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More "Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have seemed unusual, considering the taciturn habit of Indians, had he not remembered seeing Willetts speak to the trio. What had he to do with them? Shefford was considering the situation with vague doubts when, to his relief, the three strangers rode off into the twilight. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... is a matter of which most people have a very vague and imperfect knowledge. I believe I am very near the truth when I state the gross proceeds of The Times at 45,000l., a year. The present proprietor of The Morning Chronicle gave for it, I believe, 40,000l. The absolute property of The Courier, according ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... identifies it with I-chin hien, the great port on the Kiang for the export of the Yang-chau salt. This is possible; but I-chin lies west of the canal, and though the form Chinju would really represent I-chin as then named, such a position seems scarcely compatible with the way, vague as it is, in which Tinju or Chinju is introduced. Moreover, we shall see that I-chin is spoken of hereafter. (Kingsmill in N. and Q. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... influence of his models. He used especially the meter of the common evangelical hymns, and cultivated the vague personification of the poets of the eighteenth century. He himself, however, was essentially a romantic poet, as was evinced by his fondness for Byron and Marlowe. His common style is represented by the following lines from his poem entitled On ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... far off, this was the darkest hour of the night, so that even the sounds of dockland were muted and the riverside slept as deeply as the great port of London ever sleeps. Vague murmurings there were and distant clankings, with the hum of machinery which ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... wells, greasers, rum-drinking Indians, testy old cavaliers flourishing whiskers and sovereignty, or perhaps an idyllic peasantry la Jean Jacques, assailed by the prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan" evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men, surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture brides, fans, Samurai, banzais, art, and cherry blossoms? Or the word "alien"? According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following: [Footnote: The New Republic: December ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... exceptional voice, as was the case with the roles written for Martin. This singer must have possessed either a strong tenor voice with exceptional low tones, or a baritone voice with perhaps an unusual command of the falsetto—history furnishes but vague information on this point. In any case, the roles written for him—called Martin-tenor or Martin-baritone parts—are now assigned to the ordinary baritone. Pointage then becomes inevitable, as in the case of Herold's Zampa, the compass required as printed ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Academy of Philadelphia, who was being feted there. I had never before seen either Monsieur or Mademoiselle Stangerson. I was seated in the room which precedes the Salon des Ambassadeurs, and, tired of being jostled by so many noble personages, I had fallen into a vague reverie, when I scented near me the perfume of ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... had the same vague feeling that Canada, in addition to being an immense distance off, was not quite, well, it wasn't England—that was indisputable—she found herself unreasonably irritated by her ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... should render it expedient. His ruling passion was avarice; and though he had been allured by the hints which his sister had thrown out concerning Mrs. Beaumont's increased jointure, and vast expectancies from Mr. Palmer, yet he was not so rash as to act decisively upon such vague information: he had wisely determined to obtain accurate and positive evidence from Captain Lightbody, who seemed, in this case, to be the common vouchee; but Lightbody happened to be gone out to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass In splendour through the gloom; Who is it calling o'er the darkened ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... death were told to me by others. My childish recollection held every feature of that first awful scene as tenaciously as if the flames had kindled upon me, and not upon my hapless playfellow. What followed is a hazy kaleidoscope, lurid and vague, until my scattered thoughts settled to the perception that I was making a long visit at Uncle Carter's and sharing Cousin Molly ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... him. "You do that!" He made it an order. There had been no chance to leave Boyd in Calhoun. But there was still Cadiz as a possibility. He did not believe this vague story about Union gold in the bank. And the company might never enter the town in force at all. So that Boyd, left behind, would not attract the unfavorable ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... same time, I saw the neighbors wandering through their gardens, taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the ninepins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and showed itself ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... conversion you knew little about the Holy Spirit. Later on you heard of His dwelling in you, and His being the power of God in you for all the Father intends you to be, and yet His indwelling and inworking have been something vague and indefinite, and hardly a source of joy or strength. At conversion you did not yet know your need of Him, and still less what you might expect of Him. But your failures have taught it you. And now you begin to see how you have been grieving Him, by not trusting and not following ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... nurse, with love intense, Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence; Sweet, when the lost arrive: Sweet the musician's ardour beats, While his vague mind's in quest of sweets, The choicest ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Jersey, stupid irritating Jersey, where the passengers are always asking which line they are on, and where they are to come out, and whether they have yet reached Elizabeth. Launched into Jersey, one has a vague notion that he is on many lines and no one in particular, and that he is liable at any moment to come to Elizabeth. He has no notion what Elizabeth is, and always resolves that the next time he goes that way, he will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... defenseless Maria Theresa of Silesia, a strip of territory lying to the southeast of Brandenburg. He accordingly marched his army into the coveted district, and occupied the important city of Breslau without declaring war or offering any excuse except a vague claim to a ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... in midst of all her joy, Hetty went about her duties: vague fears oppressed her. What would Eben do now? What had he meant when he said: "You are no longer ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... England. Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. All the old families ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... Three of the remainder (Nos. 1, 3, and 6) may be classed as uncertain in their properties, that is, while the plants themselves seem to possess some medical value, the Indian mode of application is so far at variance with recognized methods, or their own statements are so vague and conflicting, that it is doubtful whether any good can result from the use of the herbs. Thus the Unaste[']tstiy[^u], or Virginia Snakeroot, is stated by the Dispensatory to have several uses, and among other things is said to have been highly recommended in intermittent fevers, although alone ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... looked at him closely: the words had a hidden meaning, and it was clear he was not intended to miss the implied threat. But what was Ku Sui's thought? Back in his mind an anxiety grew, indefinite, vague and devilish. ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... that case, if we are to find Villa let us make all haste forward. And first we must direct ourselves yonder"—he pointed in a vague way towards the mountains—"where we must presently leave our car and go on foot, to the ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... style of 'that pure and reformed part of Christ's Holy Catholic Church which is established in this Realm.' Now and then his attention wandered—once or twice his eyes rested on the well-dressed group directly opposite to him with a kind of vague regret and doubt. There was an emotion working in his soul to which he could scarcely give a name. Instinctively he was conscious that a certain embarrassment and uneasiness affected the ordinary members of his congregation,—he knew that their minds ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... After he had heard these ballads, so diffuse and vague, he failed to see any point of beauty in them; but the plaintive melody of the sound was nevertheless sufficient to drive away his spirit and exhilarate his soul. Hence it was that he did not make any inquiries about the arguments, and that he did not ask about the matter treated, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fancied that invisible powers would be more efficacious, than those visible motives that evidently invited mortals to the commission of mischief. Every thing was understood to be achieved, by occupying man's mind with gloomy chimeras, with vague, undefinable terrors, with avenging angels; and politics madly believed that its own interests grew out of the blind submission of its subjects, to the ministers of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... sallowness and his careless assumption, everywhere, from his forehead to his exposed and relaxed blue socks, almost sky-blue, as in past days, of creases and folds and furrows that would have been perhaps tragic if they hadn't seemed rather to show, like his whimsical black eyebrows, the vague, interrogative arch. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the use of what is commonly called the philosophy of language, is evidently misapplied by those who make it the test of grammatical certainty, it may not be amiss to offer a few considerations with a view to expose the fallacy of so vague a criterion. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... chose du passe, quelque chose du present et comme un vague mirage de l'avenir. Du reste, ces poemes, divers par le sujet, mais inspires par la meme pensee, n'ont entre eux d'autre noeud qu'un fil, ce fil qui s'attenue quelquefois au point de devenir invisible, mais qui ne casse ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... during the night, each time with the dim idea that something strange and monstrous had occurred, but I presently fell asleep again; in the morning I awoke with the same vague feeling, but presently recollection returned, and I remembered that I had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. I lay musing for some time on what I had done, and I felt rather stunned, as before; at last I arose ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... met with a very unemotional reception. Its style was peculiar,—almost as unlike that of his Essays as that of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" was unlike the style of his "Life of Schiller." It was vague, mystic, incomprehensible, to most of those who call themselves common-sense people. Some of its expressions lent themselves easily to travesty and ridicule. But the laugh could not be very loud or very long, since it took twelve years, as Mr. Higginson tells us, to sell five hundred copies. It ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is to say, which will hardly admit even of so vague a definition, seeing it is the Indefinite Absolute ...
— Hebrew Literature
... he answered with a vague laugh. "Laura, I didn't come here to bother you with my troubles; I come ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... features of the little college town, in an attempt to put the stranger entirely at her ease after her disquieting experience. So far she had had slight opportunity to observe this latest freshman arrival. She had a vague idea that Jean Brent was an unusually attractive girl, but the side view she obtained of her, as they walked along, was far from satisfactory. The newcomer said little, and only once during the short walk to Harlowe House did she turn ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... Nathan seemed a little startled by this abrupt entrance, and Mary came down the ladder with an anxious look, for this man was the village constable, and with a vague sense of debts that they did not comprehend, both the old man and girl received him with something like apprehension. But he clasped both hands under his coat behind, and looked so complacently first at the corn-stalks, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a vague feeling of apprehension when he heard that Joan Clive, the little girl who lived next door, was having a strange cousin to stay for three weeks. All his life, William had accepted Joan's adoration and homage with condescending ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Torn has fought and sacked and pillaged for the love of it, and for a principle which was at best but a vague generality. Tonight we ride to redress a wrong done to My Lady Bertrade de Montfort, and that, Shandy, is a different matter. The torch, Shandy, from tower to scullery, but in the service ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... oval in its form, and her complexion was dark and clear. But perhaps her greatest beauty consisted in the half-soft, half-wild expression of her face, which, while it seemed to declare to the world that she was mild, gentle, and, for the most part, silent, gave a vague, doubtful promise of something that might be beyond, if only her nature were sufficiently awakened, creating a hope and mysterious longing for something more than might be expected from a girl brought up under the severe thraldom of Madame Charlotte Staubach,—creating a hope, or perhaps it might ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... have any fresh motive for dreading such an occurrence, you are quite right, but if it is only a vague, groundless fear, my love, why should you deprive yourself of a real and innocent pleasure? If you knew how pleased I am when I see you enjoy yourself, and particularly when I witness your ecstacy in listening ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Norman-French, who seized and subdued this island in the year 1066 and following years. The fourth contribution came to us by the aid of the Revival of Learning— rather a process than an event, the dates of which are vague, but which may be said to have taken place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Latin left for us by the Romans is called Latin of the First Period; that brought over by the missionaries ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... and on 4th October 1798 was licensed to preach. He lived in his father's house, where part of the family room was screened off to form a study for him. He delivered some sermons, apparently with little success. He failed to obtain a call from any parish; and there are vague reports of his acting as tutor in some families, and of a rebuff received at the table of the marquis of Tweeddale, father of one of his pupils, which made him resolve to seek for independence by a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... postoffice and waited a good long hour before the mail was distributed. There was nothing in her box except the San Francisco paper. And yet she felt intuitively there must be some news. She returned to her home with a vague feeling of dread and lit the parlor lamp. Mechanically she scanned the headlines of the paper when ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... the great west coast. But the supposed epoch of this alleged immigration must carry us back to the earliest ages; for, that the Incas were (as the greater number of inquirers into Peruvian history pretend) of Asiatic origin, is a mere vague hypothesis, unsupported by anything approximating ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the purpose of Black Magic is simply and obviously to communicate with devils, and if we interrogate our sources of knowledge as to the object of such communication, it must be admitted that the response is vague. Perhaps the object will best be defined as the reinforcement of human ability by diabolical power and intelligence for the operation of evil along the lines of individual desire and ambition. For the fulfilment of what is good man aspires towards God, and to fulfil evil ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... class by themselves, however, were the female labor reform associations, which for some years did excellent work in widely separated cities. These were strictly trade unions, in spite of their somewhat vague name. They seem to have drawn their membership from the workers in the local trades. That of Lowell, perhaps the best known, originated among the mill girls, but admitted other workers. Lowell, as usual, was to the fore in ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... politely and respectfully, as many of you do, and say you are Christians; and there an end. You have simply to take my words (as I fear so many of those that listen to them do) as matters of course, the proper things to be said on a Sunday, and for me to say, which may be very true in some vague, general way, but which have no felt application to you. That is all you have to do. It is quite enough. Negative vices will ruin a man, in mind, body, and estate; and the negative sin of simple indifference avails to put a barrier between you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a grand note he can begin and end [155] chapter or paragraph! "When the funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over:" "And a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us." Dealing with a very vague range of feelings, it is his skill to associate them to very definite objects. Like the Soul, in Blake's design, "exploring the recesses of the tomb," he carries a light, the light of the poetic faith which he cannot ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... family: then the papers about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined. D'Alibert's brother-in-law, who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an end by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... attaining. Great and little aims alike, he never had known what it was to fail. What a curious state of feeling it would be to most men to know themselves able to assert so much! Think of a mind in which disappointment is a thing unknown! I think that one would be oppressed by a vague sense of fear in regarding one's self as treated by Providence in a fashion so different from the vast majority of the race. It cannot be denied that there are men in this world in whose lot failure seems ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... least, would not claim her till he had the use of her for a season, the longer the better; but he felt that he had no right to hope any such thing. The yacht was a beautiful craft, and it was in the very height of the boating season. All his hopes, however, had been very vague, and were not founded on any reasonable basis. He had been considering the remotest of possibilities, rather than ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... Another reason, according to Mr. Talmage, why the Jew bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it have been fulfilled. How do we know that the prophecies were not fulfilled before they were written? They are so vague that you can't tell what was prophesied. If you will read the Jew bible carefully, you will see that there was not a line, not a word, prophesying the coming of Christ. Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible was to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... chants still rose from the depths of the valley to the summit of the hill, like the complaining of a mighty voice; the glare of the funeral torches was still seen afar through the mist of evening; it was the hour of twilight—that strange hour, which gives to the most solid forms a vague, indefinite fantastic appearance—when the sound of firm and regular footsteps was heard on the stony soil of the rising ground, and, between the black trunks of the trees, a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in her little side-glance, which at another time would have put me on my guard. But just then I was engrossed with my own vague fears. I forgot even to remove my hand from her arm. So we were standing, when a moment later the silence was broken by the sound of a galloping horse coming fast across the marshes. We started aside. Lady Angela reined in a great bay mare a few yards away from us. Her habit ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... side the vague boundary has varied constantly, influenced by the conflicting Haitian and Dominican claims, the greater or less energy of the border authorities on each side, and the tendency of the rapidly increasing Haitian population to establish homes in the uninhabited frontier region of Santo ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her, and some one said, "Mary!" It was spoken in a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion; and she turned and saw those very eyes, that very hair, yes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... obliged him to fix every event to a definite year; and this, in many cases, can only be guess-work, for Suetonius, as may be seen from his extant writings, was often vague in his chronology. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... to sleep for a long time. From the point where he lay he could now see two of the sentinels walking back and forth, rifle on shoulder. He did not believe that they would continue to do so many hours, and he had a vague sort of desire to prove that he was right. Having nothing else to ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... had reached the conclusion that his chance to be a hero was at hand and not to be despised. Here was the opportunity to outstrip all of his competitors in the race for Rosalie's favour. It might be confessed that, with all his good intentions, his plans were hopelessly vague. The group braced up a little at the sound of ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... learned or unlearned avarice. Let the fruit fall with the leaves still clinging round it. Who would have stripped Southey's walls of the books that filled them, when, his mind no longer capable of taking in their meaning, he would still pat and fondle them with the vague loving sense of what they had once been to him,—to him, the great scholar, now like a ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... reserve wore off, and was succeeded by her usual frankness or gaiety. In her eyes appeared, at times, a new thoughtfulness, but for no longer period than the quick passing of a summer cloud over a sunny meadow. This half-light of brief conjecture or vague retrospection only mellowed the depths of her gaze, and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... saw with extraordinary vividness all that was going on around her, even to the faces of the boys and girls who passed them in taxis; but she was incapable of concentrated thought. The hurry and excitement in which she had lived for the last two days left her breathless and vague. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. But when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on; a fresh zest was added to their toil. Each morning Ralph would set out with a vague but pleasurable anticipation of adventure. And as his mind succumbed to the strange influence of the White Squaw, it coloured for him what had been the commonplace events of his daily life. If a buck ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... the grammarian, like the painter, does not strive after a vague, transcendental ideal; he is not as one that beateth the air; his quest for knowledge is definite and positive enough; he throws all care for infinite things, except the infinite of philological accuracy, upon God; and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was layin' by the roadside, and the wagon upside down A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a whirlin' round! And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a vague Sort o' notion comin' to me that ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... lxxxii. belongs to higher poetry; that the author himself there mitigates in ver. 6, in the parallel member, the strength of the expression: "I have said ye are Elohim, and sons of the Most High ye all;" and, finally, that there Elohim is used as the most vague and general name of God, while here El, a personal name, is used. Hendewerk, Ewald, and others, finally, explain "God's hero," i.e., "a divine hero, who, like an invincible God, fights and conquers." But in opposition ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... thought of such a thing as marriage. She had money of her own, and all that money could buy; and her freedom, whatever that was. In this new world about him all the terms of life seemed changed and transposed and vague, and he never quite knew what she meant. Every word that she said when they discussed life and love seemed capable of a double intent, and whether by freedom she meant to yield or to escape something he had never made out. All he ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the coalition weakened. Loiseau made three jokes that hung fire; everybody beat their brains for fresh instances to the point; and found none, when the Countess, possibly without premeditation and only from a vague desire to render homage to religion, interrogated the older of the two Sisters on the main incidents in the lives of the saints. Now, several of them had committed acts which would be counted crimes in our eyes, but the Church readily pardons such misdeeds when they are accomplished ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... when Wade tried to recall that mad ride, he found it only a vague blur upon his memory. He was conscious only of the fact that he had traveled at a speed which, in saner moments, he would have considered suicidal. Urging the big black over the rougher ground of the higher levels, he rode like a maniac, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Vague, perturbing words! Halsey said, "They tell me George Prince is listed for the voyage. I am suggesting, Haljan, that you keep your eye especially upon him. Your duties on the Planetara leave ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... all circumstances that come to our knowledge for the first time—and in Mesmerism every thing is new. An objection may be made that the article has rather a Magazinish air; Mr. Poe having evidently written with a view to effect, and so as to excite rather than to subdue the vague appetite for the mysterious and the horrible which such a case, under any circumstances, is sure to awaken—but apart from this there is nothing to deter a philosophic mind from further inquiries regarding it. It is a matter entirely ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... says the news, that a change has taken place in the king's affections. You know whom that concerns. Afterward, the news continues, people are talking about one of the maids of honor, respecting whom various slanderous reports are being circulated. These vague phrases have not allowed me to sleep. I have been deploring, ever since yesterday, that my diffidence and vacillation of purpose should, notwithstanding a certain obstinacy of character I may possess, have left me unable to reply ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... exactly why he rose in the night and stole out of his room with catlike steps. He had a vague idea that he would move silently in order not to disturb or awaken any ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... impossible to give the symptoms of this disease in an orderly manner, as the affection gives rise to a thousand and one varying and ofttimes vague symptoms. The particular part of the nervous system affected, and also the cause and character of the attacks modify the symptoms. The eminent Dr. Wood says: "Nervous exhaustion may, in the beginning, affect the whole of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Reformed with one universal sweep of the scythe of persecution, and he felt himself moved and incited to go to some of the Lords and leaders of the Congregation to warn them of what he feared; but, considering that he had only a vague and unaccountable suspicion for his thought, he wavered, and finally returned home. Thus, though manifestly and marvellously instructed of the fruition of some bloody business in hand that night, he was yet overruled by the wisdom ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... I was a little vague. Leila is at the puzzling age. You will find her much altered ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... men would have joined hands, in the name of truth and justice, to suppress it. The only thing that could be done in such circumstances was, to translate their doctrine into the language of their time. They must take the current terms—the vague popular terms—as they found them, and restrict and enlarge them, and inform them with their new meanings, with a hint to 'men of understanding' as to the sense in which they use them. That is the key to the language in which their books for ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... code," which should be something complete and limited to itself. The true sanction of each was the immemorial observance of each, not its place in the Collection, which implied a competent framer. Moreover, in proportion as General Councils were held, and enacted Canons, so did the vague title of mere usage, without definite sanction, become less influential, and the ancient Canons fell into disregard. And what made this still more natural was the circumstance that the Nicene Council did re-enact ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... very weak. As from another world he had heard the shout from above when the body of Harry Shepherd reached the brink, and afterwards some vague murmurs. Presently his fingers slipped and he went down in the black pool. The chill of the water to his face, the sudden choking sensation, brought his senses back for a moment and he struck to ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... interference, in the material world. He ascribes every work, every external act of man, to the innate force or soul of the physical universe. He observes that spiritual agents are so mysterious and unintelligible, so uncertain in their laws, so vague in their operation, so sheltered from experience, that a wise man will have nothing to say to them. They belong to a different order of causes, which he leaves to those whose profession it is to investigate them, and he confines himself to the tangible and sure. Human exploits, human ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... answered, for at the back of my mind I had a vague suspicion that the first lieutenant of the Jackass was not the only member of her ship's company who delighted in pulling ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... the unarmed passenger-ship Sussex was torpedoed without warning, and several Americans lost their lives. The first information about this incident was so vague that the matter was at first treated in a dilatory fashion in Washington. At the time I sent the following report ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... are beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think, 'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm of these things is the only charm of all the poems. There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone—nothing is articulate, nothing individual, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... long come to carry the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private persons having the world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen items of flattering regard generally known in a genteel suburb? And words could hardly be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that made a hazy largeness about poor Gwendolen on the heights of her young self-exultation. Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of, and to have their lives blown hither and thither like empty ships in which no will was present. It was not to be so ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... on that fine stretch of yellow sand, one seemed to breathe an atmosphere so pure, and to gaze at a sky so transparent, that some of those undefined longings for surroundings that have never been realized were instinctively uppermost in the mind. It is, I imagine, that vague recognition of perfection which has its effect on even superficial minds when impressed with beautiful scenery, for to what other cause can be attributed the remark one hears, that such ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... for at the mere mention of the word the vague dread seemed to shape itself into a certainty. "Oh, Captain Triggs, don't say that if Adam gets off you don't think Jerrem's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... turning, he was 'ware her looks beheld him Out of the mirror white; And at the window yearning arms she held him, Out of the vague and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... three years, she had decided to make that pilgrimage ... some time. And now, crossing Union Square on that lovely afternoon late in April, she knew that the time had come. Not that there was any reason for haste. ... At the vague thought her brown eyes rested a moment on the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... "A vague opinion prevails among men that society is moving onward to its appointed state by what is variously termed the 'force of circumstances,' 'the instinct of the race,' 'the general law of progress,' 'Divine guidance.' These loose opinions are speculative fancies adopted in the absence ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... impression—the result of the teachings of the negro soldiers and Freedmen's Bureau officials—that the Government would support them in idleness. But in the remote districts this impression was vague. The advice of the old plantation preachers held many to their work, and these did not suffer as did their brothers ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless knowledge. ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... and in other ways strive to shew that a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a very unsatisfactory ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... However vague and unphilosophical these conjectures may appear, they serve, I think, to show that one's first impulse utterly to reject any theory whatever, implying a gradual acquirement of these instincts, which for ages have excited man's admiration, may at least be delayed. Once grant that dispositions, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... His pride would not let him think that he was shrinking, but cried out in him, 'Will you be believed?' and whispered that few would believe him guilty of such an act. Yet, while something said that full surely Lady Jocelyn would not, a vague dread that Rose might, threw him back on the luxury of her love and faith in him. He found himself hoping that his statement would be laughed at. Then ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mounting into the hundreds have been negotiated between individual nations, but almost all contain that fatal reservation of questions of "honor and vital interests." Honor and vital interests—could any words be more vague and indefinite? Are these not the very cases which interested nations are least competent to decide? A complete answer to that silly reservation is found in our hundred years' peace with Great Britain. As John W. Foster, that keen student ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... through from the dilapidated roof. Between the oft-repeated figures of Hercules were frescoed niches, wherein heads of Roman emperors and other illustrious historical characters had been depicted in glowing tints; but all were so vague and dim now that they were but the ghosts of pictures, which should be described with the shadows of words—ordinary terms are too substantial to apply to them. The very echoes in this deserted hall seemed startled ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... about seven feet. For twenty feet it ran almost straight in; then they came to a sharp turn to the right, and entered a much narrower passage. The air was so pure and fresh, even after this turn was made, as to lead her to believe there must somewhere be another opening. The vague thought brought with it a throb ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... word she put the well-filled bags into Tom's hands, and received the silver he offered in payment—three bright new dimes. At that moment she caught a glimpse of Ed Brown lurking in the area way of a house at the other end of the block. The sight filled her with a vague misgiving which she could not have explained. She glanced again at Tom; he was nervous ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... improbability of the thing she had done this time was her cover. Who in the world would have dreamed that she would go off with Jevons? I don't really know that I dreamed it myself at the moment. I may be mixing up with my first vague dread the certainty that came later. But sometimes I wonder why Reggie didn't suspect me. I suppose my rectitude that had dished me with Viola saved me ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... would not have wasted much thought over it at the moment. It all worried him and at the same time he could not attend to it. Strange to say, none would have believed it perhaps, but he only felt a faint vague anxiety about his immediate future. Another, much more important anxiety tormented him—it concerned himself, but in a different, more vital way. Moreover, he was conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was working better ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... heard a warning cry. He looked up and saw the mass of metal descending, though the baggage man had not given the word. It was a swift upward glance, and as swiftly he swerved aside. Then he felt a sharp but heavy pain on his shoulder, and fell. He was conscious of a number of voices shouting, of vague forms hurrying towards him, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... struggle against them. He felt that there was a mystery, and that the Earl himself not only knew nothing about it, but could not even suspect it. But what was the mystery? That he could not, or perhaps dared not, conjecture. The vague thought which darted across his mind was one which was madness to entertain. He ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the deck and panted. He played on the boards like a public fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew—subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!—the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... resolution limited my stay in Helena to a couple of days, which were devoted to arranging for an exploration of what are now known as the Upper and the Lower Geyser Basins of the Yellowstone Park. While journeying between Corinne and Helena I had gained some vague knowledge of these geysers from an old mountaineer named Atkinson, but his information was very indefinite, mostly second-hand; and there was such general uncertainty as to the character of this wonderland that I authorized an escort of soldiers to go that season ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... land with the vague and yet inquiring glance of those who are going out to sea, noticed the church of Notre dame de la Garde, perched on its high hill, and dominating the noisy city, the harbour, the cold, grey squadrons of the rocks and Monte Cristo's ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to get out some spare sails. I obtained what I wanted from the fo'c'sle, and after a good deal of work managed to "bend" a mainsail and staysail. Being without compass or chart, however, I knew not where I was, nor could I decide what course to take in order to reach land. I had a vague idea that the seas in those regions were studded with innumerable little islands and sandbanks known only to the pearl-fishers, and it seemed inevitable that I must run aground somewhere or get stranded upon a coral reef after I had ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... restlessly, and her heart throbbed anxiously, as she told herself that she had done little to smooth his rugged pathway. The vague feeling, that he had not been entirely to blame, if she had not found perfect happiness by his side, alarmed her. Did not her former conduct justify him in expecting hindrance rather than support and help in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any one occasion attempt to conceal his person from their observation, I do say, gentlemen, that the means of knowledge of these witnesses are so slight, that if I call witnesses to prove, not by vague surmise, never having seen him before, that he was in their society and company that evening so late, as to render it impossible that he should have been at Dover that night. But supposing that the evidence of alibi should not be satisfactory, it then comes back to the other ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... had made to their room during Mark's illness had brought him into such constant and pleasant contact with Sallie and her brother that they looked upon him as a tried friend. Sallie, he knew, was a friend of the shy, golden-haired sister. So one evening he went to call at the Calkins room, with a vague hope of helping indirectly in bringing ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... interested had died in a provincial town. She was a chronic invalid and morphia was found by her bedside. There was an inquest with an open verdict. Eight days later I went to have a sitting with Mr. Vout Peters. After giving me a good deal which was vague and irrelevant, he suddenly said: "There is a lady here. She is leaning upon an older woman. She keeps saying 'Morphia.' Three times she has said it. Her mind was clouded. She did not mean it. Morphia!" Those were almost his exact ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was taking a bath, and was splashing about in the warm water, laughing with the joyous heart of a boy. With the mild steam rose the vague perfume of violets. Brave as a Crillon though he was, fearless as a Bussy, the Chevalier was something of a fop; not the mincing, lisping fop, but one who loved physical cleanliness, who took pride in the whiteness ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... toward the north scattering out over the mesa and dotting the hills beyond the mountain road. A banner of smoke lay low against the northern horizon, while across the distance came the faint whistle of an approaching train. A vague remembrance came into Marguerite's mind that there was to have been trouble in the town, a battle and bloodshed, after the passing of that train, and that she had been anxious on her father's account. But that all seemed years ago, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... mother's knee. I have been to your great cathedrals and churches. I saw only lip-service and routine. I heard only stale maxims, weak explanations of the allegories and parables that fill your Biblical records; flowing rhetoric and vague expressions of some undefinable joy and glory in an equally undefinable Hereafter, that was sometimes described as a place, and sometimes as a state. That was all. I feel such things cannot long stand against the tide of advancing thought. Modern Christianity is not the Sermon on the Mount, and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... it. But to succeed in this excellent enterprise one must have good duplicate specimens; not having them, one must have money. As a conclusion to your letter, the question of money was brought before my assembled colleagues, but the answer was vague and uncertain. I must, then, find resources in some other way, and this is what I propose to do . . .[Here follow some plans for exchange.] Beside this, I will busy myself in getting together authentic ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... and the patch on which they walked seemed still the same patch. They got a glimpse of a white, clumsy-looking stone, a small ravine, or a bundle of hay dropped by a passer-by, the brief glimmer of a great muddy puddle, or, suddenly, a shadow with vague outlines would come into view ahead of them; the nearer they got to it the smaller and darker it became; nearer still, and there stood up before the wayfarers a slanting milestone with the number rubbed off, or a wretched birch-tree drenched and bare like a wayside beggar. The ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... then, the conditions regulating conduct are from the first greatly modified. Instinct, becoming vague and more general, has evolved into "character," while the intelligence finds itself confronted with customs to which it has to accommodate conduct. But how does custom arise? Let us first consider what custom is. It is not merely a habit of action; but ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... was made to Sombrin, and the next day the Battalion left Sombrin late in the afternoon for an unknown destination. Even the Colonel did not know, and there was a vague rumour that the Brigade staff were to look after the unit. The men marched over bad roads and in the dark, and ultimately they were turned into a wood and told there were no billets, and they could bivouac for the night. Officers and men lay down on the damp ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... landscapes and pictures. I will save you a world of trouble, and will instruct you at once to find certain objects frightful and unworthy of notice or esteem. The zest of travel is taken out of one by the necessity of muttering vague formulas of meaningless praise before pictures and statues it is traditional to admire. There's too much of everything in this world. When a man has reached my age and my state of health he feels the necessity of getting at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... there are other things you could do," pleaded Max, with vague thoughts of setting his own sisters to work to find this erratic child of the riverside some more seemly mode of life than her ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... I know it; and you will one day admit that it is so, you, who at this moment shed tears with me; no one can burden his heart or his skin with another's pain. The measure of our sufferings is in ourselves.—You even understand my sorrows only by very vague analogy. Could you see me calming the most violent frenzy of despair by the contemplation of a miniature in which I can see and kiss her brow, the smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin; which enables ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... that of any other land save Egypt; yet Chinese affairs have not until recently exerted any appreciable influence upon the general current of history. All through ancient and mediaeval times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... details with interest down to the end, where the name of the "famous Chatworth ring" finished the announcement with a flourish. Why "famous"? It was very provoking to advertise with that vague adjective and not ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... soldier. Too absent-minded—hopelessly vague and careless. I live on tenter-hooks always. What detail have I forgotten? What order did I give that could be ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... affirming that the people do not pray at such stations more than at any other spot whatever. There are many such venerated trees in different parts of the country. I believe that the reason as well as the amount of such veneration is vague and unsettled in the minds of the peasantry, yet the object remains a local monument from generation to generation, honoured now, as were in the Bible times—the oak of Deborah (Gen. xxxv. 8), the oak of Ophrah (Judges vi. II), for ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... so if it had appeared that it might lead to his exculpation, but you were so fully convinced that his whole course confirmed the suspicions, that a mere vague idea was not worth dwelling on. Your general opinion, of him ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard; but it was enough to set me thinking. "If he had been shot".... If who had been shot? My fears answered that question but too readily. Who, then, was this new-comer? Was he from Berlin? And if from Berlin, what orders did he bring? A vague terror of coming evil fell upon me. I trembled—I held my breath. I tried to hear what was being said, but in vain. The voices in the next room went on in a low incessant murmur; but of that murmur I could not distinguish ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... slope was scarcely clogged at all. The firs, waving now and interlocking their branches in that vague joy or trouble of the winter wind, were keeping off the powdery drift. When he got to his house he saw Jerry on the way to the barn, but he did not hail him. Possibly Jerry had paid Tenney for his week, and although Raven's own diplomacy would stick at nothing, he preferred to act in good ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... This latest instalment of the Tarzan chronicles finds the Greystokes somewhat anxious about the restlessness and unconventional tastes of their schoolboy son, who inherits not only his father's vague jungle longings but all his explicit acquired characteristics, so that when, with the decent old ape, Akut, disguised as his invalid grandmother, he sails away from England and plunges into the wild he promptly becomes the terror of the jungle and bites the jugular veins ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... in broad light, the next day—the next—and the next, with half excuses and vague talk of business. Lady Carnegie did not interdict his visits, or blame his weakness and inconsistency, for they were seemly in the eyes of the world—which she honoured, after herself, although she washed her hands of the further ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... immediately after an accented syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, and most assuredly is not cut ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretence that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the most part be arbitrary; and insanity, without any formal or express provision, may be safely pronounced to be a virtual disqualification. The constitution of New York, to avoid investigations that must forever be vague and dangerous, has taken a particular age as the criterion of inability. No man can be a judge beyond sixty. I believe there are few at present who do not disapprove of this provision. There is no station, in relation to which it is less proper than ...
— The Federalist Papers
... divide it with the poorest family there, on the express condition that they should tidy up things, especially those children, and generally change their way of living. The man took the money—I have a vague recollection of seeing a stunned look on his face—and, I believe, brought it back to our house to see if it was all right, thereby giving me great offence. But he did the best for himself that way, for so Rag Hall came under the notice of my mother too. And there really was some whitewashing ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... the phlegmatic Scot, who, having rested his horses and affixed a drag to the wheel, was about to proceed, when Lady Juliana, who now began to have some vague suspicion of the truth, called to him to stop, and, almost breathless with alarm, inquired of her husband the meaning ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... repair and make it seaworthy but, finding this beyond my skill, had abandoned the attempt; for indeed (as I say) it was wofully bilged and broken. Moreover, at the back of my mind had always lurked a vague hope that some day, soon or late, she that was ever in my dreams, she that had been my love, my Damaris, might yet in her sweet mercy come a-seeking me. Wherefore, as I have before told, it had become my daily custom, morn and eve, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... so new to her, blushing and confused under the eyes of an immense crowd, she had scarcely dared to raise her wondering looks, and the splendours of the town had passed before her like a dream, leaving but a vague remembrance. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "If they meant any good to us, why did they not make their presence known to us," he reasoned. "Mark my words, we have not seen the last of them,—but hush, here comes the captain and Chris, there is no need to worry them with vague conjectures." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and set it slowly down a special little effort had to be made. To move about at all was a painful performance, something he did not want to do. All physical acts were to him dull but necessary parts of his training for a vague and glorious future that was to come to him some day in a brighter and more beautiful land that lay in the direction thought of rather indefinitely as the East. "If I do not move and keep moving I'll become like ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... on this still, clear morning was beautiful enough to attract wistful eyes and call up vague and distant fancies. The cloudless sky was intensely dark in its blue: one had a notion that the unseen sun was overhead and shining vertically down. The still plain of water—so clear that the shingle could be seen through it a long way out—had no decisive color, but the fishing smacks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... later to see the new comers enter the ball room. But they did not appear either that night, or any other night. They kept their cottage rooms closely, sitting out only in the rear, and were waited upon by the two black servants they had brought. Various were the conjectures about them, and vague stories soon took shape. The hotel register told only their names: Mrs. Glencarron, Mrs. Hamilton and daughter, from Mississippi. The daughter was an invalid, and this was all that could be drawn from the faithful blacks. The ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... bare instant, caught by a vague foreboding that he could not explain. But in the end he nodded, as though in answer to the unspoken question in his thoughts. "Will you come down into the cabin, Mark?" he invited quietly. "I've much to ask you; and you must have many things ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... power. All sorts of inducements are offered, including cancelation of the Boxer indemnity now being paid to Germany. (The Allies have very obligingly decided that payment of their own Boxer indemnities shall be postponed, not canceled.) Also, there are vague, indefinite hints afloat to the effect that if China is very, very good, the Allies will consider, kindly consider, the right of China to raise her customs-duties. She may, perhaps, be allowed some sort of protective tariff. This latter hint is very vague indeed, too nebulous, in fact, to ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... vague, half-formed fear that all the girls had felt, yet none had dared express, and the silence that followed was pregnant ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... window and letting the moonlight flood the room, sings the famous scena and prayer, "Leise, leise, fromme Weise," beginning, after a few bars of recitative, with a melody full of prayer and hope and tender longings, shaded with vague presentiment. It is an adagio of exquisite beauty, closing with an ecstatic outburst of rapture ("Alle meine Pulse schlagen") as she beholds her lover coming. The melody has already been heard in the overture, but its full joy and splendid sweep are attained only in this scene. In the ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... circumstances that come to our knowledge for the first time—and in Mesmerism every thing is new. An objection may be made that the article has rather a Magazinish air; Mr. Poe having evidently written with a view to effect, and so as to excite rather than to subdue the vague appetite for the mysterious and the horrible which such a case, under any circumstances, is sure to awaken—but apart from this there is nothing to deter a philosophic mind from further inquiries regarding it. It is a matter entirely for testimony. [So it is.] Under this view we shall take steps ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... late war, the subject of this sketch, Mrs. O. E. Hosmer, was residing with her family in Chicago, Illinois. Hers was by no means a vague patriotism that contented itself with verbal expressions of sympathy for her country's cause and defenders. She believed that she had sacrifices to make, and work to do, and could hope for no enjoyment, or even comfort, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... confessed—that the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous confusion and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... these mountains again and again, and knew that they were covered with beautiful vegetation and full of animal life, yet the sight of that leaden-coloured barrier of cloud resting on the forest tops, whilst the savannahs were bathed in sunshine, ever raised in my mind vague sensations of the unknown and the unfathomable. Our course was nearly parallel to this gloomy forest, but we gradually approached it. The line that separates it from the grassy savannahs is sinuous and irregular. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... like to recall it as one of those days about which we ask ourselves why we did not value them more when we had them. I speak of it here, because, in the soothing peace of the Fal that twilight, the AEsthetic seemed to stir in me—not so as to wake, but so as to wake soon. I felt some vague premonition of all the love, the sentiment, and the sorrow which would be mine in the manhood that was brightening to a pale, but ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... cannot speak for the times of his greatest popularity in France—Paul de Kock's name, except for a vague knowledge of his grisette and mauvais sujet studies, was very mainly connected with Le Barbier de Paris. It was an instance of the constant mistakes which almost all countries make about foreign authors. I imagine, from a fresh and recent reading of it, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and mended their shirts, never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the children; only to August she did speak a little sometimes, because he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew as well as she did that there were troubles about money,—though these troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and kindly, being neighbors all in the old twisting streets between the guardhouse and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil for wise ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... it appears that these primitive and isolated people, holding no intercourse whatever with the rest of mankind, were as ignorant as their ancestors even of the existence of this kind of weapons; and although their modern hieroglyphical annals were found to contain vague allusions to the use of them in the conquest of the surrounding country, by means of a peculiar kind of thunder and lightning, and several old Spanish muskets and pistols were found in their scant collection of foreign curiosities, yet, not even the most learned of their priests ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... These vague sentences tended little to the satisfaction of the house; and a motion was made, and strongly supported by the speeches of several members, for reiteration of the suit. At this her majesty was so incensed, that she communicated by sir Francis Knowles ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric—suspended in midair; it is the baseless fabric of a vision so vast, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... straightforward and vivid words as we are accustomed to hear only on the stress of actual life, or in the theatre. In history - where we see things as in a glass darkly, and the fashion of former times is brought before us, deplorably adulterated and defaced, fitted to very vague and pompous words, and strained through many men's minds of everything personal or precise - this speech of the widowed duchess startles a reader, somewhat as the footprint startled Robinson Crusoe. A human voice breaks in upon the silence of the study, and the student is aware of a fellow-creature ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for a brief space, during which the little lonely heart, grappling with its vague instinct of loss and wrong, made wide thrusts into the perplexities hedging it about, and presently electrified the Senora by saying in a half-whisper, "Why did not my father bring me to you first? Did he know you ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... truth Beltane heard a sound the which, soft though it was, checked his breath and chilled his flesh; and, as he peered into the gloomy recesses of the cavern, there moved something vague amid the shadows, something that rose up ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... throughout the journey, and steamed off without her. She bore the desertion with philosophical indifference; her friends and relations were thoroughly well used to the fact of her luggage arriving without her. She wired a vague non-committal message to her destination to say that she was coming on "by another train." Before she had time to think what her next move might be she was confronted by an imposingly attired lady, who seemed ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... leave the room, I advanced towards the mantelpiece in order to place there the stipulated present, after having agreed on a day for a second meeting with the girl, who remained in bed, I got a vague glimpse of a clock without a globe, two flower-vases and two photographs, one of them very old, one of those proofs on glass called daguerreo-types. I carelessly bent forward towards this portrait, and I remained speechless ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the nation, the noble army of Pharisees. They have read Bryce's American Commonwealth and have an intellectual understanding of the theory and form of our government but they do not know what ward they live in, they are vague as to the district, have never met their Congressman and do not know a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... came by halves to my ears, filled my mind with vague conjectures, and I cannot help thinking, to this hour, that the young heir of Moncton came to an untimely death, and she blamed herself so bitterly for not ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... means of avoiding it flitted through his brain. But even though he might see Gordon on that terrible occasion, he need not speak to him. And it would have to be done then, and then only. But now another idea, certainly very vague, had found its way into his mind, and with the object of carrying it out, Mr Whittlestaff had come to the club. "Oh, Mr Whittlestaff, how do you ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... noticed that; but I have a vague sort of feeling just now that things are not going to get better. I don't know whether it's this long-continued darkness, or the want of good food, but I feel more downcast than I ever was ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... help calling out to his dear little Carloman; but he remembered the peril of Osmond's eyes and the Queen's threat, and held his peace, with some vague notion that some day he would make Carloman King of France. In the meantime, half stifled with the straw, he felt himself carried on, down the steps, across the court; and then he knew, from the darkness and the changed ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to write letters. He had lost the careless gayety of his first arrival, and was now uneasy and preoccupied; but he had no vague presentiments like those of Madame Michaud; he was, rather, in full expectation of certain foreseen misfortunes. He said to himself, "This affair will come to some bad end; and if the general does not take ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... what was left of it—to catch a late train to the north, and the solemn, echoing tramp of their heavy feet at midnight in the silent street of Eyemouth brought the stricken people from their beds with a start, and with vague apprehension of fresh disaster. But their dread was turned to rejoicing, except for the family of that man who came home never again. In all, on that Sunday night it was known that sixty-four of ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... That thrilled the shivering woodland far and near, And shuddering to silence, left behind A whisper as of leaves in stealthy wind. A rustling 'mid the underbrush they heard Where, in the gloom about them, dim things stirred— Vague, stealing shapes that softly nearer drew, Till from the tree-gloom crept a ragged crew, Wild men and fierce, a threatening, grimly herd, Who stood like shadows, speaking not a word; And the pale moon in fitful flashes played ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet, about which I had read in the newspapers that it was woven in one piece, and had cost an incredible sum. One did not have to profane ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... tour, and this was too good an opportunity to let slip. Also it would give her a chance to see for herself what was the trouble with Virginia, whose letters of late had been of a very disquieting kind; full of reproaches and vague hints of unhappiness and disappointment ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... garret, he passed the door of a tomb. With that gray mortar Mary St. John was walled up, like the nun he had read of in the Marmion she had lent him. He might have rung the bell at the street door, and been admitted into the temple of his goddess, but a certain vague terror of his grannie, combined with equally vague qualms of conscience for having deceived her, and the approach in the far distance of a ghastly suspicion that violins, pianos, moonlight, and lovely women were ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... responsibility should be met. It has been the intention of the author in devising the following plan for the control of our railway system to make this responsibility a definite one, and not leave it as now, a vague constitutional right. For according to the law at present, State and national legislators may make laws to vary the receipts and expenditures of the railway companies as much as they please, and the only redress of the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... bear considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... almost ridiculously simple. He had had no plan, beyond a vague one of breaking from his guardians when he was led back to the jail. But he formed a new one almost as soon as he had seated himself in the room where the prisoners ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... notwithstanding these precautions, such was the careless manner in which these surveys were made, that many illiterate persons, ignorant of the forms of law, and the necessity of precision in the specification and descriptions of the tracts on which they had laid their warrants, made such loose and vague entries in the land office, as to afford no accurate information to subsequent locators, who frequently laid their warrants on the same tracts. It thus happened that the whole or a part of almost every tract was covered with different and conflicting ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... not be allowed to be come merely a high-sounding phrase, a vague generality, a pious hope, to which everyone can give lip-service. They must be made to have real meaning in terms of the daily thoughts and acts of every man, woman and child in our land during the coming year and during ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... had begun to find out something fresh about this same stream, and the life in his own heart to which it served as a revealing phantasm. He recognized that what in the stream had drawn him from earliest childhood, with an infinite pleasure, was the vague sense, for a long time an ever growing one, of its MYSTERY—the form the infinite first takes to the simplest and liveliest hearts. It was because it was ALWAYS flowing that he loved it, because it could not stop: whence it came ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the audacity of the proposal, but Gustavus gave no sign that he had heard. He continued standing in that tense attitude, his eyes vague and dreamy. And as if to show along what roads of thought his mind was travelling, he uttered a single word a name—in a questioning voice scarce louder ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... rather remarkable beliefs. In the Satya Yug the Dhedas say they were called Satyas; in the Dvapar Yug they were called Meghas; in the Treta Yug, Elias; and in the Kali Yug, Dhedas. The name Elias came, they say, from a prophet Elia, and of him their religious men have vague stories; some of them especially about a famine that lasted for three years and a half, easily fitting into the accounts of Elijah in the Jewish Scriptures. They have also prophecies of a high future in store for ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... article which belonged to the stock under my charge, and which could not be found in my absence. As soon as this customer left I was seen to enter the shop. It was observed by Mr. and Mrs. Owen and Mrs. Jones that I did not appear to notice the remark made. In fact, I looked quite absent-minded and vague. Immediately after putting my hat on the peg I returned to the same spot, put my hat on again, and walked out of the shop, still looking in a mysterious manner, which induced one of the parties, I think Mrs. Owen, to say that my behaviour was very odd, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... only asked life for such things as it could give, it had seemed to him that this was advice for himself. It was as if a refreshing breath of nature had passed before his face. At the same time his feelings in this respect were still vague, and the only well-defined pleasure that he experienced came from the young woman's fit of anger, that error of hers which brought her nearer to him, by lowering her in some degree from her pedestal of serene perfection. It was, perhaps, that seeming perfection which had made him suffer; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... waste labor upon a case so decidedly hopeless. He knew that no art within his compass could cure so thorough a case of heart-blindness, and he gave her up; but he did not give up Julia. He whispered words of consolation into her ears, which, though vague, were yet far ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... time before Alan overcame his pride enough to follow, and then he plodded rather sulkily through the slush. Passing by the ruined summer-house he paused to look at it, the vague mystery making it always an object of interest. He wished Peet had been a more genial man: it might then have been possible to get him to show the inside of that gloomy place. But he was very surly, and the secret must be found ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... east of Carchemish, which was so active in the time of the later Amenothes, had now ceased to exist, and there was but a vague remembrance of its farmer prowess. It had foundered probably in the great cataclysm which engulfed the Hittite empire, although its name appears inscribed once more among those of the vassals of Egypt on the triumphal lists of Ramses III. Its ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... will neither help you, nor be helped by you.' To the Blacks we say, 'This cup of Liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how.' If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both White and Black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new government ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... some vague, unconscious way, symbolizes, to my fancy, the character of a man. I have never been able to explain exactly why. I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated volume when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... House of the Bleeding Heart. But their voyage had not been prosperous, and after riding from Flanders they had found the wedding over, and no one in the hostel having heard of the young Master of Angus, nor even having distinguished Sir Patrick Drummoud, though there was a vague idea that the Scottish king's sisters ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woman?" muttered the Chief Inspector, with his eyes fixed on the table, and a vague notion in his mind of an inquest to be held presently upon a person likely ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the grass already marked by little dabs of red and russet brown. Farther off, in the valley, were corn-fields, now squares of yellow and bronze and gold. It was a glowing picture, but to Katherine it meant only that summer was dead, and she viewed it with vague regret. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... themselves, after the fall of paganism, took employment in the new religion. We recognise one of those symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting-point of a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of music. No one ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to pass that though he handles sacred subjects continually, he is the most ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... caught me by the nape of the neck and threw me over the fence with my amateur fishing tackle and a willow "stringer" with eleven dried, stiff trout on it. Last week I thought I would try Tidd's creek again. It was always a good place to fish, and I felt the same old excitement, with just enough vague forebodings in it to make it pleasant. Still, I had grown a foot or so since I used to fish there, and perhaps I could return the compliment by throwing the old gentleman over his own fence, and then hiss ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... who began life as a monk at Fort Augustus and finished it as a musical critic, he too I fear scarcely more than a name; and a fifth, Jack Stuart, and a sixth, Harold Parsons, and a seventh, and an eighth, and I can hardly now say how many more long since dead, now for me vague ghosts from out that old past so overflowing ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... like sweet potatoes when these trees catch," returned the sheriff grimly. "No." Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the idea of the Mafulu people having any belief in a universal God or All Father; but there is a general belief among them in a mysterious individual named Tsidibe, who may be a man, or may be a spirit (they appear to be vague as to this), who has immense power, and who once passed through their country in a direction from east to west. Wherever you may be, if you speak of this personage, and ask to be told in which direction he travelled, they always point out one which is from east to west. They believe ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... officials at head-quarters upon the enormity of their conduct in declining to see the fearful blunder made by their President and commander-in-chief, after attempting to harangue a battalion of dusty infantry in the vague hope that, inspired by his eloquence, they might do something the enlisted men of the United States never yet have done, no matter what the temptation,—revolt against their government and join the army of ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... to KITCHENER'S triumphant feat in transporting our army to France. We are not very far from Southampton, whence some of the troops must have sailed, but beyond the merest vague rumours we heard nothing. One lady, a fortnight ago, had word from some one that a Belgian padre had seen trucks full of British soldiers in Belgium. A gentleman had heard from a school friend of his daughter that motor-'buses of the General Omnibus Company ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... in the wardrobe, what contracts he made for the ensuing coronation, and the deliveries in consequence. The whole is couched in the most minute and regular manner, and is preferable to a thousand vague and interested histories. The concourse of nobility at that ceremony was extraordinarily great: there were present no fewer than three duchesses of Norfolk. Has this the air of a forced and precipitate ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... the highest degree favourable to vegetative growth, but is in no way equally favourable to the formation of flowers. The constantly repeated expression, good or favourable nourishment, is not only vague but misleading, because circumstances favourable to growth differ from those which promote reproduction; for the production of every form there are certain favourable conditions of nourishment, which may be defined for each species. Experience ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... length along the beach, two or three blue mackerel dangling from his hand: he had not enough of energy, apparently, to hold them up. This was the fellow whom, an hour before, we had pitied as a dull soul to whom the wreck was "timber" and the life-saving station a "shed." We all had a vague ideal before us of a gallant sailor, with eyes of fire and nerves of steel, plunging into the cruel surf to rescue the sinking ship. We accepted the slouching Jacob instead with disrelish. He was not the stuff of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to say how much history can be extracted from these vague and discrepant stories. They seem to refer to one assembly regarded (at least in Tibet) as the third council of the Church and held under Kanishka four or five hundred years[198] after the Buddha's death. As to what happened at the council tradition seems to justify the following ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... but no one did the whole or anything like the whole, and yet it is all one thing. Who carved the wood in St. Bertrand de Coraminges? We know who paid for it, and that is all we know. And as for the wood of Rouen, we must content ourselves with the vague phrase, "Probably ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... speak, to write away an anxiety from his heart, not in letters to others, but only for himself. Many things which were not clear to him, which he found incomprehensible—with pen in hand he succeeded in making clearer to his inward eye, so that vague pictures almost assumed corporeal shape. He had in that fashion created many comrades and many companions during his wanderings in strange lands when he was afraid. So now in his forlorn and deserted condition he would try to invite the Saviour into the poor sinner's cell. No outward ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... war, there is this moving passage: "I know that many hearts are turning towards something, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself." We badly need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, "Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Jimmie Dale's physical acts were almost wholly mechanical. It was perhaps fifteen minutes since he had discovered the loss of the letter, and he was walking now through the heart of the Bowery. Exactly how he had got there he could not have told; he had only a vague realisation that, following an intuitive sense of direction, he had lost not a second of time in making ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... mechanically. Vague doubts, which he hardly understood himself, kept him silent. It was impossible that the 'change in her life' of which she had spoken could mean that she was about to be married—and yet he was conscious of a perfectly unreasonable reluctance to open the letter. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... was better away; he could only clear him of this guilt by involving his father. And what evidence would avail against the tangible witness of the warrant? He had preserved that document with some vague hope of serving Sim, but here it was the serpent in the breast ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... reactions. The Secretary of War was taken aback. He realized that the young Negroes had not approached him to sell their labor. He gleaned that it was not for the purpose of barter and exchange they had come forward. Nor had they come with dreams of political advantage and social eclat, nor with vague glimmerings of spirituality. He was not ready to answer. He dismissed the audience with a little more than the usual ceremony. One of the older Negroes of the group, whose uncanny insight had often appeared beyond the orbit of average intelligence, ventured ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... nothing for it but removal. It was what Dr. Grant called "a very beautiful operation, indeed," and now she was recovering her strength, but only slowly, so slowly that Thomas at times found his heart sink with a vague fear. But it was not the pain of the wound that had wrought that sweet, pathetic look into the little woman's face, but the deeper pain she carried in her heart for those she loved ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... words, among the "middle class". And even in the revolutionary party to which these groups belonged there were the most various conceptions of the form of republican state to be aimed at. The left wing of the party, mainly intellectuals and manual workers, had in view more or less vague socialistic institutions; the liberals, for instance the traders, thought of a liberal democracy, more or less on the American pattern; and the nationalists merely wanted the removal of the alien Manchu ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... account which Galvano gives of this voyage is very vague and inconclusive. We shall find afterwards that the Spaniards found out the means of counteracting the perpetual eastern trade winds of the Pacific within the tropics, by shaping a more northerly course from the Philippine islands, where they established the staple of their Indian commerce, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... half-conscious determination to see whether it really ever had existed (I was beginning to think that Ombos had been using a kind of hypnotic influence on me, thus inducing me to see visions); and also, as I believe, with some vague wish to shut out the sight of those rolling, glittering eyes. For the first time I felt towards him a fierce anger, and I found myself making a resolution never to return to see him again when once I was free of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... Scriptures. In the vegetable productions of this plain the botanist would perhaps discover several unknown species of trees and plants; the reports of the Arabs on this subject are so vague and incoherent, that it is almost impossible to obtain any precise information from them; they speak, for instance, of the spurious pomegranate tree, producing a fruit exactly like that of the pomegranate, but which, on being opened, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... kind of vague peril his wife had saved him. When in the course of his education he read of nymphs and satyrs, and was startled by what seemed a highly elaborated version of his own crude imaginings, he had already, through the influence of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... gazing with much interest at the victorious lifeboat as she lay motionless upon the water of the harbour. It was a very calm day, the sea stretching from the pier-sides as smooth as a piece of green silk, and growing vague in the wintry haze of the horizon, while the white cliffs were brilliant with the silver sunshine. It filled the mind with strange and moving thoughts to look at that sleeping lifeboat, with her image as sharp as a coloured photograph shining in the clear ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ventures out he seems to be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague, unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the Eskimos believe that evil spirits walk ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... often enough to be remarkable; and then he would occasionally start it straight again, eyes right, with a nervous twitch, any thing but pleasant to the marvelling spectator. It was as if he was momentarily expecting to look upon some vague object that affrighted him, and sometimes really did see it. Mr. Jennings had consulted high medical authority (as Hurstley judged), to wit, the Union doctor of last scene, an enterprising practitioner, glib in theory, and bold in practice—and it had been mutually ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the contemplation of these things awakened thoughts of a higher character than the daily baking and brewing, milking and scrubbing in her father's house, she had no language in which to clothe them, and vague and undefined, they fleeted away like the morning mists, leaving no impress of their presence. Her acquaintance with Mrs. Schwartz, and the conversation she sometimes heard between her and her husband, gave to these shadows substance and form, and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... his father, or his father's guile, or his father's strength. Why had not his father died at once?—as all the world had assured him would be the case. Looking back he could remember that the idea of paying the creditors had at first come from his father, simply as a vague idea! Oh, what a crafty rascal his father had been! And then he had allowed himself, in his pride, to insult his father, and had spoken of his father's coming death as a thing that was desirable! From that moment his father had plotted ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... readers to follow him. But no one can ever complain that Dr. Waterland is obscure. We may agree or disagree with his views, but we can never be in doubt what those views are. Had Waterland been of a warmer and more excitable temperament he might have been tempted to indulge in vague declamation or in that personal abusiveness which was only too common in the theological controversies of the day. Waterland fell into neither of these snares; he always argues, never declaims; he is a hard hitter in controversy, but never condescends to scurrilous personalities. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... belief of the Duhoi (Ot-Danums) the liao remains with the body until the funeral-house falls into decay, perhaps for twenty years, when it enters the soil and "is then poor." The idea of the Penihings about life after death is vague, and they do not pretend to know where the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... one, the meeting with Henry Hunt (st. 18) being the ballad-maker's invention. Lord Charles's fraudulent use of the 'white flag' in st. 37 is supported by Bishop Lesley's partisan account of the engagement, written c. 1570. The time-scheme of the ballad is unusually vague: it begins 'in midsummer-time,' and the punitive expedition starts on 'the day before midsummer even'—i.e. June 19, which agrees with the chronicles. The fight takes place within the week; but Lord Charles does not get home until December 29 ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared,—this almost over-womanized woman might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... festivals of these churches; but the concourse is always meagre, and the mirth is forced and ghastly. The Italianissimi have so far imbued the people with their own ideas and feelings, that the recurrence of the famous holidays now merely awakens them to lamentations over the past and vague longings ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... tendency to represent religion as a political invention having as its object the policing of society. It is a theory which in antiquity—to its honour be it said—is but of rare occurrence. There is a vague indication of it in Euripides, a more definite one in Aristotle, and an elaborate application of it in Polybius; and that is in reality all. (That many people in more enlightened ages upheld religion as a means of keeping the masses in check, is a different matter.) However, it is an interesting ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... about, and had not blundered upon this place by accident. A hundred yards away they could now see the ghostly Rio Grande, its saffron surface faintly silvered by the low moon; lights gleamed from the windows of Morales's house. In the distance the vague outlines of the Mexican shore were resolving themselves, and far beyond winked the evidence that some belated citizens of Romero were ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... As the world stands, the United States and Great Britain must work together and stand together to keep the predatory nations in order. A League to Enforce Peace and the President's idea of disentangling alliances are all in the right direction, but vague and general and cumbersome, a sort of bastard children of Neutrality. The thing, the only thing is—a perfect understanding between the English-speaking peoples. That's necessary, and that's all that's necessary. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is returning to a more primitive condition,—hardening and growing perhaps less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a vague way the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and protector, is emigrating;—the domination of the black becomes more and more probable. Furthermore, with the continual increase of the difficulty of living, and the growing pressure of population, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... order from the President and partly through his own good luck. He contrived to get himself aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put out from Boston without cargo, chiefly, it would seem, because its captain had a vague idea of "getting home" to South Shields. Bert was able to ship himself upon her mainly because of the seamanlike appearance of his rubber boots. They had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, or imagined themselves to be chased, for some hours by an Asiatic ironclad, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... have been that Sir Simon was still unusually agitated from the scene he had recently passed through, to say nothing of the vague foreboding caused by the knowledge that Mr. Learned Bore might conceivably do anything within the next few days. There is a possibility that his hand trembled; whatever may have been the cause, as ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and faulty—a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed him with it, but ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... contingencies, to appear regularly at the King's council and to sit as assessors in his law court. They hold their lands in fact upon a contract; but the precise obligations named in this contract do not exhaust their relation to the King. In a vague and elastic sense they owe him honour (obsequium) and loyalty (fidelitas). They must do all in their power to uphold his interests and exalt his dignity. He on his side is bound to consult them collectively, in all ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... rather vague remark the good man took up his wheelbarrow and departed, leaving Brighteyes alone in the barn-yard. Alone, that is, except for the fowls. They had just arrived that morning, and they evidently did not feel at home in their new quarters. The hens were scratching and bustling about in great excitement, ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... are dropping down the coast, I may as well employ the time in giving you a rapid sketch of the commencement of this fine Norse people, though the story "remonte jusqu'a la nuit des temps," and has something of the vague magnificence of your own M'Donnell genealogy, ending a long list of great potentates, with "somebody, who was the son of somebody else, who was the son of Scotha, who was ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... been isolated and cultivated, and the mode in which they are conveyed into the body of a previously healthy patient is ascertained. But until the past year we knew neither the parasitic germ which causes typhus fever nor the mode by which it passes from one individual to another. A vague idea that it was spread through the air prevailed. Typhus is remarkable for the frequency with which the nurses and doctors attending a case become infected. About 20 per cent. of those attacked by it die, but in persons above forty-five ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... previous day, and in the evening as he tramped the cold wind-swept deck of the steamer, he had been trying to collect his thoughts, to readjust them to the new situation, to comprehend in its entirety the great change that had come in his life. The vague plans, the happy indefinite dreams, all the rainbows and roses had gone, shivered to bits like the reflection in a broken mirror. Madeline, his Madeline, was his no longer. Nor was he hers. In a way it ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... matter; but, even in his eyes, intoxication at an evening company, and before the girl in whose estimation he most wished to stand well, was a very serious matter. He could not remember much after going a second time to the supper-room in compliance with Lottie's request, but had a vague impression that she and Hemstead had brought him home. He was left in torturing uncertainty how far he had disgraced himself, because it was a subject concerning which he could not bring himself to make inquiries. That those he met at the dinner-table treated him with their ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... was no doubt partly for the purpose of securing company but also to mind the shop, while she was away. When she returned in the evening, worn out, her eyelids heavy with exhaustion, it was to find the little wife of Olivier still behind the counter, bowed down, with a vague smile on her lips, in the same attitude as she had left her five ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... rapidly, passed him; his eyes followed it idly, until it turned far away into a side street. He strayed on to the market, where he seated himself on a high stool in L'Appel du Matin coffee stall. But a vague, teasing remembrance was beginning to stir in his brain. The turbaned woman on the front seat of the carriage that had rolled past him yonder, where had he seen that dark, grave, wrinkled face, with the great hoops of gold against either cheek? Marcelite! ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... D'Entrecasteaux and of Freycinet in Polynesia, New Holland, and the Molucca Islands; and particularly to visit the Caroline Islands, discovered by Magellan, about which, with the exception of the eastern side, examined in our own time by Captain Kotzebue, we have only very vague information, communicated by the missionaries, and by them learnt from stories told by savages who had lost their way and were driven in their canoes upon the Marianne Islands. The languages, character, and customs of these islanders must also receive special ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... and accumulated rubbish—for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,—now frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep holes. On the top of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... not be shelved, and driven off to the vague period called middle-age, without excellent reason. The woman of thirty-eight and the man of forty-five will spoil their children immoderately while they are little, and be out of touch with them as they grow up. The average mother of sixty is unable to keep pace with her young ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... back. Somehow, some way, he would get them to the ship. They would return to Earth. And then.... His plans were vague. But he knew he could interest capital; he knew that this new world, that was one great mine of raw metals, would not go long unworked. The metallic colorations in rock walls and mountains had fairly shouted of rich ores and ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... 'Edictali programmate definimus, ut qui in hac fuerit ulterius fraude versatus et militia careat et compendium propriae facultatis amittat.' The last clause is perhaps purposely vague. We should have expected to hear something about restitution, but the words ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... our diversity well enough to be willing to unite to protect it. We must die for our differences as cheerfully as the Germans die for their pattern. Or, if we can sketch a design of our cause, we must be as passionate in defence of that large vague design as the Germans are passionate in defence of their tight uniformity and their drill. If we were to fail to keep together, our cause, I believe, would still prevail, but at a cost that we dare not contemplate, by way of anarchy, and the dissolution of societies, by long tortures, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... of the gallant band which had manned the "Nottingham Galley." Captain Deane's first thought was, that possibly this might be the very island on which the "Venus" had been cast away, supposing it to be an island, of which he was not yet sure. A vague feeling that even now Elizabeth and Mistress Pearson might be living on it, induced him immediately to set forth to explore the country. He had not gone far before in front of him he saw several huts, constructed evidently out of the wreck of a vessel. He hurried on, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... we feel our true reliance on others, especially if it is of that vague and not dangerous character when those around us are not ashamed or roused into attendance; when the care, and the soothing, and the vigilance, are the result of that sympathy which true and deep love only feels. This thought broke upon Constance as she sat alone one morning ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wenna Rosewarne seemed to be everywhere throughout the village, to know everything, to be doing everything that prudent help and friendly counsel could do. Mrs. Trelyon grew to love the girl in her vague, wondering, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... reasoning would not have stopped here, but, as it was, she perceived only two sides to the question, and this that Ruth had just presented seemed infinitely more convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess' seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, but Nan did not know it. She ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... gained? In the first place, time—often a physical impossibility to sin, which you may attribute to chance, but which was, in reality, the work of Providence; and is it nothing, one sin the less, in the life of an immortal soul?... Then a vague uneasiness which will soon allow of no rest, a confidence which may enable you to sympathize, more liberty left you for the exercise of religious acts; you no longer see the contemptuous smile at your acts of devotion. ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... to a well-appointed bedchamber, off which gave a smaller room, containing a little four-poster draped in dimity. With a vague gesture in the direction of the bed, she sank on a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... certainty to a period earlier than the beginning of the eighteenth century. No doubt it existed and ravaged the herds of Europe for many years and perhaps centuries before that time, but veterinary knowledge was so limited that the descriptions of the symptoms and post-mortem appearance are too vague and too limited to admit of the identification of the maladies to which they refer. It has been supposed by some writers that certain passages in the writings of Aristotle, Livy, and Virgil show the existence of pleuropneumonia at the time that their works were composed, but ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... characters are inherited but turned more and more to this explanation in his later writings. Let us, however, not make too much of the matter; for it is much less important to find out whether Darwin's ideas were vague, than it is to make sure that ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... wrote Bret Harte, "I took up Longman's Magazine* and began to lazily read something about the Spanish Armada. My knowledge of that historic event, I ought to say, is rather hazy; I remember a vague something about Drake playing bowls while the Spanish fleet was off the coast, and of Elizabeth going to Tilbury en grande tenue, but there was always a good deal of 'Jingo' shouting and Crystal Palace fireworks about ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... keen and cruel he would flash Into this sky of love, death in his hand. The path was strewn with little crimson flowers Scarlet festooned the trees, or was it blood That danced within his eyes? His thoughts were vague: Death, mercy, love, but strongest was desire Merely to see and satisfy his fear. Sudden he saw them, and he hid his eyes Before the sight, then strained to see again Taka, her arms piled high with blossoms, stood, An amber goddess of ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... all the time—he did not seem to thrive as might have been expected. The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure at the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... at last for Peter. He did not like his errand, was very vague, indeed, as to just what that errand might be. He was stiff and rather cold. Also he thought the cat might stifle in the oilcloth, but the old woman too clearly distrusted him to make it possible to interfere. Anyhow, he did not know the German ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from home—he considered that a doctor, when not on a round of visits, ought to be for ever in his consulting-room, ready for a sudden call of emergency. It was monstrous that Stirling should have proposed, after an escapade at the music-hall, to spend further hours with chance acquaintances in vague clubs! Half the town might fall sick and die while the doctor was vainly amusing himself. Thus the righteous lay-man in ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... reflected in the look with which he supplemented his failing words. Doubtless the fault was hers. She was too impenetrably healthy to be touched by the irrelevancies of disease. Her self-reproachful tenderness was tinged with the sense of his irrationality: she had a vague feeling that there was a purpose in his helpless tyrannies. The suddenness of the change had found her so unprepared. A year ago their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both had the same prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future. Now their energies no longer ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... against the bright background, a group of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows, the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which, displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... how to use them, and by better I here mean better for the health and comfort of his present body and mind. He can lay up for old age, which a savage having no durable means of sustenance cannot; he is ready to lay up because he can distinctly foresee the future, which the vague-minded savage cannot.[2] ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... preached at these revivals were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread—a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. To them hell was a burning reality—they could see the smoke and flames. The Devil was no myth. He was an actual person, a rival of God, an enemy of mankind. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of the Persians. Now, while this original source of mental discomfort, which afflicts the uncivilized man, had ceased materially to affect the Athenians, they on the other hand lived at a time when the vague sense of sin and self-reproof which was characteristic of the early ages of Christianity, had not yet invaded society. The vast complication of life brought about by the extension of the Roman Empire led to ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... dreaded figure, no less a person than Sir William Armorer himself, Justice of the Peace and Equerry to the King. None of the children had any very clear idea as to the meaning of that word 'equerry'; therefore it always filled them with a vague terror of unknown possibilities. In after years, whenever they heard it they saw again an angry man with a florid face, dressed in a suit of apple-green satin slashed with gold, standing in a doorway and wrathfully shaking a loaded cane over ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... there conveyed to her, through Alice for the most part, news that concerned the fortunes of Catholics. Politics, except in this connection, meant little enough to such as her. She heard, indeed, from time to time vague rumours of fighting, and of foreign Powers; and thought now and again of Spain, as of a country that might yet be, in God's hand, an instrument for the restoring of God's cause in England; she had ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the doctrines of the Talmud than to the laws of Moses. However secret they may have kept their learning, a portion of its tenets transpired, which was supposed to inculcate the right to pillage and murder Christians; and it is to the vague knowledge of these odious prescriptions of the Talmud that we must attribute the readiness with which the most atrocious accusations against the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Norman of Torn has fought and sacked and pillaged for the love of it, and for a principle which was at best but a vague generality. Tonight we ride to redress a wrong done to My Lady Bertrade de Montfort, and that, Shandy, is a different matter. The torch, Shandy, from tower to scullery, but in the service ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Bumpus experienced a vague feeling that he had now a fair opportunity of testing and proving his invincibility; yet the desperate nature of the case did not induce him to draw his sword. He preferred his fists, as being superior and much more handy weapons. He received the first two savages who came within reach ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... Moreover, law business in Penfield was growing duller and duller. A younger firm in the county town, only twelve miles away, was robbing them of clients continually; and there were many long days during which Stephen sat idle at his desk, looking out in a vague, dreamy way on the street below, and wondering if the time were really coming when Mr. Williams would need a clerk no longer; and, if it did come, what he could possibly find to do in that town, by which he could ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... brain and nerves, but by many judicious observations on the structure of the lungs, the intestines, the blood-vessels and the glands. His anatomy of the brain and nerves is so minute and elaborate, and abounds so much in new information, that the reader is struck by the immense chasm between the vague and meagre notices of his predecessors and the ample and correct descriptions of Willis. This excellent work, however, is not the result of his own personal and unaided exertions; and the character of Willis derives additional ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... necessity of turning the spluttering wheel, now went gayly dancing down, down, into the depths of the dim old woods, and far away, I never knew exactly where; but having heard rumors of a jumping-off place, I had a vague impression that at that spot the waters ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... second cast. As straight this time as an arrow from the taut string of a bow the noose sped silently away into the darkness. I felt a thrill of delight tingle through me as the end settled softly over the end of the vague, distant spar. I drew the cord taut and firm, not a sound breaking the intense stillness closing us in like a wall. A heavy wooden post, with a pulley attachment, stood behind where we rested, probably fitted there for hauling up heavy bales of cotton. Creeping back, I wound the slack of the rope ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... elle etait nee, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'etonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des details materiels de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si econome n'avait meme pas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme. Je n'avais pas idee d'une si complete absence de sens moral; d'une si inconsciente depravation, d'une impudence si effrontement naive.'—L'Argent des autres, vol. i. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... husband's knock, which came between ten and eleven o'clock, and for which she had been listening anxiously for at least an hour, made her heart bound and tremble, producing a feeling of weakness and oppression. As she opened the door for him, it was with a vague fear. This was instantly dispelled by his first affectionate word uttered in steady tones. He was still himself! Still as he had been for the blessed two years ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... he saw far over the tumbled mass of hills to the eastern sky, and there he caught a faint trace across the sunlit blue. It was miles away and only eyes of the keenest, like his, would have noticed the vague smudge, but he did not doubt that it was a response to the first signal. They could not see from the first to the third smoke, but there must be a second in between, probably to the north, where the hills shut out ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... back of the chair, staring straight at her, his body motionless. For an instant he was conscious of a sudden revulsion of feeling, a vague distrust of her true character, a doubt of the real nature of this perverse personality. Such a resolution on her part shocked him with its recklessness. Either she did not in the least appreciate what such action meant, or else she woefully lacked in moral judgment. Slowly, those shadowed ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Twilight voices! Child of the spirit-world am I; How should I fear you? my soul rejoices, O speak plainer! O draw nigh! Fain would I fly! Tell me your message, Ye who are calling Out of the dimness vague and vast; Lift me, take me,—the night is falling; Quick, let ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... their whereabouts; and at last, though Anton Von Barwig felt that they were hopelessly lost to him, he returned to Leipsic, more than ever determined to find them. It was the only idea he had: to find them—to find them—to find them. His other thoughts were without stimulating power—irresolute, vague, uncertain. This one idea grew and grew until it became an obsession. He could no longer bear the sound of music; so it was no sacrifice to him to give up his profession. He hated the very streets he walked in, for had Elene not walked in them? He must find her; he must find his child. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... glorious mind." One of his chief delights, as he mentioned in his "Memoranda," was, when bathing in some retired spot, to seat himself on a high rock above the sea, and there remain for hours, gazing upon the sky and the waters[1], and lost in that sort of vague reverie, which, however formless and indistinct at the moment, settled afterwards on his pages, into those clear, bright pictures which will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... phrased excuses, of admirable logic, by means of which he proved the imperative necessity of finding other anchorage for this stray and apparently very frail bark. Of necessity these letters were vague, since he did not know what particular form of frailty he had to contend with. Of one thing, however, he was sure—the Colony offered opportunities for the indulgence of every form known to man, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... strong that Shann could no longer fight the demands of his outraged stomach. He rolled on his side, retching violently until the sour smell of his illness battled the foul odor of the ship. His memories of how he had come into this place were vague; his body was a mass of dull pain, as if he had been scorched. Scorched! Had the Throgs used one of their energy whips to subdue him? The last clear thing he could recall was that slow withdrawal down the cleft ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... There was a vague impression in the Newt family—Boniface had already mentioned it to his son Abel—that there was something that Uncle Lawrence never talked about—many things indeed, of course, but still something in particular. Outside the family nothing was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... very vague term," said he smiling again more quietly. "But you have had an opportunity of knowing it much better of late than I—to which class of bright faces would you refer this one? Where ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... every nerve to bind still further with the sentiment of confidence the unity of the Confederation. (Applause.) Where is now the old talk which we used to hear from a few of the faint-hearted of a change in destiny or of annexation? (Cheers.) It does not exist. To be sure, here I have heard some vague terror expressed, but it is a terror which I have heard expressed among our friends on the American Pacific Slope also, and it is to the effect that annexation must soon take place to the Celestial Empire. (Great laughter.) Well, gentlemen, I fully sympathise with this fear. None of us like to ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... MENANDER of India, EUTHYDEMUS, and PERSIA, Ancient History.) Of the details of their history and extent of their dominion in different reigns we know almost nothing, and conjecture is often dependent on such vague data as are afforded by the collation of the localities in which the coins of independent princes have been found. But their power extended certainly over the Kabul basin, and probably, at times, over the whole of Afghanistan. The ancient ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on the deck, and the young Jewish brain and the old Jewish brain mingled and digested a course of conduct to meet every imaginable contingency; for the facts they at present possessed were only general and vague. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... early ideas of the church, its doctrines, and of the teachings of Christ as revealed in the New Testament, were rather general and vague. As is usual, it was chiefly a matter of hereditary traditions. After I found my way back to Christ and to belief in the Word of God, the question naturally arose, which church shall I join, if any? Sectarian divisions had a hand in driving me into infidelity ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... have charmed him when he first came to the prairie with romantic hopes and vague ambitions. He had been fastidious then, and the image of a very different girl occupied his heart. Even now he knew the other stood for all that was best in life; for tender romances, and sweetness, and high purpose. Helen had gracious qualities he had once half-reverently admired. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... promise from Adeline that some time, when it was convenient, and if she was not too busy, and if nobody else wanted the boat, she would let her realize her ambition, but so far this promise had remained an empty one, a vague invitation that meant nothing. Diana, catching Adeline in the garden one afternoon, made a desperate effort to obtain ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... longer, i.e. till June 22, was agreed to by the Lords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of the late generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing was inevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, not content with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's services thus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant- general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which day a letter was ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... on the twelfth. I am not aware whether he had any intelligence at that time of the Meerut outbreak. The telegrams, when they did arrive, were vague; but he indubitably kept on his guard immediately on receiving them. The Cavalry were piqueted between the cantonments and the Residency, and the Infantry and Artillery were kept prepared for movement. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... this world ignorant, yet full of presentiments and questions. I learn my first vague lesson about myself and God. I naturally ask: For what purpose has God put me here? What does He wish me to do? The Catechism answers: To do His will, to keep His commandments. Here they are, and this is what they mean. I study them, and the more I study them, the more ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... May 5. We had slept half an hour. It was four o'clock, and a vague light heralding the ruddy dawn rose up above the eastern horizon. Kasim looked dreadfully ill; his tongue was swollen, white and dry, his lips bluish. He complained of a spasmodic hiccough that shook his whole body, a sign of the approach of death. The thick blood flowed sluggishly in his ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... had been followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The struggle thus approached. Military movements began at many points, like those distant flashes of lightning and vague mutterings which herald the tempest. Early in February Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected President of the Confederate States, at Montgomery. On the 13th of April Fort Sumter surrendered to General Beauregard, and on the next day, April 14, 1861, President Lincoln issued his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fascination. The outer world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms of my comrades. Our array and our step connect us. We move as one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... have crumbled, may delight us with a more admirable representation than our own minds could have furnished of some one whose name we have long known, and of whose personal bearing, and habits, and daily thoughts, we had but a vague and misty idea; and acknowledging the fidelity of the portrait we may adopt it; and then this historical person becomes to us what the imagination of genius, not what history, has made him, and yet the portrait is probably one in which no contemporary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... make disclosures, which though, as I said, vague and imperfect, still promise to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... steals from underground, And to the spirit's ear there comes the sound, The whisper vague, and rustle delicate, Of myriad atoms stirring in their trance That for the lifted hand of Order wait, Taking their stations in the cosmic dance, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mona, "I never knew you to be so hopelessly vague. Now, for instance, how would it be if we gave a lovely motor ride to some poor shop girl, or somebody that never gets into ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Miss Grant exchanged a few syllables. Glenarvan was restless; he went in and out, while the Major was impassive. John Mangles, followed by Robert, went on the poop from time to time, to look at the weather. Paganel sat in his corner, muttering vague and incoherent words. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and disaster, of vague ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... I know about Mother Guendolen? Some faint, vague, misty memories seemed to awake within me—an odd, incongruous mixture like a dream—dark eyes like Margaret's, which told a tale, but this seemed a tale of terror; and an enamelled cross, which had somewhat to do with a battle ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... lights under superincumbent bushels. Whatever was hers was everybody's, for she dispensed her favours with a liberal hand. She would never have permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fondle and kiss! Then the idea of a child reminded her of her own mother. She thought of the deep love one must feel for a child. And the image of the mistress, sad and alone, in the large house of the Rue Saint-Dominique, came to her mind. A vague remorse seized her heart. She felt she had behaved badly. She said to herself: "If, to punish me, Heaven will not grant me a child!" She wept, and soon her grief and trouble vanished with her tears. Sleep overpowered her, and ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... again in 483, the tribune proposed agrarian laws but what their nature was, Livy, who records them, does not tell us. From some vague assertions which he makes we may conclude that the point of the law was well known, and was but a repetition of that of Cassius.[1] The consul Caeso Fabius, in 484, and his brother Marcus in the following year, secured the opposition of the ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... Father Hecker's life that we first meet with a positive interference of an extraordinary kind in the plans and purposes of his life. Many men who have outlived them, and settled down into respectable but in nowise notable members of society, have felt vague longings and indefinite aspirations toward a good beyond nature during the "Storm and Stress" period of their youth. The record of their mental struggles gets into literature with comparative frequency, and sometimes becomes famous. It has always a certain value, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the window and looked out; but there was nobody there. She closed the window again and sat just beside it; the time went on, and she wondered whether he would come, asking herself whether he had been thinking of her as she of him; gradually her thoughts grew vague, and a kind of mist came over them. She nodded. Suddenly she roused herself with a start, fancying she had heard something; she listened again, and in a moment the sound was repeated, three or four gentle taps on the window. She opened it ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... them. There was a vague idea that a sort of convalescent or children's hospital might be established for the training of women intending to study medicine or nursing, chiefly at Miss Arthuret's expense, and Dolores was anxious to consider the possibility of placing it in the sweet mountain ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a Marcius or a Quinctius! It is quite unnecessary to comment on the silliness and bad taste of passages of this kind, but it is interesting to note that the facts of history are too strong even for Mr. Mahaffy. In spite of his sneers at the provinciality of national feeling and his vague panegyrics on cosmopolitan culture, he is compelled to admit that 'however patriotism may be superseded in stray individuals by larger benevolence, bodies of men who abandon it will only replace it by meaner motives,' and cannot ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... evening to reach the buoys, get the cable on board, test the first half, speak to Lowestoft, make the splice, and start. H- had not finished his work at Norderney, so I was alone on board for Reuter. Moreover the buoys to guide us in our course were not placed, and the captain had very vague ideas about keeping his course; so I had to do a good deal, and only lay down as I was for two hours in the night. I managed to run the course perfectly. Everything went well, and we found Norderney ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her; and peering through the draperies saw their pursuing motor car at pause, not at the curb, but in the middle of the street before the house. The man's arm still rested on the sill of the window; the pale oval of the face above it was still vague. Abruptly both disappeared, a door slammed on the far side of the car, and the car itself, after a moment's wait, gathered way with whining gears and vanished, leaving nothing human visible ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... modest elevation; and to see, between yourself and them, many farm-houses and many little cottages dotted here and there. There, under your eye, how much of life, and of the interests of life, is going on! Looking at such things, you muse, in a vague, desultory way. I wonder whether when ordinary folk profess to be thinking, musing, or meditating, they are really thinking connectedly or to any purpose. I daresay the truth is they have (so to speak) given ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and Harriett on their confirmation morning had met the vicar in the Upper Richmond Road, having gone out, contrary to the desire expressed by him at his last preparation class, and how he had stopped and greeted them. She had tried to look vague and sad and to murmur something in spite of the bull's-eye in her cheek and had suddenly noticed as they stood grouped that Harriett's little sugar-loaf hat was askew and her brown eye underneath it was glaring fixedly at the vicar above the ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... discomfort she could not laugh at; there was something that braced her in mind and body in the mountain air; and Clarence no longer held a leading place in her memory. She realized now that the thought of him had hitherto occasioned her a vague uneasiness. Indeed, she was almost glad that he was far away; liberty was unexpectedly sweet, and though she had a few misgivings, she meant to ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... his usually smiling countenance growing sober for once, while his companions felt a vague uneasiness. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt. But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead. If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies. What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I left my bed and slipped out of my room on to the open terrace. Beyond our garden wall are fields of ripening rice. Through the gaps in the village groves to the North, glimpses of the river are seen. The whole scene slept in the darkness like the vague ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... as, with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise Yet scramble for no less, And read of public scandal, private fraud, Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, And all the unwholesome mess The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to lose Kathleen. The man had been somewhat vague about it, but the situation was clear to them, even though it was not so to him. Their claim to the child—the one they loved best of all—was no longer undivided. A real father had turned up to assert his rights. They might dispute his claim and make the affair so awkward and so unpleasant ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... all at once, to dally with the child. The maid was a sweet maid, an amiably irritating maid, well enough, in her way, to idle with; but the building of the ship was a substantial delight, subject to the mastery of a man with hands and a will, the end a sure achievement—no vague, elusive thing, sought in madness, vanishing in the grasp. I would be about this man's-work. Never was such a ship as this ship should be! And to the work went Judith and I. But presently, as never happened before, I was in some strange way conscious of Judith's ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... on the new-comer. Her features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible. Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators showed an ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... bribed," she answered, but with a rather heightened colour upon her cheek. And then she lifted up her face; but, as Percival perceived with a vague feeling of irritation, she merely suffered him to kiss her, and did not ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... late afternoon faded into evening. Gray twilight stole swiftly down. For a while the white fields of snow outside reflected a vague dimness; then night came with a noiseless rush, closing up the entrance to the cave with a ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... that Joseph Smith was severely wounded before he ran to the window, "and half leaped, half fell into the jail yard below. With his last dying energies he gathered himself up, and leaned in a sitting posture against the rude stone well curb. His stricken condition, his vague wandering glances, excited no pity in the mob thirsting for his life. A squad of Missourians, who were standing by the fence, leveled their pieces at him, and, before they could see him again for the smoke they made, Joe Smith was dead:" This is not ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to her feet, alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her and the door, she took up ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... no man seems to have had discoveries more at heart than he had. Besides this, this was the ultimate object of his Voyage.* (* It is conjectured that what Quiros saw was Tahiti, but his track on this voyage is very vague. There are certainly no islands in the latitude given except Pitcairn.) If Quiros was in the Latitude of 26 degrees and Longitude 146 degrees West, then I am certain that no part of the Southern Continent can no where extend so far to the Northward as the above mentioned Latitude. But the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... competitors the individual has been compelled to bring into being organs to fulfil a purpose. It is not the case that the organ was first created and then a use found for it, or use made of it. What actually happens is that first there is a vague but insistent reaching out towards an end, towards the fulfilment of some inner want or need—the need for food or to propagate, or whatever it may be—and that to achieve that end, or fulfil that need, the individual is driven to create a special organisation—as an Air Ministry ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... quarter of this century is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace which began in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of those engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those Governments which still represented the system ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... little elves dance gently on each taper, Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shrouded corners— And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners, Great shadows sway like wind-blown sheets ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... possession of her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in the spring. What was the winter to her now! ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Indians, testy old cavaliers flourishing whiskers and sovereignty, or perhaps an idyllic peasantry la Jean Jacques, assailed by the prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan" evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men, surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture brides, fans, Samurai, banzais, art, and cherry blossoms? Or the word "alien"? According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following: [Footnote: The New Republic: ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... thereon, opened at those beautiful verses of "The Iris of the Deep," which he loved so well to hear her read. What could it mean? Calmly her breath came and went; but for that she appeared like a beautiful piece of statuary, her eyes turned upward, as if seeking for strength to meet the vague sense of desolation which was creeping into her heart. Upon the table were two notes, one addressed to her mother, the other to herself, in his hand-writing. With nerveless hand she broke the seal; no emotion was visible, save the delicate glow upon her cheek, which came ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... every question with which he dealt was accompanied by so complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or inaccurate statements were intolerable to him; but I think the patience with which he sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in the discipline of working under him. One felt it a crime ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... apprehensions, because he had been assured by Nicholas that Mistress Nutter would be removed to a place of perfect security, and because he was disposed, with the squire, to regard the prisoner's threats as mere ravings of impotent malice. Still he could not help feeling great uneasiness. Vague fears, too, beset him, which he found it in vain to shake off, but he did not communicate them to his sister, as he knew the terrifying effect they would have upon her timid nature; and he, therefore, kept the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he put in every tone), "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport, Violence—trade? Too true! I trust no vague report. Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear. What has she heard!—which, heard shall never be again. Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the—wain ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... exact nor eloquent. The thoughts are not precise; the expressions are vague; and, of consequence, the reasonings of no value. The attempts at rich displays of imaginative power are contrasted with a want of invention; and illustrative stories, of feeble execution, are lavished abundantly in lieu of physiological facts. The volumes are too insipid to cheat an idle hour ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the cross to earth, and break the King And all his Table.' Then they reached a glade, Where under one long lane of cloudless air Before another wood, the royal crown Sparkled, and swaying upon a restless elm Drew the vague glance of Vivien, and her Squire; Amazed were these; 'Lo there' she cried—'a crown— Borne by some high lord-prince of Arthur's hall, And there a horse! the rider? where is he? See, yonder lies one dead within the wood. Not dead; he ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... before us. Therefore more than one moiety of the Trojan horse has already got within the citadel—it has been there for twenty-five years, and yet what has proceeded from its bowels has only tended to augment the rate of increase in the progress of your shipping. Therefore, let us not be alarmed by vague and dreamy ratiocinations of evil, which had never been wanting on any occasion, and which never will be wanting so long as this is a free State, wherein every man can find full vent and scope for the expression, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... under which you and Baker were successively nominated and elected to Congress; and because the Whigs of the district are well acquainted with the system, and, so far as I know or believe, are well satisfied with it. If the old system be thought to be vague, as to all the delegates of the county voting the same way, or as to instructions to them as to whom they are to vote for, or as to filling vacancies, I am willing to join in a provision to make these ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... chemical tension, and thus prepared for future use. With this prevision, as shall subsequently be shown, the existence of the human race itself is inseparably connected. It is to be observed that Mayer's utterances are far from being anticipated by vague statements regarding the 'stimulus' of light, or regarding coal as 'bottled sunlight.' He first saw the full meaning of De Saussure's observation as to the reducing power of the solar rays, and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... It was the vague, half-formed fear that all the girls had felt, yet none had dared express, and the silence that followed was ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been compelled to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I ought to have been shamed by the contrast in our recollections—his, so clear and systematical—mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual American travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature, animate and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... yet my heart was not discouraged. The more I prayed, the more assured I was that the Lord would give the means. Yea, as fully assured was I that the Lord would do so, as if I had already seen the new premises actually before me. This assurance arose not from some vague, enthusiastical feeling, the mere excitement of the moment, but, 1. From the reasons already related, and especially from the commandment contained in Philip. iv. 5. For I saw that I should not act according to the mind of our Lord Jesus if I did not, as soon as I could, remove the orphans ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... that, but something else had died before him. She wondered if it were this same heart of hers; and then she noticed her baby's hood was crooked, and stopped at the next lamp-post to put it straight, and felt a vague sort of pity for it, when she saw its face was pinched and blue with cold, and pressed it closer to her, though she rather hoped to find it dead ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... solicitude, sympathy and pity; and, as a brother might bend over a sleeping sister, he bent over Selene and kissed her forehead. She moved, opened her eyes, gazed into his face—but her glance was so full of horror, so vague, glassy and bewildered, that he drew back with a shudder, and with hands uplifted could only stammer out: "Oh! Selene, Selene! do you not know me?" and as he spoke he looked anxiously in the face of the rescued girl; but she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of Colias spread an open sandy beach. The night waves lapped softly. The wind had sunk to warm puffs from the southward. They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiraeus rose dark mountains and headlands, at their foot lay a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... regard to Seneca's alleged prediction of the discovery of America, it was exceedingly vague; and was wholly based on the undoubted knowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato, Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, and Plutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... ideas which have prevailed regarding the late war, this is, perhaps, the most preposterous. It is difficult to understand how, even the people whose ideas of military operations are derived from a vague rendition of the newspaper phrases of "bagging" armies, "dispositions made to capture," "deriving material advantages," when the derivers were running like scared deer, it is hard to comprehend how even such people, if they ever look upon maps, or reflect for a moment ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... otherwise, seeing that he had nothing to do but give orders for a few rope's ends to be dropped over the side to them. Then, although she had given no sign of it, his manner toward her had been such as to fill her with vague fear; while his behaviour toward Leslie, when that individual had unavailingly attempted to convince him of the presence of another survivor upon the floating wreckage, was scarcely of a kind to inspire a woman with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum—five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... engagements, and at the appointed hour found himself wandering through the corridor back of the first tier boxes at the Metropolitan. Its bare convolutions were as resonant as a sea shell. Vast and vague murmurs of music, presages of melodies, undulated through the passages, palpitated like the living breath of Euterpe, suppressed excitement lurked in every turn, there was throb and glow in each pulsating ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Mr Disney with savage conviction. "I'll talk to you about what I came to say another day, Cousin Sylvia. Really to-day——!" With a vague awkward wave of his arm he started for ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... importance whether true or not. For all his gravity and Colonelship, it would appear the old spirit of frolic has not quitted him. Here are two small incidents, pointing that way; which stand on record; credible enough, though vague and without importance otherwise. Incident FIRST is to the following feeble effect; indisputable though extremely unmomentous: Regiment Goltz, it appears, used to have gold trimmings; the Colonel Crown-Prince ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he were a young ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... by the earnestness of Janet, and by her own vague terror as to her mother's mysterious sorrow, that could claim from one usually so calm, sympathy so intense and painful. Then she sat down again to listen and to wait. How long the time seemed! The ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... fanciful origins have been invented by scholars, ancient or modern. It is necessary to return to the pedestrian facts, if merely in order to demonstrate the futility of the fancies. The result is in no way discreditable to Greece. Beginning, like other peoples, with the vague unrealised conception of the Corn Mother (an idea which could not occur before the agricultural stage of civilisation), the Greeks refined and elevated the idea into the Demeter of the Hymn, and of the Cnidian statue. To do this was ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... leave to change their mind, without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a new existence. But of that she could not yet think. She only lay, motionless as a corpse, with hands folded, and eyes firmly closed. Sometimes, with a strange wandering of fancy, she seemed to see herself thus, looking down, as a spirit might do upon its own olden self, with a vague compassion. Once she even muttered, in a sort of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... feared; there were no facts told, unless the vague date of 'London' might be something to learn. Even that much might have been found out by the post-mark, only she had been too much taken by surprise ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... meanwhile, on her own side, no separate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed altogether to her young friend's so vivid felicity; it suggested that she took for granted, at the most, certain vague recent enhancements of that state. If the Princess now, more than before, was going and going, she was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always known she WOULD, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation must more or less ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Diana replied mournfully,—"vague and foolish; wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since I cannot give you a whole heart, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was a saleswoman in a large store selling gentlemen's gloves and ties. She suffered from time to time by attacks of vague anxiety in which her heart showed vehement palpitation. There were paleness and perspiration and at the height a nervous trembling together with a feeling of despair. These attacks were not frequent, separated sometimes by weeks, sometimes by months, but troubling her exceedingly. She had been ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... wealthy neighbours, that young Altham was disgracing himself again—that at the public gaming-tables at Toplitz he had been a loser of thirty thousand pounds—the cunning parvenu listened with an air of as vague indifference as if he were not waiting with breathless anxiety the gradual dissipation of the funds, secured to the young spendthrift by the transfer of his estate, to grasp at the small remaining portion of his property. Unconsciously, when the tale of Sir Laurence's profligacy met his ear, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... lying on the bed, moaning and trying not to cry, with the painfully swollen wrist, laid out on a pillow. Twenty minutes' later the doctor was there with splints and bandages, and Kat, looking into his eyes with a vague alarm, asked, after he had examined it: "How long ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the ends, and so vast that the roof was vague. On the walls were slabs of different colors, marble spotted like the skin of serpents, and onyx flecked with violet. On two sides were galleries supported by columns of sandstone. A third gallery formed a semicircle. Opposite, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... interpreter rendered it "the fruit country," another "the place where canoes are drawn out." Cusick, the historian, translates it "a mountain rising from the water." Mr. Morgan was told that it meant "the mucky land." We can only infer that the interpreters were seeking, by vague resemblances, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... darkness and dawn. 504:21 Here we have the explanation of another passage of Scripture, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years." The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into 504:24 the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... gentleman up to the seventh heaven. It seemed well worth all the hunters in Leicestershire, all the diamonds in Golconda! He did the honours of his step-mother's house, and thanked his own friends for coming, but all with the vague consciousness of a man in a dream. Presently the "round" dance came to an end, much to the relief of the ugly man, who cared, indeed, for ladies as little as ladies cared for him; and Dick hastened to secure Miss Bruce as a partner for the approaching ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... that Charles, who had seen so many instances of the jealousy of the commons, who had himself so much roused that jealousy by his frequent evasive messages during this session, could imagine that they would rest satisfied with an answer so vague and undeterminate. It was evident, that the unusual form alone of the answer must excite their attention; that the disappointment must inflame their anger; and that therefore it was necessary, as the petition seemed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... salute of nineteen guns, which formed a virtual recognition on the part of Piedmont of his assumption of the dictatorship. Cavour had ordered Persano to act on his own responsibility as the exigencies of the hour demanded, and the admiral knew that these vague instructions assigned him a more vigorous policy than the other ministers would have agreed to officially. His bold initiative was therefore justified. As some severe words will have to be said of Persano ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... In a vague sort of way it became known that although he lived in simple style, like any freshman whose parents were not wealthy, he had a fortune in his own right and had traveled extensively in various ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... children was to keep them entirely ignorant of the affairs of their elders. To secure this end, she adopted a vague, misty style of language, of which she fondly imagined that Clare did not understand a word. The result was unfortunate, as it usually is. Clare understood detached bits of her nurse's conversation, over which she brooded silently in her own little mind, until she evolved ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... had vague dreams of renunciation. She saw herself cloistered in some quiet spot, withdrawn from the world; a place where there were long vistas of pillars and Gothic arches, after a photograph in the living room at home, and a great organ ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Columbus was put off. Having no longer confidence in the vague promises which had hitherto been made, he turned his back on Seville, resolved to offer to the King of France the honour of carrying out ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... Applications for office are in their very nature confidential, and if the reasons assigned for such applications or the names of the applicants were communicated, not only would such implied confidence be wantonly violated, but, in addition, it is quite obvious that a mass of vague, incoherent, and personal matter would be made public at a vast consumption of time, money, and trouble without accomplishing or tending in any manner to accomplish, as it appears to me, any useful object connected with a sound and constitutional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... thus perished the bloody Chaka. His brother Dingaam is now on the Zoolu throne, and appears inclined to be quiet. There is another great warrior chief, named Moselekatsee, who revolted from Chaka, and who is much such another character; but our accounts of these people are vague at present, and require time to corroborate their correctness. You will have to act and decide when you arrive there, and must be guided by circumstances. With the caravan you propose to travel with, I think there will not be much danger; and ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the evil, would suffer for their mal-administration. In reply, Lord North indignantly denied that any treachery was resorted to by ministers, and called upon the opposition to stand forth like men, and make good such vague accusations. Laws, he said, existed for the protection of the innocent; and if his accusers adhered to the laws, he had nothing to fear. Lord North, also, defended with considerable ingenuity the management of the war; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... though immediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh invasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yet another shred of his surviving rights, always had in the background the ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom. Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, with its wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of the Wat Tyler revolt in England, with its systematic attempt to envisage the vague tradition of the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... was strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... mode in which they are conveyed into the body of a previously healthy patient is ascertained. But until the past year we knew neither the parasitic germ which causes typhus fever nor the mode by which it passes from one individual to another. A vague idea that it was spread through the air prevailed. Typhus is remarkable for the frequency with which the nurses and doctors attending a case become infected. About 20 per cent. of those attacked by it die, but in persons above forty-five years of age the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the East. It is probable that the Magians here mentioned came from Arabia. Now to employ a term for specifying one sect, which may with equal propriety be applied to fifty, of totally different, or even contrary opinions, is surely a vague way of translating. It is also, in the present acceptation of the word, improper. Formerly the term wise men denoted philosophers, or men of science and erudition: it is hardly ever used so now, unless in burlesque. Some say Magi; but Magians is better, as having more the form of an ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... we seek for any chronicle of the long line of monarchs who must have swayed the sceptre of the once powerful empire of Maha Naghkon. Only a vague tradition has come down, of a celestial prince to whom the fame of founding the great temple is supposed to belong; and of an Egyptian king, who, for his sacrilege, was changed into a leper. An interesting statue, representing ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... exhaustion and despair. She felt herself wholly unable to bear any great disaster should it fall upon her, and she was grateful to her husband, and prayed, if she prayed at all, that both might die peacefully during those days. She even had a vague belief that Heaven would not really bring about that hideous catastrophe that haunted her dreams, and that forced her to dream of it when she was waking. Had she not been a faithful wife to the stern, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... himself in John Canty's abode, with the door closed against the outsiders. By the vague light of a tallow candle which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the loathsome den, and also the occupants of it. Two frowsy girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... after an accented syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, and most assuredly is not cut ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... roved restlessly about the hard packed earth of the pen. The noise of the battle in the adjoining enclosure had aroused them from slumber and awakened in their half formed brains vague questionings and fears. At sight of von Horn several of them rushed for him with menacing growls, but a swift crack of the bull whip brought them to a sudden realization of the identity of the intruder, so that they slunk away, muttering and whining ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she should do next. And, thus considering, the desire to visit and inspect her East Wellmouth property grew and strengthened. She thought more and more concerning it. It was hers, she could do what she pleased with it, and she began to formulate vague ideas as to what she might like to do. She kept these ideas to herself, but she spoke to Emily Howes concerning the possibilities of ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the vague recollections of concepts, ideas, rules. Within a few hours, their phlegmatic blandness had begun to pass. They were becoming men now. Individuals. Out of a dazed and superficial conformity, sharp differences began to emerge. Character reasserted itself, ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... too much experience to waste labor upon a case so decidedly hopeless. He knew that no art within his compass could cure so thorough a case of heart-blindness, and he gave her up; but he did not give up Julia. He whispered words of consolation into her ears, which, though vague, were yet far ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... not all. The occasion which called forth the paragraph in the paper which I have honor to conduct, was one which I shall just allude to. Some time ago there was inserted in the True Blue a short article headed 'Susanna and the Elder,' in which certain vague and idle reports, fabricated by some person who bears enmity to a most respectable Christian gentleman, who honors us ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was the best way to induce reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed, were the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new symbol? how had the Arians drawn up their Creeds? was it not on the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic sense, but which, when worked out on the long run, would prove to be heterodox? Accordingly, there was great antecedent probability, that, fierce as the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... paper, but people did sometimes throw treys at backgammon, and that which not rarely happened with two dice of six faces might happen if they had sixty or six hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was any ground, so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He thought it not unlikely that Mr. Bradshaw was a little smitten with the young lady up at The Poplars, and that he had made some diplomatic overtures to the duenna, after the approved method of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... yet later notice. In the Preface, which, as its whole language implies, was written last, Saxo speaks of Waldemar II having "encompassed ('complexus') the ebbing and flowing waves of Elbe." This language, though a little vague, can hardly refer to anything but an expedition of Waldemar to Bremen in 1208. The whole History was in that case probably finished by about 1208. As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... communication with the United States was cut off; and the road was in possession of parties of the enemy. For many days after full intelligence of it should have been in all parts of this country, nothing certain concerning it was known, while vague and painful rumors were afloat, that a great battle had been fought, and that General Taylor and his whole force had been annihilated. At length the truth came, with its thrilling details of victory and blood,—of glory and grief. A bright and glowing page was added to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... incident that laid hold upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... his clients absorbed in mirth, murmured something vague about 'business,' and spirited Miss Blossom away to the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the liberty to ask the candidate whether he was prepared with any one to propose and second his nomination; to which he gave me a vague and unmeaning answer, apparently as if he did not understand what I meant by a person to propose and second him. I then appealed to Mr. Cornish, the worthy attorney, who answered me in a similar manner; and he evidently appeared not to be in the secret any more than myself. I next ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... a curious hybrid thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which was part of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office, and included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns of the 'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague suzerainty, the limits of which no one has ever been able to define. Altogether, in its provisions and in its omissions, the Convention of Pretoria appears to prove that our political affairs were as badly conducted as our military in ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... entering the room, before we see the pictures, we know that they are good. For a pleasant soft colour, delicate and insinuating as an odour of flowers, pervades the room. So we are glad to loiter in this vague sensation of delicate colour, and we talk to our friends, avoiding the pictures, until gradually a pale-faced woman with arched eyebrows draws our eyes and fixes our thoughts. It is a portrait ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... no use turning back now," said Benita, who was almost weeping with doubt and vexation. "I will not be frightened by his vague talk. What can he know of the future more than any of the rest of us? Besides, all he says is that we shall come back again, and if that does happen, at least we shall have been free for a little while. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... three powerful impressions were forced upon Lane, never to be effaced. First he found that the change in him was vast and incalculable and vague. He could divine but not understand. Secondly, the men of the service, disabled or not, were old stories to New Yorkers. Lane saw soldiers begging from pedestrians. He muttered to himself: "By God, I'll starve to death before I ever do that!" He could not detect ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... comes the sunrise, with the tender glory of its rosy light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes are closed to it all. Here and there some lighter sleeper, with thinner eyelids or face turned to the sun, is half conscious of a vague brightness, and feels the light, though he sees not the colours of the sky nor the forms of the filmy clouds. Such souls are our saints and prophets, but most of us sleep on unconscious. To us all the moment comes when we shall wake and see ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps, the most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for. In passing through the woods, most persons have a vague consciousness of slight chirping, semi-musical sounds in the trees overhead. In most cases these sounds proceed from the warblers. Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... renewed scrutiny of her knitting; and, having satisfied herself by a personal visit to Dick's room that he was not alarmingly ill, set herself to find out what was really the matter with the young people; for there was no doubt that Cecily was in some vague way as disturbed and preoccupied as Dick. He rode out again early the next morning, returning to his studies in the library directly after breakfast; and Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to Aunt Viney's perplexity, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... no English, and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to assure him of the contrary; she has never conversed with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow; but it goes no farther, to mamma's disappointment. He is always with the beau-frere, a rather untidy, fat, bearded man, decorated, too, always smoking and looking at the feet of the ladies, whom ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... accommodate itself to all the folds and curves of his elaborate programs, to find equivalents for individual traits. It is not simply "a man," or even "an amatory hero" that is portrayed in "Don Juan." It is no vague symbol for the poet of the sort created by "Orpheus" or "Tasso" or "Mazeppa." It is Lenau's hero himself, the particular being Don Juan Tenorio. The vibrant, brilliant music of the up-surging, light-treading strings, of the resonant, palpitating brass, springs ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... mentioning Heucking. Gave it in, 27th September; by which time Heucking's also was in, and had made a strong impression on his Majesty. Presumably an honest, intelligible report; though, by ill-luck for the curious, it is now lost; among the barrow-loads of vague wigged stuff, this one Piece, probably human, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... productive, and a positive addition to knowledge; but reasoning such as that in 'Supernatural Religion' is vitiated at the outset, because it starts with the assumption that we know perfectly well the meaning of a term of which our actual conception is vague and indeterminate in the extreme—Divine Revelation. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... for themselves already, here in England," said William, with a sneer at the fancied morals of the English monks and clergy. [Footnote: The alleged profligacy and sensuality of the English Church before the Conquest rests merely on a few violent and vague expressions of the Norman monks who displaced them. No facts, as far as I can find, have ever been alleged. And without facts on the other side, an impartial man will hold by the one fact which is certain, that the Church of England, popish as it was, was, unfortunately for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... whom the mention of such an example served as an apology for their own extreme dissipation; (392) and by those who envied him for the affluence and dignity which he had acquired. The charge, however, is supported only by vague assertion, and is discredited by every consideration which ought to have weight in determining the reality of human characters. It seems totally inconsistent with his habits of literary industry, with the virtuous sentiments which he every where ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... But I do not know exactly where it is. He is always vague regarding his address. His letters he receives in several names at a newspaper shop in Hammersmith and at the ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of thirty,—no,—she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck and arranged elaborately ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect and without the wish for further information. Life anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the desert, pious people crowding ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... which happened back on Earth and a long time ago. It seemed to Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell again to find out if he was right. And Sattell went into ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... families, detesting the new ways of life now thrust upon them, and seeing no way of retrieving their fortunes in the country which had borne them, broke away entirely from old associations and started on in the strange, vague American fashion of that day, in a hope of finding a newer and perhaps a better country. They moved by rail, by boat, by wagon, in such way as they could. The old Mountain Road from Virginia was trodden by many a disheartened family who found Kentucky also smitten, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... David meditatively; "I don't know that I can tell you much about him. His position is like that of a good many others of my acquaintance—rather vague and intangible, to use the word you employed just now. He is not well off; he is a gentleman by birth, with some small means of his own, and he 'lives, sir, lives.' That is about all I can say of him—from a worldly point ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... him not. What she did see was a picture out of an old book of Indian war days which she had read when a child, a smoking cabin, with mangled forms of women and children lying in the blackened embers. By degrees, slow, painful, but relentlessly progressive, certain impressions, at first vague and passionately resisted, were wrought into convictions in her soul. First, the Inspector, in spite of his light talk, was undeniably anxious, and in this anxiety her husband shared. Then, the Force was clearly inadequate to the duty required of it. At this her indignation ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... seems to prevail that movements for the elevation of woman arise, not from the legitimate wants of society, but from the vague restlessness of unquiet spirits; not from the serene dictates of wisdom, but from the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... off his knapsack and sat down. He had had a hard and tiring day. He fell asleep for a little. Then the cool wind that blew inside the cave woke him up. He sat for a few minutes without moving, absent-minded, vague-eyed. He tried to reflect, to recapture his still torpid thoughts. And, as he recovered his consciousness, he was on the point of rising, when he received the impression that his eyes, suddenly fixed, suddenly ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... chorus of invisible spirits, the voice of the slave as he recited the gospels. His words flowed gently in the darkness, which they filled with zeal, mercy, and hope; and the neophyte, her hand in that of Ahmes, lulled by the monotonous sounds, and the vague visions in her mind, slept calm and smiling, amid the harmonies of the dark night and the holy mysteries, gazed down on by a star, which twinkled between the ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows of upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, gliding slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electric lights came on again, and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... of finding one who was willing to exchange ideas with her, rather than only to impart ideas to her. Was it any wonder if Osmund Derwent began to form a nucleus in her thoughts, round which gathered a floating island of fair fancies and golden visions, all the more beautiful because they were vague? ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Vague idea!" cried the artist "Why, I told you all about it, and growled for five or six hours one evening here because I ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... All those other Katherines, in short, whom she might have been, and who had seemed to drop away from her, vanishing phantom-like before the uncompromising realities of her husband's death and her child's birth, crowded about her, importuning her with vague desires, vague regrets. The confines of Brockhurst grew narrow, while all that which lay beyond them called to her. She craved, almost unconsciously, a wider sphere of action. She longed to obtain, and to lend a hand in the shaping of events ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Bolton was unable to share the relaxation of mind and body his companion so absolutely enjoyed. Twice he paused, food suspended, his mouth open, to listen intently for a moment, then to finish carrying his hand to his mouth with the groping of vague perplexity. Once he arose to another of his purposeless circles through the woods. Dick paid no attention to these things. In the face of danger his faculties would be as keenly on the stretch as his comrade's; but now, the question one merely of difficult ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... rather roadstead) on the coast, had been annexed to Cape Colony; but though it was generally understood both in the Colony and in England, that the whole of the west coast up to the Portuguese boundary was in some vague way subject to British influence, nothing had been done to claim any distinct right, much less to perfect that right by occupation. The Colony had always declined or omitted to vote money for the purpose, and the home government had not ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... hypothetical and vague; but nothing could be more definite than the reward which he demanded. For it appeared that what this forlorn adventurer required for himself was to be admiral of the Atlantic, ranking with the constable of Castile, Viceroy with power of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... had occurred since the truce established on the 19th. [Footnote: Id., p. 250.] Mr. Davis had remained at Charlotte in the interval between the two conventions, but when the separate surrender of Johnston's army was determined, he started southward with a vague purpose of joining some of the smaller organized armies released from the armistice by our administration's rejection of the terms of Sherman's first convention. He tells us that he still hoped that he might cross the Mississippi ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... if the zeal of Cyprian was supported by the sincere conviction of the truth of those doctrines which he preached, the crown of martyrdom must have appeared to him as an object of desire rather than of terror. It is not easy to extract any distinct ideas from the vague though eloquent declamations of the Fathers, or to ascertain the degree of immortal glory and happiness which they confidently promised to those who were so fortunate as to shed their blood in the cause of religion. [90] They inculcated with becoming ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "raw," by the by, is vague, and needs definition. Every tint is raw which is perfectly opaque, and has not all the three primitive colors in its composition. Thus, black is always raw, because it has no color; white never, because it has all colors. No tint can be raw which is not ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... charming, and that probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim rejoiced within me. "Why not," it said, "buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry her ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... I remember much about them," he responded at last. "I think they'll come plainer, though, the more I think about them. I just get the barest, vague ideas." ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... from the vague reports you have heard," commented Gran'pa Jim. "But, whatever her antecedents may have been, there is no reason why Ingua may not be rescued from her dreadful environments and be made to become a quite proper young lady, if not a model one. But that can only result ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness."[83] And we find M. Comte himself complaining, somewhat bitterly, that his quondam friend, the celebrated St. Simon, had exhibited, as he advanced in years (cette tendance banale vers une vague religiosite), a tendency towards something like Religion.[84] Cases of this kind are utterly fatal to his supposed law of individual development, and they must be equally fatal to his theory of the progress of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... That's what they told themselves—they did not say even this much to each other. But far, far away, out of sight, out of all actual knowledge, was the fear which neither of them would have dared to realise, a vague horror, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... clients of Wiesdorf sanatorium considerable anxiety. The note to Servia, the letters they received from their homes, the clatter of arms which was beginning to be heard throughout Europe, all began to point to a vague danger which could not, of course, affect their sacred persons, but might possibly hinder them from peacefully cultivating the sufferings which ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... for him, he has himself told us, to write with severity, than with forbearance; and indeed, where is the expert swordsman, who does not delight in the flourish of his weapon? Neither could this self-complacent feeling be much allayed, by the vague and abusive ribaldry with which his satire was repaid. This was natural to the controversy, was no more than he expected and was easily retorted with terrible interest. "As for knave," says he, "and sycophant and rascal, and impudent, and devil, and old serpent, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... colonies. A hundred frauds would be committed by these, which we could not detect. He did not mean by this, that the evil was to go on for ever. Had a wise plan been proposed at first, it might have been half-cured by this time. The present resolution would do no good. It was vague, indefinite, and unintelligible. Such resolutions were only the slave-merchants' harvests. They would go for more slaves than usual in the interim. He should have advised a system of duties on fresh importations of slaves, progressively increasing ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... furniture. Risler watched them at work with an indifferent air, as if he were in a stranger's house. That magnificence which had once made him so happy and proud inspired in him now an insurmountable disgust. But, when he entered his wife's bedroom, he was conscious of a vague emotion. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before, and she was conscious of a vague sense of thankfulness that she had been spared that ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... him, one saw that his brown eyes were frank and kindly, that his face was attractive when he smiled. Theodora liked him unreservedly; she even began to remember him a little, in a vague sort of way, and she hoped that Phebe would be in one of her ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... spirit such as he—all are not prepared to subscribe to the precise formulation of the mystery as given in an Athanasian creed, or a homily of a fourth century father. Beyond admitting in a general and rather vague way that Jesus is "Divine," many people are not prepared to go. They would shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... majority of the French people would improve the first possible opportunity to re-establish the Empire; and consequently the conviction which he so confidently cherished, that he was destined to be the Emperor of France, was not a vague and baseless impression, but ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... its invention the barometer has been vaunted an indicator of impending weather, and now we are in possession of numberless rules for interpreting its indications, mostly of a vague and indefinite purport, few, if any, pretending to accuracy and certainty. As mankind are always desirous of attaining weather wisdom, these rules have tended to give the barometer its widely recognized reputation, rather than any really infallible principles, clearly formulated. With no other ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... pass over, as on so many previous occasions it had already done, and leave him again free to his old practices in the same region. A feeling of pride, which made him unwilling to take a suggestion of fear and flight from the course of others, had some share in this decision; and, if we add the vague hungering of his heart toward the lovely Edith, and possibly the influence of other pledges, and the imposing consideration of other duties, we shall not be greatly at a loss in understanding the injudicious indifference to the threatening ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Another Egyptian fish deity was the god Rem, whose name signifies "to weep"; he wept fertilizing tears, and corn was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be identical with Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile god, a developed attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity who symbolized the primordial deep. The connection between a fish god and a corn god is not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Government had been to discover proof of fresh crimes since Ralegh's liberation in 1616, and to try him for them. It had failed. Much of the testimony it had painfully collected was dubious, vague, biassed, interested, or plainly corrupt. Such as it was the Council either would not, or could not, rely upon it for a conviction. Ralegh's transactions with the Frenchmen were unwarrantable, if its view of them were correct. But they had resulted in nothing, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... away at the mysterious blue west. His eyes were big with great thoughts. If he had a ship and a crew,—if he could sail away exploring! Suppose kingdoms could be founded there! Suppose—his imaginings became as lofty as the drifting clouds, and as vague; so vague that he finally lost interest in them, and turned his attention to the approaching shore. They had come near enough now to see that the scattered islands had connected themselves into a peaked coast, a broken line of dazzling whiteness, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were babies together—he and her beloved old Katie—Were conducting her to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a loss to phrase what she wished to say, both because her ideas were rather vague and because she feared lest she might offend her lover by talking upon a subject which he had markedly avoided. He made now a fresh effort to divert the talk ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... time was Hilda? She, too, had witnessed the fight. She had seen the desperate struggle, the flag of France hauled down, the ships brought to an anchor, and a wounded officer lowered into the boat. A vague, yet overpowering dread had seized her. She attempted to go down that she might meet the boat at the landing-place, but her strength failed, and she sunk back in her chair near the window, whence she could watch the boat as it ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... so much a want of sufficient observation of known facts, as the want of a true method and of verification, which rendered the investigations of the earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy, are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... and was taking a long sniff from a little gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart. He had come to her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him. It was always like that! Nobody ever seemed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... black man in evening dress, who opened the door to him instead of the usual maid, sent a vague apprehension through his preoccupied mind, but it was not until he found himself in the room set apart for the masculine guests and saw everyone arrayed in "swallow-tails," as he thought of them, that he realized what he had done. The emotion of the moment was one that made a ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... busy itself with little men and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each other—economic changes and political revolutions, costumes, ideas, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... fell on them. The laughter and gay talk ceased. The sense of holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean's greatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rocks which hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling of this solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have been bred as children on ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... beheld all those pictures which the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw him leaping ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed to the pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets; he imagined the tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have caused in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf to all his appeals; ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... reading and the singing and the talk, a vague fear kept crossing the little girl's mind. What if the things so confidently expected from the village should not come? Their little store of food was diminishing rapidly. What if their father had ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... they were halted, to rest. Some went to sleep; others, like Pierre, set to work and with their bayonets dug little trenches and threw up a slight earthwork before them, behind which they could lie; for the skirmishers had been thrown out, looking vague and ghostly as they trotted forward in the dim twilight, and they supposed that the battle would be fought right there. By the time, however, that the trenches were dug, the line was advanced, and the regiment ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... not endure any historical scrutiny: to all who have fallen across it, it is one of the most incontestable facts in the world; but if you begin to ask what it was in other periods and countries, in Greece, for instance, the strangest doubts begin to spring up, and everything seems so vague and changing that a dream is logical in comparison. Jealousy, at any rate, is one of the consequences of love; you may like it or not, at pleasure; but there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... buried in clay and utter oblivion. And before the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and long centuries before Nineveh or Calah or Asshur, there had been mighty kingdoms in Babylonia, of which the world had quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,—only what was preserved in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost, buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; would they ever ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... loving desire to please God, a single-minded preference for His service over every service of man, a resolve to approach Him by the ways which He had appointed. It was no taking for granted that to follow one's own best opinion was all one with obeying His will; no easy persuasion that a vague, obscure sincerity in our conclusions about Him and our worship of Him was all that was required of us, whether those conclusions belonged to this school of doctrine or that. That is, he had deep within him that gift which St. Paul and St. John speak of, when they enlarge ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... years, had even dreamed, in his soberer moments, of coming back to her to play the rle of a prince, but nevertheless, he found himself philosophically accepting the possibility hinted at by Sucatash and even feeling a vague ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... kinds, as well as by an extraordinary development of muscular strength with apparent lucidity of mind. They may last from a few minutes to half an hour, after which the patient falls into a sound sleep and forgets everything that has happened, or else retains only a vague recollection. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... these recoveries he made some effort to fix his thoughts, and presently he found himself reading a passage which had a strangely familiar ring in it—he thought at first it was merely that passing impression of a vague sameness in things which would vanish on analysis—but, as he read on, the impression grew stronger at every line. He turned to the beginning of the article, a notice on a recent book, and read it from beginning to end with eager care. Was he dreaming still, or mad? or how ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... There he locked the door, and began to comfort her by making light of the little mishap. But Kitty cried so tragically, that he was at his wit's end, till the ludicrous side of the affair struck her, and she began to laugh hysterically. With a vague idea that vigorous treatment was best for that feminine ailment, Jack was about to empty the contents of an ice-pitcher over her, when she arrested ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... that of a modern cannon, so that the dim background can be filled in with the suggestion of a wholly modern machinery. This is a very true satire; for there are many scientific persons who seem to be quite reconciled to the crushing of humanity by a vague mechanical environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments, while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not strive ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... turned within his solitary hall, And his high shadow shot along the wall: There were the painted forms of other times,[273] 'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes, Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults; And half a column of the pompous page, That speeds the specious tale from age to age; Where History's pen its praise or blame supplies, And lies like Truth, and still most truly ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... what starts the secretion of milk we have only a vague idea; but we know that when the flow is once established its continuation depends primarily upon the sucking efforts of the infant. If nursing is discontinued the secretion dwindles and the breasts dry up. On the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... probably told to account for the name of the field. It has been noticed that the Latin Lives are less rich in details as to names of places and people than the Irish Life. This is an indication of a later tradition, when the recollection of names had become vague, or, rather, when names which had been of interest to their contemporaries had ceased ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... warships on Davis Island?" The name roused a vague memory. "Davis Island?" he repeated, staring in concentration at the black sea. "Of course!" It came to him suddenly. A newspaper article that he had read five years before, at about the time he had abandoned college in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... was known to Penautier sooner than to his own family: then the papers about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined. D'Alibert's brother-in-law, who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an end ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... highest enjoyment? In the very prime and glory of all her faculties—wise in experience—strong from many a silent heart-struggle, what could she gain by a return of youth? Nothing! surely nothing! Yet she watched those two young persons with a vague feeling of sadness. They had life before them, a thousand dreamy delusions—a thousand alluring hopes evanescent as the apple blossoms of May, but as ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... excluded! I Had reached that age when the sensibilities are in all their bloom and freshness. Mine had been checked and chilled. They now burst forth with the suddenness of a retarded spring. My heart, hitherto unnaturally shrunk up, expanded into a riot of vague, but delicious emotions. The beauty of nature intoxicated, bewildered me. The song of the peasants; their cheerful looks; their happy avocations; the picturesque gayety of their dresses; their rustic music; their dances; all broke upon me like witchcraft. My soul responded to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... women did, and sit down and sew for it; the monotonous motion of the needle, which some people call so soothing, fairly distracted me; and, in spite of the low diet of Latin and mathematics on which I had been kept all winter, I entertained vague visions of myself, in cropped hair and army blue, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... soon occupied them. There was a vague idea that a sort of convalescent or children's hospital might be established for the training of women intending to study medicine or nursing, chiefly at Miss Arthuret's expense, and Dolores was anxious to consider the possibility of placing it in ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... never looked forward beyond a year or two. Ambition, desires, he possessed in no common degree, but as a vague, unexamined impulse. He had dreamt of love, but timidly, tremulously; that was for the time to come. He had dreamt of distinction; that, also, must be patiently awaited. In the meantime, labour. He enjoyed intellectual effort; he gloried in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... rate as yet, but little of his friend's stability. To him the world was all before him where to choose; but he was sadly in want of something that should guide his choice. He had a high, but at the same time a vague ambition. The law, the church, letters, art, and politics all enticed him; but he could not decide of which mistress the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature of his story—a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago—the poet seems to have been compelled to make a picture of human life too literal ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague—" ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... speaker's voice, gathered nothing of the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies. Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... and whale fisheries, it is true; but on the whole my relations with all that portion of mankind who inhabit the islands of the Pacific, the northwest coast of America, and the northeast coast of the old continent, were rather loose, and generally in an unsettled and vague condition; and it appeared to me that I had been singularly favored in having a man so well adapted to their regeneration thrown as it were by Providence, and in a manner so unusual, directly in my way. I now frankly proposed, therefore, to fit out an expedition, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eight cents every day?" asked his wife, her eyes snapping. She was vague about the duties of a grand juror; maybe he had to earn his two dollars; but she had exact ideas about the trouble of walking "up-street." To get eight cents for that was being paid for doing nothing at all, and she was much astonished at ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... any one of these circumstances had been altered, what a different man you might have been! Probably many people, even of middle age, conscious that the manifold cares and worries of life forbid that it should be evenly joyous, do yet cherish at the bottom of their heart some vague, yet rooted fancy, that, if but one thing were given on which they have set their hearts, or one care removed forever, they would be perfectly happy, even here. Perhaps you overrate the effect which would have been produced on your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... national and internal issues, and it must result in a new national order. If this war has not been fought in vain, if we are to achieve the objects for which we entered it, if we are ultimately to crush German militarism, which is only a vague and confusing synonym for German reaction, then it inexorably follows that the war must end in a German revolution. The road to peace must indeed pass through Berlin, but that Berlin will have ceased to be the Berlin of the Junkers—it ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... or similar ones, spoken by General Lyman, Putnam returned a vague reply, intended for an apology, but having more the tone of a defiance. Discipline and military authority must stand aside when brave men were struggling with ruthless savages. Without waiting to hear the general's response to his apology, the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... putting before it always perfectly determinate forms, it is left here much too free to represent as it wishes these men and these angels, these divinities and demons, this paradise and this hell. We see quite well the vague outlines in which the understanding must be kept to conceive these personages; but we do not find the limit clearly traced in which the imagination must be enclosed to represent them. And what I say here ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... this manner, he readily looked into the face of the mirror, wherein he caught sight of lady Feng standing, nodding her head and beckoning to him. With one gush of joy, Chia Jui felt himself, in a vague and mysterious manner, transported into the mirror, where he held an affectionate tete-a-tete with lady Feng. Lady Feng escorted him out again. On his return to bed, he gave vent to an exclamation of "Ai yah!" and opening his eyes, he turned the glass ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it calling by the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass In splendour through the gloom; Who is it calling o'er the darkened river In ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... of Angela. She was sitting perfectly still, her eyes on the floor, when he entered the room. He came in so softly that she did not hear him. He lifted her head and looked into her eyes. He noticed with certainty what had been so far only a vague, ill-defined dread. Her face was very, very pale and transparent. Her eyes were sunken and had a strange brilliancy. She was much slighter end far more ethereal than on that day when they stood the deck of the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal—he could see only the blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream, a condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds; unrealities seized the quick imagination of the man; into his fancy came the ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... relations of Rome with the somewhat more distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early times. There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere; Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have obtained great victories over the Latins, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... off at the lakes; some one had gone back and warned them of the very thing we've met. We must beat them to the lakes, for water is the only thing that will check them now. It's a good thing that they are strong, and five or six days without water will hardly kill any. It was no vague statement of the man who said if he owned hell and Texas, he'd rent Texas and live in hell, for if this isn't Billy hell, I'd like to ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... she repeated to herself with wrinkled brows. A vague depression hung over her spirits; she thought uneasily of her years, and wondered if she were growing old, unconscious of the fact that she had never yet ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... understood that they were Forcats, Galley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops;—also that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forcats and danger of plunder. (See Barbaroux, Memoires Note in p. 40, 41.) Forcats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendor as the Sea Facade. But no such sweeping measure of renovation had been contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... close that he saw their gray shadows in the gloom. But presently they wearied of yelping at him and went away. After that the silence, broken only by the wind as it roared and lulled, seemed beautiful to Slone. He lost completely that sense of vague regret which had remained with him, and he forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild, thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... The lovely eyes were fixed upon the hand that was bringing forth the choicest morsels of the food prepared early that morning. As he laid the little feast before her, Truedale acknowledged that, in a vague way, he had been saving the morsels for Nella-Rose even while he had fed, earlier, upon ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... he got the whole village built, and lying in his bed that night could only remember with real distinction the commission house, the library, and one dwelling house, far down the main street. The rest was vague—houses—white houses—not high—not crowded, but all blurred and without detail, as if ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... is the great outer circle of non-christian people—they know. Many of them are poorly informed regarding the christian life; hungry for something they have not, and know not just what it is; with high ideals, though vague, of what a christian life should be. And they look eagerly to us for what they have thought we had, and are so often keenly disappointed that our ideals, our life, is so much like others who profess nothing. And when here and there they meet one whose acts are dominated by a pure, high spirit, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... had already acquired a working knowledge of numerous languages and dialects, but of his native tongue he had still to become a master. In 1826 his appreciation of the requirements of English Prosody was of a vague description, his sense of the rhythm of verse was crude, and the attention he paid to the exigencies of rhyme was inadequate. Hence the majority of his Ballads, beyond the fact that they were faithful reproductions of the originals from which they had been laboriously ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... numerous books written upon California, no doubt you will be able to find a most scientific description of the origin of these bars. I must acknowledge with shame that my ideas on the subject are distressingly vague. I could never appreciate the poetry or the humor of making one's wrists ache by knocking to pieces gloomy-looking stones, or in dirtying one's fingers by analyzing soils, in a vain attempt to fathom the osteology or anatomy of our ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the house in which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a certain covenanted ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... when my own ideas were all vague and strange, as I sat there that night with this,"—he tapped his water-pipe—"and tried to hit on some plan; and somehow the horror passed away, and I felt no fear of the poor wretch lying there before me. I wondered at myself—that I could sit there so calmly ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... has composed a number of songs, all endowed with an unusual share of beauty. She writes her own words in almost all cases, as she is able while doing this to hear in a vague way the music which she afterward sets to them. Hers is a virile genius. "These women seem preoccupied, first of all," says one critic, "to make people forget that they are women.... Whatever Mlle. Holmes ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left vague and undefined." At that moment "Raskolnikov" was in the air, so to speak. And without wanting in any way to suggest imitation, I feel sure that the groundnote of the story was distinctly Dostoievskian. Strindberg himself had been reading Nietzsche and was—largely under the pressure ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... nor eloquent. The thoughts are not precise; the expressions are vague; and, of consequence, the reasonings of no value. The attempts at rich displays of imaginative power are contrasted with a want of invention; and illustrative stories, of feeble execution, are lavished abundantly in lieu of physiological facts. The volumes are ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... said, "I have had one object before me from my boyhood, and since you told me that I was to be your husband, that object has grown from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. Alice, I want to buy back the acres of my forefathers; I wish, I intend, that another Buckley shall be the master of Clere, and that ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... adventures, until they begin to speak of that day when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel. They both then become voluble. I rather gather—though I did not cross-examine them at all closely—that they had been a good deal bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... have seen our two children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... or a Quinctius! It is quite unnecessary to comment on the silliness and bad taste of passages of this kind, but it is interesting to note that the facts of history are too strong even for Mr. Mahaffy. In spite of his sneers at the provinciality of national feeling and his vague panegyrics on cosmopolitan culture, he is compelled to admit that 'however patriotism may be superseded in stray individuals by larger benevolence, bodies of men who abandon it will only replace it by meaner motives,' and cannot help expressing his regret that the better classes ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... which he was acquainted. She must for ever occupy a place of her own in his thoughts and in his estimation. It was a place very well defined, he told himself, and by no means within that inner circle of his brain and heart wherein lay the few things in life sweet and precious to him. The vague excitement of the early morning seemed to him now, as he moved calmly along the crowded, fashionable thoroughfare, a thing altogether unreal and unnatural. He had been in an emotional frame of mind, he told himself with a quiet smile, when the sight of those few lines in a handwriting ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... KITCHENER'S triumphant feat in transporting our army to France. We are not very far from Southampton, whence some of the troops must have sailed, but beyond the merest vague rumours we heard nothing. One lady, a fortnight ago, had word from some one that a Belgian padre had seen trucks full of British soldiers in Belgium. A gentleman had heard from a school friend of his daughter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... this book to trace the story of Japan from its beginnings to the establishment of constitutional government. Concerned as this story is with the period of vague and legendary antiquity as well as with the disorders of mediaeval time and with centuries of seclusion, it is plain that it is not an easy task to present a trustworthy and connected account of the momentous changes through which the empire has been called to pass. It ...
