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More "Vainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commanded him to stay there. Suddenly dog and child darted at each other, and then, to Sir Edward's amazement, he saw his little niece seize Fritz by the throat and bring him to the ground. When both were rolling over one another, and Fritz's short, sharp barks became rather indignant in tone, as he vainly tried to escape from the little hands so tightly round him, Sir Edward thought ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... Cause is dead, Vainly he died and set his seal— Stonewall! Earnest in error, as we feel; True to the thing he deemed was due, True as John ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... but, thanks to their pistols, and the extraordinary strength of the half-breed, four of the assailants were killed. The fifth was dragged away by the fugitives, who reached a boat which had been pulled up on the beach and was laden with three huge turtles. A score of natives pursued and vainly tried to stop them; the former were driven off, and the boat was launched successfully and steered ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Lexow disclosures of inconceivable rottenness of a Tammany police; the woe unto you! of Christian priests calling vainly upon the chief of the city "to save its children from a living hell," and the contemptuous reply on the witness-stand of the head of the party of organized robbery, at the door of which it was all laid, that he was ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... growths of a soil well guanoed by ferocity. They sported the scarlet suit of the Carib, but of a dye less innocent, as if the fated islands imparted this color to the men who preyed upon them. A cotton shirt hung on their shoulders, and a pair of cotton drawers struggled vainly to cover their thighs: you had to look very closely to pronounce upon the material, it was so stained with blood and fat. Their bronzed faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... effort. The Governor declined to use his authority to purchase arms, assured as he was on all sides that there was no danger of war, and that the United States arsenal at Baton Rouge, completely in our power, would furnish more than we could need. It was vainly urged in reply that the stores of the arsenal were almost valueless, the arms being altered flintlock muskets, and the accouterments out of date. The current was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... long for them, but I'm afraid my nice little plan for Laura will be spoilt," said Jessie Delano to herself, as she shook her head over a pair of small, dilapidated slippers almost past mending. While she vainly pricked her fingers over them for the last time, her mind was full of girlish hopes and fears, as well as of anxieties far too serious for ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... nearly four months! My right-hand neighbor, a citizen of Beaucaire, assures me, “It will be nothing, only a strong ‘mistral’ for to-morrow.” An electrician is putting the finishing touches to his arrangements. He tries vainly to concentrate some light on the box where the committee is to sit, which is screened by a bit of crumbling wall, but ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... to avoid this evil, purchasing others, and taking them himself to his lodgings. Rudolph started with joy when he thought of the happiness for Mrs. George, who was at last about to see this son, so long and vainly sought. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... finally refractory he was to be sentenced as a felon. This terrible measure, intended partly to reduce lawless vagrancy, partly to supply cheap labor to employers, failed of its purpose and was repealed in two years. Its re-enactment was vainly urged by Cecil upon Parliament in 1559. As a substitute for it in this year the law was passed forbidding masters to receive any workman without a testimonial from his last employer; laborers were ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Lady Coryston called the "revolution"—a man who had suffered cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, married ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this general Maxim in Philosophy, some of them have endeavoured to place Men in such a State of Pleasure, or Indolence at least, as they vainly imagined the Happiness of the Supreme Being to consist in. On the other Hand, the most virtuous Sect of Philosophers have created a chimerical wise Man, whom they made exempt from Passion and Pain, and thought it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... John's—with these she could cope, her lord had had them all. But in Richard she was shy of the bleak isolation, the self-sufficing, the hard, chill core. She dreaded it, yet it drew her; she was tempted to beat vainly at it for the passion's sake; and so in this case she dared to do. She would cheerfully have killed the minion, but she dared the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Sir Ingoldsby Bray, Rise up, rise up, I say to thee; A soldier, I trow, Of the Cross art thou; Rise up, rise up, from thy bended knee! Ill it seems that soldier true Of Holy Church should vainly sue:— —Foot-pages they are by no means rare, A thriftless crew, I ween, be they; Well mote we spare A Page—or a pair, For the matter of that—Sir Ingoldsby Bray, But stout and true Soldiers like you, Grow scarcer and scarcer every day!— Be prayers for the dead Duly read, Let a mass be ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... deeds we know them, as heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain. Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that she is but a poor dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts, in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... business of the country consequent upon the war, some of our statesmen who had held different and sounder views were induced to yield their scruples and, indeed, settled convictions of its unconstitutionality, and to give it their sanction as an expedient which they vainly hoped might produce relief. It was a most unfortunate error, as the subsequent history and final catastrophe of that dangerous and corrupt institution have abundantly proved. The bank, with its numerous branches ramified into the States, soon brought many ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... planted in us by inheritance from our ancestors, that none of us should love the other, but that ever brother should strive with brother and son against father? I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of our hereditary right nor vainly seek to rob us of our nature." Henry loved his children, and could never bring himself to make war very seriously against them. Henry died young in 1183, and Geoffrey in 1185. Richard was now the heir of all his father's lands, from the Tweed to the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... repeat it aloud; though I said it a hundred times, I would never blush for it. It is not I who speak; and the wonderful empire, the amiable violence of your presence, sway my voice as soon as I begin to speak. Vainly does my modesty take secret offence at it; vainly would my sex and decency bind me to other laws; it is your eyes that dictate my answer, and my lips, the slaves of their almighty power, no longer consult me on the self-respect I ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... to act among the bushes and broken ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they would have remained ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... boys!" cried Jack. And not giving the sappers more than time to scramble up, we were off in a swift rush through the darkness. The quickly formed line broke irregularly, as we ran over the space between us and the abatis, the sappers vainly trying ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance," mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and are vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia. Jealousy and revenge are clearly indicated. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... O warning vainly said In present years, as in the years gone by; Love flings a halo round the dear one's head, Faultless, immortal—till they change or die." ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and Van were once more back at Colversham greeting the boys and vainly endeavoring to settle down to the work ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do. His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike. His failure was caused, perhaps, by scruples as to the use of live bait, which led him to look up some elaborate recipes in Walton's 'Compleat Angler.' Pike, though not very intelligent, have long ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lava shag; Their fruit he would string 'bout his neck; Their fruit he finds wilted and crushed, Mere rubbish to litter the road— 10 Ah, the perfume! Pana-ewa is drunk with the scent; The breath of it spreads through the groves. Vainly flares the old king's passion, Craving a sauce for his meat and mine. The summer has flown; winter has come: 15 Ah, that is the head of our troubles. Palsied are you and helpless am I; You shrink from a plunge in the water; Alas, poor me! ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... alone through hate; through lawless love Have I still more abused the sovereign good. My heart was vainly turned towards the man Who left me in misfortune, who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of this publication is to prove from example that the pain of disappointment will be much increased by ill-temper, and that to yield to the force of necessity will be found wiser than vainly to oppose it. The contrast between the principal character with the peevishness of her cousins' temper is intended as an incitement to that placid disposition which will form the happiness of social life in every stage, and which, therefore, should not be thought beneath ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... over her arm she reached up and took hold of the saddle, doubtfully at first, and then desperately; tried to reach the stirrup with one foot, failed and tried again; and then wildly struggling, jumping, kicking, she vainly sought to climb back to the saddle. But the pony was not accustomed to such a demonstration at mounting and he strongly objected. Tossing his head he reared and dashed off, almost throwing the girl to the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... reaps the reward of his victory; and in proportion as he reaps that reward fear is overcome. Our primary fear being fear of matter, much is gained by grasping the fact which modern science for the past ten or fifteen years has been carefully putting before us—vainly as far as most of us are concerned—that what we call matter is a force subject to the control of mind, while the directing of mind rests wholly with ourselves. Since we have controlled matter to make it in so many ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... girls in their Camp Fire bathing suits were in the waters of the lake near their camp, Polly and Betty swimming with long even strokes toward its center, Mollie hovering near the shore, while Esther stood shivering in a foot of water trying vainly to warm herself by splashing and throwing handfuls of water ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... reveal? Come close then to me, dearest, listen well, While what I am no longer I conceal. I serve my fellow-men, a glorious right; Thanks for that smile, dear maid, I know 'tis due. Yes, many have I served by day and night; With me to aid them, none need vainly sue. Nay, do not praise me, love, but nearer come, That I may whisper, I'm a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, Mrs. Oke would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed scrutinisingly on his wife, as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. During our walks and rides, which we continued ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas, walking in ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think, (there is nothing new,) it is only genuineness; it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... After vainly pounding and kicking the door, they lifted a heavy steel shaft and using this as a battering ram, proceeded to smash the door from its fastenings. At first this did not avail. But at last each succeeding blow left a slightly ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... it doing the same thing in a don't-care-a-bit sort of way. Regarded from five hours later, I fancy my performances with the two noble steeds in my charge must have been distinctly amusing to view, had anyone been unoccupied enough to watch me. Vainly did I try to induce them to drink of the printer's-ink-like fluid, water and mud, already stirred up by hundreds of other horses. When they did go in, they went for a splash, a paddle, and a roll, not to imbibe, and I had to go with them a little way, nearly up to my knees, in the mud. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... carpet of dried grass and wild camomile, with pale-red sand peeping through the burnt and scanty herbage. On the low mounds, that looked like heaps of sifted ashes, struggled now and then into sickliness a ragged, twisted shrub. There were flowers too, but so sparse, that they sparkled vainly in the colorless waste, which stretched to the horizon. The farmhouses were twenty miles apart, and nine out of ten of them were new ones built by the Boers since they degenerated into white savages: mere huts, with domed kitchens behind ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... no advocate and no defence. Its great proprietor, the Public, is perfectly satisfied with his purchase and his agents. He thinks himself providentially guided in the choice of his Superintendent, and does not vainly pique himself upon his sagacity in selecting Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted for the post. This gentleman, in his place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is precisely the man for the place,—and that is precisely the place for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... frantically back and forth. He ceased his cries as their lights flashed into view. "Stop, stop!" he shouted, "don't come a step further. I am sinking a foot a minute. The ground is rotten here. I guess it's up to me to say good-bye, chums," he continued in a voice he strove vainly to make steady. "You can't help me, and I'm ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it: "undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand decrees only renders its fall ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The cheerful conception of this service on the part of a deaf-mute was to fill the air with violent gestures to indicate—and it was vivid enough—that we could not possibly escape destruction. One of his series represented with uncomfortable clearness a drowning man vainly striving to climb up a vertical wall. This pantomime was the last thing I saw from my position at the oars as we turned a bend and left ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... what it was to hold your being upon the breath of another. You can reason calmly, because you cannot know the extent of feeling you are vainly ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... affliction, it purified and sanctified. To Eric, as he rested his aching head on a pillow wet with tears, and vainly sought for the sleep whose blessing he had never learned to prize before, how odious seemed all the vice which he had seen and partaken in since he became an inmate of that little room. How his soul revolted with infinite disgust ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... too, the singular influence the man has upon me. It is the undefinable in his art—black art. Seriously, dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the eyes with those unfathomable orbs of his, which I have already vainly attempted to describe to you. How dreadful if we have the power to make one fall in love! Do you know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power— ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... room for four months. Feeling a little better one day, he ordered his yacht to be brought up to the Neva, opposite his palace, and embarked to visit some of his works on Lake Ladoga. His physicians, vainly remonstrating against it, accompanied him. It was the middle of October. The weather continuing fine, the emperor remained upon the water, visiting his works upon the shore of the lake and of the Gulf of Finland, until the 5th of November. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... bands of savages, under French instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, in desperate campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of peace between England and France confirmed and reconfirmed the French claims to the main part of her American domain. The advances of French missions ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in those words, he rose to take his leave. The landlord vainly invited him to drink a parting glass; the landlady vainly pressed him to stay another ten minutes and try a cup of tea. He only replied that his sister expected him, and that he must return to the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... there," was his answer. And he went on talking over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse. I tried to dismiss it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick. Presently Dominic, hailing ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Growing weary of him, Rochester found a more worthy object for his favour in Thomas Otway, a poet rich in all the miseries which afflicted genius in those days. Son of the rector of Woolbeding, pupil at Winchester School, and commoner of Christchurch, Cambridge, he had on his arrival in town vainly sought employment as an actor, and barely earned bread as a play-writer. Before he became a PROTEGE of my Lord Rochester he had written "Alcibiades," a tragedy, he being then, in 1665, in his twenty-fifth year. His next play was "Don Carlos, Prince ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... walked up the street, he trod on air. It was like a dream come true. He would be crossing the Pacific, going to foreign lands, getting the very job he had been vainly longing for—and getting ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... so," she whimpered complainingly, trying vainly to steady the glasses. He slipped his arms around her, and let her lean against him; she did not even seem to realize it. Just then she had caught sight of something, and her intense interest steadied her so that she stood ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... went, and he turned ignominiously after it. If he was running the Charlestonian was flying. He shot across first base, and on, just grazing second base—unseen by Tug, who had turned his back and was yelling vainly to the center-fielder to throw him the ball he had not yet caught up with. On the Charlestonian sped in a blind hurry. He very much resembled a young man decidedly anxious to get home as soon as possible. He flew past third base and on down like an antelope ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she would not have treated him so outrageously at a time ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Thus the day passed vainly; the night brought no more success. The two following days brought no tidings, though nothing was neglected in the search. Of the male searchers, scarcely any one knew Surja Mukhi by sight; so they seized many poor women ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... dear mother," said the boy, looking archly round at his attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by signs to silence her ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the Governor of the Havanna was apprised of the surrender of the fort, vainly imagining he had overthrown half his enemies at least, he caused great rejoicings to be made in the island, as if he had gained a decisive victory, or carried a citadel of importance. He also sent off several vessels to victual and refresh his warriors, who, according to him, must have been greatly ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Simon Lee, Give me your tool" to him I said; And at the word right gladly he Received my proffer'd aid. I struck, and with a single blow The tangled root I sever'd, At which the poor old man so long And vainly had endeavoured. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be throbbing violently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not pleasant to witness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... accustomed for so many years to act as beaters for this well-known animal that they had not the slightest nervousness; they knew the ground thoroughly, and the old mucharns, which had been vainly occupied so often, had simply been strengthened, but were ready ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two or three of the papers, looked at the theatre announcements, made a face seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet; hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new tooth-powder of which he had heard, and threw down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering, "These papers become more and more stupid every day." A moment after, a carriage ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Unto each prescribed His destined path, Which the happy one Runs o'er swiftly To his glad goal: He whose heart cruel Fate hath contracted, Struggles but vainly Against all the barriers The brazen thread raises, But which the harsh shears Must ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Other critics of the administration, mainly Republicans, became interested in the Liberal revolt—those who deprecated the President's choice of associates and advisors, the civil service reformers who were aroused by the dismissal of Secretaries Hoar and Cox, and the tariff reformers who had vainly attempted to arouse ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, as well as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use any inappropriate freedom. At last, one day while she waited vainly outside the cabinet in which the King was retired with a few of his councillors, Jeanne's patience failed her altogether. She knocked at the door, and being admitted threw herself at the feet of the King. To Jeanne he was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... weariness of the week's work. I may have passed and repassed in the street some of the families that they were the mothers of; it was in that fortnight of the great heat, whose oppressiveness I am aware of having vainly attempted to share with the reader, and the street children seemed to have been roused to uncommon vigilance by it. They played about far into the night, unrebuked by their mothers, and the large babies, whom the little girls were always lugging, shared ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... striking his thigh with his hand with a sort of convulsive motion, he exclaimed, "No, gentlemen: I will have no Regency! With my Guards and Marmont's corps I shall be in Paris to-morrow." Ney and Macdonald vainly endeavoured to undeceive him respecting this impracticable design. He rose with marked ill-humour, and rubbing his head, as he was in the habit of doing when agitated, he said in a loud and authoritative ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the hither side a flood of logs was sweeping and tearing down, like a mighty breastwork suddenly loosened. Dan started back in terror at the sight, and was about to spring up the bank to a place of safety, when his eyes rested upon the form of a man out in the midst of that rush of destruction, vainly trying to free himself from the watery chasm which had suddenly yawned beneath his feet. Dan's heart beat wildly at the sight. But only for an instant did he hesitate. Then forward he leaped like a greyhound. Forgotten was ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... is the sentiment which finds expression in the pathetic speech of Henry V.'s father when he vainly seeks that sleep which thousands of his poorest subjects enjoy. The sleepless king points to the irony of reclining on the kingly couch beneath canopies of costly state when sleep refuses to weigh his eyelids down or steep his senses in forgetfulness. The king is credited with control of every ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... had disappeared from the tableland as suddenly but not as' tracklessly as a phantom. Lonely men in their tents and three or four mothers of families in their slab humpies looked out vainly for him for three days, anticipating necessary vegetables, and, being disappointed, slandered him courageously, while they found consolation in the reflection that if he ever came his round again they would distress and vex him by withholding payments for the vegetables of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... up at the ceiling and vainly tried to think of something else to say. As his eyes wandered over the gray painted joists and the spaces of plaster between, he saw, not without qualms, that the little chandelier with the old-fashioned cut-glass pendants ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Peter took for a human voice. And again he lay shivering close to the foot-deep carpet of needles under him, while his heart thumped against his ribs, and his whiskers stood out in mortal fear. There followed a weird and appalling silence, and in that stillness Peter quested vainly for the sunlight he had lost. And then, indistinctly, but bringing with it a new thrill, he heard another sound. It was a soft and distant rippling of running water. He knew that sound. It was friendly. He had played among the rocks and pebbles and sand where it was made. His courage came ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... has been alluded to. He found himself unable to sleep as formerly. Long after retiring to rest he would lie wide awake, vainly courting the gentle influence that seemed to shun him the more it was wooed. The rays of the morning sun would sometimes stream into the window before sleep had visited his eyelids, and he would rise haggard, and weary, and desponding. And if he did sink into ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the viscous scum,—in strange contrast to his splendid appearance now! And Kearney well remembered the same, noting in addition a scar on Santander's cheek—he had himself given—which the latter vainly sought to conceal beneath whiskers since permitted to grow their ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the Legislature ought to extend the Factory Acts to Hillsborough trades, and so check the heartless avarice of the parents. At present, no class of her Majesty's subjects cries so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and the humanity of Parliament as these poor little children; their parents, the lowest and most degraded set of brutes in England, teach them swearing and indecency at home, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... want particularly to emphasize here is just this: that trees and plants don't grow out of the ground at all, as most people do vainly talk, but directly out of the air; and that when they die or get consumed, they return once more to the atmosphere from which they were taken. Trees ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... trying vainly to turn his head so that he might see her. "What has happened—why have ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Vainly had every possible attempt been made to catch him off his guard; he had proved himself to be too crafty for the best revenue officers put upon his track. And when failure after failure became the rule, the Big Boss had decided to change the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... passage, as if to escape from the horror of what she had done. In almost a state of panic she ran across the quadrangle, and, turning into the garden, sought refuge inside the tool-shed. Here she was found some time afterwards by Janie, who had been sent to look for her, and had vainly searched St. Chad's and every other likely spot ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... lavish pomp, they had to grind their vassals and tenants, and if there be a beautiful pony or a fine cow which my lady covets, she will have them, and well it happens if the daughters, yea, even the wives, escape the lust of their lord. And the small free-holders around them must either vainly follow or give bail for them, resulting in their own ruin, the loss of their possessions, and the sale of their patrimony, or expect to be hated and despised, and forced to every idle pursuit. Oh ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... hand with the exterminating angel! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one. Where would be Death's triumph, if none lived to weep? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out, as if spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands, ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the study fire, and Milly stood before him, one little hand resting upon his knee and the other holding her tiny handkerchief to her eyes, and vainly trying to ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... village had often, but vainly, endeavored to lead these unhappy people to a sense of religion, but he was always received by them with scoffing ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... Astronomical Society,—I congratulate you and myself that we have lived to see the great and hitherto impassable barrier to our excursion into the sidereal universe, that barrier against which we have chafed so long and so vainly—aestuantes angusto limite mundi—almost simultaneously overleaped at three different points. It is the greatest and most glorious triumph which practical astronomy has ever witnessed. Perhaps I ought not to speak so strongly; ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... (by way of parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not active? Was ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... it would insist very emphatically upon marriage and the purity of the home, much more emphatically than we do now. Such a case as the one numbered 197, a beautiful instance of the sweet, old-fashioned, homely, simple life of the poor we Socialists are supposed to be vainly endeavouring to undermine—would certainly be dealt with in a drastic ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... ashore. Seated on a stone on shore, watching operations, is The Other Man. The sun vainly tries to get through, and the intense cold is almost unendurable. No hitch is to occur this time. The toughest and stoutest bamboo hawsers are dexterously brought out, their inboard ends bound in a flash firmly round the mast close down ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... empire, Moravians and Hungarians came to their assistance, but the imperial forces were too powerful and the rising was suppressed, only to be renewed in 1624, when Denmark espoused the Protestant cause, but struggled vainly against Catholic armies under Wallenstein and Tilly. The tactless oppression of the Emperor Ferdinand again fanned into flame the fires of rebellion; Swedish armies now came to the assistance of the Protestants, and under Gustavus Adolphus ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: "What madness drives the Theban ladies fair "To give their incense to surrounding air? "Say why this new sprung deity preferr'd? "Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? "Or say why Caeus offspring is obey'd, "While to my goddesship no tribute's paid? "For me no altars blaze with living fires, "No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, "Tho' Cadmus' palace, not unknown to fame, "And Phrygian nations all revere my name. "Where'er ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... to arrive and the young surgeon, after listening vainly for a promising flutter of the heart, officially pronounced the merchant dead. When the coroner arrived, he was assured that nothing in the private office had been disturbed, after which he proceeded ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shore, and begins to experience the various little annoyances that a "new-chum" must necessarily undergo, he realizes most thoroughly the pleasures and comforts he has left behind him on board ship; and, very frequently, vainly endeavours to suppress the wish that he was back on board "the old hooker" making the voyage out ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Lord's abiding Vainly sought 'mid shadows dim? Lo! His purpose wisely hiding, Thee He ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... discharge from Baltimore jail, he was engaged in delivering his message on the subject of slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to make what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was forced, after vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house in which to give his three lectures, to accept the offer of Abner Kneeland's Society of Infidels of the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of these people, branded by the community as blasphemers, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... knight had fled, and after him the dead man's horse. Hereward and his man rode home in peace, and the third knight, after trying vainly to walk a mile or two, fell and lay, and was fain to fulfil Martin's prophecy, and be brought home in a cart, to carry for years after, like Sir Lancelot, the nickname of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... only half as much to communicate as the present speakers, the book would be full of information. This little sarcasm was entirely spoilt by being taken literally, as it was at once decided that X. must write a book. Vainly he protested that it would be impossible to write a book after only a brief visit to a place, as he could only put into it what was already known to others; his objections were over-ruled, and he was reminded that only the other day, when H. E., the ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... which all desire is, seemingly, the sovereign good which is the last end. But this is not true of peace, since it is attainable even by a wayfarer; else Our Lord would vainly command (Mk. 9:49): "Have peace among you." Therefore all things do not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bookseller, prudently aiming to set Th' ignipotent god at defiance, To open a policy vainly essay'd At the Albion, the Hope, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... her. The rush of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage-horses over the verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further and the crags echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and escaped death by a hand's-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of the mountain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (relative monoideism) a single image retains first place for a long time and tends to have the same importance again. Finally, in a condition of obsession (absolute monoideism) the fixed idea defies all rivalry and rules despotically. Many inventors have suffered painfully this tyranny and have vainly struggled to break it. The fixed idea, once settled, does not permit anything to dislodge it save for the moment and with much pain. Even then it is displaced only apparently, for it persists in the unconscious life where it has ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... idea dawned for him. In the darkness that surrounded him he began to see a light. Going to the now darkened store, where Cowley & Son had for over a year waited vainly for trade to come, he crept stealthily in and felt about in a barrel that stood by the stove at the rear. In the barrel beneath shavings lay a tin box containing Cowley & Son's cash. Every evening Ebenezer ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... in Philosophy, some of them have endeavoured to place Men in such a State of Pleasure, or Indolence at least, as they vainly imagined the Happiness of the Supreme Being to consist in. On the other Hand, the most virtuous Sect of Philosophers have created a chimerical wise Man, whom they made exempt from Passion and Pain, and thought it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... debtors, and employment for the day-labourers that were destitute of work. Abolition of privileges, civil equality, social reform—these were the three great ideas, of which it was the design of this movement to secure the recognition. Vainly the patricians exerted all the means at their command in opposition to these legislative proposals; even the dictatorship and the old military hero Camillus were able only to delay, not to avert their accomplishment. Willingly would the people ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... reason, are objections given by the nature of this reason itself, and must therefore have a destination and purpose which can only be for the good of humanity. For what purpose has Providence raised many objects, in which we have the deepest interest, so far above us, that we vainly try to cognize them with certainty, and our powers of mental vision are rather excited than satisfied by the glimpses we may chance to seize? It is very doubtful whether it is for our benefit to advance bold affirmations regarding subjects involved in such obscurity; perhaps it would even be ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... see nothing clearly: but he could hear her breathing: and he could hear his own heart thumping. She came nearer to him; once more she halted. Their faces were so near that their breath mingled. Their eyes sought each other vainly in the darkness.... She fell into his arms. In silence, without a word, they hugged ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... when I do not get a smile out of some remark from the gallery, while I know that the gallery always enjoys at least one hearty laugh at my expense. I do not begrudge it them, for I know how very peculiar tennis players in general, and myself in particular, appear when struggling vainly to reach a shot ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... estimate of the event, and in measuring its consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it: "undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand decrees only renders its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... occasion, while the Viceroy, accompanied by Matthews, Cowan, and other commanders, was riding to view the country, a horseman approached them under cover of a cactus hedge, and threw his lance, wounding Matthews in the thigh. Matthews vainly pursued him, beside himself with rage at his wound and ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... was getting late, and after vainly trying to distinguish objects through streaked and misty glass, the girls gave up and leaned back with a sigh ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Percy Falconer, after vainly trying to get in place to walk beside Betty, who frustrated him by keeping Amy close to her, drifted off to find new sartorial ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... under water, the black shoots of the vines appearing like symmetrical wreckage above the surface—was at last swallowed up by the grim central gateway of the town, surmounted by its frowning tower. On each side spread the brown machicolated battlements that vainly defended the death-stricken place. A soft northern atmosphere would have invested it in a certain mystery of romance, but in the clear southern air, the towers and walls standing sharply defined against the blue, wind-swept sky, it ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... day all the morning till one, when they took luncheon, all reeking with wet, at the King's Head,—so that a little money might be legitimately spent in the cause. Then, at two, they sallied out again, vainly endeavouring to make their twenty calls within the hour. About four, when it was beginning to be dusk, they were very tired, and Silverbridge had ventured to suggest that as they were all wet through, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... were standing near an electric light so that they could now see each other plainly. Betty observed a tall, overgrown boy with thin, straight features and clear hazel eyes, and now that his hat was removed, a mass of curly dark hair, which had been vainly smoothed down. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... out of the pantry and gazed at Danny with sparkling eyes, while Pearlie, on the verge of tears, vainly tried to awaken in him some sense of the shame he was bringing on her. Camilla hurried to the pantry again, and brought another cookie. "I believe, Mrs. Francis, that Danny is hungry," she said. "Children sometimes act that way," ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... costumes, as Tartar warriors and Indian queens. In the stern were the servants and attendants, travestied in the most grotesque and ludicrous style. This magnificent and unwieldly car had by some chance lost its place in the procession, and vainly endeavoured to whip in; as it is a point of honour among the charioteers not to yield the pas. Our coachman, however, was ordered (though most unwilling) to draw up and make way for it; and this little civility was acknowledged, not only by a profusion of bows, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Petroff and the little lawyer entered Engelhardt's room, after vainly knocking at the door for some time, they found him in bed, with his thin hairy hands lying helplessly on the coverlet. He was gazing directly upward, and indeed his eyes were rolled up so far that the whites showed, and he seemed to be looking fixedly at some special ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... reconcile herself to seeing her son leave her. She had vainly thought that she had renounced love, for she could not do without the illusion of love; all her affections, all her actions were tinged with it. There are so many mothers who expend on their sons all the secret ardor which they have been ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of whose construction excited great admiration in America and Europe, is one for making paper bags. Many men, leading mechanics among them, had until then vainly sought to construct such a machine. A woman, Miss Maggie Knight, invented it. Since then, the lady invented also a machine to fold paper bags, that does the work of 30 persons. She herself superintends the construction of the machine in Amherst, Mass. That German women have made similar inventions ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... promise he had made to his wife in the morning. Thus did he sacrifice Jesus to the enmity of the Jews, and endeavour to stifle remorse by washing his hands before the people, saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it.' Vainly dost thou pronounce these words, O Pilate! for his blood is on thy head likewise; thou canst not wash his blood from thy soul, as thou dost from ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the flaunting splendour of his toilet, and the appetite with which he had done honour to the breakfast. He was young, and would have been remarkably handsome, had not his dark eyes and shaggy brows given an expression of fierceness and dissimulation to his countenance, which he vainly endeavoured to hide, by never looking his interlocutor in the face. His name was Couriol. His presence at this breakfast was purely accidental. He had come to see M. Richard, (the proprietor of the house where M. Guesno alighted on his journey to Paris, and who was also one of the guests,) just ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... rules the world, by this law of sin, which is even the contradiction of the law of God. Who of you believes this, that Satan's kingdom is so spacious,—that it is even over the most part of the visible church? This is the emperor of the world. The Turk vainly arrogates this title to himself, but the devil is truly so, and we have God's own testimony for it. All kings, all nobles, all princes, all people, rich and poor, high and low, are once subjects of this prince, ruled by this black law of sin. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses vis-a-vis China, in relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese delegates answered, was extorted by force. Japan, having vainly sought to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the world ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sleep I vainly try; Since twelve I haven't closed an eye, And now it's three, and as I lie, From Notre Dame to St. Denis The bells of Paris chime to me; "You're young," they say, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... according to the Diario, is generally felt on this occasion, there are many who doubt the policy of this celebration, at a time when the troops are unpaid—when the soldiers, wounded at the last pronunciamiento, are refused their pensions, while the widows and orphans of others are vainly suing for assistance. "At the best," say those who cavil on the subject, "it was a civil war—a war between brothers—a subject of regret and not of glory—of sadness and not of jubilee." As for General ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... guard to remove it, he rushed up and pulled it down with his own hand. As he descended, the landlord shot him dead, and one of his soldier's shot the landlord dead. It was a pity that so brave a lad, who had risen so high, should fall so vainly; but they have made a hero of him in America; have inscribed his name on marble monuments, and counted him up among their great men. In all this their mistake is very great. It is bad for a country to have no names worthy of monumental brass; but it ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... that man was descended from an ape or monkey. Evolutionists, ashamed of a doctrine so repugnant to all reason and so revolting to mankind, vainly imagine they can escape the odium of such a view, by declaring that man is not descended from an ape or monkey, but that all the primates including all monkeys, apes, and man, sprang from a common ancestor. Of this alleged ancestor ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... intended to fix, at the vainly hoped for interview, the following day as the time for that momentous operation. The weather was propitious; the air, though still damp, began to be tempered by those pale rays of the April sun which, being the first, appear so congenial, although so pale. How if Rosa allowed the right moment ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Flemish people. At Lierre we were very hungry and searched vainly for an inn or a grocery. At last in one of the streets we saw a little baker-shop. The upper story was riddled and broken. But the shop was untouched, the window-shade half up, and underneath we could see two loaves of ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal hindrances, by earnest Christians of various names, whom the established clergy vainly affected to despise. The Baptists and the Presbyterians, soon to be so powerfully prevalent throughout the South, were represented by a few scattered congregations. But the church of the people of the South at this period seems to have been the Quaker ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... like an unballasted yacht under the lash of a hurricane. Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... not leave me always where you first found me? Did you not know that the sight of happiness irritates mankind? If we had been wise, we would have hid ours like a crime. You thought to raise me, but you only sunk me lower. You were proud of our love; you published it abroad. Vainly I asked you in mercy to leave me in obscurity, and unknown. Soon the whole town knew that I was your mistress. Every one was talking of the money you spent on me. How I blushed at the flaunting luxury you thrust upon me! You were satisfied, because my beauty became celebrated; I wept, because ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... joy in self-denial and suffering, whereby the soul might be so refined from selfishness as to surrender itself wholly to the will of God, and to see the marks of His love equally present everywhere—if to religious men and women outside the cloister this seemed like vainly striving ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... not allowed to feed in peace, for Rob smacked and slapped sharply, viciously, but vainly, doing far more injury to himself than to the gnat-like flies, so, to repeat ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... little handkerchief to her eyes. She fell to sobbing convulsively. Vainly I tried to soothe ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... watchers there came a low long whine that seemed about to end in the wolf song. The blood trails were leading him away toward the game scent, and he tugged viciously at the babeesh that held him captive, gnawing at it vainly, like an angry dog, forgetting what experience had taught him many times before. Each moment added to his excitement He ran about the sapling, gulped mouthfuls of the bloody snow, and each time he paused for a moment with his open dripping jaws held toward the dead ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... gold, but jewels. He gets in by saying, "Semsi mountain, Semsi mountain, open!" He loads himself with precious stones, but has forgotten the word, and cries only, "Simeli mountain, Simeli mountain, open!" The robbers return and charge him with having twice stolen from them. He vainly protests, "It was not I " and they cut his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... as heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain. Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that she is but a poor dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts, in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her the catalogue of material advantages he has to offer. Finally, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... begin the evening well, but deteriorate more and more as the performance advances and at the end are uttering mere raucous sounds. They are like a man unable to swim who is in a deep river—their voices control them in place of they controlling their voices. They struggle vainly against obstacles, but are carried away by the flood and are finally engulfed ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... was rather a rush. Thursday we frantically packed valises and vainly attempted to reduce them to something near the regulation 35lbs. At first one put in a wardrobe fit for Darius going to conquer Greece, which, when put on the scale, gaily passed its maximum of 55 pounds. ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... antipathy was that he loved Cardinal Guerillot, as was his habit in all things, with passion and with jealousy, and he could not forgive Mademoiselle Hafner for having formed an intimacy with the holy prelate in spite of him, Montfanon, who had vainly warned the old Bishop de Clermont against her whom he considered the most wily of intriguers. For months vainly did she furnish proofs of her sincerity of heart, the Cardinal reporting them in due season to the Marquis, who persisted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Possessed with pride and insolence, thou braggest today of thy prowess, not regarding any of the world's bowmen in battle![209] Where was thy prowess and where were thy weapons when vanquishing thee in battle the wielder of Gandiva slew Jayadratha in thy very sight? Vainly, O wretch of a Suta, dost thou indulge in thy mind the hope of vanquishing him who formerly contended in battle with Mahadeva himself. The very gods with the Asuras united together and with Indra at their head had failed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... comes with the news that a companion of our youth is about to be married—shock which seems to shake the memory of that youth; to confuse the background of our life. It is by means of such shocks as these that Fate endeavours vainly to make us realise that the past is irrevocable—that we are passing on, and that that which has been can never be again. And at the same time we learn something else: namely, that the past is not by any means unchangeable. So potential is To-day that it not only holds To-morrow ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... God! Oh life was very sweet! And it is hard in youth and hope to die; And there my comrades dear lay at my feet, And in that blear of blood soon must I lie. And yet . . . I almost laughed — it seemed so odd, For long and long had I not vainly tried To reason out and body forth my God, And prayed for light, and doubted — and DENIED: Denied the Being I could not conceive, Denied a life-to-be beyond the grave. . . . And now they ask me, who do not believe, Just to deny, to voice my doubt, to save This life of mine that ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... despite this terrible example so plainly set forth in the Old Testament, probably one-half of the married men of the present day are pursuing it, and hence so many Impotent and Powerless persons, seeking vainly amongst the many cheap, quack remedies for something to re-invigorate ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... parents hastily returned to New York, where, surrounded by early associations, they vainly and hopelessly struggled ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... and see The desolate Antigone. On the last path her steps shall treed, Set forth, the journey of the dead, Watching, with vainly lingering gaze, Her last, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... fancied woes her useless tear; Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills; And execrate the wrongs that Afric's sons, Torn from their natal shore, and doom'd to bear The yoke of servitude in foreign climes, Sustain. Nor vainly let our sorrows flow, Nor let the strong emotion rise in vain; But may the land contagion widely spread, Till in its flame the unrelenting heart Of avarice melt in softest sympathy— And one bright blaze of universal love In grateful ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of life that was visible. There was a cornfield below the larch-plantation; and though the corn was all laid flat by the wet and the wind, a cow and her calf that had strayed into the field seemed to have no difficulty in finding a rich, moist breakfast. Then a small girl appeared, vainly trying with one hand to keep her kerchief on her head, while with the other she threw stones at the marauders. By and by even these disappeared; and there was nothing visible outside but that hurrying and desolate sea, and the wet, bedraggled, comfortless ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... suspense, Alain le Gallais was wandering idly on the rude quay of S. Helier, looking up at the insulated castle, and vainly seeking to conjecture what might be the nature of the plans being there matured, when he was suddenly addressed from behind in a rough, but not wholly unfamiliar voice. Turning about he beheld the grim face and gaunt form of Major Querto, by ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... indeed, but worn, fatigued, nervous. Harassed by a need of production, outrun by their costly fantasies, worn out by devouring genius, hungry for pleasure, the artists of Paris would all regain by excessive labor what they have lost by idleness, and vainly seek to reconcile the world and glory, money and art. To begin with, the artist is ceaselessly panting under his creditors; his necessities beget his debts, and his debts require of him his nights. After his labor, his pleasure. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... country seemed to begin. There were one or two houses within sight, set back amidst trees, and at the summit of a low hill the wheel of a windmill was clattering merrily. There were many hills in sight, all prettily wooded, and, on the whole, Brimfield looked attractive. They searched vainly for a glimpse of the school buildings, and the driver, returning just then, explained in reply to their inquiry, that the school was ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... poor cavalry were in no condition to oppose them. Sometimes our half-starved infantry went into the field; but the depth of the snow hindered them from acting successfully against the flying cavalry of the enemy. The artillery vainly thundered from the ramparts, and in the field it could not advance, because of the weakness of our attenuated horses. This was our way of making war; this is what the civil service employes of Orenbourg called ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... charge with great attention, leaning forward toward the reader with an earnestness that denoted his interest; and, when it was ended, he raised his tall body to the utmost, and drew a long sigh. All eyes were turned to the prisoner, whose voice was vainly expected to break the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... several times; and yet the shorthand in which I am writing these lines is Pitman's. And the reason is, that my secretary cannot transcribe Sweet, having been perforce taught in the schools of Pitman. Therefore, Sweet railed at Pitman as vainly as Thersites railed at Ajax: his raillery, however it may have eased his soul, gave no popular vogue to Current Shorthand. Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... both in those days, and since, I have put myself hard to it, vainly, to find words wherewith to tell of beautiful things; but beauty has been in the world since the world was made, and human language can make a shift, somehow, to give account of it, whereas the peculiar forces of devastation induced by modern ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... brothers rolled and writhed, with every faculty at terrible tension. Now Ralph was uppermost; now Nick sought to drive the downward blow. Now Ralph strained to twist his knife-arm free from the iron grip that held it; now Nick slashed vainly at the air, seeking to sever the sinewy limb that threatened above ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... Vainly the fowler's eye 5 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As darkly painted on the crimson sky, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... all covered with snow, breathed heavily under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using the last of its strength, vainly endeavoured to escape from the switch, hobbling with its short legs through the deep snow which it ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... draw rein? Will he the yawning rift refrain? And with his halting band remain? He rais'd up in his stirrups, high, Better the chasm to descry, And measure with his hawk-like eye, While his dark steed begrim'd with toil, Tried madly, vainly, to recoil! A mutter'd curse—a sabre goad— Full at the leap the robber rode: Great God! his horse near dead and spent, Scarce halfway o'er the chasm went. That fearful rush, and daring bound, Was followed by a crashing sound— A sudden, awful knell! For down, more than ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... living sheets of flesh. Rose was like a plump partridge attracting the knife of a gourmet. Many an elegant deep in debt would very willingly have resigned himself to make the happiness of Mademoiselle Cormon. But, alas! the poor girl was now forty years old. At this period, after vainly seeking to put into her life those interests which make the Woman, and finding herself forced to be still unmarried, she fortified her virtue by stern religious practices. She had recourse to religion, the great consoler ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... still in use, to some extent, for both moods; being generally placed by the grammarians in the subjunctive only, but much oftener written for the indicative: as, "Whate'er thou art or wert."—Byron's Harold, Canto iv, st. 115. "O thou that wert so happy!"—Ib., st. 109. "Vainly wert thou ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... reprehensible was their conduct, at times, in defying the decencies of polite life. After the Treaty of Amiens, Nelson, accompanied by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, retired to his seat at Merton, in Surrey, and on the death of the ambassador, in 1803, he vainly endeavored to procure an allowance from the government for the widow, on the pretext of the services she had rendered the fleet in Sicily. Failing this, he himself granted her an annuity of twelve ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying vainly to fan her ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... necessary witnesses to-morrow to prove my words; at present I will state the fact, and add; for your benefit, that, whether true or false, your destiny is the same, and from it you cannot, shall not escape. I will now lay down the unalterable decree of fate, which you may as vainly attempt to avoid, as to pluck down the stars of heaven, or to blot out the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... survived in great families, as well as among that middle class, from which the Empire drew its solid support; but in fashionable society there was a marked and rapid relaxation of morals which was vainly combated by stringent social and sumptuary legislation. The part taken by women in social and political life is among the most powerful factors in determining the general aspect of an age. This, which had already ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... All Good still continues to call for our warmest gratitude. Especially have we reason to rejoice in the exuberant harvests which have lavishly recompensed well-directed industry and given to it that sure reward which is vainly sought in visionary speculations. I cannot, indeed, view without peculiar satisfaction the evidences afforded by the past season of the benefits that spring from the steady devotion of the husbandman to his honorable pursuit. No means of individual comfort is more certain and no source of national ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... girl!" was Mary's comment, while Caroline expressed her disappointment and vainly endeavored to change Elsie's determination. The little girl was firm, because she felt sure she was doing right, and soon managed to change the subject of conversation to the pleasure nearest at hand—the ride they were ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... which she was to receive the welcome yet dreaded visit from the Viscount Massetti. She gained the rendezvous unobserved, with loudly beating heart. The young Italian was not there. She searched eagerly but vainly for him in the gathering twilight. What had happened to prevent his coming? She was on thorns of anxiety. Perhaps he had attempted to scale the wall and had fallen, sustaining some severe injury! Perhaps even then, while ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Representatives of Her Majesty about matters which ought to be decided by the Courts of this Republic. Instead, however, of complaining to Her Majesty's Government after all other reasonable means of redress have been vainly invoked, they continually make themselves guilty of ignoring and treating with contempt the local Courts and authorities by continually making all sorts of ridiculous and ex parte complaints to Her Majesty's ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... the table, the casket was not there; perhaps she had left it on the bed. The water had floated the bed to the roof, and he had to draw it down; but the casket was not there either. Perhaps it had been knocked over by the rush of water. He felt about vainly with his hands, stooping under water. His feet were more fortunate, for he stumbled over the object sought for; the casket had fallen to the ground. He lifted it, and tried while holding it to climb up to the other side, where he need not ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... meet in your walks in the common thoroughfare of London, glide, shuffle, or crawl onward, as if they conscientiously thought they had no manner of right to tread the earth but on sufferance. Not so our coalheaver. Mark how erect he walks! how firm a keel he presents to the vainly breasting human tide that comes rolling on with a show of opposition to his onward course! It is he, and he only, who preserves, in his gait and in his air, the self-sustained and conscious dignity of the first-created man. Surrounded by an inferior creation, he gives ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... towards the evening, the sea gave up, not indeed her dead, but what was accepted as a positive proof of their wretched fate. Henderson, who was in a fever of excitement, which Power vainly strove to allay, was walking with him and Eden, who was hardly less troubled, along the beach, when he caught sight of something floating along, rising and falling on the dumb sullen swell of the advancing tide. He thought and declared ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... loved many those years, for the loss of a great love sends us vainly from hand to hand of many lesser loves, to ease a little the great ache; and at that time the world seemed full of my lovers. I have forgotten none of them. They pass before me, a fair frieze of unforgotten faces; but most I loved a Roman poet, because, perhaps, he loved so well the memory ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... post, as soon as the forms of the law, respecting notice of the sale, could be complied with. The poor widow, half distracted at being thus suddenly bereft of house and home, spent the remainder of the day in vainly endeavoring to procure some tenement into which she could remove with her furniture, or with so much of it as might yet be saved. On the next day, however, as a last resort, she obtained and accepted the present use of the deserted cabin we have ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... suggested with great directness that it was the "Old Man's house," and that, invoking the Divine Power, if the case were his own, he would invite whom he pleased, even if in so doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further remarked, should contend against him vainly. All this delivered with a terseness and vigor lost ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Augustine says (Tract. xliv, super Joan.): "If God were not to hear sinners, the publican would have vainly said: Lord, be merciful to me a sinner"; and Chrysostom [*Hom. xviii of the same Opus Imperfectum] says: "Everyone that asketh shall receive, that is to say whether he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... abreast over the road that crossed the hills and forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace. Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... agreeable Dutch strangers, darted up the steps and next moment emerged with the form of the Pretenderette between them, struggling indeed, but struggling vainly. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... puerilities. A man's life—soul—are worth some sacrifices. If you loved me—" A quick ingathering of his breath, then a low moan, then the irrepressible cry she vainly sought to hush, "O Valerie, you are silent! You do not love me! Two years of suffering! two years of repression, then this delirium of hope, of possibility, and you silent! I will trouble you no more. Gwendolen alive or Gwendolen dead, what is it ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba came nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the Praetorian Guard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainly called for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself. He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till he heard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the "ancient fashion," which he was told was being fixed with his neck in a forked stick ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... time came when Frank was thirteen, when he had gone through all the "Standards," when he must leave school, and begin to work for his living. It was a hard apprenticeship, for something quite different from brain-work was needed now, and the boy struggled vainly against his physical weakness. It was a state of things so entirely incomprehensible to Mr Darvell, that, as he expressed it, "it fairly haggled him." Weakness and delicacy were conditions entirely unknown to him and all his other relations, and might, he thought, be avoided by everyone ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... door—close the door, Nell!" gasped Winnie, holding her handkerchief to her mouth and vainly endeavouring to suppress the laughter. "I know it's dreadfully wicked to behave in this manner, but I can't help myself," and off the child went again; while Nellie, unable to resist, joined in the merry peal. When both stopped at length, the tears were ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... and vainly endeavours to impress him with respect for her husband. She quits him to throw herself into ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... misfortune. I received Herr Pfistermeister, the private secretary of H.M. the King of Bavaria, in my room. He first expressed great pleasure at having found me at last, thanks to receiving some happy directions, after vainly seeking me in Vienna and even at Mariafeld on Lake Zurich. He was charged with a note for me from the young King of Bavaria, together with a portrait and a ring as a present. In words which, though ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... weak in the faith, and warns rash, presumptuous Christians to take heed lest they fall, however they may stand at the present. He presents a forcible simile in the running of the race, or the strife for the prize. Many run without obtaining the object of their pursuit. But we should not vainly run. To faithfully follow Christ does not mean simply to run. That will not suffice. We must run to the purpose. To believe, to be running in Christ's course, is not sufficient; we must lay hold on ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... ground beyond the encampment and disappeared in the forest. Tana-naw Station waited their reappearance, and long and vainly ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... so plaintive and cloying as a vocal performance, leaped forward briskly enough under the rapid lashings to and fro of the crank; the elbow of the organist moved with a swift rhythm as his searching eye tried vainly to wring a penny or two from some one of all these opulent facades. "Good Heaven!" cried Truesdale; "how little feeling, how little expression! Here," he said to the man in Italian; "take this half lira and let me have a chance. Bellini was never ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... disqualification for civil and military employment. He meditated the design of again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by terrors which he afterwards vainly wished to soothe, and the other by hopes which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was the smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in that way. They eased off their grip with great caution. Moreover Magadar, having risen, and seeing how things were going, took off his belt and made a running noose of it. He passed the loop deftly round Cheenbuk's legs and drew it tight, while the others were still trying vainly to compress ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... fast down her painted cheeks; she wiped them hastily away, and so roughly, that her face became a strange and ghastly spectacle. Unconscious of her disordered appearance, she rushed past Belinda, who vainly attempted to stop her, threw up the sash, and stretching herself far out of the window, gasped for breath. Miss Portman drew her back, and closed the window, saying, "The rouge is all off your face, my dear Lady Delacour; you are not fit to be seen. Sit down upon this sofa, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... were thus largely reinforced. Ever and anon came onslaughts upon us personally and upon every feature of the institution, whether actual, probable, possible, or conceivable. One eminent editorial personage, having vainly sought to "unload'' a member of his staff into one of our professorships, howled in a long article at the turpitude of Mr. Cornell in land matters, screamed for legislative investigation, and for ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in some confusion, and stammered out: "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle. I have offended you; I have acted like a brute! Do not be angry with me for what I have done. If you knew ..." I vainly sought for some excuse, and in a few moments she said: "There is nothing for me to know, Monsieur." But I had found something to say, and I cried: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb. To him the living now will come And cross his threshold in the self-same way To clasp his hand and vainly try to say Words that shall soothe the heart ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... the hair was curled close over a straight, low forehead. The face rose up to hers. She looked into the subtle eyes, and the thrill of the lips, just touching hers, awakened a sense of sin, and her eyes when they opened were frightened and weary. And as she sat up in her bed, trembling, striving vainly to separate the real from the unreal, she saw the star still shining. She hid her face in the pillow, and was only calmed by the thought that it was ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the throne of England, and the year afterwards, having, among other points, vainly demanded of the Dutch satisfaction for the murder of his regicide ambassador, which took place in this year, and some compensation for the cruelties exercised on the English at Amboyne some thirty years before, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... best version of "Peace Egg" which I have seen performed, I have as yet quite vainly endeavoured to get any part transcribed. It is oral tradition. It is practised for some weeks beforehand, and the costumes, including wonderful head-dresses about the size of the plumed bonnet of a Highlander in full-dress, are carefully preserved from year to year. These paste-board ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim, has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... condemned judges of the late King have been brought before the Parliament, and like to be hanged. I am deep in Chancery against Tom Trice, God give a good issue; and myself under great trouble for my late great expending of money vainly, which God stop for the future. This is the last day ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... it! and how it expresses that joy in the present and recklessness of the morrow, which the fabulist has in vain contrasted with the virtuous industry of the ant in order to point a moral for mankind!—vainly, because the cigale's short life in the sunlit trees will ever seem to men a more ideal one than that of the earth-burrowing ant, with its possible longevity, its peevish parsimony, and restless anxiety for the future. I could have lain down under ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
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