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More "Wistful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lose faith in your hands. Oil, coal, electricity, what are these but multiplied and more adaptable, super-serviceable hands? They may temporarily be unemployed, but the world can't go round without them." A man who feels poetry in petroleum suffers from no wistful "desire of the moth for the star." To his full sense of life the moth and the star are of one essential substance, parts of one glorious conquerable creation—and the moth just a fleck of star- ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... he wished them to be quiet they were silent, all leaning forward, their eyes shining, their lips apart, their fists clinched as tho they were holding their tongues in leash by that means, their dark, brown faces alight with wistful, almost palpitating eagerness. The regard they fixed on his face was ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his "Here, Helene, will you take it?" so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red when ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... frost. Indeed, if need be, he was willing to lay down the dreary life which had of late grown valueless to him. Yet he was not without tenderness, and as he plodded on over the frozen snow, he thought of the lost outcast with wistful regret. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... miss the little wagging tail; I miss the plaintive, pleading wail; I miss the wistful, loving glance; I miss ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... A wistful child, in foul unwholesome shreds, Recalls some legend of a daisy chain That makes a pretty necklace. She would fain Make one, and wear it, if she had ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... possessed her; and the sky and air, and brown, desolate earth, just warming with the April sun, all glowed with hope. How near to her seemed Heaven and all holy, sweet influences; and the centre of it all was one radiant, beautiful face, looking with sad, wistful eyes to her for love and life which she so wanted to give. She felt and knew that to this one in some way, she would be fully revealed, and misconception and absence and doubt would vanish. She should meet him, but just how he would look, or what he would say, or how she should or ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the beginning of many words. Their skins are as swarthy as those of Bedaween, their foreheads comparatively low, their eyes far more deeply set their stature lower, their hair yet more abundant, the look of wistful melancholy more marked, and two, who were unclothed for hard work in fashioning a canoe, were almost entirely covered with short, black hair, specially thick on the shoulders and back, and so completely ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Allan's easel and strolled away after them. Was it the motoring, I wondered, which had prompted her half-wistful question, or had I been wise too late? Arthur had been very confident. So much that he had said had carried with it a certain ring of truth. Youth and the temperament of youth were surely irresistible. Like calls to like across the garden of spring flowers with a cry which no interloper ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gazed out at the water, and I saw in his face the peculiarly wistful expression that so often accompanies thoughts which are both elusive and far away. The index finger of his right hand was slightly raised, indicating a subconscious impulse to point upward. Slowly turning back to us, he said in a tone of solemnity ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... rising to his feet, bowed gravely, looking into the girl's face with a light in his eyes which ever afterwards haunted her when his name was mentioned—a light, half wistful, half kindly. For several minutes after they had left, he sat looking idly at the "bill of fare" with the same look on his face. There had been no such chance of salvation ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... with aroused energy, a little wistful smile softening the strain of his face. "You were wise to give me food, else I couldn't have solved this mystery. To the beginning, then: You, Prudence Corson, betrothed to me these three years and more; ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... leaving the two alone. Their hands lay clasped in one another, but they could not speak. His eyes were upon her, all the fierce light of delirium out of them, in spite of the fever that was burning in every limb, resting upon her face in a silly wistful way, as if he feared the vision was deceptive, or his prize might vanish at any moment. At last she asked: "Do you know me, Mr. Coristine?" and he murmured: "How could I help knowing you?" But, in a minute, he commanded himself, and said: "It is very kind of you ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning, Strangely wistful, And half tristful, Have turned her from foul ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... stayed to admire the classical busts and statues that lined the deserted corridors like exhibits in a museum. All the life-size ones I whacked with my cane. I took a wistful pleasure in giving the naked ones two good strokes each. As I drew near the class-room door I certainly felt uncomfortable, for I knew Fillet intended to sting. But my sense of martyrdom carried me through. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the formalism of the affair. For this dance in an earthen hovel on a plank floor was the degenerate but lineal descendant of the splendid and formal balls which the Dons had held in the old days, when New Spain belonged to its proud and wealthy conquerors; it was the wistful and grotesque remnant ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410, spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be agitated with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... no dawdling and putting off of the day's work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper, he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a wistful glance, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... could git. Nebber knowed ob any plantashuns [TR: illegible, possibly "men"] be divided. D'ant member 'bout slave 'risings en niggers voting en wuz not ole er'nuff ter member de sta'rs fallin'. Songs we use'ter sing wuz, "On Jordan's Bank I Stand en Cast a Wistful Eye en Lak Drops ob Sweat, Lak Blood Run Down, I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... him with wistful eyes—almost jealous of the privilege which his kind deed was about to bring him—he felt that his own heart was in his ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... lightkeeper nodded solemnly. He clasped his knee with his hands and rocked back and forth in his chair. "I know," he went on, an absent, wistful look in his eye; "but you must have wondered, just the same. I bought that craft because—well, because she reminded me of old times, I cal'late. I used to command a schooner like her once; bigger and lots more able, of course, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... used to love to touch was concealed. Sometimes he dined with an ingenue in a poke bonnet; sometimes with a senorita in black turban and black lace veil, mysterious and provocative; sometimes with a demure miss in a wistful little turned-down brim. It was like living with a stranger who ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon gambling—not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied no asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been in London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded by opportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... above them, But not their hearts that roam! We learned from our wistful mothers To call old England "home"; We read of the English skylark, Of the spring in the English lanes, But we screamed with the painted lories As we rode on the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... a little embarrassed, as was natural in a lad of his years, but truly loving and tender all the same, and Margot's brown eyes searched his face with wistful questioning. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Cabanal, and from them Tona had bought her stock. Now that they were dead, the girl was left with a fortune almost, three or four thousand duros, to put it low. And how the poor thing loved Tonet! Whenever she met him on the streets of the Cabanal, she always had one of her placid wistful smiles for him; and she spent her afternoons with sina Tona on the beach, just because the old lady was the mother of that bantam who was forever turning the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said in a deeply wistful tone, "I don't understand this. Why shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed? What is there about this that is not according to law and honor and the plain, simple rights ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Whereupon Tubby cast a wistful eye toward the border of the frogpond, where the big greenbacks could be seen, sitting partly in the water, and calling to one ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... upon the rocks of uncertainty and dim dissatisfaction. New thoughts, new questions, new desires had risen in her during that sad month of May, and she felt as one seeking vainly she knew not what. She looked beyond the trees of the Green Park to the far skies with wistful eyes, and asked herself deep questions concerning many things, born of the thoughts that arose in her mind when she stood amid a people mourning tenderly a dearly loved sovereign, and beheld how in hearts all over the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the other hand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression of the world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealism difficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dream before the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpses by every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as well as some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defended against the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for the Greek, God was the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... head. They were pretty thick and stout, however, and had remarkably large heads and faces. I do not think the tallest of them was much, if any, over five feet. Donovan, who was about six feet, looked like a giant beside them. They stood huddled together, looking just a little wistful at being cut off from their fellows, and casting fearful glances at Guard, who stood barking excitedly at them from the companion-way. Though used to dogs, they had very likely never seen a jet-black Newfoundland before. Possibly ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... hitherto seriously devoted themselves to steak and coffee, speedily brightened up under her pleasantries. Indeed she kept them lingering so long that the Mayhews and Stanton passed out before them, the latter casting a wistful glance at the cheerful party, for he had ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to be waiting for Meade to finish, but Meade, who suddenly realized to what he was leading, did not finish; and Lavis turned his head so as to look squarely at Cadogan. Through the half-closed, wistful eyes Cadogan caught a gleam that he again felt was an answer to Meade's unfinished question, and yet was again meant, not for ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Jeremiah had other strains. I conclude this lecture with selections which deal with the same impending judgment, yet are wistful and tender, the poet taking as his own the sin and sufferings of the people with whose doom ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. He eyed the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest with which, in middle life, men revisit scenes familiar to them in youth,—surprised to find either so little change or so much, and recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions. The long High Street which ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... side to side, for she was such a little thing that the stool raised her entirely off the floor. There was a thoughtful look on her round, freckled face, and a wistful one in her great blue eyes as the full meaning of Uncle ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her pleading, wistful eyes, spoke day after day of Julia, of her dutiful love toward her, and her growing love for me, I drifted, almost without an effort of my own volition, into an engagement with her. You see there was no counter-balance. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... last words; he was reflecting. Roundjacket watched him with a strange, wistful look, which had much ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... into a flood of tears, as if she had some forboding of what was to happen. The boy took me out in my box, about half an hours walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the sea-shore. I ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards the sea. I found myself not very well, and told the page that I had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good. I got in, and the boy shut the window close down, to keep out the cold. I soon fell asleep, and all I can conjecture ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Nelly had been to Italy the year before and did nothing but boast of it all day. So the two girls arm in arm started for the moors. Nelly Reeves was a tall good looking girl, slightly pretty, but with none of the wistful beauty about her that was so clearly stamped on all Beatrice Langton's features. She had black hair and what she considered beautiful eyes, though they really were small and vacant ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... cup of coffee, I shall be most pleased. You must excuse me, for I never take anything before midday. I am a recluse, have been for many years and rarely stir abroad. I do not intend to return to the world unless I can bring something with me worth having." A wistful smile twisted a little the corners of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... him in amazement; the Cossacks gaped under their helmets. The girl watched him with wistful eyes. She understood. It was the artist-temperament in full command. The man had vanished, the musician was in possession. He was rocked by it, swayed, overpowered, a slave. His eyes saw nothing; his ears heard nothing; his mind was a whirl, a wonderful ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... lay my wistful hands in thine A little while before you seek the dark, Untraversed ways of War and its Reward, I cannot bear to lift my gaze and mark The gloried light of hopeful, high emprise That, like a bird already poised for flight, Has waked within your eyes. For me no proud illusions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... found herself disinclined for any further exertion, and just sat, reclining upon pale pink satin cushions, her slender hands folded upon her lap, her large, dark luminous eyes and delicate, refined features all set in a wistful sadness. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the good ancient customs of thy sires! The day will come, when thou, with burning tears, Wilt long for home, and for thy native hills, And that dear melody of tuneful herds, Which now, in proud disgust, thou dost despise! A day when wistful pangs shall shake thy heart, Hearing their music in a foreign land. Oh! potent is the spell that binds to home! No, no, the cold, false world is not for thee. At the proud court, with thy true ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... I lived in this little world; it was dull and humdrum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and the boys fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was "town,"—a straggling, lay village of houses, churches, and shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, Dicks, and Captains. Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored folks, who lived in three- or four-room ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... be with us a part of every day?" returned Violet, with a wistful half-inquiring look ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... have a little money; I found it inside my vest. I suppose I must have put it there before——' and then he became silent, while the strange, wistful look ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... could have some," Sabrina went on, in a wistful eagerness, "I don't seem to have a thing ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... come and play with your brothers and sisters just now?" asked the Colonel, as a dreamy-eyed boy of about eight, with a mop of dark hair and a wistful expression, came slowly ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and all else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at his door, the little potentate all the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hands that lay on the coverlet, and the face of the dying woman was not more ghastly than the one which bent over her. As Dr. Grey approached, the mistress of the house rose, and put out her hands towards him, with a wistful, pleading, childish ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in appearance a tall, dark-haired boy—he was really only a boy—with a singularly beautiful face, and a strange wistful expression of the eyes that I think will haunt me as long as I live. I made him, somewhat externally and feebly, I fear, one of the characters in a recently published novel. That he was a lonely spirit will be plain enough from his writings; he lived ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... devised many excuses for waylaying her. His machine being forbidden, he hung about until she appeared and trudged homeward with her. Often he came in a glow from the cabinetmaker's and submitted for her judgment the questions that had been debated that day at the shop. There was something sweet and wistful and charming in his boyishness; and she was surprised, as Harwood had been from the first, by the intelligence he evinced in political and social questions. He demanded absolute answers to problems that were perplexing wise men all over ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... that no one could enter the Professions who had no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine. As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Wonderful, wistful, to contemplate! Difficult, doubtful, to speak upon! Strange and great for tongue to relate, Mystical hearing for every one! Nor wotteth man this, what a marvel it is, When seeing, and saying, and hearing ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... with a wistful yet joyous emphasis, "I wish I could come to school to you. And I'd like to be ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... turbulent and nothing truculent; he has made no contribution to the literature of revolt. Yet many of his poems make an irresistible appeal to our more reflective moods; and once or twice, his fancy, always winsome and wistful, rises to a height of pure imagination, as in The Listeners—which I find myself returning to muse ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... She found something in the room which she certainly would never have expected. When she came in as usual she saw something small and dark in her chair,—an odd, tiny figure, which turned toward her a little, weird-looking, wistful face. ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... title, of a brilliant position, and at the same time she did not want to let me go. However one may dream of ambassadors one's heart is not a stone, and one has wistful feelings for one's youth. Ariadne tried to fall in love, made a show of being in love, and even swore that she loved me. But I am a highly strung and sensitive man; when I am loved I feel it even at a distance, without vows and assurances; at once I felt as it were a coldness ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... trouble, and the number of folks wearing mourning that one met in Hull and Yarmouth, and the other places, was enough to make the most light-hearted man feel miserable. Black everywhere—nothing but black at every turn; and then the women's faces looked so wistful, and the children seemed so quiet, that I couldn't bear to walk the streets. The women would question any stranger that came from the quays, and they scorned to think that there was not always a chance for their men; but the dead seamen were swinging about in the ooze far down ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... staring before him with manful eyes that winked rapidly but shed no tears. His lips were pursed up as if to whistle, yet made no sound. At the sight of him and the withered poppies in the place where never a flower of memory blossomed, hot tears surged to the girl's eyes. It was wistful to think of a child ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... what do you mean? Don't joke, please, because every true word you say is of value to me, you see," he said, in an almost beseeching tone, with a wistful expression ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... dressed, had come into the bazaar, and had made her way noiselessly up to where the Rectory children stood. She was a slight, delicate-looking child, taller than Bridget, though not seemingly much older. She had large, earnest, perhaps somewhat wistful, brown eyes, which made her face attractive and interesting when you looked at it closely, though at first sight it was too small and pale to catch one's attention. She stood there quietly and very ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... of the interest he took in the restoration of the lost female. The stout yeoman arose, and, moving to the entranced Narra-mattah, he took the infant into his large hands, and for a moment the honest borderer gazed at the boy with a wistful and softened eye. Then raising the diminutive face of the infant to his own expanded and bold features, he touched its cheek with his lips, and returned the babe to its mother, who witnessed the whole ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... into a merry laugh. The youth had captured her, with his wistful, Irish eyes, his brogue ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... do her good, I trust," casting wistful glances up the stairs and toward the door of the chamber, where girlish voices were heard, Nettie Hudson and Susie Granger chatting gayly and uttering exclamations of delight as they arranged and adjusted ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Charitable people gave him alms, but he never begged. He would enter a town, take his station near a church and wait until the bells rang for matins or vespers, then take up his staff and, sighing deeply, move off. People noting the wistful look in his eyes would ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... both her hands in his, but she took them away again. For one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful and despairing kindliness in them: then she stood before him, with her face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous. "I did wish to see you—for once, for the last time," she said. "If you had gone away, you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terror of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which like a sheeted spectre beset his very path! ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously the wan, wistful face of Judge Hyde's wife pressed up to the pane of the south window, its great restless eyes and shadowy hair bringing to mind some captive bird that pines and beats against the cage. Her husband absent from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... its lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,—NOT FOR HER; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to HER,—wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... about thirty years old, blonde, a little effeminate, wistful. A curious appurtenance in the military household of so vigorous a general). "Natacha, there is not an hour that I can call truly good if I spend it away from you, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... had begged Janith to let him rent a super mech. And she had scoffed at his wastefulness. Yet, now that he remembered it again, there had been a wistful note of hope ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... him farewell. He had lost courage, poor David; perhaps he had not very much to start with, and things had gone hard with him for a long time. He knew he should never see these faces again, this homely, friendly place. He gazed about with wistful eyes, noting every spot in the bare little station. He had known it all by heart, ever since he was a child, for his father had been station-master. He could have built the whole thing over, with his eyes shut, he thought, and ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... you look like some one in a dream. I really might imagine you a piece of rare statuary—one of the Niobe group strayed from the Florentine gallery to meet the wistful gaze of the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... was shaking down a fortune from the green ivy-bushes that hung at the vintners' doors, the western continent, at which he had already cast wistful glances, remained the treasure-house of Spain. His unfortunate but indomitable half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, recalled it to his memory. The name of Gilbert deserves to be better remembered than it is; and America, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... glad lips have breathed the trembling prayer, "O Lord, remember me!" The hosts of God With wistful angel-faces, bending low Above their dying King, were surely stirred To wonder at the cry. Not one of all The shining host had dared to speak to Him In that dread hour of woe, when Heaven and Earth Stood trembling and amazed. Yet, lo! the voice Of one who ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... some new note in that expressive voice of hers. Was it merely wistful, was it really jealous, or was either element the product of my own imagination? I made answer while ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... planned; but plans, as immemorial experience has taught us, but never quite convinced us, "gang aft a-gley," and Robert's were no exception to the rule. Between him and the open page before him, he saw continually the face of Marcia Oldham. The sweet, wistful, violet eyes gazed earnestly at him, the delicately cut mouth with the dimple in one corner smiled at him and his book presently dropped from his fingers and lay unheeded on the rug while he dreamed dreams and saw visions. Gradually, his thoughts wandered from the future and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the gate of iron Pressed his wan and wistful face, Gazing with an awe-struck pleasure At the glories of the place; Never had his brightest day-dream Shone ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable, because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler who could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... children crowded together under my window, and looked wistfully up. What did they expect? That something would be thrown down? Withered flowers, bones, cigar ends, or one thing or another, that they could amuse themselves with? They looked up with their frost-pinched faces and unspeakably wistful eyes. In the meantime, the two small foes continued to ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... raised her head, and, turning, looked full upon me. It was a wild, eager, wistful, questioning look—her large, lustrous eyes thrilled me through with their old power; I saw in her face something that set my heart throbbing with feverish madness. It was a mute appeal—a face turned toward me as though to find out by that one eager, piercing, penetrating glance, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... moment the girl was on the point of laughing at him, but the wistful seriousness of his face checked the outburst of merriment on her lips, and instead she ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... She spoke with such wistful regret that the older woman felt its note through her own deep gloom. She groped out, tears blinding her, until her hand found her young friend's, and then she clasped it, and stood holding it, no ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... other hand, who threw Jehovah's thunderbolts across the world as if he liked them, and approved of them, and was ready for any further number of these celestial missiles, of an even vaster displacement, was in his heart of hearts a wistful believer in everlasting mercy. Few men have been born with a softer heart. He sometimes wondered whether in framing the Regulations of the Salvation Army he had not pressed too hard on human nature. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... had dogged her into town, and now worried her more than dust, or heat, or the ceaseless clatter of tongues. Tom, Dick, and Harry's unmended hose persisted in dancing a spectral jig before her mental eye, mother's querulous complaints spoilt the song she hummed to cheer herself, and little May's wistful face put the goddess of beauty ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the wilderness, and encumbered with the stumps of the great trees which had been felled, some to be used as logs, others to be cut up into planks; but the place had a rough beauty of its own, while the wistful glances that fell upon him from the occupants of the porch sent a thrill through his breast, and raised a hope that if ever he came that way he ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one, except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But time ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun;[10] and, after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden.[11] The scholar must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.[12] Therein it resembles his ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... answered by a slim, appealing girl of perhaps twenty-two. Hers was a wistful, oval face, with a small, upturned nose; and her clear hazel eyes were the sort that always seem to be enjoying some amusing secret of their own. Her hair was a soft brown, worn loose to the shoulders, after ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... advent of MR. COADE and MR. PURDIE presently adds to their misgivings. MR. COADE is old, a sweet pippin of a man with a gentle smile for all; he must have suffered much, you conclude incorrectly, to acquire that tolerant smile. Sometimes, as when he sees other people at work, a wistful look takes the place of the smile, and MR. COADE fidgets like one who would be elsewhere. Then there rises before his eyes the room called the study in his house, whose walls are lined with boxes marked A. B. C. to Z. and A2. B2. C2. to K2. These contain dusty ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... first call on the domestic group of which he was the nub. Still in the future was the day when he was to move into town, and to have also a summer home on the North Shore, and to make some of his father-in-law's spare funds yield profitable results, and to arouse among wistful clerks and unsuccessful "operators" an admiring wonder as the ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... you gullible," she denied, suddenly wistful. "I thought you very generous and very ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... set fire to the hotel, and, as I recall it, shot him. How true such stories are I cannot say, but there was no doubt that Senlis had been punished. At least half of the old city on the banks of the wistful Nonette—it is a much larger place than Crepy, with a cathedral of some consequence— was smashed as utterly as it might have been by a cyclone or an earthquake. The systematic manner in which this was done was suggested by the fact that, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Beauty one could make a choice. There was always one lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the others. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be more perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I have been through the work a score of times ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... captain's nomination. Then Mr. Simpson stepped to the front and, after a wistful glance at the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inclined to reproach himself because he was not. Of course there was a sadness about it, a regret that the wonder of those days of love and youth had passed. But the sorrow was not bitter, the regret was but a wistful longing, the sweet, lingering fragrance of a memory, that was all. Toward her, Madeline, he felt—and it surprised him, too, to find that he felt—not the slightest trace of resentment. And more surprising still he felt none toward Blanchard. He had meant what he said in his letter, he wished ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... talking earnestly. He heard the little iron gate open and close. He watched them disappear behind the hedge of laurels. A puff of breeze brought the faint odour of roses to him, and with it a sudden host of memories. His eyes grew wistful. He felt something tugging at his heartstrings. Only a few years ago life here had seemed so wonderful a thing—only a few years, but with all the passions and struggles of a lifetime crowded into them. The maelstrom ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... time, he chopped wood for her; once he came with a board on his shoulder, and quickly and skillfully replaced the rotten step on the porch. Another time he repaired the tottering fence with just as little ado. He whistled as he worked. It was a beautifully sad and wistful whistle. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... grave, but perfectly composed. There was a wistful look in his eyes indeed, as if he were thinking of something or some one far away—Kit's face on the sunny hills of Quercy where he had ridden with her, perhaps; a look which seemed to say that the doings here ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... saddled and bridled before the principal entrance to the mansion, and Mr. Horace Dinsmore was pacing the veranda to and fro with slow, meditative step, while Bruno, crouching beside the door, followed his movements with wistful, questioning eyes, doubtless wondering what had become of his ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... Thenceforth one path My footsteps wooed; the fickle train was still Of young desires—new felt my being's aim, My soul revealed! and as the pilgrim turns His wistful gaze, where, from the orient sky, With gracious lustre beams Redemption's star;— So to that brightest point of heaven, her presence, My hopes and longings centred all. No sun Sank in the western waves, but smiled farewell To two united lovers:—thus in stillness Our hearts were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... far clouds and the heaving and noisy sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men putting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... unlike as possible to my dear brave Irma, with her curls like shining jet, and the clean-cut, decisive profile. But I saw at once from whom Baby Louis had gotten his fair soft curls, his blue eyes, and the wistful appeal of his smile. They were always before me as I sat with my elbows on the ink-splattered table, and I did all my work conscious of the rebellious twist of raven curl that was on the other side. I did not open this often, only when by myself, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... indeed to her, but because of some great grief. What this grief was he could not guess, for the children had been told nothing about the beautiful lady, except that her name was Lady Clarice. She never complained, but the boy's wistful eyes would follow her as she moved among the trees, and his heart would swell with pity; and how he would long to do something to prove to ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... from the table and his emptied dishes and fragmentary beef-bone, Rufus sat before the little fireplace, gazing into it at the red coals, and taking casual and then wistful note of various things about his brother's apartment that told of the man that ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a little wistful, but he answered chafingly, "Wouldn't that be a great thing to do just now in the middle of one of the greatest ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... facts of its local history. To the great Roman conqueror the inhabitants of this part of Britain opposed a resistance, which taught him, as he indirectly confesses, to look back with many a wistful glance toward the coast where he had left his transports, but ill-assured against the ocean or the enemy. Against the Norman conqueror, likewise, when all the rest of the island had yielded implicitly to his sway and to the substitution of feudal for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Friendship; there are amatory explanations of all kinds. When he fails to keep an appointment with a lady on account of the rain—for there were no umbrellas in those days—he likens himself to Leander, wistful on the Sestian shore. He is not always very discreet; Damon's thoughts when "Night's black Curtain o'er the World was spread" were very innocent, but such as we have decided nowadays to say nothing about. It was the fashion of the time ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila had a strange, arresting sort of jaw, a trifle over-accentuated and out of drawing. Her eyes were long, flattened, narrow, the color of bubbles filled with smoke, of a surface brilliance and an inner mistiness—indescribable eyes, clear, very melting, wistful and beautiful under sooty lashes and slender, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sun went in, and the river grew darker, while the town stood out more clearly. Ceaselessly, the younger men gazed towards the town with wistful, gloomy eyes, though silently they remained ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... [SN: Heb. xiii. 20.] who in this also "left us an example, that we should follow His steps." [1 Pet. ii. 22.] Never did man walk more genuinely with men than the Son of Man, whether it was among the needy and wistful crowds in streets or on hill-sides, or at the dinner-table of the Pharisee, or in the homes of Nazareth, Cana, and Bethany. No Christian was ever so "practical" as Jesus Christ. No disciple ever so directly and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... rapid, full of fun, and takes the reader not only to many interesting places in Central America, but in the country as well, where Peggy attends a school for girls. The incidents are cleverly brought out, and Peggy in her wistful way, proves in her many adventures to be a brave girl and an endearing heroine to her ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... with memories, like twilight, and the song of the thrush; even at its least, it had been the glow that lives behind the northern horizon in midsummer, witnessing to the hidden glory, during darkness, or the wistful glimmer of stars. Now, while the sun went higher, and all the hum of life rose, and the cries of the water-birds, the buzz of insects over the bright lake, became more insistent, and the blue and lovely morning spread and strengthened round her, criticism and analysis failed. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Caroline turned a wild, wistful look on the woman as she said this; then she moved a step toward her, and the tones of her voice, as they came through her white lips, were mournful and stormy, like wind ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... the field, the wistful lamb Saw them approach, and ran from side to side The gate, pushing its eager face between The lowest bars, and bleating for pure joy. And Jesus, kneeling by it, fondled with The little creature, that could scarce find how To show its love enough; licking his hands, Then, starting ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Hartmann's retreating figure. Then a slight sound attracted his attention, and he looked up in time to see Kathrien coming downstairs. Her simple white dress held no touch of mourning, yet she was a wistful, pathetic little ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... all this sybaritic store the intruder had to set the figure mirrored by a great cheval-glass—the counterfeit of a jaded shop-girl in shabby, shapeless, sodden garments, her damp, dark hair framing stringily a pinched and haggard face with wistful, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... wistful mother-eyes are blurred With sudden mists, as lingerers stay, And the old dusts are roused and stirred By the warm tear-drops ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... much interested in all this that from time to time I began to pause beside his gate to converse with him. By degrees the timid, suspicious expression wore away, and his eyes looked only wistful, and he spoke of his aches and pains as if it did him good to tell ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Her profile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powdered with gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back from a small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She had taken off her high, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... who are unused to the confinement of a vessel, Mabel cast wistful eyes towards the shore; nor was it long before she expressed a wish that it were possible to land. The Pathfinder was near her at the time, and he assured her that nothing would be easier, as they had a bark canoe on deck, which was the best possible mode of conveyance to go through a surf. After ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not even so much as suggest the possibility of it, but he shook his head with great solemnity as he stood with Fred, and Mrs Bright, and Isobel, at the end of the pier, gazing at the brig, with one eye very much screwed up, and a wistful expression in the other, while the graceful craft spread out her canvas and ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Courtney boy, clean and shining and carrying high his glowing symbol. Came the choir, two by two, the women first, sopranos, altos and Elizabeth. Came the men, bass and tenor, neatly shaved for Sunday morning. Came the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe, a trifle wistful, because always he fell so far below the mark he had set. Came the benediction. Came the slow rising from its knees of the congregation and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... toes are in. See, my foot wishes to enter!" Then something soft, coaxing, infinitely wistful, in Arabian followed by a slap. The next moment Hannah, in tears, rushed back to the kitchen. There was no sound from the hallway. No smiling Tufik presented ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... perhaps as regards her figure, which was agile, rounded, and peculiarly graceful. Her foreign-looking face was unusual, dark-eyed, a somewhat large and very mobile mouth, fair and waving hair, a broad forehead, a sweet and at times wistful face, thoughtful for the most part, but apt to be irradiated by sudden smiles. Not a beautiful woman at all, but ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... like uplands in Eden, Gleam in an afterglow Like a rose-world ruining earthwards— Mystical, wistful, slow! ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... the wistful dark ones, smiled responsively, and Maria Angelina felt a queer tightening within her, as if some one had tied a band ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... thoughts of the world as those of no monarch living had ever done. He was not received with royal honors, though with some generous enthusiasm, by the people. He was looked upon, in high places as that most forlorn being, an unsuccessful adventurer;—so he turned his face, his sad eyes wistful with one last hope, towards the setting sun. Alas, his own ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... very odd thing happened. She found something in the room which she certainly would never have expected. When she came in as usual she saw something small and dark in her chair,—an odd, tiny figure, which turned toward her a little, weird-looking, wistful face. ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the very smallest boys in the party showed signs of a wistful desire to distinguish himself, and they turned their attention to him, pushing at his shoulders while he swung away from them, and hesitated dreamily. He was eventually induced to make furtive expedition, but it was only for a few yards. Then he paused, motionless, ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... soft prophecies of morn Had wrapped the sea in wistful white, A band of men, with faces worn, Clomb inland past a beetling height To find the young chief they adored, Sought eagerly since fall of sun, And now in ghastly change restored.... One raised a torch of ruddy shine, And, kneeling by their leader, one Set ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... wind away the flowing sliver into cans, made answer. She was clad in a dun overall and had a dim scarlet cap of worsted drawn over her white hair. The remains of beauty homed in her brown and wrinkled face; her grey eyes were gentle, and her expression wistful and kindly. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... character of Glahn, the hero, but the tone is more subdued. The madcap youth of genius has realized that the world looks frigidly at its vagaries, and the secretly proud "au moins je suis autre"—more a boast than a confession—gives place to a wistful, apologetic admission of the difference as a fault. Here already we have something of that resignation which comes later to its fulness in the story of the Wanderer ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... oughter said it, anyhow. Well, I s'pose I've got to go write that letter to Keith now. Seein' as how you've come I can't put it off no longer. Goodness only knows, though, what I'm goin' to say," she sighed, as her visitor nodded back a wistful- eyed good-bye. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... honesty of purpose in the blue eyes raised to his, such wistful curves to the sensitive little lips, that Jonathan Green for the first time felt the thrall ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... by the Crown Prince and his nurse. The Prince was a dark, handsome little fellow of four years. His mother had died when he was born, and he had never played with children of his own age, and his face was absurdly wise and wistful; but it lighted with a sweet and grateful smile when anyone showed him kindness or sought to arouse his interest. To the Crown Prince Kalonay was an awful and wonderful being. He was the one person who could make him laugh out ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... Eugene, had the beauty which should have been the girl's. Very tall, very blond, with the straight nose and wistful eyes of the Flora of twenty years ago. "If only Adele could have had his looks," his mother used to say. "They're wasted on a man. He doesn't need them but a girl does. Adele will have to be well-dressed and interesting. And that's ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have had, and so dear to me—Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become like other men. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... that to the attendance officer," said Mrs. Damper in a wistful tone. "But p'r'aps it might get ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quite comfortable," he said (and when he said so he lied), "and the men go very fast. You will be there in no time." So I bundled in somehow, said a wistful good-bye to Boggley, and we started. I can't honestly say I like a doolie. I would rather have been my luggage and gone in the bullock-cart. Whichever way I lay I very soon got an ache in my back. The conduct, too, of ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... eyes were fixed on me, and there was a curiously wistful expression in them. I could not understand what he wanted ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... was merging into the vague, purple shadows of coming dusk. They stood silent, for the most part, and let them go without the usual facetious advice to "Be good to yourselves," and the hackneyed admonition to Chip to keep out of jail if he could. There must have been something very wistful in their faces, for the Little Doctor smiled bravely down upon then from the buggy seat, and lifted up the Kid for a four-toothed smile and an ecstatic "Bye!" accompanied by a vigorous flopping of ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... be soon, too," answered Harry, with a wistful glance toward the north, where, several hundred miles ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... endings," she murmured to herself. "Perhaps for me," she added, with a sudden wistful look out of the bare high window, "a night ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whenever he reported progress to her, that there was a certain sort of repressed excitability about him, a wistful nervousness very foreign to his assured independence and self-confidence, and he several times seemed as if he were going to make some disclosure to her; all of which made his young mistress think that he had something on ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... shore pell-mell and some hurried to the barn for the only means of rescue—an old disused skiff and a leaky, discarded canoe. Others gazed in wistful silence out ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the ugly turtle he rose to his feet. "And they do say to kill it lets a venom into the place it is holt of. I dunno what to do." And in his uncertainty Jacob's eyes sought my face while at the same instant Martha lifted her wistful eyes to mine. It was the instinctive turning of the masses to the domination of my class in the time ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had seen elsewhere, an old fellow with a beard said it was S——, the first secretary, who had insisted on their stopping, and had almost had a fight with everyone about it. The old marine told me that the other men would be damned—he used the word in a wistful sort of way which had nothing profane about it—if they stopped much longer. They wanted other people to share the honours; they did not see why every man should not have a turn at the same duty.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Greg came through the sally-port. In an instant he bounded across the road. He immediately took it upon himself to talk with Belle, and Dick turned to Laura with flushed face and wistful eyes. ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... be regained even by those who have wandered farthest from its beauty and purity. Men and women, with faces seemingly hardened and grown rigid under the impress of vice, that but too correctly reveal the coarse and brutal nature within, often become wistful and tender over some simple flower or luscious fruit that recalls earlier and happier days. These are gifts which offend no prejudices, and inevitably suggest that which is good, sweet, wholesome ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... self—for the bright, eager face that looked back to you from the old lookin'-glass on summer mornin's, when the winder was open out into the orchard, and the May birds was singin' amidst the apple-blows. The red lips parted with a happy smile; the bright, laughin' eyes, sort o' soft too, and wistful— wishful for the good that mebby come to you, and mebby didn't, but which the glowin' face was sure of, on that spring morning with the May birds singin' outside, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... much like a gentle, strong child wandering in Fairyland, melted now by the sweets of child-deep piety in the Adagio Religioso, now leaping down the Polacca Guerricra like a young angel down a ladder from heaven, and roaming wistful and silent and amazed in the solitude of the Prairie, at times leaping and running and shouting, and then sighing and weeping and losing its voice in aerial cadences, until the smiles make rainbows through ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... again in so poor a snare.' A most attractive bait was provided by Sussex in the person of his sister, who had been brought over to Dublin, and who might be won by the great northern chief if he would only come up to the viceregal court to woo her. 'Shane glanced at the tempting morsel with wistful eyes. Had he trusted himself in the hands of Sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing and a rough nuptial knot about his neck. At the last moment a little bird carried the tale to his ear. He had been advertized out of the Pale that the lady was brought over only to entrap him, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... wolf-hound Cork came to meet them here, wagging a wistful tail and lifting questioning eyes. He made no attempt to hinder their advance, obviously regarding them as ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... grew sad, while Thurston rebelled against an instinctive conviction that she knew a wistful expression was becoming to her and was calculated to appeal to ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... noticed that the girl looked haggard, wistful, more spiritual than usual. He was shy of her, and ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... you, I am thankful for the law. It was your voice which spoke it, it came from you. It will keep you near to me all through the black months until you come back. Oh, Hilary!" and the brave argument spoken to enhearten herself and him ended suddenly in a most wistful cry. ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... way it goes with some people," said Lance, the first time he spoke of it; and Roy fancied he detected a wistful note ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... high as the dining-table used to plant himself in a position to watch all my motions at dinner. Being alone, and either reading or thinking, at first I did not observe him; but as soon as I did, and noticed that he pursued each rising and descent of my fork as the poet 'with wistful eyes pursues the setting sun,' that unconsciously he mimicked and rehearsed all the notes and appoggiaturas that make up the successive bars in the music of eating one's dinner, I was compelled to rise, and say, 'My good fellow, I can't stand this; will you do me the favour to accept ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of infinite and wistful yearning. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... this lady, still so young and so beautiful, so unlovingly entreated, and so far away from the home of her happy childhood. Yet she bore all patiently and without complaint or murmur, only at times when she looked from terrace or tower her gaze travelled beyond the deep pine-woods, and in a wistful day-dream she retraced, beyond the great lake and the Black Forest, all the long way she had ridden so joyfully with her dear husband ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... marked in the womb by the troubles her mother bore," said old Margery, shaking her head. "She never had the ways of other babies, but hath ever that wistful look—and her eyes are brighter than they should be. Mistress Winslow will never ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... won't mind if I come after them to-morrow, would you?" she begged with big wistful eyes. "The stairway is so dark and so narrow in our house, I'm afraid ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... gracious, sweet, kindly sunlight that falls only between nights of pain. The bright and chivalric passages of "Boris," the music called forth by the memories of feudal Russia, and the glory of the Czars, give a deeper, stranger, even more wistful tone to the great gray pile of which they are a part. "Khovanchtchina" is never so much the tragedy, the monument to beings and cultures superseded and cast aside in the relentless march of life, as in the scene when Prince Ivan Khovansky meets his death. For at the moment that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... nimbly to the floor, with a maddening display of a silken ankle, advancing to the criminologist with a wistful playfulness which brought a flush of sudden feeling, to the face of Reginald Warren. Helene was carrying out his directions to the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Dallas, before whose eyes was rising, not the gold, for he seemed to be looking right through that, but the wistful, deeply-lined face of a grey-haired woman at a window, watching ever for the lost ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... more numerous. When the shadows of evening fall their thoughts "lightly turn" to the tired shop-girl, just released from her long hours of standing and serving, and the surveillance perhaps of a tyrannical shop-walker who makes her life a burden. Her cheap black dress, pale face, and wistful eyes betray her. She is so tired, so hungry for a little recreation, something to give a little brightness and colour to her grey life, so unprotected and weak to resist—how easy to compass her destruction! ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... was reached at last, Half hid in lilacs down the lane; She pushed it wide, and, as she past, A wistful look she backward cast, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... tried to lift a leg and was surprised when it didn't move. He looked down at it. Completely bemused, he peered down at his crimson chest. He looked up at Taber without anger, only with surprise. A distinct expression of wistful regret crossed his face as ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... be a dream alone," she said, with wistful lightness. "It's far too much like being a ghost. I'm going to be a friend, if you'll let me. And I'm going to write to you, if you will tell me where. You won't find it so very easy to make a mere memory of me. And when you come home—When ARE you ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thought Miriam, with a picture before her eyes of the little grey-gowned thing with the wistful, ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... Tony had gone in, the clouds parted and the moonlight burst with a sudden glory over the sea. In the moonglade, which reached from my feet to the far horizon, the waters heaved and curled, most silvery, as if they were alive. That was the wistful gentle sea from which, but a moment or two before, we had wrested back our property—that sea of little strivings within a large peace. I thought at the time that there was surely a God, and that as surely He was there. For which reason, I was glad, when I came in house, that ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... hinted at hurt wrinkled the candor of the Morrison's countenance. "I hoped it wasn't mere business that brought you—all!" He dwelt on the last word with wistful ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... sun sets, and evening is drowned in electric lights; Arm-in-arm, they wander under the trees Everywhere meeting others, wandering arm-in-arm In the same wistful wonder, seeking ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... the monarch of English poetry must have often paced, watching the Antonios and Shylocks of his day, the anxious wistful faces of the debtors or the embarrassed, and the greedy anger of the creditors. In the Bourse he may first have thought over to himself the beautiful lines in the "Merchant of Venice" (act i.), where he so wonderfully epitomises the vicissitudes of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... paleface, fair as dawn itself, but smeared with color that was coming away in blotches, emerged from the process of washing and gazed with his big, brown eyes at his foster-parent, in a way that made the miner weak with surprise. Such a pretty and wistful little armful of a boy he was certain had never been seen before ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... more. His whole countenance seemed instinct and inspired with a divine life: his chest swelled proudly; his eyes glowed: on his forehead was writ the majesty of a man who can dare to be noble! He turned to meet the eyes of Ione—earnest, wistful, fearful—he kissed her fondly, strained her warmly to his breast, and in a moment more he had left ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... with tender gravity shook it gently, very gently. As he did so, a mistiness came over his bright, wild eyes, which, when he had turned again to go, must—if ever Indian warrior weeps—have gathered into a tear. With wistful eyes, Burl and Bushie followed the swiftly receding form of their red friend, who never turned to look at them till he had gained the crest of a distant hill to the north. Here he faced about and remained for many moments gazing back at them; his graceful figure, his wild ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... bag, walked by her brother's side, and Snip-snap behaved in his usual erratic fashion, now running before, now lingering behind, now stopping to exchange a greeting with a fellow-dog, or to sniff with watering jaws and wistful eyes at a butcher's shop, but always returning faithfully to his charge, and always raising an inquiring face to see if Dickory was quite comfortable. She was thoroughly so, and when she crowed, and laughed, and chuckled, Flossy wondered they had never thought of taking her out before. The sun ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... moment that he was a man with the toils of the law closing upon him, forgot that his success and even his liberty were at stake. He saw only a girl with the hunger of love in her wistful eyes, and knew that it lay in his power to bring back the laughter and the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... evil forebodings) and time never had any value. He was afraid of death, and hoped he would die before the white men were ready to take his country from him. He crossed the river frequently (with never less than ten boats crammed full of people), in the wistful hope of extracting some information on the subject from his own white man. There was a certain chair on the veranda he always took: the dignitaries of the court squatted on the rugs and skins between the furniture: ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... hanging smoothly and evenly all round. I looked up at her face. I cannot now describe the features beyond saying that the whole face was refined and pleasing, and that in the expression there was certainly nothing to alarm or repel. It was rather wistful and beseeching, the look in the eyes anxious, the lips slightly parted, as if she were on the point of speaking. I have since thought that if I had spoken, if I could have spoken—for I did make one effort to do so, but no audible words ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... our fate's one ship in twain Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart. O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart. I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place, Where, by one waving of a wistful wing, My soul could straightway tremble face to face With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring — Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale, To round and redden for another kiss — Would not my ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Emma was not long in appearing; the hue of her face was troubled, for she had deceived herself with the belief that it was Richard who knocked at the door. What more natural than for him to have come on Christmas Eve? She approached Alice with a wistful look, not venturing to utter any question, only hoping that some good news might have been brought her. Long watching in the sick room had given her own complexion the tint of ill-health; her eyelids were swollen and ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... earnestly. He heard the little iron gate open and close. He watched them disappear behind the hedge of laurels. A puff of breeze brought the faint odour of roses to him, and with it a sudden host of memories. His eyes grew wistful. He felt something tugging at his heartstrings. Only a few years ago life here had seemed so wonderful a thing—only a few years, but with all the passions and struggles of a lifetime crowded into them. The maelstrom was there still, but he himself had crept out of it. What was ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... among the bushes behind, and turning his head he saw Elfride following him. The fair girl looked in his face with a wistful smile of hope, too forcedly hopeful to displace the firmly established dread beneath it. His severe words of the previous night still sat heavy ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... say, however, that I know the English lady. I know her—many, many of her—and I have met her a-many times. I know the enchanted fairyland in which her wistful memory loves to linger. Often and often have I watched her father's wardian-case grow into "papa's hot-houses;" the plain brick house that he leases, out Notting Hill way, swell into "our family mansion," and the cottage ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... way—a smile that did not instantaneously flash, but darted out of the corner of her eye, and slipped along the slightly parted lips, as if afraid of being caught, and vanished, leaving a wistful face. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... a long time since I began to lie here. I am afraid it will be many months before I get well again. I think I shall resign myself to proper invalids' fashions. I will have some pretty lace caps, Laura, and we will have more books." Then a wistful expression crossed her face and she said: "I would give anything on earth to walk, even only for ten minutes, by the side of the river; as I lie here I think so much about it. I know it in all ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... into her cheeks suddenly, and then as quickly receded, leaving a wistful expression in her eyes. She sighed. "It has been my dream for a long time. I have always imagined that it is more wonderful than Alpha; but you know there is no chance ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the tenants within their impassive shelter. In the whole configuration of the heartless, uncharacterized place there was not one gracious inequality to lean against; not a ledge to rest elbow upon; not a panel, not even a stove-pipe hole, to become dearly familiar to the wistful eye; not so much as a genial crack in the plastering, or a companionable rattle in a casement, or a little human obstinacy in a door to base some kind of an acquaintance upon and make one less lonely. Through the grim, untwinkling windows, gaping sullenly the wrong way with iron shutters, came a ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... aside from the men—and from the other girl. She was pale, her eyes were big and fright-laden, and since Sanderson's comings she had been looking at him with an intense, wondering and wistful gaze, her hands clasped over her breast, the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... gazed from the old schoolroom With a wistful look, of a long June day, When on my cheek was the hectic bloom Caught of Mischief, as I presume— He had such a "partial" way, It seemed, toward me.—And again I thought Of a probable likelihood to be Kept in after school—for a girl was caught ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... came here with other voyagers to your colony of New Amsterdam. But there they gave me no welcome, because I was a Jew;—even in this new country some there are who hate the children of Jacob." He leaned forward, his thin face alight with a wistful hope. "But there they told me of a new colony in the far wilderness,—a colony where men of every race, of every creed, were welcome. Far off in the swamps and forests, they said, a man named Roger Williams had established a refuge ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... her from his pew—the little figure in its sorrowful black, the shining hair hanging in a plait no longer frizzed at the end, the chastened droop of the young lips, the wistful sadness of the blue eyes. He could hardly realize it was the little scatterbrain girl who had written that letter, and stolen away through the darkness to meet ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... so with Eleanor after her father passed from the Ranch House that night. Afterwards, she knew that she had noticed the wistful look on his face; but the memory of it did not come to the surface of thought till she heard the click of Calamity's door in the basement and recollected his words; "Keep Calamity by you." Also, at that very moment, a great gray racing motor car swerved out across the white bridge from the Senator's ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... impressive sense of the reality of future glory. Paul gave himself time to think of heaven, of the home of God, of his own home when time should be no more. He loved to contemplate "the glory that shall be revealed." He mused in wistful expectancy of the day "when Christ who is our life shall be manifested," and when we also "shall be manifested with him in glory." He pondered the thought of death as "gain," as transferring him to conditions in which he would be "at home with the Lord," ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... leading to the sidewalk Fred was halted by a touch upon his arm. He had forgotten Ginger, but there she stood with that childish, almost wistful, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... bent her troubled sweet old face over the handle of her parasol, and did not say anything for a few minutes. "It is all very well as long as you are young," she said, with a wistful look; "and somehow you young creatures are so much handier than we used to be. Our little Lucy, you know, that I can remember quite a baby—I am twice as old as she is," cried Miss Wodehouse, "and she is twice as much use in the world as I. Well, it is all very strange. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... all that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red woolen nightcap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but didn't seem to recognise me; and, just as I was getting back ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... were little they kept sending me snap-shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes—and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me—even when life was at its loudest ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... different—the ice no longer single glittering glaciers, but spread out on every hand? Is it not these same fleecy clouds far away in the blue expanse that the eye looks for at home on a bright summer day? Sailing on these, fancy steers its course to the land of wistful longing. And it is just at these glittering glaciers in the distance that we direct our longing gaze. Why should not a summer day be as lovely here? Ah, yes! it is lovely, pure as a dream, without desire, without ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... used his fingers and modelling tools more calmly; his gaze was less wistful and he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at the tap o' their voice. But you'll maybe speak to her some of the things ye spak' to us, Miss Cam'ell. Ye'll have one less at the school now, ye see," he added, smiling sadly; and then turning with a look of tender pity on his grandmother, who watched him with wistful eyes, as if she knew that his lips were moving for her, he said, "Oh, tell her to listen to his voice, and let the sound into her heart. He was aye able to mak' deaf folk hear, wasn't he, Miss Cam'ell?" said Geordie, with a bright smile as he turned ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... Gabriel?" asked Rebecca in anguish of soul, while she laid both her hands upon his shoulders, and gazed upon him with wistful glances. He would have avoided her eyes, but could not; his looks must sink deep into those glittering, black eyes. Deep they looked, deep as the sea, and he thought to himself that a secret could be buried there, and rest secure in the bottom ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... white scolloped frills to-day; 'Neath her hat of straw the Peasant Primrose sitteth, Nor permitteth Any of her kindred present, Specially the milk-sweet cowslip, E'er to leave the tranquil shade; By the hedges, Or the edges Of some stream or grassy glade, They look upon the scene half wistful, half afraid. ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the clouds melted away, the sun came out, and the purple haze of Indian summer took possession of air and sky. In an hour the weather passed from the crisp and sparkling freshness of winter, to the wistful melancholy ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... help you," said Panoria. And the little girls, fixing their wistful eyes on the tempting fruit, followed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... "I am told it nearly every hour of the day." She spoke in a wistful tone. "Sometimes," she added, "I could almost wish I were back in the lower school, where I was looked up to by the smaller girls and had a right ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... taller than the woman who had come first, and must have been well over six feet. His clean-shaven, aquiline face was of a dead pallor. There were dark shadows and a disagreeable fulness under his gray, wistful eyes, which seemed to appeal for help without any hope of receiving it. He walked wearily and slouchingly, stooping a little, as if he were too tired or bored to take the trouble of throwing ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Alison's companion of the coach, a woman of middle age, inclining to be stout; but her face was thin and lined, belying her comfortable aspect,—a wistful face which had known much sorrow, and had still much ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... relief which this brought to our Lord, the keen satisfaction He felt as He heard it distinctly and solemnly uttered as the creed of the Twelve; as He heard what hitherto He could only have gathered from casual expressions, from wistful awe-struck looks, from overheard questionings and debatings with one another. You see how at once, He steps on to a new footing with them, as He cordially, and with intense gratitude, says to Peter, "Blessed art thou, ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... outdo her thought Beatrice, for Nelly had been to Italy the year before and did nothing but boast of it all day. So the two girls arm in arm started for the moors. Nelly Reeves was a tall good looking girl, slightly pretty, but with none of the wistful beauty about her that was so clearly stamped on all Beatrice Langton's features. She had black hair and what she considered beautiful eyes, though they really were small and vacant ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... crowd neared the steps, Luba went over to him. Garbitsch looked up, with a pleasant, somehow wistful smile on his face. "Hello, Luba, ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hauled me over the coals just now for not doing, if only in gratitude for all the comfort that dog has been to me since I left home. I suppose I'm an ungrateful brute—more so than Wolf, eh, old fellow?"—patting the latter's head again as he looked up into his master's face with his wistful brown eyes, saying as plainly as he could in doggy language how much he would like to be able to speak, so that he could express his affectionate feelings ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... delivered himself and walked away, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop confirmed the story of his own disgrace, speaking in a low but clear voice, and with a gentle and wistful smile. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... The beautiful central figure is a girl child standing without self-consciousness by blooming primroses. Modeled faintly on the pedestal are the parents, from whose upturned faces and uplifted hands the primroses seem to spring. In the friezes, wistful old people are borne onward to Destiny in boats manned by joyous chubby children, unconscious of their priceless gift of youth to which their elders look back ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... an interesting problem whether Balzac, in spite of his brave words, realised that Madame Hanska no longer cared for him. When he wrote that he was sure that none of these deferments proceeded from want of love, did he pen these words with a wistful attempt to prove to himself that the fact was as he stated? After eighteen months in the same house with Madame Hanska, could he really believe that only material difficulties kept her apart from him? Or did he at last understand: and though ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... died slowly from the girl's eyes. In its place there came an expression, more wistful perhaps than anything else. When she spoke again the irritation ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... hay, where the curious grasshoppers peered at her with round horny eyes, and velvet-bodied spiders scurried across her fair curls with six-legged speed, and the robin eyed her from a bough above with wistful glances, till Roger must needs carry her tenderly out of their neighborhood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... sun lighted up the yellow leaves of the maples along the sidewalk. The wind blew strongly up from the rivers. She passed a stand with some withered apples and stale cakes, and put her hand in her pocket, then with a wistful look went on. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... along the pike, with buggy top let down, And ribbons sailing out behind, when Eph. would drive to town, The envy of the country boys, and many maidens fair A-casting wistful glances at the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... this year—a Wednesday—these mixed impressions and longings presented themselves with unwonted force and iteration. So wistful and sudden a craving for snapping all ties and hurrying away was after all spasmodic, perhaps whimsical; but it was quickened by that sultry, melting air of the parks and the tropical look of the streets. The pavements seemed to glare fiercely like ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... at him without speaking. There was an inquiring, wistful expression in her face, as if she longed to unbosom herself to someone, and yet had no one close enough, intimate enough in whom she could confide. Presently ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... each there was much which was of its nature incomprehensible to the other and which, of necessity, must remain so. Slowly there came a different look upon the girl's face. Her eyes softened and were more wistful that he had ever thought they could be. Her breast rose and fell in a profound sigh. All of the triumph and mockery ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... the West Indies is like water in the desert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our islands. The cause is this. The French colonists, whether Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no wistful looks toward France; they have not even a packet of their own; they marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies and the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is quite different; except a few regular Creoles ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... mine were in the same building and on the same floor. As we met on the stairs, he would nod to me and pass on. I noticed that he was indeed "failing." He looked-weary and sad, and the cold or defiant gleam in his steel-gray eyes, was changed into a wistful and painful expression that was very pathetic. I did not dare to invade his reserve with any tender of sympathy. Joyless and hopeless as he might be, I felt instinctively that he would play out his drama alone. Perhaps ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... she said, bending forward to lay a wistful, penitent hand on that of Miss Sessions. "I'll try to understand better. I reckon I'm right dumb, and you'll have to have a lot of patience with me. I don't rightly know what to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... faded. As I had hitherto dreamed of knight-errants, of corsairs and of outlaws, I now dreamed of cowboys, of gold-seekers, of beach-combers. Fancy painted scenes in which I, too, should play a rousing part. I read avidly all I could find dealing with the Far West, and ever my wistful gaze roved over the grey sea. The spirit of Romance beaconed to me. I, too, would adventure in the stranger lands, and face their perils and brave their dangers. The joy of the thought exulted in my veins, and scarce could I bide the day when the roads of chance and change ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... times at night and in the morning? I always thought it must be so nice to wake up and find another girl there ready to play and talk." Eyebright's tone was a little wistful. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay, against the island of Ometepec. Day after day she lay there immovable, with her white side gleaming dimly across the water, and far out of the reach of us wistful filibusters;—for although there was a small brig of General Walker's floating beside the pier which ran out into the lake, yet it was out of repair; and, in any state, the wind blew too strongly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... loving looks that sometimes passed between them when they were alone together. The face that lay on the pillow was white and withered, like a crumpled white rose. The dark eyes had a pleading, wistful look, and were wonderfully soft withal. Miss Rejoice had white hair too, but it had a warm yellowish tinge, very different from the clear white of Miss Vesta's. It curled, too, in little ringlets round her beautiful old face. In short, Miss Vesta was splendidly handsome, while no ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... day, when she had watched in silence the girl's sweet face, and noticed its half-sad, half-wistful expression, 'what is the matter with you? You are fretting about something. Tell me what it is. Do you not wish to go to Troon with us, or would you rather go to Bourhill? Do tell us what you would ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... walked for exercise; these three garret bedrooms" (where his three [six] copyists sat and wrote) "were the place he kept his—pupils in": Tempus edax rerum! Yet ferax also: for our friend now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical: "I let it all in lodgings, to respectable gentlemen; by the quarter or the month; it's all one to me."