— Japan • David Murray
... corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense familiarity made me look again. But the man had turned and was walking rapidly away. There was something about the slope of the shoulders and the fringe of silver hair between coat collar and slouch hat that aroused vague memories. Instead of crossing the street, I hurried after the man. I quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts that formed unbidden in my brain. No, it was impossible. It could not be—not ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... that you have lived only half your life if you haven't heard the pansymphonicon. We gave him little satisfaction by asking no questions and yawning or asking what time it was every time he tried to whet our curiosity by vague references and half descriptions of it. Jimmie is a frightful liar, and would sacrifice his hope of heaven to torture us successfully for half a day. I don't believe one word of all he has said or hinted or drawn or sung ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual cluster of gas lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—and over all, that saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Court of Burgundy. Bertha was astonished to learn that her maid had left the castle without receiving her dismissal from herself, her mistress; but she said nothing. Soon afterwards she had other fish to fry, for she became a prey to vague apprehensions, because her husband completely changed in his manner, commenced to notice the likeness of his first-born to himself, and could find nothing resembling his nose, or his forehead, his this, or his that, in the youngest ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the second stage. Judas, reassured that he has escaped detection for the moment, and perhaps doubting whether the Master had anything more than a vague suspicion of treachery, or knew who was the traitor, shapes his lying lips with loathsome audacity into the same question, but yet not quite the same, The others had said, 'Is it I, Lord?' he falters when he comes to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... both ill, at the Green Curtain, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell."[117] By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague and uncertain to warrant any ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... himself was certainly disappointed. Mrs. Thrale says that his complacency towards Thrale was not wholly devoid of interested motives; and she adds that his manner towards Reynolds and Dr. Taylor was also softened by the vague expectation of being named in their wills. One of her marginal notes is: "Johnson mentioned to Reynolds that he had been told by Taylor he was to be his heir. His fondness for Reynolds, ay, and for Thrale, had a dash of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his attention had been drawn away by the discussion between Sir Lothian Hume and the referee upon the question of time. For my own part, I had been so struck by the furious manner in which these belated travellers were approaching, that I had continued to watch them with all sorts of vague hopes within me, which I did not dare to put into words for fear of adding to my uncle's disappointments. I had just made out that the gig contained a man and a woman, when suddenly I saw it swerve off the road, and come with a galloping horse and bounding wheels right across the moor, crashing through ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other hand, those in whom the interior faculties predominate too greatly vividly realize their psychic life, but have more vague and feeble conceptions of material objects, including their own bodies, and attach undue importance to the imaginary and subjective in preference to the objective. The materialists and the illusionists, however, are not entirely composed of these two classes of subjective ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... sanctuary we met. But I shall say a few blunt words, such as were frequent in the days of intimacy, and, if they are needless, you will let them fall to the ground. Youth is past, with its passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness, its vague desires. You have chosen your path, you have rounded out your lot, your duties are before you. Now beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dulness of fancy, its too external ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of literal application of texts to the living men and women in a congregation is not only in bad taste, but presumptuous and blasphemous. What right has a clergyman to sit in judgment on me, for instance? To give forced constructions to parables and vague generalities in Scripture, about the actual meaning of which divines in all ages have differed; and, pointing his finger to me or to you, say—'The case is yours, sir!' I cannot sit patiently under many more ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... curiosity and after from a sentiment of respectful devotion, Guy was impelled to study that delicate and sensitive nature, entirely swayed by love of Sulpice, that suffered at times a vague pressure as of some indefinable anguish at the throat, as if a vacuum—a choking vacuum—had been created about her by ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous Apologetical Narration of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to this question it would ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... conversation flowed, a salon rather than a shop, changed and ennobled its customs. The reign of coffee is that of temperance. Coffee, the beverage of sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which, unlike spirituous liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... whether the name "Medyen" be foreign or Arabic; and whether "Medyen" spoke Arabic. He considers the absurd enumeration of the alphabetical kings (El-Mas'di, quoted above) to be curious, as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of Midian. When these kings are said contemporaneously to have ruled over Meccah, Western Nejd, Yemen, "Medyen," Egypt, etc., it is extremely improbable that Midian ever penetrated into Yemen, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... a in Pegasus continued 45 deg. to the south points out the important star Fomalhaut in the mouth of the Southern Fish. To the right of this line, nearly half-way down, is the rather vague constellation of Aquarius, where a small equilateral triangle with a star in the centre may ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid, dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the car—in that instant she had known for the first time a new and indefinable emotion—vague in her mind, vaguer ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... wonders of science and art must therefore have contributed somewhat to rid our people of the impression of being at every turn beset by occult powers, under the name perhaps of witchcraft, and to expel the notions of a vague and capricious agency interfering and sporting with events throughout the system around them. Their rationality thus obtained an improvement, which may be set against the injury undoubtedly done them through that diminished exercise of the understanding which accompanied ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... migrations to the eastward of a line passing through Repulse Bay, or about the meridian of 86° west, while in a northern direction we know that he travels as far as the seventy-sixth degree of latitude. In Greenland this animal is known only by vague and exaggerated report; on the western coast of Baffin’s Bay it has certainly been seen, though very rarely, by the present inhabitants; and the eldest person belonging to the Winter Island tribe had never seen one to the eastward of Eiwillik, where, as well as at Akkōōleĕ, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... awake till she heard twelve o'clock strike from St. Mary, Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone, perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young, and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs. Cardew heard the chimes, and over ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... their conditions it is well to make the change which England made nearly fifty years ago, and to adopt a system of which the success has been doubtful in its chosen field. In order to decide the question intelligently we must put aside all vague confusions about an exact science which will work the same results everywhere because it operates under an immutable law. Even if free trade had been a brilliant and conclusive success in England, of which there is no proof, does ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his live cape filling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fide gold ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... rests exclusively on that "breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality. All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:—The "materialists," must give up their last stronghold—we cannot even grant them a right to assume the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... it is sad, and in the picture of the poet we seem to see Shelley himself. Other long poems followed, poems which are both terrible and beautiful, but many years must pass before you try to read them. For Shelley's poetry is more vague, his meaning more elusive, than that of almost any other poet of whom we have spoken. It is rather for Shelley's shorter poems, his lyrics, that I would try to gain your love at present, for although he wrote The Cenci, the best tragedy of his time, a tragedy which by its terror ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... line of thought. And an unprejudiced observer will scarcely fail in this case to admit that what attracts many adherents of occult science—or occultism—is nothing but the fatal craving for what is unknown and mysterious, or even vague. And he will also be ready to own that there is much cogency in the reasons put forward against what is fantastic and visionary by serious opponents of the cause in question. In fact, one who studies occult science will ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Rocky Mountains, in a York boat, tarried at our camp, bringing word that the ice-jam was clear in Lesser Slave Lake, which was cheering, but that we need scarcely look for the expected assistance. They also gave a vague account of the murder of a squaw by her husband for cannibalism, which afterwards proved to be groundless, and, with this comforting ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... thunderous discharge on our side, there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on the other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited to fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion, till it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the gorge could possibly have failed to receive its ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... matter from what source this belief in a "ghost" originated, it must be admitted that it is found among all peoples, and is apparently an universal idea. And, running along with it in the primitive peoples, we find that there is, and always has been, an idea, more or less vague and indistinct, that somehow, someway, sometime, this "ghost" of the person returns to earthly existence and takes upon itself a new fleshly garment—a new body. Here, then, is where the idea of Reincarnation begins—everywhere, at a certain stage of human mental development. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... that non-human independence. My conversational reticences about myself turn into garrulousness on paper—as the sea-lion plunges and swims the more energetically because his limbs are of a sort to make him shambling on land. The act of writing, in spite of past experience, brings with it the vague, delightful illusion of an audience nearer to my idiom than the Cherokees, and more numerous than the visionary One for whom many authors have declared themselves willing to go through the pleasing punishment of publication. My ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... clank of metal chains, the beat of hoofs upon the good road-bed, sounded smartly on the ear. The houses became larger, newer, more flamboyant; richly dressed, handsome women were coming and going between them and their broughams. When Sommers turned to look back, the boulevard disappeared in the vague, murky region of mephitic cloud, beneath which the husbands of those women were toiling, striving, creating. He walked on and on, enjoying his leisure, speculating idly about the people and the houses. At last, as he neared Fortieth Street, the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... passionate belief in his high and romantic birth was part of his being, and Miss Winwood's recognition was a splendid confirmation of his faith. It was rather the suppressio veri of which he was guilty than the propositio falsi. So between them his childhood was invested with a vague semblance of reality in which the fact of his isolation stood ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... maxim, "once a priest always a priest," kept him in the pulpit, to which he had no irresistible call, and to which the accident of his career only had led him. Had the church to which he belonged been organized with an episcopal government, he had certainly been its primate; but in the vague and incoherent condition of the Congregational churches, to one of which he belonged, there was no career beyond that of the isolated pastorate of a single congregation. In this insufficiency of interest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... moonlight over the dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of sprites upon the sward. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... little vague, Mr. Blake; I hardly know what I am to understand by it. Do you mean evening dress for one dinner-party or a succession of dinner-parties? You know they are perpetual in Rutherford; every house invites every other ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deem it commonplace. For my part, I cannot regard it in this light. I have never looked upon this primitive homestead of the pioneer without receiving from it an impression of romantic pleasure. Something seems to impart to it an air of vague and mystic grandeur. Perhaps I associate the picture with the frame in which it is set—the magnificent forest that surrounds it, every aisle of which is redolent of romance. Such a scene is suggestive of hunter lore and legend—of perils by flood and field, always pleasant ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of the common people of Israel began with certain vague hopes of a happier and nobler way of living for the descendants of Abraham. As the centuries passed these hopes were only very partially realized. But what was more important the Jews came more and more clearly to understand the meaning of their own hopes. Their great teachers ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... force of habit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took possession of her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Yea, heard the churl against the baron—yea, And did him justice; sat in mine own courts Judging my judges, that had found a King Who ranged confusions, made the twilight day, And struck a shape from out the vague, and law From madness. And the event—our fallows till'd, Much corn, repeopled towns, a realm again. So far my course, albeit not glassy-smooth, Had prosper'd in the main, but suddenly Jarr'd on this rock. A cleric violated The daughter of his host, and murder'd him. Bishops—York, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... good. We'd just say things we shouldn't. You said just now you doubted if you knew why I was here. I may not be sure of all my reasons, but one of them is, I wanted to get away from—there." My hand made motion in a vague direction ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... This was rather vague theorizing, however. Look and stare as much as he chose, he could detect nothing that resembled man or animal. He shrank to one side and waited several minutes, in the hope that the thing would explain itself. But it did not, and, after waiting some time, he resumed his journey along the ravine, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... the silver he offered in payment—three bright new dimes. At that moment she caught a glimpse of Ed Brown lurking in the area way of a house at the other end of the block. The sight filled her with a vague misgiving which she could not have explained. She glanced again at Tom; he was nervous ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. A garden ought to produce one everything,—just as a business ought to support a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a convention lately to resolve that the house should ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... brigade column had reached Gomiecourt when word was received that the enemy was attacking again, and there were vague reports that Behagnies had either been captured or was being hard pressed. It was considered inadvisable to continue the journey to Mory, and more important to hold up this possible enveloping movement. We were therefore deflected to the right, and ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... generally an excuse for idle dreaming; because the brain, after a certain time given to active exertion, felt exhausted, and could no longer be prompted to work with intellectual profit; that, in consequence, the effort grew weaker and weaker, till vague musings and indistinct shadows gradually replaced the powerful grasp and clear ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that had been piled together; but the other quieted her fears, and helped her to climb to the top, whence soon the happy mother beheld the vessel of her son. The fairy, her assistant, had disappeared. This story evidently bears a vague tradition of this tumulus having been raised by a woman, and of some maritime expedition made by him for whom it was probably destined. The name of fairy is attached in Brittany to everything—mountains, springs, grottoes, rocks; every accident in nature ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... look of pained surprise crept over their faces, and remained fixed there. Their feet stood rooted to the floor, and the hands which held the cutlasses and pistols stiffened and became rigid. Not one of them could move an eye-lash. Their outlines began to waver; their faces began to be dim and vague, as if covered with close white veils; from their outsides inward they slowly faded, melted, dissolved; nothing remained of any of them but a wraith, a vapor, a puff of smoke, remotely in the shape of a human being; and then ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... was used to Viola's casual behaviour; and the monstrous improbability of the thing she had done this time was her cover. Who in the world would have dreamed that she would go off with Jevons? I don't really know that I dreamed it myself at the moment. I may be mixing up with my first vague dread the certainty that came later. But sometimes I wonder why Reggie didn't suspect me. I suppose my rectitude that had dished me with Viola saved me with ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... to something vague that can be construed two ways, like the Delphic Oracle or Old ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... study; in August, 1800, as a step toward the solution of this problem, Kleist returned to Berlin and secured a modest appointment in the customs department. He found no more satisfaction in the civil than in his former military service, and all manner of vague plans, artistic, literary and academic, occupied his mind. Intensive study of Kant's philosophy brought on an intellectual crisis, in which the ardent student found himself bereft of his fond hope of attaining to absolute truth. Meanwhile ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that period—and thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better—at least we are led to infer so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of History," ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... abbe and Jessica were making their way swiftly towards the manor-house. They scarcely spoke as they went, but in Jessica's mind was a vague horror. Lights sparkled on the crescent shore of Beauport, and the torches of fishermen flared upon the St. Charles. She looked back once towards the heights of Quebec and saw the fires of many homes—they scorched her eyes. She asked no questions. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague—after you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... so marked as to give family life distinctness and precision, and to make a home education and a home discipline probable and possible. While descent is traced only through the mother, and while the family is therefore a vague entity, no progress to a high polity is possible. Secondly, that polity would seem to have been created very gradually; by the aggregation of families into clans or GENTES, and of clans into nations, and then again by the ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... until long after the discovery of gold in California had set us all to thinking that I was reminded of the strange story of the old German, Von Rittenhofen, of finding some pieces of gold while on one of his hunts for butterflies. I followed out his vague directions as best I might. We found gold enough to make us rich without our land. That claim is staked legally. Half of it awaits an owner who ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... is eighty years of age, white-haired, wrinkled, but there is force yet left in his arm, and he is as courageous as ever. He has no fear of any Indian that walks the earth, and the vague rumors and whisperings of an uprising are as idle as the wind to him. He lies down to sleep. The lights in all the houses are extinguished. No sentinel walks the street. In the darkness dusky forms glide noiselessly through the town. The doors of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... stopped suddenly and listened. A vague, confused sound was heard in front of them, and Jethro quitted the road and took his course over the fields. Amuba heard the sound increase, and was presently conscious that a crowd of people were passing ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... to the returned wanderer. Poor man! The changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... on either side. When he turned to look at either of the clouds, the one looked at disappeared. It was not condensed enough to be visible to direct vision, yet he was aware of it from the corner of his eye. Shapeless and threatening, the gloomy thickness of the air floated beside him like the vague monster of a dream. Sometimes he fancied that he saw an arm or a limb among the folds of the cloud, or an approach to a face; the instant he looked it vanished. Marching at each hand these vapours bore him ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... captive would trot, gallop, obey the sound of our voice, feed from our hand; and, in fact, showed himself perfectly docile. Now our ingenuity was taxed to the utmost. How were we to saddle and bridle a bird? First, for a bit for his beak. Vague ideas passed through my mind, but every one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the room beside him; so they stand awe-struck in the "wind of the going" of a majestic and unseen Being. This feeling differs from mysticism, inasmuch as it is connected with a reality, while the mystic dreams a vague and unsupported dream, and the poetry it produces is simply the irresistible cry springing from the perception of this wondrous Some One who is actually near them. The feeling is connected, in general, with a lofty moral and religious nature; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the gravelled flat of each enclosure, and perpendicularly down steps cut in the sandstone or let into the walls. I counted 800 houses from the river, and there must be many more: the inhabitants are Bengalees and Khasias, and perhaps amount to 3000 or 4000; but this is a very vague estimate. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... holds her sucking child; opening out her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her wasted dying look, keen and yet vague—her ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those delightful, well-remembered evenings of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... before but could not remember where. The young man in his neat, well fitting clothes, his country tan given place to the pallor of study and late hours, was a very different person from the boy in shirt sleeves and overalls of the ranch yard. But his voice increased Mayer's vague sense of former encounter and with it came a faint feeling of disquiet. Memory connected this fellow with something unpleasant. As Mark turned to him it grew into uneasiness. Where before had he met those eyes, dark blue, looking with an inquiring ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... les pieds comme les mains d'un petit enfant, et une assez longue queue, semblable a celle des gros verdereaux (lezards verts). Nos Arabes et notre trucheman nous dirent qu'elle etoit fort dangereuse. [Footnote: D'apres la description vague que donne ici la Brocquiere, il paroit que l'animal dont il parle est le grand lezard appele monitor, parce qu'on pretend qu'il avertit da l'approche du crocodile. Quant a la terreur qu'en avoient les Arabes, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Luna had vague ideas of this powerful weapon; but it had never seemed so real before. He was growing suspicious. He recalled Firmstone's words, "I've told you a good deal, but not all by a good long measure." They had seemed simple and straightforward ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... he does not sustain the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty—the faculty of finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with personality—shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We feel ourselves ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... is heard for a different training from that now given in the public schools. Many are trying to find it. Almost every large town has its experiment—and many smaller places have theirs. Nobody seems to know just what is best. Even the words which express the want are vague. Bright and thoughtful people differ as to what might, can, and should be done. A society has been formed in New York to bring together the needed data. The Slater trustees, charged with the care of a large fund for the training of freedmen, have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... A vague gesture, and she lifted her head, with a tremor of her shoulders, as though shaking off care as a young girl drops a scarf of lace ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... acknowledge that her mother was only a memory. She hardly realized it, indeed. Only, conscious of that vague, strange discomfort, she had an impulse to get away from it. She put ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... "stage" which took the party to the "Spaniard" at Hampstead started! Sometimes I am drawn to the shop, crowded with books; but one's thoughts stray away from the books into speculations as to which house it was. But the indications are most vague, though the eye settles on a decent range of shabby-looking faded tenements—two storeys high only—and which look like lodging houses. Some ingenious commentators have indeed ventured to identify the house itself, arguing from the very general ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... institutions,—alterations in national habits,—may and ought to be earnestly considered: but this is a problem not easily solved. The evils, as you point them out, are great, real, and most obvious; the remedy is obscure and vague; yet for such difficulties as spring from over-competition, emigration must be good; the new life in a new country must give a new lease of hope; the wider field, less thickly peopled, must open a new path for endeavour. But I always think great physical ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... passed, the day came, and Henry awakened his comrades. Long Jim was still missing and their alarm was justified. Whatever trail lie might have struck, he would have returned in the night unless something had happened to him. Henry had vague theories, but nothing definite, and he kept them to himself. Yet they must make a change in their plans. To go on and leave Long Jim to whatever fate might be his was unthinkable. No task could interfere with the duty of the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a single word, Bucks." As he spoke, Scott opened the hall door and whistled into the darkness. For an instant there was no response. Then a small and vague object outlined itself in the gloom, but halted questioningly on the threshold. Wagging his abbreviated tail very gently and carrying his drooping ears very low, Scuffy at length walked slowly into the room. Bucks hailed him with delight, and Scuffy bounding ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence for some time, gave a violent start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Serjeant Buzfuz, in the august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to his mind. An admonitory gesture from Perker restrained him, and he listened to the learned gentleman's continuation with a look of indignation, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... for any trace of the sanctuary of the most celebrated of the Sibyls. Her tomb is pointed out as a vague ruin a short distance from the Necropolis, among the tombs which line the Via Domitiana; and Justin Martyr and Pausanias both describe a round cinerary urn found in this spot which was said to have contained her ashes. The tufa rock of the Acropolis is pierced with numerous dark caverns and labyrinthine ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... published, and at the end of this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally "a decline," she took to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea. She waited for the tokens of her book's conquests in the great world of thought and men. She had waited so long ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... Mornington had arrived at Madras. He then received a letter containing a tissue of the most palpable lies concerning Tippoo's dealings with the French. Two or three more letters passed, but as Tippoo's answers were all vague and evasive, the governor general issued a manifesto, on the 22nd of February, 1799, recapitulating all the grievances against Mysore, and declaring that, though the allies were prepared to repel any attack, they were equally anxious to ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... it's time for me to be off,' said Mark, dreading further revelations, and too nervous to see that they could do him no possible harm. But the fact was, Caffyn's presence filled him with a vague alarm which he could ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the water,—bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to command, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dogma. The dogma took up into itself a legend of the childhood of the world. It elaborated that which in Genesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as a sacred philosophy of history. It postulated an original revelation. It affirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. To the framers of the dogma, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... refreshment to me; there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells "kow" with a large "K." Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. The sanitar then seemed to slip away leaving him alone with a vague sense of disaster. The sun had set, but there was a moon, full and high, and now by its light he could see that his wagon was standing outside the gate of the house at M——. There was the yard, the bandaging-room, the long faded wall of the house, the barn, but where? ... where?... ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... was inclined to patronize held him in contempt and for cause. The lieutenant listened for a time to all Harry had to say with apparent indifference, then suddenly interrupting him, he said: "Oh, I say, old chap, I wouldn't rub it in if I were you. I have a more or less vague remembrance of having rather indulged in heroics. One can't keep his head with poker and unlimited brandy-and-sodas; they don't go together. It's a thing I almost never do; never in a big game, but the thing got interesting ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a contraction at his heart, a fear and dread of Jonah swept through Paasch, the vague, primeval distrust and suspicion of the deformed that lurks in the normal man, a survival of the ancient hostility that in olden times consigned them to the stake as servants of the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the quiet rooms, And all the paths around, With thy perpetual song resound, As thou didst sit, on woman's work intent, Abundantly content With the vague future, floating on thy mind! Thy custom thus to spend the day In that sweet time of youth ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... the ploughshare rust, While the sword grows bright with its fatal labour, And blackens between each man and neighbour The perilous cloud of a vague distrust! ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... with a vague gesture of distaste. "Oh, thank you," he replied; "but, do you know, I don't think I like deans, Mrs. Dewsbury." Mrs. Dewsbury's smile was recondite and diplomatic. "Then you'll exactly suit one another," she answered with gay wisdom. "For, to tell you the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... baroness wandered about the house in a vague, restless way, unable to settle to anything, and trying to amuse herself by consulting with the nurse as to how they should go and fetch the baby back when they discovered where it was. She ate little or nothing, and after another ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... cured five out of six patients by copious bleedings. I relate here the reasons for an opinion without pretending to a discovery. Something like this doctrine may be found in certain modern publications, but it is delivered in that vague and diffuse style, which I trust your example will banish ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... interested in ships arriving from southern ports in the Caribbean, or from southern Europe. That, he figured, would give them only the ships that might have been standing off Seaford in the early hours before dawn on the critical dates. He had a vague idea that he might find some sort of similarity in the ships that had been off Seaford on the critical dates. The registry might be the same, ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... well-filled bags into Tom's hands, and received the silver he offered in payment—three bright new dimes. At that moment she caught a glimpse of Ed Brown lurking in the area way of a house at the other end of the block. The sight filled her with a vague misgiving which she could not have explained. She glanced again at Tom; he ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the future—a perfectly vague, indefinite future that terrified her. Every moment of her life had been sheltered and happy and, by reason of that very shelter, her fears had grown upon her. He remembered one evening when they had been present at some party and she had been radiant, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... this Act, notwithstanding any custom of the country or any contract or agreement, the tenant may follow any system of cropping, and dispose of any of his produce as he pleases, but after so doing he must make suitable and adequate provision to protect the farm from injury thereby: a proviso vague and difficult to enforce, and not sufficient to prevent an unscrupulous tenant greatly ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... the length and breadth of our nation a sense,—vague and obscure as yet,—of weariness with the old organisations, of desire for this transformation, works and grows. In the House of Commons the old organisations must inevitably be most enduring and strongest, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... happens when things rot? Have other garden books confused you with vague meanings for words like "stabilized humus?" This book won't. Are you afraid that compost making is a nasty, unpleasant, or difficult process? ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... to the bill, on grounds seriously affecting the class of persons to whom it is designed to bring relief. It will tend to keep the mind of the freedman in a state of uncertain expectation and restlessness, while to those among whom he lives it will be a source of constant and vague apprehension. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... portion here alluded to is not to be taken in the vague sense we attach to the term. The word mahar denotes a present made to, or a portion settled on, the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... a searching examination, could at first render no account of how she came to be mixed up in the affair. Then little by little a vague remembrance returned to her, and she began dimly to ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Christianity and of commerce with Europe enabled Japan, which had previously been almost unheard of, except through the vague accounts of Marco Polo and the semi-mythical stories by way of China, to leave a conspicuous mark, first upon the countries of southern Europe, and later upon Holland and England. As in European literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... de Bossuet, who had been charged to preach the sermon of investiture, showed a good deal of wit by exhibiting none at all. The King must have felt indebted to him for such reserve. Into his discourse he had put mere vague commonplaces, which neither touch nor wound any one; honeyed anathemas such as these ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... have always lived in Bordeaux and they are connected by marriage with everybody—from the blacksmith up to the Mayor's notary. Once a Tessier was Mayor himself. Years and years ago Madame's great-uncle Jean had emigrated to America, and from time to time vague rumors of the wealth he had achieved in the new country reached the ears of his relatives—but ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... into sight, the fourth Fuzzy struggling under one arm and a little kitten, black with a white face, peeping over the crook of his other elbow. He was too stunned with disappointment to look at it with more than vague curiosity. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... dream of mine,— lines which were apparently mathematically designed to meet in reciprocal unity. The lines on this occasion between us five human beings were an almost visible tangle. I found my best refuge in silence,—and I listened in vague wonderment to the flow of senseless small talk poured out by Dr. Brayle, apparently for the amusement of Catherine, who on her part seemed suddenly possessed by a spirit of wilfulness and enforced gaiety which moved her to utter a great many foolish things, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... things—only sitting very still, and thinking long, long thoughts. And whatever it was they thought of, it put no gladness into their eyes. Any one who could have peered into their faces in the pale moonlight must have been struck by the similarity in the expression of their eyes, the vague, staring misery of those who search the horizon vainly for something that will never be theirs, some lost city from which they are for ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and realised that its wearer would probably be pretty and young and generally charming, and that probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim rejoiced within me. "Why not," it said, "buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in charters, and claimed by Alphonso VI. and the Battler, the title ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into the binnacle was preparing to go down the bridge steps when a cry from the Look-out made him wheel round. Suddenly, and as if evolved by magic from the blackness, the vague spectre of a vast ship shewed up ahead on the port bow making to cross their course. Thundering along under full canvas without lights and seemingly blind, she seemed only ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... apparent short-sightedness of the policy may surprise us; but Cecil was too reticent and self-controlled a man to let his reasons appear, and his words, in answer to his cousin's applications for his assistance, were always kind, encouraging, and vague. But we must judge by the event, and that makes it clear that Cecil did not care to see Bacon in high position. Nothing can account for Bacon's strange failure for so long a time to reach his due place in the public service but the secret hostility, whatever may have ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... own despatch, which is singularly literal and straightforward, that he had no wish, and did not even conceive it necessary, to excuse his disaster. But here again the estimate helps us little, owing to the vague use of the terms battalion and squadron. For the same reason we can but guess at the strength of the royal force. In the writings of the time Claverhouse's command is indiscriminately styled a regiment and a troop. It is certain that he was the responsible officer, ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the striking contrast formed by these different methods of proceeding would convince all Europe, that one court was guided by motives of jealousy, ambition, and avarice, and that the conduct of the other was founded on principles of honour, justice, and moderation; that the vague imputations contained in the king of England's declaration, had in reality no foundation; and the very manner in which they were set forth would prove their futility and falsehood; that the mention made of the works at Dunkirk, and the troop assembled on the coasts of the ocean, implied the most ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... riding toward home just when the shadows were beginning to grow long behind him, wondered if Jean would be back by the time he reached the ranch. He hoped so, with a vague distaste at finding the place empty of her cheerful presence. Be looked at his watch; it was nearly four o'clock. She ought to be home by half-past four or five, anyway. He glanced sidelong at Jim and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... with, and image the show Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know! Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... nature of Rameses was averse to every kind of dreaminess or self-absorption, and no one had ever seen him, even in hours of extreme weariness, give himself up to vague and melancholy brooding; but now he would often sit gazing at the ground in wrapt meditation, and start like an awakened sleeper when his reverie was disturbed by the requirements of the outer world around him. A hundred times before he had looked death ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dirt, so that the victim is impelled continually to wash the hands, fear of disease—especially such as syphilis—and a host of other fears, all of which are recognized as unreasonable, against which the victim struggles but vainly. Sometimes the fear is nameless, vague, undifferentiated, and comes on like a cloud with rapid heartbeat, faint feelings, and a sense of impending death. Sometimes the fear is related to something that has actually happened, as, fear of anything ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... now?" continued Folliot. He gave Glassdale a look which seemed to denote and imply several things. "It might be to your advantage to explain a bit, you know," he added. "One has to be a little—vague, eh?" ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... over his craft, In the vague white light of dawn, With God's calm will for his burning will, While ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... Aurelius's account of his Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it is that, in spite of the vices and foibles of individual Graeculi, the education of the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history leaves on the mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius: it is only from the private memoranda of his nephew that we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, virtuous man he was; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind less than his immortal ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a carcel lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held in his hands. As I entered, he started ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... that. Max Mainz was stirring unhappily now. These officers were talking above his head, even as they ignored him. He had a vague feeling that he was being defended by Captain Mauser, but he ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... thing" was he never said—perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. Bart had injured Lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage—he, perhaps, never formulated ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Christ?" "I will teach them to pray," was the answer. And surely this is the great distinction between the Christian and the heathen—the one has communion with his Father in heaven, an all-powerful, wise, and loving Friend; the other may cherish some vague belief and worship of an unknown God, but has neither love nor trust to carry him above ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... had engaged heretofore he had endeavoured to propitiate and turn away the malice of the evil spirit, rather than to worship the Good Spirit, in whom all Indians believe, but about whom he had very vague ideas until his visit to the Christian hunter's wigwam. Now, however, even before he skinned the bear, as the result of that visit, he prayed to that Good Spirit, the giver of all his blessings, and was grateful for his deliverance. ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... my head in my hands. Then I got up and walked the floor. I found that I was determined to see Mr. Thorold, and to see him as soon as possible. Yet I had no certain means of communicating with him. My determination was a vague determination, but it sprung from the necessity of the case. I must see Mr. Thorold. Both of us in Washington for a little while now, no foresight could tell when again we might be near each other. It might well be never. I would ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of great gratitude, from a sister of Fanny Morne." I suppose, by the way, this is one source of the satisfaction that some real mourners find in wearing mourning, as they say, "for the dead,"—a vague longing, like mine, after they have passed beyond human care, to do or sacrifice still something more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... converted into an inanimate mass of clay, when you left me alone on this inanimate theatre of death, my feelings underwent a sudden revolution; this moment seemed to age me a half a century, and without lessening my hatred, only left me a confused perception of it, with a vague memory full of disenchantment ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... was 'ware her looks beheld him Out of the mirror white; And at the window yearning arms she held him, Out of the vague and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... keen, Alfred Vargrave seem'd able To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind. A vigorous, various, versatile mind; A character wavering, fitful, uncertain, As the shadow that shakes o'er a luminous curtain, Vague, flitting, but on it forever impressing The shape of some substance at which you stand guessing: When you said, "All is worthless and weak here," behold! Into sight on a sudden there seem'd to unfold Great outlines of ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... personify mountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all our feelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly declares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued with life—however dim and vague the conception may be—and feel their character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. But while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... sky. Three hundred paces away the Gave rolls between marshaled banks, which it has covered with sand; in the midst of the waters may be seen the moss-grown piles of a ruined bridge. One is at ease here, and yet at the bottom of the heart a vague unrest is felt; the soul is softened and loses itself in melancholy and tender revery. Suddenly the clock strikes, and one is forced to go and prepare himself to eat his ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the world, but know Their ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... North Russia and gain their most loyal service in the expedition. Truth, not silence with its suspected acquiescence with British propaganda and methods of dealing with Russians; truth not rumors, truth, was needed; not vague ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... have vague charcoal sketches of Senator Hanway and John Harley; you may note as wide a difference between the two as lies between warclubs and poisons. And yet they fitted with each other like the halves of a shell. Also they were masters of intrigue; only ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... engraving that represents Queen Victoria in a flowing habit and the Prince in a double-breasted frock coat and a stock, on horseback, hung over the mantelpiece in his drawing-room. If the outer patriotism was a little vague, the inner had vigour enough. Canada was a great place. Mr Milburn had been born in the country, and had never "gone over" to England; Canada was good enough for him. He was born, one might say, in the manufacturing interest, and inherited the complacent and Conservative ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... whose descriptions are too vague; too general—little more than bald assertions. A letter from a vacuum cleaner manufacturing company trying to interest agents is filled with such statements as: "This is the best hand power machine ever manufactured," ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... its accuracy. You will meet with similar stories, implicitly believed, in every society you go into, varying in their circumstances—a ghost being sometimes put in the place of a dream, and sometimes a vague but strong mental impression, a foreboding only. But the common point exists in all, that all intimation of the death of an absent acquaintance has been in one or another way insinuated into the mind of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... was over; but a vague alarm had been created, which answered the purpose of the optimates. Caesar was at their mercy any day. They had sworn to maintain all his acts. They had sworn, after Cicero's speech, individually and collectively to defend his life. Caesar, whether he believed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Although he were a "woodcock," the thing must go on in its own natural course. If misfortunes did come, why misfortunes must come. It was the same thing with any soldier or any sailor. If she were to fall in love with some officer,—for the supposition in its vague, undefined form was admissible even to poor Ada's imagination,—she would not be debarred from marrying him merely by the fact that he would have to go to the wars. Of course, as regarded Captain Yorke Clayton, this was merely a speculation. He might be engaged to some other ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... supposed epoch of this alleged immigration must carry us back to the earliest ages; for, that the Incas were (as the greater number of inquirers into Peruvian history pretend) of Asiatic origin, is a mere vague hypothesis, unsupported by anything approximating to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the Iroquois arrived—false on one hand, and on the other vague. Soon after the captain and consul began their investigation they stumbled upon the vessel's papers, concealed in a manner which had hitherto baffled careful search. These showed that she was the missing Cayalti, which on the previous January 18th had cleared ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... trying to express vague thoughts which yet were most real to her, "everything seems to ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... some such feeling as that of which you speak, vague, but very strong, impels me to say what I am about to say ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a degree—At length, somewhat unconsciously, "I think not," she answered. "No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam's. You need not fear for me ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... In three strides he was standing over Antony Ferrara, fists clenched and his sinewy body tense in every fibre. His face was pale, as was apparent even in that vague light, and ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... they are for me, too—for what she considers my good. But all the same it makes an embarrassment. Happily Second Sight cannot speak as clearly as it sees, or, rather, as it understands. For the translation of the vague beliefs which it inculcates is both nebulous and uncertain—a sort of Delphic oracle which always says things which no one can make out at the time, but which can be afterwards read in any one of several ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone, perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young, and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs. Cardew heard the chimes, and over ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... indulged in and even the thoughts were fought against until the time mentioned above when other sex ideas were implanted. Janet's mother had neither given nor received confidences on this subject, and indeed never throughout the daughter's life has there been anything except vague warnings on the part of the mother about the general dangers ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... visitor to the island disposed of! There were no traces of other violence about it. It looked as though it had been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I stared at the little furry body came the difficulty of how the thing had been done. The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had seen the inhuman face of the man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among these unknown people. The thicket about ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... skylights it was impossible to see anything save a faint, ghostly white radiance representing the phosphorescent surface of the foaming sea, in the midst of which the hull of the yacht stood out black, vague, and shapeless, it being impossible to see the whole length of her because of the dense clouds ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... follow it. Then came a breeze from the river, to sing drearily through the trees. In the intervals, when the breeze was still, its absence seemed in some way, to stimulate the watchers' power of hearing, so that they could detect vague sounds which proceeded from the river. The creak of oars told of a late rower on the stream—a voice was wafted up to them, to be drowned in the sighing of the leaves set swaying by the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... hopes; in common souls 65 Hope is but vague and undefined, Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... music in her hand. The page was upside down—and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face. Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something wrong, and with a conviction that she would do ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... of five hundred yards, and stationing his infantry in the roads leading from the grove wherein their tents were pitched. The State troops were taken completely by surprise; for, although there had been vague reports current in camp of an intended attack from the arsenal, the cry of the visitors at the grove, 'They're coming!' 'They're coming!' raised just as the first column appeared in sight, found them strolling leisurely under the trees, chatting with their friends from the city, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a comparatively short time ago, I think it was after you were here the last time. There were some vague rumors afloat as to the credit of the bank, and your father, who did not believe them, took a few shares as a proof of his confidence in it, thinking, he said, that the fact that he did so might allay any ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to the officers who conveyed this intimation was distinctly unfavorable and even hostile. The two boats sent ashore found that the entrance to the river was effectually barred by a row of iron stakes and by an inner boom, and that a large and excited crowd forbade them to land. A vague promise was given that an opening would be made in the obstructions to admit the passage of the English ships; but on the boats repeating their visit on the succeeding day they found that the small passages had been more effectually secured, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his opponents it had fallen upon unheeding ears and incredulous minds. But now, at last, the country was beginning to wake up to the gravity of the crisis, and when he pointed to the 'irrepressible conflict' he was formulating, in clear words, a vague and unwilling belief that was creeping over every ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... intelligence, who proposed the flesh-soil for manure for turnips. The old Vicar, whose age reaches halfway back to the day of the Battle, stood tottering over the verge of the trench. Carlyle has shewn great sagacity in guessing at the localities from the vague descriptions of contemporaries: and his short pasticcio of the battle is the best I have seen. {137} But he will spoil all by making a demi- god of Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise that he brought about the very thing he fought to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and Lancashire men had to hoof it across the sun-baked desert. The troops were divided into three columns, each striking for a different point. They were bent on a combined scheme in which the "General Idea," "Special Idea," and other vague military ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... aeronauts were being hurried on at a speed of 70 miles a second, this vague aspect of the earth soon developed itself into definite outlines. Mountains and plains were no longer confused, the distinction between sea and shore was more plainly identified, and instead of being, as it were, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... old, too; but I hope God will spare me to see them before I die. My soldiers are nothing compared to a disciplined army, where thousands obey the command of one man." Evidently he still entertained some vague hope that the coming event might turn to his advantage, as on another occasion he said to Mr. Waldmeier, "We have a prophecy in our country that a European king will meet an Abyssinian one, and that afterwards a king will reign in Abyssinia ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... a man more or less astray in his wits, he wandered out either late or early, with the vague, aimless step of a dreamer, and stood about, staring vacantly. Leh Shin's shop attracted him, and he would squat on the ground either just outside the narrow entrance, or just within, and, with flaccid, dropping mouth, stare at the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be another disappointment; for we can attempt no more than merely to associate in one fraternity all who are afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistake in life is the chief condition of admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. We will assign to ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of other experiments which your committee has learned about which are here passed in silence. The accounts of them are vague, or the promised results of such slight importance as not to warrant cumbering with them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... be the reason of this barrenness, dryness, coldness, this complete inability to feel the influence of true music, and, in its presence, to forget any little vexation, any small jealous distress, or any mistaken personal notion? Could Mozart's astonishing gift for arithmetic serve us for a vague explanation? On the one hand, it seems that with him—whose nervous system was so excessively sensitive to any disturbing sound, whose heart beat with such overflowing sympathy—the ideal elements of music met and united to form a wondrous whole. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... me a sense of freedom, fearless and infinite. What was there to be afraid of anywhere? Even we little children could see the open door of our Father's house. We were playing around its threshold now, and we need never wander out of sight of it. The feeling was a vague one, but it was like a remembrance. The spacious mansions were not far away. They were my home. I had known them, and should return to ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Whenever you have had time to read through some of it, enough to judge by, I shall be very curious to hear your judgment. I have been able to read a page or two here and there, and have been interested and instructed by parts. But my vague impression is that too much space is given to methodical details, and I can find hardly any facts or detailed new views. The number of new words, to a man like myself, weak in his Greek, is something dreadful. He seems to have a passion for defining, I daresay very well, and for coining ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... ravines and gorges among them. It is certain that nothing approaching an accurate map can ever have been made of the mountains, and I should say that in most cases the indications that may have been given are very vague. They would no doubt have been sufficient for those who lived soon after the money was hidden, and were natives of that part of the country and thoroughly acquainted with all the surroundings, but when the information came to ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... got to his feet again, and went to the door to see what promise the night gave of being cloudless and to note the moon already pushing up above the jagged skyline where the trees stood upon the hill tops, she watched him with an interest that was not tinged with the vague suspicion of an hour ago. She saw that as he stood lounging in the doorway, his hands upon his hips, one shoulder against the rude door jamb, he had to stoop his head a little, and knew that he was a taller, bigger man than she had realized ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Lone?" she exclaimed, when she neared the vague figure of a man unsaddling a horse. "You didn't see Frank coming anywhere, did you? Dad won't have his supper until Frank comes with the things I sent ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... very little to me—the answers he gave were the most vague. I naturally inquired concerning his health first, he really looked so wretchedly broken down; and he said there was nothing the matter that he had been a little out of sorts lately, that was all. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... from command of the post and overshadowed by vague sense of official condemnation, was now, in hopeful imitation of the Homeric Achilles, sulking in his tent. Invited by Colonel Stone to appear at the office and give his counsel as to the matter, Captain Devers had replied ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... time confined myself to this vague plan, because it was sufficient to fill my imagination with agreeable objects, and my heart with sentiments in which it delighted. These fictions, by frequently presenting themselves, at length gained a consistence, and took in my mind a determined form. I then had an inclination ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the white-haired dame leads us to the Japanese Room. Had gentle-looking Princess Amalia some vague foreshadowing of the future in her mind when she planned these two rooms leading into one another? The Japanese decorations are more grotesque, the designs less cheerfully comical than those of cousin Chinaman. These monstrous, mis-shapen ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... nor geese appeared to engage him; his eyes were fixed upon me. The horse swerved so near that its long mane almost brushed against me. By an irresistible impulse I laid my ungloved hand upon it, but did not look at the rider. Carriage and horseman passed on, and William resumed his pace. A vague idea took possession of me that I had seen the horseman before on my various drives. I had a vision of a man galloping on a black horse out of the fog, and into it again. I was very sure, however, that ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... of popular demands for the control of corporations by the Government. Though the Republican leaders were much averse to providing such control, they found inaction so dangerous that on January 14, 1890, Senator John Sherman reported from the Finance Committee a vague but peremptory statute to make trade competition compulsory. This was the origin of the AntiTrust Law which has since gone by his name, although the law actually passed was framed by the Senate judiciary committee. The first section ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... expiration of a quarter of an hour he threw down the book, exclaiming, "How can any one read such silly stuffy. It is insipid and vapid; there is nothing in it. These are the dreams of a visionary! What is nature? The thing is vague and unmeaning. Men and passions are the subjects to write about—there is something there for study. These fellows are good for nothing under any government. I will, however, give them pensions, because I ought to do so, as Head of the State. They occupy and amuse the idle. I will make ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... goes through; only the victims know what that is. My ghost - the ghost of the Whampo Reach - the ghost of those sultry and miasmal nights, had no shape, no vaporous form; it was nothing but a presence, a vague amorphous dread. It may have floated with the swollen and putrid corpses which hourly came bobbing down the stream, but it never appeared; for there was nothing to appear. Still it might appear. I expected every instant through the night to see it in some inconceivable form. I ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... voyage for Kendric, and both to startle him and set him puzzling. He was out on deck in a steamer chair which he had had the lazy forethought to bring, his feet cocked up on the rail, his eyes on the vague expanse about him. There was no moon; the sky was starlit. Barlow had said "Good night" half an hour before; Philippine Charlie was muttering over the wheel; Nigger Ben's voice was crooning from the galley where he was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... is a science. That is the second thing to grasp. Yoga is a science, and not a vague, dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury, compose the romantic type which the delineator figures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the hotel is a street. But during my first delusion, of course, I assumed that he uncovered in this tiny temple merely because he was in church. There is something about the very word elevator that expresses a great deal of his vague but idealistic religion. Perhaps that flying chapel will eventually be ritualistically decorated like a chapel; possibly with a symbolic scheme of wings. Perhaps a brief religious service will be held in the elevator as it ascends; in a few well-chosen words touching the Utmost for ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it's what I would certainly have made it," answered Svidrigailov, with a vague smile. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hearkening thus, they both became aware Of distant bells that throbbed upon the air, A faint, insistent sound that rose and fell, A clamour vague that ominous did swell. As thus they stood, well hidden from the road, Footsteps they heard of feet that briskly strode. And, through the leaves, a small man they espied, Who came apace, a great sword by his side. Large bascinet upon his head he ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... was entertained splendidly; presents were made to him, which, being considerably in debt, he gladly accepted; but as regards his mission he was put off with evasions and blandishments, and he returned home with a reply from the king containing some vague promises of reform in financial and other matters, but an absolute refusal to modify the decrees against heresy. Rather would he sacrifice a hundred thousand lives, if he had them, than concede liberty of worship in any form. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... for a few minutes. There was a loud twittering of birds. A rabbit who had stolen carefully through the undergrowth scurried away. A car had come through the wood and swept past them, bringing with it some vague sense of disturbance. It was some little time before she settled down again to ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nowhere doth benignity, which comes In human form from heaven, so quickly gain An empire o'er the heart, as where a race, Gloomy and savage, full of life and power, Without external guidance, and oppress'd With vague forebodings, ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the Muse, to speak in the style of the last century. Even his intimates were ignorant of the fact that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, his Kasdah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in Western IndiaI am purposely vague in specifying the place. When so doing he held in hand the long and hoary honours of his chin with the points toward me, as if to say ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... company had not obtained as much money as had been hoped for in the last subscription, it anticipated great success in its trade, until vague rumors began to circulate that Admiral DeRuyter had been sent to Africa to undo the conquest made by Captain Holmes. In the last part of December, 1664, these rumors were confirmed. In a petition to the king of January 2, 1665[43], the company ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... one, particularly if war, or some such incident, intervenes to clarify the atmosphere and strengthen the understanding. Thus, in 1850, Free Joe represented not only a problem of large concern, but, in the watchful eyes of Hillsborough, he was the embodiment of that vague and mysterious danger that seemed to be forever lurking on the outskirts of slavery, ready to sound a shrill and ghostly signal in the impenetrable swamps, and steal forth under the midnight stars to murder, rapine, and pillage—a danger always threatening, ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... direction of her finger. He saw that she was staring at the black heart of the amber block; but when he looked he could see nothing but the vague, irregular ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... observe, much too vague in their specific differences, which are almost universally constituted by one or two particular marks, the rest of the description running in general terms. But our countryman, the excellent Mr. Ray, is the only describer ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... good in a situation of that sort, never any good at all. I ought to have assumed blank ignorance, but the man's eyes pleaded; it seemed a tremendous matter to him. I tried to be non-committal, and said: "Of course I haven't any right." But I had a vague, stupid sense that loyalty to Churchill demanded that I should back up a man he was backing. As a matter of fact, nothing so direct was a-gate, it couldn't have been. It was something about shares in one of de Mersch's other enterprises. Polehampton was going to pick them up for nothing, and ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... proposed to keep in Boston as small a garrison, supported by as small a fleet, as could safely be left, and to send the rest of the troops and ships to harry the coast. This proposition, if by the vague term of chastisement he meant the burning of defenceless towns, was unworthy of Burgoyne; but when later he proposed with this detached force to occupy Rhode Island, doubtless using Newport as a base, he outlined a plan which, if ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a dyke around the invision from within. And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being built up, girder by girder, around the vague spirit. Space, the physical space of savage shyness, is now on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... inserted a separate leaf, being the title of a distinct work, having the signature of "M. Jo. Knox," in 1581, probably the nephew of the Reformer, who became Minister of Melrose. It has no connexion with the volume in which it is preserved; but it led to some vague conjectures that the writer of the History itself may have been "the younger Mr. Knox, seeing the former died in the year 1572, and the other was alive nine years after;" or else, "that the latter Mr. Knox had perfected the work, pursuant to the order ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of respect and attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." This is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... State may not promise to pay a dollar, yet, wherever such paper money carries any purchasing power with it (which has very seldom happened, and then only for short periods), it will be found that there is a vague popular understanding that the State intends, at some time or other, to redeem the notes with value in coin to some amount. In the early cases of irredeemable money in our colonies, the income ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... when I shall be in urgent need of all the assistance which my officers can give me. I will say no more at present—except that I hope you will take the utmost care of yourself, and get quite well again as quickly as possible—for at present my information is too vague to permit me to make a definite statement. Meanwhile,"—putting his hand into his breast pocket and producing a long, official-looking document—"it affords me the utmost pleasure to hand you this, which is your appointment to the command ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... engraving after Landseer, showing a lonely stag paddling into a lake. The stag at eve had drunk or was about to drink his fill, and Cyril was copying him. He had already indicated a flight of birds in the middle distance; vague birds on the wing being easier than detailed stags, he ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... crime that once estranges from the virtues Doth make the memory of their features daily More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit Can have the passport to our confidence Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd, Who prize and seek the honest man but as A safer lock ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... forms of industrial grievance and of poverty has forced upon us a large mass of legislation which is sometimes called by the name of Socialistic Legislation. It is necessary to enter on a brief examination of the character of the various enactments included under this vague term, in order to ascertain the real nature of the remedy they seek ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... know how it is," said GORST, curiously regarding DON'T-KEIR HARDIE, and his eruption of correspondence, "but our friend, for whom I shall certainly vote, somehow reminds me of Mrs. Jellaby. The same earnestness of vague purpose, the same self-devotion to public questions, and the same large correspondence. I wouldn't be surprised, if you had the opportunity of examining our friend's hands, if you found them rather inked than horny. Still, I shall vote for him, and say something, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
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