"Listlessly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Benjamin walked listlessly along as far as Fourth street. He chanced to pass the house of a Mr. Read, whose very pretty daughter, Deborah, was standing at the front door. She was eighteen years of age, and was much amused at the comical appearance which the young man ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... have been well if faintness and weariness had been all that was the matter; but now that the excitement was over, the collapse came; and the men sat down listlessly and sulkily by twos and threes upon the deck, starting and wincing when they heard some poor fellow below cry out under the surgeon's knife; or murmuring to each other that all was lost. Drew tried in vain to rouse them, telling ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... more listlessly; 'it might be more prudent to show them first the fairer and more graceful side of the old Myths. Certainly the great age of Athenian tragedy had its playful ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... have seen cutting trees have worked in leisurely manner, in contrast with the work of the old ones. After giving a few bites, they usually stop to eat a piece of the bark, or to stare listlessly around for a time. As workers, young beaver appear at their best and liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... couldn't help but notice that." She shifted her eyes sidewise at Merle. "I do wish some of the folks could have been there," she added, listlessly. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... usual hurried, feverish toil in the claim was suspended; the pick and shovel were left sticking in the richest "pay gravel;" the toiling millionaires themselves, ragged, dirty, and perspiring, lay panting under the nearest shade, where the pipes went out listlessly, and conversation sank ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... blood-bounding vein. Of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use, And keen Gelonian, when to Rhodope He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk With horse-blood curdled. Seest one far afield Oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag, Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain, At night retire belated and alone; With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep With dire contagion through the unwary herd. Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... plans were entirely overthrown. What should I do in the emergency? Stop, there was Horner; I would ask him if he had seen them. There, dressed a merveille and with his inseparable eye-glass stuck askew in the corner of his left eye, he stood listlessly criticising the people as they came forth from prayer, in his usual impertinently- inoffensive way. He was just as likely as not to have seen them, and could naturally give me the information I sought about the direction in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... may kindle that hope into life once more,' Humphrey said, in a voice of restrained emotion, and not daring to trust himself to say another word, he bent his knee again before Mary, took the long, slender hands which hung listlessly at her side, and bowing his head for a moment over ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... and catching the other by the throat pounded his head against the wall of the dungeon. He was surprised at the strength left in him, and also at a fury which he had never felt before in his life. A few of the prisoners roused themselves listlessly and laughed. He kicked the two fellows out of the way ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... these gnarled and unlovely fingers she wore a ring which, in the idleness of the mood that possessed me, I examined listlessly. It was an old-fashioned and slender circle of gold, so pale that it looked silvery, such as in times long past had commonly been used either for troth-plight or marriage-vows, surmounted by two small united hearts of the same dull metal by way of ornament. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... He loitered listlessly on, under the trees. His step was feeble; and he stooped and tottered, as if decrepid. He stopped again, shook his head, and went on, looking upon the ground, and at times long ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... impressions of the Salon, which he had taken on his way from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his precious teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly cross-examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of "breadth" in a painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as unostentatiously as the creakiness of his boots would permit towards the door. Eve had despatched ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... street. Face, step, and manner were very different from what they had been when she tripped up the steps less than half an hour before. All the alertness, the springiness, the joy of living were gone. For half a block she listlessly dragged one foot after the other. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress Aurora von Koenigsmarck is ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interested in expressing the impalpable emotion of the situation, we get this faultless and uncommon use of words: 'The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... fun. He was too near her age, the young lady frequently declaring that she had half a mind to throw aside all family ties and lay siege to the handsome young man, who really was very popular with the fair sex. During this discussion of Lottie, Anna had sat listlessly looking up and down the columns of an old Herald, which Dick, Eudora's pet dog, had ferreted out from the table and deposited at her feet. She evidently was not thinking of Lottie, nor yet of the advertisements, until one struck her notice as being very singular. Holding it a ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... ourselves. But are we? Is it not rather, that while God's succours are hastening to our side we will not open our eyes to see, nor our hearts to receive them? If we go through the world with our hands hanging listlessly down instead of lifted to heaven, or full of the trifles and toys of this present, as so many of us do, what wonder is it if heavenly gifts of strength do not come into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... morbid state of mind to study was impossible, and so she staid at home, brooding over the past and shrinking from the future, with no companionship except that of Rover, who seemed so fully to understand and sympathize with her. Oftentimes when her work for the day was done, and she sat down listlessly upon a little seat beneath the apple tree which grew in the yard, the dog would go to her, and putting his head in her lap, gaze into her face with such a human look of pity in his eyes that her tears would fall like rain, as she wound her arms ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the fates, or whatever it is that gives to men individuality, ever marked a man with less manhood than was given to poor Yavapai Joe. Standing erect, he would have been, perhaps, a little above medium height, but thin and stooped, with a half-starved look, as he slouched listlessly in the saddle, it was almost impossible to think of him as a matured man. The receding chin, and coarse, loosely opened mouth, the pale, lifeless eyes set too closely together under a low forehead, with a ragged thatch of dead, mouse-colored ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the operator, lounging at his window as we descended from our dusty vehicle. He had not addressed himself to anybody in particular, but I said that I was Mr. Gilland, and he produced the envelope. "Toted in from Okeechobee?" he inquired, listlessly. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... support of wise and prudent reform movements, for his discretion in making permanent public gifts—"the Weightman Charities," one very complaisant editor called them, as if they deserved classification as a distinct species. He turned he papers over listlessly. There was a description and a picture of the "Weightman Wing of the Hospital for Cripples," of which he was president; and an article on the new professor in the "Weightman Chair of Political Jurisprudence" in Jackson University, of which he was a trustee; and an illustrated account ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... to answer to their names in the detention-room, and others, with the air of men to whom time is no object and exertion no temptation, lounged about in the corridors with hands in pockets, regarding listlessly the general stampede of their fellows, and apparently not knowing exactly ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... demonstrate that Caffie's assassin was not the man whom the law had arrested and detained. The evening of the assassination she was in this same room, lying on this same bed, before this same window, and after having read all day, she reflected and dreamed about her book, while listlessly watching the coming of twilight in the court, that already obscured everything in its shadow. Mechanically she had fixed her eyes on the window of Caffie's office opposite. Suddenly she saw a tall man, whom she took for an upholsterer, approach the window, and try to draw the curtains. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... farther on he found Don Hermoso, whose condition seemed even worse than that of his son. But the Senorita Isolda he could not find, although he searched the remainder of the prisoners twice over. Then he walked aft to where Don Hermoso and his wife and son were standing listlessly together, exchanging an occasional word or two with each other, but apparently too utterly wretched to take notice of anything, or ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... of three, a young married couple and an unmarried sister, lounged on their belongings, listlessly watching the ripples on the water, as did also others of the party. But little conversation was passing. Each seemed to be communing with himself or herself, but it was easy to see what were the thoughts occupying the minds of all. The young husband, it was plain to be seen, would ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... While Laurie listlessly watched the procession of priests under their canopies, white-veiled nuns bearing lighted tapers, and some brotherhood in blue chanting as they walked, Amy watched him, and felt a new sort of shyness steal over her, for he was changed, and she could not find the merry-faced boy she ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... whole being seemed to have faded away, as if her heart, turned to ice, had stopped beating. When the good lady turned away with a pitying look, she sank down upon her knees completely exhausted, and slipped listlessly into the snow, whose flakes quickly ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... across the office and flung open the dining-room door, disclosing a lop-sided youth who was listlessly kicking ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... his breast; his strong hands rested listlessly on his knees: his attitude was that of utter despondency and prostration. But in the expression of his face there were the signs of some dangerous and restless thought which belied not the gloom but the stillness of the posture. His brow, which was ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should have passed through the trouble of the last few months without showing its effects to some degree, and yet it seemed to her old friend that there was more alteration than he could see occasion for. Her face had a weary, worn-out look, and the hand that lay listlessly on the arm of her chair was terribly thin. Those fainting fits, too, of which Lucia had told him, and the one which she had had that day, were alarming. He knew the