—"To me also," whispered the ghost of Samuel, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... slim figure, and there was more than mere prettiness in her exquisite small features, her thick dark hair, her clear white skin with a tracery of blue veins in the temples. Her high-bridged nose and firm chin suggested some force of character, but that suggestion was counteracted by her wistful tender mouth, with drooping underlip. The face, on the whole, was a paradoxical one, containing elements of strength and weakness, and the eyes were the index to ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... its morning brightness, with the purple luring mountains, and the smiling sky. Go back on the train that would stop at the station in half an hour, with the desert there, and the wonderful land, and its strange, wistful people, and not even see a glimpse of him she loved? Go back with the letter still in her possession and her message still ungiven? Never! Surely she was not afraid to stay long enough to send for him. The woman who had fed them and sheltered them for the night would ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... the days when no gray car appeared she faced the situation, took stock, as it were, and grew heavy-eyed and wistful. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the day he paid her a courtship so tender, so deferential, so loving, it might have been a votary addressing his saint, a courtier waiting on his queen; and as the hour advanced, and the time of departure drew near, his attentions became yet more tender, more wistful. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... reader's appetite is largely in his eyes, and it is very natural for one who is born with a taste for books to gather them about him at first indiscriminately, on the hearsay recommendation of fame, before he really knows what his own individual tastes are, or are going to be, and in that wistful survey I have imagined, our eyes will fall, too, with some amusement, on not a few volumes to which we never have had any really personal relation, and which, whatever their distinction or their value for others, were never meant for us. The way to do with such books ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... my hand on the animal's neck with a commanding pressure; he lay down at once, only now and then raising his large wistful brown eyes to my face as though he wondered what had changed it so greatly. But no disguise could deceive his intelligence—the faithful creature knew his master. Meantime I thought Nina looked pale; certainly the little jeweled ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... kissed her, and disappeared into the house. Sydney turned blushing to the Baron, and laughed at his wistful look. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... are darkest and days most dark; when the sun seems farthest from the planet and cheers it with lowest heat; when the fields lie shorn between harvest-time and seed-time and man turns wistful eyes back and forth between the mystery of his origin and the mystery of his end,—then comes the great pageant of the winter solstice, then ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... a sort of Pantagruelian serenity; a serenity produced by no crude optimism but by some happy inward knowledge of a neglected hope. The great Rabelaisian motto, "bon espoir y gist au fond!" seems to emanate from the most wistful and poignant of his pages. He pities the unpitied, he redeems the commonplace, he makes the ordinary as if it were not ordinary, and by the sheer genius of his imagination he throws an indescribable glamour over the "little things" of the darkest ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... magnetic in his gaze, for she raised her white lids just then, and met the earnest, wistful look bent upon her. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... maid rose up and took Some drops of water from the foaming rill, And gaz'd upon me with a wistful look. ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... pine trees. Beyond lay the sea. As he sat there with folded arms, he was surely a fatalist. The question as to whether or not he should ever reach it, should ever find himself really bound for home, was one which seemed to trouble him slightly enough. He thought with a faint, wistful interest of the various ports of call, of the days which might pass, each one bringing him nearer the end. He suffered himself, even, to think of that faint blur upon the horizon, the breath of the spicy winds, the strange home perfumes of the bay, as he ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... left. You see, Jack, mother's heart is bound up in you, and she's getting to be an old woman with but few ties. I might manage to comfort your own mother; but you are so young, Jack. There will be many years before you, doubtless; and if you could give a few to us," with a wistful, loving look. "Now, if you wanted ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... she was within a few rods of the strange acting man, who, hearing her rapid steps, stopped, and turning round with a wistful, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... so small," was his wistful thought, "and heaven is so big; but I'll do something big enough to get, 'Well done good and faithful servant,' said to me when I die, I hope. And I'll try every ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... sobered and regretful, began to make searching inquiries, he learned that there were a score, or half a hundred men for whom Old Crele had acted as a hunter's and fisher's guide. These sportsmen had come from far and wide during many years, and both Crele and her wistful mother admitted that many of them had shown signs of interest and even indications of affection for the girl as a child and as a pretty maid, daughter of ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... raised my face in her hands. I was sitting on a low stool so as to get the last of the light for my embroidery. She pushed the hair back from my forehead—I wear it brushed up like Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt—and she looked and looked into my eyes. If possible there was something pained and wistful in her face. "My beautiful Ambrosine," she said, and that was all. I felt I was blushing all over my cheeks. "Beautiful Ambrosine." Then it must be true if grandmamma said it. I had often thought so—perhaps—myself, but I was not sure if other people ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... had but little anxiety as to the result. I had caught him looking at us on board the steamer, when we were together, openly lovemaking, and his expression then had been wistful, but not unkind nor unfavourable. Therefore, I had ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... Fred wanted me to ask if you had a large safety-pin." Marjorie looked a little wistful, as if she did not quite like ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... meeting" at which he had sought to canvass his spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of the existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium. Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a self-accuser in finespun interpretations ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... very slowly, gazing scornfully at the flowers and trees, and every evening, if the weather permitted, he would sit apart on a bench and gaze at the sinking sun, turning his dark face toward it until it disappeared. And as he gazed at the setting sun, an obscure, wistful sorrow glowed in his dark eyes. For he saw palm trees, that seemed to melt into the sun, so that only their tops showed, edged with flame, while their trunks were invisible—and elephants, stepping proudly, with their little brown mahouts upon ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... cadence at the "Crucifixus." Another passage, equal to any ever written, begins at "Et unam Sanctam Catholicam." There is a curious energy in the repetition of "Et Apostolicam Ecclesiam," and then a wistful sweetness and tenderness at "Confiteor unum baptisma." Again, the whole of the "Agnus" is divine, the repeated "miserere nobis," and the passage beginning at the "Dona nobis pacem," possessing that ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness with which those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed them in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ran by the way-side. Georgie dipped his handkerchief in it, and kneeling beside him, tried to wash away the mud and blood from his face with the utmost tenderness and gentleness, saying all the time words of kindness and concern, and giving him those looks of deep, wistful pity. ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... the incense of flattery, though the natural inheritance, and constant resource, from time immemorial, of the Dedicator, to me offer nothing but the wistful regret that I dare not invoke their aid. Sinister views would be imputed to all I could say; since, thus situated, to extol your judgment, would seem the effect of art, and to celebrate your impartiality, be ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... more, and very soon afterwards he rode away. But not before, as every day, I had noticed that wistful wandering glance up at the darkened window of the room, where sad and alone, save for kindly Mrs. Tod, the young ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Verena's incurable softness could reproach—with not allowing enough. Olive didn't appear to understand that, while Matthias Pardon drew that picture and tried to hold her hand (this image was unfortunate), she had given one long, fixed, wistful look, through the door he opened, at the bright tumult of the world, and then had turned away, solely for her friend's sake, to an austerer probation and a purer effort; solely for her friend's, that is, and that of the whole enslaved sisterhood. The fact remained, at ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... the Omnipotent, in slumber bound, Nods till the piteous Trump of Judgment sound. Perchance Leviathan of the deep sea Would lease a lost mermaiden's grot to me, There of your beauty we would joyance make— A music wistful for the sea-nymph's sake: Haply Elijah, o'er his spokes of fire, Cresting steep Leo, or the heavenly Lyre, Spied, tranced in azure of inanest space, Some eyrie hostel, meet for human grace, Where two might happy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... Don't be alarmed; I can't—yet. But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... The sun rose brightly, and its gleam Fell on that hapless bed, And tinged with light each shapeless beam Which roofed the lowly shed; When, looking up with wistful eye, The Bruce beheld a spider try His filmy thread to fling From beam to beam of that rude cot; And well the insect's toilsome lot ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... aureola about his head. Cristobal looked at this picture with reverent delight; and, to his surprise, the Holy Child returned his gaze: wherever he went, the sweet, sorrowful eyes followed him. There was a wondrous charm in that pleading glance. Why was it so wistful? What had ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... looked up at her again, with the same dominating, wistful entreaty in his brown eyes. She lowered her head until her cheek rested against his, and his arm went upward and around ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... she recommenced, with a half wistful, half speculative air, "whether I should ask to have a peep at the place ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... her fourteenth year sedately, to the sound of Evangeline. Her upright body, her lifted, delicately obstinate, rather wistful face expressed her small, conscious determination to be good. She was silent with emotion when Mrs. Hancock told her she was ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
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