's gettin' more absent-minded all the time. Here's a letter for you, Cy, that he got at the post-office a week ago Monday. 'Twas the night of the church sociable, and he had on his Sunday cutaway, and he ain't worn it sence, till the party yesterday. When he took off the coat, goin' to bed, the letter fell ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... are ended when I once get them packed into a motor at the door. But Christine looks as if she couldn't survive much longer, and as for old Gilbert, he's as absent-minded as the conventional bridegroom." ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... writers, or as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame Cornuel? Buffon was dull company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron loved nobody but himself; Rousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La Fontaine absent-minded. Human energy, equally distributed, produces dolts, mediocrity in all; unequally bestowed it gives rise to those incongruities to whom the name of Genius is given, and which, if we only could see them, would look like deformities. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... themselves. Fire gleamed in his eyes, and occasionally the boldest and most daring ideas flitted through his mind. Why not, for instance, have marten fur on the collar? The thought of this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in copying a letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that he exclaimed almost aloud, "Ugh!" and crossed himself. Once, in the course of every month, he had a conference with Petrovich on the subject of the cloak, where it would be better to buy ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and become efficient practical human beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great renunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the reverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature what Professor Bergson calls "distrait," aloof, absent-minded, intent only, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often thinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made vaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... sight of young people enjoying themselves (it is only in the best-natured of elderly folk that one meets with that TRAIT) she possessed to the full. On the other hand, her daughter was of a grave turn of mind. Rather, she was of that peculiarly careless, absent-minded, gratuitously distant bearing which commonly distinguishes unmarried beauties. Whenever she tried to be gay, her gaiety somehow seemed to be unnatural to her, so that she always appeared to be laughing either at herself or at the persons to whom she was speaking or at ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... left? It is only because military men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not need any ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which had lighted up her face the previous evening. Since then, I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten times, perhaps oftener, and on each occasion I found that when I was not speaking of you, or your sister, or some person or place associated with you, I was not holding her attention. She would be absent-minded, her eyes would wander away from me to the sea, or to some distant object in the landscape; her fingers would play with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced me she was not listening. At these moments if I abruptly changed the theme—I did it several times as an experiment—and dropped ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance. But when he came level with our pew I understood. Hurrying back from his morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of a ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... were of a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street, as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic jeer at him. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... said Josephine, in a tone which was scandalously absent-minded considering the importance of the information. After a moment she remarked, coyly: "I should really think, Fred, there might be a chance of his giving you something when ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... her pale eyebrows. "Absent-minded as ever, I see, Howes," she said with a whimsical sort of fondness in her peculiar voice. "Better run off to the head class before you forget where ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... violets till the room was fragrant. Some of them she took up to Weston, chatting to the patient and her nurse as she arranged them, with such sweetness, such smiles, such an abandonment of kindness, that both looked after her amazed, when, again, she vanished. What had become of the imperious absent-minded young ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shoo, and I'll catch," cried the kind host, but shrank back as the fowl came near, exclaiming: "Say, West, has a hen got teeth?" At last they conquered, plucked, and cooked her for a somewhat tardy meal, with some potatoes clawed up in the potato field. Once, when very absent-minded, at a hotel table in a country tavern, the waitress was astonished to watch him as he took the oil cruet from the castor and proceeded ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... for quotation. It is in the second scene of The Tempest, where Prospero relates to his daughter the story of his past life, at the same time letting her into the fact and the reasons of what he has just been doing, and still has in hand to do. The dear wise old gentleman is here absent-minded, his thoughts being busy and very intent upon the tempest he has lately got up, and upon the incoming and forthcoming consequences of it; and he thinks Miranda is not attentive to what he is saying, because he is but half-attending to it himself. This subdued mental agitation, and wandering ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... expression of the stranger's face that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he seen a pallor so death-like and chilling. The face was more than pale; it was white. Kimberlin's observing faculty had been sharpened by the absinthe, and, after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent removal of a full beard. Besides the pallor, there were deep and sharp lines upon the face, which the electric light brought out very distinctly. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... young lady who trails her hand in the water—and I have yet to be in a boating-party where the young lady did not trail her hand in the water—that on the Nerbada it is perhaps as well to resign an absent-minded hand to the young officer who sits by her in the boat lest Magar should snap ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... hearing the hour strike, knew that Ackroyd would be waiting at the end of Walnut Tree Walk. She was absent-minded, halting between a desire to go at once, and tell him that they could not come, and a disinclination not perhaps very clearly explained. The minutes went on. It seemed to be decided for her that he should learn the truth by ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the fine morning and of the beautiful country, of the grand Commencement of the preceding day and of the University they were going to see; but they talked in an absent-minded manner, as if, indeed, they were ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... who presides over the lost articles has had long experience as an alienist. He is skeptical as to the reality of what is called mind. So far as his clients are concerned, it is notable for its absence. To be confronted day after day by the absent-minded, and to listen to their monotonous tale of woe, is disenchanting. It is difficult to observe all the amenities of life when one is dealing with the ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... secretary who, brayed daily between the upper and nether millstones of official instructions and 'voluntary effort,' never left his desk nor dared to wander abroad for fresh air—the gardens having been specially laid out to trick the absent-minded and induce them to lose their way. Farrell had simply told the Adjutant that he wished to see me on urgent personal business. The Adjutant could not hesitate before a presence that might, in its dress-clothes ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... how, on board the steamer, the blue hills before us, we passed by the Duke's handsome castle, without dreaming how and why I should stand there at the window this year, an old wig of a Minister before me, who unravelled his views on national polities, while I was thinking, with an occasional absent-minded "Quite so," of our trip of '47, and sought with my eyes the spot on the Mayence bridge whence you, in your little Geneva coat, embarked on the steamer; and then I thought of Geneva. * * * Countess Thun unfortunately left on Sunday for Tetschen, to spend three months with her father-in-law. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... And Duryodhana, the son of Dhritarashtra, was so taken up with his thoughts then that he spoke not a word to Suvala's son even though the latter addressed him repeatedly. And Sakuni, beholding him absent-minded, said,—'O Duryodhana, why art thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... women sat under the shade of the tree and talked, Mr. Randall listened for a while in a somewhat absent-minded manner. At length be reached out his hand and took the newspaper from off the table. He read first the financial news which interested him most of all. Then he turned over the pages and glanced carelessly at the events of the day. The various accounts of political meetings, murders, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... lifetime; Clovis Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her sister, Jane Thropplestance, who was some years her junior, was chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in Middlesex. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... The pater has an absent-minded way of upsetting things, and Nannie's tone carried conviction with it; so, as fast as I could, I followed in her wake as she threaded her way ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. He read a list of box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan. Fortunately no one noticed ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... "Hm-m," Rod answered in absent-minded fashion. "That cat of Miss Charity's just walked away with one of those feathered ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... listened to the conversation of these two men on philosophy and philosophers, which made a tremendous impression on me. I remember that Weiss was an absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt manner of speaking; he had an interesting and pensive expression which impressed me immensely. I recollect how, on being accused of a want of clearness in his writing and style, he justified ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... next morning, Gervaise promised herself she would not return to the Sainte-Anne again. What use would it be? She did not want to go off her head also. However, every ten minutes, she fell to musing and became absent-minded. It would be curious though, if he were still throwing his legs about. When twelve o'clock struck, she could no longer resist; she started off and did not notice how long the walk was, her brain was so full of her desire to go and the dread of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... interest in the things he used to. He goes about as if he had something on his mind; kind of absent-minded, you know; and forgets to-morrow what he says to-day. He always puts on a good face, though, when Miss ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... later he began in the same absent-minded manner on a huge plateful of bacon, with a pot of coffee in keeping, and was eating in silence when the stillness of the sunshine was broken by the sound of a horse's hoofs. Laramie looked out and saw, through ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... directness. He was conscious of his will playing on her. He was keeping his part of the contract, but he was also breaking the way for hers. He must not let them go for a moment, those grey eyes like a girl's that grew absent-minded so easily. Only a little more and his mood would curve around both them, a glamorous ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... punctuality, was in his place at the head of the table, and the table well filled with members, for the honorary secretary's harmless foible was known and admitted. The table and the chairs, the scraping of the chair-legs on the bare floor, the agenda papers and the ornamentation thereof by absent-minded pens, were the same as in the committee's youth. But the personnel of the committee had greatly changed, and it was enlarged—as its scope had been enlarged. The two Lechford hospitals behind the French lines were now only a part of the committee's responsibilities. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... about Oklahoma," he commented. "You could have knocked me down with a feather when you said it. I guess Hale forgot I was working here—he really is dreadfully absent-minded—or else he thought you weren't to be trusted with so important a secret. He's as queer as they make 'em, but he was very good to me; couldn't seem to take enough pains to trace out what he knew of my ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... pretty vivacity and interest in the people they met, particularly a few youthful and picturesque caballeros. Aunt Viney smiled gravely. Was the poor child developing an unlooked-for coquetry, or preparing to make the absent-minded Dick jealous? Well, the idea was not a bad one. In the evening she astonished the two cousins by offering to accompany them into the garden—a suggestion accepted with eager and effusive politeness by each, but ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... haphazard, as apparently absent-minded and as shrewd in her own house as in the houses of others, greeted Dion with a vague cordiality. Her husband, a robust and very definite giant, with a fan-shaped beard, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... know; and I was perfectly sure of it; you're always so prompt, and I always wonder at it, such an absent-minded creature as you are. But you came near spoiling everything by getting here behind this pillar, and burying yourself in your book that way. If it hadn't been for my principle of always asking questions, I never should have found you in the world. But just as I was really beginning ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... well esteemed by Laura's sister, Mrs. Jaynes, a sharp-visaged little woman, to whose energetic control her absent-minded, studious husband surrendered the parsonage and all it contained. Nay, she even shared his labors in the moral vineyard of his parish; for while he remained at home among his favorite volumes, she used to go about from house to house, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates: — Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... was that some absent-minded person had built a three-story house upon my unhappy body; but I was joggling and bouncing up and down, so that that ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... of the streets where there is danger of upsetting the unwary or absent-minded pedestrian, the Allan and Darling Team headed down the trail with real pleasure in the prospect of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a horrid husband, and was doing it to support her boy. The subject of the discourse (I think it was on Ruskin) was clearly of minor importance, not only to my friend, but to the throng of well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled in late, dropped their muffs and pocket-books, and undisguisedly lost themselves in the study of each other's apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with warmth, but she evidently represented a social obligation ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Mr. Rickman of the front shop and second-hand department, known as "our Mr. Rickman." The shop was proud of him; his appearance was supposed to give it a certain cachet. He neither strutted nor grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded scholarly manner. He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a noble apathy. Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained incorruptible. He would introduce ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "How very absent-minded Mr. Winton seems to be this evening!" murmured Bessie from her niche between Adams and the Reverend Billy at the farther end of the table. "He isn't quite at his best, is ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... scale with a pleased grin. She has evidently gained. She rejoins the group of women, chattering volubly in low tones. Her exultant "gained half a pound" can be heard. The other women smile their perfunctory congratulations, their eyes absent-minded, intent on their own worries. Stanton writes down the weight in ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... frail a memory, that although he eateth with hunger, if he chance to look back, remembreth no more his meat, and departing searcheth for other." Who would not visit Calabria, if only on the chance of beholding the speckled posterior of the absent-minded Luzard? ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... down stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her behaviour that she made the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... oleander from one of the tall marble urns set along the balustrade, and pressed the pink blossom against her face, and, closing her eyes, breathed in its perfume; then, absent-minded, she let it drop, over the terrace, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... you say, a vagabond and an outcast, and all that sort of thing, but this is a conventional English home," the girl with the blue eyes declared, "and I am a perfectly well-behaved young woman with an absent-minded but strict parent. I could not think of asking any one to tea of whose very name ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... furnished with nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was irregular in his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to be traced that absolute will which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... sweetness of a melancholy reverie. Sometimes the soul is impatient of the body's dogged hold on life, and steals away to view its future domain, to draw in advance upon its coming freedom—now lingering, now swifter than a hawk—and then it comes back and we say that we have been absent-minded. Alf started—his soul had returned. "And weren't you surprised to see them ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... the Queen's letters, and settling into a new life at Cambridge; but I realised that he was building up happiness fast. One little touch of his perennial humour comes back to my mind. He was describing to me some ceremony performed by a very old and absent-minded ecclesiastic, and how two priests stood behind him to see that he omitted nothing, "With the look in their eyes," said Hugh, "that you can see in the eyes of a terrier who is standing with ears pricked at the mouth of a ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... His name was strange, his conversation was unusual, his eyes were most disagreeable, and yet oddly fascinating. Greif thought about him and was not satisfied with his short interview. The man's remark about the future was either that of a visionary, or of an absent-minded person who did not always know what he was saying. Greif himself could hardly understand how he had been led, in a first meeting with one who was altogether a stranger, to speak so plainly of what disturbed him. It was not his custom to make acquaintances ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... on Emma, and as I saw them together I fancied I had never looked on three more charming faces. They appeared mutually pleased with each other, too, although for some reason there seemed to be more affinity between Emma and Agnes. Carrie appeared thoughtful and absent-minded, which made Anna joke her about her "lover, Penoyer." As she was about leaving the room she made no