steady self-command which she had been used to exert in the miseries ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Listlessly the girl turned and looked at her, and Dyce threw her arms around her slender waist, and falling on her knees hid her face in Beryl's dress, sobbing passionately. In the violence of her emotion, she rocked back and forth, swaying like a reed in some fierce blast ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... misgivings. It was one of the few occasions when my misfortune became an advantage. No one, especially no woman, was likely to rebuff too sharply the intruder who dragged himself into her presence. So far from that, Mrs. Molyneux, who was leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down listlessly into the fire, moved to welcome me with a smile and to offer me a hand startlingly cold. But after that she resumed her first attitude and made no attempt to converse—she, the most ready, the most voluble of ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... alone on the terrace with a book in her lap which she was not reading, saw Gaspare walking listlessly through the archway holding his gun. He came slowly towards her, lifted his hat, and was going on without a word, but she ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... she said listlessly. "But you'll be interested in seeing how the Zucker system works out; a half-page ad. in the Sunday edition gets a special signed and illustrated feature article, a quarter-page only a column of ordinary press stuff. A full page—I don't know what he'll offer for ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the island was out of doors. The women and the children were idling in groups; the men were listlessly following the commissioner on his rounds. No spirit of rebelliousness was evident. The men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety of poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of authority with the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the parting feast. Hunters had gone in quest of game. The women ground yuca roots for fresh cassava bread. And the children, with tear-stained faces, gathered wood that had been stranded along the edge of the sandbar. But the youth wandered about listlessly, barely conscious of the activities that were going ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the Chambers game aroused little interest. Both teams played listlessly, much, as Amy put it, as if they were waiting for the noon whistle. There was a good deal of punting and both sides handled the ball cleanly. Neither team was able to make consistent gains at rushing and the ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had wreaked its vengeance upon my unfortunate boat it rejoined its little one, and still continued to swim round and round it at prodigious speed, evidently in a perfect agony of concern. Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we were rapidly swept inshore, even when we floated listlessly on the surface of the water. The sea was quite calm, and we had no fear of sharks, being well aware that we would keep them away by ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... comrade listlessly, trusting, as it would seem, to the sea language for puzzlement enough to ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... where I had sat for luncheon. Air came in listlessly through the open door behind me. Now and again Rose or Berthe appeared for a moment. I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr. Soames came. A hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise of a quarrel between some ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Helen, listlessly, "you would think of something for me to do; I begin to be ashamed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force, could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing. It is not the old for whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is your vitality? Where is your "Lebens-gluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of superfluous life ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a grove of cottonwoods, his hands clasped listlessly behind him, his chin sunken dejectedly upon his breast, suddenly raised his eyes and beheld a beautiful woman standing not ten paces away. She was not a girl like her whom he had renounced for the Church, but a woman about whose delicate warm face and slender palpitating bosom ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Castleman's House under the Wall), and her eyes rested on the small iron box in which the letter to King Louis had been deposited. An unconscious motive, perhaps it was childish curiosity, prompted her to examine the missive. She took the pouch from the box and found it unsealed. She listlessly drew out the missive and began to read, when suddenly her face grew radiant with joy. She ran excitedly to her mother, who was sitting on the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... in the Burnham case sat listlessly in their chairs, glad that their work in the matter at issue was nearly done, yet regretful that a case had not been made out which might have called for the exercise of that large intelligence, that critical acumen, that capacity for close reasoning, of which the members of the average ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... is comparatively still in Ship Street. Women with soulless faces loll stolidly in the open ground-floor windows. There are few customers in the bar-rooms; here and there two or three idlers shake for drinks. Policemen stroll listlessly about, and have little to do. But at nightfall there is a change; the scrape of fiddles, the stamp of boot-heels, is heard from the dance-halls. Oaths and boisterous laughter everywhere strike the ear. Children, half-clad, run loose at eleven o'clock. Two policemen at a corner interrogate ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... elapsed. On the morning of the fourth day, as Francis sat listlessly awaiting the coming of her jailer with her noonday meal, which was the only diversion that her prison life afforded, the door opened to admit, not her keeper, but Sir Francis Walsingham and two warders. Every particle of color left her face at sight of him, and she uttered a silent prayer ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... intention of making money. He avoided the grand stand, with the bookmakers huddling in couples, like hoarse lovebirds; he kept away from the members' inclosure, where the Guards' band was endeavouring to defy the elements which emptied their vials into the brazen instruments; he drifted listlessly about the course till the clearing-bell rang, and it seemed as if he was searching for some one whom he only wished to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... were the Curator and the Specimen? Those questions brought with them no feeling of anxiety or surprise. He turned, in a half-awakened way, without a wish or a purpose—turned, and listlessly looked back. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... on the Sunday, Caffyn, having risen late and finding that Mark had breakfasted and gone out alone, was climbing the path by the waterfall, when, on one of the bridges which span the cascade, he saw a girl's figure leaning listlessly over the rough rail. It was Gilda Featherstone, and he thought he could detect an additional tinge in her cheeks and a light in her eyes as he came towards her. Her father and mother were in one of the shelters ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... told her listlessly as she lingered in the cosy kitchen. She was pale and her eyes were dull. She was tired, she told herself impatiently. The summer had been hot and she had worked hard. It irritated her that the keen eyes of Mrs. Donovan saw that she was not happy but ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... accordingly. As we marched through Carlisle we greeted the day with patriotic airs without exciting the slightest demonstration beyond an occasional waving of a handkerchief. The people gathered to see us pass, looking on listlessly. We did not notice a rag of bunting flying except our own colors, though it was ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... across the caw of the rooks about the elms and the low sounds from the stables and the kitchen behind the house. Otherwise the evening was very still; the two old ladies were sitting near the fireplace; Lady Maxwell had taken up her embroidery, and was looking at it listlessly, and Mistress Margaret had one of her devotional books and was turning the pages, pausing here and there as ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... like a sigh Miss Terry strode back to the fire, where the play box stood gaping. She had made but a small inroad upon its heaped-up treasures. She threw herself listlessly into the chair and began to pull over the things. Broken games and animals, dolls' dresses painfully tailored by unskilled fingers, disjointed members,—sorry relics of past pleasures,—one by one Miss Terry ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... The nursing of Mr. Faucitt had left her tired, and she had not slept well on the train. But the real cause of her depression was the fact that there had been a lack of enthusiasm in Gerald's greeting over the telephone just now. He had spoken listlessly, as though the fact of her returning after all these weeks was a matter of no account, and she felt hurt ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... alone sat listlessly That lavish board beside; The one a fair-haired stripling, tall, Blithe-brow'd and eager-ey'd, Caressing still two hounds in leash, That by his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a French silk of delicate blue, her rich, dark hair looped up in massive braids, sat listlessly, poring over a volume of old ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... in the world; and sometimes the long, dark figure of the cure, reading his breviary to economize time, might be seen gliding along before you, representative of the murky superstition that still fills these valleys, and which, indeed, you can read in the stolid face of the Savoyard, as he sits listlessly under the broad easings of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... on the slightly opened door, then, receiving no answer, opened it softly. She paused irresolutely on the threshold, Anne peering over her shoulder. Laura Atkins had left the room, but Mildred Taylor, fully dressed, sat at the window looking listlessly out. If she heard Grace's light knock she paid no attention to it. It was not until Grace said rather diffidently, "We heard you were ill and thought we'd come in to see you," that the girl at the window turned toward Grace. Her piquant little face was drawn and pale, and her eyes looked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... out that the fire was by the side of a water-hole, but the two hundred yards between it and ourselves was so open, that surprising the camp seemed almost impossible. The hour was in our favour, for the blacks were lying about listlessly, resting themselves after the fatigues of procuring the food of which they had just made a meal. They numbered about twenty of both sexes, and were evidently quite unconscious of our proximity. Detaching the two troopers ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... vivacity, or the capacity of enjoyment. It is most remarkable. I am quite serious when I say that I have not heard a hearty laugh these six weeks, except my own; nor have I seen a merry face on any shoulders but a black man's. Lounging listlessly about; idling in bar-rooms; smoking; spitting; and lolling on the pavement in rocking-chairs, outside the shop-doors; are the only recreations. I don't think the national shrewdness extends beyond the Yankees; that is, the Eastern men. The rest are heavy, dull, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... he IS dirty and horrid!" said Stashie emphatically, looking over at the drooping, battered little figure, leaning against the school door, listlessly kicking at ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... surged about him, and the mad cheering crowned his victory, and the Household in the splendor of their triumph and the fullness of their gratitude rushed from the drags and the stands to cluster to his saddle, Bertie looked as serenely and listlessly nonchalant as of old, while he nodded to the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Rowdy as listlessly consented. Camas as a town was neither interesting nor important; but when one has spent three long weeks communing with nature in her sulkiest and most unamiable mood, even a town without a railroad to its name may serve to relieve the ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... and he played listlessly with Maud, or fell asleep on the floor in the midst of the toys; and by evening time even Jane's careless eyes could see that the ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... and glanced at the title listlessly, Under a Loggia. She no longer read novels herself, devoting all her spare time to solid literature in the hope of catching Cecil up. It was dreadful how little she knew, and even when she thought she knew a thing, like the Italian ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... withdrew, and Ann Eliza, returning to the back room, found Evelina still listlessly seated by the table. True to her new policy of silence, the elder sister set about folding up the bridal dress; but suddenly Evelina said in a harsh unnatural voice: "There ain't any use in going on ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Shann pulled listlessly at the framework of his latest try, fully disheartened. He tried not to think of the unescapable fact that the water in the rain tank had sunk to only an inch or so of muddy scum. Last night he had dug in the heart of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... slim, boyish build, with its long line of slender hip, accentuated by the clinging black of her gown, moved listlessly across the hall to where Major Durward was standing smoking by the big open fire, waiting for the car which was to take him to ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... upon a wider ocean than before. The public must decide whether her sails shall flap listlessly against the masts, or swell before a stiff and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Mr. Witherspoon with a smile, for he was certain of his ground by this time, and the whip hung listlessly alongside the farmer's leg; "we made so good an impression on Mr. Brush that early this morning his man Bill came over with a basket, and also this note. ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... been elevated, for the greater comfort of the owner, to the top of a pianoforte, and presenting an inclination of forty-five degrees to Mr. Wilkeson's body, reposing calmly and smoking an antique pipe in his favorite chair below. One of his long arms was hanging listlessly by his side, and the other made a sharp projecting elbow, and terminated in the interior of his vest. This was the attitude which, of all possible adjustments of the human anatomy, Mr. Wilkeson preferred; ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... out of the car at Jacksonville with a stiff and aching body. I determined to ask no more porters, not even my benefactor, about stopping-places; so I found myself on the street not knowing where to go. I walked along listlessly until I met a colored man who had the appearance of a preacher. I asked him if he could direct me to a respectable boarding-house for colored people. He said that if I walked along with him in the direction ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... it listlessly, with a curious buzzing in his ears and a certain dimness of sight which was quite disconcerting; and when a cab was summoned he was glad enough to let a respectfully sympathetic porter lend him ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... our boys," said the Dewey's skipper listlessly. Then, taking Jack's megaphone, he ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... over to Camas; all the other fellows have gone," Pink proposed listlessly, drawing ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... walked away. I had hoped that she was going to talk to me, and with keen disappointment watched her moving across the floor. All the glory seemed now to have gone out of the leaves of the volume, and I continued turning them over listlessly, glancing at intervals at the beautiful girl, who was also like one of the pages before me, wonderful to look at and hard to understand. In a distant part of the room I saw her place some cushions on the floor, and settle herself on them to do ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... he stood there, leaning on his hands, surveying almost listlessly in the candle-light that lined, bedraggled, grey, hopeless countenance, those dark-socketed, smouldering eyes, whose pupils even now were so dilated that a casual glance would have failed to detect the least hint of any iris. 'It must have been something pretty bad you were, you ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover. One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again the lucky ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... linger with me there and either we shall come to romantic lands which the men of the caravans only speak of in song; or else we shall listlessly walk in a land so lovely that even the butterflies that float about it when they see their images flash in the sacred pools are terrified by their beauty, and each night we shall hear the myriad nightingales all in one chorus sing the stars to death. Do this and ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... up to the corral gate, turned his horse inside and fastened the chain just as he had done a thousand times before—only this would be the last time. His tired eyes went from one familiar object to another, listlessly aware of the regret he should feel but too utterly wearied of sorrow to feel much of anything. No one seemed to be about, and the whole place had an atmosphere of desolation that almost ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... river on a lumber raft. The baby was left shut up in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled blanket. Soon after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work in order that he might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town at the heels of his father. The two found work, which the boy did while the man lay sleeping in the sun. They cleaned cisterns, swept out stores and saloons and at night went with a wheelbarrow and a box to remove and dump in the river the contents of out-houses. At ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the basket, looked at them, then let them drop listlessly on his knee. "I am afraid I don't care for such things, as I used to do. Before—this happened, I had a language of my own, in which I could express everything—as artists or poets can. Now—I am struck dumb. There is something crying in me—that can find no voice. And when one can't ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... express from Euston to Scotland was tearing along on its daily journey. It was that barren hour in the afternoon when luncheon is over and forgotten, and tea is yet far distant, and most of the passengers were either asleep or listlessly trying to ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... shone in the firelight silvery white. Face and figure were full of character and breeding, of life lived to its utmost, of will, responsibility, success. Yet to-night the spring of the mechanism seemed broken, and the noble head lay back against the brown leather of his deep chair as listlessly as a tired girl's. He watched the dry wood of the fire as it blazed and fell apart and blazed up brightly again, yet his eyes did not seem to see it—their absorbed ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... would wander into the pressroom and watch Thursday Smith run off the edition on the wonderful press, which seemed to possess an intelligence of its own, so perfectly did it perform its functions. At such times she sat listlessly by and said little, for Thursday was no voluble talker, especially when busied over his press. But a certain spirit of comradeship grew up between these two, and it was not unusual for the pressmen, after his work was finished and the papers were neatly piled for distribution to the carriers ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... out of it," he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the canal bank. "Anyway I'll make an end, for I want to.... But is it a way out? What does it matter! There'll be the square yard of space—ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the sole constitutional purpose of all places within the gift of Decimus, was, that Decimus should strengthen himself. A few bilious Britons there were who would not subscribe to this article of faith; but their objection was purely theoretical. In a practical point of view, they listlessly abandoned the matter, as being the business of some other Britons unknown, somewhere, or nowhere. In like manner, at home, great numbers of Britons maintained, for as long as four-and-twenty consecutive hours, that those invisible and anonymous ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Berenger's condition. 'Ah! I never guessed it had been so frightful as this. I should not have known him. Ah! had I imagined—-' She leant back, covered her face, and wept, as one overpowered; then, after a few seconds, she bent forward, and would have taken the hand that hung listlessly down, but it was at once withdrawn, and folded with the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Her hand dropped listlessly. I confess to the thought that it must have been very trying for her. What a plucky girl she was! She held me in contempt, and yet she clung to me, patiently and unmurmuring. And I ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... disclosed to a shrewd eye some indications that here was a boy who had been extremely, if temporarily, ill. He went to the cistern, and, after a cautious glance round the reassuring horizon, lifted the iron cover. Then he took from the inner pocket of his jacket an object which he dropped listlessly into the water: it was a bit of wood, whittled to the likeness of a pistol. And though his lips moved not, nor any sound issued from his vocal organs, yet were words formed. They were so deep in the person of Penrod they came almost ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... reclining there, in his elegant dressing-gown, with a silk handkerchief bound across his temples. His usually pale face was flushed and feverish; his eyes were half closed, until he became sensible of my presence—and then he opened them wide enough: one hand was thrown listlessly over the back of the sofa, and held a small volume, with which, apparently, he had been vainly attempting to beguile the weary hours. He dropped it, however, in his start of indignant surprise as I advanced into the room and stood before ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... that lay listlessly in her lap were rough and red from much uncongenial toil. He looked at her for a moment, still absorbed in himself, then, as he noted the pathos in every line of her face and figure, the expression of his face subtly changed. His ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... be of use to mothers and to the rising generation, as I humbly hope and trust that it has been, and that it will be still more abundantly, it ought not to be listlessly read, merely as a novel or as any other piece of fiction; but it must be thoughtfully and carefully studied, until its contents, in all its bearings, be ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... nothing but toast and water, as a substitute for their proper contents. The poor woman was sitting by the fire with one twin on her lap, and the other on a chair by her side, and a larger child was in the corner by the fire, looking heavy and ill, while others of different ages lounged about listlessly. She was not untidy, but very pale, and she spoke in a meek, subdued way, as if the ills of life were so heavy on her that she had no spirit even to complain. She thanked them for their gifts but languidly, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... some time after her sobs had ceased again, still lay there. At last she rose and dragged herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked, discoloured face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the marks beneath her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself. Then, sitting down on the brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes off the floor. They gave forth a dry peculiar crackle. Fifteen ten-pound notes—all Hilary's travelling money. Her eyes opened wider and wider as she counted; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... event that might awaken the young solitary from his torpor. By day, he roved through the island, or lay listlessly under the shadow of a tree; by night, he slept beneath the rocks which had first sheltered him; while the fruits, that grew and ripened without his care, gave him food. Thus he lived a merely animal life, his strongest sensation one of satisfaction for his relief ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... I became conscious of my eyes resting on a bird-excreta-marked leaf. How strange, I thought, it is that I have never got another specimen of that curious spider I found in Java which simulated a patch just like this! I plucked the leaf by the petiole while so cogitating, and looked at it half listlessly for some moments, mentally remarking how closely that other spider had copied nature, when, to my delighted surprise, I discovered that I had actually secured a second specimen, but the imitation was so exquisite that ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets; when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad mass around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest; and my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... gave her a sense of oneness with eternal truth, which had hitherto been lacking from her religious experience. In judging Wilbur she was disposed to ascribe the defects of his character largely to the coldness and analyzing sobriety of his creed. She had accompanied him to church listlessly, and had been bored by the unemotional appeals to conscience and quiet subjective designations of duty. She preferred to thrill with the intensity of words which now roundly rated sin, now passionately called to mind the ransom of the Saviour, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of cottonwoods, and ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... and assist it, by blowing, and bits of paper; and it seemed in so precarious a state that he determined not again to lie down, but sit on the bedside: as he did, with his arms folded, ready to resume operations if necessary. In this posture he remained for some time, watching his little fire, and listlessly listening to the discordant jangling of innumerable church-bells, clamorously calling the citizens to their devotions. The current of thoughts passing through his mind, was ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a few days from Java when there were signs of a change of weather. Hitherto it had been lovely; now a slight mist seemed to hang over the sea while, overhead, it was clear and bright. There was not a breath of wind, and the sails hung listlessly against the masts. Will—who was leaning against the bulwarks, chatting to Hans—observed the captain, after looking round at the horizon, go into his cabin. He reappeared in a minute, and spoke to the officer; who immediately shouted an order for ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... Murphy had retired the Retriever rose and fell gently on the slightest swell, her booms and yards swinging idly amidships, her sails and cordage slatting listlessly ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... try to smooth the gloomy brow of Don Miguel. All in vain. The "pernicious foreigner" is once more on the shores of Alta California. The Mexican eagle flutters listlessly over the sea gates of the great West. The serpent coils of foreign conspiracy are twining ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... feeling of disappointment almost brought a groan to his lips. He conquered himself with an effort, however, opened the window a few inches, and returned to his place. Catherine was lying back, her eyes half-closed, her arms hanging listlessly on either ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coaxing her from her usual station in a corner, had lifted her into the window-seat, and, by way of occupying her attention, told her to watch the passengers and count how many ladies should go down the street in a given time. She had sat listlessly, hardly looking, and not counting, when—my eye being fixed on hers—I witnessed in its iris and pupil a startling transfiguration. These sudden, dangerous natures—sensitive as they are called—offer many a curious spectacle ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and walked on. Returning to the great city, I suddenly found myself outside the shop of a publisher to whom I had vainly applied some time before, in the hope of selling some of my writings. As I looked listlessly at the window, I observed a paper affixed to the glass, on which was written in a fair round hand, "A Novel or Tale is much wanted." I at once resolved to go to work to produce what was thus solicited. But what ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds. |
