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More "Wan" Quotes from Famous Books



... towards the end of vespers, she sent for him to come to her in a chapel that was in the cloister. He, knowing not who it was that sought him, went in all ignorance to the sternest battle in which he had ever been. When she saw him so pale and wan that she could hardly recognise him, yet filled with grace, in no whit less winning than of yore, Love made her stretch out her arms to embrace him, whilst her pity at seeing him in such a plight so enfeebled her heart, that she sank ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... one was reaching forwards, restlessly and vainly, to the future that was to be richer yet. Then the future became the happy present, and still one had leaned forward. How idle it all was! even while he waited and gazed, the light of evening was gone, the clouds were lustreless and wan, the sunset, that band of golden light, was flying softly, a girdle of beauty round the world; but the twilight and the night had their beauty too, their peace, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset' seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... camp with disappointment and dejection written on his face, he was met by Mrs. Graham, who had grown pale and wan with anxiety. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... door, ushering out a bleached man with a trickle of wan beard, and consoling him, "All right, Dad. Be careful about the sugar, and mind the diet I gave you. Gut the prescription filled, and come in and see me next week. Say, uh, better, uh, better not drink too much beer. All ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... That some immense calamity was nigh. They tell, that clashing arms 'mid the black clouds, And dreadful horns and trumpets in the heavens Sounded, to warn us of the impious deed. Full of solicitude the earth beheld The pale wan image of sad Phoebus' face. Torches were often seen 'mid heaven to glare; And from the clouds oft gory drops were shed. Blue Lucifer a dusky hue o'ercast; And Luna's car was sprinkled o'er with blood. Th' infernal owl in numerous places shriek'd, A direful omen! In a thousand ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... before thee, while the aid Of father's counsel is deep laid; And soon thy mother wan may find A last home there—and ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... to have found a martyr, pale and wan from the shock of the catastrophe which had befallen her, and, even amid the intoxication of his own great day, he was not easy as to how she might have taken his behavior on the fatal night. But here was some one, all joy, animation, and indulgence—a glorified Julie ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wringing them together from time to time, wringing till the compressed flesh became perfectly white. What could I do? I talked with her, as I saw she wished; her grey eyes had dark circles round them and a strange kind of dark light in them; her cheeks were flushed, but her lips were white and wan. I wondered that others did not read these signs as clearly as I did. But perhaps they did; I think, from what came afterwards, the minister did. Poor cousin Holman! she worshipped her husband; and the outward signs of his uneasiness were more patent to her ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... hardly support this humble reference to her judgment, from the wan face of the poor invalid, and taking her by the hand, whispered, "You shall do what you please." In a few ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... a recognition there, he stopped, endeavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old Philip came out of the room, and ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... and ev'ry door he shet,* *shut And window eke; and then this sorrowful man Upon his bedde's side adown him set, Full like a dead image, pale and wan, And in his breast the heaped woe began Out burst, and he to worken in this wise, In his woodness,* as I shall you devise.** ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... three men mysel' in my time, as you d' know; an' if either wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I'd ha' married three more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o' spoort. Catchin' fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for money, which ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... pleased. I observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and, with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and horses, even though I harnessed them myself, was the work of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... evidently was, had a meagre, wan, countenance; and a diminutive form. The servant had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... schoolhouse at Wrayth, where the buxom girl who had been assistant mistress, and had married, a year before, brought her first-born son to show the lord and lady—as he had been born on their wedding day, just a fortnight ago! She was pale and wan, but so ecstatically proud and happy looking; and Tristram at once said, they—he and Zara—must be the god-parents of her boy; and Zara held the crimson, crumpled atom for a moment, and then looked up and met her husband's eyes, and saw that they had filled with tears. And she returned the creature ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... of rare rapturous vision, Oh, purple, impalpable Cow, Do you browse in a Dream Field Elysian, Are you purpling pleasantly now? By the side of wan waves do you languish? Or in the lithe lush of the grove? While vainly I search in my ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... brave The Normans eftsoons fled awaie aghaste; And lefte behynde their bowe and asenglave. For fear of hym, in thilk a cowart haste. His garb sufficient were to move affryghte; 485 A wolf skin girded round his myddle was; A bear skyn, from Norwegians wan in fyghte, Was tytend round his shoulders by the claws: So Hercules, 'tis sunge, much like to him, Upon his sholder wore a lyon's ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... by a hundred shrines Glittering at the great Shwe's base Falls the sound of his feet mid lines Droned from the sacred Wisdom. Round and round where the idols gaze So pitiless on his pained distress He passes on, Pale-eyed and wan— A pariah like the ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... answered Mike, with something of a twinkle in his eye; "but I've left wan at Rocky Cottage," he added, turning ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... Denzil. "But what is Ugliness but a higher form of Beauty? You have to look deeper into it to see it; such vision is the priceless gift of the few. To me this wan desolation of sighing rain is lovely as ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... sat up, pale, but smiling in a wan fashion. "I am all right now," she said. "It was silly of me—let us go, dear," she added to the young girl; "I shall be better for the open air—I have had a headache all morning. * * * No, please, don't ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker

... thrown away; before many minutes were over Leah's wan face brightened a little, and her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... on—no crawling this time—to the clearing house, the Base. Past the little sun-washed villages it runs, and the gleaming Seine brings smiles to wan faces. There, look, over there in the distance, are the wonderful spires and the quaint houses and the river, all fresh and laughing in the sun, and the trees up on the hill above the town are all tender green. Even if ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... prepared to be proud of his successful son; and the mother, who had over and over again cautioned him not to overwork himself, was anxious to know that his health was good. She had but little fear as to his success; her fear was that he should come home thin, pale, and wan. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... on his temples, and encircled his bald forehead; his eyebrows were scarcely marked; his upper eyelid, flabby and overhanging, like the membrane which shades the eyes of reptiles, half concealed his small, sharp, black eye. His thin lips, absolutely colorless, were hardly distinguishable from the wan hue of his lean visage, with its pointed nose and chin; and this livid mask (deprived as it were of lips) appeared only the more singular, from its maintaining a death-like immobility. Had it not ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Kau. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... comforts, all was joy and congratulation. Her incurable disease was for the time forgotten; and although pain would occasionally draw down the muscles of her face, as soon as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation. Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing with the fashionable world, and talked of chaperoning Isabel to private parties and public amusements, when she was standing on the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed her attenuated ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... cook a pot of mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Mr. Brown, excitedly,—a flush overspreading his wan features. "Has the traitor been found?" Then with a profound sigh of disappointment, he ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel [4] which of old, Until the breaking ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become attached to Mr. Sleuth. A wan smile would sometimes light up his sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased—pleased and vaguely touched. In between those—those dreadful events outside, which filled her with such suspicion, such anguish and such suspense, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... higher, The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, That, balked, yet stands at bay. Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, And in her hand swings high o'erhead, Above the waste of war, The silver torch-light of the evening star Wherewith to search the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... little girl, spitefully. "Ey hate yo now warser than onny wan else. Ey hate yo because yo are neaw lunger my sister—becose yo 're a grand ledy's dowter, an a grand ledy yersel. Ey hate yo becose yung Ruchot Assheton loves yo—an becose yo ha better luck i' aw things than ey have, or con expect to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... sight, and weary of waiting, not without some fear that- -as the Negroes would have put it—'If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, amid the hospitality ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... to part with his niggers an the niggers didn' wan' to part with ol' master so they thought by comin to Arkansas they would have a chance to keep 'em. So they got on their way. We loaded up our wagons an put up our wagon sheet an we had plenty to eat an plenty of horse feed. We traveled bout 15 or 20 miles a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... where his daughter was already standing, the picture of deep despair, at his bed-side, the attack seemed intense, and we followed the directions left by the physician to assuage it. At length it seemed to subside, and he fell back exhausted on the pillow, his eyes were closed, and his countenance wan and livid. Apparently with corresponding misgivings, his daughter at one side of the bed and I at the other gazed for some time intently and in silence on his countenance, and then glanced with anxious inquiring looks ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... in an atmosphere of heaven, and longed for his eternal home. Only once after the arrival of Oowikapun and Astumastao did he have sufficient strength to go with them to the house of God. Every Indian within twenty miles of the sanctuary was there that bright Sabbath morning. Wan and pale and spiritual looked the saintly man who seemed to have just, by the strength of his will, kept the soul in the frail earthen vessel, that he might once again worship in the earthly sanctuary, ere he entered into that ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... robbed, so I went right up to him and I sed—look out mister, you air gittin' your pockits picked, wall sir, that durned cuss never sed a word and every body commenced to laff, and I looked round to see what they wuz a laffin' at, and it wan't no man at all, nothin' only a durned old wax figger. I never felt so durned foolish since the day I popped the question to Samantha. Wall then I looked round a spell longer, and thar wuz a feller what they called the human pin cushion, and he wuz stuck chock full ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... the housewife a young negro girl had been found who came daily to help a few hours, thereby giving to the household, according to Dutch ideas, a necessary air of completeness - then I saw upon Elsje's wan countenance and in her clear, dark-ringed eyes a light that shone out above all gloomy memories ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... Hector in a lamentable state. Instead of the bluff robust form, which but shortly before he had worn, his limbs were shrunk, his cheeks formerly of a high red were wan and hollow, his voice was gone, his lungs were affected, and his cough was incessant. He had himself at last begun to think his life in danger; and was preparing to return to town for advice: consequently our stay was short. His ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... home of Mme. Permon was almost the only resort of Buonaparte, who, though disillusioned, was still a Jacobin. Something like desperation appeared in his manner; the lack of proper food emaciated his frame, while uncertainty as to the future left its mark on his wan face and in his restless eyes. It was not astonishing, for his personal and family affairs were apparently hopeless. His brothers, like himself, had now been deprived of profitable employment; they, with him, might possibly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... much, the holy saint, What stranger sought the lonely isle, But seeing him weary and wan and faint St. Colum hailed him with ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... as Faithful and Loyal Duke. Eight years later he had conferred on him by letters patent the still more glorious title of Magnificent Prince and Pacificator. The Emperor Wen (A.D. 1330-3) of the Yuean dynasty added the appellation Warrior Prince and Civilizer, and, finally, the Emperor Wan Li of the Ming dynasty, in 1594, conferred on him the title of Faithful and Loyal Great Ti, Supporter of Heaven and Protector of the Kingdom. He thus became a god, a ti, and has ever since received worship as Kuan Ti or Wu Ti, the God of War. Temples (1600 State ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... A wan light played upon the heaving "graybacks" outside the mouth of the harbor. The wind whined among the pines which grew along the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... did not close my eyes all night, and was keenly alive to the faintest sounds, and every ripple of the water, and every murmur of the waves, broke distinctly on my ear. One thing I noticed and accepted as a happy omen; not a single shark now lingered round the raft. The wan- ing moon rose at a quarter to one, and through the feeble glimmer which she cast across the ocean, many and many a time I fancied I caught sight of the longed-for sail, lying only a few ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... I've got teu chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't ought to be kept no longer, and if he wan't to hum, I were ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... that silent shines, While care-untroubled mortals sleep! Thou seest a wretch who inly pines, And wanders here to wail and weep! With woe I nightly vigils keep, Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam, And mourn in lamentation deep How life and love are ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... hard That each Australian bard— Each wan, poetic card— With thoughts galvanic in His fiery soul alight, In wild aerial flight, Will sit him down ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... entered from under a heavy blue velvet curtain, and found himself in an atmosphere heavy with warmth and perfume, and strangely oppressed besides. On one side of the large fire sat the young Queen, faded, wan, and with all animation or energy departed, only gazing with a silent, wistful intentness at her husband. He was opposite to her in a pillowed chair, his feet on a stool, with a deadly white, padded, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... into the room, fully dressed, with tireless eyes but wan face,—Soto, the prototype of his master, the most perfect secretary and servant evolved through ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sun shines wan and pale, Chill blows the northern gale, And odd leaves shake and quiver on the tree, While I am left alone, Chilled as a mossy stone, And all the world is frowning ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... at the wan face only dimly visible in that prison-light, for the poor little man shrank back as he recognized the form of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... wan moon is setting behind the white wave, And time is setting with me, O! False friends, false love, farewell! for mair I'll ne'er ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... and he takes five hours to do it in; no more, and no less. P'r'a'ps I might get him up sooner if I used the whip; but how would you like any one to use a whip on you when you was picking apples or counting baskets of strawbys into a wan?" ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... sitting far back in the shadows of the church wearing such a look of sadness that she frightened me. It was not goodness but sorrow that had spiritualised her face. And to me she seemed a wan prisoner looking through the windows of her cell, despairing, like one who already knows his death sentence. "What if after all I am mistaken," I thought, "and there really is occasion for such ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... from his eyes went creeping down his face as the dawn-glow creeps down a mountain. Perhaps in a dream he had come upon the truth, or perhaps from the light of her soul. For he said with a faint, wan smile ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... hurt some," murmured Dan; "a good deal in my back, and a durned sight more in my feelin's. As if I wan't sufferin' a'ready the pangs of death—wus'n death!—a thinkin' about the master, and what's been done to him, arter he'd been so kind to me—and thinkin' he'd think I'm the ongratefulest cuss out of the bad place!—and then to have it all laid on to me by Stackridge ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... apologetically. "Jest wan't' say et them 'air guns er likely t' come handy here 'most any minute. Give us guns, 'n' we 'll ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... her towards the ladder up which Bellward and Nur-el-Din had already disappeared. At the top, he took the lead and conducted Barbara into the taproom. A single candle stood on the table, throwing a wan light into the room. Rass lay on his back in the centre of the floor, one hand doubled up under him, one ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... Edward kneels upon thy verdant grave, And calls upon thy name. The breeze that blows On his wan cheek will soon sweep over him In solemn music a funereal dirge, Wild and most sorrowful. His cheek is pale, The worm that prey'd upon thy youthful bloom It canker'd green on his. Now lost he stands, The ghost of what he ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... past 'leben," said Joan, looking at the clock. "I don't see how 'tis possible for 'em to venture in 'fore wan, 'less 'tis to Yallow Rock, and they'd hardly try that. What do 'ee say, Eve? Shall we run up out to cliff, top o' Talland lane, and see if us can see any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... her tearful eyes to his face with a look of something like relief: "knowing that, I begin to feel that it may be possible to forgive and forget, especially if the consequences do not prove lasting," she added with a sob, and turning her eyes to the little wan face on the pillow. "But I certainly take no delight in the severity of her punishment: in fact, I fear it may destroy any little affection she has ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley

... bed of straw and a torn blanket or two, in a corner of the dismal shanty, through which the cold winds swept, lay Tim, dying. The hectic flush was on his thin cheek, the glaze of death seemed in his eye. He reached his wan hand to Job. A lad of sixteen he was, but no more years of ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... men! Drag in those two drunken brute bastes," he cried, laying hold of Mullan's limp carcass. "Lug in wan of them water-jars. Stick their damned heads into that trough beyant. Now be lively. The whole gang'll be on us in less ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... a hard tone. But Israel Kafka's eyes grew dark and the sombre fire beamed in them as he spoke again. The weary, tortured smile left his wan lips, and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... d—d fire-eatin' 'ristocrat,' said a long, lean, bushy-haired, be-whiskered individual who was standing near the counter: 'ef ye wan't ter fight, I'll 'tend to yer case to onst. Let him go, boys,' he continued as he stepped toward the Colonel, and parted the crowd that had gathered around him: 'give him the shootin'-iron, and let's see ef he'll take a man ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... knows me!" he snarled. "He knows me mighty well! Pard, you keep your nose out of this, d'you see! You mind your own business. I wan't goin' to hurt ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... who linger—follow The phantom pale and wan. O'er hill and dale, and rill and vale It slowly ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... falls dark, save for the glimmer of the lamp beneath which he stands. But as his song ends, the dawn breaks over the houses, the lamp goes out—THE WINE HORN becomes shadow. Then from the doorway of the Inn, in the shrill grey light SEELCHEN comes forth. She is pale, as if wan with living; her eyes like pitch against the powdery ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... crept away. Every face soon blanched with terror at the common enemy. Wretched women feebly tried to help crying children, though too ill to move themselves; others threw them down anywhere, to be able to escape in time for the threatened paroxysm; all were groaning, wan and miserable, railing at the poor, wearied stewardess, calling her here, there, and everywhere at the same time, and threatening her as if she were the sole cause of their woe. About midnight, our course being altered, "Richard ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... house was thronged with visitors, eager to hear the story which was agitating the whole community, but about midnight I told my friends that rest was a necessity, for never in my life was I so thoroughly exhausted from talking; but, as the next day wan-the Sabbath, I would in the evening meet all who chose to come in the Valley School-house (at that day the largest in the county) and tell them the whole story, and save repeating it so ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... moving with unexpected power, and only the hunter himself could tire her out. As for him, he was not happy unless he was working, and at times he made the screw spin again under his fierce strokes, whenever his eyes fell on the wan faces of his young companions stewing in the insufferable heat. He shortened the journey by twenty-four hours, for on the afternoon of the fourth day the woman, for the first time, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... we know that tears are vain, That Death nor heeds nor hears distress: Will this unteach us to complain? Or make one mourner weep the less? And thou—who tell'st me to forget, Thy looks are wan, thine eyes ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... Techelles! no, for I shall die. See, where my slave, the ugly monster Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart, Who flies away at every glance I give, And, when I look away, comes stealing on!— Villain, away, and hie thee to the field! I and mine army come to load thy back With souls of thousand mangled carcasses.— Look, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... Suddenly aware that his lips were dry, he poured himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table; the drink was lukewarm and sweetish to the taste. Nauseated, he turned his head away from the glass, and found himself facing his image in the mirror upon the chest of drawers. A wan, aging countenance with dishevelled hair stared back at him. In a self-tormenting mood he allowed the corners of his mouth to droop as if he were playing the part of pantaloon on the stage; disarranged his hair yet more wildly; put out his tongue at his own image ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... the face of the earth. Great grey clouds with haloes of lurid pearl and pale-green were coming up from the plains or the sea and spreading over the towers of the city. In the middle of the moving mass of grey vapours was a splash of paler vapour; a wan white cloud whose white seemed somehow more ominous than gloom. It went over the high citadel like a white wild goose flying; and ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... time 'nother fella tchausey belonga Jimmy. He wan make Jimmy shout. Jimmy no wan shout for that boy. They ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... his room for hours, fighting the hardest battle he had ever fought. It was the first time he had ever been tempted to marry—tempted beyond endurance. And, at last, ashen pale, in the wan morning light, and with set teeth, he took his final oath and resolve. He would save himself years of wretchedness by a month's anguish; he would not go near her, nor see her again. He was not entirely selfish; he did not forget that she might, nay, would suffer, but he said, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... she whispered; "you've never faded a bit, and it's been such a long time—oh, an awful long time!" She sighed deeply; her little face looked wan ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... that am leaving you forever. Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid the world ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... 'a come by the stream at the back of the house, and vanished the same way," muttered the stranger; "but whoever she was, she wan't no good! What with her, and the old ghost that some says shrieks around the house o' nights nobody'd get me inside! I wish ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... capital. And being hungry certainly made pathetic his prediction that some among those present would one day wear the medal for twenty-five years of faithful service to the Empire. Being hungry took the poet-hero's glow out of his wan cheek as he declared again that he, a Hapsburg, would never desert, for even then he heard Imperialist platoons shooting recaptured deserters. Or he thought of the wounded left to die on the grassy plain and lying there ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... depression of spirits that she could only travel to her new place of detention in a litter and under the care of a physician. On reaching Highgate she had become unfit to proceed, her pulse weak, her countenance pale and wan. The doctor left her there and returned to town, where he reported to the king that the lady was too sick ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the President without having my cooperation and support. When we arrived at the President's drawing room I found him fully dressed and seated in his chair. With great difficulty he was able to articulate. His face was pale and wan. One side of it had fallen, and his condition was indeed pitiful to behold. Quickly I reached the same conclusion as that of Doctor Grayson, as to the necessity for the immediate cancellation of the trip, for to continue it, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... is no longer unknown to Parisians. Every year at Colonne's or Chevillard's we see his tall, thin silhouette reappear in the conductor's desk. There he is with his abrupt and imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a child's, a moustache so fair that it is nearly white, and curly hair growing like a crown above his ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... said Wan Lun, remembering. "It has been said that they not only do not inform others of the fact of treatment but frequently do not inform the man under treatment but seem to be only a new friend until—poof." He smiled. "I think the guild name is ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... him at once, and, when I sent for him afterwards and inquired after my friends at Polreen, his first words were, 'There now—I wasn' so far wrong, after all! I knawed you must be mixed up with these things, wan ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and lay stretched on the ground. He looked bloodless and wan, the grizzled beard not able to hide the thinness of his face. The healthful vigor he had found on the prairie had left him, each day's march claiming a dole from his hoarded store of strength. He knew—no one else—that he had never recovered the vitality ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... Princess answered: "Go, dear swan, and tell This same to Nala;" and the egg-born said, "I go"—and flew; and told the Prince of all. But Damayanti, having heard the bird, Lived fancy-free no more; by Nala's side Her soul dwelt, while she sat at home distraught, Mournful and wan, sighing the hours away, With eyes upcast, and passion-laden looks; So that, eftsoons, her limbs failed, and her mind— With love o'erweighted—found no rest in sleep, No grace in company, no joy at feasts. Nor night nor day brought ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... are all past over Of our dreaming, dreams that hover In a mist of fair false things: Night's afloat on wide wan wings." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... alighted. hire her] her hair. lossum] lovesome. loh] laughed. bote he] unless she. buen] be. make] mate. feye] like to die. nihtes] at night. wende] turn. for-thi] on that account. wonges waxeth won] cheeks grow wan. levedi] lady. y-lent me on] arrived to me. so wyter mon] so wise a man. swyre] neck. may] maid. for-wake] worn out with vigils. so water in wore] as water in a weir. reve] rob. y-yerned yore] long been distressed. tholien] to endure. geynest under ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... "I shud think he had been here, wid his dommed old stove-pipe demolisher. Be jabbers! he got a good whack over the head wid me mop-stick to pay for his flabbergasted stubbornness. And I think he'll have to sell more nor wan of thim pesky wire flumadoodles before he can replace the ould plug hat, which yez'll foind layin' theer in ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... shewed them. He had been three months in the Orthopaedic Hospital, she told Delia. The legs twisted with rickets had been broken and set twice, and now he was "doing fine." She set him down, and made him walk. "I never thought to see him do that!" she said, her wan face shining. "And it's all his doing—" she pointed to ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "I know it wan't manners, but it came out 'fore I thought, and Harney, he hits me a cuff, and tells me to hush my jaw. He got paid, though, for jes' then a voice I hadn't hearn afore, a wee voice like a girl's, calls out ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... in German made a change. The wan face waked up a little and looked astonished at the speaker. Rollo seated her; then poured out himself a cup of Gyda's coffee, creamed and sugared it duly, and offered it to the girl with the observance ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... M. C. E. Bonin, in July 1896; he was then on the banks of the Yellow River in the northern part of the Ordo country, which is exclusively inhabited by nomadic and pastoral Mongols, forming seven tribes or hords, Djungar, Talat, Wan, Ottok, Djassak, Wushun and Hangkin, among which are eastward the Djungar and in the centre the Wan; according to their own tradition, these tribes descend from the seven armies encamped in the country at the time of Chinghiz's death; the King of Djungar was 67 years of age, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... appeared in the doorway, the woman stopped her machine and the children set up a howl of pleasure. "Sammy! Ikey!" cried the woman, smiling a wan welcome, as the babies crept and toddled toward the newcomers. "Where ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... be afraid Of Death, but be prepared to meet him. Look; Here is your mother's brother; he to her As Reginald to Eve.' His thin voice shook.— 'Eve was your Mother's name.' His words did err, As dreaming; and his wan lips ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... and truly dear to him. What to him were the sweet flowers that there grew in such happy luxuriance and heedless beauty? Alas, the flower that to his mind was fairer than them all, was blighted, and in the wan cheek of her whom he loved, he sighed to see the lily usurping the place ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... were told of inland seas Like sullen oceans, salt and dead, And sandy deserts, white and wan, Where never trod the foot of man, Nor bird went winging overhead, Nor ever stirred a gracious breeze To wake the silence with its breath — A land of loneliness ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... not see the shirt. Now he would be disdained no longer! For a moment he ran to and fro and breathed the air; then he got upon the scent, and ran at a breathless gallop toward the sea-dunes, where the young folk of the town played late into the summer night that lay over the wan sea. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the king went dark. He looked from the cruel insolent face of the black knight to the wan beseeching face of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... "I wan't never in 'em afore, and wouldn't be now, only my son Dan'el's wife's took oncommon bad, and he ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... by his originality, you will either stuff your fingers into your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a monstrous pipe! Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... next met Dawn he was greatly dejected. She thought he appeared too old and wan for one of his years. The brow on which the light of hope and life should repose, was indeed wrinkled, and furrowed with unrest because the spirit was ill at ease. There was a claim upon him, a voice calling for retribution, which through the very law of life, aside from personal ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... companions call him "The Prince!" Yet another. This little girl's mother is to-day a celebrated beauty—and her next-door diner was farmed out and insured. When fourteen months old the child only weighed fourteen pounds. Every child is a picture—the wan cheeks are no more, a rosy hue and healthy flush are ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... thought she looked tired. She had put on the low-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress which the Mingott ceremonial exacted on the most informal occasions, and had built her fair hair into its usual accumulated coils; and her face, in contrast, was wan and almost faded. But she shone on him with her usual tenderness, and her eyes had kept the blue dazzle of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... either side of the camp, to right and left, walking back and forth, and he knew also that they would watch well. Time passed. The night darkened and then a wan moon came out, casting a ghostly, gray shadow over the measureless black forest. The great stars, pale and cold, danced in a dusky blue. Faint moans came out of the depths of the wilderness, as a stray wind ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... has since died under mournful circumstances. His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of a courageous little review, La Jeune France, which he maintained for some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the Comedie Humaine. I can see him yet, a feverish fellow, wan and haggard, but with his face always lit up by enthusiasm, stopping me in a theatre lobby to tell me about a plan of M. Cerfberr's; and almost immediately we discovered that the same plan had been conceived by M. Christophe. The latter had already prepared a cabinet of pigeon-holes, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... The young lady was sitting with her hand between the leaves of a Bible, and a disturbed, far-away look in her eyes, which might have been the questioning of a troubled conscience, or—of a very different feeling. She roused up as Mrs. Dallas came to her, and put on a somewhat wan smile. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows. Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning: no colour tinged the east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. The breath of this morning was chill as its aspect; a raw wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, and showed, as it slowly rose, leaving a colourless, silver-gleaming ring all round the horizon, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... burning. Heavy clouds of smoke went up from them in the still, pure atmosphere, like aerial columns, while the flames, paling in the beams of the morning sun, flew up through the reek as though striving to rise above it, with wan and changeful gleams of red and yellow, now curling down, and now writhing upward like snakes. Of all these fires there was not one from which the smoke did not mount straight to heaven, though each burned to a different ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the attention of the grand inquisitor on the present occasion was that of the Jew Isaachar ben Solomon. The old man was indeed a miserable spectacle. His garments hung loosely about his wasted and attenuated form—his countenance was wan and ghastly—but the fire of his eyes was not altogether quenched. He was heavily chained—and, as he walked between the two familiars who led him into the tribunal, he could scarcely drag himself along. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... ye can go?" he shouted. "Make haste! Make haste! 'Tis an ixpriss company ye are workin' fer, an' not a cimitery. T' look at ye wan w'u'd think ye ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler

... I zaid, would do to deck Thy heaeir; the white would match thy neck; The red would meaeke thy red cheaek wan A-thinken o' the gi'er gone; The green would show thee to be true; But still I'd sooner zee the blue, Because 'twer he that deck'd thy heaeir When vu'st I walk'd ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... dress, the deep green of the coat making ruddier the embrowned flesh of sturdy Joseph of Arimathea, the rich shot crimson of Nicodemus's garment, relieved with green and brown, the chilling white of the cloth which supports the wan limbs of Christ, the blue of the Virgin's robe, combine less to produce the impression of great pictorial magnificence than to heighten that of solemn pathos, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... "don't ye wish ye wos up to the knees and elbows in the goolden sands already? Faix I'd give a month's pay to have wan day at the diggin's." ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... following evening, and gave her a little more. For three days after he pursued the same course, and, further than courtesy demanded, he was not answered a word. On the fourth night he found the face turned. A pitiful face, whose aspect went to his heart—wan, white, haggard, unutterably pathetic. That night he read the fourteenth chapter of Saint John's Gospel, and added few words of his own. On leaving her, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... crowd of men and women and children had come into the market place, eager to learn what cause the judges were about to try. When they saw the horse, all stood still in wonder. Then every one was ready to tell how they had seen him wan-der-ing on the hills, unfed, un-cared for, while his master sat at home counting his bags ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin

... evidence to the deep nature of his studies, and to the exertion which merited repose. The girl sighed as she looked at the surrounding chaos; she took one hand gently and unresistingly on his part from his face, and pressed it to her own. While she gazed fondly upon the pale; wan countenance which it had concealed, it seemed, alas! to dawn slowly upon her that this confused heap of material was but an indication of ideas equally disturbed, and energies as broken. To whom had she wedded herself? To a man whose whole soul was absorbed in one idea, and that ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... of mats. She was clothed; her head was adorned with a wreath of coral, and her arms and ankles with strings of beads. She struck me at once as being very beautiful, though, as I saw her nearer, I perceived that her eye had lost its lustre, and that her face was wan and emaciated. The canoe was a very large one, capable of carrying a hundred and fifty people, though not more than sixty were on board, and of that number nearly half lay dead or dying on the deck. It was easy to divine what had become of the rest. The young ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... mother's room, listening to the reproaches that were heaped upon her without stint; but as no reply was given to them, Mrs. Sherwood looked at her intently, and something in the mother's heart brought to her attention the wan, white face of her daughter. She had not noticed that Dexie looked so worn and thin, and for a ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... which the emperor had applied to his brother corresponded but little to the appearance of the Archduke Charles. His small, bent form, with its weak, shrivelled limbs, was not the form of a hero; his pale, wan face, with the hollow cheeks; the dim eyes deeply imbedded in their sockets, and the clouded brow, on which thin tufts of hair hung down, was not the face of a bold captain, confident of achieving brilliant triumphs by his heroic deeds, and deserving of the name of the hope and consolation ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... Anybody would have guessed Miss to have been bred up under the influence of a cruel stepdame, and John to be the fondling of a tender mother. John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter; Miss looked pale and wan, as if she had the green sickness; and no wonder, for John was the darling: he had all the good bits, was crammed with good pullet, chicken, pig, goose, and capon; while Miss had only a little oatmeal and water, or a dry crust without butter. John ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... to do evil and to forget. A brawler and a swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I.' Kim bit back a smile. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man—a long time ago—I did pilgrimage to Guru Ch'wan among the poplars' (he pointed Bhotanwards), 'where ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... resident here a strange, resistant, capable force that ruled men—the subtlety with which he knew how to feed cupidity with hope and gain and the ruthlessness with which he repaid those who said him nay. He was a still man, as such a man might well have been—feeble and fish-like in his handshake, wan and slightly lackadaisical in his smile, but speaking always with eyes that answered for ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... been somewhat shadowy and wan, had always been slight and slim and small. But was she always as wan and slight as she now seemed? or did he observe it the more from the contrast it presented to Cherry's blooming beauty, to which his eyes had grown ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... West early in May for his annual inspection trip, Isabelle moved to the Farm for the season. She was wan and listless. She had talked of going abroad with Vickers, but had suddenly given up the plan. A box of books arrived with her, and she announced to Vickers that she meant to read Italian with him; she must do something to ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... effort, spasmodic aims, these give the quality of all my Bromstead memories. The crowning one of them all rises to desolating tragedy. I remember now the wan spring sunshine of that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes and aggressive cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother returned from church to find my father dead. He had been pruning the grape vine. He had never had a ladder long enough to reach the sill of the third-floor windows—at ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... of dreams. They had left him now too wan and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond. He knew ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... answer for your character (as I believe I can)," she went on with a wan, almost wistful smile, "he is ready ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... women, weeping, Sit ranged in many a length'ning row; Their heedless locks, dishevelled, sweeping Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe. No festive sounds that peal along, Their mournful dirge can overwhelm; Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song, Commingled, wails the ruined realm. "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said: "From home afar behold us torn, By foreign lords as ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... presentiment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if drawn by ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac

... the man, with a tremendous oath—"haven't they? LOOK HERE!" A glance was enough. Crawley turned wan and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her, but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn fringe upon the coverlet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... away in the dissert somewheres,' he is wont to say, 'I don't rightly remimber where, for my brain's no better than a sive at geagraphy, but it was a wild place, anyhow—bad luck to it! Well, we had sot up a line o' telegraph in it, an' wan the posts was stuck in the ground not far from a pool o' wather where the wild bastes was used to dhrink of a night, an' they tuk a mighty likin' to this post, which they scrubbed an' scraped at till they broke it agin an' agin. Och! it's me heart ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... him a wan little smile, and went into the house. Gifford stood in the sunshine, with the roses and the white phlox, and looked after her retreating figure. But in spite of his heartache, he would not leave the flowers ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... deep breath. "It is true that I do not know. And I am—afraid." A wan little smile that was more piteous than tears curved her lips: for "afraid" seemed strange coming from her, the fearless child of the hills and dales. "If—if I said 'yes'—Ah, but I do not!" she broke off as he made to draw her to him, and she shrank back. "I do not! I said 'if,' it would ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... find an answer to this immensely comprehensive question, an apparition advanced towards me, out of a dark corner of the kitchen. A wan, wild, haggard girl, with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce keenness in her eyes, came limping up on a crutch to the table at which I was sitting, and looked at me as if I was an object ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... weird wan moonlight, King led them forward, straight up the narrowing gorge, between cliffs that seemed to fray the very bosom of the sky. He smoked a cigar and stared at the view, as if be were off to the mountains for a month's sport with dependable shikarris whom he knew. Nobody could ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... and this applies not alone to Calcutta, but to all parts of the country. Until their sixth year, children apparently retain their health and the ruddy color of the race, but, soon after that age, they grow pale and wan, the listlessness of a premature decay setting in, or some mysterious blight steals over them. Thus, without the symptoms of any fixed disease, they droop and pine, like exotic plants. Nothing but a return to England, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... face. And then when at length I did look at her, I could not tear myself away from such a sorrowful object of contemplation. She was no longer the little pink and white child I had seen in the Champs-Elysees; she had grown taller and thinner, and her face was wan as a waxen taper. Her languid eyes were encircled with blue rings. And her temples . . . what invisible hand had laid those two sad ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... by the young Sheridan and some other Irish adherents, arrived in Lochnannach; and on the twentieth day of September, this unfortunate prince embarked in the habit which he wore for disguise. His eye was hollow, his visage wan, and his constitution greatly impaired by famine and fatigue. He was accompanied by Cameron of Lochiel and his brother, with a few other exiles. They set sail for France, and after having passed unseen, by means of a thick fog, through a British squadron ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... looked roun no moren if I wan't there, an I cut my eyes roun to see if there is somebody I can holler to for help. When I looked back he was gone; gone, like dat, without makin a sound. Den I knowed he be a hant, an de nex day when ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... were now awake, and sitting up in bed, with little tables before them, which they could slide up and down as they wished along the sides of their cots. There was no sign of medicine, and nothing painful to see, except the wan faces of the children themselves. But Oliver and Dolly had no eyes but for Tony, and they hurried on to the corner where he was lying. His face was very white, and his eyelids were closed, and his lips drawn in as if he were still in pain. But at the very gentle and almost frightened ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... They were steadily drifting back to the commonplace. Whilst she stitched together some muslin strips he knocked the head off a bottle of brandy. They each drank a small quantity, and the generous spirit brought color to their wan cheeks. The sailor showed Iris how to fasten a bandage by twisting the muslin round the upper part of his boot. For the first time she saw the cut ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... with all my soul," she said. "I will never let you give me up; and as to forgetting, I might die, but I could never forget. Care for Ralph Go wan! I love you, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Cronos' Son, when storm is rolling up, Herdeth together through the welkin wide. Swiftly the whole plain filled. Onward they streamed Like harvest-ravaging locusts drifting on In fashion of heavy-brooding rain-clouds o'er Wide plains of earth, an irresistible host Bringing wan famine on the sons of men; So in their might and multitude they went. The city streets were all too strait for them Marching: upsoared ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... fearful sight—this man, thin, wan, naked, and bleeding, who seemed to have risen from the grave to revenge the sufferings of his life. His countenance was ghastly pale, his hair lying in matted locks on his neck; and the long beard, covering the lower part of his face, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... you would not have spoken to save me,— Yes,—for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the sinners." Spake and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,— Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting, Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow. Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless incredulous mocking. Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle, Dwelling on her, where she knelt by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... offered a wan, appealing shadow of a smile. "I confess to a certain degree of weariness ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... too ill to bear anything more that night, and when Esther went into the sickroom the next day she could hardly recognise her bonnie, smiling sister in the pale, bandaged face on the pillow, so drawn with pain, so dark about the eyes, so wan and changed in even ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man; Over the surging sea, with a whitening south wind wan, Through the foam of the firth, man makes his perilous way; And the eldest of deities Earth that knows not toil nor decay Ever he furrows and scores, as his team, year in year out, With breed of the yoked ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... womanhood, her motherhood in its degradation! All the holier part of what was once herself; all that was true and noble, womanly and pure, from the deep waters of oblivion to which that damning appetite has consigned them, rise to haunt her now, pale, wan, and spectre-like. Oh! to sit down, side by side with her former self; to see herself as she used to be before the tempter crept into the Eden of her heart; to look despairingly up to the height whence she had fallen, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... night Helen Armstrong has had no sleep; and now, in the pale moonlight of the morning, her cheeks show white and wan, while a dark shadow broods upon her brow, and her eyes glisten with wild unnatural light, as one in a raging fever. Absorbed in thought, she takes no heed of anything along the road; and scarce makes answer to an occasional observation addressed to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... now in motley clad, Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad, That some condoled with him as with a brother Who, having lost a wife, had got another. Others, mistaking his profession, often Approached him to be measured for a coffin. For years this highborn jester never broke The silence—he was pondering a joke. At last, one day, in cap-and-bells ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... the Doctrine of the Mean and the Great Learning were preserved. No text of these Books was given, and Hsi-ho tells us that in the reign of Chia- ching [1], the most flourishing period of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1522-1566), when Wang Wan-ch'ang [2] published a copy of the Great Learning, taken from the T'ang edition of the Thirteen Ching, all the officers and scholars looked at one another in astonishment, and were inclined to supposed that the Work was a forgery. Besides ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge

... oppressed brow. Mary thought it would be hard to define where was that difference. It was not want of bloom, for of that Laura had more than any of the others, fresh, healthy, and bright, while Amy was always rather pale, and Lady Eveleen was positively wan and faded by London and late hours; nor was it loss of animation, for Laura talked and laughed with interest and eagerness; nor was it thought, for little Amy, when at rest, wore a meditative, pensive countenance; but there was something either added ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "I have earned twenty dollars, and we shall have a Christmas dinner, and you shall have a drum, too." As she said this she caught the little fellow in her arms and kissed him and pressed his wan cheek ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... of straw and a torn blanket or two, in a corner of the dismal shanty, through which the cold winds swept, lay Tim, dying. The hectic flush was on his thin cheek, the glaze of death seemed in his eye. He reached his wan hand to Job. A lad of sixteen he was, but no more years of life were ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... icy fetters lie! See black Suspicion bend his gloomy brow, The hideous image of himself to view! And fond Belief, with all a lover's flame, Sink in those arms that point his head with shame! 40 There wan Dejection, faltering as he goes, In shades and silence vainly seeks repose; Musing through pathless wilds, consumes the day, Then lost in darkness weeps the hours away. Here the gay crowd of Luxury advance, Some ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... he found in the disease preying upon him. He must have been far gone in consumption when I first knew him, for I have no recollection of a time when his voice was not faint and husky, his sweet smile wan, and his blue eyes dull with the disease that wasted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the 'beautiful' sermon that Mr. Perley preached at the last 'Come-Outers'' meetin'. That was what started me thinkin' about the grave, I guess. Then she pitched into Seth Wingate's wife for havin' a new bunnit this season when the old one wan't ha'f wore out. She talked for ten minutes or so on that, and then she begun about Parker's bein' let go over at the cable station and about the new feller that's been signed to take his place. She's all for Parker. Says he was a 'perfectly lovely' man and that 'twas outrageous the way he was ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... hope for the best, for whatever God wills is sure to happen, and His will is surely the best! Yes, Herbert, I also hope—beyond the grave!" said Marah Rocke, with a wan smile. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... I will, chile! But, w'at you wan' it fer?" answered Aunt Connie, smiling down at the little girl whom ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... he was speechless, ghastly, wan Like him of whom the story ran Who spoke the spectre hound ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... child—only a child—living in the shadow of some great sorrow, which, though I did not know it, had pressed close upon us. There flashed before me a vision of my mother lying wan and white on the pillows. And I turned on my face ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... diaphanous, almost fluid red—those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read each other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene's part, sombre and threatening on her mother's. At once Helene's eyes were lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought too ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... be 'Old Dog Tray,' because it begins wid a lovely howl. Remimber now, when I hit this gong that's the signal for yez to begin, and ye'll all come together wid wan smash. Then the band will play a bar or two, and then every man Jack o' ye will go strong on the chorus. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... at a glance, and turning to me said, in a low tone, that she would not live through the night, that she was literally worn out. As low as he spoke, she overheard him. She clasped her bony hands exultantly, her poor wan face gleamed with joy, and she burst out in her thin, weak voice, into the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Featherloom and not enough foolishness." He came over and put a gentle hand on his wife's shoulder, a thing strictly against the rules during business hours. And Emma not only permitted it but reached over and covered his hand with her own. "You're tired, and you're a wee bit nervous; so g'wan," said T. A., ever so gently, and kissed his wife, "g'wan; get out ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... and forwards before the distempered sight—A yawning, gaping, stretching out of the arms, twitching of the nerves, sneezing, drowsiness, and contraction of the breast—Dulness, debility, distress, and dismay, with a great sense of weariness—A wan complexion, a languid eye, a loathing stomach, and an uncertain appetite, which, if not immediately satisfied, is irremediably lost—Heartburning, bilious vomitings, belchings, pains in the pit of the stomach, and shortness of breath—Dizziness, inveterate ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel [4] which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... the morning. Thick-coming fancies, for which there was more than good reason, had disturbed him only too successfully, and he was as full of apprehension as one who has a league with Mephistopheles. Charlotte told him nothing of what made her likewise so wan and anxious, but drove off to the castle, as had been planned, about nine o'clock, leaving her brother and his friend ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... palls of curling smoke rose white and yellow, to turn back as the monuments met their crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the stars. It was such a light as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and shadowy under the wild and vivid light of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... His face was wan and drawn with anguish, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken, heavy and lusterless; his form was bowed, his steps feeble ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... into renewed vigor, to cast out the obstructions, and infuse a new vitality into the blend. Now look again—the roses blossom on her cheek, and where lately sorrow sat joy bursts from every feature. See the sweet infant wasted with worms. Its wan, sickly features tell you without disguise, and painfully distinct, that they are eating its life away. Its pinched-up nose and ears and restless sleepings tell the dreadful truth in language which every mother knows. Give it the PILLS in large doses to sweep these vile ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... we gaed, And raised the slogan ane and a', And cut a hole through a sheet of lead, And so we wan ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... Mr. David's? To-night being yer Sabbath, you'll be blowing out yer bedroom candle, though ye won't light it; Mr. David'll light his and blow it out too; and the misthress won't even touch the candleshtick. There's three religions in this house, not wan. ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... also conveyed to her room, laughing and crying in turns beyond control. Zell still knelt over her father, sobbing passionately, while Edith, with her large eyes dilated with fear, and her cheeks in wan contrast with the sunset glow they had worn all the evening, maintained her presence of mind, and asked Mr. Goulden, Mr. Van Dam, and Gus Elliot, to carry her father to his room. They, much pleased in thus being singled out as special friends of the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair, straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the lashes upon her wan cheeks. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... received were not capable of lessening the anguish of his mind, which kept his body so weak, that tho' youth and an excellent constitution threw off the fever in a short time, yet he was unable to quit his chamber in near three weeks, and when he did, appeared so wan and so dejected, that he seemed no more than the shadow of the once gay and ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... Cecilia Dallison, "whose nose is so unpleasant. I don't really think I—" and she felt for a penny in her little bag. Standing beside the "poor old creature" was a woman clothed in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque which had once known a better head. The wan remains of a little bit of fur lay round her throat. She had a thin face, not without refinement, mild, very clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black hair. Beside her was a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby. Mrs. Dallison held out two-pence ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... said his Lordship, 'I thought evewebody had seen the new mail-cart; it's the neatest, pwettiest, gwacefullest thing that ever wan upon wheels. Painted wed, with a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... sette a sege, the sothe to say, To Harflue town, with royal array; That toune he wan, and made a fray That Fraunce shall rywe ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... laid a red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to throw it at ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... The water, the wan water, [Antistrophe 2. Lapped him, and his head Drooped in the bed of slaughter Low, as one wearied; Woe for the edged axe, And woe for the heart of hate, Houndlike about thy tracks, O conqueror desolate, From Troy over land and sea, Till ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... tired, and it seemed to Harold that she had lost many pounds of flesh since he saw her last. Her face was pale, and pinched, and wan, but it flushed brightly as Harold came in, and she went ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... walk'd the deck, And oh, his brow was wan! Unlike the flush it used to wear When in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... away through the labyrinth of small and gloomy canals, until at length the wan orange glare shining out into the night showed him that he was drawing near one of the entrances to the Fenice. If he had been less preoccupied—less eager to think of nothing but how to get the slow hours over—he ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... on and drew the hood over my head, and it tumbled my hair," she said, with a little wan smile. Already the glamour of the wedding was giving way to the sorrow of parting. "I had my hat under my cloak. Oh, anwl! I am ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... appear where these islands were, situated; whether Hainan or Formosa, properly Tai-ouan, or Tai-wan, or the islands in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... to the Legation to thank the Secretary for his kindness. Now, the Secretary had lived in modern capitals for many years, was trained in diplomacy, and had schooled himself never to appear surprised. But the Princess Kalora fairly bowled him over. He had pictured her as a wan and waxen creature, who would be carried to the hotel in a closed carriage or ambulance, there to recline by the windowside and look out at the rustling leaves. He had decided, after hours of deliberation, ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... of audible speech, but hour by hour he grew stronger until at dinner-time he was able to partake of some soup and roast beef, and even to listen with a wan smile to Moe's caustic appraisement of Leon Sammet's character. Finally, after a good night's rest, Moe and Abe awoke to find the engine stilled at Quarantine. They were saved the necessity of packing their trunks for the cogent reason that they had been physically unable to open them, let alone ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... at my friend's office. To my surprise he responded to my ring himself and at once introduced me to his wife, who had come into the city with him that morning. I was warmly greeted but my thin and wan appearance affected them, especially Mrs. K——. I then discovered why I had failed to rouse him in the early hours of the morning when accompanied by the officer from the police station. He did not live in Cologne but in a pretty and quiet little residential ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... the beach, exclaiming, "Oh! I knows it now! Look dare. You see two small canoes? Dere wor tree canoes dare yisterday. De t'ird wan am ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... red-white-'n'-blue ribbon sure looks fierce on that green dress—but I reckon blood will tell, even if it's Injun blood. G'wan, or you'll be late and have your trouble for your pay. But hurry back soon's the agony's over; the bread'll be ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... me bowld mascot gets a wee trifle powerful by dint o' the high-feedin' and the natural nature of the crature. Herself, wid her iligant lady's nose, is afther noticin' it, and she sends wan o' the gerrls to tell meself and Mikeen to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various

... persistently. The orchestral compositions of Sibelius seem to have passed over black torrents and desolate moorlands, through pallid sunlight and grim primeval forests, and become drenched with them. The instrumentation is all wet grays and blacks, relieved only by bits of brightness wan and elusive as the northern summer, frostily green as the polar lights. The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, full of shattering trombones and screaming violins, full of the sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation of cymbals, the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... to the floor, and sat in silence for some time. The heart of Mrs. Carleton was opening towards—the baby and it was a baby to make its way into any heart. She had forgotten her own weakness—forgotten, in the presence of this wan and wasted mother, with a sleeping cherub on her lap, all about her ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before; the hot, hissing showers which descended like a rain of fire; the clash and clang of meeting rocks and riven stones; the burning houses and flaming vineyards; the hurrying fugitives, with wan faces and straining eyeballs, calling on those they loved to follow them; the ashes, and cinders, and boiling mud, driving through the darkened streets, and pouring into the public places; above all, that fine, impalpable, but choking dust which entered everywhere, penetrating even ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... sweet. At home Canaric wines and Greek grow lothsome; Here milk is nectar, water tasteth toothsome. There without baked, rost, boyl'd, it is no cheere; Bisket we like, and Bonny Clabo here. There we complain of one wan roasted chick; Here meat worse cookt ne're makes us sick. At home in silken sparrers, beds of Down, We scant can rest, but still tosse up and down; Here we can sleep, a saddle to our pillow, A hedge the Curtaine, Canopy a Willow. There if a child ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... progress of the guilty soul From earth's worn threshold to the throne of doom; Here the black genius to the dismal goal Drags the wan spectre from the unsheltering tomb, While from the side it never more may warn The better angel, sorrowing, flees forlorn. There (closed the eighth) seven yawning gates reveal The sevenfold anguish ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... sorr," says O'Flynn with solemnity—"it's the wan thing on the top o' God's futstool that makes me ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... an ethereal-looking woman, with a consciously wan smile and a grey chiffon frock, that looked as if it would have had to be unpinned and unwound, rather than taken off, when bed-time came, put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... stammering, with eyes asquint, and crooked on her feet, with hands lopped off, and pallid in her color. I gazed at her; and as the sun comforts the cold limbs which the night bennmbs, so my look made her tongue nimble, and then set her wholly straight in little while, and so colored her wan face as love requires. Then, when she had her speech thus unloosed, she began to sing, so that with difficulty should I have turned my attention from her. "I am," she sang, "I am the sweet Siren, and the mariners in mid sea I bewitch, so full am I of pleasantness ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... I had not known that pale Face, had I met it unawares. So thin and wan,—and he hath shot up into a tall Stripling during the last few Months. These two Nights of Watching have tried me sorelie, but I would not be witholden from sitting up with him yet agayn—what and if this Night should ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... house when I wan't in, though I was close by and see him go in. He went up garret and got a little saw-mill he made. I went up to the house, and was just goin' to see where he was; but I stopped a minute in the kitchen ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... so wan with care,' we begin to wish that we had never undertaken the publication of these letters. Between two impending law-suits how shall we muster courage to keep on the even tenor of our way? Even our staunch friend, the anonymous Public, torments us with frequent ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined. Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered doorway, holding out a hand which ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... without seeing something of this kind to exercise your admiration. Many of those domains of love, which, under the old-fashioned dress, would have been considered as a flat country, now present, through a transparent crape, the perfect rotundity of two sweetly-rising hillocks. As prisoners, wan and disfigured by confinement, recover their health and fulness on being restored to liberty, so has the bosom of the Parisian belles, released from the busk and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... "I hope there wan't no great harm in't ef I did, sir," replied Seth, with ludicrous mock solemnity. "Bein' Christmas so, I thought I'd like a little bit of turkey, sir, ef 'twant no more than the gobble. And there I was, enjoying it all by myself, hevin' a nice time, when this man ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... truly hospitable and generous to all comers. Thomas never forgot his reception, and now he was a proud and happy man to be enabled thus to offer 'a slight return,' as he modestly said, to one of the family. With much concern we all viewed Miss Marion's wan and careworn looks, so touching in the young; 'But her dim blue een will get bright again, and she'll fill out—never fear,' said Martha Wesley to me, by way of comfort and encouragement, 'now we've got her amongst us, poor ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side, looking earnestly into his countenance, and ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... those eyes but reflected the wan light of dawn that was breaking above the eastern hills, or that they did indeed shine red and green by turns as did the eyes of the wolf, may not be told. But Allan shrank back at sight of them with a ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... a cubit long and wide: To all the shades around libations pour, And o'er the ingredients strew the hallow'd flour: New wine and milk, with honey temper'd bring, And living water from the crystal spring. Then the wan shades and feeble ghosts implore, With promised offerings on thy native shore; A barren cow, the stateliest of the isle, And heap'd with various wealth, a blazing pile: These to the rest; but to the seer must bleed A sable ram, the pride of all thy breed. These solemn vows and holy offerings paid ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies about you last night, and nearly slew me with a glance because I dared to touch my mandolin after dinner. Poor little Nick was rather ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear— O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow green: And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... rein and half turned in the saddle. I could see her face. It was dank and wan and heavy-eyed; her hair, somewhat robbed of its sheen, crowned ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... round the spot Where much-loved forms once met their eyes Which now are left to rot, With trumpet-tongue, for vengeance call Upon each guilty head That drowns, mid revelry and brawls, Remembrance of the dead. Tho' faint from fighting—wounded—wan, To camp you'll turn your feet, And no sweet, smiling, happy home, Your saddened hearts will greet: No hands of love—no eyes of light— Will make your wants their care, Or soothe you thro' the dreary night, Or smooth your clotted hair. But crushed by sickness, famine, thirst, You'll ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had expected. She smiled in a wan way, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... been a more difficult matter. Esther found Mrs. Barker's dismay quite enough to deal with. Indeed, the good woman was at first overwhelmed; and sat down, the first time she was taken to the house, in a sort of despair, with a face wan ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... persons had been found in this fetid sepulchre at one time, and with one only able to crawl to the door to ask for water. Removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence, we found it crammed with wan victims of famine, ready and willing to perish. A quiet listless despair broods over the population, and cradles ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... going to do with the Highway boy and the plumber?" inquired Mac, in a low tone of voice. "They've both wan, ye see." ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... told him simply. At Ebor's shocked look, he rippled in wan amusement and said, "Oh, it wasn't as bad as it might have been, I suppose. It was just that we had to rush around so frantically, unloading and dismantling the dome, getting this ...
— They Also Serve • Donald E. Westlake

... policeman, "there's two talking-clubs that chew the rag in that joint. It's the Reds' night, but wan o' the ladies of the other club showed up—Miss Dumont—and the Reds yonder was all for chasing her out. So we run in a couple of 'em—that feller Sondheim and another called Bromberg. They're ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... he sank into the depths of squalor. He was eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of the poetry of untruth. One day through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along in the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken eyes, wearing a tragically mean garb. And soon after I learned that he had vanished ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... weakened, while Martin especially looked a phantom of his former self. Alick, though only so lately recovered from his severe illness, held out the best. Pat never made a complaint, though his wan cheek showed that famine was telling on him. If I sucked in my cheeks, it felt as if my teeth would come through them, and my knees would often scarcely ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... task the weary seamstress lays, Now from the close and foul-aired workroom free. The toilsome shop is closed, and also he Who for the week stood there doth taste the sweets Of liberty awhile; the penman meets No more the tiring scroll; and now in chain The prisoner sits within his dungeon, wan And weary; but he hears some soothing strain Break through the thick and iron-girded wall; And then the heavy shackles seem to fall From off his feet; a strange emotion fills His soul, and through his wasted body thrills, When of the bygone days he thinks in sweet ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... and all we are living, We that were wan with Winter's fear; Reach out your hands to her hands that are giving, Lest ye lose her love and the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... deserted and desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... was a vary seemilar case," broke in Snecky Hobart shrilly. "Maist o' ye'll mind 'at Donal was michty plagueit wi' a drucken wife. Ay, weel, wan day Bowie's man was carryin' a coffin past Donal's door, and Donal an' the wife was there. Says Donal, 'Put doon yer coffin, my man, an' tell's wha it's for.' The laddie rests the coffin on its end, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... spent her time with Marylyn. She did not feel that Dallas needed buoying—Dallas, quiet, self-poised, and staunch. Yet, all the while, the elder girl was growing wan under the strain. For, having given generously of her strength, there was no one from whom, in turn, she might take. And so her thoughts came often to be of the one who had faithfully watched over them, how faithfully, shown by the fact that catastrophe had followed ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... these waters on his way to win a bride when suddenly above "the night wind's melancholy song" he heard a voice calling him through the twilight. "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" he answered in French. "Who calls?" But only his own voice came back in echoes while the gloom of night deepened and a wan moon rose silently behind the distant hill. Then when he reached the Indian encampment it was only to see the death fires lighted on the shore, to hear the wail of women and to learn that just before her lips had closed forever, his beloved had called for him—just ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a Turkish beneesh, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan features. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death. They are not living and breathing people, these persons of the fables; they are but shadows, beautiful ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... how a gentle maid's wan fingers clasp The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand; Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks; But the sweet dream has vanished! ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... Princesses, whom you will see standing in the earth up to their necks, with only their heads out" 88 So the man gave him a pair of snow shoes 96 The King went into the Castle, and at first his Queen didn't know him, he was so wan and thin, through wandering so far and ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... of the area open to international foreign settlement at Shanghai and the opening of the ports of Nanking, Tsing-tao (Kiao chao), and Ta-lien-wan to foreign trade and settlement will doubtless afford American enterprise additional facilities and new fields, of which it will not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... moment did Janet think of refusing this sad petition. She sat down beside her; she laid Sophy's head against her broad loving breast; she looked with wondering pity at the small, shrunken face, so wan and ghostlike in the gray light. Then she called Christina, and Christina lifted Sophy easily in her arms, and carried her into her own house. "For we'll give Braelands no occasion against either her or Andrew," she said. Then they undressed the weary woman and made her a drink ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... the Irishman. "If it's insinivation yez be talkin' about, the divil a bit ov that do I mane. Larry O'Gorman isn't agoin' to bate about the bush wan way or the tother, Misther Laygrow. He tells ye to yer teeth that it was yer beautiful self putt the exthra button into the bag,—yez did it, Misther Laygrow, and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... doors—of the Opera house. And those little keys, the object of general curiosity, were being passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some of the guests was diverted by their discovery, at the end of the table, of that strange, wan and fantastic face, with the hollow eyes, which had already appeared in the foyer of the ballet and been greeted ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... traitor's vainly-trusted vow? Could they, the fond and happy, see me now, Who knew me when life's early summer smiled, They would not know 'twas I, or marvel how The laughing thing, half woman and half child, Could e'er be changed to form so squalid, wan, and wild. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... do evil and to forget. A brawler and a swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I.' Kim bit back a smile. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man—a long time ago—I did pilgrimage to Guru Ch'wan among the poplars' (he pointed Bhotanwards), 'where they ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... ä¹Ÿæƒ ã€å…¶ä½¿æ°‘ CHAP. XIII. When Tsze-lu heard anything, if he had not yet succeeded in carrying it into practice, he was only afraid lest he should hear something else. CHAP. XIV. Tsze-kung asked, saying, 'On what ground did Kung-wan get that title of Wan?' The Master said, 'He was of an active nature and yet fond of learning, and he was not ashamed to ask and learn of his inferiors!— On these grounds he has been styled Wan.' CHAP. XV. The Master said of Tsze-ch'an that he had four of the characteristics of a superior man:— ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... physicians had left, and over whom the priests had already begun the last sacred rites? But, heeding them not, the Master passed His hands over the child's head, and took her little cold palms within his own. Then began a strange happening. The little chest began to heave, and the white wan cheeks began to show traces of color. Then the arms and hands began to move, and the wasted limbs drew slightly up. Then, opening her eyes with a wondering look, the child gazed at the Healer and smiled gently at Him. Then ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... for an attendant, and led the Chemist to the door, throwing a blanket around him as he did so. In the doorway the Chemist paused and looked back with a wan smile over ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... careless reporters have stumbled for generations. When the casualties of the war against inaccuracy are recorded, lurid will be among the missing. As used by ignorant scribblers, the word means something like bright or brilliant, or perhaps towering; yet its precise meaning is pale yellow, wan, ghastly. Journalists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century will remember a long list of such sins against precision, recorded by Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. A few additions have been made to his list, and the whole is ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... that your desertion or neglect Could break my heart, as women's hearts do break. If my wan days had nothing to expect From your love's splendor, all joy would forsake The chambers of my soul. Yes, this is true. And yet, and yet—one ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... very kind of you, Mills," Philippa said, with rather a wan little smile. "I had some tea at South Lynn, but it was very bad. You ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in the forenoon when Bayliss, returning homeward in sweater and running togs, espied Bert's white, wan face near the front door. Bayliss signaled cordially to young Dodge, who, glad of this kindliness at such a time, went down ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... in a county contest. She was asked to read it to the school and though she begged to be excused, her teacher insisted. She slept little and ate little during the days before it must be read and on the morning when the school assembled to hear it looked pale and wan. It was with very evident effort that she walked to the front of the platform. Her lips opened but no voice came. Her sister thought she was going to faint but she pulled herself together and was able ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... the period of the "Wan of the League," as the four later civil wars are often called. The last of the four is alone of any ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... difficult conception in women) the first consideration is to be had of their species; for little women are more apt to conceive than great, slender than gross, white and fair than ruddy and high coloured, black than wan, those that have their veins conspicuous, than others; but to be very fleshy is evil, and to have great swelled breasts ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... in the garden, since he is bound to silence. He was asking me to marry him. I refused; I said in my family circumstances I could give him nothing but my respect. He was a little angry at that; he did not seem to think much of my respect. I wonder," she added, with rather a wan smile, "if he will care at all for it now. For I offer it him now. I will swear anywhere that he never did ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... The radiance diminishes. The luminous disk of the Sun is gradually corroded. Another disk, as black as ink, creeps in front of it, and little by little invades it entirely. The atmosphere takes on a wan, sepulchral hue; astonished nature is hushed in profound silence; an immense veil of sadness spreads over the world. Night comes on suddenly, and the stars shine out in the Heavens. It seems as though by some mysterious cataclysm the Sun had disappeared forever. But this ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... and stonier faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather the ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q

... shivered if this ain't the edication I wan't," said Sneak, turning round with one or two dead bees in his hand, that he had found near the root ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... my words. Then, at length—O friends! do not be any harder upon me than you can help, for indeed, indeed I have paid sorely for it, and it is the first lie that ever I told; then, at length, with a face as wan as the ashes of a dead fire—with trembling lips, and a faint, scarcely audible voice, I say, "No, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... would go to the north. Given an open boat and the tempestuous seas of November, there might be one chance out of a hundred of our reaching Manhattan and the Dutch, who might or might not give us refuge. She had willed to flee, and we were upon our journey, and the one chance had vanished. That wan, monotonous, cold, and clinging mist had shrouded us for our burial, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... moment a change had come. The moon had got round, and was fronting her from the west, and she saw that her face was altered, that she had grown pale, as if she too were wan with fear, and from her lofty place espied a coming terror. The light seemed to be dissolving out of her; she was dying—she was going out! And yet everything around looked strangely clear—clearer ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... sore check upon his self applause, and he formed many prudent resolutions to be more upon his guard in future. Some days after, in passing through his grounds, he was accosted by a man who exhibited an appearance of extreme wretchedness. His face was wan, and his features sunken. His dimmed eye seemed hardly able to discern the object on which it gazed; and his tottering limbs with difficulty supported his feeble frame. His moving lips appeared to be framing a prayer for compassion, but his hollow voice ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown

... before he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its dirge of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... Grogan—a woman who fills so honorably her every station in life—should at this moment be stricken down either by the hand of an assassin or the hoof of a horse. Such acts in a law-abidin' community like Rockville bring with them the deepest detistation and the profoundest sympathy. No wan, I am sure, is more touched by her misforchune than me worthy friend Mr. Daniel McGaw, who by this direct interposition of Providence is foorced into the position of being compelled to assert his rights befoore your ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... told they would save his life. Then he was led outside and far away by Snake and Yellin' Kid. In a short time Fah Moo was a very sick Celestial, but after that he grew rapidly better and came creeping back to the kitchen, somewhat pale, wan and drawn, but no longer ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... her face bound me faster in a dungeon of utter hopelessness. My sweet day-dreams and midnight rhapsodies trooped back to mock at me. I felt that I must bow broken under anguish or else steel myself and shout back cynical derision to the whole wan troop of torturing regrets. And all the time, she was caressing that thing in her hand and looking down at it with a fondness, which I—poor fool—thought that I alone could inspire. I suppose if I could ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... the laboratory. He was an enthusiastic, but unskilful, chemist. The only thing he could do with any real certainty was to make oxygen. But he had ambitions beyond that feat, and was continually experimenting in a reckless way which made the chemistry master look wan and uneasy. He was bending over a complicated mixture of tubes, acids, and Bunsen burners when Dunstable found him. It was after school, so that the laboratory was empty, but ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... bird's early crying, They began Thy Crucifying, O Thou of face as woeful wan, As the far-flown ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... "G'wan now, Miss Brewster—I'm no infant!" scoffed Sary. "Don' cher know a fat bein' mustn't tech milk 'cause it's ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... without another word. Blanche held her book before her face until he had disappeared. Then it slipped from her fingers. She looked hard into a cluster of roses, and she saw only two figures—always the same figures. Her eyes were set, her face was wan and old. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... then, all outlets thus secured save one, At last she took to the open, stood and stared With her wan face to see where God might wait— And there found Caponsacchi wait as well For the precious something at perdition's edge, He only was predestinate to save . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... a splendid fire," rejoined Clare, looking into his face with a wan smile, "and we're ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... at Rio de Janeiro on the 7th of February; and sailed thence on the 4th of March; arriving in the channel without any interruption, save what was given by a French privateer which chased her when within forty-eight hours sail of the land. The natives Bennillong and Yem-mer-ra-wan-nie were well, but not sufficiently divested of the genuine, natural love for liberty and their native country, to prefer London with its pleasures and its abundance to the woods of New South Wales. They requested that their wives might be taught ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... "Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother's bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, Resting the grass amid and upon, To be leaned and to ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... besht dresh, Cordalia," said her mother. "It'll soon be wore out, an' ye'll git no other, wid your father oidle, an' no wan airnin' a pinny but you an' Johnny an' Sarah Rosabel. Fwhere are ...
— Different Girls • Various

... only facts,' cried the King of the Bill-Stickers, recovering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that had suddenly fallen upon him, 'come in and welcome! If it had been income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you out of the wan, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... was; he broke his neck once, when the net had been forgotten. They all do it—ils se cassent le cou tous, tot ou tard! Allons toi t'as peur, toi?" Chat noir's great back was quivering with fear; he had no taste, himself, for shapes like these, spectral and wan as ghosts, walking about in the sun. He took us as far away as possible, and as quickly, from these reminders of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... The sad tidings to tell you!— An orphan you were Ere this misery befell you; And far in yon wild, Where the dead-tapers hover, So cold, cold and wan Lies the corpse of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... sheep below With fingers nice inserting, and above, 490 With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd The nerve, which in its quick vibration sang Clear as the swallow's voice. Keen anguish seized The suitors, wan grew ev'ry cheek, and Jove Gave him his rolling thunder for a sign. That omen, granted to him by the son Of wily Saturn, with delight he heard. He took a shaft that at the table-side Lay ready drawn; but in his quiver's womb 500 The rest yet slept, by those Achaians proud To be, ere long, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... payment for it. A couple of shillings would purchase them coal and food, and they were much in need of both. John was sitting by the scanty fire, with his daughter's shawl over his shoulders, looking wan, wasted, and desponding. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... beautiful, did not answer; nevertheless she seemed scarcely less affected by his sudden appearance and his strange address. She swayed on her feet, and had she not grasped a chair would have fallen. A burning flush for an instant lit up her wan cheek, to disappear at the first sound of her father's voice. He had followed Bercy into the room, and his tone was ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk rose, and the well attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... the night was stark black and loud with clashing waters. A fitful wind played in gusts now grim, now groping, like a lost thing blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore a few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly, withdrawn in vast remoteness; those near at hand, of the anchored shipping, skipped and swayed and flickered in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have been more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He broke surface and dropped a ten pound ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... clear, Made strange by the breathless waiting for the deeds that are drawing anear. For woe had grown into will, and wrath was bared of its sheath, And stark in the streets of London stood the crop of the dragon's teeth. Where then in my dream were the poor and the wall of faces wan? Here and here by my side, shoulder to shoulder of man, Hope in the simple folk, hope in the hearts of the wise, For the happy life to follow, or death and the ending of lies, Hope is awake in the faces angerless now ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris

... she thought how Maxwell would laugh when she told him the fear of being spoken to had kept her from suicide; and she sat waiting for him to come with such an inward haggardness that she was astonished, at sight of herself in the glass, to find that she wan looking very much as usual. Maxwell certainly noticed no difference when he came in and flung himself wearily on the lounge, and made no attempt to break the silence of their meeting; they had kissed, of course, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... days agone For storm, wherein the Sweeping One, Midst rain of swords, and the darts' breath, Blew o'er all a gale of death. Now a maimed, one-footed man On rollers' steed through waters wan Out to Iceland must I go; Ah, the ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... Columbus, who was sleeping uneasily, his curious big head and long, thin hair making a strange picture against the pillow. His face looked more meagre and his eyes more sunken than ever before, but there was a feverish flush on his wan cheeks, and the slender hands moved uneasily on the outside of the blue coverlet, the puny arms were bare to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... away and far away, Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold, Many a wide circle and many a wan star away, Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... did ye say? Hats, John Graeme, I think ye should be proud o' wan o' yours marryin' a Granahan. Money or no money, that's a nice way ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne

... wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read the letter, at ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... that," declared Andy Flinn, laughing. "Three nights did he play the same joke, and then they got on to him. Wan officer do be sneakin' up to the loft, while the rist pretended to be huntin' around downstairs. He discovered the sthring, cript downstairs again, wint out on the sly, and, be the powers, followed it ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... and Ned began to bestir himself, he missed the cheery "Good-morning" of his companion, who was not able to lift his head from his pillow of palmetto. His wan smile went to Ned's heart, and the boy had to busy himself with the fire to hide his emotion. Every hour of that day he watched over the invalid, and from time to time tempted him with bits of broiled bird, heron soup and sips of hot tea made from leaves of the sweet ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry, To her proud soul no common fear can bring: Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King, Her soul aflame ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... even for that which she feared; she wanted to have it over, and she raised herself on her elbow, and listened with acute impatience: at last the door was thrown wide open, and bright and gay as ever, in came Cecilia, but at the first sight of Helen on her bed, wan and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... always been somewhat shadowy and wan, had always been slight and slim and small. But was she always as wan and slight as she now seemed? or did he observe it the more from the contrast it presented to Cherry's blooming beauty, to which his eyes had grown used? ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... in the Cascine at six o'clock of a foggy morning; the light bad, the ground heavy from a night's rain. The marchese wore black, I remember, and looked horrible; a wan, doomed face, a mouth drawn down at one corner, a slavered, untidy red beard; and those wide fish-eyes of his which seemed to see nothing. Count Giraldi bore himself gallantly, as he always did. I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... thanks to Lady Morley-Frere, Mary Darragh, and the other busybodies who had the royal ear, and hated me. If I coquetted with the King 'twas but to see my heart's real master frown, and his face grow wan and sad, for by those very tokens I knew that ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... hour before dawn grew colder and blacker. A great silence seemed wedged down between the ebony hills. The stars were wan. No cry of wolf or moan of wind disturbed the stillness. And the stars grew warmer. The black east changed and paled. Dawn was at hand. An opaque and obscure grayness filled the world; all had changed, except that strange, oppressive, and vast ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... her throat: "'tis after. Oh, Eve," she gasped, "ain't it too awful to think of their cuttin' up his poor dead body into bits? Call theyselves doctors!" she burst out—"the gashly lot! I'll never let wan o' their name come nighst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or one o'clock, and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours before it was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came, he could not even ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... said, with a deep breath. "It is true that I do not know. And I am—afraid." A wan little smile that was more piteous than tears curved her lips: for "afraid" seemed strange coming from her, the fearless child of the hills and dales. "If—if I said 'yes'—Ah, but I do not!" she broke off as he made to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... flat he crept to the threshold. Yes, it was really a corridor, but endless in length. A wan light illumined it: lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling lightened at intervals the dull hue of the atmosphere—the distance was veiled in shadow. Not a single door appeared in the whole extent! Only on one ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... departure alone kept back the threatened storm. Even Nancy in the kitchen had been heard to say that, "if the scented dandy didn't kape out ov her kitchen wid his imperdent speeches, she would give him wan blow wid her fist that would spoil his beauty for him," and threatened to "give warnin'" if the mistress did not keep him ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... his communication, Caleb feebly stretched his wan hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his kindness. Now, the Secretary had lived in modern capitals for many years, was trained in diplomacy, and had schooled himself never to appear surprised. But the Princess Kalora fairly bowled him over. He had pictured her as a wan and waxen creature, who would be carried to the hotel in a closed carriage or ambulance, there to recline by the windowside and look out at the rustling leaves. He had decided, after hours of deliberation, that the etiquette of the situation would be for some member ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... just rung and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat full upon the gleaming shoulders of his waterproof and upon his upturned features. It was a wan, sensitive, clear-cut face, with some subtle, nameless peculiarity in its expression, something of the startled horse in the white-rimmed eye, something too of the helpless child in the drawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. The man-servant knew the stranger ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you be seated, and try this pie of mother's own making, with a slice of home-cured ham (father is a great rearer of pigs; and the brothers of Leighs Priory, who know what good living is, always come to him for his primest bacon and ham). You look as if you needed a good meal, for your face is but wan this morning. Mother scarce looked to see you on your ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... comes paddling up, A face so wild and wan: "Ah, Trim, he's there! Make haste, take care; And ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various

... lights and crimson are cast over the grey-green world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields. Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are confused; wonderful ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man—wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... now deere Soueraigne And our gracious Mother, Why doth your Highnes looke so pale and wan? Tamo. Haue I not reason thinke you to looke pale. These two haue tic'd me hither to this place, A barren, detested vale you see it is. The Trees though Sommer, yet forlorne and leane, Ore-come with Mosse, and balefull Misselto. Heere neuer shines ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... away; before many minutes were over Leah's wan face brightened a little, and her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... of gloriest past The warrior sickening turns. To list to the sound of the wailing blast, As the wan lamp dimly burns: For the daring might of the lion-hearted With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various

... himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... dynasty which preceded that of Kau, B.C. 1766 to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Kau. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have a single ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... Washin'ton, mem?" Rhoda asked. "I thought, maybe, you was old enough. Misc Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River a-crossin' to 'Napolis. He was a-swarin' at the cappen of the piriauger and a dammin' of the Eas'n Shu, and he said they wan't no good rudes in Marylan' nohow; that the Wes'n Shu was all red mud, an' the Eas'n Shu yaller mud, an' the bay was jus' pizen. Misc Somers say she don't think it was Gineral Washin'ton, caze he cuss so. She goin' to find out when she kin git a book an' somebody to read outen it ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... a wan smile. "Yes, that is so. But it still is very slowly we go when I measure with my thoughts the swiftness. In my thoughts we ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... the hall who had a more stately step, none who looked more proud. He waited not for salutation, but strode across the hall of state, and fronted Marmion, as peer meets peer. Beneath the cowl was a face so wan, so worn, a cheek so sunken, and an eye so wild, that the mother would not have known her child, much less ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,—"light to the last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Lo! the lamp's wan fitful light, Glide,—gliding round the golden rim! Restored to life, now glancing bright, Now just expiring, faint and dim! Like a spirit loath to die, Contending with its destiny. All dark! a momentary veil Is o'er the sleeper! now a pale Uncertain beauty glimmers faint, And now the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... adventure," said the ever gay Mrs. Elmsley, as Waunangee, after having shaken hands with herself, departed with Ronayne. "Really, my dear, he is a fine looking, and certainly a warm-hearted fellow, that Wau—Wan—what's ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... of the morning, he appeared to Lily like a drowned man, with a puffed-out face, swollen eyes and wan cheeks. To think that she belonged to that! Lily spat at him in contempt. Oh, rather sleep with lizards and guinea-pigs than that; rather with a woolly dog, like Poland, that Parisienne! Oh, to get rid of ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... she had had to take it. "She doesn't want to die. Think of her age. Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. Think of all she is. Think of all she has. She lies there stiffening herself and clinging to it all. So I thank God—!" the poor lady wound up with a wan inconsequence. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... we don't raich the top of the hill, it'll be because it hasn't got wan," answered Gahogan. Stilton ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... the long lean frame was thrown upon the couch, and "tired Nature's sweet restorer" held him briefly in her arms, the smile of hopefulness on the wan cheek told that, despite all the terrible difficulties of the situation, the sleeper was sustained by a strong and cheerful belief in the Providence of God, the Patriotism of the People, and the efficacy of his Inaugural Peace-offering ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents' feet for hours together, with his little hands patiently folded in each other, and his thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pine away, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been a joyless one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which, child as he was, he had never known in this world, they were his parents, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... it wor a gun bein' cocked. Dat must 'a' been de black box heah, suh. Gorry! but I's glad it wan't dem white trash from de town. I's jest a-gittin' ready tuh vamoose outen heah right smart now. I's gwine tuh Chattanooga, tuh jine my darter. An' dat grub yuh guv me'll kerry me part ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... love was false while mine was true." Aflood with tears he cried: "It was not so, 'Twas your false love my true love falsely slew - For 'twas your love that was the first to go." Thus did we stand and said no more for shame Till I, seeing his cheek so wan and wet, Sobbed thus: "So be it; my love shall bear the blame; Let us inter them honourably." And yet I swear by all truth human and divine 'Twas his that in its death ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... feeling shook her frame. But her eyes remained dry, and her cheeks were burning. She rose at length and began to undress, but for this she found herself unequal. She entered the couch and sat up in it—her hands crossed upon her lap—her face wan, wild, the very picture of hopelessness if not desperation! The words of her weak mother had tortured her; but what was this agony to that which was occasioned by ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... courtesy,—where, when not sleeping, black soldiers and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little street was fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had the air of doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their occupants, and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats, poured in from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies, disappeared into the shops with a sort of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... who had but recently risen from a bed of pain, was wan and pale; his tall and stately form had shrunk, his massive head was bowed, his raven locks had ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... the Marsh. The wan film of the winter grasses had faded off the April green before the innings became noisy with bleating, and the new-born lambs could match their whiteness with the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... of tremulous mountain was scrolled along a horizon that flamed crimson in the setting sun. A flock of twilight clouds—flamingos of the sky—floated toward the sunset as if going to roost. Beyond was the great river, its bosom as wan, where it lay in the shadow of the mountain, as Richard Travis's own cheek; but where the sunset fell on it the reflected light turned it to pink which to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... the little book won no attention; it is not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death. They are not living and breathing people, these persons of the fables; they are but shadows, beautiful and faint, and their poem is fit reading ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... his body thin, and his face pale and wan, his temper sour and sullen, seldom caring to speak, and when he did it was with peevishness and ill-nature;—every thing was to him an object of disquiet; nothing of delight; and he seemed, in all respects, like one who was weary of the ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... hand had been laid upon the brow of him who had just come home. Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber. They looked at him with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... ill from her depression of spirits that she could only travel to her new place of detention in a litter and under the care of a physician. On reaching Highgate she had become unfit to proceed, her pulse weak, her countenance pale and wan. The doctor left her there and returned to town, where he reported to the king that the lady was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... unfadingly. Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells! I look on the white sea of the saints. I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom. All beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy everlasting. Colourless peace! Oh, my beloved! So walkest thou for my soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy spotless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his own—those in ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield

... to loathe all sustenance; her cheeks grew wan, her bright eyes lost their splendour, the roses vanished from her lips, and her delicate limbs could hardly support their burden; in a word, her sole consolation was limited to the prospect of depositing ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... when he returned to Hendlip, he was met by two wan, gaunt men, whose countenances showed privation and suffering. They gave their names as William Andrews and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... fire was burning. Heavy clouds of smoke went up from them in the still, pure atmosphere, like aerial columns, while the flames, paling in the beams of the morning sun, flew up through the reek as though striving to rise above it, with wan and changeful gleams of red and yellow, now curling down, and now writhing upward like snakes. Of all these fires there was not one from which the smoke did not mount straight to heaven, though each burned to a different god; and Melissa regarded it as a happy sign that none ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... numbed to sense to the full the unpleasantness of my condition.... Presently there came a dawning light which gradually grew stronger. I did not seem to have eyes, but was conscious of the ray seemingly through the walls of my body. Slowly it increased, to a sickly wan filter of grey. It was light shining through water, a light which would have been no light to a human being. To me it was intense and fearsome, seemed to reach centres of me that were sensitive beyond ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... levers, her long round arms moving with unexpected power, and only the hunter himself could tire her out. As for him, he was not happy unless he was working, and at times he made the screw spin again under his fierce strokes, whenever his eyes fell on the wan faces of his young companions stewing in the insufferable heat. He shortened the journey by twenty-four hours, for on the afternoon of the fourth day the woman, for the first time, showed signs ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... water, displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the days, when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a brilliancy unknown in our foggy clime. It did not look like a wan flat surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds, looked like hills ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... yet greater zest to the luxury of their mutual trust that Duke Carl added to his announcement of the purposed place and time of the event a pretended test of the girl's devotion. He tells her the story of the aged wizard, meagre and wan, to whom she must find her way alone for the purpose of asking a question all-important to himself. The fierce old man will try to escape with terrible threats, will turn, or half turn, into repulsive animals. She must cling the faster; ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... the thousands and thousands and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and putting her left arm very lightly on his shoulder. It was all that she could do for him, but it was in order that she might do this that she had been summoned from London to his side. He was wan and worn and pale,—a man evidently dying, the oil of whose lamp was all burned out; but still as he turned his eyes up to the woman's face there was a remnant of that look of graceful faineant nobility ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Sanchez, whom he had known five years, and described as a "durrty cross betune a skunk and a spitbox," a greaser Indian who would knife his best friend. As for 'Tonio, whom he had known ever since he came to Arizona in '65, and once held to be "the wan good Indian in it," 'Tonio had made him believe he too held Sanchez in contempt. Yet, to all appearance, the two, who up to this night had been confined entirely apart, had gone together. One of the counts in the unwritten indictments against McDowell was ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... meant much. It would have meant a million times more if the "boys" could have flashed back a helio to the wan old General who used to be such a noise in the world—"Same to you, General." The boys somehow liked him. The defects of Sam Hughes were of the sort that soldiers love. He was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something breathed to him, telling ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... in the trees, The wan stars burn and pale— Oh Rose, come forth!—upon the breeze I hear the nightingale Unfold the crimson waves that lie In darkness rosy dim, And swing thy fragrant censer high, Oh royal ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... the two men, a wan smile straying from one to the other, exhausted by her suppressed emotions. Suddenly, without a word, she held out her hand to Graydon. In her deepest soul, she loved this manly, strong-hearted young fellow. She knew, after ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... them. What was their surprise one day, at catching in a thicket of mangrove trees, a glimpse of a man in Spanish attire. They entered, and found the unfortunate Ojeda; he lay on the matted roots of the trees; he was speechless, wan, and wasted; but his hand still grasped his sword. They restored him with wine and a warm fire; he recounted the story of his rash expedition; of his struggles among rocks and forests to reach the shore; and he bitterly ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... with the cross-currents of the China Sea. As the only lady passenger I had very comfortable quarters, and the kindest attention from French officers and Annamese stewards. The second afternoon there came a welcome diversion when the boat put into Kwang-chou-wan, two hundred miles southwest of Hong Kong, to visit the new free port of Fort Bayard, the commercial and military station which the French are creating in the cession they secured from China in 1898, and which, if all goes well, is some ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... fancies, for which there was more than good reason, had disturbed him only too successfully, and he was as full of apprehension as one who has a league with Mephistopheles. Charlotte told him nothing of what made her likewise so wan and anxious, but drove off to the castle, as had been planned, about nine o'clock, leaving her brother and his friend at ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... along the line we're winnin' this time. The Jocks has got right away for'ard, an' the Ghurkies is in wid their killin' knives on our left. An' the Irish is in front av all. Glory be! 'Tis a big foight this time, an' it's winnin' we are. Me good arm's gone I know, but I'd rather be here wid wan arm than annywhere else wid two. An' what's an arm or a man more or less in the world? We're winnin', ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... forgotten the fact that she was very fair and very good to look at; she found, half-consciously, that her beauty had its drawbacks. There did not seem to be any reason why she should spare her strength in any way. So, a little wan and tremulous, she appeared at the early morning service, and then, after walking back in any weather, there was a dull little breakfast, and soon after that she got to work. Every post brought begging letters in crowds, and these hurt her dreadfully. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... of aspect, I ran and stumbled along the cliffs. Dead Man's Rock lay below wrapped in a curtain of mist. Thick clouds were rolling up from seaward; the grey light of returning day made sea, sky and land seem colourless and wan. But for me there was no sight but Polkimbra ahead. As I gained the little village I ran down the hill to the "Lugger" and knocked upon the door. Heavens! how long it was before I was answered. At last the landlady's head appeared at an upper window. With a few words ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if drawn by the tip of a brush, ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac

... dun Night her shadowy veil has spread, See want and infamy as forth they come, Lead their wan daughter from her branded home, To woo the stranger for unhallow'd bread. Poor outcast! o'er thy sickly-tinted cheek And half-clad form, what havock want hath made; And the sweet lustre of thine eye doth fade, And all thy soul's sad sorrow seems to speak. O miserable state! ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... Admiral at head of column. I went to him. Men looked at me as I passed them. I was ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to say, "Is it so this strange land does them? But those first ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our fortune! Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and happiness." But some had more thoughtful ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only there was the police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her conscience, then, that was gnawing at her—because of the police! Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, who had sobbed and thanked her Maker because she had ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... it consists of wan sailmaker's needle, a ball o' twine, and a clasp-knife. Set me down with these before a roll o' canvass and I'll make ye ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... chance again. I've heard your speeches, and says I, 'There's your wan chance, cully,' and I'm here to grab f'r it. If you've been meanin' the half of what you've been sayin', Mr. Blount—" There was more of it, half pleadings and half mere rageful babblings of a vengeful soul hampered ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... to him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she wants—she knows what she will take. And she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... matter over in every mortal way, the old woman and me, Jack, and I'll tell 'ee what we've aboot concluded. On one side thou really wan't t' have us oop ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... very solemn for a song with so cheerful a purpose. We have rarely read, indeed, a book with so large a proportion of unhappy words in it. Frozen shrouds, souls a-chill with agony, things wan and gray, icy demons, scourging willow-branches, snow-heaped mounds, black and freezing nights, cups of sorrow drained to the lees, etc., are presented in such profusion that to struggle through the 'dark abyss' in search of the 'ray of hope' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs, With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs, Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye, Through our English village the Canadians ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... pillow. Her face was pinched, it seemed thin, and the brilliancy and size of her eyes were exaggerated. One arm, clumsy and inanimate in splints, was extended over the cotton spread; but with the other hand she was feverishly busy with her appearance. She smiled, a wan tremulous movement that again shut the pain like a leaden ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... as a moonlit night is wont to be, by a magical Presence. A big moth went past her face, so close that she felt the flutter of its wings. A little night beast somewhere was scruttling in bushes or the sand. Suddenly, across the wan grass the shadow of the pine-trunk moved. It moved—ever so little—moved! And, petrified—Gyp stared. There, joined to the trunk, Summerhay was standing, his face just visible against the stem, the moonlight on one cheek, a hand shading his eyes. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a sighte of fulle grete ruthe. Mykelle of that folke therynne Thay weren[O] but verrey bonys and skynne. With eyen holowgh and[P] nose scharpe, Vnnethe thay myght brethe or carpe, For her colowris was[Q] wan as lede, Not like to lyue but sone ben dede. Disfigurid pateronys[R] and quaynte, And as[S] a dede kyng thay weren paynte. There men myght see an[T] exampleyre, How fode makith the pepulle faire.[U] In euery strete summe ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Mr. Dooley, "there's wan thing I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration iv Independence. I'd be ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... went down at last, and the gray day imperceptibly merged into the gray dusk. Then came the lingering darkness, with a flicker of fireflies and broad wan flares of heat lightning. Con woke once in the night to hear the rain on the roof. The wind was blaring near at hand. In its large, free measures, like some deliberate adagio, there was naught of menace; but when he slept again, and awoke to hear its voice ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... though they were twin-sisters. She was dressed in a black velvet gown, precisely like that of the queen in the well-known portrait which belongs to the king; on her head was the pointed velvet coif, which is characteristic of her; and she had the wan complexion, and the features we all know well. I could not help betraying my surprise to his Eminence. The suddenness of the evocation seemed to me all the more amazing because Monsieur de Cagliostro ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... up with a wan smile. Tears were again in her eyes. "Mr. Moore," she said in a broken voice, "what you've told me about Mr. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... Margaret, May Margaret now as then, Then where's that bonny smile of yours That broke the hearts of men? The bonny smile is wan, lad, That once was glad as day— And oh! 'tis weary smiling To keep the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... the desire to be taken seriously; that pale ignorances, presiding over microscopes by which they cannot distinguish flesh from nostoc or fishes' spawn or frogs' spawn, have visited upon us their wan solemnities. We've been damned by corpses and skeletons and mummies, which twitch and totter with ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... dissert somewheres,' he is wont to say, 'I don't rightly remimber where, for my brain's no better than a sive at geagraphy, but it was a wild place, anyhow—bad luck to it! Well, we had sot up a line o' telegraph in it, an' wan the posts was stuck in the ground not far from a pool o' wather where the wild bastes was used to dhrink of a night, an' they tuk a mighty likin' to this post, which they scrubbed an' scraped at till they broke it agin an' agin. Och! it's me heart was broke intirely wi' them. At last I ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... on the battle-field at last His body she had found. She kissed, without a tear or word, The wan ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the morning, a hail shower lying all around, though the sky was a deep sapphire blue, with the wan ghost of the moon lingering on the horizon, and the atmosphere bitter cold. The breakfast was late at the Ewes, owing to Mr. Crawfurd's delicate health, and because Mrs. Crawfurd had her fancies ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... might do with her as I pleased. I observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and, with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and horses, even though I harnessed them myself, was the work of many minutes; minutes, each freighted with the weight ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... anxious now. She wore a white dress, simple with the simplicity of supreme and expensive art. A rope of pearls was her only ornament. Her hair was somewhat elaborately coiffured, there was a touch of rouge upon her cheeks, and the unscreened evening sunlight was scarcely kind to her rather wan features and carefully arranged complexion. She still had her claims to beauty, however. Tallente admitted that to himself as he stood there appraising her, with a strange and almost impersonal regard,—his wife of thirteen years. She was beautiful, notwithstanding ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... comin' to bed?" and upon receiving no answer he rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as ye damn please about it. If ye wan' to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... slepen so that no man may yow wake. Who sey ever or this so dul a man?" "Ye, freend," quod he, "do ye your hedes ake For love, and lat me liven as I can." 550 But though that he for wo was pale and wan, Yet made he tho as freshe a countenaunce As though he shulde have led the ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... silhouettes; The sun in universal carnage sets, And, halting higher, The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, That, balked, yet stands at bay. Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, And in her hand swings high o'erhead, Above the waste of war, The silver torch-light of the evening star Wherewith to search ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... never saw him but he was swaying, or standing with his hand before his eyes, or clutching on to the edge of a chair, or walking with feeble footsteps; and she never spoke to him but he replied with a tired, wan smile, until she became seriously alarmed, thinking his brain was affected, and consulted ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... their hair with lines which looked like snow. The first man, who was the chief mate, walked leaning heavily on the arm of the kindly-hearted harbour-master, Captain Braine. The second man, whose collar-bone was broken, moved as one might suppose a galvanised corpse would. A third man's wan face wore a forced smile, which only seemed to light up the piteous, underlying expression of the features. They were all saturated with brine; they were soaked with sea-water to the very marrow of the bones. Shivering, and with a stupefied rolling of the eyes, ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... as he went Forgot the minstrel's song; But the blessing that his wan lips sent Will guard the minstrel long; And keep his spirit innocent, And turn his hand ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold, Lisping again his broken words till all the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... began to shorten, Hulda's cheeks lost their bright color, and her steps their merry lightness; she became pale and wan. Her parents were grieved to see her change so fast, but they hoped, as the weary winter came on, that the cheerful fire and gay company would revive her; but she grew worse and worse, till she could scarcely walk alone through ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... total, lasts about an hour. During all this time the black lunar disc may be watched making its way steadily across the solar face. Notwithstanding the gradual obscuration of the sun, one does not notice much diminution of light until about three-quarters of his disc are covered. Then a wan, unearthly appearance begins to pervade all things, the temperature falls noticeably, and nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... especial desire it had been taken, had been very fond of it, and had always kept it in her room, and Fred was very anxious to see it again. After a long search, with Bennet's help, Henrietta found it, and brought it to him. Thin, wan, and in the deep black garments, there was much more general resemblance to her present appearance in this than in the portrait of the beautiful smiling bride. "And yet," said Fred, as he compared them, "do not you think, Henrietta, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... clung to his arm with a tragic forlornness that seemed to leave her very wan and helpless. And he had found it ineffably sweet to enfold that warm mass of wan helplessness in ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... in the schoolhouse at Wrayth, where the buxom girl who had been assistant mistress, and had married, a year before, brought her first-born son to show the lord and lady—as he had been born on their wedding day, just a fortnight ago! She was pale and wan, but so ecstatically proud and happy looking; and Tristram at once said, they—he and Zara—must be the god-parents of her boy; and Zara held the crimson, crumpled atom for a moment, and then looked up and met her husband's eyes, and saw that they had filled with tears. And she returned ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... restraint. She was about to leave the table in order to relieve them of her presence, when Miss Burton unexpectedly entered and took her chair, which hitherto had been vacant. She was a little pale and wan, but this only made her look the more interesting, and both Stanton and Van Berg welcomed her as they would the sunshine after a dreary storm. Even Mrs. Mayhew seemed to find a wonderful relief in her coming, and added ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... finished the measures, and some few other daunces, the said page waved them forth with his wan, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... wish to be convinced of the absurdity of endeavouring to thwart nature's laws, plant a tuft of grass, or a cabbage-plant, in the darkest corner of your coal-cellar. The plant or the tuft may increase in length and breadth, but its colour will be as wan and pale, almost, as would be your own face ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... Hubbard Went to the Cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; When she got there The Cupboard wan bare. And so the poor ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream; its autumn with the laden boughs, when the withered banners of the corn are still, and gathered fields are growing strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color what they touch, weaves in the Autumn wood her tapestries ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... to receive him in, when his aged steps should bring him there at last. He is filled with joy to see her, so young—so bright—so full of promise—and is enraptured to think that she never was old, wan, tearful, withered. This is always one of the sources of consolation in the deaths of children. With no effort of the fancy, with nothing to undo, you will always be able to think of the pretty creature you have lost, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... yellow, to turn back as the monuments met their crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the stars. It was such a light as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and shadowy under the wild and vivid light ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... hear it from himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... and then I saw Ruth. She moved in her chair as if weary. A servant entered bearing a light, and then I saw her face. It was wonderfully changed. It was not that she looked older, but that she was so weary and wan. The old joyous light was gone from her eyes, and she was ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... many months have elapsed; alone and mournfully I live, like a hermit, in these walls, abhorred by the world, an abomination even to brutes. Beautiful nature is shut out from me; for I am blind by day, and only when the moon sheds her wan light upon this ruin, falls the ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... winding-sheet enfold; Count the mystic count of seven: Name the Governors of Heaven.[2] Then in earthen vessel place them, And with dragon-wort encase them, Bleach them in the noonday sun, Till the marrow melt and run, Till the flesh is pale and wan, As a moon-ensilvered cloud, As an unpolluted shroud. Next within their chill embrace The dead man's Awful Candle place; Of murderer's fat must that candle be —You may scoop it beneath the roadside tree—, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... cheerfulness," answered the other, a shade of sadness coming into his face, "methinks the merry smile hath forever forsaken her lips, for now she looketh so pale and wan it doth seem but the shadow of her former self wandering about the house; but thank God, the worst is over, and she is ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... de winder An' kip jus' so quiet lak wan leetle mouse, She say de more finer moon never was shiner— Very fonny, for moon isn't dat side ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond

... sergeant knew for whom those supplies were meant, others did not, and of these latter one jocular and untutored Patlander sang out, "Bully for the leftenint; 'tis he that knows how to look out for number wan." Whereat there came furious shouts of "Shame!" "Shut up!" and inelegant and opprobrious epithets, all at the expense of the impetuous son of Erin who had spoken too soon. Some one whacked his empty head with an equally empty canteen and called him a Yap. Some one else, farther back, sang out, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... pralaya is skipped, and you stand on the far shore, in the sunset of an elder day: looking now forward, into futurity, from 390, perhaps 394 B.C.; over first a half-cycle of Persian decline,—long melancholy sands and shingle, to—there on the edge of the great wan water,—that July in 330 when mean Satrap Bessus killed his king, Codomannus, last of the Achaemenidae, then in flight from Alexander;—and the House of Cyrus and Darius came to an end. What a time it was that drifted into Limbo then! One unit of history; one phase ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... willingly to roam, Lured by a traitor's vainly-trusted vow? Could they, the fond and happy, see me now, Who knew me when life's early summer smiled, They would not know 'twas I, or marvel how The laughing thing, half woman and half child, Could e'er be changed to form so squalid, wan, and wild. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... cald me yer own Susan—in clare county More betoken—iv bin onaisy about ye yer so bowld an Rekles, but this is wurst ov all. Iv no noshun o them sandlewood skooners. The Haf ov thems pirits an The other hafs no beter. Whats wus is that my owld master was drownded in wan, or out o wan, but shure its All the Saim. Down he wint an that ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... including Mde-wa-kan-ton-wan ("Spirit Lake village") and Wa-qpe-ku-te ("Shoot among deciduous trees"), mostly located in Knox county, Nebraska, on the former Santee reservation, with some oa Fort Peck reservation, Montana. B. Sisseton ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... very white and listless, leaning against the side of a doorway, smoking, and looking into the ballroom. Edith could see that his face was thin and wan—that the hand he raised to his lips with a cigarette, was trembling. They were dancing quite ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... one or two exceptions, they had sound limbs, clear eyes, and healthy complexions. As for the young girls, many of them were exceptionally pretty; and the children were sturdy youngsters, not the wan, thin-legged little creatures one sees in Paris. In fact, all of these people appeared to belong to a different race from that of the Parisians, to come from ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... a great wan-hope at his departure, and grieved continually, neither would be comforted; for she said, "I have brought this on myself by sending him such perilous journeys heretofore, and now I cannot bear to part from him." But that she ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... loved you, John; No fault of mine made me your toast: Why will you haunt me with a face as wan ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... Jack took into his strong arms, and would have carried ashore had he been allowed his own way. But this was a point beyond even his power to enforce. For one thing they were sure the child was dead, the little face looked so wan. Secondly, if they were caught by the English gunboat it would mean heavy fines, and the men had no notion of throwing away good ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... His gravity was mix'd with gentleness, Nor had his age made his good humour less; Then was he well in years (the same that he Was Consul that of my nativity), 90 (A stripling then), in his fourth consulate On him at Capua I in arms did wait. I five years after at Tarentum wan The quaestorship, and then our love began; And four years after, when I praetor was, He pleaded, and the Cincian law[4] did pass. With useful diligence he used t'engage, Yet with the temperate arts of patient age He breaks fierce Hannibal's insulting heats; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... longing, The widow curbed and wan— The good wife proud at season, And the maid aware of man; All souls, unslaked, consuming, Defrauded in delays, Desire not more than quittance Than I ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... the church, he turns from the spot whence he has anxiously watched the different members of the departing throng, and feebly crouches down on his knees at the base of a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow, and his cheeks are wan; his thin grey hairs are few and fading on his aged head. He makes no effort to follow the crowd and partake their sustenance; no one is left behind to urge, no one returns to lead him to the public meal. Though weak and old, he is perfectly forsaken in his loneliness, perfectly unsolaced ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... the green umbrella struck a Casey-at-the-bat pose and cut in: "G'wan away from me with your dime-novel talk or I'll place the back of me ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... presentiment forbade me to look in her face. And then when at length I did look at her, I could not tear myself away from such a sorrowful object of contemplation. She was no longer the little pink and white child I had seen in the Champs-Elysees; she had grown taller and thinner, and her face was wan as a waxen taper. Her languid eyes were encircled with blue rings. And her temples . . . what invisible hand had laid those two ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... glory and brightness as seldom comes to human eyes. It was a vision of angels and of brilliant stars. She commenced calling her father, and those with him, and began talking about the radiant forms that hovered over her. Her wan, pale face was illumined with smiles, and with an ecstasy of joy she talked of the angels and stars, and of the happiness she experienced. "Why, Reed," exclaimed McCutchen, "Patty is dying!" And it was ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering, Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate seashore. Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father, And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man, Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion, E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken. Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him, Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... the Queen's manner toward me became more distant every day; thanks to Lady Morley-Frere, Mary Darragh, and the other busybodies who had the royal ear, and hated me. If I coquetted with the King 'twas but to see my heart's real master frown, and his face grow wan and sad, for by those very tokens I ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... not badly hurt. She went forward with Mr. and Mrs. Bolton, and after they had both taken the limp hand that lay outside the covering, she touched it too. It returned no pressure, but his large, wan eyes looked at her with such gentle dignity and intelligence that she began to frame in her mind an excuse for what seemed ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... blowing so hard, high up there in the exposed place, that the only way to be safe was to stand nailed by the wind to the wan of the tower. At their feet fell the precipice where the limestone was quarried away. Below was a jumble of hills and tiny villages—Mattock, Ambergate, Stoney Middleton. The lads were eager to spy out the church of Bestwood, far away among the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... simplicity, was going on without being noticed. Micheline had thrown herself with a burst of tenderness into her mother's arms. Serge was deeply affected by the young girl's affection for him, when a trembling hand touched his arm. He turned round. Jeanne de Cernay was before him, pale and wan; her eyes sunken into her head like two black nails, and her lips tightened by a violent contraction. The Prince stood thunderstruck at the sight of her. He looked around him. Nobody was observing him. Pierre was beside Marechal, who was whispering those words ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... neighbor before mentioned—Mrs. Quinn, long time laundress of Captain Sanders's troop and jealous as to Wren's, was telling what she had heard of Shannon's discoveries, opining that both Captain Wren and the captain's daughter deserved investigation. "No wan need tell me there was others prowling about Mullins's post at three in the marnin.' As for Angela—" But here Miss Shaughnessy bounded from the wooden settee, and, with amazing vim and vigor, sailed spontaneously ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... southern side of the house. Her paling beams streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light, heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was lost to view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the long row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed up in night. But one visible object was discernible, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... Thy strength and bloom are faded: Who hath thus Thy state degraded? Death upon Thy form is written; See the wan worn limbs, the smitten Breast upon ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... dear, to keep me company," she answered with a wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway. I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with," and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the skies, letting her grief have its way ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... been heard by those who were huddled around the miserable fire, for they scrambled to their knees. As the tiny blaze sprang up just then, it showed the scouts the four Stanhope boys looking pinched and wan, with their eyes staring the wonder they must have felt at sight ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... poet Marvell. But with some peoples the task of answering the question is an easy one; for fate, or its human side, caste, has settled the matter long before the infant comes into the world. The Chinese philosopher, Han Wan-Kung, is cited by Legge as saying: "When Shuh-yu was born, his mother knew, as soon as she looked at him, that he would fall a victim to his love of bribes. When Yang sze-go was born, the mother of Shuh-he-ang knew, as soon ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... "Ah, g'wan!" reiterated Frenchy. "You won't get into the brig for it, that's sure. I'll do it alone. Only see that you keep your mouth shut about it, if ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... ye don't," concluded an Irishman, "I take it ye'll die, an' take sam wan of us wid ye; fur this is an American ship, where the mates are hired fur the bigness o' their fists an' the hardness o' their hearts. Look pleasant, now, the pair o' ye; an' wan o' ye take this hash-kid ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... to git right back in thar, an' keep still. It was just as that whole caboodle come tearin' up this las' time, sir. It wan't no safe place fer a girl whar you was. Ragan he promised to tell you, only he got hit 'fore the fracas was done. That's why Foster chirked up, an' that's all ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... want to part with his niggers an the niggers didn' wan' to part with ol' master so they thought by comin to Arkansas they would have a chance to keep 'em. So they got on their way. We loaded up our wagons an put up our wagon sheet an we had plenty to eat an plenty of horse feed. We traveled ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... men's artificial arrangements, to, the recognition of a certain potent natural aristocracy, which is far from being always identical with that more formal, heraldic one. And what is a coarse fact in the case of Faulconbridge becomes a motive of pathetic appeal in the wan and babyish Arthur. The magic with which nature models tiny and delicate children to the likeness of their rough fathers is nowhere more justly expressed than in the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... full of energy, Laura tore her Minerva from top to bottom, while two great tears rolled down the cheeks grown wan with hope deferred. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... for his kindness. Now, the Secretary had lived in modern capitals for many years, was trained in diplomacy, and had schooled himself never to appear surprised. But the Princess Kalora fairly bowled him over. He had pictured her as a wan and waxen creature, who would be carried to the hotel in a closed carriage or ambulance, there to recline by the windowside and look out at the rustling leaves. He had decided, after hours of deliberation, that the etiquette of the situation would be for some member ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... wine of which they drank A drug infused, antidote to the pains Of grief and anger, a most potent charm For ills of ev'ry name. Whoe'er his wine So medicated drinks, he shall not pour 280 All day the tears down his wan cheek, although His father and his mother both were dead, Nor even though his brother or his son Had fall'n in battle, and before his eyes. Such drugs Jove's daughter own'd, with skill prepar'd, And of prime virtue, by the wife of Thone, AEgyptian Polydamna, giv'n her. For ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... and seeing, with the exception of the copse just passed, nothing but an open forest, without shelter or harbour for an ambushed foe. But at that moment Edith caught him by the arm, and turned upon him a countenance more wan with fear than that she had exhibited upon first hearing the cries of Stackpole. It expressed, indeed, more than alarm,—it was the highest degree of terror, and the feeling was so overpowering that her lips, though moving as in the act of speech, gave forth no sound whatever. But what ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... you say that, mother dear; sweet to know that you love me so," Evelyn said in moved tones, bending down to press a kiss on the wan cheek, "and I mean to fairly surfeit you with my company in the days and ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star, All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... olive; and the small fountains, which, in any other land, would spring merrily along, sparkling and singing among tinkling pebbles, here flow calmly and silently into some pale font of marble, all beautiful with life; worked by some unknown hand, long ago nerveless, and fall and pass on among wan flowers, and scented copse, through cool leaf-lighted caves or gray Egerian grottoes, to join the Tiber or Eridanus, to swell the waves of Nemi, or the Larian Lake. The most minute objects (leaf, flower, and stone), while they add ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... river. Tall grass twisted about the Terran's legs as he began to run. In spite of the gloom, he hesitated to cross that open space. At night Warlock's peculiar vegetation displayed a very alien attribute—ten ... twenty varieties of grass, plant, and tree emitted a wan phosphorescence, varying in degree, but affording each an aura of light. And the path before Shann now was dotted by splotches of that radiance, not as brilliant as the chemical-born flames the attackers had kindled ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... is at your service, my son. But,' he added, with a wan smile, 'my Lenten fare is always somewhat meagre, and this year it has been such that I must ask you for a crust of bread if I am to have the strength to ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of Saint Malo, hired by the young Sheridan and some other Irish adherents, arrived in Lochnannach; and on the twentieth day of September, this unfortunate prince embarked in the habit which he wore for disguise. His eye was hollow, his visage wan, and his constitution greatly impaired by famine and fatigue. He was accompanied by Cameron of Lochiel and his brother, with a few other exiles. They set sail for France, and after having passed unseen, by means of a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... works by the older masters the source of light is conceived within the picture, so by its issuance from the inward of the wing, the valuable principle of radiation has resulted, the light passing upward through the wan face behind to the crescent moon and below through the sleeve and long fold of the dress to the ground. On the side it follows the arm disappearing through the fingers ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... lakes and meadows, haunting oft the wonted shore,— Hunters from the land of spirits seek the bison and the deer, Where the Saxon now inherits golden field and silver mere; And beside the mound where burried lies the dark-eyed maid he loves, Some tall warrior, wan and wearied, in the misty moonlight moves. See—he stands erect and lingers—stoic still, but loth to go— Clutching in his tawny fingers feathered shaft and polished bow. Never wail or moan he utters ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... a frightful picture of the misery of the workers. Men, women, children, young girls, pass before you, starved, blanched, ragged, wan, and wild. The description ends with ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... Alberich's dwelling,—a frowning fortress of granite built in the mountain-side. The gate was opened by the sleepy giant who always sat within, and the party rode into the narrow court-yard. There they were met by Alberich, seeming smaller and grayer, and more pinched and wan, than ever before. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... though not Atheists in principle, yet such in practice.[21] What do all their acts declare, but this, that they either know not God, or fear not what he can do unto them? But, O! how will they change their note, when they see what will become of them! How wan will they look! Yea, the hair of their heads will stand on end for fear; for their fear is their portion; nor can their fears, nor their prayers, nor their entreaties, nor their wishes, nor their repentings, help them in this day. And thus have I showed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the Trojan women, weeping, Sit ranged in many a length'ning row; Their heedless locks, dishevelled, sweeping Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe. No festive sounds that peal along, Their mournful dirge can overwhelm; Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song, Commingled, wails the ruined realm. "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said: "From home afar behold us torn, By foreign lords as captives borne— Ah, happy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... blood and fire, over heaps of slain, General Sir Redvers Duller passed into Ladysmith—passed in just in time; passed in to see men with wan cheeks and sunken eyes—an army of skeletons; but passed in to find the ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... into the charming dream. Bent and weary, he came across the lawn to find his son. The wan, pathetic figure brought back to James all the present bitterness. He sighed, and advanced ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... eyes widened, and a look of mingled confusion and astonishment came into his wan face. "I do not see, tio mio—I ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends:— such a man may be reckoned a COMPLETE man.' CHAP. XIV. 1. The Master asked Kung-ming Chia about Kung-shu Wan, saying, 'Is it true that your master speaks not, laughs not, and takes not?' 2. Kung-ming Chia replied, 'This has arisen from the reporters going beyond the truth.— My master speaks when it is the time to speak, and so men do not get tired of his speaking. He laughs when there ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... the sting from the sorrow he inflicted by making her believe it inevitable. Thus this little wellspring of romance forever watered and kept fresh her otherwise withered life; if subdued, she was not bitter; and no one can tell how the thin, wan face renewed its youth, and the wrinkled cheeks their pinkish bloom, caught in that far-off spring-time in her father's orchards, as, sitting in her solitary room, she remembered the man, now occupying a prominent position in life, who said, as he bade her tenderly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... young wife whom he had lost. I repeated—fervently and sincerely repeated—what I had already said to him in writing. "I owe everything, sir, to your fatherly kindness." Saying this, I ventured a little further. I took his wan white hand, hanging over the arm of the chair, and respectfully put ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... and scarce, on a bare brick floor, with a grate in which no fire could have been kindled without falling into the middle of the room. He recalls that racking head-ache, that scorching thirst, and those pains in all the bones of a wan, wasted figure lying under a patchwork quilt on a squalid bed. A figure, independent of, and dissevered from himself, yet in some degree identified with his thoughts, his sufferings, and his memories. Somebody nursed the figure, too—he ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... moves over to the next table again to help out with the silver bucket of champagne he's ordered, taking Jeff Tuttle with him to present to his old friends that he's known for all of twenty minutes. The New Yorker is now more suspicious then ever of Ben; his wan beauty is marred by a cynical smile and his hair has come unglued in a couple of places. Ben is more sensitive than ever to these suspicions of his new pal so he calls on Jake Berger to match his watch against the four. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... shriek of war, face to face with death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined. Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered doorway, holding out ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... overwhelming extent. On the other hand, when, as he generally did, he called Mike 'Mister Cricketer', the humour of the thing appeared to elude Mike, though the mode of address always drew from Psmith a pale, wan smile, as of a broken heart made cheerful against ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... her breast. The hand of the woman was stretched out with a coin which she was about dropping into an iron-bound coffer which stood at the side of the picture. It was "the widow's mite;" and her face, wan, sad, sweet, yet loving and longing, told the story. The two coins were going into the box ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Wan water from the border hills, Dear voice from the old years, Thy distant music lulls and stills, And ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... suddenly above "the night wind's melancholy song" he heard a voice calling him through the twilight. "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" he answered in French. "Who calls?" But only his own voice came back in echoes while the gloom of night deepened and a wan moon rose silently behind the distant hill. Then when he reached the Indian encampment it was only to see the death fires lighted on the shore, to hear the wail of women and to learn that just before her lips had closed forever, his beloved had called for him—just ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... backer near him, and it was commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes—a wan mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase, for a payment which ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... from him," said Lorelei, with a wan smile, "and I'll know that you are in good company for one evening ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... herself on the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies about you last night, and nearly slew me with a glance because I dared to touch my mandolin after dinner. Poor little Nick was rather blue too though he did ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... yesterday," he said, trying to force a smile, but it was a sickly effort, and only made more ghastly and wan his pallid features, over which ages seemed to have passed since the previous day, leaving them scarred, and battered, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... has tane a siller wan', An' gi'en him strokes three, And he has started up the bravest knight That ever ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... 'twould have made a preacher peevish to have you land in the pit of his stummick with them sharp hoofs of yourn. But you're only an innercent little sheep, and they wan't no sense in his tryin' to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... months afterwards seemed doubtful, there were only broken revelations of the laborious hours renewed, and the white nights when he had seen the moonlight fade and the gaslight grow wan at the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... of many Asiatic races, including not only the volunteers from the native states of India, but elements from the French colony in Cochin China, with Annam, Cambodia, Tonkin, Laos, and Kwang Chau Wan. England and France both contributed many African tribes, including Arabs from Algeria and Tunis, Senegalese, Saharans, and many of the South African races. The red races of North America were represented in the armies of both Canada and the United States, while the Maoris, Samoans, and other ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... before a breeze sprang up and dispelled the ominous fog. The moon showed her wan face through the driving scud, the sail was at last hoisted, and cold and hungry, and sick at heart, our voyagers once more returned to their ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... a praying angel and an evil dwarf on either side. The black abyss attracts her yet she is softened by a child's caress. She laughs at the blackest calamities that threaten her, but weeps over thin, wan children without bread. Her whole life goes into song. The boy criminal on the street fascinates her and she would kiss him. She writes of jealousy as a ghost of vengeance. If death comes, she fears "that the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... weapon tie: Then the gay glittering diadem put on, Ponderous with brass, and starr'd with Bristol-stone. His royal consort next consults her glass, 50 And out of twenty boxes culls a face; The whitening first her ghastly looks besmears, All pale and wan the unfinish'd form appears; Till on her cheeks the blushing purple glows, And a false virgin-modesty bestows. Her ruddy lips the deep vermilion dyes; Length to her brows the pencil's arts supplies, And with black ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... His senses, nevertheless, were alert. He heard the low roar of the flooded brook, the whir of rising grouse ahead, the hoofs of deer on stones, the song of spring birds. He had an eye also for the wan wild flowers in the shaded corners. Presently he led the horse out of the willows into the open and up a low-swelling, long slope of fragrant sage. Here he dropped back to Columbine's side and put his hand upon the pommel of her saddle. It was not long until her own hand softly fell ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... which contained "dangerous praises of his valor and worthiness," inserted for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of the queen and bringing him into disgrace. The work was shown him by Elizabeth herself. On coming from her presence he was observed to look "pale and wan," and going home he reported himself sick;—an expedient for working on the feelings of his sovereign, to which, notwithstanding the truth and honor popularly regarded as his characteristics, Essex is known to have frequently condescended. On this, as on most occasions, he found it successful: ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... the mirror by their side, looked at her wan face, the shabby little hat, the none too tidily arranged hair which drooped over her ears; down at her shapeless jacket, her patched skirt, the shoes which were in open rebellion. Then she laughed, curiously enough ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields. Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... me wan an' nine, fork it oot,' she answered brusquely, and held out her brawny hand, into which Abel Graham reluctantly, as usual, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... pale Cynthia fades, The bursting earth unveils the shades! All slow, and wan, and wrapped with shrouds They rise in visionary crowds, And all with sober accent cry, 'Think, mortal, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... Julianne. Aunt Julianne used ter have spells and fight and kick all the time. They had doctor after doctor but none did her any good. Somebody told Uncle Martin to go ter a old conjurer and let the doctors go cause they wan't doing nothing for her anyway. Sho nuff he got one ter come see her and give her some medicine. This old man said she had bugs in her head, and after giving her the medicine he started rubbing her head. While he rubbed her head he said: ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... viands, and accustomed to find every whim fulfilled, this kind of life was intolerable to him. The steaming recesses of a squalid eating-house gave him a sensation of loathing and sickness, and the want of exercise made him look haggard and wan. In vain he appealed to men who had called themselves his father's friends; he found to his cost that the son of a detected swindler has no friends, and more especially if his own life have been tainted with suspicion or dishonour. Poor ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and many long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... through the wire induces currents in the water, and these moving in the opposite direction act as a drag on the passage of the message through the wire. What the effect of this phenomenon would be on a cable long enough to cross the Atlantic wan a serious problem that required deep study by the company's engineers. It seemed entirely possible that the messages would move so slowly that the operation of the cable, once it was laid, ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... hand, went along the lengthy passage, and opened the door. No one was there! She came back to the dining-room smiling—"Masther Edward is afther playin' wan av his thricks, ma'am——" she began, when the bell again rang—this time vigorously. My eldest sister threw down the book she was reading, and with an impatient exclamation herself went to the door, opened it quickly, and said sharply ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... the Lord give me the b'ys, an' 'twas the Lord took away their blissid father. Do ye think He'd 'a' done ayther wan or the other if He hadn't thought I could care for 'em all? An' I will, too. It may be we'll be hungry—yis, an' cold, too—wanst in a while. But it won't ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger

... She was so bright, so imperious, so queen-like! You ask me why I did not let you know I was living? Blythe, I would have died in very truth by my own hand rather than trouble her peace in her married life with you!" He paused—then glanced up at his friend, with the wan flicker of a smile—"And—do you ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... o' dem, dey shouted enough, dey shouted dey fill. But dat ain' whut I's drivin' at yit. Whut I wan' 'o know, whut mek Brothah Simon ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... upon the image of the dog, which had taken, the evening before, such fantastic liberties with my overwrought fancy. But these drops gathered themselves up nimbly into little shining balls, and fled off to the ground like so much quicksilver. I looked out upon the wan pools and marshes, whence a greenish mist steamed up, and seemed to poison the sunlight streaming through it. It is possible that this semblance of an unwholesome mist was not so much the fault of the marshes as a condition of the atmosphere, premonitory of the fierce electric storms and the earthquake ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... young circus tank-actor propped up in the clean, white hospital bed, with a pleasant-faced nurse hovering about him. Benny looked pale and wan, though perhaps some of his pallor was caused by the white ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum

... after a life of vicissitude, anxious only to be forgotten, and after so much storm and stress to be nothing more than pious. There must be many descendants of the Moors, but the present population is wan and lifeless. They are taciturn, sombre folk, with nothing in them of the chattering and vivacious creatures of Arab history. Indeed, as I wandered through the streets, it was not the Moors that engaged my mind, but rather Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castille. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... you, sir? Oh, I did hope that you would come again!" she exclaimed, "The doctor says that my little girl's certain to get well. I was terrible anxious the day before yesterday, but now though she's weak and wan, you'd hardly know ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... entered without his knowledge. Turning his head, he beheld that the God of Love was standing in the room, even as he seemed in the form of the image that stood over the fountain by the bridge. But now the bright feathers of his wings were faded, and his face was wan, and the garment that he wore was no longer red but black, and he looked very sadly upon Dante, and Dante felt his spirit grow cold and old within him before that melancholy gaze. Then the God of Love made a sign to Dante to rise ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... but nedder of us had no learnin' an' I say to Paul, 'Does you think you got nough learnin' to lead a flock of people? I don' wan' you to git up an' mek me shame.' I tell him to go to de Benedicts an' see what book he needs to study, come by town bring me a pair of broggans for me, 'cause I wuz a-gwine to wuk and he wuz a-gwine to school. For t'ree long years I plowed ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... for anny wan who comes routin' me out av bed at such an hour, an' may the devil fly off wid yez for that same," growled the man. "Go away wid yez, an' niver let me ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... various stages of life and death, yoked up to every conceivable manner of springless vehicle, piled high with odds and ends of furniture and bedding which had been snatched up in the mad hurry of flight. On top of the bundles lay sick and starving children, wan with want and exposure. Beside the wagon walked weary women or old men, urging their animals on with weird cries and curses, returning to the devastated remains of what had once ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... will, chile! But, w'at you wan' it fer?" answered Aunt Connie, smiling down at the little girl whom she ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... not open, ranne to the backsyde and lept ouer the garden wal; but, in lepyng, the draught-bord so troubled hym, that he fell downe into the gardyn and had almoste broken his necke: and ther he lay styll, tyll that the pryncypall cam into the garden; which, wan he saw hym lye there, had wente some man had ben slayne and there caste ouer the wall, and durst not come nye him, tyll he had callyd vp hys companye which, when many of the gentylmen[57] wer com to gether loked well ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... they came to Alberich's dwelling,—a frowning fortress of granite built in the mountain-side. The gate was opened by the sleepy giant who always sat within, and the party rode into the narrow court-yard. There they were met by Alberich, seeming smaller and grayer, and more pinched and wan, than ever before. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... they fled in terror from the board of old. Than these no deadlier portent nor any fiercer plague of divine wrath hath issued from the Stygian waters; winged things with maidens' countenance, bellies dropping filth, and clawed hands and faces ever wan with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... scarcely sleep at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out behind the window-curtains. It was even now day out-of-doors, though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it was long before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale. Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The tree-trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect of mesmeric fixity which ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... sight of her first, and she could see him turn and say a word to his comrade. Bannister looked up, caught sight of her, and smiled. That smile, so pale and wan, went to her heart like a knife. But the message of her eyes was hope. They told the prisoners silently to be of good cheer, that at least they were ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... but then there wan't any danger o' that, cos, you see, I kep the vessel off by night, an the danger couldn't hev riz. I thought we were a mile further up the bay; we've been a doin better than I ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... and there, indeed, a sceptic Mutters language rather rude; Here and there a wan dyspeptic, Yielding to a peevish mood, Wonders why a winning nation finds itself so short ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... de wagons broke down 'cause de mules ain't had nothin' ta eat an' most ob dem died. We git in sich a bad fix some ob de people died. When it seem lak we wuz all gwine die, a planter come along de road an' he stopped ta find out what wuz de matter. Wan he heard our story an' who our master wuz he git a message to him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... quarreling with her mother, but he said nothing. He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, "Come on now, honey; here's a regular home and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... but hasta la vista!" She lifted her chin valiantly, although her smile was a trifle wan. "That means 'until we meet again', you know, and I feel somehow that it will ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... was cut at night by torchlight. It was a warm and dull evening, and the wan moon threw a yellow light onto the torches which made the night misty with their resinous smoke. The hounds devoured the wild boar's stinking entrails, and snarled and fought for them, while the prickers and the gentlemen, standing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... home-coming? Ellie was taken to the hospital, whither frightened Mrs. Connors was summoned. Upon one of the cots in the accident ward lay the child, her small face wan with pain, and in her eyes the startled expression noticeable in those of a person who has had a serious fall. In one feverish hand she held something tightly clasped—something for which she had asked before being carried from the store. When ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... unexpected power, and only the hunter himself could tire her out. As for him, he was not happy unless he was working, and at times he made the screw spin again under his fierce strokes, whenever his eyes fell on the wan faces of his young companions stewing in the insufferable heat. He shortened the journey by twenty-four hours, for on the afternoon of the fourth day the woman, for the first time, showed ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... "Nary a wan did I see, Masther Ned. Sure there was a slatherin' lot of lads bint on some joke, an' I didn't interfere wid 'em, knowin' they was up t' no harm. But ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... looked shocked. "Julie was real dacent, she niver sought her betters' society. Nay, she was afeared Miss Kathleen might listen to his courtin'. She didn't consider no wan good enough ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... distance rose the yell of hounds: The flame-wisps, starting from the sedge and grass, Hung, 'mid the vapours, over the morass. Up to him came a beldame, wildly drest, Bearing a closely-folded feather-vest: She smil'd upon him with her cheeks so wan, Gave him the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... Captain, it's meself that has a pairt of me rations lift, and Oi'll go and get it for the poor crayther, and Oi'll bring the horses at the same toime," and he started off muttering to himself, "Ah, them Apaches, the dhirty divils; I'd like to kill ivery wan o' thim." ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... could not destroy. Then, with a sudden transition of tone and gesture, he denounced vengeance against her betrayer, and called upon the north wind to cool the fervour of his brain. His hair hung in dishevelled parcels, his cheeks were wan, his looks ghastly, his vigour was fled, and all the glory of his youth faded; the physician hung his head in silence, the attendants wrung their hands in despair, and the countenance of his friend was ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... sheen; And, floating swan-like, stately, and serene, A few light fleecy clouds, the drapery of heav'n, Throw their pale shadows o'er this witching scene, Deep'ning its mystic grandeur—and seem driven Round these all shapeless piles like Time's wan ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... chiefly Italians, though a few Swiss, French and Germans are to be found among them. They are commonly to be found in the streets in pairs; but sometimes three work together, and again only one is to be found. There are several hundreds of these children on the streets. Dirty, wan, shrunken, monkey-faced little creatures they are. Between them and other children lies a deep gulf, across which they gaze wistfully at the sports and joys that may not be theirs. All day long, and late into the night, they ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... so pale and wan, fond lover, Prithee why so pale? Will, when looking well wont move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee why ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... had no more meaning for him. He was again eternal and infinite. All this beauty of earth and sky and moon-wan water, it was not outside him, it was himself. He reached out a hand to pluck a handful of stars, and could not—because they were too close. You cannot pluck the jewels of your ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... or else these caitiff rogues Had wreaked themselves on me; good cause is theirs To hate me, for my wont hath ever been To catch my thief, and then like vermin here Drown him, and with a stone about his neck; And under this wan water many of them Lie rotting, but at night let go the stone, And rise, and flickering in a grimly light Dance on the mere. Good now, ye have saved a life Worth somewhat as the cleanser of this wood. And fain would I reward thee worshipfully. What guerdon will ye?' Gareth sharply spake, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... thousands and thousands and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... do with her as I pleased. I observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and, with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and horses, even though I harnessed them myself, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... by words, doth turn Wan ashes. Still, from memory's urn, The lingering blossoms tenderly Refute our wilding minstrelsy. Alas! we work but beauty's wrong! The dream is lovelier ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... Bridget, in a loud whisper, "would ye be havin' th' milkman lave wan or two quarts ov milk ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler

... Lost Hollow! Over it loomed darkly the mountain whose peak was so often shrouded in clouds. The people loved the hills and the shadows; they glided like wan ghosts up and down The Way or took to the more sheltered trails. When they were sober they were gentle, harmless folk, but when whiskey overpowered them the men became dully brutal, the women wretchedly slavish, and ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter the size of the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... cheek-bones were nearly pressing through her skin, till her elbows were sharp, and her finger-bones as those of a skeleton. Her eye did not lose its lustre, but it became unnaturally bright, prominent, and too large for her wan face. The soft brown locks which she had once loved to brush back, scorning, as she would boast to herself, to care that they should be seen were now sparse enough and all untidy and unclean. It was matter of little thought now whether they were seen ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... records show that, in the reign of the Emperor Bidatsu (A.D. 572-585), a memorial sent by Korea to the Yamato Court was illegible to all the officials except one man, by name Wang-sin-i, who seems to have been a descendant of the Paikche emigrant, Wan-i. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... very last line of the ascending troop—lean, hungry looking men, with wan faces, but shouting lustily. I think they were about three hundred in all. "Come on, lad," called out a bearded fellow with a bandage over one eye, making room for me at his side; "there's work for plenty more!"—and a minute after, a shot took him in the ribs, and he scream'd out "Oh, my God!" ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... rays touched the trees of the forest, then eyes were first turned upon one another, and then in different directions. Those of Captain Redwood rested upon the faces of his children, now truly overspread with the wan pallor of what seemed to be rapidly ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... first landing Nina knocked at a door, and was desired to enter by a soft female voice. The only occupant of the room when she entered was a dark-haired child, some twelve years old perhaps, but small in stature and delicate, and, as appeared to the eye, almost wan. "Well, Ruth dear," said Nina, "is Anton ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... himself, to Colonel Greenleaf, the large, dingy-gray, lively-eyed Major Kincaid, at the sentinelled door of the room where he and his four wan fellows, snatched back from liberty on the eve of release, were prisoners in plain view of the vessel on which they were to have ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... "Thou knowest what would befall, bestir thee than; Prevent with craft, what force could not withstand, Turn to their evil the speeches of the man, With his own weapon wound Godfredo's hand; Kindle debate, infect with poison wan The English, Switzer, and Italian band, Great tumult move, make brawls and quarrels rife, Set all the camp on ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... was I in days agone For storm, wherein the Sweeping One, Midst rain of swords, and the darts' breath, Blew o'er all a gale of death. Now a maimed, one-footed man On rollers' steed through waters wan Out to Iceland must I go; Ah, the skald ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... stolid faces passed, Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense; Or if a young face yearned from out the mist Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan With desolate fore-knowledge of the end. My life lay waste about me: as I walked, From the gross dark of unfrequented streets The face of my own youth peered forth at me, Struck white with pity at the thing I was; And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal, With lifted face star-strong, went one ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... were rude to you: they said, "Be gibbetted!" In many a ruthless road your cheek grew wan Where hawkers and street-music were prohibited And stout policemen urged you to get on; Yet still that stubborn heart, the heart of CATO'S kin, Stayed you, and still the gleam that cannot die, Though every now and then an old potato skin Did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... at its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she wants—she knows what she will take. And ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... [Footnote: Commonplace.] compositions, intermingle and wrest in whole sentences taken from ancient Authors, supposing by such filching-theft to purchase honour and reputation to themselves, doe cleane contrarie. For, this infinite varietie and dissemblance of lustres, makes a face so wan, so il-favored, and so uglie, in respect of theirs, that they lose much more than gaine thereby. These were two contrarie humours: The Philosopher Chrisippus was wont to foist-in amongst his bookes, not only whole sentences and other long-long discourses, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... tales of saints in my breviary," soliloquized Mary of Scotland; and in the streaming moonlight, as she spoke, a faint outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace, a crown of blood-red roses pressing thorns into the wan temples that dripped sanguine streams, and in the halo above the wreath a legend, partially obscured, that ran, "Utque talis ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... at six o'clock of a foggy morning; the light bad, the ground heavy from a night's rain. The marchese wore black, I remember, and looked horrible; a wan, doomed face, a mouth drawn down at one corner, a slavered, untidy red beard; and those wide fish-eyes of his which seemed to see nothing. Count Giraldi bore himself gallantly, as he always did. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Emperor, about the yere 1480. The same began likewise to encroach vpon the countries of Lituania and Liuonia, but the conquest only intended, and attempted by him vpon some part of those countries, was pursued and performed by his sonne Basileus, who first wan the citie and dukedom of Plesko, afterwards the citie and dukedome of Smolensco, and many other faire towns, with a large territory belonging vnto them, about the yere 1514. [Sidenote: 1580.] These ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... fainting in the midst of space, so weak that she was unable to wane, forced to stay up yonder, seized and paralyzed by the severity of the weather. She shed a cold, mournful light over the world, that dying and wan light which she gives us every month, at the end ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... Saint Giles of Holy Thorn, a broad and fair foundation, one of the two set up in the forest by the Countess Isabel, Dowager of March and Bellesme, Countess of Hauterive and Lady of Morgraunt in her own right. Where the Wan river makes a great loop, running east for three miles, and west again for as many before it drives its final surge towards the Southern Sea, there stands Holy Thorn, Church and Convent, watching over ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... when they found what Eden really was—a handful of rotting log cabins set in a swamp. The wharves and public buildings existed only on the agent's map with which he had so cruelly cheated them. There were only a few wan men alive there—the rest had succumbed to the sickly hot vapor that rose from the swamp and hung in the air. At the sight of what they had come to, Martin lay down and wept in very despair. But for his comrade's cheerfulness he would have wholly ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset' seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that week she never saw him but he was swaying, or standing with his hand before his eyes, or clutching on to the edge of a chair, or walking with feeble footsteps; and she never spoke to him but he replied with a tired, wan smile, until she became seriously alarmed, thinking his brain was affected, and consulted Captain Hamilton, ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and they went out. Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face, had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial step ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... his vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something breathed to him, telling him when he was alone. He need not have looked at the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... said this gentleman," indicating the nervous and apprehensive Captain Elisha, "was fightin' and murderin'. I ask your pardon, sir. 'Twas this bloke's foolishness. G'wan ashore! You make me sick. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... has been a stormy, a cold, a boisterous and inclement day. The winds have been harsh, the skies have been severe; and if we had no houses over our heads; if we had no shelter against this howling and freezing tempest; if we were wan and worn out; if half of us were sick and tired, and ready to descend into the grave; if we were on the bleak coast of Plymouth, houseless, homeless, with nothing over our heads but the Heavens, and that God who sits above the Heavens; ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... recollect is the scene as it was revealed by the momentary light of one of the last matches. Maqueda sat by Oliver. His arm was about her waist, her head rested upon his shoulder, her long hair flowed loose, her large and tender eyes stared from her white, wan face up toward his face, which was almost that of ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... When this old cap was new When we two parted Where gang ye, thou silly auld carle Where the bee sucks, there lurk I While larks with little wing Who is Sylvia? what is she Why does your brand so drop with blood Why do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears Why so pale and wan, fond lover With ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... ones lies down to sleep, One in the strength and glory of his prime, Whom sorrow never touch'd, nor age impair'd; And still another, wan misfortune's child, Nurtur'd in bitterness, who never took His meat with pleasure. Side by side they rest On Death's oblivious pillow. Do ye say Their varied lot below, mark'd their deserts? ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... recovered his senses he was lying on the deck of one of the war-vessels, and Waggie was barking in an effort to awaken him. Near him sat Watson, with a happy smile on his wan face. Around him was ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... smaller one, which he entered from under a heavy blue velvet curtain, and found himself in an atmosphere heavy with warmth and perfume, and strangely oppressed besides. On one side of the large fire sat the young Queen, faded, wan, and with all animation or energy departed, only gazing with a silent, wistful intentness at her husband. He was opposite to her in a pillowed chair, his feet on a stool, with a deadly white, padded, puffy cheek, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pressure of that hateful object to her face bound me faster in a dungeon of utter hopelessness. My sweet day-dreams and midnight rhapsodies trooped back to mock at me. I felt that I must bow broken under anguish or else steel myself and shout back cynical derision to the whole wan troop of torturing regrets. And all the time, she was caressing that thing in her hand and looking down at it with a fondness, which I—poor fool—thought that I alone could inspire. I suppose if I could have crept away unobserved, I would have gone from her presence hardened and embittered; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... sighs thro' the chimney, complaining and wailing and melting away in a depth of sadness, as if it would pacify its own sorrow, and found newer grief in that need. The clouds break and roll away in the sky, and the wan moon sails up as if to a weary duty. Yet so calm it is, so pure, that it chides weariness and preaches a deep, still hope. In the city I seem not to breathe quite freely yet, but daily I gain ground and air. It is so different, even more than ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... warm, breezeless summer night, Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky; But, undiscouraged, we began to climb The mountain-side. The mist soon girt us round, 15 And, after ordinary travellers' talk With our conductor, pensively we sank Each into commerce with his private thoughts: ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... you sit in the churchyard weeping? Why do you cling to the dear old graves, When the dim, drear mists of the dusk are creeping Out of the marshes in wan, white waves? Darling, I know you're a slave to sorrow; Dearie, I know that the world is cruel; But you'll be in bed with a cold to-morrow, I shall be ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... necessity of having good men in office. The officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government, according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety, intended ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... pitiless light of the morning, he appeared to Lily like a drowned man, with a puffed-out face, swollen eyes and wan cheeks. To think that she belonged to that! Lily spat at him in contempt. Oh, rather sleep with lizards and guinea-pigs than that; rather with a woolly dog, like Poland, that Parisienne! Oh, to get rid ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... persistent knock, and I beheld Miss Charity's meager figure outlined against walls and a flight of uncarpeted stairs such as I had never seen before out of a tenement house. I may have dropped my eyes, but I recovered myself immediately. Marking the slow awakening of pleasure in the wan old face as she recognized me, I uttered some apology for my early call and then waited to see if she would welcome ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... Dooley, "there's wan thing I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration iv Independence. I'd ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... smile flickered for an instant across his wan face. "You have not changed—your voice is just the same. Oh, how it makes me remember! We were good ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... getting immediate payment for it. A couple of shillings would purchase them coal and food, and they were much in need of both. John was sitting by the scanty fire, with his daughter's shawl over his shoulders, looking wan, wasted, and desponding. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... Then four he kill'd and five did wound, That was an unmeet marrow! And he had weel nigh wan the day ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... the way to the river; and then she thought how Maxwell would laugh when she told him the fear of being spoken to had kept her from suicide; and she sat waiting for him to come with such an inward haggardness that she was astonished, at sight of herself in the glass, to find that she wan looking very much as usual. Maxwell certainly noticed no difference when he came in and flung himself wearily on the lounge, and made no attempt to break the silence of their meeting; they had kissed, of ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... witchcraft, declares that "that mighty angel of darkness is not foolishly nor idly to be scoffed at or blasphemed. The Devil," says he, "may properly be looked upon as a dignity, though his glory be pale and wan, and those once bright and orient colors faded and darkened in his robes; and the Scriptures represent him as a prince, though it be of devils." Although our fathers cannot be charged with having ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... yet,"—with a faint wan smile. "Let me keep it a little longer. Not even Mrs. Massereene knows of it. Indeed, it is too soon to proclaim my design. People might scoff it; though for all that I shall work it out. And something ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... which is becoming or graceful. Port, manner of movement or walk. At-tire', dress, clothes. Tar'-nish, to soil, to sully. Av'a-lanche, a vast body of snow, earth, and ice, sliding down from a mountain. Vouch-safes', yields, conde-scends, gives. Wan'ton, luxuriant. Net'ted, caught in a net. Fledge'ling, a young bird. Rec-og-ni'tion, acknowledgment of ac-quaintance. Pre-con-cert'ed, planned beforehand. Cai'tiff (pro. ka'tif), a mean villain. Thral'dom, bondage, slavery. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him past. Her self-absorption was without pretence. Wan and white and with a redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and spoke in a worn ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... you'll be very patient with me," said she, with a wan smile. "I am far from well. I've been debating for several days whether or not to give up and send for ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... linger—follow The phantom pale and wan. O'er hill and dale, and rill and vale It slowly ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... bleach, tarnish, achromatize, blanch, etiolate, wash out, tone down. Adj. uncolored &c (color) &c 428; colorless, achromatic, aplanatic^; etiolate, etiolated; hueless^, pale, pallid; palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a corpse, white ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... charm; that you invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit. The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when you know all the aspects of her beauty. She has high spirits or low, she is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour. She is always interesting and almost always sad; but she has a thousand occasional graces and is always liable to happy accidents. You become extraordinarily fond of these things; you count upon them; they make part of your life. Tenderly ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... greeting, as she perched herself on the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies about you last night, and nearly slew me with a glance because I dared to touch my mandolin after dinner. Poor little Nick was rather blue too though ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... attendant, and led the Chemist to the door, throwing a blanket around him as he did so. In the doorway the Chemist paused and looked back with a wan smile over the wreck ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... moment she sat gazing at the sand, her lips moving. She looked wan as old ivory in the dying firelight, and in the hollows of her immense eyes seemed to dream the mysteries of all ages. "Take a handful of sand," she said to Victoria. "Hold it over thine heart. Now, wish with the whole ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the eyes of the Chevalier, who had been sorely smitten through the friends of his heart, out at sea Night and Death were closing the eyes of another wan old man who had been a traitor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... her powers were overtaxed. The cleaning was triumphantly concluded on Saturday night, and Lucy crept away early to bed, but was unable to sleep from fatigue. She came downstairs next morning so wan and white that Aunt Hepsy feared she was going to turn sick on her hands. But Lucy said she was well enough, and would go to church as usual. Thinking she looked really ill, Miss Goldthwaite came round to the porch after ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan

... probably been a double debate, and between three and five o'clock he has written "a column bould." No one can well mistake him. The features are often Irish, the gait jaunty or resolutely brisk, but neither "buxom, blithe, nor debonnair," complexion wan, expression pensive, and the entire propriety of the toilette disarranged and degagee. The stuff that he has perpetrated is happily no longer present to his memory, and neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... to miss a beat, for against the wan surface of the river he saw an arm raised and a gun point—presumably at the dummy he had left under the tent. Oddly enough his shock of horror was not primarily that one should seek to kill him, Stonor; ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... very seemilar case," broke in Snecky Hobart, shrilly. "Maist o' ye'll mind 'at Donal was michty plague't wi' a drucken wife. Ay, weel, wan day Bowie's man was carryin' a coffin past Donal's door, and Donal an' the wife was there. Says Donal, 'Put doon yer coffin, my man, an' tell's wha it's for.' The laddie rests the coffin on its end, an' says he, 'It's for Davie Fairbrother's guid-wife.' 'Ay, then,' says Donal, 'tak ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... the cause. One of their number, promenading with Lieutenant Hartley, glanced up at Major Webb as they passed him by, with such a world of mingled question and reproach in her soft blue eyes that his heart for the moment smote him. He had never seen Esther Dade looking so languid or so wan, yet more of her and for her had he been thinking during the week gone by than of any other girl in or out of the army. To-day, however, there was another he eagerly sought to see, and, with something akin ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... to her without a word. She opened the door into the next room, which was the kitchen and dining-room of the family, and there, not three feet from her, in the dim light, haggard and wan, bareheaded, his clothes in rags about him, she ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... of this kind to exercise your admiration. Many of those domains of love, which, under the old-fashioned dress, would have been considered as a flat country, now present, through a transparent crape, the perfect rotundity of two sweetly-rising hillocks. As prisoners, wan and disfigured by confinement, recover their health and fulness on being restored to liberty, so has the bosom of the Parisian belles, released from the busk and corset, experienced a ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... advantage and generously started a fresh topic. "They's a tawld 'ee, I reckon, 'bout the bill they's a posted up, right afore the winder, by the Three Pilchards," he said. "Iss," he added, not waiting for an answer, "the king's pardon and wan hunderd pound to be who'll discover to 'em the man who 'twas fired the fatal shot. Wan hunderd pound!" he sneered. "That's a fat lot, surely; and as for t' king's pardon, why 'twudn't lave un braithin'-time to spend it in—not if he war left here, 'twudn't. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... can answer for your character (as I believe I can)," she went on with a wan, almost wistful smile, "he is ready to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... deride; And some demented hurl aside their gowns, And queens their robes discard and jewelled crowns, And rush upon the streets bereft of shame, Their forms expose, and all the gods defame. Alas! from earth the Queen of Love has gone, And lovers 'void their haunts with faces wan And spurn from them the hateful thought of love, For love no longer reigns, all life to move. An awful thrill now speeds through Hades' doors, And shakes with horror all the dismal floors; A wail upon the breeze ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... superinduce insanity." He went to a switch on the wall and pressed it, and instantly the cone of light disappeared. Another movement, and the room Was flooded with the yellow glow of an electric lamp, which seemed dingy and wan, compared with the cold ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... she raised her cup to her lips, and the dark blood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowly retreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, dark eyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her, asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclear irritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she had never thought Louise; she was not even ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... putting one wan finger on his trembling lips in protest. She did not speak, but he read the thrilling simplicity of her silence completely. "Love is never too late!" was what her eloquent ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... visitors, eager to hear the story which was agitating the whole community, but about midnight I told my friends that rest was a necessity, for never in my life was I so thoroughly exhausted from talking; but, as the next day wan-the Sabbath, I would in the evening meet all who chose to come in the Valley School-house (at that day the largest in the county) and tell them the whole story, and save repeating ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Mrs. Van Buren; "while the horse-shoe remains over the stable to keep witches out, you may let the wan stay. You have as much right to your superstitions as ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth

... her countenance radiant with intelligence, and her dark eyes beaming with sympathy and kindness, it was indeed a pleasant surprise to see one so young and delicate, going about from hospital to hospital to find opportunities of doing good to the wan and suffering, and crippled heroes, who had been brought from hard-fought battle-fields to be cared for ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain, a full ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... doors behind them burst open and the Guards flocked in—mighty men of many foreign lands; but now their faces were wan, their eyes stared wide, and their jaws hung down. But at the sound of the clanging of their harness the strength of the Wanderer came back to him again, for the Gods and their vengeance he feared, but not the sword of man. And now once more the bow sang aloud. He grasped it, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... to the health of a family. It is a universal law of physiology, that all living things flourish best in the light. Vegetables, in a dark cellar, grow pale and spindling,[H] and children, brought up in mines, are wan and stinted. This universal law, indicates the folly of turning day into night, thus losing the genial influence, which the light of day produces on all ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... the young man, pressing his wan and wasted fingers over his heart,—"till then, no more dreams, no more strain on my life—my heart would break! Oh, monsieur, how small is my prison—how low the window—how narrow are the doors! To think that so much pride, splendor, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... o'erspreads it all, He places lightly, and, as time subdues The rage of fermentation, plunges deep In the soft medium, till they stand immersed. Then rise the tender germs upstarting quick And spreading wide their spongy lobes; at first Pale, wan, and livid; but assuming soon, If fanned by balmy and nutritious air Strained through the friendly mats, a vivid green. Two leaves produced, two rough indented leaves, Cautious he pinches from the second stalk A pimple, that portends a future sprout, And interdicts its growth. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... greatness. I could hear her open her window, and could see from mine that she stood there talking to the stars, and asking them where was the woman that had been she, and where was her own dear love and unalterable affection? I could see that she wept often, and that the tears ran down her white wan face all pinched by suffering, and that she supplicated the night in tender words to bring back to her what had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... suffer. Tell her that I shall be as crushed by it as she. But anything is better than degradation such as this. Tell her specially that I have not decided without absolute knowledge." Emily was told. The letter was read to her and by her till she knew it almost by heart. There came upon her a wan look of abject agony, that seemed to rob her at once of her youth and beauty; but even now she would not yield. She did not longer affect to disbelieve the tidings, but said that no man, let him do what he might, could be too far gone for repentance and ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... room she was shocked at the change in his appearance. It was almost as though what Arsdale had gained Donaldson had lost. He was colorless, wan, and haggard. His eyes seemed more deeply imbedded in the dark recesses below his brows. Even his hair at the temples looked grayer. But neither his voice nor his manner betrayed the change. The grip of his hand was just as sure; there was the same certainty in gesture and speech, save ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... had the rising sun the day reveal'd, Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispell'd, When from the woods there bolts, before our sight, Somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite, So thin, so ghastly meager, and so wan, So bare of flesh, he scarce resembled man. This thing, all tatter'd, seem'd from far t' implore Our pious aid, and pointed to the shore. We look behind, then view his shaggy beard; His clothes were ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... retreat from Williamsburg, did not tend to cheer the inexpert. First came squads of convalescent sick, barely able to march, who had been sent ahead to save the ambulances for those worse than they. It was a black Sunday afternoon, when those wan and hollow-eyed men limped painfully through the streets on their weary way to Camp Winder Hospital. Weak—mud-encrusted and utterly emaciated—many of them fell by the roadside; while others thankfully accepted the rough transportation of any chance wagon, or cart, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes—a wan mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... To scowl upon his Maker, well from him May all our mis'ry flow. Oh what a sight! How passing strange it seem'd, when I did spy Upon his head three faces: one in front Of hue vermilion, th' other two with this Midway each shoulder join'd and at the crest; The right 'twixt wan and yellow seem'd: the left To look on, such as come from whence old Nile Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth Two mighty wings, enormous as became A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw Outstretch'd on ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and cultivating the garden, or our reading. Of the latter, I had many times endeavored to give her some idea, showing her the plates in the Family Bible, and doing my best to explain them to her, but of late I had quite lost sight of her. Now, how changed, how wan she looked! As I addressed her with my ordinary phrase, "Tshah-ko-zhah?" (What is it?) she gave a sigh that was almost a sob. She did not beg, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... his hands down to the bottom of his pockets. They were all one hole, and that sad lost foolish look came over his wan face again, and startled ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for G[^u][n]wani[']gist[^u]['][n][)i] or Atawin[)e][']h[)i], was obtained from A'wan[']ita (Young Deer), who wrote down only the prayer and explained the treatment orally. He coincides in the opinion that this disease in children is caused by the birds, but says that it originates from the shadow of a bird flying overhead having fallen upon the pregnant ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... As the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... at his companion in surprise; then an absent look came into his eyes, and a variety of expressions passed over his wan visage. At last ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... that it was all right and just what she had expected. What else could she have dreamed? That he should ever marry her was beyond possibility; that had been settled long since—there where the tall, dark pines, wan with the shades of evening, cast their haunting shadows across the Silver Fleece and half hid the blood-washed west. After that he would marry some one else, of course; some good and pure woman who would help and uplift and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... house over there, is my mother. Her brother is here, too, and she has some friends with her. Mother Anastasia was away recently on a little jaunt, and when she came back she said that I looked tired and wan, and that I ought to go to my mother's for a fortnight. So I came. That was all simple ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... feet, And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says 'Forgiven!'" Back hurried Sister Monica; but where Was the poor beggar she left lying there? Gone; and she searched in vain, and sought the place For that wan woman with the piteous face: But only Angela at the gateway stood, Laden with hawthorn blossoms from the wood. And never did a day pass by again, But the old portress, with a sigh of pain, Would sorrow for her loitering: with a prayer That the poor beggar, in her wild despair, Might not have come ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... herself the day following, wan and silent. Willoughby was away; the news of his failure was public property, and she writhed when she read of it in the daily prints. But in the following days she suffered other pangs that were a healthy counter-irritant—she learned to pick and number her FRIENDS, and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... night I stole upon them both. (Lord Dinas knew of this alone, my Lords.) Iseult was sleeping, and Lord Tristram slept An arm's length scarce before me in the moss All pale and wan, and breathed so heavily, So wearily, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was not heralded with loud joy; for when she came into the world, four others, with pale temples, wan, worn cheeks, and skeleton, white arms, were awaiting permission ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... solemnly, "ye burns in yer insides till ye feel like ye had a furnace blazin' there. Thin whin it seems ye must bust wid the flarin' av it, ye suddintly turns cowld as ice, an' yer sowl do shrivil up wid fear. An' thin, at last, ye fergit all about it till the nixt wan happens along. Och—I haven't had a sphell fer months! This is an awful dull place. I think I'll ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... while her hand rose to his face and stroked it softly, then she drew herself away from him and with a wan smile upon her ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... had been the most exciting, the most savage of all sports—a man hunt! They had caught the man at last, and they pushed him, they dragged him, they belaboured him with blows. And he, the man, what a sorry prey he looked! A wreck, wan and dirty from having spent the night in a hole full of leaves, still soaked to his waist from having rushed through a stream, drenched too by the rain, bespattered with mire, his coat and trousers ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the eye of that faithful friend he tried to extend his hand. It was so wan that Glastonbury trembled ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... been strong, for the skylight and all its burden opened on a hinge, and the snow could be seen sliding from it, could be heard in a heavy body rumbling on the roof. She closed the skylight, and now a wan light filtered down the funnel and turned their faces green. It was like life at the bottom of a well, and they felt as though the level of the earth was far above their heads, and its weighty walls pressing ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... my dear?" she said, with a wan little smile at Patty. "How pretty you are! I used to be pretty, too; at least, so they told me." She gave a trilling little laugh, and Patty said, heartily, "I'm sure they were right; ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... the doctor. The strong light increased the pallor of her face. Sommers noticed that the eyes were sunken and had black circles. His glance rested on her hands, as she leaned with folded arms on the table. They were white and wan like the face. The blood seemed to have ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Goesler, standing close by him and putting her left arm very lightly on his shoulder. It was all that she could do for him, but it was in order that she might do this that she had been summoned from London to his side. He was wan and worn and pale,—a man evidently dying, the oil of whose lamp was all burned out; but still as he turned his eyes up to the woman's face there was a remnant of that look of graceful faineant nobility which had always ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... reduced to less than half its full dimensions—stole ghostlike above the horizon; and by her wan light we saw that a host of soft, fleecy clouds—shaped like the smoke belched from the mouth of a cannon upon a windless day—were mustering their squadrons in the eastern quarter; and we knew them for the welcome trade-cloud, the sure indication that the breeze ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... "that I ought to have two pigs: 'For shure, a pair o' pags is double wan pag,' says Flannigan—good clear logic it strikes ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... I don't think you are posing. It's getting on for dinner-time, and you've got that wan, sinking feeling that makes you look upon the world and find it a hollow fraud. The bugle will be blowing in a few minutes, and half an hour after that you will ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... that one of the Taidshut chiefs, called Mutchin Sultu, had revolted against Madagu, the Kin Emperor of China, who had sent his chinsang ("prime minister"), Wan-jan-siang, with an army against him. He eagerly volunteered his services against the old enemies of his people, and was successful. He killed the chief and captured much booty; inter alia was a silver cradle with a covering of golden tissue, such as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... hundred times a day The names of Shiva, wound with darting snakes About their sun-tanned necks and hollow flanks, One palsied foot drawn up against the ham. So gathered they, a grievous company; Crowns blistered by the blazing heat, eyes bleared, Sinews and muscles shrivelled, visages Haggard and wan as slain men's, five days dead; Here crouched one in the dust who noon by noon Meted a thousand grains of millet out, Ate it with famished patience, seed by seed, And so starved on; there one who bruised his pulse With bitter leaves lest palate should be pleased; ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... were raised, and a human head, impassible and bloated, was seen resting on a large pillow; the eyebrows, which were like arches of ebony, met each other at the points; golden dust sparkled in the frizzled hair, and the face was so wan that it looked as if it had been powdered with marble raspings. The rest of the body was concealed beneath the fleeces ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... took him away through the labyrinth of small and gloomy canals, until at length the wan orange glare shining out into the night showed him that he was drawing near one of the entrances to the Fenice. If he had been less preoccupied—less eager to think of nothing but how to get the slow hours over—he might have noticed ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... not so glad Were she to read the graven tale of lines On the wan face of one somewhere alone; Nor were they more content could he have had Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines Apart, and would be ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... heard, an' didn't dacloine for till do it, But tuk the mate-thray down, an' into the foyre he threw it: A shape's choine an' a goat's he throwed on top of the platter, An' wan from a lovely pig, than which there wor nivir a fatter; Thase O'Tommedon tuk, O'Kelly devoided thim nately, He meed mince-mate av thim all, an' thin he spitted thim swately; To sich entoicin' fud they all extinded their arrams. Till ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... I'm willing to give up wan evenin' to society. We all are, for that matter. But it takes an hour an' a half to read the blissed story. If we could only sit down during the recital, sor, it— it wouldn't be so bad. But as it ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... is it that we are to keep?" she asked, with a wan smile. Her kind blue eyes had that glitter in them which is caused by a constant and continuous hunger. Six months ago they had only been gay and kind, now they saw the world as it is, as it always must be so long as the human heart is capable of happiness and the human reason recognizes ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... of that ilk, David Arnot of that ilk, and Mr. John Wedderburn, vicar of Dundee; the yeomen, John Thomson, in Leith, Steven Taburner, with a piper, called Alexander Bailie; they shot very near, and warred [worsted] the English-men of the enterprise, and wan the hundred crowns and the tun of wine, which made the King very merry that his men wan ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... say in a lower voice, "G'wan, you ol' scalliwaggle"; then, "Heah he is, cap'n, heah he come! Watch out foh him. He's nimble—yass, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... of a stage set seen in daylight. The Velasquez portrait mentally translated me to the billiard room where something lay upon the settee with a white sheet drawn over it; and I wondered if my own face looked as wan and comfortless as did the faces of my companions, that is, of two of them, for I ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... me a rose—a huge, hybrid, opulent rose, the product of a dozen forcing processes—and I will love you a new way. As the flowers say good-by, I will say goodnight. Shall I burn them? No, for they would smoulder. And if I left them here alone, to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy wayfarer. And safe in my heart there lives that gracious picture of my lady as she stands ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... sat limp before the two men, a wan smile straying from one to the other, exhausted by her suppressed emotions. Suddenly, without a word, she held out her hand to Graydon. In her deepest soul, she loved this manly, strong-hearted young fellow. She knew, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... Dexter still remained, and in a feeble condition. It was as late as November before the physician in attendance would consent to her removal. She was then taken home, but so changed that even her nearest friends failed to recognize in her wan, sad, dreary face, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... but all the civilities he received were not capable of lessening the anguish of his mind, which kept his body so weak, that tho' youth and an excellent constitution threw off the fever in a short time, yet he was unable to quit his chamber in near three weeks, and when he did, appeared so wan and so dejected, that he seemed no more than the shadow of the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... The mist aside, and with that wind the tide Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field Of battle: but no man was moving there; Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave Brake in among dead faces, to and fro Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... Ah've done ma best for yuh, Miss Laura, yes, Ah have. Ah jest been with yuh ev'ry moment of ma time, an' [Places suit-case on table; crosses to centre.] Ah worked for yuh an' Ah loved yuh, an' Ah doan' wan' to be left 'ere all alone in dis town 'ere New York. [LAURA turns to door; ANNIE stoops, grabs up ribbon, hides it behind her back.] Ah ain't the kind of cullud lady knows many people. Can't yuh ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... table beside the doctor. The strong light increased the pallor of her face. Sommers noticed that the eyes were sunken and had black circles. His glance rested on her hands, as she leaned with folded arms on the table. They were white and wan like the face. The blood seemed to have ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... she went in a raptured daze, Looked in a mirror with startled gaze, Didn't seem to be pleased at all; Savagely muttered: "Insipid Doll!" Clutched her hair and a pair of shears, Cropped and bobbed it behind the ears; Aimed at a wan and willowy-necked Sort of a Holman Hunt effect; Robed in subtile and sage-green tones, Like the dames of Rossetti and E. Burne-Jones; Girdled her garments billowing wide, Moved with an undulating glide; All her frivolous friends forsook, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... o'clock at night, and there had been a fuss. Rose had forgotten the fact that she was very fair and very good to look at; she found, half-consciously, that her beauty had its drawbacks. There did not seem to be any reason why she should spare her strength in any way. So, a little wan and tremulous, she appeared at the early morning service, and then, after walking back in any weather, there was a dull little breakfast, and soon after that she got to work. Every post brought begging letters in crowds, and these hurt her ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... of you," she said; "and how have you been? You look a little wan and tired. Have you ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... which he entered from under a heavy blue velvet curtain, and found himself in an atmosphere heavy with warmth and perfume, and strangely oppressed besides. On one side of the large fire sat the young Queen, faded, wan, and with all animation or energy departed, only gazing with a silent, wistful intentness at her husband. He was opposite to her in a pillowed chair, his feet on a stool, with a deadly white, padded, puffy cheek, and his ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... America. Some of them were evidently well over seventy, and yet, with one or two exceptions, they had sound limbs, clear eyes, and healthy complexions. As for the young girls, many of them were exceptionally pretty; and the children were sturdy youngsters, not the wan, thin-legged little creatures one sees in Paris. In fact, all of these people appeared to belong to a different race from that of the Parisians, to come ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... had changed; it was as though he had let down. Again it seemed as though in the last hour he had been intoxicated, and this the depression to follow that kind of exuberance. But he looked up as he heard her, and smiled a little, a wan, tired smile. She was beside ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... humanity rolleth on; And 'mid faces miserly, haggard, and wan, Between the hypocrite's and the knave's, The hapless idiot's and the slave's, Sweet children smile in their nurses' arms, And clap their hands in innocent glee; While, unrebuked by the heavenly charms That beam ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... responsible for some of the most tumid compositions in the history of English verse. Collins' most current ode, though by no means his best one, "The Passions," abounds in those personifications which, as has been said, constituted, in eighteenth century poetry, a sort of feeble mythology: "wan Despair," "dejected Pity," "brown Exercise," and "Music sphere-descended maid." It was probably the allegorical figures in Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," "Sport that wrinkled care derides," "spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet," etc., that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... it wan't manners, but it came out 'fore I thought, and Harney, he hits me a cuff, and tells me to hush my jaw. He got paid, though, for jes' then a voice I hadn't hearn afore, a wee voice like a girl's, calls out five hundred, and ole Harney turn black as tar. 'Who's that?' he said, pushin' inter the ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... Kau, B.C. 1766 to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Kau. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have a single ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... British subjects, and secured our Chinese passports, resembling naval ensigns more than anything else, for the four provinces of Hu-peh, Kwei-chow, Szech'wan, and Yuen-nan. The Consul-General and his assistants helped us in many ways, disillusioning us of the many distorted reports which have got into print regarding the indifference shown to British travelers by their own consuls at these ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... to the Tuileries, and posted themselves on the terrace beneath the windows of the King's private apartments. As they sat on the steps in the wan light of breaking day. Scheffer heard some one softly calling his name. He listened and the call ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... Time had no more meaning for him. He was again eternal and infinite. All this beauty of earth and sky and moon-wan water, it was not outside him, it was himself. He reached out a hand to pluck a handful of stars, and could not—because they were too close. You cannot pluck the jewels of ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... the granite hills jutting out here and there grimly through the snow wreaths. There is a desolate-looking refuge on the left, with its number 16, marked on it in long ghastly figures, and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and through its window in a frantic whirl; the near ground is all wan with half-thawed, half-trampled snow; a diligence in front, whose horses, unable to face the wind, have turned right round with fright, its passengers struggling to escape, jammed in the window; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... his peers to see, And the man he loved so tenderly, Fast the tears of Count Roland ran, His visage discolored became, and wan, He swooned for sorrow beyond control. "Alas," said Turpin, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... said the young man, pressing his wan and wasted fingers over his heart—"till then, no more dreams, no more strain upon my life—it would break! Oh, monsieur, how small is my prison—how low the window—how narrow are the doors! To think that so much pride, splendor, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... comes a message from far across the deep, From hearts that still can pity and eyes that still can weep— O little lips a-hunger! O faces pale and wan! There's somewhere—somewhere—peace on earth, somewhere good will to man, Across the waste of waters, a thousand leagues away, There's some one still remembers that here ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... staring vaguely at the low and lisping stream, and Alix felt a great pang of pity when she saw him. He came to her smiling, but as Cherry had smiled, with a wan and ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... own room, and Phoebe feared that her presence was intrusive, for she saw her hostess no more till teatime, when the wan face and placid smile almost made her weep at first, then wonder at the calm unconstrained manner in which her amusement was provided for, and feel ready to beg not to be treated like a child or a stranger. When parting for the night, however, Honor tenderly said, 'Thanks, my dear, for giving ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of a hand upon his own roused him to discover the Liane Delorme had seated herself beside him, in a chair that looked the other way, so that her face was not far from his; and he could scarcely be unaware of its hinted beauty, now wan and glimmering in starlight, enigmatic ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... their language is the Same with the Che luck kit to quaws. these people appeared very friendly. Some of them informed us that they had latterly returned from the War excurtion against the Snake Indians who inhabit the upper part of the Multnomah river to the S. E. of them they Call them To wan nah hi ooks. that they had been fortunate in the expidition and had taken from their enimies most of the horses which we Saw in their possession. after dinner we proceeded on our voyage. I walked on Shore with Shabono ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... information he says that the woman seemed to be habited in a brown-coloured petticoat, waistcoat and a white hood, such a one as his wife's sister usually wore, and that her countenance looked extremely pale and wan, with her teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy was like that of his wife's sister, who ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... and shaken from the recent misfortune of losing his wife; who had survived the death of her children fifteen years; herself dying in the sixtieth of her own age. The eyes of Orlando were sunk deeply into his forehead, yet they retained their native brilliancy and quickness. His cheeks were wan, and a good deal withered. His step was cautious and infirm. When we were seated in his comfortable library chairs, he extended his right arm towards me, and squeezing my hand cordially within his own—"Philemon," ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold, clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... And she undid the bundle at her back, and laying the two babes down on the road, showed that the elder of them was in truth in a fearful state. It was a child nearly two years of age, but its little legs seemed to have withered away; its cheeks were wan, and yellow and sunken, and the two teeth which it had already cut were seen with terrible plainness through its emaciated lips. Its head and forehead were covered with sores; and then the mother, moving aside the rags, showed that its back and legs were in the same state. "Look to that," ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... face relaxed into a wan smile as he counted the pencil marks again. Long before that week was ended he figured that he would be dead. The medicines— and the letters— would come too late, probably four or five days too late. Straight out from his last mark he drew a long line, and ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... an old lady and two old daughters, and one fat German professor. Pasquale put me there. It was very respectable," she added, with a wan smile, "and so dull. Madame Champet would scarcely let me go ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... or Atawin[)e][']h[)i], was obtained from A'wan[']ita (Young Deer), who wrote down only the prayer and explained the treatment orally. He coincides in the opinion that this disease in children is caused by the birds, but says that it originates from the shadow of a bird flying overhead having fallen upon the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... on to the broken ground at the foot of the fells, and all must needs ride slower; and then the Carline came sidling up to the Maiden, and saw how wan and woebegone was her face, and asked what ailed her; and she answered faintly at first, and then clearer and louder: "It is because I am thinking of him and his woe; and I wot well that now, so soon as the battle is over, there shall ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... but"—a wan little smile broke through the film of gathering tears—"we will be waiting till they are needed, and we will be praying that the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... went to a switch on the wall and pressed it, and instantly the cone of light disappeared. Another movement, and the room Was flooded with the yellow glow of an electric lamp, which seemed dingy and wan, compared with the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... Bonaparte surrendered to William; there he had given and delivered up our army; it was there that, not being immediately admitted, and requested to exercise a little patience, he had remained for nearly an hour silent and wan before the door, bringing his disgrace, and waiting until it should please William to open the door to him; it was there that before receiving it the King of Prussia had made the sword of France dangle about in an ante-chamber. Lower down, nearer, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... and fearful night. Rack scuds across the moon's wan face (violas and second violins). Hanged men rattle in their chains upon the wayside gibbets (triangle and piccolo). But on, on, on go the lovers, one dead ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... hair; Ingrateful hair, ill-nurtur'd wicked Locks! The cruel wretch then took up from the foot Both my loose tender garments, and at once Rent them from end to end: Imagine then Whether my crimson red, through shame was chang'd Into a pale wan tincture, yea or no. I that was looking toward Heaven then, And with my cries imploring ayd from thence, Upon a suddain to the Earth let fall My shamefac'd eyes, and shut them close, as if Under mine eye-lids, I could cover all ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... has a singular cheerfulness of aspect. Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and which he has carefully buttoned, that he may not make an awkward pause in the hall of his friend's house, I am sure he would search his pocket for a cent to give the wan beggar at the corner. It is impossible just now, my dear woman; but ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... the snow-line crept farther down the bleak, rock-shouldered peaks, and gale followed gale, with sleet and slush and snow, and in the eddies and quiet places young ice formed and thickened through the fleeting hours. And each morn, toil- stiffened men turned wan faces across the lake to see if the freeze-up had come. For the freeze-up heralded the death of their hope—the hope that they would be floating down the swift river ere navigation closed on ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... at that mute response the sufferer fell to dark musing—so sorely stricken was he by the double stab dealt to health and his interests by the loss of his post and the near prospect of death, that he had no strength left for anger. He lay, ghastly and wan, like a consumptive patient after a wrestling bout with ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... it loomed darkly the mountain whose peak was so often shrouded in clouds. The people loved the hills and the shadows; they glided like wan ghosts up and down The Way or took to the more sheltered trails. When they were sober they were gentle, harmless folk, but when whiskey overpowered them the men became dully brutal, the women wretchedly slavish, and the children what one might expect such sad little creatures to become! ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin, and Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in a Chinese junk. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Any change in the weather was as unexpected as it is in books. Suddenly a West Indian Hurricane, ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... towards the French window. Through its high space she saw the wan night outside, a sort of thin paleness resting against the blackness in which she was hidden. And as her eyes became accustomed to their environment she perceived that the pallor without was impinged upon by two shadowy darknesses. Very faint they ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... country thing, allus frightened to death an' ready to bust out cryin'. Gents ain't goin' to stand that. A lot of 'em wants cheerin' up as much as she does. Gent as was in liquor last night knocked 'er down an' give 'er a black eye. 'T wan't ill feelin', but he lost his temper, an' give 'er a knock casual. She can't go out to-night, an' she's been 'uddled up all day cryin' ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... matted head on his breast did rest, A lang blue beard wan'ered down like a vest; But the glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... we remained on deck long enough to see the orb rise again from his lowest dip, and change evening into morning by the same incomprehensible process. There was no golden transfiguration of the dreadful shore; a wan lustre played over the rocks—pictures of eternal death—like a settled pallor of despair on Nature's ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... if crowded side by side on the bottom of one grave. Six persons had been found in this fetid sepulchre at one time, and with one only able to crawl to the door to ask for water. Removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence, we found it crammed with wan victims of famine, ready and willing to perish. A quiet listless despair broods over the population, and ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... Cameron's room, for she wanted to see him. Hugh felt his heart flutter as if doubting whether to stop at once, or to dash through its confining bars. He rose and followed the maid. He stood over Euphra pale and speechless. She lay before him wasted and wan; her eyes twice their former size, but with half their former light; her fingers long and transparent; and her voice low and feeble. She had just raised herself with difficulty to a sitting posture, and the effort ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... smiled, and then became very still and attentive. "Ah, thin," said his mother, "that villain's the boy for tuckin' up soup! The Lord be about him, an' save him alive to me,—the crayter ! . . . An' there's little curly there,— the rogue! Sure he'll take as much soup as any wan o' them. Maybe he wouldn't laugh to see a big bowl forninst him this day." "It's very well they have such good spirits," said the visitor. "So it is," replies the woman, "so it is, for God knows it's little else they have to keep them warm thim ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... She began to search her mind for an answer. Then she smiled uncertainly, a wan, small smile. It was very clear; what she had lost was all interest in life and all hope for the brave to-morrow. Nothing remained of all those lovely dreams which she had built up by day and night about the figure of Pierre le Rouge. He was gone, and the bright-colored ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... fit of coughing proceeding from the sofa awoke Lawrence next morning, startling him into sudden recollection of the evening's adventure; and when the shutters were opened Wikkey looked so fearfully wan and exhausted in the pale gray light, that he made all speed to summon Mrs. Evans, and to go himself for the doctor. The examination of the patient did not last long, and at its conclusion the doctor ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM

... onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window at his side—a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... and the dun deer lap[66], And she lap wondrous wide, Until they came to the wan water, And he stem'd her ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... of the slant west sunshine Made the wan face almost fair, Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, And the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... too, with out medical assistance—only there was the police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her conscience, then, that was gnawing at her—because of the police! Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, who had sobbed and thanked ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... strain writes the author of Why so pale and wan, fond lover? and both the circumstance and the doggerel should be ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... do," replied the little girl, spitefully. "Ey hate yo now warser than onny wan else. Ey hate yo because yo are neaw lunger my sister—becose yo 're a grand ledy's dowter, an a grand ledy yersel. Ey hate yo becose yung Ruchot Assheton loves yo—an becose yo ha better luck i' aw things than ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... "Dthere eeze wan troub' 'bout dat. To which case do you riffer? 'Cause, you know, dey got t'ree, four case' like dat. An' you better not mention no name, 'cause you don't want git nobody in troub', you know. Now dthere's dthe case of——. And dthere's dthe case of——. And dthere's ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... air a glad thing to this chile to think he'll soon hev a bit o' fightin'. An' 'specially as it's to be agin ole Santy, the durned skunk. By the jumpin' Geehosofat! if Cris Rock iver gits longside him agin, as he war on't San Jacinty, there wan't be no more meercy for the cussed tyrant, same as, like a set of fools, we Texans showed him thar an' then. Tell ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... Before beginning his arduous and dangerous journey, Linnaeus went to Lund to visit his old patron, Doctor Stobaeus. Time, the great healer, had cured the Doctor of his hate, and he now spoke of Linnaeus as his best pupil. He had left hastily by the wan light of the moon, without leaving orders where his mail was to be forwarded; but now he was received as an honored guest. All the little misunderstandings they had were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its fair sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward, to break and die beneath the noonday sun; ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... from himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with her natural ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... stared at the wan face on the pillow. He shrugged his shoulders, and there was an essence of pity in the movement. Meanwhile the count gazed with idle curiosity at the partitions. He saw the Chevalier's court rapier with its jeweled hilt. The Chevalier's grandsire had flaunted the slender blade under the great ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... the king's gate. Mr. Beresford was reading the ballad, and we took up the tableaux at the point where Hynde Horn has come from a far countrie to see why the diamonds in the ring given him by his own true love have grown pale and wan. He hears that the king's daughter Jean has been married to a knight these nine ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Surja Mukhi's wan face expanded into a smile; then again becoming dejected, she said: "He could come, but I cannot tell if he would. I am guilty of a great offence against him, but he is full of kindness to me; he might forgive me, but he is far from here. Can ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... your kindness. You are the first friend I have seen this many a year," said the poor woman, while hot tears trickled down her wan cheeks. ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester

... poor but decent gown, made high in the neck, and without any regard to fashion or smartness. Her brown hair fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls but with only a slight wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that had done its best to blossom in too scanty light. To complete the pitiableness of her aspect, she shivered either with cold, or fear, or ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... lodges in regiments. The lodges, he said, had been formed under warrants granted for that purpose by the Duke of Cumberland, who was the grand-master of the Orange body, and a field-marshal. It was true the wan-ants had not the name of his royal highness upon them; but he found it difficult to imagine that he was ignorant of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. Mr. Hume moved a string of eleven resolutions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... tek you' word fo' hall dad, Madame Carraze. It mague no differend wad she loog lag; I don' wan' see 'er." ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... down at her I heard footsteps and brisk remarks from behind the bushes on the bank, and here comes Williams, puffin' and blowin', followed by a sulky-lookin' hired man totin' a deckload of sweaters and ileskins, with a lunch basket on top. Williams himself wan't carryin' anything but his temper, but he hadn't forgot none ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... alterations, and said what flowers I was to wear, and how my hair was to be done, just exactly as if I were a new doll which made an amusing plaything. I had to be dressed in her room, too, and she lay watching me with her big wan eyes, issuing directions to Terese, and saying pretty things to me. It was one of her very, very nicest days, and ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... up, Wally! G'wan, now—faster! No loafing, Bo, or I'll wallop you!" Nor did he cease until they both paused from exhaustion. Even then he would not allow his charge to do more than regain his ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare—the noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet—with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when thinking on the enamored and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love keeps ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... formed an exception to these varying emotions. A gleam of light from the opening crossed his wan countenance, and fell upon the pages of the little volume, whose leaves he was again occupied in turning, as if searching for some song more fitted to their condition than any that had yet met their eye. He was, most probably, acting all this time under a confused recollection ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... in the chamber above, lay the dying child. Had she survived till the following spring, she would then have been eight years old. As Isoult bent over her, a smile broke on the thin wan face, and the little voice said,—"Aunt Isoult!" This was Honour's pet name for her friend; for there was no tie of relationship between them. Isoult softly stroked the fair hair. "Aunt Isoult," the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before; the hot, hissing showers which descended like a rain of fire; the clash and clang of meeting rocks and riven stones; the burning houses and flaming vineyards; the hurrying fugitives, with wan faces and straining eyeballs, calling on those they loved to follow them; the ashes, and cinders, and boiling mud, driving through the darkened streets, and pouring into the public places; above all, that fine, impalpable, but choking dust which ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... commissary sergeant knew for whom those supplies were meant, others did not, and of these latter one jocular and untutored Patlander sang out, "Bully for the leftenint; 'tis he that knows how to look out for number wan." Whereat there came furious shouts of "Shame!" "Shut up!" and inelegant and opprobrious epithets, all at the expense of the impetuous son of Erin who had spoken too soon. Some one whacked his empty head with an equally empty canteen and called him a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... on the words of her dream. They watched the sky till Elfride grew calm, and the dawn appeared. It was mere wan lightness first. Then the wind blew in a changed spirit, and died away to a zephyr. The star dissolved into ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... boys; I ain' got time to fool with you chillern," said the old man. "Ain't you hear your ma tell me she 'pend on me to bury that silver what yo' gran'ma and gran'pa used to eat off o'—an' don' wan' nobody to know nothin' 'bout it? An' y' all comin' here with guns, like you huntin' squ'rr'ls, an' now talkin' 'bout wadin' ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... thought sin and shame to throw away that noble sword, and so eft he hid the sword, and returned again, and told to the king that he had been at the water, and done his commandment. What saw thou there? said the king. Sir, he said, I saw nothing but the waters wap and waves wan. Ah, traitor untrue, said King Arthur, now hast thou betrayed me twice. Who would have weened that, thou that hast been to me so lief and dear? and thou art named a noble knight, and would betray me for the richness of the sword. But now go again lightly, for thy long tarrying ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... garland sere of Vere de Vere, wan ornaments of Fable, The orchid is a thoughtful plant, and likes a gorgeous table; And, should from out your coronals one berry bright be shining, His patronage may snap it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... There was no mistaking the kindliness in his eyes, or the look of rather wan beseeching in his thin, pinched face. In his golfing suit of Harris tweed he was not an unattractive figure, even if he ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... volumed in a Turkish beneesh, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan features. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... Ching published by them, only the names of the Doctrine of the Mean and the Great Learning were preserved. No text of these Books was given, and Hsi-ho tells us that in the reign of Chia-ching [1], the most flourishing period of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1522-1566), when Wang Wan-ch'ang [2] published a copy of the Great Learning, taken from the T'ang edition of the Thirteen Ching, all the officers and scholars looked at one another in astonishment, and were inclined to supposed that the Work was a forgery. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... a try for it now, sir." Frazier looked white and wan, shaking, hollow-eyed, but a smile was on his lips. "Two engines are intact. Two will run half-speed or a little better, and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... weary of waiting, not without some fear that- -as the Negroes would have put it—'If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, amid the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan; And the fair and the brave whom we loved on earth are gone; But still thus even in death, So sweet the living breath Of the fields and the flowers in our youth we wander'd o'er, That ere, condemned, we go ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... along in the forenoon when Bayliss, returning homeward in sweater and running togs, espied Bert's white, wan face near the front door. Bayliss signaled cordially to young Dodge, who, glad of this kindliness at such a time, went down the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... good women, iv'ry wan, take 'em alone," Moya had said one day to Mrs. Schuler and Ethel Blue when they heard from the kitchen the sounds of dispute upon the porch; "yit listen to ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... on the terre-plein watching the sunrise. As yet the river lay indistinct, a broad wan-coloured band of light stretching away across the darkness. The outwork on the slope beneath her was a formless shadow astir with smaller shadows equally formless. She heard the tread of feet on the wooden ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents' feet for hours together, with his little hands patiently folded in each other, and his thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pine away, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been a joyless one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which, child as he was, he had never known in this world, they were his parents, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... biography of Saint Catherine of Siena, "a study in the religion, literature, and history of the fourteenth century of Italy." That sounded heartless enough. The frontispiece portrait of the wan, meager, despondent saint promised freedom from ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, "Come on now, honey; here's a regular home and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... for the first time. The light shone full in her face: a look I shall never forget. Yes, it was the girl I had seen so often, and yet not the girl. It was the same childish face, but all marked upon with inexplicable wan lines of a certain mysterious womanhood. It was childish, but bearing upon it an inexpressible look of half-sad dignity, that stirred a man's heart to its profoundest depths. And there was in it, too, as I have thought since, a something I have seen in the faces ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from pushing through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon. There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders. There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright green ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Bill with a wan smile as he fainted away. His wounds and Claud's wounds were bound with the Colonel's own hand. Then commenced the weary procession through trench after trench to the hospital below. They were but two in a cavalcade of ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... with the General and Admiral and a large escort. I rode on a pony. It was a strange and sad sight. The wretched-looking single-storied houses on either side of the narrow streets almost all shut up, only a few people making their appearance, and these for the most part wan and haggard, and here and there places which the fire from our ships had destroyed, all presented a very melancholy spectacle; and one could hardly help asking one's self, with some disgust, whether it was worth while to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... tree till I could git somebody to ketch the sorrel for me. He wuz cotched arfter a while, an' I hed some money, so I got some pine plank an' made a coffin dat evenin', an' wrapt Marse Chan's body up in de fleg, and put 'im in de coffin; but I didn' nail de top on strong, 'cause I knowed ole missis wan' see 'im; an' I got a' ambulance, an' set out for home dat night. We reached dyar de nex' evenin', arfter travellin' all dat night an' ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... sight of the Dead Sea presently, bowling past the Inn of the Good Samaritan and beginning to descend into the valley, twelve hundred feet below sea level, that separates Palestine from Moab. The moon shone full on the water, and it looked more wan and wild than an illustration out of Dante's Inferno. There was no doubt how the legends sprang up about birds falling dead as they flew across it. It was difficult to believe that anything could be there and not die. It was a vision of the land ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... the task of thralls Who had to rear these inner suburbs, Piling the sad Victorian walls Where each wan window ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... dew gathering on the Hegumen's pallid forehead, and observed his failing voice. He stooped, took the wan hand from the laboring breast, and kissed it; then turning about quickly to go for the needed restoration, he found himself face to face with the young Greek whom he rescued from Nilo in the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... some of the evidences of strain which deform the faces and exhaust the minds of so many virtuosos. The traveling salesman seems to thrive upon miles of railroad travel as do the crews of the trains, but the virtuoso, dragged from concert to concert by his showman, grows tired—oh, so tired, pale, wan, listless and indifferent! At the beginning of the season he is quite another person. The magnetism that has done so much to win him fame shines in his eyes and seems to emanate from his finger-tips, but the difference in his physical being at the end of the season is ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... two, you know, and they looked wan and hungry. About three hours after, I was cantering my pony down Swanbrook Lane—the grass there is so soft and green, that you cannot hear his feet, while I can hear every grasshopper that chirps—suddenly, I heard a child's voice singing ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... he takes five hours to do it in; no more, and no less. P'r'a'ps I might get him up sooner if I used the whip; but how would you like any one to use a whip on you when you was picking apples or counting baskets of strawbys into a wan?" ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... Major. You wan't old enough for the Mexican War, was you? No, of course not. But I was there and this here fightin' agin such odds puts me in ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... leaving you forever. Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... in de dark ages, w'en de whaleships war de pi'neers ob commerce, 'n day wan't no worryin', poofity-plukity steamboats a-poundin' along, 'nough ter galley ebery whale clean eout ob dere skin, dey war plenty whaleships fill up in twelve, fifteen, twenty monf' after leabin' home. 'N er man bed ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... to speak,—but ere His tongue could hurry forth his fear, Had Douglas marked the hectic strife, Where death seemed combating with life; For to her cheek, in feverish flood, One instant rushed the throbbing blood, Then ebbing back, with sudden sway, Left its domain as wan as clay. 'Roderick, enough! enough!' he cried, 'My daughter cannot be thy bride; Not that the blush to wooer dear, Nor paleness that of maiden fear. It may not be,—forgive her, Chief, Nor hazard aught for our relief. Against his sovereign, Douglas ne'er ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... til our Ladies even the Nativite, upon which even by strong assaute the towne was wonne. And than the kyng leide strong sege to the castel, which was yolden to hym. And while he was abidyng at Cane, he sent the duke of Clarence with other lordes to Baieux, and bisegid and wan it. And the same yere the kyng bisegid Argentyne, bothe towne and castell, which were yolden to hym. Also the kyng wan many castelles and townes, and strong abbeis long ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... black torrents and desolate moorlands, through pallid sunlight and grim primeval forests, and become drenched with them. The instrumentation is all wet grays and blacks, relieved only by bits of brightness wan and elusive as the northern summer, frostily green as the polar lights. The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, full of shattering trombones and screaming violins, full of the sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... by a most apparent effort that he roused himself to reply to her remarks. Mrs Rendell would have felt repelled by his coldness of manner, had it not been for one redeeming point—his unaffected interest in her children! The wan face brightened into a smile at the mention of Nan's name, and he begged that the girl might be allowed to come over to see him "often—as often as possible," in a tone of unmistakable sincerity. Mrs Rendell assented graciously; ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Shiva, wound with darting snakes About their sun-tanned necks and hollow flanks, One palsied foot drawn up against the ham. So gathered they, a grievous company; Crowns blistered by the blazing heat, eyes bleared, Sinews and muscles shrivelled, visages Haggard and wan as slain men's, five days dead; Here crouched one in the dust who noon by noon Meted a thousand grains of millet out, Ate it with famished patience, seed by seed, And so starved on; there one who bruised his pulse With bitter leaves lest palate should ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again. She will not ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... pain, on beds of woe, Where stricken heroes languish, Wan faces smile and sick hearts grow Triumphant over anguish; While souls that starve in lonely gloom Flush green with odorous praises, And all the lowly pallets bloom With ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... foe, deluded by whose say, To the forbidden fruit Eve raised her hand, Turned his wan eyes on Charlemagne one day, When he the good Rinaldo absent scanned; And seeing what foul rout and disarray Might at that time be given to Charles's band, Of all the Saracens the choice and flower Marshalled in arms ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... there comes an end to summer. The flowers dropped from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously the wan, wistful face of Judge Hyde's wife pressed up to the pane of the south window, its great restless eyes and shadowy hair bringing to mind some captive bird that pines and beats against the cage. Her husband absent from home long and often, full of affairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... was not wholly laid aside though; in the early morning, and in the evening, and often late into the night, the thin, wan fingers were busy about their task; but the middle of the day was snatched like an hour of sleep in the midst of pain—garnered up like a fountain of sweet waters in the wilderness; for then it was that little Jessie came for her Latin lesson, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... give me a rose—a huge, hybrid, opulent rose, the product of a dozen forcing processes—and I will love you a new way. As the flowers say good-by, I will say goodnight. Shall I burn them? No, for they would smoulder. And if I left them here alone, to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... lasts forever; and in three months Neil Semple was in his office again, wan and worn with fever and suffering, and wearing his sword arm in a sling, but still decidedly world-like and life-like. It was characteristic of Neil that few, even of his intimates, cared to talk of the duel to him, to make any observations on his absence, or any inquiries about ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... were dying and withering, this her sun having been removed from her, bloomed again and at once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognised the beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one that was laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless of all round about. The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with the change, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden so rosy. Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her with all her heart, like ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with me,' said the King. 'Go back, and do my command; spare not, but throw it in.' But again Sir Bedivere's heart failed him, and he hid the sword, and returned to tell the King he had seen nothing but the wan water. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... God; it is well that ye should bow in meekness to His will, in readiness to His wisdom. Ye are learning the lesson speedily, as docile children should; and be assured of high reward from the Teacher who hath set it you. Poor Charles! white and wan, thy cheek is grown transparent with anxiety, and thy blue eye dim with hope deferred: poor Emmy, sick and weak, thou weariest Heaven with thy prayers, and waterest thy couch with thy tears. Yet, a little while; this discipline ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... down 'cause de mules ain't had nothin' ta eat an' most ob dem died. We git in sich a bad fix some ob de people died. When it seem lak we wuz all gwine die, a planter come along de road an' he stopped ta find out what wuz de matter. Wan he heard our story an' who our master wuz he git a message to him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... fares my friend? methinks you look not well; Your eyes are sunk, your cheeks look pale and wan: What ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... breeding towns, as fast as you breed roe-deer; Example, but not meddling. See that hollow— I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog— I drowned a black mare in that self-same spot Hunting with your good father: Well, he gave One jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks— Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights— All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved— I told them, six weeks' work would break their hearts: They answered, Christ would help, and Christ's great mother, And make them strong when weakest: So they ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... last ouk, as I gaed out To flit a tether'd ewe and lamb, I met, as skiffin' ower the green, A jolly, rantin' Highlandman. His shape was neat, wi' feature sweet, And ilka smile my favour wan; I ne'er had seen sae braw a lad As this young ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... there's nothing stopping you. G'wan and have your talk. I can't get away. The old dragon wanted to have a talk with me, too, this morning. So did the housekeeper. Everybody does." And he polished ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... in the bonds of his own thought, Whence very death can take off nought, Nor sleep, with bitterer dreams than death, What though thy thousands at thy knees Lie thick as grave-worms feed on these, Though thy green fields and joyous places Are populous with blood-blackening faces And wan limbs eaten by the sun? Better an end of all men's races, Better the world's whole work were done, And life wiped out of all our traces, And there were left to time not one, Than such as these that fill thy graves Should sow in slaves ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... must do without you now, Stir you no more anyhow To yearning concords taught you in your glory; While, your strings a tangled wreck, Once smart drawn, Ten worm-wounds in your neck, Purflings wan With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con Your present ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the death of his wife, whose end had been hastened by the sudden and complete disappearance of her darling sister Esther, the wan colourlessness of his face had been intensified; his stern enthusiasm, once latent, had become visible; his heart, tenderer than ever towards the victims of the misery around him, grew harder towards the employers, whom he believed to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... greeting at the stile so often named. One was a thorough specimen of a Manchester man; born of factory workers, and himself bred up in youth, and living in manhood, among the mills. He was below the middle size and slightly made; there was almost a stunted look about him; and his wan, colourless face gave you the idea, that in his childhood he had suffered from the scanty living consequent upon bad times and improvident habits. His features were strongly marked, though not irregular, and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... There was a little, white face as wan and pale as the early daylight, with an aureole of dark red curls around it, staring at him through the broken window frame of the old log cabin that he had seen deserted a dozen times in his hunting ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... had lashed the poor, frail baby to my girdle with the scarf of knotted silk I wore about my neck, and, wan and exhausted, he lay upon my shoulder tranquilly as any Indian papoose might do on its mother's breast. A branch of sea-weed floated past as I looked down—some gracious mermaid's gift, perhaps, extended by her invisible fingers to greet ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... "he looks singularly wan—his features seem writhen as by a palsy stroke; and though he was talking so fast while we came along, he hath not opened his mouth since we ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... but yer see da said dat I stole de hogs what I barbecued. De proof wa'nt good, an' I think dat da done wrong in ackin' upon sech slim testimony. Da said dat I cotch de hogs in a corn fid'. I know dat wan't true, 'case it was a wheat ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... in my time, as you d' know; an' if either wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I'd ha' married three more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o' spoort. Catchin' fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for money, which is the first thing in life; an' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... last, Techelles! no, for I shall die. See, where my slave, the ugly monster Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart, Who flies away at every glance I give, And, when I look away, comes stealing on!— Villain, away, and hie thee to the field! I and mine army come to load thy back With souls of thousand mangled carcasses.— Look, where he goes! but, see, he ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... the rear seat, already were on their feet. Jack stood beside Frank, peering into the shadows behind. The moon was in its first quarter, low down and shed only a faint radiance. But even by the wan light, it could be seen that something dire had happened to the car of the bandits. It stood sideways across the road, leaning drunkenly to one side. And to the ears of the boys came groans from a number of dark ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Electra, pressing her face against the frame, looking out into the moaning, struggling night, striving to read the mystic characters dimly traced on the ash-grey hurrying clouds as the reckless winds parted their wan folds. She shrank away from the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... one knows to be justifiable; the taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand decency; the neglected children, who are learning not be the children of gentlefolk; and, worse than all, the alms and doles of half-generous ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... upon me, that touching scene in the great man's life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own imagination—Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson—all the familiar throng—with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... floor, her face still wan, her attitude unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand, came over to her side, she ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... these arid valleys; and that Greek Muse who made Arethusa and Maenalus ring with her divine accents, still sings for my ears upon the barren mountain and in the place of the dried-up spring. Yes, Madame, when our globe, no longer inhabited, shall, like the moon, roll a wan corpse through space, the soil which bears the ruins of Selinonte will still keep the seal of beauty in the midst of universal death; and then, then, at least there will be no frivolous mouth to blaspheme ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... dusty felt hats or peaked caps, with shaggy beards or faded scarfs around their throats. Here and there, too, was a woman of comely face and figure, but for the most part it was a collection of crones, prematurely aged, with weird, wan, old-world features, slip-shod and draggle-tailed, their heads bare, or covered with dingy shawls in lieu of bonnets—red shawls, gray shawls, brick-dust shawls, mud-colored shawls. Yet there was an indefinable touch of romance and pathos about the tawdriness and witch-like ugliness, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... November, there might be one chance out of a hundred of our reaching Manhattan and the Dutch, who might or might not give us refuge. She had willed to flee, and we were upon our journey, and the one chance had vanished. That wan, monotonous, cold, and clinging mist had shrouded us for our burial, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... and yet have lost faith in ourselves; only the most foolish believe in our raison d'etre. We look out instinctively for places of enjoyment, gayety, and happiness, and yet we do not believe in happiness. Though our pessimism be wan and ephemeral as the clouds from our Havanas, it obscures our view of wider horizons. Amidst these clouds and mists we create for ourselves a separate world, a world torn off from the immensity of all life, shut up within ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... advanced slowly towards him I noticed he was pale, that he looked wearied and wan, that he had grey whiskers and moustache, that he wore a bluish cloth cap with a faded gold band on a red ground round it, and that he had on a red-sleeved waistcoat, and a pair of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... I caught myself up, but the girl offered me the pardon of a beautiful wan smile. "So Ray himself declares. He says ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit. The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when you know all the aspects of her beauty. She has high spirits or low, she is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour. She is always interesting and almost always sad; but she has a thousand occasional graces and is always liable to happy accidents. You become extraordinarily ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... wallflowers and southernwood that filled the entering air with sweetness. A room with thin-legged chairs, with cupboards whose lozens gave view to punch-bowls and rummers and silver ladles, a room where the two brothers would convene at night while John was elsewhere, and in a wan candle light sit silent by the hour before cooling spirits, musing on other parlours elsewhere in which spurs had jingled under the board, musing on comrades departed. It was hung around with dark pictures in broad black frames, for ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... slant west sunshine Made the wan face almost fair, Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, And the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... up. Atter dey tuk me out ob de house, I wuked in de fiel' lak de urthurs. Long 'fore day break, we wuz standin' in de fiel's leanin' on our hoes waitin' fer daylite en waitin' fer de horn ter blow so we would start ter wuk. Ef'n we wan'ed ter go ter any place we had ter hab a pass wid our Marster's name on hit en ef you didn' hab hit, you got tore ter pieces en den you Marster tore you up w'en you ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... devil-ray," was the reply, "an' the're twenty, thirty feet 'cross sometimes. They looks lak a sting ray. Ah don' wan' to see 'em." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... came and Ned began to bestir himself, he missed the cheery "Good-morning" of his companion, who was not able to lift his head from his pillow of palmetto. His wan smile went to Ned's heart, and the boy had to busy himself with the fire to hide his emotion. Every hour of that day he watched over the invalid, and from time to time tempted him with bits of broiled bird, heron soup and sips of hot tea made from leaves of the sweet bay. Ned's acquaintance ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... with a mighty leap, cleared the wall. Hermod rode straight to the gloomy palace, dismounted, entered, and in a moment was face to face with the terrible queen of the kingdom of the dead. Beside her, on a beautiful throne, sat Balder, pale and wan, crowned with a withered wreath of flowers, and close at hand was Nanna, pallid as her husband, for whom she had died. And all night long, while ghostly forms wandered restless and sleepless through ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Dardnells, and ses he, 'What's the use of wastin' brave throops here? We'll lave the English to clane up the threnches,' and on that they packs the Irish off and marches thim thousands of miles intil Siberia. Ah! 'twas the dhrop thim Germins got when they came shtrugglin' along wan day and run up aginst the ould Tinth agin. There was tarrible slaughter that day, and the inimy bruk in great disorther, and is now trying to escape down the Sewers into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... use. So far as I could see, r'inca'nation was jist plain error and follerin' after false gods, and I told Doc so. Anyhow, I knowed there wan't nothin' like it in the Methodist Church, an' I jist up and let Doc know I wouldn't marry anybody that believed such stuff. Doc reckoned to change my mind, but my argument was jist plain 'I won't!' and that settled it. I believe a man and wife ought to ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose and his colourless eyes ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... light shining on his white, wan face. "Thank you, Mr. Montague, he said. "It is very good of you. It is a help, at least, to hear a word of sympathy. I—I ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... own dear mother," said Arthur, as he took his candle. He was not crying, and there was almost a little wan smile on his face as he said it, making him look very different from the bright, joyous boy who generally threw his arms around her neck with an embrace, which was most emphatic as well as affectionate. ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... before her, wan and white-lipped as if her emotions were burned out. Presently she began to talk again ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... his eyebrows were scarcely marked; his upper eyelid, flabby and overhanging, like the membrane which shades the eyes of reptiles, half concealed his small, sharp, black eye. His thin lips, absolutely colorless, were hardly distinguishable from the wan hue of his lean visage, with its pointed nose and chin; and this livid mask (deprived as it were of lips) appeared only the more singular, from its maintaining a death-like immobility. Had it not been for the rapid movement of his fingers, as, bending ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... even on Glashgar, in the skin-coat of the beast-boy, had she seen him so like an angel. And in his eyes was that which triumphed, not over dumbness, but over speech. It brought the rose-fire rushing into her wan cheeks; she hid her face on his bosom; and, under the dingy red flame of the lamp in the stony street, they held each other, as blessed as if they had been under an orange tree haunted with fire-flies. For they knew each the heart of the other, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... his poor ould eye begun to water. 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. 'I've got out of the habit of reg'lar aitin',' he says. 'It don't take much to kape me goin'.' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed three hungry men than wan "no occasion."' His appetite it grew on him wit' every mouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay there on the bench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him there wit' a big fire ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... her head when her mother spoke. She had not been shedding tears. Perhaps she might have looked less terribly wan and woeful if she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... thus prepared his audience, looked silently into the fire for another half-hour, until the room was dark, and all the tutor could see was a wan hand fidgeting uneasily on the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... Orange lodges in regiments. The lodges, he said, had been formed under warrants granted for that purpose by the Duke of Cumberland, who was the grand-master of the Orange body, and a field-marshal. It was true the wan-ants had not the name of his royal highness upon them; but he found it difficult to imagine that he was ignorant of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. Mr. Hume moved a string of eleven resolutions upon this subject. Mr. Patten, the chairman of the committee ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... trick-fashion of the dance, the rollicking music stopped right off short in the middle of a note, the lights went out, the dancers fled precipitously to their seats, and out of the arbored gallery of the orchestra a single swarthy-faced male singer stepped forth into the wan wake of an artificial moon, and lifted up a marvelous tenor voice in one of those weird folk-songs of the far-away that fairly tear the listener's heart out of his body—a song as sinisterly metallic as the hum of hate along a dagger-blade; a song as rapturously surprised ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... to the stars, and asking them where was the woman that had been she, and where was her own dear love and unalterable affection? I could see that she wept often, and that the tears ran down her white wan face all pinched by suffering, and that she supplicated the night in tender words to bring back to her what had gone away—what had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... her passage through Paris in 1792 on her way to Germany, when she saw her former patroness Marie Antoinette, whom she remembered in all the glory of her youth, popularity, and loveliness, seated in an open chariot, pale, wan, and grief-stricken, surrounded by a guard of troopers with drawn swords and hooted at by a mob of howling sans-culottes. Better far to be a mimic queen than to be hurled from the most radiant and splendid place in European royalty, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... accompany him to Trullyabister "on business." Dr. Holtum, Harry Mitchell, and Fred followed Mr. Adiesen to his study, for the purpose of inspecting some of its treasures. Aunt Osla insisted upon Signy's retirement to a sofa—for the child still looked wan and nervous. Yaspard carried off Tom and Bill to Noostigard, where Gloy had gone immediately after breakfast to tell the Harrisons all the astonishing news. Thus the lawn at Moolapund was cleared of the large human party which had assembled there—the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... As he looked about him right and left, lo! his eyes fell on a young man, who was carrying a tunic and crying it for sale at fifteen dinars: so he considered him and saw him to be like his brother Sa'id; and indeed it was his very self, but he was wan of blee and changed for long strangerhood and the travails of travel, so that he knew him not. However, he said to his attendants, "Take yonder youth and carry him to the palace where I lodge, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... hours of waiting, of aching immobility, of dull agony of mind, the interior of the van was becoming slowly visible.... She had listened to the lessening fury of the wind: the rain had ceased. The wan light of early day came through the cracks in the planking. Bobinette could see the bear waking up: it turned, yawned: suddenly it fixed its eyes ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... are all to buy: The wan look, the hollow tone, The hung head, the sunken eye, You can have them for ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... traveller who visited the tomb of Chinghiz is M. C. E. Bonin, in July 1896; he was then on the banks of the Yellow River in the northern part of the Ordo country, which is exclusively inhabited by nomadic and pastoral Mongols, forming seven tribes or hords, Djungar, Talat, Wan, Ottok, Djassak, Wushun and Hangkin, among which are eastward the Djungar and in the centre the Wan; according to their own tradition, these tribes descend from the seven armies encamped in the country at the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... th' citie for th' throuble that's comin' on about th' mine, y' onderstand? He's wan o' th' men t' be ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... upon the same thing, and to give the very same warning. Some years afterwards, when he was taken up in 1715, and committed to the Tower upon suspicion of treasonable practices, which never appeared, his friends said to him that his fortune wan now fulfilled, the Hanover House was the white horse whereof he was admonished to beware. But some time after this, he had a fall from a white horse, and received a blow by which he lost the sight ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... 1766 to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Ku. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... efforts to talk and appear interested in what was going on around her. She was afraid her keen-eyed Aunt Maria would see that she was unhappy. But alone with Georgina who shared her secret, she relapsed into a silence so deep it could be felt, responding only with a wan smile when the child's lively chatter seemed to force an answer of some kind. But to-day when Georgina came to the table she was strangely silent herself, so mute that Belle noticed it, and found that she was being furtively ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... first touch of dawn came into the sky, that unnatural wind ceased, in a single moment; and I could see no sign of the hand. The dawn came slowly, and presently the wan light filled all the room, and made the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle look more unearthly. Yet, it was not until the day had fully come, that I made any attempt to leave the barrier, for I did not know but that there was some ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... shut on them, and they fled in terror from the board of old. Than these no deadlier portent nor any fiercer plague of divine wrath hath issued from the Stygian waters; winged things with maidens' countenance, bellies dropping filth, and clawed hands and faces ever wan with hunger. . ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... observation of humanity than Allan possessed would have seen the story of Major Milroy's life written in Major Milroy's face. The home troubles that had struck him were plainly betrayed in his stooping figure and his wan, deeply wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy self-absorption ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... black hollows. The clear Galaxy Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful, Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth And harmony of planet-girded Suns And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel, Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men, Or other things talking in unknown tongues, And notes of busy life in distant worlds Beat like a far wave on my ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... the Sabbath morn. But such a Sabbath! The day seemed all wan with weeping, and gray with care. The wind dashed itself against the casement, laden with soft heavy sleet. The ground, the bushes, the very outhouses seemed sodden with the rain. The trees, which looked stricken as if they could die of grief, were yet tormented ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... her drowsy ears. Brief time it was, 'till, with bewildered eyes, She saw her fairies vanish in a mist, Floating away in music, while she stood Alone, far down the mountain opposite The side that with such toil she just had climbed. She stood alone—and where? the roses shrank From her wan cheeks to view her new distress,— Before her a dark chasm, and above her A crowd of close and overhanging rocks, All dripping, black, and hopelessly down-leant. A glimmering hope now broke upon her ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... night but meself," he went on. "It's awful to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil out o' the oul' goat when I ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... he watched by her bedside until the crisis was passed. He would fan her fevered brow, moisten her parched lips, chafe her hot, burning hands, smooth her tumbled pillow, and when at last he succeeded in soothing her into a troubled slumber, he would sit by her and gaze on her wan face with an earnestness which seemed to say that she was his all of earth, his more than all of heaven. Julia too was all attention. Nothing tired her, and with unwearied patience she came and went at her father's bidding, doing a thousand little offices pertaining to a ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... you like?' she says, and Danny ups and says, 'Chockaluts and candy men and taffy and curren' buns and ginger bread,' and she had every wan of them." ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with dark circles under them, and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... "Try it wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read the letter, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... morning, when he returned to Hendlip, he was met by two wan, gaunt men, whose countenances showed privation and suffering. They gave their names as William Andrews ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... Great Learning were preserved. No text of these Books was given, and Hsi-ho tells us that in the reign of Chia- ching [1], the most flourishing period of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1522-1566), when Wang Wan-ch'ang [2] published a copy of the Great Learning, taken from the T'ang edition of the Thirteen Ching, all the officers and scholars looked at one another in astonishment, and were inclined to supposed that the Work was a forgery. Besides ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge

... contend with the cross-currents of the China Sea. As the only lady passenger I had very comfortable quarters, and the kindest attention from French officers and Annamese stewards. The second afternoon there came a welcome diversion when the boat put into Kwang-chou-wan, two hundred miles southwest of Hong Kong, to visit the new free port of Fort Bayard, the commercial and military station which the French are creating in the cession they secured from China in 1898, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Moncrieff, Archie, and myself were called into the dying man's apartment, and heard him make the fullest confession of all his villainy, and beg for our forgiveness with the tears roiling down his wan, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... sunrise Macdonald entered the house, wan and haggard, for he had not been to bed all night. Besides the hours that he had spent with his patients he had been busy in the Fort all night. He had to make an autopsy of the dead man, and, as the only officer available, investigate the crime, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it, were ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... the trebly crimsoned field Terrible words are thunder-tost; Full of the wrath that will not yield, Full of revenge for battles lost! Hark to their echo, as it crost The Capital, making faces wan: End this murderous holocaust; Abraham ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... day and the hour for you to strike. Some of us, disguised as beggars and merchants, will go into Seoul. We will destroy the railway, we will kindle flames in every port, we will destroy Chinkokai, kill Ito and all the Japanese, Yi Wan-yong and his underlings, and will not leave a single rebel against our Emperor alive. Then Japan will bring out all her troops to fight us. We have no weapons at our hands, but we will keep our own patriotism. We may not ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... refracted from a high damp-stained wall outside, came in trembling, as if the fever which had shaken everything else had shaken even it,—there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop, a little, feeble, wan, sick child. With his little wasted face, and his little hot worn hands folded over his breast, and his little bright attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I have seen him for several years, looking steadily ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... best essay in a county contest. She was asked to read it to the school and though she begged to be excused, her teacher insisted. She slept little and ate little during the days before it must be read and on the morning when the school assembled to hear it looked pale and wan. It was with very evident effort that she walked to the front of the platform. Her lips opened but no voice came. Her sister thought she was going to faint but she pulled herself together and was able to read in a thin scared voice which could not be heard ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... removable school; may it purmernate dis whole lan' an' country!" At another meeting, after the workers had finished a session, some of the leading colored farmers were called on to speak. One of them opened his remarks with the words: "I ain't no speaker, but I jes wan' a tell you how much I done been steamilated by dis my only two ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... cullud pusson ter do is ter p'ramberlate ter de Linkum lines. Ki! I doan wan' what drap outen OUR sogers' pockets. I kin git Virginny leaf widouten runnin' 'mong de spooks arter it. De place fer a big fine is whar de brush is tick and de Linkum men crawl away so dey woan be tromp on. Who knows but I kin fine a place whar a ginral hide hisself? Ob cose if he hab ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... day, balmy and gloriously bright, found four people seated together in the spacious, sunny morning-room of a great house on Belleair Avenue. A young man, pale and wan as from a long illness, but with a new steadiness and clarity born of suffering in his eyes; a girl, slender and black-robed, her delicate face flushing with an exquisite, spring-like color, her eyes soft and misty ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... by little dispersed. It was about midnight when we left. The stars were still buried in mist; the moon which was almost at the edge of the horizon, lit up the night with a sort of wan daylight. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... Andy Flinn, laughing. "Three nights did he play the same joke, and then they got on to him. Wan officer do be sneakin' up to the loft, while the rist pretended to be huntin' around downstairs. He discovered the sthring, cript downstairs again, wint out on the sly, and, be the powers, followed it to the fince. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... the women of the after-palace, hearing the cries of the horses, birds, and beasts, their hair dishevelled, their faces wan and yellow, their forms sickly to look at, their mouths and lips parched, their garments torn and unwashed, the soil and heat not cleansed from their bodies, their ornaments all thrown aside, disconsolate and sad, cheerless in face, raised their bodies, without any grace, even as the feeble little ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... and an early end; and she drew from all things around her something to feed the pensive character of her thoughts. The stillness of noon; the holy and eloquent repose of twilight, its rosy sky and its soft air, its shadows and its dews,—had equally for her heart a whisper and a spell. The wan stars, where, from the eldest time, man has shaped out a chart of the undiscoverable future; the mysterious moon, to which the great ocean ministers from its untrodden shrines; the winds, which traverse the vast air, pilgrims from an eternal home to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... now unroped, and a halt was called for a bite and sup. It was daylight; a cold wan light among a circle of peaks and shafts, overtopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands of feet above them. The guides were apart, gesticulating and consulting, with many shakings of the head. Seated on the white ground, heavy ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... of Holy Thorn, a broad and fair foundation, one of the two set up in the forest by the Countess Isabel, Dowager of March and Bellesme, Countess of Hauterive and Lady of Morgraunt in her own right. Where the Wan river makes a great loop, running east for three miles, and west again for as many before it drives its final surge towards the Southern Sea, there stands Holy Thorn, Church and Convent, watching over the red roofs of Malbank hamlet huddled together across the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... their midst is a little child, With ragged shoes and a brimless hat, Not bigger than Hop-O'-my-Thumb, at most, And wan and thin at that. ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... the bar of justice, A creature wan and wild, In form too small for a woman, In features too old for a child; For a look so worn and pathetic Was stamped on her pale young face, It seemed long years of suffering Must have left that ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... tol' you wan day, two, t'ree mont' ago," Poleon remarked, with apparent evasion, "'bout Johnny Platt w'at I ketch on de Porcupine ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... face had looked wan and pale, now it was suffused by a warm glow that was not that of the ruddy early morning sun. For the hope had risen strongly in her breast that, in spite of all, the terrible affliction would be lightened, and ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... "Wan thing is sure," said Barney; "nivver a cintipade is loikely to get inther our beds, fer we make 'em up ache noight, so we'd see th' craythers ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish









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