"Dumbly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that melted as they came, he went haltingly ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... November, 1824, we set sail. I had been waiting three years to arrive at this starting-point,—my whole life, indeed, had been dumbly turning towards it,—yet now I commenced it with a coolness and tranquillity far exceeding that I had possessed on many comparatively trifling occasions. It is often so. We are borne along on the current like drift-wood, and, spying jutting rocks or tremendous cataracts ahead, fancy, "Here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... while the girls watched her dumbly, not knowing what to do or say. Then suddenly Grace ran ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... they might go with mutual advantage to himself and them, the morning breeze carried within earshot another note, higher in the scale, but unmistakable in significance. Silently the old man stood and dumbly watched a procession of petticoats march up to his gate and turn into ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... of his own hopes. Three days after Sarratt's death Nelly had written to him to give him George's dying message, and to thank him on her own account for all that he had done to help her journey. The letter was phrased as Nelly could not help phrasing anything she wrote. Cicely, to whom Nelly dumbly shewed it, thought it 'sweet.' But on Farrel's morbid state, it struck like ice, and he had the greatest difficulty in writing a letter of sympathy, such as any common friend must send her, in return. Every word seemed to him either too strong or too weak. The poor Viking, indeed, had begun ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... filled with tears, round drops that gathered slowly in the corners of her puckered lids and spilled over the soft curves of her cheek. She did not look at Hollister. She stared at the gray river. She made a little gesture, as if she dumbly answered some futile question, and her hands dropped idly into ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hood, and not a star shone through the fleecy thickness to aid in the search for the little girl. At a late hour it began to sprinkle again, and, though no sound of shot or blast had broken the silence of the prairie, one by one the anxious hunters came straggling home, dumbly ate, and waited for ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Spurr'd by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest. —Cross her hands humbly As if praying dumbly, Over ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and fears at the prospect, there seemed nothing else to do. She longed to flee, to hide in some dark hole, to cover her shame from her father and the world, but in the hands of this determined man she felt herself powerless. What he willed, she dumbly did. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... reply dazed her; then she threw both arms about his neck, and burst into tears, sobbing as if her heart would break, while he dumbly sought to soothe her sorrow, by cuddling her head on his shoulder and rubbing his quivering cheek against hers, for he could not trust his ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the horrid flow, The shapeless bark and pallid chalklike arms Of him that oared it, dumbly to and fro, Went gliding, and the struggling ghosts in swarms Leaped in and passed, but myriads more behind Crowded the dismal beaches. One might hear A tumult of entreaty thin and clear Rise like the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... men directly, he sent him up to the main-topgallant cross-trees with a spy-glass to carefully "sweep the offing," as he termed it, and then as Smith brought down the guns with a very inquiring look which said dumbly but plainly enough, "You won't leave me behind, will yer, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... 'to quite spoil the violet bank. There is something in disease so destructive; as it were, to flowers.' And as the violets shared the scourge, so the creatures shared the curse. And as they stared dumbly into the eyes of the Son of God they seemed to half understand that their redemption was drawing nigh. 'In Nature herself,' as Longfellow says, 'there is a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... all humanity which have not been said yet, which only you can say, a thousand and one aspects of the Deluge not yet presented to the world. Above all, Paul, there are millions of poor bereaved souls who suffer dumbly and vaguely wonder for what crime they ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... an attempt to rise, apparently doubting his good faith and afraid to lose sight of him, as he retreated toward the door. But she fell back again, and only stared at him dumbly. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... We both dumbly stared in wondering admiration at this marvellous woman. Was it possible that a girl could have such nerve, such courage? Or had woman's hope, so persistent where her loved ones are concerned, made Beulah Sands blind to the awfulness ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... also a lot of fine fellows—and fine women. They are men and women, if I understand it, who have sloughed off the conventions, that are conventions simply for convention's sake, and who are reaching out towards the realities. Most of them haven't an idea what those are, but dumbly they know. Tommy knows, for instance, who is a good chum and who isn't; that is, he knows that sincerity and unselfishness and pluck are realities. He doesn't care a damn if a chap drinks and swears and commits what the Statute-Book and the Prayer-Book call ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... at them as helplessly as a frightened child. "The air!" he groaned. "It is hot!" and then he held out his hand to the princess, and showed her a flake of soot on it, and he dumbly pointed to others that ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... a room where a telephone waited: McGuire sensed this but dumbly, and the way to that room was long to his stumbling feet. He was blinded: his mind would not function: he saw only those fluttering things, and the moonlight on their wings, and the shadows that took them so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... could not control them, but McCoy's gentle presence seemed to rebuke and calm them, and the muttering and cursing died away, until the full crew, save here and there an anxious face directed at the captain, yearned dumbly toward the green clad peaks and beetling coast ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... and grasped Baldos by the arm. His eyes were stern and accusing. Above, Yetive and Beverly had clasped hands and were looking on dumbly. What did ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Thy altars, country,—save thy memories, all. Ah! here, where yet a ray of glory lingers, Let a light shine unto all generous souls, And be Italia's hope! Unto these stones Oft came Vittorio[8] for inspiration, Wroth to his country's gods. Dumbly he roved Where Arno is most lonely, anxiously Brooding upon the heavens and the fields; Then when no living aspect could console, Here rested the Austere, upon his face Death's pallor and the deathless light of hope. Here with ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... fascination with which they dominated her, resisting him dumbly with tight-locked lips till he held her palpitating ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... gazed at him with a look of such strong interrogation as he was about to follow her into the house that he paused with his foot on the step and eyed her dumbly. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... me, and I pointed, dumbly; and yet, as I did so, it was with the knowledge that he would not be able to see what I saw. (Queer, wasn't it?) And then, almost in a breath, I lost sight of the thing, and became aware that Tammy ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... Gray's Inn, especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. Connues, these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead (not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any gentleman would think ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the sparks fly brightly Upward from the glowing mass; Hail! the stroke that makes them pass, Fall it heavy, fall it lightly! Now the stubborn strength bends humbly, To the Master yielding dumbly; From the metal, purged and glowing, Forms of freest ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... our commune have relatives residing in the little hamlets between Cregy and Monthyon, and have been out to help them re-install themselves. Very little in the way of details of the battle seems to be known. Trees and houses dumbly tell their own tales. The roads are terribly cut up, but road builders are already at work. Huge trees have been broken off like twigs, but even there men are at work, uprooting them and cutting the wood into lengths ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... up at him dumbly, mumbled something, stuffed the bills into his trousers pocket and bolted for home. He burst in on his mother in the kitchen, buried his face against ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... and self- seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude abandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation became uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her "naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orr but stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome, social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... had swiftly frozen into an implacable sternness which struck fear to the childish heart of his wife, and she obeyed him dumbly. Dropping weakly upon a chair, she added her sobs to those of Fanny, which had begun to break ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... yearning for something they haven't. And they don't know enough to know what it is they long for. But they are conscious of the constant, weary, yearning tug within. The great heart of the non-Christian world to-day is asking dumbly, but earnestly, as only the heart can ask, for the light we have. Its knocking at our front door is growing louder ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... said, staring dumbly down into Brennan's face over the front wheel. "Where in Sam Hill ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Sate the king; Beside him group'd his princely peers; And dames aloft, in circling tiers, Wreath'd round their blooming ring. King Francis, where he sate, Raised a finger—yawn'd the gate, And, slow from his repose, A LION goes! Dumbly he gazed around The foe-encircled ground; And, with a lazy gape, He stretch'd his lordly shape, And shook his careless mane, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... together shouting thus: "A gift, and 'Deo Gratias!'—gift withdrawn, And 'Deo Gratias!' Sooth, the word is good! Madman is this, or man of God? We'll know!" So from his frowning fortress once again Adown the resonant road o'er street and bridge Rode Daire, at his right the queen in fear, With dumbly pleading countenance; close behind, With tangled locks and loose-hung battle-axe Ran the wild kerne; and loud the bull-horn blew. The convent reached, King Daire from his horse Flung his great limbs, and at the doorway towered In gazing stern: the ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... seem to be unhappily scarce in the life of this age. Neither understandingly, like poets, nor unconsciously (or, at least, dumbly), like peasants, are we aware of the places in which we live. We make no pilgrimages to holy spots, nor have we wandering students who mark out and acutely set down the distinctions between this people and that. Facilities of travel have perhaps damped our desire to hear news of other countries. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the pages turned, I watched you, dumbly contemplating— O how exceedingly I yearned To ask the girl ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... spring and shake under a heavy European foot, everything had such an unaccustomed look, that one felt as if one were in a foreign land, where Western prejudices and standpoints were unknown and inadmissible. These surroundings spoke to Wilhelm dumbly yet intelligibly, and he felt their persuasive power almost immediately. He had recovered his equanimity when, a quarter of an hour later, Schrotter ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... hour before the dawn!—there was no star above, no light below but the pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervously upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, she took up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... because the dial is unsatisfactory! In like manner, when, by physical incapacity, or inherited disease, the brain can no longer receive the impressions or electric messages of the Spirit, it is practically useless. Yet the Spirit is there all the same, dumbly waiting for release and another chance ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... eye began to roll—to Cis's face, seeing the truth written there, and the story of her long hours of suffering; to the countenance of the priest, to ask, dumbly, if any living man had ever heard anything more outrageous than this; then, "By the Great Horn Spoon!" he breathed, and again stomped one ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... dumbly. It was like a line out of a melodrama. He feared, first for his own, then for the butler's sanity. The latter was smiling gently, as one who sees light in a ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... now impatient. He could not see the drift of this, and he was about to whisper to Parpon, when the little man sent him a look, commanding silence, and he fretted on dumbly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reckoned with two things: Firstly, he had forgotten that the Governor was an old Indian fighter, and ready for surprises; and, secondly, he had not taken into account the usual apathy of the common people when their leaders fight. Dumbly and quite unmoved the people stood, staring like armadillos at a snake, and made no sign. Then word was brought that the Governor had left the church and was assembling a force ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... write any more; a sense of weariness and futility comes over me. I will go back to my garden to see what I can see, only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, which would ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on and rode over from Tombstone, silent as usual, and with that saturninity of expression which grew darker as the whisky began to work within him. He took no part in the celebration but sat through one day and two blazing nights, dumbly sardonic, at a round table. Save for his dark countenance, the faces which ringed that table were changing constantly. Men came noisily, sat down for a time, and departed at length in chastened silence as the poker-game which ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Claire nodded dumbly. In the case of previous Belgian admirers affairs had been checked before they reached the extreme stage, and she found this, her first spoken proposal much less exciting than she had expected. As a friend pure and simple, she had thoroughly liked Mr Judge, and at the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Tayoga and Robert obeyed dumbly, passing Jumonville's boat at a range of five or six yards, going a little beyond the line, and, turning about as if to make a curve that would keep them from striking any other canoe. Again Robert made a false stroke with the paddle, causing ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... boys stood dumbly looking on, but Dan and Emil worked bravely, running to and fro with water from the bath-room, and helping to ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of herself and Elsa she was thinking—two helpless women, lost in this place of terrible ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... now is aye your soundless voice, Lifted in an awful patience o'er the world's uproarious noise; O'er its jarrings and its greetings—o'er its loving and its hate— Silence! Bare thy brows all dumbly to the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... another word. For seconds they became one of the speechless couples, standing dumbly in the great dingy station, ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... his subordinates that theory is indispensable. It is of still higher value for producing a similar solidarity between him and his superiors at the Council table at home. How often have officers dumbly acquiesced in ill-advised operations simply for lack of the mental power and verbal apparatus to convince an impatient Minister where the errors of his plan lay? How often, moreover, have statesmen and officers, ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... had been a hard one for Pocahontas, harder, perhaps, for the gallant nature which forbade her to bewail herself. She suffered deeply and dumbly through all the weary nights and days. Pride and womanly reserve precluded all beating of the breast, and forced principle and nature to the ceaseless fight. Right gallantly she bore herself. The mortification, the anguish, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... dimly apprehended, then, was true. She clings to her mistress, endeavouring to calm her. "What, dear heart, have you so long been concealing from me? Not one tear did you shed at parting from father and mother. Hardly a word of farewell did you speak to those remaining behind. Coldly and dumbly you left the land of home; pale and silent you have been on the voyage, taking no food, taking no sleep, deeply troubled, rigid and wretched,—how am I to endure to see you thus, to be nothing to you, to stand before you as a stranger? Oh, tell me what ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... keel—keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize—ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... struggling constantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade—the a, b, c's of it—and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room, and he would chew on his under lip and viciously ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... timorous and inferior mind was incapable of translating the command into action. He could only stare dumbly ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... no memory of her at all? Or was she so different in that wet, muddied blouse, hair streaming, and face scratched—she looked down at her grimy little hands and wondered dumbly what her ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest,— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... they stared at each other dumbly—the actor paralysed by terror, the host wearing the smile of a lunatic. And then the "lunatic" slowly peeled court-plaster from his teeth, and removed features, and ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... of breath, leaving me as much astonished as ever in my life. She looked so beautiful in her fury and fierceness too, that I could only stare at her and wonder dumbly what ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... reader may have of that. Thereby with diligence he may produce for himself some faint twilight notion of the Flight of Time in remote Brandenburg,—convince himself that remote Brandenburg was present all along, alive after its sort, and assisting, dumbly or otherwise, in the great World-Drama as ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... I haue come, great Clearkes haue purposed To greete me with premeditated welcomes; Where I haue seene them shiuer and looke pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practiz'd accent in their feares, And in conclusion, dumbly haue broke off, Not paying me a welcome. Trust me sweete, Out of this silence yet, I pickt a welcome: And in the modesty of fearefull duty, I read as much, as from the ratling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence. Loue therefore, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... addressed, its coming close to such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, turmoil, and danger of the great battle. Voltaire was ever in the front and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... dumbly. She began to realize that the knightly spirit of those gallant, long dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago lighted them through quest and adventure, and she was a little afraid with ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes? Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken, we were wholly strangers: and yet an ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moment, in a rainbow-shimmer of joy, or a sudden lightning-flare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe viol of public music, but as one wrought by ecstasy, dumbly eloquent with desire.' ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard from the children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough to write. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have any money to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed, as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children were growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling youngsters whom Minnie was for ever worrying ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... I nodded dumbly. I could not speak just then—but the young woman in front of me could. Very distinctly as I passed ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... from the man in wild haste, and climbing into his buggy with trembling limbs drove off down the road, leaving Haskins seated dumbly on the sunny pile of sheaves, his head sunk into ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... been struck a merciless blow. She was a little consoled by Perigal's letter, but, in her heart of hearts, something told her that, despite his brave words, the marriage was indefinitely postponed; indeed, it was more than doubtful if it would ever take place at all. She suffered, dumbly, despairingly; her torments were the more poignant because she realised that the man she loved beyond anything in the world must be acutely distressed at this unexpected confounding of his hopes. Her head throbbed with dull ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... she looked at him, dumbly, half-guessing, half-understanding, apologizing perhaps, anyhow saying as he had said, "It's none of my fault," straight and beautiful in body, her face like a shell within its cap, then he knew that cloisters and classics are no use ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and Keith felt himself the centre of many eyes. The murmur grew as the winner failed to appear, but Keith could not move a limb. Dumbly and unbelievingly he stared at the Rector and the group of teachers seated ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... turned and looked round the little room. There was an arm-chair in the corner, but he came and sat down on the sofa beside Dolly. Dolly gazed at him dumbly. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... you," Professor Lightning said. He stood up and went to the flap of the tent. "Come with me," he said, and Charley got up, dumbly, and followed him out into the ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... remained at the window. Prince Ivan still dumbly played the piano. There were a few minutes of absolute silence. Then the Prince hastily got up, shut the piano, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... institutions or the follies of this earth. What strikes one with a sort of awe is just this something inhuman in its character. It is like a visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East or ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... time she had made the attempt. She flushed and lifted her head, for there was no lack of pride or spirit in her softness. Yet by and by she could not help looking at him across the table with another soft appeal in her sweet eyes which plead dumbly for old times' sake. And after breakfast was over she tried again, knowing that this would be the last opportunity, and yearning with all her loving heart to win back some of the old friendliness that she still prized as a precious thing, which she could ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her. The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... at the heavy sound of the cave-in. For a few minutes he had stared sullenly, not grasping the situation. Then very slowly it dawned on him that his prison walls had fallen. Yes, surely, there at last lay his way to freedom, his path to the great open spaces for which he dumbly and vaguely hungered. With stately deliberation he marched down from ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... hidden round the corner of his mind, it would not let his lips articulate the desperate cry. He stared at the passing moment as a castaway, gagged, and bound to a raft of pirates, might wake from a delirious sleep, stare dumbly up at the steep side of a galleon that rides slowly, and know that with it rides away his chance of life because he cannot speak. Love of this girl meant infinite joy and a relief such as nothing before had ever promised him from the black regiment of moods that had for long beleaguered ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... He shook his head dumbly, looking at his splayed fingers with the vacant stare of an invalid just recovering consciousness. "I want only the coffee; make it strong, please. I really am not hungry. The thought of food, somehow, is sickening. I've ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and dumbly resisting the sentries up beside the first Jews. They were citizens who dared not rejoice aloud. They followed the young Roman with brightened eyes, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... "allow me if you please, monsieur"—and the sack has disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... we fail; and thereby to pin our aspirations down to definite resolves to act in certain ways rather than in certain other ways. Our ideals are apt to be vague and even conflicting, or else so abstract and general as to fail to direct us with precision to any concrete act. We realize dumbly that we are not what we should be, and we grope for better things; but just wherein the difference consists, just where is the point where we go off the track, is uncertain in our minds. As in physical achievement, half the success lies ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... been picked up from all parts of the world,—most of it was undoubtedly valuable. In one dark corner stood an ancient harp; then there was the spinning-wheel,—itself a curiosity fit for a museum,—testifying dumbly of the mistress of all these surroundings, and on the floor there was something else,—something that both the young men were strongly inclined to take possession of. It was only a bunch of tiny meadow daisies, fastened together with ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Minnie Webb. "Oh, what does it mean?" and, worried and heartsick, lest she should have made a mistake, she sat looking dumbly ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... what superhuman Peal was that? Not man, nor woman, Nor twenty madmen, crush'd, could wreak Their soul in such a ponderous shriek. Dumbly, for an instant, stares The field; and creep men's ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring dumbly ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... darted a swift glance at Barry and suddenly cut short the chat. She went ahead, giving no reply to the skipper's outburst, and he followed dumbly, wondering what new piece of trickery was to be revealed when Gordon's sudden illness was investigated. For fifteen minutes he followed in the girl's wake, attempting to reopen conversation and receiving brief replies; and gradually his irritation and puzzlement passed; ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... his party, elegant and brilliant as it often is, is the work of men essentially unresponsive to the appeal of their compatriots. For them, as it is for every Russian musician, Russia was without their windows, appealing dumbly for expression of its wild, ungoverned energy, its misery, its rich and childish laughter, its deep, great Christianity. It wanted a music that would have the accents of its rude, large-hearted speech, and that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much the property of every Dedlock—while he lasted— as the house and lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose and that of Chesney Wold to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Dumbly she wandered there, as pale With lack of light, with form as frail As those poor hollow congeners Whose searching eyes encountered hers, Petitioning as mute as she Some grain of hope, where none might be, Daring not ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... of our bread— Up goes the cost of our caking! People must ever be fed; Bakers must ever be baking. So, though our nerves may be quaking, Dumbly, in arrant despair, Pay we the crowd that is taking All ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... little Blossoms crowded to the rail of The Sarah and stared dumbly at the slim girl in a pink frock who had ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... Garda, and spread his line behind the river from the Venetian town on the north as far as Mantua, the farthest southern outpost of Austria, thus thwarting one, and that not the least important, of Bonaparte's plans. As to the Italians, they seemed bereft of sense, and for the most part yielded dumbly to what was required. There were occasional outbursts of enthusiasm by Italian Jacobins, and in the confusion of warfare they wreaked a sneaking vengeance on their conservative compatriots by extortion and terrorizing. The population was confused between the woe of actual loss and the joy of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,—except as pipe-matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing only for provender (of tithes); content if it can have that; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of 'haggard faces;' and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their dark struggle, 'a gallows forty feet high'! Certainly a singular Golden Age; with ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle |
