"Wandering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tatters from the ceilings; the dust lay thick, undisturbed for generations. Unclean things littered in musty corners. Through gaping skylights a sunny beam would penetrate; it played about the mildewy stucco partitions encrusted, in patches, with a poisonous lichen of bright green. Wandering about this dank and mournful pile of wreckage, he could understand why simple folks should dread to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a weary breath, looked down at him, and shook his head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find a constable after all. This guy could get himself killed, wandering around loose. ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller
... story, commonplace enough. A daughter, a loose-living officer, a knife flung from a dark alley, and sudden flight to the south. Hillard had found him wandering through the streets of Naples, hiding from the carabinieri as best he could. Hillard contrived to smuggle him on the private yacht of a friend. He found a peasant who was reconsidering the advisability of digging sewers and laying railroad ties ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... acquaintance to fulfill her matronizing duties. As I was no dancer I was left alone most of the time, and amused myself by gliding from window to window along the wall, that it might not be observed that I was a fixed flower. Still I suffered the annoyance of being stared at by wandering squads of young gentlemen, the "curled darlings" of the ball-room. I borrowed Mrs. Bliss's fan in one of her visits for a protection. With that, and the embrasure of a remote window where I finally stationed myself, I hoped to escape further notice. ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... before sunset, and did not feel very much fatigued, either by the ride of thirty-six miles, the terrible heat, or the wandering about on foot. Only two days afterwards, I set out on my road to the ruins of the city of Babylon. The district in which these ruins lie is called Isak-Arabia, and is the seat of the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... here yet in earth, busily and continually fighting, day and night, against temptations of the Fiend, forsaking and hating the prosperity of this world, despising and withstanding their fleshly lusts; which only are the pilgrims of CHRIST, wandering towards heaven by steadfast faith, and grounded hope, and by perfect charity. For these heavenly pilgrims may not, nor will not, be letted [hindered] of their good purpose by reason of any Doctors discording from Holy Scripture, nor by the floods of any tribulation ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... appetite these days," grinned Denver, as the gentleman mentioned cleaned up a second loaded plate of ham, eggs and fried potatoes. "I see him studying a Wind River Bible* yesterday. Curious how in the spring a young man's fancy gits to wandering on house furnishing. Red, he was taking the catalogue alphabetically. Carpets was absorbin' his attention, chairs on deck, and chandeliers in the hole, as we used to say ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... hypothetical way, even down to problems of housekeeping, in the light of mere worldly prudence, much as if they were guardians arranging a mariage de convenance, rather than impulsive and ardent lovers wandering in Arcady. Without Miss Owens's letters it is impossible to know what she may have said to him, but in May, 1837, Lincoln ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... boon southern country he is fled, And now in happier air, Wandering with the Great Mother's train divine (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, I trow the mighty Mother doth not see) Within a ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our argument?" said the other, reminded that they had been wandering from it for the last ten minutes. "Oh, I recollect; I know what I was at. I was saying that you liked music, but didn't like dancing; music leads another person to dance, but not you; and dancing does not increase but diminishes the intensity of the pleasure you find in music. In like manner, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of the peddler increased in a manner for which nothing apparent could account; his eye was constantly wandering towards the lower end of the vale as if in expectation of some interruption from that quarter. At length Caesar appeared, leading the noble beast which was to bear the weight of the traveler. The peddler officiously assisted to tighten the girths, and fasten the blue cloak ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... an old town in which they were wandering, and change in the channels of traffic had so turned its natural nourishment aside, that it was in parts withering and crumbling away. Not a few of the houses were, some from poverty, some from utter disuse, yielding fast to decay. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... So, wandering, hoping, trying, waiting, thirty-two years of his life went by, and they left him true, sympathetic, patient. The sharp private griefs that sting the heart so deeply, and leave a little poison behind, did not spare him. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... moment, his arms hanging listlessly; at length, raising them slowly, he crossed his hands over his head, one of his favorite attitudes, raised his eyes from the ground, and looked steadily at me. Oh! what a strange expression! His wild look, a sad and mysterious smile wandering over his lips, his mouth which tried to speak, but to which speech refused to come! That face has been constantly before me since last night; it pursues me, possesses me, and even at this moment its image is stamped in the paper I am writing on. This black velvet ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... to the task. Against the solid walls of this barrier the impetuous visitor beat in vain, and then, just as suddenly as he had begun his foray, he subsided. The final sputter of his dying, under the hose streams of his foes, sounded for all the world like a chuckle. It was as if this wandering creature had signified that he had accomplished his purpose in giving the department a good scare, and that he might as well stop. The firemen stood for a moment to catch breath, gazing on the havoc wrought by this wild half hour; then, coiling up ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes. The latter are the real tramps. They make a business of begging—a very good business too—and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days. Whisky and Wanderlust, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit. They become tramps because they find that life "on the road" comes the nearest to the life they hoped to lead. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... interest; and as De Chaulieu's thoughts were now forced into another direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, till the brazen doors were open which admitted them to the royal vault. Satisfied, at length, with what they had seen, they began to think of returning to the inn, the more especially as De Chaulieu, who had not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... is telling the truth, John, and that he has been doing nothing worse than wandering about the streets? You know the way he has always had of roaming about by himself, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... remembered if not recorded. Among them, most eager, most intense, most frequent of all associations, there is a boy with nerves all a-tingle at the vast sweet mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call of the winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided solely by ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... persisted in putting her fingers in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little one's head, and would call to him: "Do ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... of playing cards here on a steamboat, in public, as he said to himself, was rather frightful. He was not sure if his mother would like to have him do that. He looked uneasily around to see what Charlie would say about it. But Charlie was nowhere in sight. He was wandering around, like an uneasy ghost, watching for signs of the rising of the river, now confidently predicted by the knowing ones among ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... the commodore's plans, the castaways made camp in the grove. For a week they subsisted on gooneys, taro root, cocoanuts and cocoanut milk, and a sea-turtle which Scraggs found wandering on the beach. This suggested turtle eggs to Mr. Gibney, and a change of diet resulted. Nevertheless, the unaccustomed food, poorly cooked as it was, and the lack of water, told cruelly on them, and their strength failed rapidly. Realizing that in a few days he would not ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... the slope of the Pacific; and now at last he had come upon the trail of Labrador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. He smiled at it the comprehending smile of the man who has fingered the nerves and the heart of men and things. As a traveller, wandering through a prison, looks upon its grim cells and dungeons with the eye of unembarrassed freedom, finding no direful significance in the clank of its iron, so Pierre travelled down with a handful of Indians through the hard fastnesses of that country, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... out. If my brother, from whom I have taken the above illustration, had had some judicious and wide-minded friend, to correct and supplement the mainly admirable principles which had been instilled into him by my mother, he would have been saved years of spiritual wandering; but, as it was, he fell in with one after another, each in his own way as literal and unspiritual as the other—each impressed with one aspect of religious truth, and with one only. In the end he became perhaps the widest-minded and most ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... keenly. Through no fault of his, the lives of all entrusted to him were placed in jeopardy. Often and often his thoughts went wandering away to his dear Lucy. Although he would not have allowed any fear of losing his own life to oppress him, he could not help dreading the idea of plunging her in grief and exposing her to long months ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... any rate as represented by the professional ascetics of India, is not held in admiration by the people of the country. The real character of most of the wandering ascetics is perfectly well known. But the people fear their curse; hence they give them alms, and a measure of outward respect. That their profession and their conduct are so often in contradiction does not apparently ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of August passed away. And September found the two men still wandering in an aimless fashion about the prairie country, and yet with no desire for change. The Boy was growing more and more dissatisfied, less and less resigned ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... the sister of his new ally, Artavasdes the king of Armenia, when the announcement of the victory of his vizier arrived, and along with it, according to Oriental usage, the cut-off head of Crassus. The tables were already removed; one of the wandering companies of actors from Asia Minor, numbers of which at that time existed and carried Hellenic poetry and the Hellenic drama far into the east, was just performing before the assembled court the -Bacchae- of Euripides. The actor playing the part of Agave, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a wandering fragment of cloud climbed the curve of the watery globe until Joe Hawkridge perceived, with a mariner's eye, that it was, indeed, a vessel steering ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... and Thomassin, who, on seeing his crayon sketches, predicted for him a brilliant career as an artist. But a friend of Callot's family having accidentally encountered him, took steps to compel the fugitive to return home. By this time he had acquired such a love of wandering that he could not rest; so he ran away a second time, and a second time he was brought back by his elder brother, who caught him at Turin. At last the father, seeing resistance was in vain, gave his reluctant consent ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Streamlet adown the sloping vale; The Shepherd seeks the Fountain, where sits the Maiden pale; And to the wandering Brooklet, through many a lonely wild, The burden of the Fountain ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... from Palestine, and are a portion of the tribes of the Philistines expelled by Joshua; that the first rendezvous of the wanderers was the oasis of Oujlah, which is a few days' journey from Siwah, the site of the celebrated Ammonium; and thence they proceeded, wandering at will, to the west and south, peopling all the arid regions of the Sahara. The Sheikh of the slaves visiting me to-day, and describing Timbuctoo, said, "It is several times larger than Tunis; it is as large as Moskou ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the 2nd of September John had been wandering in and out of the various rooms, and frowning as though very displeased about something. I gave him a hint or two that he ought to put in more time with me in the air-chamber, but he took no notice of my suggestions. Presently, whilst I was in there alone, he came through, but, without ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... tabagie," as Michelet calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it because it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident women this will seem no evil influence in married life. Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment, makes just so ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he sent them forth slowly, now from one side of his mouth, now from the other, as a ship fires her broadsides at her foes, he would stop and gaze at the vanishing vapour, his thoughts apparently wandering to distant times and regions far away, now taking a glance down the Sound to watch for any tall ship which might be coming up from the westward, now looking along ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... wound. Quezox: Ah, Francos, well I know that wisdom bears With weight of mountains on my retching soul. But I will set my shoulders like the gods, And bear the load as Atlas doth the skies. Francos: But, Quezox, I am filled with anxious thoughts Anent sweet Seldonskip, whose wandering eye Doth lecherous look upon each passing dame. The fire of youth that wanders through his veins May scandal breed, and it were well to look With watchful eye upon his every act Affairs of state with mighty import ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... may be a sort of wandering joke to the citizens of this State, but he's doing what he wants to do, and that's more than I'm doing. Just fifty miles to Senator Brown's ranch. Drop in and see us. As the chap in Denver said when he wrote to his friend in El Paso: 'Drop into ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... customs of the tune. Originally an officer of the guards in Kyoto, he attained considerable skill in military science and archery, but his poetic heart rebelling against such pursuits, he resigned office, took the tonsure, and turning his back upon his wife and children, became a wandering bard. Yoritomo encountered him one day, and was so struck by his venerable appearance that he invited him to his mansion and would have had him remain there permanently. But Saigyo declined. On parting, the Minamoto chief gave him as souvenir a cat chiselled ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... possessed and mad. His wife, conscious of his counterfeiting, and privy to his design, taking her children with her, first cast herself as a suppliant before the temple of the goddesses; then, pretending to seek her wandering husband, no man hindering her, went out of the town in safety; and by this means they all escaped to Marcellus at Syracuse. After many other such affronts offered him by the men of Engyium, Marcellus, having taken them all prisoners and cast them into bonds, was preparing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... I threw myself on my bed, and instantly fell fast asleep, for I was worn out by emotion and fatigue: and my slumber resembled the deep peace of my own heart. And a little before the dawn, I woke up, and went out, wandering where my footsteps led me, with a soul lost in meditation on Tarawali, bathed in the nectar of reminiscence and anticipation, and yet puzzled by a doubt that it could not resolve. And I said to myself as I went along: How in the ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... joy in dreaming ease to lie Amid a field new shorn; And see all round, on sunlit slopes, The piled-up shocks of corn; And send the fancy wandering o'er ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... ragged fringe lay the flat and fertile fields of Eastern Bengal. A dark spot seen indistinctly through the hot-weather haze marked where the little city of Cooch Behar lay. Sixty miles and more away to the south-east the Garo Hills rose beyond the snaky line of the Brahmaputra River wandering ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... desertion of the Batavian cavalry, who promptly turned against us. However, despite the confusion, the legionaries gripped their swords and kept their places. Then the Ubian and Treviran auxiliaries broke in shameful flight and went wandering all over the country. The Germans pressed hard on their heels and meanwhile the legions could make good their escape into the camp, which was called 'Castra Vetera'.[294] Claudius Labeo, who commanded ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... subdivisions). The Lamanites, in the course of two hundred years, had become dark in color and "wild and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people; full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents and wandering about in the wilderness, with a short skin girdle about their loins, and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow and the cimeter and the ax" (Enos i, 2o). The Nephites, on the other hand, tilled the land and raised flocks. Between the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... bottomless sea! He had long followed the glittering yet fleeting traces left by the meteors through the blue depths of space; he had tracked the mystic and incalculable orbits of the comets as they flash through their wandering paths, solitary and incomprehensible, everywhere dreaded for their ominous splendor, yet inoffensive and harmless. He had gazed upon the shining of that distant star, Aldebaran, which, like the glitter and sullen ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... no shelter, no place in the world, no share in life. I was cast out. The changeless purposes of nature had ejected me from humanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and the gates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round the unscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands. That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if I could have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. To ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... hope for no good to the State from having a Prince so devoted to his pleasure. She told me also of a play shortly coming upon the stage of Sir Charles Sedley's, which, she thinks, will be called "The Wandering Ladys," a comedy that she thinks will be most pleasant; and also another play, called "The Duke of Lorane:" besides "Catiline," which she thinks, for want of the clothes which the King promised them, will not be acted ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... "Literature of Europe," after indulging in some profound reflections on "the thoughts of Pascal," and the theological dogmas of his school respecting the fallen nature of Man, thus speaks of Man's place in the creation—"It might be wandering from the proper subject of these volumes if we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether, while the creation of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the connection ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... get to talking of architecture. I have just copied two quotations from Emerson, and am studying them every night for fifteen minutes before I go to sleep. I'm going to quote them some time offhand, just after morning service, when we are wandering about the cathedral grounds. The first is this: "The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial proportion and perspective ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... guidance of her brother's tutor, who had bestowed no unfruitful pains upon no ordinary capacity. She was a good linguist, a fine musician, was well read in our elder poets and their Italian originals, was no unskilful artist, and had acquired some knowledge of botany when wandering, as a girl, in her native woods. Since her retirement to Cherbury, reading had been her chief resource. The hall contained a library whose shelves, indeed, were more full than choice; but, amid folios of theological ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... mythology and the tricks of a professional rhetoric—there arose a new school, intent on making literature real and modern. These were the Romance poets. If they pictured Theseus as a duke, and Jason as a wandering knight, it was because they thought of them as live men, and took means to make them live for the reader or listener. The realism of the early literature of the Middle Ages is perhaps best seen in old Irish. The monk bewails the lawlessness of his wandering thoughts, which run after dreams ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... "And the wandering star—again started on its eternal round. And her voice, passing through space, called me to the assistance ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with forced gayety: "Good morning, dear ones all." They looked up with blank, unanswering faces, and said: "Good morning, Marcia"—that was all. But Marcia's heart leaped at the recognition of her presence, for she had begun to fear that she was dead, and that it was her spirit that was wandering about. ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... roof—she became far less disagreeable, and even a little proud of her own cleverness. And so there was a temporary lull in Hilary's cares, and she could sit quiet, with her eyes fixed on the rainy landscape, which she did not see, and her thoughts wandering toward that unknown place and unknown life into which they were sweeping, as we all sweep, ignorantly, unresistingly, almost unconsciously, into new destinies. Hilary, for the first time, began to doubt of theirs. Anxious as she had been ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Sphinx waited. Year after year the flocking pigeons flitted and wheeled through the sweet skies of spring, built their nests and reared their young; tiny lizards, the new birth of the season, coiled and glittered on the hot sands like wandering jewels; every creature, dying out of conscious life, left its perpetuated self behind it, and repeated its own youth in its young, according to its kind: but the Sphinx lived alone. Nor all-unconscious of her solitude: for he who formed that massive shape, chiselled those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... divine teaching, down to the poorest slave who heard the tidings of spiritual liberty, they had all become daughters of a great and immortal faith. Of that faith women were the earliest adherents, disciples, and martyrs. Women followed Jesus, entertained the wandering apostles, worshipped in the catacombs, or died in the arena. The Acts of the Apostles bear record to the charity of Dorcas and the hospitality of Lydia; and tradition has preserved the memory of Praxedes and Pudentiana, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... case and murmured that 'they were all very interesting,' and again I caught his eye wandering to the great case opposite. I was in the act of reaching out a porcupine with an ankylosed knee-joint, when he plucked up courage to say frankly, 'The fact is, I am principally interested in ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... brother turned from you through jealousy; I wished to give you an idea of my power over him, and from extreme indifference I have brought him back, by showing him that he suspected you wrongly, to the ardours of the warmest love. Well, I need only tell him that I was mistaken, and fix his wandering suspicions upon any man whatever, and I shall take him away from you, even as I have brought him back. I need give you no proof of what I say; you know perfectly well that I am ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... eighty-one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long "nooning"; and, wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Schubert uses this musical figure to indicate the ceaseless motion of one condemned to endless wandering. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... care to have near me nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything happens to my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If I am too far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait till a cart comes along. My chief danger, I always find, is from the wandering overhauler. The sight of a broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of triumph. At first I used to ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... Such virtue to revive My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face, But if that powerful charm of thy great grace Could then thy loyal lover so sustain, Why comes there not again More often or more soon the sweet delight? Twice hath the wandering moon with borrowed light Stored from her brother's rays her crescent horn, Nor yet hath fortune borne Me on the way to so much bliss again. Earth smiles anew; fair spring renews her reign: The grass and every shrub once more is green; The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... some grass and laid it before them, and then, wrapping themselves in the Cossack cloaks to keep off the damp fog, were soon asleep. At day-break the fog was still thick, but as the sun rose it gradually dispersed it, and they were shortly able to see up the valley. They found that in their wandering in the mist they must have moved partly in a circle, for they were still little more than a quarter of a mile from the point where they had left it to ascend to the chateau. Round this they could ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... glad, Bryce Cardigan, you're not a quitter. Good-bye, good luck—and don't forget my errand." She hung up and sat at the telephone for a moment, dimpled chin in dimpled hand, her glance wandering through the window and far away across the roofs of the town to where the smoke-stack of Cardigan's mill cut the sky-line. "How I'd hate you if I could handle you!" ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... father, and have a talk with him about you, but I ride to London to-morrow, and may be forced to tarry there for some time. When I return I will wait upon him and have a talk as to his plans for you. Now, I doubt not, you would all rather be wandering about the garden than sitting here with us, so we ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... high hill just as the sun was rising, and far behind them little Nell caught a last view of the village. As she looked back and thought how contented they had been there at first, and of the further wandering that lay before them now, poor little Nell burst ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... at once. At first she was annoyed, then there surged over her a great, uplifting thrill of exaltation. She stepped quickly to the front and, raising her clear young voice, reclaimed the wandering attention of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... mingled shade and mist That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove Flee from the morning beam: The matter of which dreams are made Not more endowed with actual life Than this phantasmal portraiture Of wandering human thought. Queen ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... words, a low sound, wandering and muttering with an inward note, came palpitating on their ears through the night air. It seemed to approach from no direction that could be identified, yet it was at first remote, and then came nearer, and in a moment trembled around ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... secret and recondite knowledge of the customs and manners of the ancients, as well as their literature, which curiosity had led me to obtain, and which I knew had never entered into the heads of those who, contented with their reputation in the customary academical routine, had rarely dreamed of wandering into less beaten paths of learning. Fortunately too for me, Gerald was so certain of success that latterly he omitted all precaution to obtain it; and as none of our schoolfellows had the vanity to think of contesting ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a special historical interest, because it shows how very vague were the boundaries and the occupancies of the little wandering chieftains of this period. It need hardly be pointed out that no regular division into shires can have existed so early, and, as we have already insisted, the Thames itself was not a permanent boundary between any two definable societies, yet ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... feeling, that without his guide he would be very helpless in such a place. Being alone in the mountains was not indeed new to him. As we have already said, he had acquired the character of being much too reckless in wandering about by himself; but there was a vast difference between going alone over ground which he had traversed several times with guides in the immediate neighbourhood of Chamouni, and being left in a region to which he had been conducted by paths so intricate, tortuous, and difficult, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of prayer beset everybody. Thoughts have a way of wandering, the "saying" of prayers tends to become mechanical, moods vary, and there are times in most men's lives when they feel it almost impossible to pray with any sense of reality. A man should not lightly ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... man? She was strong-minded,—but yet a woman, with a woman's propensity to follow her feelings rather than either facts or reason. Her lover had told her that her uncle had been very feeble when those words had been spoken, with his mind probably vague and his thoughts wandering. It had, perhaps, been but a dream. Such words did not suffice as evidence on which to believe a man guilty of so great a crime. She knew,—so she declared to herself,—that the old man's words had not ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... denouement may take place any minute. I fancy they have come from all over the country for the satisfaction of being able to say, for the rest of their lives, that they were in at the death. The poor Capitol has become a sort of asylum for wandering lunatics." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the Knight of Snowdoun gave, Dame Margaret heard with silence grave; Or Ellen, innocently gay, Turned all inquiry light away: 615 "Weird women we—by dale and down We dwell, afar from tower and town. We stem the flood, we ride the blast, On wandering knights our spells we cast; While viewless minstrels touch the string, 620 'Tis thus our charmed rimes we sing." She sung, and still a harp unseen Filled ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of harder work for the two camp duty men. Hal tried to read again, but found his thoughts too frequently wandering to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... in unison. Their writings bear a close resemblance to one another, and their merits and their failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as his fingers move orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he has begun, though his unattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing of his fingers be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how probable soever, by this instance, it appears to be so: but ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Ye who, wandering here, seeking the beautiful, Stoop down, thinking to pluck one of these favorites, Take heed! Nymphs may avenge. List to a prodigy;— One moon scarcely has waned since I here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... sordidness and the commonplace. She could imagine positively nothing less romantic. She thought of the ground floor on chill March mornings with no fires anywhere save a red gleam in the dining-room, and herself wandering about in it idle, at a loss for a diversion, an ambition, an effort, a real task; and she thought of the upper floor, a mainly unoccupied wilderness of iron bedsteads and yellow chests of drawers and chipped earthenware and ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... were sound, the Empire cemented together by Akbar's statecraft might have defied aggression. His successors were debauchees or fanatics. They neglected the army; a recrudescence of the nomad instinct sent them wandering over India with a locust-like horde of followers; Hindus were persecuted, and their temples were destroyed. So the military castes whose religion was threatened, rose in revolt; Viceroys threw off allegiance, and carved out kingdoms for themselves. Within a century of Akbar's death his Empire ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... brother's present, had the box fetched and opened, and then desired to be left alone. The Egyptian paintings on the outside of the box reminded him of Nitetis, and then he asked himself what she would have said to his deed. Fever had already begun, and his mind was wandering as he took the beautiful wax bust out of the box. He stared in horror at the dull, immovable eyes. The likeness was so perfect, and his judgment so weakened by wine and fever, that he fancied himself the victim ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... miseries. The icy blasts struck death to the hearts of the feeble; and the puny fighting of man against man was now merged in the awful struggle against the powers of the air. Drifts of snow blotted out the landscape; the wandering columns often lost the road and thousands forthwith ended their miseries. Except among the Old Guard all semblance of military order was now lost, and battalions melted away ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... For Lilamani—wandering backward in fancy through the Garden of Remembrance—revealed more than she realised of the man she loved and of her own passionate spirit, compact of fire and dew, the sublimated essence of the Eastern woman ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow—a beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... thus, that your name should come so readily to my lip? But I have remembered the name 'Martin' for the sake of a boy, long years since, who found a little maid (she was just ten year old) found her lost and wandering in a wood, very woeful and frightened and forlorn. And this boy seemed very big and strong (he was just eleven, he said) and was armed with a bow and arrows 'to shoot outlaws.' And yet he was very gentle and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... which caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for the audience to understand him. At last, upon his quitting the assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him to set him right. "You," said he, "have a manner of speaking very like that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and cowardice. You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular assembly nor prepare your body ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... his thoughts wandering many times during the morning's work to the image of Roberta dancing with the old uncle from the country. He had never met her at any of the society dances which were now and then honoured by his presence. Unquestionably the Grays ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... At night, seated under the verandah, they smoke, or eat delicious oranges which the wife and daughters of old Vicente peel in a large silver dish, and the hours of sleep are passed in hammocks, the doors of the house having first been closed carefully to keep out any wandering jaguars that may be prowling around. In regard to these fierce animals, M. Forgues says that enough of them are to be met with in the forests of Paraguay to affright the bravest man, but it is more difficult to avoid them than to see them. They are sometimes caught in traps resembling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... students. In the chapel under the Joshua Reynolds window, through which the sun was shining, hung a long "roll of honour," a hundred names and more. In the college garden an open-air hospital was ranged under the old city wall, where we used to climb and go wandering in the early summer mornings after some all-night spree. Down on the river the empty college barges lay void of life. From the top of one of them an aged custodian broke into words: "Ah! Oxford'll never be the same again in my time. Why, who's ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... entertainment. This he succeeds in doing after some opposition from the terrified Eurylochus, who has not yet gotten over his scare. Sorely did the companions need this rest and recuperation after their many sufferings on land and sea; "weak and spiritless they were, always thinking of the bitter wandering." But now in the palace of Circe "they feasted every day for a whole year," eating and drinking without being turned into swine. Even Eurylochus follows after, "for ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... with the confidence in the rectitude of their intentions that so besets and befits the riders of bicycles. People would stare with disapproval in Honolulu to see a woman riding with both legs on the same side of a horse, and those wandering abroad in the voluminous folds of two spacious garments disapprove ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... upon. And, although he could not say what Luther affirmed of himself concerning covetousness, yet he could say, that he had been less troubled with covetousness and cares than many other evils, and rather inclined to solitariness than company, and was much troubled with wandering of mind and idle thoughts; and for outward things, he was never rich (and although when in Killinchie he had not above four pounds sterling of stipends a-year) yet he was ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... these vague and wondrous tales, determined himself to cross the mountains and find out what manner of land it was that lay beyond. With a few chosen companions he set out, making his own trail through the gloomy forest. After weeks of wandering, he at last emerged into the beautiful and fertile country of Kentucky, for which, in after years, the red men and the white strove with such obstinate fury that it grew to be called "the dark and bloody ground." But when Boone first ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... black juice, but even of the choicest kinds, and resembling new wax. Nor, I being thy husband, will there be wanting to thee chesnuts, nor the fruit of the arbute tree:[75] every tree shall be at thy service. All this cattle is my own: many, too, are wandering in the valleys: many the wood conceals: many {more} are penned in my caves. Nor, shouldst thou ask me perchance, could I tell thee, how many there are; 'tis for the poor man to count his cattle. For the praises of these trust not me at all; in person thou thyself mayst see how they ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... like the wandering talk of an old woman muttering in a corner by the fireside of witches and the like than it is like a truthful account set down by Jeremiah Wilkins. And now that I have written it I see there is nothing to tell. Nothing but the shameful account of my fear of some horror beyond my knowing. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... thought of her wandering about in that horrible place," Deppingham cried as he started resolutely ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... spent in wandering on the beach picking up shells, and gazing wistfully out to sea, Henry Stuart appeared to grow tired of waiting; for he laid himself down on the shore, turned his back on the ocean, pillowed his head on a tuft of grass, and deliberately ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... care of his children. Be seated, sar, and please excuse my not rising, my rheumatism is a sore affliction to me. But de Lord is good, de Lord giveth and de Lord He taketh away—and de holy text includes rheumatism too—as I have told my poor wandering flock many ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... mind the guide believed that, while this might be possible, it was more likely that the cook had missed his way, and was now wandering about the mountains. It was too late to go in search of the missing outfit that day, so there was nothing to do but to wait until morning, then to start out after it, in case the straggler had not come in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... But now I spoke. I did not want him to suppose that I believed anything he said, nor did I really intend to humor him in his insane retrospections; but what he had said suggested to me the very apropos remark that one might suppose he had been giving a new version of the story of the Wandering Jew. ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... spent either in the company of her brother or Michael, wandering about the valley, or sitting alone outside their primitive home, absorbing the spirit of the desert. She had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... countries look a little false under the ground-glass of incipient bad weather. This was the case on the day of my pilgrimage to Les Baux. Nevertheless I was glad to keep going, as I was to arrive; and as I went it seemed to me that true happiness would consist in wandering through such a land on foot, on September afternoons, when one might stretch one's self on the warm ground in some shady hollow and listen to the hum of bees and the whistle of melancholy shepherds; for in Provence the shepherds whistle to their flocks. I saw two or three of them, in the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... all the inanimate things of the world this wood of Chaldicotes was the dearest to him. He was not a man to whom his companions gave much credit for feelings or thoughts akin to poetry, but here, out in the Chace, his mind would be almost