reply, but after she was gone Agnes looked ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... inadvertently have walked some distance since we saw them," said Cortlandt. "They were what I looked forward to for lunch," exclaimed Bearwarden. They were greatly perplexed. The mushrooms were all about them when they shot the birds, which still lay where they had fallen. "We must be very absent-minded," said the doctor, "or perchance our brains are affected by the air. We must analyze it to see if it contains our own proportion of oxygen and nitrogen. There was a good deal of carbonic-acid gas on Jupiter, but that would hardly confuse our senses. The strange thing is, that we all ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... has always a relish for applying them to any triviality. The great specialist having condescended to the priest's simplicity, condescended expansively. He settled himself with comfort in his arm-chair and began to talk in the tone of a somewhat absent-minded lecturer: ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... far-away look in his eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-minded. I trust ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... long he had wished to follow. The change had been come by with little difficulty. Professor Wyvern— that eminent biologist whose fame was so tremendous that even now a normally forgetful Press yet continued to paragraph him while he spent in absent-minded seclusion the ebb of that life which at the flood had so mightily advanced knowledge—Professor Wyvern was too much attached to his son, too docile in the hands of his loving wife, to gainsay any wish that Bill might urge and that ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... She had her hat off now, and her fine soft brown hair, in silky disorder, attracted her absent-minded care. But Lydia had pulled out the pin of her own tight little hat with its backward pointing quill and rumpled her hair in the doing and never knew it; now she transfixed the hat with a ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Two revolvers, one double-barreled pistol, three knives, one watch, two rings (both home-made, valuable and fearfully ugly), a pocket-inkstand, a silver tobacco-box, and forty or fifty ounces of dust and nuggets. Boston Bill, who was notoriously absent-minded, dropped in a pocket-comb, but, on being sternly called to order by old Thompson, cursed himself most fluently, and redeemed his disgraceful contribution with a gold double-eagle. "The Webfoot," who was the most unlucky man in camp, had been so wrought upon by the tale of one missionary who ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... himself, as he also retired to bed, after another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Into love-songs might be growing, Just as caterpillars later Into butterflies develop. Homeward now he would be turning; But the wood-sprite Meysenhartus Hid with dust the right path from him, And young Werner, absent-minded, 'Stead of river-ward went inland. Now again the wood-sprite grinning Clambered to the fir-tree's summit, Rocking gaily in the branches. "He is caught!" so said he, mocking. Werner paying no attention, Went up through ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... desperation. For he would take his stick and his hat and would walk to the window, and look perfectly absent-minded and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... brought about by a few lines of praise from Pierre Loti, the touching appreciations of prison life by Penitence Murray, and the voluble intellectuality of Thapoulos, Jennings and Smith the sculptor, Miss Van Tuyn began to feel absent-minded. Her power of attraction was quite evidently being seriously challenged. She was now certain—how could she not be—that Craven had not merely gone to Number 18A, but had ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... him to the city, and did not return home until late in the evening. He was then much occupied with his own thoughts, and entered but little into conversation. Fanny was absent-minded, a fact that did not escape the mother's observation. Aunt Grace noted the change which the stranger's coming and departure had occasioned, and, shaking her wise head, ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... snapshots of society at racecourses. These people, caught unawares, seemed to be all feet and parasols, or smiles and muffs. Then, feeling rather exhausted, he ordered a drink, and forgot it, and smoked a cigarette. When he saw anyone he knew, he put on an absent-minded air, and avoided the friend's eye. He looked at his watch as if in sudden anxiety, and found that it was half-past one. This was the time he was to meet his little brother at Prince's. He made inquiries and found that Nigel was expected ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the air as if ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... when he was not under the influence of brandy he was sleeping from the effects of opium. In three days he was willing to pay anything the apothecary asked, and seemed scarcely conscious of the payments he made. He kept up a show of playing the accustomed game of cards, but he was absent-minded, and was not even angry at his daily losses. The apothecary had more money in his pocket than he had possessed for many a day. As Arnoldo Meschini sank deeper and deeper, the chemist's spirits rose, and he began to assume ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... a certain minister who was officiating at a funeral that, while standing by the coffin offering the final prayer, he noticed one of the mourners kneeling upon the loose earth recently thrown from the grave. This man was a prospector, like all the rest, and in an absent-minded way he had tearfully been sifting the soil through his fingers. Suddenly he arose and began to stake out a claim adjoining the grave. This was, of course, observed by the clergyman, who hastened the ceremonials to a conclusion, and ended his prayer ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... it looked splendid"; his tone was absent-minded again. He seemed almost to ramble in his speech. "We must see that Ishmael gits fixed up comfortable in the Old Men's Home; yew remember haow he offered us all his pennies that day we broke up housekeepin'. An' we must do somethin' ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... astonishment when I read the name of Baroness de C——, the wife of the French Ambassador to the Vatican. What could she want at that early hour? I had heard many stories of her absent- mindedness. I thought that nothing less than being very absent-minded, or else the wish to secure my help for some charity concert, could account for this matutinal visit, especially as I knew her ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone |
