Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Yawn" Quotes from Famous Books



... spelling-book, and, calling Charley into the middle of the floor, pronounced one row of words after another for him to spell, until several pages had been gone over and not a single word missed, greatly to the pride and admiration of the father. But by nine o'clock the fire got low, and the family began to yawn. It was time to go to bed, and, without saying good-night, the different members retired to their allotted quarters,—Mr. and Mrs. Sapp to the bed by the fireplace, Jack and Charley to one bed in the back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... seem'd, an adder all on fire, As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. In that part, whence our life is nourish'd first, One he transpierc'd; then down before him fell Stretch'd out. The pierced spirit look'd on him But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn'd, As if by sleep or fev'rous fit assail'd. He ey'd the serpent, and the serpent him. One from the wound, the other from the mouth Breath'd a thick smoke, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... the timber, too, are strange. Kangaroo and wallaby are as fond of grass as the sheep, and after a pelican's yawn there are few things funnier to witness than the career of an 'old man' kangaroo, with his harem after him, when the approach of a buggy disturbs the family at their afternoon meal. Away they go, the little ones cantering ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... middle of the afternoon she saw with joy that it had lulled, and though very cold, was so bright and calm that she might venture. She had eagerly opened the kitchen door to go up and get ready, when a long weary yawn from her old grandmother made her look back. The old lady had laid her knitting in her lap and bent her face down to her hand, which she was rubbing across her brow, as if to clear away the tired feeling that had settled there. Ellen's conscience instantly brought up Alice's words, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... thousand," he repeated thoughtfully. "Yet think what that one may mean—a walking drama, a tragedy, a comedy, an epitome of life or death. There is more to be read in the face of that one than in the three hundred pages of the novel over which we yawn ourselves to sleep. Here is the train! Now let us watch the people together—that is, if you really mean that you have no ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... his solace, there was now comparative silence. Two women's voices talked together, and now and then a guitar was touched by a wandering hand. Isabel had just put up her handkerchief to conceal her first yawn, when the gentlemen, odorous of cigars, returned to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... right," said Larry; "shows their sense! You and I are what Father Greer and the rest of them would consider rotten bad Catholics, and I believe they know it!" He got up from the limping old rocking-chair and stretched himself, with a yawn that prolonged itself into a howl. "Oh Dark Rosaleen!—or Kathleen-ni-Houlihan—or anything else you like to call yourself—if you only knew how really and sincerely devoted I am to you! I believe I'm a perfectly single-minded Irish patriot, and ye you won't believe in me, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... sad for him. He lags the long bright morning through, Ever so tired of nothing to do; He moons and mopes the livelong day, Nothing to think about, nothing to say; Up to bed with his candle to creep, Too tired to yawn, too tired to sleep: Poor Tired ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... yawn, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding turned back to the room, which was bright with the rich golden light that poured in from the suspended globes of the cold ato-light that illuminated the snow-covered city. With a distasteful grimace, he seated himself before a broad, paper-littered ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson

... to talk about it yet," added Wilton, with a yawn, for the wild scheme seemed so far off to him that he could not enter into ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... the Countess Zoya sat apart talking together until nearly midnight. Finally, with a yawn, Zoya suggested that they try to break up the party. For a little while they looked on. Not understanding the game of baccarat, Nina watched the faces ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... got up with a yawn, watching her approvingly as she crossed the tent. The easy swing of her boyish figure and the defiant carriage of her head reminded him of one of his own thoroughbred horses. She was as beautiful and as wild as they were. And as he broke them so would he break her. She was nearly tamed now, but ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... it were not for that ride to-morrow, I could sleep all day," added Eleanor, hiding a yawn. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... fall upon hers, and looked into her eyes. The Princess stifled a yawn. This country style of love-making was a thing which she had ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... coloured advertisements. The work is all done standing; the hours are from seven until six, with half an hour at noon, and holiday at one thirty on Saturdays. It is to feed a machine that I am paid three dollars a week. The expression is admirably chosen. The machine's iron jaws yawn for food; they devour all I give, and when by chance I am slow they snap hungrily at my hand and would crush my fingers did I not snatch them away, feeling the first cold clutch. It is nervous work. Each leaf to be printed must be handled twice; 5,000 circulars or bill-heads mean 10,000 gestures ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... liked being a great actress, and how soon she would begin to storm because that photographer hadn't sent the proofs. The young woman understood this, and deigned to smile at it, but Madeline yawned a very polite and sleepy yawn, and closed her eyes. Van Bibber moved up closer, and she leaned over until her bare shoulder touched his arm, and while the woman buttoned on her absurdly small shoes, she let her curly head fall on his elbow and rest there. Any number ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... the world are you doing, Vernie?" Angie paused in the library door, stifling a yawn daintily as she slipped her evening ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... number of the unfortunate negroes. The operation was nearly completed, when we felt another terrific shock vibrate through the ship. Again and again she struck. We had just time to spring up the main-hatchway, followed by the howling terrified blacks, when the sides of the ship seemed to yawn asunder; a foaming wave rushed towards us, and at the same moment a vivid flash of lightning showed us the shore, not ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... vehemence was intense, he did not succeed in making any impression upon his companion, who with a yawn that threatened to dislocate his jaws replied: "Perhaps you are right; but I am going to bed. This need not prevent you from searching around, however; and if you find ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... acted with simple cunning. He had remained talking pugilism with Keggs in the pantry till a prodigious yawn from his host had told him that the time was come for the breaking up of the party. Then, begging Keggs not to move, as he could find his way out, he had hurried to the back door, opened and shut ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... enter to his chamber And suddenly touch him, Would he fade to a thin mist, Or glow into a fire-ball, Or burst like a punctured light-globe? It is impossible that he would merely yawn and rub And ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... on his feet and smothers a yawn. "All very interesting, I'm sure," says he; "but really, you know, Pyramid Gordon's theories on such ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... see me, my friends?" he asked, in a gentle but sad voice. "Do you not look down wonderingly where you saw a cheerful, smiling king, upon the now bent, shrunken old man, cold and phlegmatic, who seldom speaks, and then causes every one to yawn? Oh, where have you fled, beautiful spring-time of life—wherein once we used to enliven our conversations with the wit of the Athenians, and the jest fluttered upon our lips as we glided through life in the bold enjoyment of youth? Banished is the dance, and I creep about, leaning ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... prow, Parted were the azure waves, And I saw where, far below, Yawn the vast deep's ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... of being taken off, and held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window? A man must have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be called together, like fools, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... two the chap on watch began to yawn, then to nod. Pretty soon he stretched himself on the floor, facing us, pistol in hand. For a while he supported himself on his elbow, then laid his head on his arm, blinking like an owl. I performed an occasional snore, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... two "champions" meet. In the silence which followed, the Judge was looking attentively at the back of the Colonel, and thinking that the old thief was getting about down to skin and bone. He turned with a yawn to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... The patients yawn, Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... granite rock, Else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. A murky vapour thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan. The roots upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the, wreck-strewn ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... dissolv'd, or an extinguish'd sun; (Ye sublunary worlds, awake, awake! Ye rulers of the nation, hear, and shake!) Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day; In sudden night all earth's dominions lay; Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend; Eternal mountains, like their cedars, bend: The valleys yawn, the troubled ocean roar, And break the bondage of his wonted shore; A sanguine stain the silver moon o'erspread; Darkness the circle of the sun invade; From inmost heaven incessant thunders roll, And the strong echo bound from pole to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... differ," said Stafford dryly. Rising with a yawn, he went on: "Half the marital troubles one hears about are the fault of the wife. She is often too exacting, too fond of meddling in her husband's affairs. A man who respects himself bends to no one—not even to his wife." With another ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... already finished playing, and was just about to yawn, now cannot in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know whether she wants to be angry or to laugh. She has a steady visitor, some little old man in a high station, with perverted erotic habits. The entire establishment makes fun ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... awkwardly-constructed stanza, a female, uncomely and ungraceful, is represented as standing in the attitude of a yawn, not indicated by the gaping mouth, but by the contorted person, and arms twisted behind the back. She is close to a stained-glass window, whose gaudy colours are challenged by her own bright blue dress, the object of the artist throughout appearing to be violent opposition, not harmony. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... with a cramp in my leg that I dared not stir to relieve, or a tickling in the small of my back from which there was no escape, or a cobweb on my face I had not the courage to brush away. I have felt sleep taking possession of me, yet daring neither to yawn, nor nod my head, nor wink my eyes. I have stared fixedly at the gas, or the old china ornament on the mantelpiece, till my eyes became watery with the effort and I have suffered all the tortures of a cold in the head without the possibility either of sniffing ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... to weave himself garlands from the flowers that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no button-hole. Then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and wish himself back in his friends' studios in London. I almost pitied the wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had never been more wretched. "Why," I asked, "was your mouth not always full of the 'Greek spirit,' and did you not mock the Christians ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... are a credit to our southern chivalry." Miss Rathburn suppressed a yawn with the tips of her ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... raging winds root up the boiling deep, And, with Destruction big, o'er Gotham sweep; Let rains rush down, till Faith, with doubtful eye, Looks for the sign of mercy in the sky; Let Pestilence in all her horrors rise; Where'er I turn, let Famine blast my eyes; Let the earth yawn, and, ere they've time to think, In the deep gulf let all my subjects sink Before my eyes, whilst on the verge I reel; Feeling, but as a monarch ought to feel, 310 Not for myself, but them, I'll kiss the rod, And, having own'd the justice of my God, Myself with firmness ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... brazenly forward, deliberately calling attention to myself when there was no need. Oh, it was sickening! I hated myself, I hated with all my heart the girls who had prompted me to such immodest conduct. I wished the ground would yawn and snap me up. I was ashamed to look up at my friends on the platform. What was Miss Dillingham thinking of me? Oh, what a fool I had been! I had ruined my own triumph. I had disgraced myself, and my friends, and poor Mr. Swan, and the Winthrop School. The ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... roused from rest One hundred children of the blest Cheat you a word or two with feet That down the noisy aisle-ways beat... Forget on narrow-minded earth The Mighty Yawn that ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... With a yawn Foyle relinquished his efforts, and his head dropped forward on his desk. In a little he was fast asleep. He was roused by a light touch on the shoulder. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... spell was broken. He started to his feet, and with the courage of terror extreme, opened the door—not opened it a little, as if he feared an unwelcome human presence, but pulled it, with a sudden wide yawn, open as ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... wonder to me you could see anything at all after such a ram!" remarked Moses Pyne, with a yawn, as he lay back and rested his head on a tuft of grass. "The shock seemed to me ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... about the table felt free to talk as they liked. But Polly Brewster and her friend Eleanor Maynard were almost talked out by the time they finished the last bit of Sary's delicious dessert; and Barbara Maynard tried her best to hide a yawn behind her hand, while Anne Stewart, the pretty teacher who was the fourth member in the party that spent a night in the cave, was eager to continue planning for the future of the mine, but Nature demanded rest after the three ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... toward the clouds were the towering, craggy peaks, with many a rent and yawn and table-land and lesser elevation, until, as if to check the climbing ambition of the prodigious monster, nature had flung an immense blanket of snow, whose ragged and torn edges lapped far down the sides of the crests. Ages ago ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... husband while he sleeps; you have got into the habit of walking on the tips of your toes so as not to disturb the household, and your husband, in the midst of this refreshing half-sleep, has begun to yawn luxuriously; then he has gone out to his club, where he has been received like the prodigal son, while you, poor poet without pen or ink, have consoled yourself by watching your sisters follow ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... Why not be a trained nurse?—and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, as assistants, girls who—"well, had had a tough time of it," he said, delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of his highly moral sentiments crept into her face. She swallowed an occasional yawn, and murmured to most of his statements, "Is that so?" She was sleepy, and wished ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... the congregation at the loud devotions of a detachment of the Salvation Army. After a battering of drums and a clashing of cymbals and a shouting of hymns, the worship settled to the prayer of a weak brother, who was so long in supplication that the head exhorter covered a yawn with his hand, and at the first sign of relenting in the supplicant bade the drums and cymbals strike up. Then, after a hymn, a sister, such a very plain, elderly sister, with hardly a tooth or an aitch in her head, began to relate her ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... during the process of digestion: Mr Carker became communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for the most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such ecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred his attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional 'Very true, Carker,' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... presumably the same occupation. There was nothing about the place in the least mysterious or out of the way. Even the blinds of the offices had been left undrawn. The man and the boy, who were alone visible, seemed, in a sense, to be working under protest. Every now and then the former stopped to yawn, and the latter performed a difficult balancing feat upon his stool. De Grost, having satisfied his curiosity, came presently from his shelter, almost running into the arms of a policeman, who looked at him closely. The Baron, who had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, stopped ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... given at times to what he denominated "low down talks" such as are wont when kindred souls hold close converse. Seated in my office on one occasion, at the hour when churchyards yawn, and being as he candidly admitted in a somewhat "reminiscent" mood, he unwittingly gave expression to thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls, when I made earnest inquiry, "Doctor, what in your judgment as a medical man is to be the final destination of the human soul?" The solemn ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... passed over the greyish countenance as the dazzling vision protruded itself before Mr. Sharpley. He drew his fingers convulsively through the mass of bristling hair (which might be designated by that color known as iron grey), and then suppressing a yawn, muttered: "It's worth the trying. The fellow's good for another five—that's a bonanza ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment,—in the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone,—it has vanished like a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have glimpses of those still higher and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... delved the day before, was now in plain view to the treasure seekers. They saw the hillside yawn there in an awful paroxysm, till the aperture was several yards wide. Then, from beneath, there shot into the open, smoking rocks, debris of many kinds, and—something else! Drew, seeing this final object, shrieked aloud. His voice could not be heard above the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... herself back into the library. The whistling did not seem to break through the smoke which surrounded Wayne. After several moments of ostentatious indifference, she threw out at him, with a conspicuous yawn: "Well, Wayne, what did you think of the terrifying ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... from sheer terror. A gulf seemed to yawn before his feet, and the Countess appeared to him in the light of the minister of wrath waiting to push him into it. With the rapidity of lightning, his whole life seemed to pass in sudden review before him—his happy childhood and guarded youth at Selwick Hall, the changed circumstances ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... flowers Of art's device, carved to delight the eyes Of those long since but dust within their graves! The hollow hearth-place, with its fluted jambs Of clammy Ethiop marble, whence, of yore, Had risen the Yule-log's animating blaze On festal faces, tomb-like, coldly yawn'd; While o'er its centre, lined in hues of night, Grinn'd the same features with the aspick eyes, And fox-like watchful, though averted gaze, The haunting demon of that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... throng looked through half-closed eyes, it saw the mighty Delmar slowly corning into her own. Taking the ball on her forty-two yard mark, Delmar sent her backfield men galloping through holes which began to yawn open in the Elliott defense. Five, ten, fifteen yards were reeled off on every play. Time was called while the Elliott line was patched up by three substitutes. But with play resumed, the Delmar steam roller continued ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... that is to be had for the mere act of wishing. Difficulty is essential to enjoyment. High life is as likely to tire on one's hands as any other. The Marquis, giving all the praise of manners and agreeability to Vienna, sums up all in one prodigious yawn. "The same evenings at Metternich's, the same lounges for making purchases and visits on a morning, the same idleness and fatigue at night, the searching and arid climate, and the clouds of execrable fine dust"—all conspiring to tell the great of the earth that they can escape ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... tempered with mercy, &c., which means that I'll have another now. That's the thing for ideas! Oh, certainly. Picture to yourself an editor writing like mad. He indulges in a pipe to soothe his rampant brain, and while lighting it he leans back for a complacent yawn. When he gets up again, his dominant idea is that the back of his chair must have been suffering from a diseased spine. Isn't that a striking picture? The earth hitting a poor man on the back of his head, eh? Well, it's quite ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... at once. The conventions of the short story allow of little space for the retrospection necessary to such an introduction; and when the writer begins to say, "But first let me explain how all this came about," the reader begins to yawn, and the charm of the opening sentences is forgotten in the dreariness of the ensuing explanations. This method is of the modern school of short story writers, but Hawthorne, in "The Prophetic Pictures," gives us an excellent example of how it may be used to advantage; and the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... attendant upon all the social functions of the season, and at many of them he appeared to enjoy himself hugely. At the musicals and purely literary entertainments, however, Miles Dawson always looked, as he was, extremely bored. Once Miss Henderson had seen him yawn at a Shelley reading. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or perhaps, to be more accurate, of the horse horsey. Intellectual pleasures were naught to him but fountains of ennui, and being a very honest, frank ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... me how he rose at dawn To titivate the land ('Twas here that I began to yawn Behind a courteous hand), And how he thought his favourite pea Had found the soil too dry (And here I feared my yawns would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... the trees, and advanced to the piazza. "Welcome, wanderers," went on Miss Martha, repressing a yawn. "I think I shall bequeath Sylvia ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... the Nile and other African rivers to drink. Though it is clumsy in its movements on land, it makes its way swiftly through the water by means of its tail; sometimes it opens its terrible jaws, gives a great yawn, and then shuts them again with a sound which is heard far away. Mr. Arnot, a missionary in the heart of Africa, tells us that the crocodiles in the great river Zambesi drag the game which they catch ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... in the garden Green grass-plot, fresh lawn, Though pasture lands harden And drought fissures yawn. While leaves, not a few fall, Let rose-leaves for you fall, Leaves pearl-strung with dewfall, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... say." He pretended politely to suppress a yawn, indicating that the subject bored him inordinately. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... only wait Who haunt the chambers of the Great. He heard the chairmen come and go; He heard the Porter yawn below; Beyond him, in the Grand Saloon, He heard the silver stroke of noon, And thought how at this very time The old church clock at home would chime. Dear heart, how plain he saw it all! The lich-gate ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. As for the persons who go there to look at each other—to show their dresses—to yawn away waste hours—to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement—or to say they were there, at next day's three-o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that glare, cost, and noise are necessary), I commend to their consideration, or at least to such consideration ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... at that moment, indulging in a gigantic stretch and a cavernous yawn; but he finished both hastily, and rushed at his poor horse as if he intended to slay it on the spot. He only threw the saddle on its back, however, and then ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... sea-shore; but the theatres are closing like fading flowers, and shedding their chorus-girls on every outward breeze; the tables d'hote express a relaxed enterprise in the nonchalance of the management and service; the hotels yawn wearily from their hollow rooms; the greengroceries try to mask the barrenness of their windows in a show of tropic or semi-tropic fruits; the provision-men merely disgust with their retarded displays of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... stifled a yawn. "Perhaps you didn't understand us. The men are agitating for a meeting of the board of directors. We want to be at that meeting. That's the only thing we're interested in ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse

... got back from another heavy case as your message came in," he apologized, stifling a yawn. "Tobacco is the only thing that keeps me going. Could you give me ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... the horse, and begad, Pen goes in and wins the plate. That's what I call a sensible union. A couple like that have something to talk to each other about when they come together. If you had Cupid himself to talk to—if Blanche and Pen were Cupid and Psyche, begad—they'd begin to yawn after a few evenings, if they had nothing but sentiment to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the Florida Everglades, don't you?" asked Tommy, with a most satisfying yawn. "Well, if you haven't forgotten all about it, you'll remember that we didn't have any sleep there for a couple of nights, and that I actually began to grow thin because of being kept ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... seen none of these things myself but others say they has, an' believe me, I'm plumb cautious when travelin' these parts alone. Howsomever, he hain't yet skeered me 'nough to make my ha'r come out by the roots," said Pete with a yawn. "There, kick that back log over so's the fire can lick at t'other side; ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... places, which can always be bought with gold, and a free pardon and a return home. Leave that part of the business to me. I have played the game often enough to understand the moves. Meantime, you will be free and safe there. Elsewhere, the gates of a prison may yawn for ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... playful tone as he leant forward and gazed into her eyes, that shone strangely in the gloom. They expressed surprise and expectancy. Yourii longed to embrace her, yet again his courage failed him, and he pretended to stifle a yawn. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... take all shapes; and is of such force (as Ficinus adds), that it can work upon others, as well as ourselves." How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection in another? Why doth one man's yawning [1628]make another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like? Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... glad the day has come at last," said Edith, as she rose that morning with a yawn. "Oh, dear, and it's going to be splendid, too. Kitty, what dress are you going to ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... you vary it. Nobody knocks like you. I suppose no two people would make three taps just the same." She was far too polite to yawn; but she made as much of the movement as she could not control, and then put a mark in her book, and laid it down. A very different girl, indeed, was she from her younger sister; a stranger would never have suspected ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... formerly. Sheepshanks is getting an old man. And if so, I suspect we shall see a good deal of Preston. He's "no blate," as they used to say in Scotland, and made himself quite at home to-night. If I'd asked him to stay, or, indeed, if I'd done anything but yawn, he'd have been here now. But I defy any man to stay when I ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... might float to me across the water. I think Tommy half expected me to suggest that we take one of the small boats, and went to his room to put on darker clothes. In a few minutes Monsieur yawned and followed him—though I rather suspected that his yawn was caused more by nervousness than the want of sleep. A moment later Gates, standing near the wheel, softly called my name, so I arose and went ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... the Duchesse"; his "Falle of Princes"[837] is imitated from Boccaccio and from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" which the knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes with uplifted pen to yawn at his ease in the face of his reader.[838] But his pen goes down again on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a "Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans," of thirty thousand lines, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... furbished arms, clang of trumpets, waving of banners and plumes, clouds of dust, clash of swords, unhorsing of knights, and outcry of heralds. When she awoke, she said emphatically to Mr. Mumbles, as he was beginning to take his morning yawn: 'I've hit it'; and gave him a sharp stroke on his ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... instance, you will see one start up suddenly and look at the hunter, who by that time is perfectly still, with an intense scrutiny that seems to say, "I declare I was almost sure I saw that move that time, but I must have been mistaken." Then, with a drowsy look, almost a yawn, down goes his head, and the hunter begins to hitch himself along again very cautiously. Suddenly up goes the seal's head so quickly that the hunter hasn't time to subside as before, but begins to roll about, blow off steam, and lift its feet around like a seal flapping ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... film is breaking; the ages have long been circling. Fellow-men! if we live hereafter, it will not be in lyrics; nor shall we yawn, and our shadows lengthen, while the eternal cycles are revolving. To live at all, is a high vocation; to live forever, and run parallel with Oro, may truly appall us. Toil we not here? and shall we be forever slothful elsewhere? Other ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... opening his mouth in a cavernous yawn. "But it'd better be soon. I like space, but not between ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... displaying great originality of design, and ingenious artistic effects, becomes after a time rather a tiresome object of contemplation. The colonel found it so, and he relieved his strained eyes by an occasional amateur astronomical observation. On turning his head, with a yawn, from one of these, he saw inside the hut a state of affairs which caused him to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... which shows very plainly the nature of the man, while it likewise allows the critic to escape the charge of unkindness. We all know the painstaking player, and always cheerfully acknowledge his virtues, but who shall blame us if, after giving him the benefit of his earnestness, we yawn and creep out into the lobby while ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... You are not fit to be alone." I tried to call up my pride, and laugh off the accusation against my courage, all the more, perhaps, because I felt its truth. "Do you want anything more that I can get you, Lady Speldhurst?" I asked, trying to feign a yawn of sleepiness. The old dame's keen eyes were upon me. "I rather like you, my dear," she said, "and I liked your mamma well enough before she treated me so shamefully about the christening dinner. Now, I know ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... together.' I thought that a safe way of getting through the time. 'You are very good,' said I. 'Get a bed ready, Coffin and Purse!' Two bright little imps darted away, and the Thing turning round to me with a sulphurous yawn, said, 'I don't mind, Phil, if I lie down with you.' Surely ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... gendarmes will be here soon," she murmured amiably; "I am rather tired of waiting." She affected to stifle a yawn. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... to Mr Parmenter, "Oh, dear! is she going to preach a sermon?" and he hid a laugh under a yawn. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... sun excites you, And the long ages, and the lingering chill Make you pause to yawn, Opening your impervious mouth, Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers; Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums, Then close the wedge of your little mountain front, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence

... those steadfast natures which can better be depended upon, which in a battle are impregnable to fear and immovable, are equally immovable when there is anything to be learned; they are always in a torpid state, and are apt to yawn and go to sleep over any ...
