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More "Somnolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fire, where, with a conventional sentence, he extended his legs to the low blaze. A man regarded him with a peering suspicious gaze; but any doubts were apparently laid, for the other silently resumed a somnolent indifference. His clothes were an amazing and unnecessary tangle of rags; his stubble of beard and broken black hat had an air of unreality, as though they were the stage properties of a stupid and conventional ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of bygone times, in which the clerk flourished in all his glory, would be complete without some reference to the important person who occupied the second tier in the "three-decker," and decked in gown and bands delivered somnolent sermons from its upper storey. Curious stories are often told of the careless parsons of former days, of their irreverence, their love of sport, their neglect of their parishes, their quaint and irreverent manners; but such characters, about whom these stories ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the fall of darkness and the larger silence of darkness, the veldt awoke. Animals that had dozed through the hot hours and grazed through the cooler hours in somnolent content now quivered alert. There were runnings here and there, the stamp of hoofs, sharp snortings as taut nerves stretched. Zebras uttered the absurd small-dog barks peculiar to them; ostriches boomed; jackals yapped; unknown birds uttered hasty wild calls. Numerous hyenas, near and far ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... extreme old age. "The excitable weakness of the old man brings him into great danger of becoming a criminal. The excitability is opposed to slowness and one-sidedness in thought; he is easily surprised by irrelevancies; he is torn from his drowse, and behaves like a somnolent drunkard.... The very old individual is a fanatic about rest—every disturbance of his rest troubles him. Hence, all his anger, all his teasing and quarreling, all his obstinacy and stiffness, have a single ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sort of torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches against which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... foregoing points to the fact that the steak and kidney pudding had been excellent, even as my benefactor had said; wherefore, drowsing in somnolent content, I sat amid leaves beside a prattling rill musing comfortably as a well-fed young philosopher may, when these reflections were banished in sudden alarm, for upon the drowsy afternoon stillness rose a stir of leaves, a snapping of twigs, the sounds of one who burst through all obstacles ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the enfant terrible of the drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... they had left all this somnolent peace and begun the long walk back to the station, he explained what he meant: "I couldn't say so before the Eldress, but of course there are times when anybody can feel the charm of getting rid of personal ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... of experience which is almost as common as ordinary dreaming, we see that the semi-somnolent self possesses a faculty not always given to the waking self. Compared with my own waking self, for instance, my half-asleep self is almost a personality of genius. He can create visions that the waking self can remember, but cannot originate, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... be. Money in the hands of the individual is continuously and feverishly on the search for opportunities, i. e. for creative and productive use. In the hands of the Government it is apt to lose a good deal of its fructifying energy and ceaseless striving and to sink instead into placid and somnolent repose. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... mechanical environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments, while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not strive nor cry; neither is her voice heard in the streets. The artist had not to draw pain but to draw despair; and while the pain is old enough the particular despair is modern. The victim racked for a creed could at least cry "I am converted." But here even the terms ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... Kalidasa: for example, the story of the jealous humpback who eggs on Queen Kaikeyi to demand her two boons; the beautiful scene in which Sita insists on following Rama into the forest; the account of the somnolent giant Pot-ear, a character quite as good as Polyphemus. Other fine episodes are so briefly alluded to as to lose all their charm: for example, the story of the golden deer that attracts the attention of Rama while Ravana is stealing his wife; the journey of the monkey Hanumat ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... of Steens, and a trifle over, lies the market town of Helston (or 'Helleston' as men wrote it in 1734, and ought to write it still); on the road to nowhere and somnolent then as now, but then as now waking up once a year, on the 8th of May, to celebrate the Feast of Flora and welcome back the summer. She is brought in at daybreak with green boughs and singing, and at noon the citizens dance through the streets in her honour, the Mayor himself leading off as ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained, soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of constantly meeting new conditions with new processes, of uprooting ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fled from Stella's room leaving the overturned fairy lamp to bring about the climax of that evening, her one thought was to get to bed, and hardly had she tumbled into it than sleep brought oblivion of all else. Lily Pearl was a somnolent soul in ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... school." It is not at all surprising that the general public and the younger generation of artists, more especially the romanticists, were not unanimously moved to unbounded enthusiasm by "the clear limpid flow" and "almost somnolent tranquillity" of Field's playing, "the placid tenderness, graceful candour, and charming ingenuousness of his melodious reveries." This characterisation of Field's style is taken from Liszt's preface to the nocturnes. Moscheles, with whom ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... did not sleep, tired as I was—I was more than half afraid to close my eyes, and when I finally did summon up sufficient courage to do so, there ensued a series of disturbances that successfully banished any further somnolent inclination for ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... I have been presenting the explanation for over forty years to my pupils. The sensibility to hypnotic phenomena is due to the anterior portion of the middle lobe of the brain—to the portion which is developed one inch behind the external angle of the eye, by exciting which we bring on the somnolent condition. The predominance of this region renders the person liable ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the Monday night arrived which was to bring the final test of strength. Picture the large, ponderous structure of black granite—erected at the expense of millions and suggesting somewhat the somnolent architecture of ancient Egypt—which served as the city hall and county court-house combined. On this evening the four streets surrounding it were packed with thousands of people. To this throng Cowperwood has become an astounding figure: ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... they passed beyond the hearing of the astonished eavesdropper. Good heaven, what was this? Not his child? Two minutes later Mrs. Odell-Carney was back at the spring where they had left her somnolent husband, who had refused to climb a hill because all of his breath was required ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... New Orleans in the morning. Phyllis was glad to be alone. She had tried to send her lover away cheerfully; but there is always the afterward. The "afterward" to Phyllis was an extreme sadness that was almost lethargy. Many crushed souls have these fits of somnolent depression; and it does no good either to reproach them, or to point out that physical infirmity is the cause. They know what the sorrowful sleep of the apostles in the garden of Olivet was, and pity them. Phyllis wept slow, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Hernando Pizarro, who was appointed governor of Cuzco, held young Manco in close confinement, and everything outwardly was as fine and lovely as a summer day. There was growing, however, a tremendous uprising in which hitherto somnolent Fate was about to lay her belated hands upon nearly all the actors of the great drama which had heretofore ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Beholding the somnolent proprietor, he advanced quietly to the middle of the big room. Then, with malicious enjoyment of the effect, he banged his riding-crop violently upon the table, close to the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped, it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point at, 'fore ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... pottering &c v.; shilly-shally &c (irresolute) 605. sleeping, &c v.; asleep; fast asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative &c 174. Adv. inactively &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... indeed, they have been swarming in since Prague came into her own some few years ago and became the capital of a free and independent republic. In former years, when Prague was still accounted a small provincial town of somnolent habits, there were only two or three hotels that counted at all as accommodation for foreigners; now there are many yet inadequate to the number of visitors. As to those that are drawn to Prague, their numbers may be ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... room with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think the performance little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest of dialectic nightmares—is often found astride of a somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of general-utility men, to do all the dirty work of illustration; and they fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at the "Princess's," which I found doing duty on one evening as a gorge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... day I was somewhat somnolent, of which you may be sure Miss Frankland took no notice. She retired to her own room when we went for our recreation. My sisters scolded me for not coming to them the previous night, but I told them that ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother—a dark-faced, pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes—and waited for her to speak. The reply ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... commiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving her guests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred the white dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there was a still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laugh appeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. There was another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly and ostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter young woman, her elder sister, at ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... found the rooms. The somnolent boots will carry our things upstairs. Which of the two rooms will I have? They are en suite. I make no choice. It is, I protest, a matter of perfect indifference to me; but one room being infinitely ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... they take a vacation they are going to break down. The doctor tells them so and they know it. Whereupon they rush off for a week or ten days; some of them enter upon an orgy of exercise, others relax into a somnolent state of lying around and thanking their stars that they can rest at last. They certainly do feel better and do improve, but they come back to work merely to begin the same old vicious round. They have had their lesson, but they have ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... hundred years this nation writhed in the pain and anguish of travail; and as a happy sequel to this long night of suffering, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, she bore a son who was destined to awaken a nation's somnolent conscience to a monstrous evil; to lead a nation through a fierce siege of fratricidal strife; to strike the shackles of slavery from the limbs of four millions of bondsmen; to fall a victim to the assassin's bullet; to be enshrined in the hearts of a grateful nation; and to have ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... in the boat calmly awaiting his return; and this feeling presently grew so strong within him that he could scarcely credit his eyes when, upon passing through the screen of concealing foliage, he saw only the three seamen curled up in the boat. They roused themselves from their semi-somnolent condition and sat up to receive him, with glances of mute enquiry ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Selifan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to rest against Chichikov's knees—a position ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... closed very easily with a spring bolt, but it could only be opened by a key of peculiar construction. Seaton took out his key, opened the door, and called to the mate, but received no reply. However, he took the precaution to go round the store, and see whether Wylie, rendered somnolent by liquor, might not be lying oblivious among the cases; Wylie, however, was not to be seen, and Seaton, finding himself alone, did an unwise thing; he came and contemplated Wardlaw's cases of metal and specie. (Men will go too near the thing that causes their pain.) He eyed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... well. He tossed restlessly in the caressing softness of his bed. He turned a knob in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere. He turned another knob, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ceiling ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... that day, Saint Mars Montalvin, Tom Sheffield, and his cousin, Madame de Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings. It was growing dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There was a delicate perfume of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in yet, and chatting and laughing filled the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... too, that the following noon—this day being a Sunday, warm, clear, and somnolent—Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... said to him, as I stretched my legs—"Hamilcar, somnolent Prince of the City of Books—thou guardian nocturnal! Like that Divine Cat who combated the impious in Heliopolis—in the night of the great combat—thou dost defend from vile nibblers those books which the old savant acquired at the cost of his slender savings and indefatigable ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... which the bird paid to everything that passed, and the presence of the old lady as well, did for a time interfere with their conversation. But, after awhile, the old lady was asleep, and the bird, having once or twice attempted to imitate the somnolent sounds which his mistress was making, seemed also to go to sleep himself. Then Reginald, beginning with Lady Ushant and the old Morton family generally, gradually got the conversation round to Bragton and the little bridge. He had been very stern when he had left her there, and he knew also that ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... eyes that could sparkle; besides, his whole countenance possessed the configuration of one who had been born for a life of activity. On the contrary, however—whether from a malady or some other cause—the man appeared as somnolent and immobile as if both his visage and body were carved out of marble. In a word, with all the exterior marks that denote the possession of an active and ardent soul, Pepe the Sleeper appeared the most inactive ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the offspring of a lioness, by a leopard that coerces her, and, for this reason, cheetas are sterile like mules and all other hybrids. No animal of the same size is as weighty as the cheeta. It is the most somnolent animal on earth. The best are those that are 'hollow-bellied,' roach backed, and have deep black spots on a dark tawny ground, the spots on the back being close to each other; that have the eyes bloodshot, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... land of Lotus Eaters, "that slumber is more sweet than toil!" The back benches of that room were strewn with shattered hopes. Small intelligent scholars came up and passed by on their way to Balliol Scholarships; but the faces at the back of the room remained terribly somnolent and happy. A certain Banbury had been there for three years and had earned the nickname of "old Father Time," and Mansell, too, swore he would enrol himself with the Lost Legion, while even Gordon said that nothing would shift him from there ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Legation, allowed to sink into a somewhat somnolent condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a dozen different ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and the congregation paid a very languid attention, but suddenly a curious little sound went through the church—one of those scarcely perceptible noises which no comparison can explain; it was a quick attraction of all eyes, an arousing of somnolent intelligences, a slight, quick drawing-in of the breath. The listeners had heeded very indifferently Mr Gray's admonitions to brotherly love and charity as matters which did not concern them other than abstractedly; but quite suddenly they had realised that he was bringing his discourse ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... he could not in any wise but rebuild was the great Altar, aloft on which stood the Shrine itself; the great Altar, which had been damaged by fire, by the careless rubbish and careless candle of two somnolent Monks, one night,—the Shrine escaping almost as if by miracle! Abbot Samson read his Monks a severe lecture: "A Dream one of us had, that he saw St. Edmund naked and in lamentable plight. Know ye the interpretation of that Dream? St. Edmund proclaims himself naked, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... shimmering water, fall away and dwindle as the silhouette of the embarcadero receded. On the electric train they were whizzed among many sleepy folk into a sleeping town, Oakland, drowsing and silent. Gratton summoned a somnolent taxi-driver and they were whisked through the cool air to a garage. He left her a moment, sitting in the taxi, while he ran in and arranged for ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... hour later, Rodrigo did in fact attack the presumably somnolent Americans, more happened than either he or they expected. A third was also waiting to strike for the sake of a woman. He was Dupin, who wanted nothing better than the allies at each other's throat. Crouching warily near, the Tiger sprang at both ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... dropped slackly on Bucephalus's back and he slowed to a walk. Inside the governess-cart all was somnolent peace. Behind us the car was already beginning to make remarks on one of those abusive press-the-button horns. "You FOOL! You FOOL! Get OUT o' the way! Get OUT o' the way!" it said. Then we heard the car slow down and pandemonium broke loose. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling settled upon the school. A long stand at cricket is a soothing sight to watch. There was an absence of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with the drowsy summer afternoon. And yet runs were ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... wood workbox, a shred or two of muslin, an end or two of ribbon collected for conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly night- capped and night-gowned, lay in its cradle; she was rocking it to sleep, with an air of the most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and somnolent faculties; her eyes, at the same time, being engaged with a picture-book, which lay ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... then dressed and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim—as no one else in the castle would do—the basin of soup, with which she then fed her patient as he leant back in the corner of the settle, at first in the same somnolent, half-conscious state in which he had been ever since the relief from the severe pain; but after a few spoonfuls the light and life came back to his eye, and he broke out, "Thanks, thanks, gracious lady! ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feel the vibra-currents through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought-life-force set his every ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action, of repose that was quick with existence without being violent with struggle and travail. The spirit of the place was the spirit of the peace of the living, somnolent with the easement and content of prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"—with feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the very outskirts of the village, and in a flash Caroline knew it for ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... resigned acquiescence, and at the finish was fast asleep. Every evening after that Deidrick proposed in perfect good faith, the girl repeated her objections with equal candour, and they were received with somnolent approval. Love-making is very agreeable, and by the usuage of long years it becomes a confirmed habit. In less than a decade it became impossible for Katrina to enjoy her supper without the regular proposal, and Deidrick could not sleep of a night without the preliminary ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... in a semi-unconscious, semi-somnolent state, half syncope, half sleep, and there was nothing to be gained by rousing her just then, so we wrapped her up warmly in shawls, sent for my dogcart, and lifted her on the back seat, where I supported her as best I could, while my man drove ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the somnolent gathering with dismay. "Aunt Peggy, I don't like sleepy picnics. I ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... helm Doth guide the ship of state through calm and storm. To think in words, disloyalty proclaims; But act subservient fealty do prove. (Exit Printus) Quezox: Most noble Sire, thy courage I admire But Somnolent doth wait without the door. Francos: Ha! He doth quickly to my call respond, But bid him enter. I will quick despatch The matter which thy urgent hopes demand. (Enter Quezox and Somnolent) Quezox: Sire, here is ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Brian, dreamily,—it is very late, and he is in a gently, kindly, somnolent state, born of the arm-chair and his pipe,—"I wonder if one was to give in to them entirely, would they be generous ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the ordinary repose of a dog. As the night wore on, such a sense of heaviness oppressed my eyelids that it was literally impossible for me to open them—such a masterful languor possessed all my muscles that I could no more move on my pillow than if I had been a corpse. And yet, in this somnolent condition, my mind was able to pursue lazy trains of pleasant thought. My sense of hearing was so acute that it caught the faintest sounds made by the passage of the night-breeze through the rushes of the lake. Inside my bed-chamber, I was even ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... addressing the chair with usual solemnity said, "Mr. President, I desire the chair to record the fact that the seat of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania has not been occupied by himself at the present session. It is occupied by another." The galleries roared; the somnolent Senator shambled over to his own side of the aisle and Senator Penrose was given credit, by the unwise, for humor ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... they got out of the cart. They were in a half-somnolent state. Kirsha was off before they realized that they had not thanked him. When they looked for him they could only see a cloud of dust and hear the clatter of hoofs and the rattle of wheels ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Later on, perhaps, he would accustom himself and grow resigned to this luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of it fretted him, and it was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent M. de Kercadiou that Andre-Louis was ushered in the early hours of the afternoon of that Sunday in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been the custom at Gavrillac. This because Benoit, M. de Kercadiou's old seneschal, had accompanied his seigneur upon ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the story will be a man born and "raised" in a somnolent little southern town. His education is about a common school one, but he learns afterward from reading and life. I'm going to try to give him a "style" in narrative and speech—the best I've got in the shop. I'm going to take him through all the main phases of life—wild adventure, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... distant cows low at gates and fences; when sheep-bells tinkle faintly; when the weary toiler, seated sideways on his weary horse, fares, homewards, nodding sleepily with every plodding hoof-fall, but rousing to give one a drowsy "good night," then who can resist the somnolent charm of the place, save only the "Bull" himself, snorting down in lofty contempt—as rolling of eye, as curly of horn, as stiff as to tail as any indignant bull ever was, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... when Dr. Hiram Webster had, forty years before, bought the ranchos surrounding them from the Moreno grandees. Gone were the Morenos from all but the archives of California, but the willows and Dr. Hiram Webster were full of years and honors. The ranchos were ranchos no longer. A somnolent city covered their fertile acres, catching but a whiff at angels' intervals of the metropolis of nerves and pulse and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... liberate ourselves from such inconvenience, by abandoning as far as we can a fleshy diet? and let us remember, that even on the score of comfort, the pain of indigence is much milder than that which is produced by repletion. We should thus free ourselves at once from a heavy and somnolent condition of body, from many and vehement diseases, from the want of medical assistance, from "the crassitude of the corporeal bond," and above all, from that savage and unnatural strength which incites to base actions, so as to escape an Iliad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... temperaments. Some yawned fearfully; others cursed and swore; others shook their sides with merriment; others reasoned and remonstrated with their neighbors; some very composedly stretched themselves upon the sofas, having first borrowed chair-cushions enough to support their somnolent heads; other bivouacked on three chairs, while some, not finding a convenient couch, stretched themselves flat on the floor of the House, with, perhaps, a volume of the Laws of the United ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... remembered being read to one evening after dinner, but the debates, as delivered by the Duke, had generally a somnolent effect upon his wife. She had a faint idea of the beginning, and struggled heroically to discover what the speakers were talking about; then came a soft confusion of sound, like the falling of waters; and the middle and end of the debate ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... moving his hands the while in a weird, sinuous rhythm, until presently, satisfied with the vacant expression which had replaced the eager look of the moment before in the eyes of the tremulous Raikes, the Sepoy began, with an indescribably easy, somnolent ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... and somnolent glance at Stevie, who sat on his right, delicate, pale-faced, his rosy mouth open vacantly. It was not a critical glance. It had no intention. And if Mr Verloc thought for a moment that his wife's brother looked uncommonly useless, it was only a dull and fleeting ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... what was passing; and that he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... though, there wa'n't many somnolent hours in it. But in spite of all the trouble he'd got into, I couldn't figure him out as anything more'n playful. Course, rough housin' in rathskellers until they called out the reserves, and turnin' the fire hose on a vaudeville artist from a box, and ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Geneva Square was a pattern of all that was desirable in the way of cleanliness and order. One might hope to find such a haven in some somnolent cathedral town, but scarcely in the grimy, smoky, restless metropolis ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... colossal cliffs of vivid vermilion hue. At its western curve the Colorado River split the red walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods; when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless. Safe from the storms ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... which the Transcontinental trains thunder, is faced by a long, straggling green, and fringing the green is a row of wooden shops and houses equally straggling. They have a somnolent and spiritless air. Behind is a wedge of pretty dwellings stretching down to the river, tailing off into an Indian encampment by the stream, where, about dingy tepees, a dozen or so stoic ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... and was in a tranquil state between sleeping and waking, when he heard his master emerge from the front room, and pass along the hallway, as though about to enter his bed-chamber. Another moment and he was roused from his half-somnolent condition by the hearing of the sharp report of a pistol shot, followed by a sound from Nero, something between a moan and a howl. He sprang to the floor, but ere he could make his way into the hall he was well-nigh stunned by hearing a tremendous crash, as though some large body had ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... and more somnolent hour of the night; then, in spite of his reflections, he descended the stairs without boots, armed with his pistols, moving step by step, stopping to question the silence, putting forth his hands, measuring the stairs, peering into the darkness, and ready at the slightest incident to fly ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... cheek was a whip of scorpions, lashing the mother's naked soul. Will ethical teachers say that there is no salutary moral lesson in this vivid picture? To many it seems better than a cart-load of dull tracts or somnolent homilies. Poor, pathetic little Jeanne, lying there in the cemetery of Passy—where later was erected the real tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff, though dead she yet spoke a lesson of contrition to her mother. And though the second marriage ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... village of Bixby was in its usual condition of somnolent cheerfulness, that same afternoon. The mail had come in, being brought in Abner Colt's green wagon from the railway-station two miles away. The appearance of the green wagon, with its solitary brown bag, not generally too well filled, and its ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... interrupted and delayed our proceedings, without bringing fresh light to bear upon our investigations. After the luncheon interval, I was pleased to observe that for one cause or another—I repeat, for one cause or another—he was distinctly—shall I say somnolent, gentlemen? Yes, I will say somnolent. And I wish to inform him that the more somnolent he remains, the better we shall ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Hamlet himself would suddenly bark at her as though he hated her, or would bare his teeth and grin at her in a mocking, sarcastic way that he had. At first, as an answer to this, she had the ridiculous idea of herself adopting an animal, and she selected, for this purpose, the kitchen cat, a dull, somnolent beast, whose sleek black hair was furtive, and green, crooked eyes malignant. The cat showed no signs of affection for Mary, nor could she herself honestly care for it. When she brought it with her into the schoolroom, Hamlet treated it in ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... first-class carriages, and woke in the morning at La Roche or some strange-sounding place, for paler coffee and the pale brioche. So it was with Colonel and Mrs. Ercott and their niece, accompanied by books they did not read, viands they did not eat, and one somnolent Irishman returning from the East. In the disposition of legs there was the usual difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up, and all ultimately doing so, save Olive. More than once during that night the Colonel, lying on the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 1867, Garibaldi, at Genoa, announced his intention of marching upon Rome, an echo woke in many a poet's heart "by rose hung river and light-foot rill," but left Ibsen simply disconcerted. If Rome was to be freed from Papal slavery, it would no longer be the somnolent and unupbraiding haunt of quietness which the Norwegian desired for the healing of his spleen and his moral hypochondria. In October the heralds of liberty crossed the Papal frontier; on the 30th, by a slightly prosaic touch, it was the French who entered ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Average Jones' clean cut, agreeable, but rather stolidly neutral face underwent a subtle transformation. Another personality looked out from the deep-set, somnolent, gray eyes; a personality resolute, forceful and quietly alert. It was apparently belied by the hesitant drawl, which, as all who had ever seen the Ad-Visor at his chosen pursuits well knew, signified awakened or intensified interest in the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... height to instant and terrible destruction upon the green, slimy boulders over which the water dashed and roared continuously far below. Here he had sat, that arrogant lover of hers, and slipped from somnolent enjoyment into that dreadful gulf. At her feet—proof indisputable of the truth of the story she had been told—lay a charred fragment of the cigar that had doubtless been between his lips when he had sunk into that fatal sleep. The memory of Peter's words flashed ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... red, minutely wrinkled face, and very small eyes. Greeted with the respect due to the owner of Cocknage Gardens, a sporting resort where all the best foot-racing and rabbit-coursing took place, he accepted it in somnolent indifference, and immediately took off his coat and sat down in cotton shirt-sleeves. Then he pulled out a red handkerchief and his tobacco-box, and set them on the table. Big ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... morrow or indeed even for the day. He was entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy. His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he had been engaged in the preparation of his magnum ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... opinion," said the Idiot, "but the man of enterprise can't afford to indulge in the luxury of the somnolent cowpath. It is too quiet. It conduces to sleep, which is a luxury business men cannot afford to indulge in too freely. Man must be up and doing. The prosperity of a great city is to my mind directly due to its noise and ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... or rapidly. If slowly, there is fever and the animal gives a rare cough which resembles that of a heavy horse affected with a slight chronic bronchitis; it becomes somewhat dejected and dull, at times somnolent, and has a diminished appetite. This condition lasts for several days, or the disease may begin with high fever, and the symptoms described below are severe and develop in rapid sequence. The respiration ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... acknowledged failure. To be under further obligations to Herr Renwick was an added bitterness to her wounded pride, but hope had already beggared her and she could not choose. She got into coat and hat, and after another careful scrutiny of her somnolent guardian, quietly opened the shutters of the side window, stepped out into the shadow of the hedge, and made her way toward the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... bedraggled, chattering in a high fever; a case of acute pneumonia. Her delirium had kept Tilda—who was preternaturally sharp for her nine years—awake and curious during the better part of two night-watches. Thereafter, for a day and a night and half a day, the patient had lain somnolent, breathing hard, at intervals feebly conscious. In one of these intervals her eyes had wandered and found the child; and since then had painfully sought her a dozen times, and found her again ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the nonce the attributes of that unaccountably somnolent Fate, and brought him to a terrible end, I am sure abundant justification will be found in the recital of his mythical misdeeds, which, I repeat, were not a circumstance to his real transgressions. Indeed, one has to go back to the most cruel and degenerate of the Roman emperors to parallel ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Shuster had carried on his work in Persia until Persia had become of a strength to threaten the world. Lu was growing strong; and Ts'i—renowned military Ts'i—thought she ought to be doing something. Thus in our own time, whenever somnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia, land-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt a call to send down emissaries, and—see that the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... drowsily, as though lulled to sleep by the light, the warmth, and the silence. The twitter of birds sounded at rare intervals from the thickets, and only the cry of the water-fowls on the marshes and the somnolent hum of insects filled the air. Above the blue line of rails stretching in an endless chain of curves and zigzags, the warm air glowed with ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... disturbed at great altitudes than at the lower levels. While Karstens and Tatum were tossing uneasily in the bedclothes, the writer sat up with a blanket round his shoulders, crouching over the primus stove, with the thermometer at -21 deg. F. outdoors. Walter alone was at ease, with digestive and somnolent capabilities proof against any invasion. It was, of course, broad daylight all night. At three the company was aroused, and, after partaking of a very light breakfast indeed, we sallied forth into the brilliant, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Richard's fortune, and so perform her chief business on earth. By her door he murmured, "Good creature! you sleep with a sense of duty done," and paced on, reflecting, "She has not made money a demon of discord," and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's somnolent door, and to them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... available for ordinary purposes, but a day to be got through as easily as possible, shortened at both ends by late rising and unusually early retiring, as well as by naps indulged in during the day, when even the so-called Sunday reading proved somnolent in its tendency. The necessary abstinence from ordinary occupations was partly made up by the freedom with which the conversation was permitted to run loose in secular matters, amusements, gossip, criticisms ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... smart carriages passed and the high-stepping horses, which were indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent from careless coachmanship, one sought in vain for some idea of what they were doing it all for. They did not seem to enjoy it. If they did not enjoy it, why did they do it? The expression that was ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... line of railway darted past Kingcombe, in the vain hope of waking that somnolent town. It was a pleasant whirl across the usual breezy flats of moorland, by some meadows where a network of serpentine streams flashed in the sun. Agatha felt more like her own self; with her, the spirit of Nature was always an exorciser of internal ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town, unprodded even by the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... slow affair compared with action. The whole set of events that I have narrated occupied but a few minutes. When I unbolted the parlor door and found a somnolent navvy waiting to be shaved, I realized with astonishment how brief the interlude ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... the 'fixed gaze upon the disk' affect reason? Certainly, it does not immediately affect reason; but through the nerves of the eye it very powerfully operates on the organ of reason, the brain, and induces an impressive, passive, and somnolent condition. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... nicely balanced accuracy; with ample pauses between each fresh beginning; with mathematically accurate gauging of the precise provocation needed to shift Jan farther and farther into the wilderness without seriously and dangerously arousing his somnolent faculties. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... woman in a little cracked civil voice—a demonstration by which our friends were so affected that they bobbed up and almost curtseyed to her. They subsided again, and it was shortly after, in a summer hum of French insects and a phase of almost somnolent reverie, that Maisie most had the vision of what it was to shut out from such a perspective so appealing a participant. It had not yet appeared so vast as at that moment, this prospect of statues shining in the blue and ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... he could estimate it afterward, it took Bell over an hour to cover one mile in the blackness under the jungle roof. Once he blundered into fire-ants. They were somnolent in the darkness, but one hand stung as if in white-hot metal as he went on. And thorns tore at him. The heavy flying suit protected him somewhat, but after the first hundred yards he blundered on almost blindly, with his arms across his face, stopping ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... cry the Swedes always. Yes, my friends, but you had a Captain at Narva; you had not yet shot your Captain when you did Narva! "Faction of Hats," "Faction of Caps" (that is, NIGHT-caps, as being somnolent and disinclined to France and War): seldom did a once-valiant far-shining Nation sink to such depths, since they shot their Captain, and said to Anarchy, "THOU art Captaincy, we see, and the Divine thing!" Of the Wars and businesses of such ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... leaves are motionless—the song-bird's mute— The very air seems somnolent and sick: The spreading branches with o'er-ripen'd fruit Show in the sunshine all their clusters thick, While now and then a mellow apple falls With a dull sound within ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... deck the engines toiled without ceasing. Steam hissed and panted. At intervals the engine-room bell jarred upon the car. At intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid to and fro with a dull, rattling sound. Yet, owing to the somnolent stillness settled upon the river, these sounds escaped, failed to catch ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... diffusion of light from the clouded moon, skulking affrighted somewhere in the grim and sullen purlieus of the sky? She listened, thinking to hear the stir of horses in their stalls, some sound from barn or byre, the wakening of the restless poultry, all snugly housed; but the somnolent stillness of the muffled earth continued unbroken, and only the frantic wind screamed and howled ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... room, for something in the story had revived a memory. By dint of much persuasion I dragged from the somnolent George various details. The family in question were Beharis, large landholders dwelling near the Nepal border. He had known old Ram Singh for years, and had seen him twice since his return from England. He got the story from him under no promise of secrecy, for the family drug was as well known ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... their apartments with the preparation of food, and in the labors of the loom and spindle; while young children, half-naked, play around the house doors and through the lanes with an activity in strong contrast with the prevailing tone of grave and somnolent repose. ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... perfection the romance of Picturesqueness. To pass from the United States to Mexico is like passing at one bound from the New World to the Old. Wherever it has not been recently Americanized, its beauty is that of sunbaked, somnolent decay. It is in many ways curiously like its mother—or rather its step-mother—country, Spain. But Spain can show nothing to equal the spacious magnificence of its scenery or the picturesqueness of its physiognomies and its costumes. And then it is the scene ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... is a slow-going, somnolent sort of place in which veils are worn by old ladies who wish to enjoy a pleasant snooze during the sermon without being caught in the act. That any one should wear a veil with the same regularity and the same purpose that she wears the dress ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His pictures—Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of artistic perception, save a certain sentiment ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... were long days—lazy, somnolent days. The four girls spent them each in her own separate way. Sometimes the little colony met only at mealtimes—with glowing reports of ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... The long somnolent game was suddenly awakened by two blissful errors, which gave the audience something to jeer at. A tally slipped home for Boston. A sharp double play redeemed the errors and closed the inning. The first man up ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... headquarters of the keepers, and just outside this room there were a number of pegs for them to sling their guns and bags on when they came in of an evening to have a pipe and a chopin of white wine. Ziska's uncle and aunt were both large, stout, and somnolent people, very good-natured and kind, but a trifle dull. Ziska really had the management of the place, and she was not slow to lend a hand if the servants were remiss in waiting on us. But that, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... side-streets at the lower end of the avenue. From its roof, after you had worked your way through the groves of washing which hung limply from the clothes-line, you could see many things of interest. To the left lay Washington Square, full of somnolent Italians and roller-skating children; to the right was a spectacle which never failed to intrigue Ginger, the high smoke-stacks of a Cunard liner moving slowly down the river, sticking up over the house-tops as if the boat was ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... September morning. There was an easterly haze driving in from the Baie des Chaleurs and the darkness was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour of rain would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent travelers yawned in the waiting room, which smelled horribly of smoky lamps. The telegraph instrument in the ticket office clicked spasmodically for a minute, and then relapsed into a gloomy silence. The imperturbable station ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... holds good regardless of size. The whole fringe of Arabia, from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene of incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... or parts thereof. Evan saw his way from beginning to end of the routine, and wondered that anything so simple as bank work could ever worry a man. He recalled the first week of his clerkship in Mt. Alban, and a grin crept over his somnolent features. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... borne in upon his mind that there must be some great reason why all the people, except himself, had suddenly become somnolent; and, determining to avail himself of the opportunity thus offered (oblata occasione utendum), he rose and, having lighted a candle, silently approached the chests. Then, having burnt through the threads of the seals with the flame of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... they reached Lake Drummond, that placid pool in the somnolent shades, and Mr. P. put up at the house of a melancholy man, with a fur cap, who lived in a cabin on the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has its legend, quaint or tragic: Dunfermline, in whose royal towers the king may be still observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood- red wine; somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith; Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled"; Burntisland where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table carried between tidemarks, and publicly ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentle contact; your subject, after a few minutes, will manifest a sensitiveness of the eye, and will wink oftener than usual—his winking will be repeated and prolonged, until his eyelids droop or remain closed—he is now somnolent and dreamy; and this condition may be prolonged until it becomes the Mesmeric Somnolence, or may be promptly removed by brushing the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... likely to have a more favourable opportunity to carry my bold scheme into effect than that which at that moment presented itself to me. I quietly emerged from my place of concealment and, once more crouching low among the ferns, crept slowly and with infinite caution toward the somnolent Jose, gradually working my way round until I could just see him clear of the corner of the capstan-house. Some twenty minutes of this work brought me right up to the gable end of the building, from which position I again reconnoitred Jose. He was unmistakably ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... succeeded in arousing the somnolent Slingsby, who, lifting a drowsy head, blinked sleepily, and demanded in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... the man the key. The detective who had done the speaking passed into the bedroom, and the girl heard him pulling out the drawers. She did not move from where she stood confronting her late employer, still preserving his attitude of somnolent detachment. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... and local administration the reactionary policy of the latter half of Alexander II.'s reign had been steadily maintained; the revolutionary movement had waxed and waned, but its aims were essentially the same as of old; the Church had remained in its usual somnolent condition; a grave agricultural crisis affecting landed proprietors and peasants had begun, but it was merely a development of a state of things which I had previously described; the manufacturing industry had made gigantic strides, but they were all in the direction which the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... arbitrament of chance to decide the destinies of nations. Heads, I order an assortment of vines and fig trees, go back to the Jornado and become a cattle-king, I proceed to New-York-on-the-Hudson, by the Ess-Pee at 3:15 this A.M. presently, and arouse that somnolent city from its ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the safety of your excellent car'vansary, Ma'am,' Enright explains. 'Which Dan's mighty easy moved; an' some mornin', onless you adopts them improvements, that somnolent sot you're harborin' 'll go too far with Dan. I takes it you-all don't want the shack all smoked up with Dan's six-shooter? In which event you'll put that reverberant drunkard in the far-corner room, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the choicest dishes known to the modern cuisine, and in my disturbed slumber's would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... did he trouble them. They were always relieved when, at last, he would creep into a corner and fall asleep from sheer weariness, for his anxiety made him more and more somnolent as he grew older. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... more patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it, and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering, where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night before to clean up the room after the bloody work of the operations; ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... opportunity. We were put into litters hung on long poles, supported on men's shoulders; and the journey occupied several days, though I can give very little account of it. Some of the time, indeed, I was in a semi-somnolent state, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the professor continued to wind itself slowly round and round the coils it spoke of, doubling, trebling, quadrupling its somnolent energy as the coil ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Somnolent, vast, inert, the darkness lay Waiting for dawn. Across the ocean stirred A luminous haze, not light, but whispering light, So softly yet, the islands had not heard. The mystery of sleep was in the trees And on the weary stars. A ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... during these after-dinner evening visits, he had often allowed himself to lapse into occasional silence that was slightly somnolent, and was accustomed to fall into the easy attitudes of an old friend who does not stand on ceremony. But now he seemed suddenly to rouse himself and to show the alertness of men who do their best to be agreeable, who take thought as to what they wish to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... was a place of somnolent peace and deep stillness, broken only by a pleasant dripping from the wooden flume that brought down the cold waters of some spring hidden in the thick green growth far up on the mountainside. And such water! He who ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... daily routine of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the glorious pages ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... news that explains all that,' said the giant, eyeing her movements with somnolent irascibility. 'My uncle has been letting things out. He was here late last night, and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... could examine that office with detached scrutiny while William Rufus Le ffacase occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered. Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whose neckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor tie ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... somnolent Ras had been shuffling drowsily about a fresh fire with no apparent aim, he presently contrived to produce a roasted chicken, fresh cucumbers, some caviare and rolls, coffee and cheese and a small freezer of ice cream, all of which he appeared to take at intervals from ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... demanded by the expeditionary force. In order to provide for the quantities of essential supplies and to avoid the congestion of the chief ports of France, certain ports were especially allotted to our army, of which the most important were St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, and Brest. The first, a somnolent fishing village, was transformed by the energy of American engineers into a first-class port with enormous docks, warehouses, and supply depots; Brest rose in the space of twelve months from the rank of a second-class ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... dangerous touch of the devil. But the Darwins were always a bold folk, and had the courage of their opinions more than most men. So even in Lichfield, cathedral city as it was, and in the politely somnolent eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin ventured to point out the probability that quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and men were all mere divergent descendants of a single similar original form, and even that 'one and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... presently there may be a momentary terrible recognition that his wits begin to wander. Frantically he stumbles on, thrashing his body with his arms, forcing his gait to the uttermost, a prey to the terror that hangs over him, until his growing horror and despair are mercifully swallowed up in the somnolent torpidity that overwhelms him. All of us who have travelled in cold weather know how uneasy and apprehensive a man becomes when the fingers grow obstinately cold and he realises that he is not succeeding in getting them warm again. It is the beginning ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... mute. A sombre, supernatural calm hung over the island like a pall. Far off, over the black sea, pulsed the fitful glow of an occasional gleam of lightning, faint with the distance which it traversed. There was no moon; the stars were gone; the sky was inky and the air somnolent. The smell of smoke hung about her. She could not help wondering if his fine, strong body was lying up there, burnt to a crisp. It was far past midnight; she was alone in the garden. Sixty feet below her was the ground; above, the black dome ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... in arousing the somnolent Slingsby, who, lifting a drowsy head, blinked sleepily, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... to the fire, where, with a conventional sentence, he extended his legs to the low blaze. A man regarded him with a peering suspicious gaze; but any doubts were apparently laid, for the other silently resumed a somnolent indifference. His clothes were an amazing and unnecessary tangle of rags; his stubble of beard and broken black hat had an air of unreality, as though they were the stage properties of a stupid and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the preparation of food, and in the labors of the loom and spindle; while young children, half-naked, play around the house doors and through the lanes with an activity in strong contrast with the prevailing tone of grave and somnolent repose. ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... movement in the crowd, which parted. At the farther end of the lane thus made, a flashy young gypsy was seen, with a somnolent ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people. Whereas, of all the shameful people (equally billions and not less bilious) that have presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In 'Lear' and in 'Hamlet,' as in a human face agitated by passion, are many things that tremble on the brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy or intellect. But no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous, though many find them dull, and prefer ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Spiritual Railway Society—it is under Him the safest of all associations yet established. The arrangements are admirably adapted for the projects in view. All the seats are delightfully soft, and as somnolent as church pews, to which they bear a close resemblance. The machine men, and all those appointed to situations on the line, are mostly in orders; but belong to different denominations. The scheme originated in Oxford, and has spread rapidly throughout the length and breadth of the land. Several ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Lambert only spread out his legs and shut his eyes. Ransome was not only a good speaker but also one of the cleverest men in the 'Varsity, and he scored time after time without disturbing Lambert's equanimity. I think that Lambert's enormous and somnolent bulk must have annoyed Ransome, for he went on to make an attack which was virulently sarcastic. In his speech Lambert had been foolish enough to say nothing in favour of modern novels, he had taken it for ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... enfant terrible of the drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy which pictured ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... high up, apparently, as the private dares to go, unless he considers the somnolent iniquity of the Colonel quite beyond the range of the bugle. But the pathetic appeal was too much for Crittenden, and he got up, stepping into a fragrant foot-bath of cold dew and out to a dapple gray wash-basin that sat on three wooden stakes just outside. Sousing his head, he sniffed ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... more favourable opportunity to carry my bold scheme into effect than that which at that moment presented itself to me. I quietly emerged from my place of concealment and, once more crouching low among the ferns, crept slowly and with infinite caution toward the somnolent Jose, gradually working my way round until I could just see him clear of the corner of the capstan-house. Some twenty minutes of this work brought me right up to the gable end of the building, from which position I again reconnoitred Jose. He was unmistakably fast asleep, and therefore practically ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... lesson to you," he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his pocket, "for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to bring that child to." Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but for weeks afterwards "Julian Amplach"—this unhappy twin—was kept in a somnolent attitude in the cart, and was believed to have contracted dissipated habits from the effects of his ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... and this is tantamount to saying that he was not capable of ignoring the somnolent influences of human nature. To his own extreme surprise his head fell forward with an abrupt nod while he was engaged in the act of depicting Big Waller's nose, and he found, on resuming work, with an imbecile smile at what he deemed his weakness, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... where Greenstream village lay somnolent beneath the refulgent day. The chairs before the office of the Bugle were unoccupied, from within came the monotonous, sliding rattle of the small footpress. Gordon sat absently revolving the possibilities ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and the two young men went hunting or fishing in the deep forests or played golf around the somnolent course—games which John diplomatically allowed his host to win—or swam in the mountain coolness of the lake. John found Mr. Washington a somewhat exacting personality—utterly uninterested in any ideas ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... true story of Col. John James Waldron," continued Old Grumps, with a groan which was very somnolent, as if it were a twin to a snore. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... with a lifted upper lip and his most somnolent tiger-cat expression. After Blackwell had finished and been withdrawn from circulation he rolled and ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... dream; the oldest of races knew better. The race that was first to dream the beautiful dream of a Millennium was the first to discard it. Nay, was it even a beautiful dream? Every man under his own fig-tree, forsooth, obese and somnolent, the spirit disintegrated! Omnia ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... piece of gold sewn in her dress; and when she came to consider the lateness of the hour, and the somnolent habits of Mrs Jarley, and to imagine the state of consternation in which they would certainly throw that good lady by knocking her up in the middle of the night—and when she reflected, on the other hand, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... one hundred and ninety-eight. He gave me another somnolent grin, and fell into deeper slumber. I would have made him move about, but I might as well have tried to make Cleopatra's needle waltz around the room with me. Tom's breathing became stertorous, and that, in connection with morphia ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the water. Under the planks of the deck the engines toiled without ceasing. Steam hissed and panted. At intervals the engine-room bell jarred upon the car. At intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid to and fro with a dull, rattling sound. Yet, owing to the somnolent stillness settled upon the river, these sounds escaped, failed to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... preaching, and the congregation paid a very languid attention, but suddenly a curious little sound went through the church—one of those scarcely perceptible noises which no comparison can explain; it was a quick attraction of all eyes, an arousing of somnolent intelligences, a slight, quick drawing-in of the breath. The listeners had heeded very indifferently Mr Gray's admonitions to brotherly love and charity as matters which did not concern them other than abstractedly; but quite suddenly they had realised that ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits, being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to keep pace with the flow of his speech. With old friends he was coarse and severe: even the brutal Vandamme confessed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... is sounded, usually at five, but sometimes at four; or, in the case of emergency, at any hour of the night. But generally it comes just as the attitude necessary to comfort has been discovered, and the somnolent individual is ready for the luxury of what I may call a half and half snooze. It is at that moment, in that mysterious borderland of sleeping and waking, that the strident and compelling sound of the bugle falls upon the unwilling ear. There ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... Quatre-Bras; There Kellermann's cuirassiers will promptly join you To bear the English backward Brussels way. I go on towards Fleurus and Ligny now.— If Blucher's force retreat, and Wellington's Lie somnolent in Brussels one day more, I gain that city sans a ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... time on voyages to the Cape (especially nearing the Equator), and are the joy of the genial-hearted. Even those who have no little games of their own are wont to look on sympathetically, or, better still, to turn away the understanding eye. The long, lazy, somnolent days and the magic nights, star-spangled above and lit with phosphorescent seas below, lend themselves to the dangerous kind of flirtation that says little and looks much, and if there is any place in the world ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... King not well. He has a slight stricture, of which he makes a great deal, and a bad cold. He seemed somnolent; but ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... which he believed his attempts at pulpit eloquence were sure to be defeated. Though he could compass the hardihood to discourse to an assemblage of distracting schoolboys several hours every week-day, he could not summon the courage to address an audience of somnolent adults two ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Board did but exist to chequer his importance. Five days in the week for seven hours a day he wrote, and thought, and wove the threads of its business, and this lot came down once a week for two or three hours, and taught their grandmother to suck eggs. But watching that red-cheeked, white-haired, somnolent figure, his smile was not so contemptuous as might have been expected. For after all, the chairman was a wonderful old boy. A man of go and insight could not but respect him. Eighty! Half paralysed, over head and ears in debt, having gone the pace all his life—or ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... use their flyer? That would not gain them any time, what with launching it and landing, for so short a flight. And a bandit flyer could not very well land unseen or unnoticed, even in somnolent Nareda. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... sighing to the rather somnolent Vere de Vere, he scornfully yanked his extra pairs of thick, white-streaked, yellow cotton socks from the wicker ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... intimate friends that day, Saint Mars Montalvin, Tom Sheffield, and his cousin, Madame de Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings. It was growing dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There was a delicate perfume of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in yet, and chatting and laughing filled the room ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... writes in the Theosophical Review: "It has been translated into no less than twenty different languages, and may be said without the faintest risk of contradiction, to have been the busiest instrument of Buddhist propaganda for many a day in the annals of that long somnolent dharma. The least that learned Buddhists of Ceylon can do to repay the debt of gratitude they owe to Colonel Olcott and other members of the Theosophical Society who have worked for them, is to bestir themselves to throw some light on their own ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... would wait till after luncheon, then in that somnolent hour when all men's thoughts are a bit dulled, and vigilance least awake, he would find some road, on good hard land, ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... luminous with the light of electric signs as with the radiance of some lurid and sinister moon. The voice of London sounded in Kirkwood's ears, like the ominous purring of a somnolent brute beast, resting, gorged and satiated, ere rising again to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... as an armour over wariness, holding craft in reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent, even when he said: 'You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the world to men of the world; and I have not lost by it. I am Mrs. Barman Radnor's legal adviser: you are Mr. Victor Radnor's friend. They are, as we see them, not on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... away for about three years; some months before it had entirely perished, though I stood motionless, every thing which I looked at seemed in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapor seemed to have settled on my forehead and temples, which usually occasions a sort of somnolent pressure upon my eyes, and particularly from dinner till evening. So that I often recollect what is said of the poet Phineas ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... pale, listened to her. Beauclair had positively told him that the cure would come like a lightning flash, that under the influence of extreme excitement a sudden awakening of will so long somnolent would take place ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... shout behind me; and, glancing back, saw my pursuers, three now, with my full-bodied cousin for whipper-in—change their course as I leapt a brook and headed for the crowded enclosure. A somnolent fat man, bulging, like a feather-bed, on a three-legged stool, dozed at the receipt of custom, with a deal table and a bowl of sixpences before him. I dashed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... somewhat somnolent, of which you may be sure Miss Frankland took no notice. She retired to her own room when we went for our recreation. My sisters scolded me for not coming to them the previous night, but I told them that Miss F. had continued to move about her room for so long a time that I had ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... 13 inches; tail, 5-1/2 inches. Hodgson kept some of this species in his garden for some time. They were somnolent by day, active by night, and did not hybernate in Nepal. They were fed on grain and fruit, and would chatter a good deal over their meals, but in general were silent. They slept rolled up into a ball, were tame and gentle usually, but ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... to return in a few hours; and Brendon joined Albert in his sleeping apartment. For a time they were alone together and then came Jenny with some soup. She stopped to chat for a little while and, finding her uncle apparently somnolent and disinclined to talk, turned to Mark and spoke under her breath. She was still agitated and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... few minutes stewards and other members of the crew were sent round to arouse the people. Some utterly refused to get up. The stewards had almost to force the doors of the staterooms to make the somnolent appreciate their peril, and many of them, it is believed, were drowned ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... to sink into a somewhat somnolent condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a dozen different places in this huge compound; and one ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and swore; others shook their sides with merriment; others reasoned and remonstrated with their neighbors; some very composedly stretched themselves upon the sofas, having first borrowed chair-cushions enough to support their somnolent heads; other bivouacked on three chairs, while some, not finding a convenient couch, stretched themselves flat on the floor of the House, with, perhaps, a volume of the Laws of the United States ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... pine woods. It all looked dreary and desolate, and I could not think what I should do there. Returning in the afternoon, I stretched myself, dead tired, on a hard couch, awaiting the long-desired hour of sleep. It did not come; but I fell into a kind of somnolent state, in which I suddenly felt as though I were sinking in swiftly flowing water. The rushing sound formed itself in my brain into a musical sound, the chord of E flat major, which continually re-echoed in broken forms; these broken chords seemed to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... night before, such threatening prognostics of a future full of misery. The vicar was not a man to get up without a fire. He rang to let Marianne know that he was awake and that she must come to him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,—a sort of music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to rest against Chichikov's knees—a position which necessitated his being awakened with a cuff. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... vigils. His mitre—for he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament—rested on a table beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in all the colors of ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... lying comfortably somnolent on the outskirts of life, heard light footsteps, but hardly heeded them. He knew that some one came into the room and stood silently by his couch for some seconds. He lazily unclosed his eyelids for a moment, not in order to see who ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... two o'clock of a late September morning. There was an easterly haze driving in from the Baie des Chaleurs and the darkness was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour of rain would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent travelers yawned in the waiting room, which smelled horribly of smoky lamps. The telegraph instrument in the ticket office clicked spasmodically for a minute, and then relapsed into a gloomy silence. The imperturbable station master was tipped back against the wall in a wooden armchair, with ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... splendid, any single nation was not of a speed that showed slackening and regular expulsion. More of it was renounced and a slave a real slave is somnolent, a real slave rests in potatos ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to wake up in various different ways. There is the clear and beautiful dawn of new and balanced effort, easy, unresting, planned, assured, and there is also the blundering-up of a still half-somnolent man, irascible, clumsy, quarrelsome, who stubs his toe in his first walk across the room, smashes his too persistent alarum clock in a fit of nerves, and cuts his throat while shaving. All patriotic vehemence ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... curve the Colorado River split the red walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods; when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless. Safe from the storms of the elements as well as of the world was ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... a somnolent head up from a pile of lumber near the tracks and yawned welcome to the recruit. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... feverishly on the search for opportunities, i. e. for creative and productive use. In the hands of the Government it is apt to lose a good deal of its fructifying energy and ceaseless striving and to sink instead into placid and somnolent repose. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... prayer could he bring to its due conclusion, for either his eyes closed before he came to the "Amen," or else worldly images crowded round him, and forced him to begin his devotions again from the beginning, when he had succeeded in recollecting himself. In this half-somnolent state he obtained not one moment of inward collectedness, of quiet reflection; not even when he gazed up at the starry heavens, or looked down on the oasis, veiled in night, where many others like himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... marching upon Rome, an echo woke in many a poet's heart "by rose hung river and light-foot rill," but left Ibsen simply disconcerted. If Rome was to be freed from Papal slavery, it would no longer be the somnolent and unupbraiding haunt of quietness which the Norwegian desired for the healing of his spleen and his moral hypochondria. In October the heralds of liberty crossed the Papal frontier; on the 30th, by a slightly prosaic touch, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... principle holds good regardless of size. The whole fringe of Arabia, from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene of incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its race. Its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the international boundary, the Charlotte drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of Active Pass, where the steamers take to ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... whip of scorpions, lashing the mother's naked soul. Will ethical teachers say that there is no salutary moral lesson in this vivid picture? To many it seems better than a cart-load of dull tracts or somnolent homilies. Poor, pathetic little Jeanne, lying there in the cemetery of Passy—where later was erected the real tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff, though dead she yet spoke a lesson of contrition to her mother. And though the second marriage of Helene has been styled an anti-climax, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... He has found the rooms. The somnolent boots will carry our things upstairs. Which of the two rooms will I have? They are en suite. I make no choice. It is, I protest, a matter of perfect indifference to me; but one room being infinitely superior to the other, I select it, apologetically. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... rebellious vanity and a strong sense of independence. Hunting is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weather and sundry other topics of similar piquancy. Elsie invited all of us to a welsh rarebit party she was giving at eleven-thirty, and then they got to work at the bridge table, poor George Hazzard cutting in occasionally. This left Billy Smith and me free to make up a somewhat somnolent two-some. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... thanksgiving) the young man chanced upon a somnolent and bedraggled hack, at rest in the stenciled shadows of the Third Avenue elevated structure. Its pilot was snoring lustily the sleep of the belated, on the box. With some difficulty he was awakened, and Maitland dodged into the musty, dusty body of the vehicle, grateful ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... middle of the road, turned, and waited. His action attracted little attention. Coldstream was indoors, somnolent with the afternoon heat. Across the street the proprietor of the general store ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of our itinerary, but Oxford cannot be viewed in a day, and we found much to delight our senses south of the High Street. Finally, a languorous journey by punt from the Barges to Magdalen Bridge more than compensated us for the somnolent half-hour which we had been proposing to spend under the shadow of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of light from the clouded moon, skulking affrighted somewhere in the grim and sullen purlieus of the sky? She listened, thinking to hear the stir of horses in their stalls, some sound from barn or byre, the wakening of the restless poultry, all snugly housed; but the somnolent stillness of the muffled earth continued unbroken, and only the frantic wind screamed ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... with fat hands, a red, minutely wrinkled face, and very small eyes. Greeted with the respect due to the owner of Cocknage Gardens, a sporting resort where all the best foot-racing and rabbit-coursing took place, he accepted it in somnolent indifference, and immediately took off his coat and sat down in cotton shirt-sleeves. Then he pulled out a red handkerchief and his tobacco-box, and set them on the table. Big ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... calmly awaiting his return; and this feeling presently grew so strong within him that he could scarcely credit his eyes when, upon passing through the screen of concealing foliage, he saw only the three seamen curled up in the boat. They roused themselves from their semi-somnolent condition and sat up to receive him, with glances of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... from memory, but I believe my words are pretty correct. When Lord Brougham had delivered this emphatic utterance, he proceeded with his address, which was a dull affair and did not inspire the least enthusiasm. It was, indeed, a somewhat somnolent discourse, and his audience hardly seemed to wake up till he reached his peroration, which closed with a ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... or otherwise (the amatory ones were the worst), usually faded slowly, like the light from the setting sun or an exhausted coal in the grate, about the end of Puffin's second tumbler, and the gentlemen after that were usually somnolent, but occasionally laid the foundation for some disagreement next day, which they were too sleepy to go into now. Major Flint by this time would have had some five small glasses of whisky (equivalent, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... was stated and told off on the frauelein's fingers, Deidrick nodded a resigned acquiescence, and at the finish was fast asleep. Every evening after that Deidrick proposed in perfect good faith, the girl repeated her objections with equal candour, and they were received with somnolent approval. Love-making is very agreeable, and by the usuage of long years it becomes a confirmed habit. In less than a decade it became impossible for Katrina to enjoy her supper without the regular proposal, and Deidrick could not sleep of a night without the preliminary nap ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... summit of our eastern hill." From its clerical occupants the place had inherited a mild mustiness of theological association—a vague reverberation of old Calvinistic sermons, which served to deepen its extra-mundane and somnolent quality. The three years that Hawthorne passed here were, I should suppose, among the happiest of his life. The future was indeed not in any special manner assured; but the present was sufficiently ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... connects itself with the main stem from which branch off the rest of his virtues and vices. However, there it was, and perhaps some shrewder psychologist may be able to explain how such a passion could be begotten in a nature otherwise so somnolent. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the morrow or indeed even for the day. He was entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy. His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he had been engaged in the preparation of his magnum opus, which periodically was just on the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... more than he had told and Wilding again decided that his only chance of gaining any real information would be at Maryville. Accordingly, he got an automobile and started for that somnolent village on ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... is the offspring of a lioness, by a leopard that coerces her, and, for this reason, cheetas are sterile like mules and all other hybrids. No animal of the same size is as weighty as the cheeta. It is the most somnolent animal on earth. The best are those that are 'hollow-bellied,' roach backed, and have deep black spots on a dark tawny ground, the spots on the back being close to each other; that have the eyes bloodshot, small and narrow; the mouth 'deep and laughing'; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... it loomed ahead. He began to climb upward, almost on all-fours, digging his finger nails into the yellow clay in an instinctive effort to pull himself forward. Finally he gained the top ... The street, somnolent with approaching noon, was deserted—the child had disappeared. He recovered his whirling senses and looked again. This time he saw that the door of the shack stood open. He took a step forward. A figure loomed in the doorway. He shaded his ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... and for whom will the End be? All grows, and seeks and endures its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether we think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a changed world. In that seven-years' sleep of his, so much has changed! All that is without us will change while we think not of it; much even that is within us. The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... inconvenience, by abandoning as far as we can a fleshy diet? and let us remember, that even on the score of comfort, the pain of indigence is much milder than that which is produced by repletion. We should thus free ourselves at once from a heavy and somnolent condition of body, from many and vehement diseases, from the want of medical assistance, from "the crassitude of the corporeal bond," and above all, from that savage and unnatural strength which incites to base actions, so as to escape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... day was spent by us in the little town of S——, a comfortable place very slightly disturbed by the fact that it had been already the scene of four battles; there was just this effect, as it seemed to me, that the affairs of the day were carried on with a kind of somnolent indifference.... "You may order your veal," the waiter seemed to say, "but whether you will get it or no is entirely in the hands of God. It is, therefore, of no avail that I should hurry or that you should ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light. The tattooing that framed them appeared like black holes from which the sparks glinted uncannily, and the kava mounting to his brain or to mine gave those sparks a ghastliness that fascinated me in my keen, somnolent state. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... to fly; squeaking and blinded by the luster of the sun, they flew aimlessly about the tree. But after a while from the lower opening there stole out, like lightning, a real tenant, in the person of a monstrous boa, who evidently, digesting the remnants of the last feast in a semi-somnolent state, had not become aroused and did not think of safety until the smoke curled in his nostrils. At the sight of the strong body, which, like a monstrous spring, darted out of the smoking interior of the tree, Stas ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the bridge, the girls laughed and chatted together, but involuntarily they hushed their voices on entering the green shadow of the little town under its slow-marching procession of great trees; and the spell of somnolent silence seized them. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... warning to all somnolent old ladies, it may not be amiss to enter a little more fully into detail. The attack commenced by her sitting bolt upright in her chair, with her eyes so very particularly open, that it seemed as if, in her case, Macbeth ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sous le porche, dans l'ombre. L'homme posa sa malle par terre, je le payai, et il s'en alla bien vite.... Derrire lui l'norme porte se referma lourdement, lourdement.... Bientt aprs, un portier somnolent, tenant la main une grosse ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... cows low at gates and fences; when sheep-bells tinkle faintly; when the weary toiler, seated sideways on his weary horse, fares, homewards, nodding sleepily with every plodding hoof-fall, but rousing to give one a drowsy "good night," then who can resist the somnolent charm of the place, save only the "Bull" himself, snorting down in lofty contempt—as rolling of eye, as curly of horn, as stiff as to tail as any indignant bull ever ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Dana shall raise On a futile foundation of hope, And its glories shall blaze In the somnolent haze Of the mythical ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... office with detached scrutiny while William Rufus Le ffacase occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered. Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whose neckband was fastened with a diamond ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... upon his desk from all sides. For a time he struggled manfully: for a time thereafter he wallowed desperately. Then he sent out a far cry for help. The cry smote upon the ear of McGuire Ellis, "Hoong!" ejaculated that somnolent toiler, coming up out of deep waters. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... new life. If she thought at all, 'twas in the symbol of the old Apostle, "in Him we live and move and have our being." She recalled that God had been defined in the consciousness of the race as Love. Deep draughts of new existence whelmed her. No longer life coursed somnolent through unconscious veins. Life ran riotous of gladness tingling to a living joy so poignant it became pain. Was it fool-joy born of swifter pulse and time-old inheritance in the flesh? Was it the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... bloodless and sallow. He lay quite motionless except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were nearly closed, his features relaxed, and, though he was not actually asleep, he seemed to be in a dreamy, somnolent, lethargic state, as if under the influence of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... like the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"—with feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the very outskirts of the village, and in a flash Caroline knew it for what it was, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada, long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians was ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... Monday night arrived which was to bring the final test of strength. Picture the large, ponderous structure of black granite—erected at the expense of millions and suggesting somewhat the somnolent architecture of ancient Egypt—which served as the city hall and county court-house combined. On this evening the four streets surrounding it were packed with thousands of people. To this throng Cowperwood has become an astounding figure: his wealth fabulous, his heart iron, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this hour of the brooding, sultry fall, there was a bitter fragrance in the air, and the world seemed tuned to the somnolent sound of crickets, singing the fields to sleep. That one little note brooded over the earth, and all the living things upon it: hovering, and crooning, and lulling them to the rest decreed from of old. The homely beauty of it smote upon him, though it could not cheer. A hideous progress seemed to ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches against which our ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque! Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... lazily; but in this laziness there was a certain peculiar grace, and it would seem that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... retreat almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with his habits. Later on, perhaps, he would accustom himself and grow resigned to this luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of it fretted him, and it was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent M. de Kercadiou that Andre-Louis was ushered in the early hours of the afternoon of that Sunday in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been the custom at Gavrillac. This because Benoit, M. de Kercadiou's old seneschal, had accompanied his seigneur ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... them. Down the quiet, tree-shaped sidewalk, Mr. Penfield Evans strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and before her large frame mansion of a thousand angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Herrington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and modish, was ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books, Maria with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled and critical; and at once he was struck with indignation, not unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished, unforgiven. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A somnolent atmosphere, still touched by the smell of gunpowder, greeted him as he strode majestically down the halls. Somehow each person who bowed to him seemed to do it with the melancholy precision of one who has been up for six nights in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... one of the most tremendous roars I ever heard. It was so chose to me that, in the confusion of my sleepy brain, it seemed to be far more terrible than that even of the gorilla. I was mistaken in this, however, and no doubt my semi-somnolent condition tended to increase ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... appearance of eyes that could sparkle; besides, his whole countenance possessed the configuration of one who had been born for a life of activity. On the contrary, however—whether from a malady or some other cause—the man appeared as somnolent and immobile as if both his visage and body were carved out of marble. In a word, with all the exterior marks that denote the possession of an active and ardent soul, Pepe the Sleeper appeared the most inactive and apathetic ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... minutes past five Dick Bellamy stopped Melchard's car outside the booking-office of somnolent Harthborough's dead-alive station—the junction of the single-line track to Whitebay and its bathing machines with the double-track branch of the G.N.R. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... less than Claggett Chew's cabin, the door of which had been left open so that Osterbridge Hawsey could watch the fight with the least possible discomfort. He sat, somnolent, in a comfortable chair, his long legs stretched out before him, smoking a clay pipe. His attention wandering, as it so often did, he failed to see the mouse who ran under his legs into the shadow beneath them. The frantic mouse now determined, in the seconds left to it for decision, to attempt ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... unbroken. A far-off commiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving her guests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred the white dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there was a still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laugh appeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. There was another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly and ostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter young woman, her elder ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... and lit a cigarette, he essayed for the second time to arouse the Baron; but getting nothing but the most somnolent responses, he set out for a stroll, visiting the gardens, stables, kennels, and keeper's house, and even inspecting a likely pool or two upon the river, and making in the course of it several useful acquaintances among the ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... way to the other end of the street, where Cousin Tryphena's tiny, two-roomed house stood, we always laid bare the secrets of her somnolent, respectable, unprofitable life; we always informed our visitors that she lived and kept up a social position on two hundred and fifteen dollars a year, and that she had never been further from home than to the next village. We always drew attention ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... himself up among the hay, unobserved by the somnolent driver, and had ridden thus an hour or more in that delicious state between waking, and sleeping, ere the waggoner discovered him, whereupon ensued the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... that he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work; in the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself; and in the summer, in common with the rest of the place, he grew somnolent. He sat by the hacked and stained kitchen-table (which he seldom scrubbed, and on which he tried his knife, sawed bones, and chopped meat) and slept the afternoons away in the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest of dialectic nightmares—is often found astride of a somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of GENERAL-UTILITY men, to do all the dirty work of illustration; and they fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at the 'Princess's,' which I found doing duty on one evening ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... auriferous insect, who was for four years comptroller of the currency, is remembered in Washington chiefly for a remarkable burst of speed displayed one night when his timorous mind conceived the idea that a somnolent hackman was going to rob him. He had his dress suit case in one hand and his plug hat in the other, and he covered three blocks in ten seconds. The cabby, whom he had hired, waked in time to discover the meteoric dash, and was the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... remaining taxi without asking me to share it and vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke. I was in no mood for waiting; besides I was going to be democratic. I took a surface car up Lexington Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent Italian gentleman for thirty blocks. The car was intolerably stuffy and smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic. By the time I reached the cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour. I turned up my coat collar and ran to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did not in the least care whether it was a train ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... few pianists get a real sostenuto. An "Allegro Patetico" (op. 12), "Medea" (op. 13), and a set of small pieces (one of them a burlesque called "A Caudle Lecture," with a garrulous "said she" and a somnolent "said he") make up his rather short ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... tree meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped, it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point at, 'fore I ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... or two of muslin, an end or two of ribbon collected for conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly night- capped and night-gowned, lay in its cradle; she was rocking it to sleep, with an air of the most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and somnolent faculties; her eyes, at the same time, being engaged with a picture-book, which lay open ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... best episodes of the Ramayana are quite omitted by Kalidasa: for example, the story of the jealous humpback who eggs on Queen Kaikeyi to demand her two boons; the beautiful scene in which Sita insists on following Rama into the forest; the account of the somnolent giant Pot-ear, a character quite as good as Polyphemus. Other fine episodes are so briefly alluded to as to lose all their charm: for example, the story of the golden deer that attracts the attention of Rama while Ravana is stealing his wife; the ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... went on their way till night, when Skrymir gave up his wallet of provisions to Thor and his two companions, and bade them supply themselves,—he meanwhile composing himself to sleep, snoring so loudly that the forest trembled. Thor could not undo the giant's wallet, and in his wrath he smote the somnolent lubber with his mallet, a crushing blow. Skrymir simply awoke, and inquired whether a leaf had not fallen upon his head from the oak-tree under which he was lying. Conceive the chagrin and shame ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... &c. v.;shilly-shally &c. (irresolute) 605. sleeping, &c. v.; asleep; fast asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful[obs3]; dozy[obs3], drowsy, somnolent, torpescent[obs3], lethargic, lethargical[obs3]; somnifacient[obs3]; statuvolent[obs3], statuvolic[obs3]; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific[obs3], somniferous; soporous[obs3], soporific, soporiferous[obs3]; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Drummond, that placid pool in the somnolent shades, and Mr. P. put up at the house of a melancholy man, with a fur cap, who lived in a cabin on the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... At somnolent Cordoba I left the line to Vera Cruz for that to the southward. The car was packed with the dirty, foul-tongued wives and the children and bundles of a company of soldiers recently sent against the rebels of Juchitan. Ever since leaving Boca del Monte the day before I had been coming ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... room he stood at gaze like a kitten of good family beholding a mangy mongrel asleep in its pink basket. For on his bed was Mrs. Zapp, her rotund curves stretching behind her large flat feet, whose soles were toward him. She was noisily somnolent; her stays creaked regularly as she breathed, except when she moved ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the disadvantage of following upon a speaker who had reduced the House to a state of somnolent despair. Lord Selborne has an episcopal appearance, the manner of an author of hymns, and the unctuous delivery of a High Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the House of Lords, he considered ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... opportunity for this), temperance in food, and especially—in the light of what has been said above—temperance in drink, are all incidentally of value as aids to the maintenance of purity. So also is the avoidance of the habit of lying in bed in a semi-somnolent condition after true sleep has finally departed. A Christian's body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and no other spirit, whether of impurity or of sloth, should be allowed to have ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... befell, too, that the following noon—this day being a Sunday, warm, clear, and somnolent—Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... long time, during these after-dinner evening visits, he had often allowed himself to lapse into occasional silence that was slightly somnolent, and was accustomed to fall into the easy attitudes of an old friend who does not stand on ceremony. But now he seemed suddenly to rouse himself and to show the alertness of men who do their best to be agreeable, who take thought as to what they ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... I did not sleep, tired as I was—I was more than half afraid to close my eyes, and when I finally did summon up sufficient courage to do so, there ensued a series of disturbances that successfully banished any further somnolent inclination for ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... was always in the habit of giving precedence to his mistress, and he really had forgotten for a moment that the somnolent Nym was to be regarded as his Sovereign. So his future Majesty, with Bertram's assistance, mounted the bay charger, and his sister Alianora was placed on the pillion ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... to get moving pictures of a rhino charge. Mr. Akeley had a machine and our plan of action was simple. We would first locate the rhino, usually somnolent under a thorn tree or browsing soberly out in the open. We would then get to the leeward of him and slowly advance the machine; Mr. Akeley in the middle and Stephenson and I on each side with our double-barreled cordite rifles. In case the charge became too ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... (irresolute) 605. sleeping, &c v.; asleep; fast asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative &c 174. Adv. inactively &c adj.; at leisure &c 685. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house; as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on the track were their next, and indeed their only, neighbours, except the wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous employment, long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would read all, the advertisements ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its old weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has its legend, quaint or tragic: Dunfermline, in whose royal towers the king may be still observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood- red wine; somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith; Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled"; Burntisland where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my pupils. The sensibility to hypnotic phenomena is due to the anterior portion of the middle lobe of the brain—to the portion which is developed one inch behind the external angle of the eye, by exciting which we bring on the somnolent condition. The predominance of this region renders the person liable to the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... which human power could not go, even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her eyes closed, slowly, gently, with a drowsy helplessness. Once her elbow slipped from the sill of the window and awoke her. A somnolent thought that she would go to bed passed dully through her mind. But she did not act upon it. She propped her head upon her hand once more, and, in a moment, ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Persia until Persia had become of a strength to threaten the world. Lu was growing strong; and Ts'i—renowned military Ts'i—thought she ought to be doing something. Thus in our own time, whenever somnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia, land-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt a call to send down emissaries, and—see that the cleaning should not ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... suspense—this horrible oppression of acknowledged failure. To be under further obligations to Herr Renwick was an added bitterness to her wounded pride, but hope had already beggared her and she could not choose. She got into coat and hat, and after another careful scrutiny of her somnolent guardian, quietly opened the shutters of the side window, stepped out into the shadow of the hedge, and made her way ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Christina protracted on that very account. She then dressed and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim—as no one else in the castle would do—the basin of soup, with which she then fed her patient as he leant back in the corner of the settle, at first in the same somnolent, half-conscious state in which he had been ever since the relief from the severe pain; but after a few spoonfuls the light and life came back to his eye, and he broke out, "Thanks, thanks, gracious lady! This is the Lady Baroness for me! My young lord was the only wise man! Thanks, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
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