poetical. While wandering among the forest trees, he became susceptible of the tenderness of human nature: he would listen to the birds singing, and pick here and there a wild flower on his path. He would watch the decay of the old trees and the progress of the young, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the public may be admitted; pictures and statues may be shown to visitors: and this is a noble charity. In the same manner the fortunate individuals who have achieved the greatest of all human works of art should employ it as a sacred charity. How many, morally wearied, wandering, disabled, are healed and comforted by the warmth of a true home! When a mother has sent her son to the temptations of a distant city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he has found some ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mind; there was no need for the woman to come nearer to tell him that. Only grief for which there was no comfort, despair in which there was no hope, could tune a human note to that eloquent expression of pain. Perhaps she was wandering in the night now for the solace of weariness, pouring out the three lines of her song in what seemed the bitterness of accusation for ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... for it, and was shot by de Wichehalse's servant, John Babb. The Babbs were said never to have prospered afterwards; their crops failed, the fisheries failed, and they became extinct in the second generation. The last of them, Ursula Babb, the grand-daughter of John, was to be seen wandering up and down the little beach of Lynmouth, a half-crazed old crone, cursed with the evil-eye, and babbling disjointed and incoherent stories of the ruin ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... shot at her. "What's the matter with you lately?" He saw that he had startled her and that she made an effort to collect her wandering thoughts. "You're about as warm and wifely as a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... 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 on ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... a lonely man, wandering without aim or goal in far-distant deserts; away from home and friends; joyless, hopeless. One who was dearer to her than all on earth beside; who had left her in anger, and upon whose loved face she might look no more. For three years no tidings had come ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Philip," said Lucy, noticing that his fingers were wandering over the keys. "What is that you are falling into?—something ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Summer's charms, Her clouds of green, her starry flowers, And let this bird, this wandering bird, Make his fine wonder yours; He, hiding in the leaves so green, When sampling this fair world of ours, Cries cuckoo, clear; and like Lot's wife, I look, though it should ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... altogether believe it. It was strange to be hated!—the emotion was too extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling vagabond, that night-wanderer. For in his thoughts Soames always saw him lying in wait—wandering. Ah, but he must be in very low water! Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of a third-rate restaurant, looking ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... calves. The little yellow hides of the buffalo calves were given to the children of the camp to play with, but six of the children were poor and did not get any. The other children made much fun of the six, and plagued them so that they drove them out of the camp. After wandering ashamed and afraid on the prairie, the six finally were taken up into the sky. So they are not seen in the spring and summer, when the buffalo calves are yellow; but in the autumn and winter, when the buffalo calves are ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... well-remembered air creates a longing, even to death, for the home where that air was first heard;—it seems to me as if, once imprisoned, I would break every association with liberty, and keep my eyes from wandering where my limbs must no longer bear me. However, I do suppose some may be, and some have been, happy in a cloister. I cannot envy them; I ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... not rest there. My grandmother did not know what to do. She had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so many marvelous stories are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew, as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's stone, and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casnova, in his memoirs, says that he was a spy. But be that as it may, St. Germain, in spite of the mystery surrounding him, was a very ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... many men in number and but small store of victuals to suffice us for any long time; by means whereof we were in despair and fear that we should perish through famine, so that some were in mind to yield themselves to the mercy of the Spaniards, other some to the savages or infidels, and wandering thus certain days in these unknown seas, hunger constrained us to eat hides, cats and dogs, mice, rats, parrots, and monkeys, to be short, our hunger was so great that we thought it savoury and sweet whatsoever we could ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... again reading in the library, and coming to a point which demanded reflection, I lowered the book and let my eyes go wandering. The same moment I saw the back of a slender old man, in a long, dark coat, shiny as from much wear, in the act of disappearing through the masked door into the closet beyond. I darted across the room, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... reposed beneath their tents, the line of which was marked by the fires, and the besieged city seemed oppressed by the same slumber; upon its ramparts nothing was to be seen but the arms of the sentinels, which shone in the rays of the moon, or the wandering fire of the night-rounds. Nothing was to be heard but the gloomy and prolonged cries of its guards, who warned one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