— The Republic • Plato

... the rubbers are safely in the hall closet, I make a great deal of todo about going into the other room, in order to give the impression that there is nothing interesting enough in the hall to keep me there. A good, loud yawn helps to disarm any suspicion of undue excitement. I sometimes even chew a bit of fringe on the sofa and take a scolding for it—anything to draw attention from the rubbers. Then, when everyone is at dinner, I sneak out and ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... early rising!" said a donkey, with a great yawn. "I wish I might sleep till sunrise. Here I am, harnessed and ready to start to town before the roosters crow. And why? To take a little fruit and a few vegetables to market. Isn't that a foolish reason ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry

... to yawn before me. The loneliness and friendlessness of my position were presented to my mind with terrific reality. A deadly swoon-like feeling ensued. To yield in this might seal my fate. I paced the floor ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... steep above it, gazed half incredulous, now that they had found the thing they sought. It looked so unbelievably adequate and modern and alive standing there, drawing its perfectly measured breath; it was so eloquent of power and the work of men's hands that there seemed to yawn a gap of half a thousand years between it and the raid in which it was being made a factor. That this pet toy of the modern millionaire should be set to work out the crude vengeance of wild men in these primitive surroundings, crowded up on a little rocky path of these savage mountains, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... stiff, he was conscious of great emptiness. By the stars he knew that it was well toward morning. Hills bulked in the distance, with dark blobs here and there which daylight later identified as live oaks. Cliff was climbing out, and at the sound of Johnny's yawn ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... trial the Englishman, whose crimes had been many and black, bore himself with an air of complete indifference and received the sentence of the supreme penalty with a bored yawn. After he had been led on to the scaffold and just as the hood and noose were about to be placed over his head, the attendant priest, still persisting in his attempts to awaken penitence, in spite of the doomed man's ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... be penned in a corner behind a table, ordered champagne not because he wanted it but because it was etiquette, suppressed a yawn, lighted a cigarette, and reviewed the assemblage with a languid but ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... general yawn went the round of the loungers about the fire. The second guard had gone on, and when the first rode in, Joe Stallings, halting his horse in passing the fire, called out sociably, "That muley steer, the white four ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... an over, I got bored and retired to my position at square-leg, displeased with the condition on which our privilege was granted that, having organised a game, we were to remain at our posts to the end. Someone awoke Penny, who walked with a yawn to the bowler's wicket, and, graciously putting into his mouth a huge green fruit-ball, offered by one of the more minute players, said with ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... upon the thick fold of the curtain, for all was still in his mother's room, and he was mentally going on tiptoe to the door, when there was a loud yawn from the prie dieu chair close to the bed's head, and a voice almost at his ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... wept in the midnight gloom, Where the canyons yawn and the Selkirks loom, For the love that they knew ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... Mervale put aside all glum-faced discussion, with a little yawn, and sprang to his feet. "Then we can but hope that somewhere, somehow, Mistress Katherine yet lives and in her own good time may reappear. And while we speak of reappearances—surely the Lady Ursula is strangely tardy ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... opinion that this day will never come to an end," said Prince, with a yawn that nearly rent ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... at least half-past ten, even though he was "jolly sleepy." He had slept for at least two hours in the forest. She ought to have remembered that, but she had forgotten it, and when, at a quarter to nine, on an enormous yawn, Jimmy had announced that he thought he would "turn in and get between the sheets," she had almost eagerly acquiesced. She wanted her boy asleep, soundly asleep that night. When the clock had struck nine he had already traveled beyond ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... "sharpen its claws" on tree trunks, and the sound was by no means cheerful. The brute seemed bent on remaining near the little camp. I remember that Grandsir Billy said that they heard it "garp" several times; I suppose he meant yawn. The circumstance seems rather strange. He said that it "garped" like a big dog every time it sharpened its claws. Yet it did not cease to watch the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... merry kind of mood, then, this evening: but such moods have their reactions; and half an hour later he was beginning first to yawn behind his hand and then to wear a heavy look on his face. Her Majesty observed it, too, as I could see: for she fell silent (which was the worst thing in the world to do), and began to eye him sidelong with a kind of dismay. (It was wonderful how little knowledge she had of how ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... Nello would go. Most often of all he would go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the stones by the iron fragments of the Quentin Matsys's gate, would stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again, and, winding his arms about the dog's neck, would kiss him on his broad, tawny-colored forehead and murmur always ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... be fancies of the churl, Look to thy woodcraft,' and so leaving him, Now with slack rein and careless of himself, Now with dug spur and raving at himself, Now with droopt brow down the long glades he rode; So marked not on his right a cavern-chasm Yawn over darkness, where, nor far within, The whole day died, but, dying, gleamed on rocks Roof-pendent, sharp; and others from the floor, Tusklike, arising, made that mouth of night Whereout the Demon issued up from Hell. He marked not this, but blind and deaf to all Save that chained rage, which ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... had followed the falls-filled Snake and the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among basaltic bastions buttressing the mountain sides, or through the lava lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the sullen roar ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... and just as I have realised who are the road-makers, they appear in person. One immense fellow, hearing us, stands up and shows himself about six feet from us in the grass, gazes calmly, and then yawns a yawn a yard wide and grunts his news to his companions, some of whom—there is evidently a large herd—get up and stroll towards us with all the flowing grace of Pantechnicon vans in motion. We put our helm paddles hard a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... The opera was Samson et Dalila, and a very famous tenor was making his reappearance after a long absence. Edith gave herself up to complete enjoyment of the music. Then suddenly she was startled by a yawn at her side. Burton was sitting back, his hands in his pockets, his ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the intruder showed signs of friendliness and nearer approach, I aroused Stepan, who sprang to his feet, and, with one heave of his mighty shoulders, sent the intruder flying into the darker recesses of the stancia. "It's only a Shaman," muttered the Cossack with a yawn, as he rolled back into the dirty straw, and I then regretted that I had not more closely examined this High Priest of, perhaps, the weirdest faith in existence, for an hour afterwards, when the rekindled fire had once more rendered objects clearly visible, the "Shaman" had ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... an expiration in the voice of whisper, forcing slowly all air out from the chest. Then give to this expiration vocality, producing the reverberation far back in the mouth: the resulting utterance is a hoarse exemplification of the orotund. With the mouth in the position of a yawn, making the cavity of reverberation as large as possible, repeat the exercise until the utterance can be produced smoothly and without hoarseness. 2. Form similar syllables containing other tonic elements, and make similar exercises, taking care to produce a smooth, effusive utterance. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... things always seem so much harder to learn when one's just come back after the holidays?" propounded Marjorie Butler with a melancholy yawn. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... friends' experiences.—And the man too: he should consider his wife's feelings as much as he did his sweetheart's. If she dislikes smoke, he should not smoke. He should not yawn in her presence. He should keep himself well-groomed and attractive. Look at that dirty cuff! I have no ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... old Tompkins will have to rap pretty loud to make me budge at eight bells," said Tom with a portentous yawn, as he peeled off his reefing jacket and turned in "all standing," as he expressed it, with the exception of his boots. He was too tired to undress; and besides, he thought, in his lazy way, what was the use of his doing so when he would have to turn out again and relieve the first mate ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... Empire district. But it was a hot noonday, the dispensary lies somewhat up hill, and the uniformless officer of the Zone metropolis is rather thickly built. Wherefore, stowing away this private bit of information under his hat, he told himself with a yawn, "Oh, I'll drag him in later in the day," and drifted down to a wide-open door on Railroad Avenue to spend a bit of the $25 reward in off-setting the heat. Meanwhile "Mac," feeling somewhat recovered from his financial extravagance, came sauntering out of the dispensary ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... died down presently, since there had been no particular damage done, and the boat was uninjured. The boys sat around for an hour or two, talking. Then some of them began to yawn, and to examine the places inside the three tents where they had stowed their blankets, carried along because the summer nights were apt to get ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... that, fixed as he was to his place, to uproot himself was utterly impossible. Meanwhile Madame Astier, sitting on the edge of an armchair in her dressing-gown, with a lace wrap round her head, watched his proceedings and murmured between yawn and yawn with placid irony, 'Really, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... full bloom. A sound of doors closing made him open his eyes. Some one had entered the adjoining room. He heard a dress brushing against the thin partition, the turning of leaves in a book in which the reader seemed to feel no absorbing interest; for he was startled by a long sigh ending in a yawn. Was he still asleep, still dreaming? Had he not heard the cry of the "jackal in the desert," so thoroughly in harmony with the heavy, scorching temperature without? No. Nothing more. He dozed again; and this time all the confused images ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... waste of strength," said Jack Marvin, with a well affected yawn. "I got started first and called fer my cousin Dot, and by tugging her all the way I managed to get her ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... extremely awkward comes to pass, I suppose I shall have to make up my mind on the subject,' replied Rallywood with a lazy yawn, 'in the meantime it is to much trouble. Just at present my part is simple, and I look for the game ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... but my stomach declares it is half-past two. Trot along, there's a good Paddy. And don't forget to tie a pink string to my piece of meat, when you give it to the orderly. Else I may not know it's the best one." With a reluctant yawn and a glance upward towards the sun, Paddy scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off with the outspread palms of his stubby hands. Then he turned to the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... and enormous Mansions of Silence which society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called Clubs no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James's Street, at a half-score of other dandies gaping from another bay-window over the way; those who consult a dreary evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves with the jokes of the miserable Punch by way of wit; the men about ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... penned The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland. And I thought I knew a thing or two, or might be even three, About a Ghoul, and a Fay or Troll, and a Brownie or Banshee. I knew that a Banshee always howled, whilst a Goblin might but yawn, I also knew that a Poltergeist was not a Leprechaun, But the Psychicals, I'm bound to say, had me on "buttered toastes" With the wonderful changes which they rang on the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... cried Mina, with a yawn, and tossing back her brown unruly locks with an impatient gesture, 'isn't it slow? Can't you wake up? You haven't spoken a word for ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... rendered a little French ballad. Marya Dmitrievna did not know how to express her delight; she several times tried to send for Lisa. Gedeonovsky, too, was at a loss for words, and could only nod his head, but all at once he gave an unexpected yawn, and hardly had time to cover his mouth with his! hand. This yawn did not escape Varvara Pavlovna; she at once turned her back on the piano, observing, "Assez de musique comme ca; let us talk," and she ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... answered her question by appearing, with a stretch and a yawn, from beneath a bunk. He had heard his name in Courtenay's voice. That sufficed for Joey ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... prayers aloud, which is no better than an hypocritical show of devotion; and I am scandalised to see a man cross himself thrice at the Benedicite, and as often at Grace (and the more, because it is a sign I have in great veneration and continual use, even when I yawn), and to dedicate all the other hours of the day to acts of malice, avarice, and injustice. One hour to God, the rest to the devil, as if by composition and compensation. 'Tis a wonder to see actions so various in themselves succeed one another with such an uniformity ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the other, stifling a yawn. "I think I'll retire. I've had a long journey and I'm awfully knocked out. By the way, old chap," he continued, coming closer to David and whispering in his ear, which made that sensitive young man draw back with a quiver of dislike, "you couldn't favor me with a few dollars, could you? ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... reaching out with pliant fingers to count the buttons on the White Linen Nurse's dress. "Oh, I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" In the midst of the passionate assertion her rigid little mouth relaxed in a most mild and innocent yawn. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... as |-sist our moan, Help us to | sigh and groan Heavily, | heavily. Graves, yawn and | yield your dead, Till death be | uttered Heavily, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the fight was fought and won, And there was Peace as still as Death On everything beneath the sun. Just as I started to draw breath, And yawn, and stretch, and pat myself, — The grass began to whisper things — And every tree became an elf, That grinned and chuckled counsellings: Birds, beasts, one thing alone they said, Beating and dinning ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... sociology led her to a book on village-improvement—tree-planting, town pageants, girls' clubs. It had pictures of greens and garden-walls in France, New England, Pennsylvania. She had picked it up carelessly, with a slight yawn which she patted down with her finger-tips as delicately ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... their darning, and Connie bent earnestly over her magazine. Aunt Grace covered a yawn with her slender fingers and ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... hear such barefaced fishing for compliments?' said Charles; but Amabel, who did not like her sister to be teased, and was also conscious of having wasted a good deal of time, sat down to practise. Laura returned to her drawing, and Charles, with a yawn, listlessly turned over a newspaper, while his fair delicate features, which would have been handsome but that they were blanched, sharpened, and worn with pain, gradually lost their animated and rather satirical expression, and assumed an air of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... jointed, The Duke stepped rather aside than forward And welcomed her with his grandest smile; And, mind you, his mother all the while 160 Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward; And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play, As if her first hair had grown grey; For such things ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... crudities of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age—misericorde!—the men yawn, and les demoiselles—bah! les demoiselles have the souls of accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms lost; it ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... and happiness; and there is nothing which so quickly discredits itself as empty rhetoric and dialectic, or poetry that wanders in dim and private worlds. If pure music, even with its immense sensuous appeal, is so easily tedious, what a universal yawn must meet the verbiage which develops nothing but its own irridescence. Absolute versification and absolute dialectic may have their place in society; they give play to an organ that has its rights like any other, and that, after serving for a while in the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... resting vacantly by turns upon myself and upon the square in the ceiling which at that moment framed a patch of grey sky studded with whirling snow-flakes. At last, she raised her veil with an indolent movement, put her hand on my shoulder and, with a long yawn that revealed all the pearly freshness of ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... eighteen years, never even letting her know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her? That is what I want explained to me!" he paused, as was his wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn: "Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose," replied ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... which was out; at Modestine, standing meekly by the tree to which he was tied; at the raindrops bounding off Aggie's round and prostrate figure—and I rebelled. Every muscle was sore; it hurt me even to yawn. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... expression for a polite young woman," replied Roderick, with a severe yawn; "anyone who comes to Paris for tea ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... rapids in their course, Like madden'd, living things rush on, With wild, unhesitating force, To where thy mighty chasms yawn. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... alley-way on either side of the engine platform. The beat of the engines becomes part of his environment. He sleeps with it pulsing in his ears, so that if she slows or stops he opens his eyes. When I go up at four o'clock and call the Second Engineer, he will stretch, yawn, half open one eye, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... curious state this which, at some time or other, exists between two loving people cast for each other's welfaring. A delicate mystery lies in it, and that is an essential strand in every true affection, but it can readily be destroyed. Break it rudely, even shock it a little, and a chasm may yawn where, before, there was a silken thread of union, tender in its fibre, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... at it as if she were taking snuff, and pronounced it perfect. Just then the opera began. I withdrew into the shade, and Josephine was silenced for a while in admiration of the scenery and the dresses. By and by, she began to yawn. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... with a slight yawn. "I've got here some papers somewhere;"—he began to feel in his coat pocket languidly;—"but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken sort of place! Let's go up to Welker's, and you can look at them over ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... sitting bolt upright, both ears and hands forgotten. For once Dolly Beatty forgot to fuss with her hat or admire her hands in the new lavender gloves two sizes too small. The choir even forgot to flirt and yawn and never once looked bored ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... "To yawn, I suppose," said Fitz. "Haul away there, my lad! Look alive!" came in a deep growl from below; and Chips winked and made the great muscles stand out in his brown arms as he hauled, but kept ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... she appeared to be bored. As a matter of fact, she hid an incipient yawn behind her small ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... an ostentatious yawn, "I believe the wise method of ridding oneself of impertinents is to grant their requests. Have you ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... chamber door and called us. Halstead hastily opened his eyes and rose, as suddenly as he had fallen asleep, without even a preliminary yawn. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... its bunks as the others had entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. It ate till it could eat no more; and then Manuel filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. Dan lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... uttered a very weary yawn and turned her face from the light. Priscilla stepped into the hall, put on her waterproof and oldest hat and went out. She knew her way well to the little vicarage, built of gray stone and lying something ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty stomachs in every village, a bundle of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... at all inclined to settle down and after wandering about a good deal, Mulberry threw himself down in a chair and gave a yawn. There was silence for a little while and at last Lawrence unexpectedly broke it by saying "I say Mulberry how long is it since you and Gladys Lincarrol ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... where the waters yawn, And cruel monsters grin, My comrades sink to depths below, All in ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie

... welcomed the rise of an ancient house from the dust of decay. All those dreams of Roland's youth are fulfilled; but they do not gladden his heart like the thought that his son, at the last, was worthy of his line, and the hope that no gulf shall yawn between the two when the Grand Circle is rounded, and man's past and man's future meet where Time disappears. Never was that lost one forgotten; never was his name breathed but tears rushed to the eyes; and each morning the peasant ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... smiled at her innocent memories. Kessler suppressed a yawn. "Oh, my," Margaret said, "the poor man! How embarrassing if he was ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith

... chair, nodded to me not to dismiss my assistant, joined our conversation, and when conversation was merged in accounts, he took up a book of songs, and amused himself with it till my business was over and my disciple of Coke retired. He then said, very slowly, and with a slight yawn, "You have never been at ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... musketeer; from whom this separation of the two associates removed his last suspicion, and he touched Porthos lightly on the shoulder; the latter replied by a terrible yawn. "Come," said D'Artagnan. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... had a fit of moral cowardice, and was so reluctant to encounter the gentlest woman in England, that he dined at a chop-house, and then sauntered into a music hall, and did not get home till past ten, meaning to say a few kind, hurried words, then yawn, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... much tied down by a certain degree of good manners to you, as by other degrees of them to other people. Were I to show you, by a manifest inattention to what you said to me, that I was thinking of something else the whole time; were I to yawn extremely, snore, or break wind in your company, I should think that I behaved myself to you like a beast, and should not expect that you would care to frequent me. No. The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friendships, require a degree of good-breeding, both ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... a fellow makes some bloomin' mistakes sometimes. I am not interested very much though," continued Matlock Styles, and gave a yawn. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... or five games in succession, excusing his own careless play every time by some dexterous compliment to his betrothed. More than once he stifled a yawn—more than once his glances wandered away to the group near the piano, amidst which Clarissa was seated, listening to Lizzy Fermor's brilliant waltzes and mazurkas, with an open music-book on her lap, turning over the leaves now and then, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... at Coquenil and then, with a yawn and a shrug of indifference, he called to the dog, while Caesar ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... ledges and shelves of rock; covering these was an army of seals and sea lions waking from their night's rest. They would raise their bodies half upright from their stony beds, stretch their flippers and yawn, much after the manner of a human being, then drop into the water and make off toward the open sea in search of their breakfast. Stretched on his ledge, in the black rubber dress, Paul was probably taken for ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... fat and greasy, While Wynne sleeps the whole debate, They submissive round him wait; (Yet would gladly see the hunks, In his grave, and search his trunks,) See, they gently twitch his coat, Just to yawn and give his vote, Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick brute, they call ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... and then ag'in, some of 'em doesn't," replied the man, as with a yawn he turned away to rearrange his ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... a tremendous yawn, settled back in greater comfort against his sustaining tree, and closed his eyes. I waited, counting the seconds by the beating of the blood in my ears. In the background Cookie hovered apprehensively. Plainly he would go on ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... manage it," answered David, with a yawn, stretching himself out on a seat, and in less than half a minute ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... the yawn with which he was indulging himself, and got upon his feet, surprised in no small degree to find that no one had entered the room. He went to the ladder to satisfy himself, but meeting with a like measure of ill-success there, he came away in a discontented mood; not perceiving ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... soot which had formed their festival dress was washed off by the rain. The square itself was deserted, save for a pack of dogs and a few little boys, rolling about in the mud puddles. Once in a while an old man would come out of the gamal, yawn and disappear. In short, it was a lendemain de fete of the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... merciful, O my Aunt," responds Salam with lofty irrelevance. Then follows a prolonged pause, somewhat trying, I apprehend, to Aunt, and struggling with a yawn Salam says at length, "I will ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... with a yawn. "I see that my honored father is not in a mood for reasonable conversation. Here comes the surgeon with his lancet. Perhaps, when you have lost a few quarts of your bad blood, you may see things in a better light." So saying, he sauntered out of the room. With ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... away from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her? That is what I want explained to me!" he paused, as was his wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn: "Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose," replied ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... cheerful A little while agone; Now he is pale and tearful, And—yes, I've seen him yawn. So tired is he of kisses That he can only weep; The one dear thing he misses And ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... they were in the water within a few feet of the crocodile, which made some difference in our ideas of its vivacity. Presently the creature really began to struggle, and the united efforts of the men could hardly restrain it from getting into deeper water. The monster now began to yawn, which so terrified the men that they would have dropped the rope and fled had they not been afraid of the consequences, as I was addressing them rather forcibly from the bank. I put another shot through the shoulder of the struggling monster, which ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... book sometimes—sometimes Father Gratry's "Month of May," sometimes that good little book by the Abbe Berlioux. But when the people began to yawn I flung the book aside, and said a few simple words to the congregation. And I spoke out of a full heart, a very full heart, and the waters flowed over, and flooded ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... my injunctions," she said, "your double will prove more tractable. He will go forth and do all I would have you do, while I have but to stamp upon the floor and a dungeon will yawn beneath your feet, where you will lie immured till doomsday. The same fate will attend your crafty associate, Master Potts—so that neither of you will be ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... else you can do," said Phoebe. She yawned as she spoke, but Will's reply strangled the yawn and ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... said Bessie. "Mamma has pretty things in the drawing- room, but she keeps them out of the way; and everything here is so dull and stupid!" and the little girl gave a yawn. ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... down presently, since there had been no particular damage done, and the boat was uninjured. The boys sat around for an hour or two, talking. Then some of them began to yawn, and to examine the places inside the three tents where they had stowed their blankets, carried along because the summer nights were apt to get ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... at the conduct of the young man; and he soon began to suppose that this was not the person he was to fight, but probably a keeper, who was examining into his condition. After submitting to this scrutiny a few minutes, he gave a mighty yawn, which startled the spectators, but which delighted the Absolute Fool; for never before had he beheld such a depth of potentiality. He knelt in silent delight at this exhibition of the ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton

... small one only eleven feet in length, but as thick as a man's thigh. It was secured by having a stick tightly tied round the neck. It went about dragging its clog with it, sometimes opening its mouth with a very suspicious yawn, and sometimes turning its tail up into the air. Being put into a cage, and released from the stick, it began to breathe most violently, the expirations sounding like high-pressure steam escaping from a ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... with involuntary persistency at an empty space upon the wall which seemed to yawn expectant. By a terrible impression, she was pursued by the thought of a fresh slab which might soon perhaps be placed there,—with another name which she did not even dare think of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... deeper and deeper bass, until the very teacups on the table shuddered under the influence of him. The elder children, admitted to the family festival, ate till they could eat no more; stared till they could stare no more; yawned till they could yawn no more—and then went to bed. Oscar got on well with everybody. Mrs. Finch was naturally interested in him as one of twins—though she was also surprised and disappointed at hearing that his mother had begun and ended with his brother and himself. As for Lucilla, she sat in silent happiness, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... fire, which was out; at Modestine, standing meekly by the tree to which he was tied; at the raindrops bounding off Aggie's round and prostrate figure—and I rebelled. Every muscle was sore; it hurt me even to yawn. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of the Nursery Blarney-Stone has been made over, to have and to hold, to the writers of the Children's Astor-Place Library. We yawn over poetical justice in novels, and only tolerate it as an amusing absurdity in genteel comedy, for the sake of getting the curtain rapidly down over the benedictory guardian and the virtue-rewarded fair, who are impatient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... home, so as to be able to speak together, a thing forbidden by Madame Rupprecht's rules of etiquette, which strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation passing between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn, when two gentlemen came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party, from the formal manner in which the host led him up, and presented him to the hostess. I thought I had never seen any one so handsome or so elegant. His hair was powdered, of course, but ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... to have "calculated," according to custom; but sleepiness overpowered him at the moment, and he terminated the word with a yawn of such ferocity that it drew from Redhand a remark of doubt as to whether his jaws could stand ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... the sand-hills have assumed a different shape. The ridges trend differently. Some have disappeared, and valleys yawn open where they stood! ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... encounter with ancient mariners—I beg your pardon—oldest inhabitants," said Valentine with a despondent yawn. "Well, I suppose that sort of individual is a little less obtuse when he lives within the roar of the great city's thunder than when he vegetates in the dismal outskirts of a manufacturing town. Where am I to find my octogenarian ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... night. Don Mariano lay upon the clean straw that he had placed in the old sow's pen and waited for the hour of midnight, at which time, as is well known, churchyards yawn and devils flit about. He had apologized to the bereaved mother for entertaining unworthy suspicions of her, and they were on amicable terms. Don Mariano was almost dozing when he was startled broad awake by a familiar grunt. Peering between ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... that seems now to be more unsubstantial than the fabric of a dream. I cannot think of Clara or of my mother without despair. For oh, Herbert, between me and them there seems to yawn a dishonored grave! Herbert, they talk, you know, of an attack upon the Molino-del-Rey, and I almost hope to fall ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... iron rail, tail and paws tucked neatly under. Ste. Marie chirruped, and the cat turned yellow eyes upon him in mild astonishment, as one who should say, "Who the deuce are you, and what the deuce are you doing here?" He chirruped again, and the cat, after an ostentatious yawn and stretch, came to him—beating up to windward, as it were, and making the bed in three tacks. When O'Hara entered the room some time later he found his patient in a very cheerful frame of mind, and the black cat sitting ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... apartment in order to go to dinner. The hunters will come in a crowd, and will relate the whole history of their day's sport, without sparing us a single detail. They will then go to dinner. Madame de Dangeau will challenge me, with a yawn, to a game of backgammon. Such is the way in ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... done at last, and the hot and tired mother, with still the anxious look on her face, stooped and took them from their fiery bed, and the father awoke with a yawn to hear himself summoned to the feast. It was later than usual; many things had detained them; four o'clock quite, and before the army of dishes could be marshaled back into shape, the bell would certainly toll for evening service. "Let ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... of the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... and it will be so tiresome. I get so sleepy while they are singing, for I never care to watch the acting. I did at first, when it was new, but now it seems insipid to see them make-believe, while the theatre is worse yet," and she gave a weary yawn. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... hid a yawn with the back of a shapely hand. "The Princess of Helium is hungry, fellow," she drawled; "tell your ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... was extremely delighted at the fact Kister had mentioned to him, though he did yawn, and even yawned loudly. To arouse curiosity flattered his vanity intensely: love he despised—in words—but inwardly he was himself aware that it would be a hard and difficult task for him to win love.... A hard and difficult task for him to win love, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... so wise and grave that nobody laughed, and his sisters even seemed impressed rather. Jinny waited anxiously for more. If Mother did make an odd grimace, it was not noticed, and anyhow was cleverly converted into the swallowing of a yawn. There was a moment's silence. Jimbo, proudly conscious that more was expected of him, provided it in ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... of dire effect! for, surely, If ever mortal, King or Cotter, Believed that earth was charged to quake And yawn for his unworthy sake, 'Twas Peter Bell ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... as we were afterwards told, are caused by the splitting of the ice when there comes a fall in the barometer. Then the glacier will yawn like a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye,— Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas, Along that wilderness ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... an army of the Greeks in vain, and has now returned home into his dear native land, with empty ships, having left behind him brave Menelaus.' Thus will some one hereafter say: then may the wide earth yawn for me." ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... for midwinter, and the great south room felt too warm to me. So warm that I began to feel sleepy and a little dizzy, and Madam Leigh noticed the yawn ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... 'twixt midnight and the dawn, When silence and the darkness strive in vain For mastery, and Morpheus hath withdrawn His friendly ward, not to return again; Lo! Fancy's two-winged doorway wide doth yawn And uninvited guests arrive amain. A fateful suite they hover into sight— They are the soul's dread ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... rusticity combined with religion was fading away. A silence reigned, and the hour for tea drew slowly on. But presently Amarinth, after reading all the advertisements on the cover of his newspaper, put it down slowly and glanced around, with the puffy expression of a person suppressing a grown-up yawn. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... a watch which to-morrow will replace with another more problematic still. But in the yard are the undisputable evidences of his wild unthrift. Old rusty mowing-machines, buggies with torn and flapping canvas, sleighs ready to yawn at every crack, all are here: poor relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at the back door for the privilege of playing in it. They take long, entrancing journeys ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... and many a time during the long winter Peter had stopped at Johnny Chuck's house and shouted down the long hall at the top of his voice without once waking Johnny Chuck. Now Peter nearly tumbled over with surprise, as he heard Johnny Chuck yawn at the first low call ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess

... tell you, in the breast of each one of us Magyars there is a hell. What is sweeter than life? What is more sacred than each breath we draw? Ah! my country!" These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness, that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to the fullest extent, so that the uvula rises and almost disappears, and the root of the tongue and larynx are depressed. The action is similar to yawning, and to accomplish it "think a yawn", ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... Nigel, with a half-suppressed yawn, that was irresistibly dragged out of him by the sight of another ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... his horse led by the bridle. She shut the door behind them and drove home the great bolts. Servants came tumbling out to take the horses and do their duty; Count Eustace, a brother of Jehane's, got up from the hearth, where he had been asleep on a bearskin, rubbed his eyes, gulped a yawn, knelt, and was kissed by Richard. Jehane stood apart, mistress of herself as it seemed, but conscious, perhaps, that she was being watched. So she was. In the bustle of salutation the Abbot Milo found eyes to see what ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... the young girl. "But after all, it doesn't much matter what happens to you if you are in good company." The semi-gloom permitted her to gaze steadfastly into his eyes. He ignored the opportunity for a compliment, and Susan stifled a little yawn, real ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... they?" exclaimed Daisy Jenkins, giving a slight yawn, and looking longingly out at the tennis courts as she spoke. "I suppose it's the way with fashionable folk. For my part, I call it rude. Mrs. Meadowsweet, may I run across the garden, and pick a piece of sweet brier to put in the front ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... was awake bright and early, and stretching himself with a long-drawn yawn, set out to find some way of procuring for himself a breakfast. First at one shop-door and then at another he stopped, popping in his shaggy head and asking the man inside, "Give me a job, Mister?" and being in reply promptly ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... as ditch water!—This is my only holiday, yet I don't seem to enjoy it!—for I feel knocked up with my week's work! (A yawn.) What a life mine is, to be sure! Here am I, in my eight-and-twentieth year, and for four long years have been one of the shopmen at Tag-rag & Co.'s, slaving from half-past seven o'clock in the morning till nine at night, and all for ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... most of them responded—while Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him understand that he must abandon this method of reassuring himself. They were close upon ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... huge standing collar, and in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. The ladies behind him yawn in a furtive manner under cover of their bouquets, but the audience is hilarious over him as he sings about his friend Thomas from the country, who came up to Paris to see the sights and shocked everybody by his dreadful manners. He put his muddy boots on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... fish or a tartar?" said a fresh voice, and a bronzed, sturdy man of about seven-and-thirty stepped up behind them, putting on a pith helmet and suppressing a yawn, for he had just risen from his nap under ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... assemblage is much the same as that already noticed in connection with the place. The divan has its corps of sleepers and burden of garments, and the tables yet resound with the rattle and clash of dice. Yet the greater part of the company are not doing anything. They walk about, or yawn tremendously, or pause as they pass each other to exchange idle nothings. Will the weather be fair to-morrow? Are the preparations for the games complete? Do the laws of the Circus in Antioch differ from the laws of the Circus in Rome? Truth is, the young fellows are suffering ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... ever eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent interest; and as for one who has not—well, he should be made to feel his limitations," replied Francesca, with a yawn. "Come, let us forget our troubles in sleep; ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of such force (as Ficinus adds), that it can work upon others, as well as ourselves." How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection in another? Why doth one man's yawning [1628]make another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like? Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks after the murder ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... hours last night," he remarked, with a portentous yawn. "Now that this business is settled, I'll go back ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round, and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don't seem to get many patients. And there's no society at all; and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if it were not for my books, and my lab—laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I was made for higher things.' And then he'd ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... like an idiot into the yawn of hatch down which they had disappeared. I had been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the Major's berth, that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment. Small wonder that neither Captain North nor ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... orderly as it was impassioned. "There is agitation, there are meetings, there is mutual encouragement to the struggle, the provinces concert opposition together, the wrath against Great Britain grows and the abyss begins to yawn; but such are the habits of order among this people, that, in the midst of this immense ferment among the nation, it is scarcely possible to pick out even a few acts of violence here and there; up to the day when the uprising ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... blame 'em much," Farquaharson stifled a yawn. "Dress Rehearsal until two this morning followed by a call for line rehearsal again at eleven. When they get through that, if they ever do, there's nothing more except the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... all glum-faced discussion, with a little yawn, and sprang to his feet. "Then we can but hope that somewhere, somehow, Mistress Katherine yet lives and in her own good time may reappear. And while we speak of reappearances—surely the Lady Ursula is strangely tardy in ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... disappointment, Kay. I had hoped he would prove to be a worth-while opponent, for certainly he is a most likable young man. However—" He smothered a yawn with his hand, selected a cigar from his case, carefully cut off the end and lighted it. "Poor devil," he murmured, presently, and rose, remarking that he might as well take a turn or two around the farmyard as a first ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... the friends good night. He was very sleepy and should sleep well, he said, with a yawn which revealed his big teeth, while Rose gazed at him with an air of submissive humility. However, he gave her a push, and told her to go and turn out the gas in ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... in a pain-urged effort to make it smaller. And always he kept his nose down and himself harmless for a spring. In the thick of it he slowly raised his nose and yawned. Nor, because it came up slowly, and because Collins had anticipated the yawn by being one thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal's own brain, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... just pretending to be asleep, and all the time he was watching Longlegs out of a corner of one of his big goggly eyes. Very, very slowly and carefully, so as not to make the teeniest, weeniest sound, Longlegs lifted one foot to wade out into the Smiling Pool. Grandfather Frog pretended to yawn and opened his big goggly eyes. Longlegs stood on one foot without moving so much as a feather. Grandfather Frog yawned again, nodded as if he were too sleepy to keep awake, and half closed his eyes. Longlegs waited and waited. Then, little by little, so slowly ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess

... a nature which turned as instinctively to darkness as Desmond's to light. A score of times protest died when Scaife murmured, "There I go again, forgetting the gulf between us"; and always Desmond swore stoutly that the gulf, if a gulf did yawn between them, should be bridged by friendship and hope. But, insensibly, Caesar's ideals became tainted by Scaife's materialism. Scaife, for instance, spent money lavishly upon "food" and clothes. So far as a Public ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... to have you!" she declares, with exuberant cordiality. "I have done nothing all the afternoon but lie on this sofa and yawn over a novel. I could have written it better myself, and that foolish librarian at Mudie's recommended it. I drive to town nearly every afternoon—there is always something to buy or something to see. Are you fond of London, ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... wake up!" and then some dozen of the upper story lodgers, who had kept their peepers open to enjoy the fun, began to spread around and pull away the loose straw in order to get a view of the scene below. Sure enough, the old rooster gave a long yawn—"Aw-w-w-w-um!" flirted off his "kiverlids" and got up, making a slow move towards the fire-place, reaching which, he gave an extra "Aw-w-w-um!" knocked the ashes out of his pipe—filled it up with "nigger-head," dipped it in the embers, gave ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... eagerly to tell him about Christ's life. At first he listened attentively; but this attention did not last long, and he began to yawn. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... be joined by Fifanti himself; but he never stayed very long. He had an old-fashioned contempt for writings in what he called the "dialettale," and he loved the solemn injuvenations of the Latin tongue. Soon, as he listened, he would begin to yawn, and presently grunt and rise and depart, flinging a contemptuous word at the matter of my reading, and telling me at times that I ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... unmoved by it. She was not merely regardless of it, but ostentatiously disdainful. She took a coquettish lady's-maidish amble to the door, passing Schwartz by the way, and yawned as she looked out upon the street. Schwartz fawned after her to the door, and with a second yawn she repassed him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat old gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on until the old fellow arose with a friendly bon jour, to me, and a whistle to Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in the air. The despised Schwartz stood ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... had broken ground, was eloquent and rung a hundred changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man. Then at last, suddenly, his climax was a yawn, and he declared that he must go to bed. Rowland let him go alone, and sat there late, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... things myself but others say they has, an' believe me, I'm plumb cautious when travelin' these parts alone. Howsomever, he hain't yet skeered me 'nough to make my ha'r come out by the roots," said Pete with a yawn. "There, kick that back log over so's the fire can lick at t'other side; now ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... some little time before he could make up his mind to the effort, and when he did, and began to slowly open the door, he let it glide to once more, for one of the men suddenly uttered a loud yawn, jumped up and stretched himself, before giving a companion ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... shepherds, its nymphs and waters and Sicilian seas, than to follow the beaten track of ordinary education. It was vastly more entertaining to translate the impassioned prose of Aristaenetus into impassioned verse, especially in collaboration with a cherished friend, than to yawn over Euclid and to grumble over Cocker. The translation of Aristaenetus, the boyish task of Sheridan and his friend Halhed, still enjoys a sort of existence in the series of classical translations in Bohn's Library. It is one of the ironies of literature that fate has preserved ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... employed by the adversary; and THEN, I warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and cleverness with the cards in every way; and it was only from hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times when the Chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were Greek to ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rains. Who can help laughing at sight of a flock of them huddled up under lee of a barn, limp, draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, looking as if they would die for want of a yawn? One sees just such groups of other two-legged creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances. The truth is, a hen's life at best seems poorer than that of any other known animal. Except when she is setting, I cannot ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... events, the chill of the bitter dawn awoke me there; and with a yawn I stretched out both arms. My right hand encountered—what?— the body of a man stretched beside me! Still dazed and numb, I rolled over to my elbow, raised myself a little and peered into ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... find myself one of the congregation at the loud devotions of a detachment of the Salvation Army. After a battering of drums and a clashing of cymbals and a shouting of hymns, the worship settled to the prayer of a weak brother, who was so long in supplication that the head exhorter covered a yawn with his hand, and at the first sign of relenting in the supplicant bade the drums and cymbals strike up. Then, after a hymn, a sister, such a very plain, elderly sister, with hardly a tooth or an aitch in her head, began to relate her religious history. It appeared that she had been a much greater ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... "she'd only say, 'Oh, all right,' and yawn and change the subject—and what could I do then?" She answered herself, "Nothing," and thoughtfully added, "It will take a ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel missing—I went over them ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... git the chance ef I gits my leetle account settled with ole Steve Brayton fust. 'Pears like that old hog ain't satisfied shootin' me hisself." Stretching his arms with a yawn, Steve winked at Isom and moved to the door. ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... of the discomfited major-domo excited my compassion. The poor man would so gladly have enjoyed his widowhood. But in spite of my endeavours to repress it a long yawn extended wide ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... glare from Miss Rowe would instantly recall her to a sense of the enormity of such a misdeed. Naughty Enid managed to draw a cat on the margin of her blotting paper, and held it up for an admiring comrade to see; and Beatrice Wynne gave a terrific yawn, for which she was told to lose an order mark. Patty had been struggling for a long time with a difficult sum in compound proportion, and having just finished it, paused for a moment to take a rest. She ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... yet. If my speculations should ever see daylight, they may chance to get you into scrapes, but will certainly get me into worse.... But one must work; sic itur ad astra,—and the astra are always there to befriend one, at least as asterisks, filling up the gaps which yawn ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... appeared among the trees, and advanced to the piazza. "Welcome, wanderers," went on Miss Martha, repressing a yawn. "I think I shall bequeath Sylvia ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... and surly occupant of the sitting-room, where he had thrown himself at full length upon the sofa, to lie and yawn over the newspaper, which he vowed was as ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... in her recollections, the girl recalled herself with a start. She was safe in luxurious Crownlands, it had all been years ago. But again the abyss seemed to yawn at her feet. She felt again those kisses that had waked the little-girl heart into passionate womanhood; she shut her eyes and pressed her hand tight against them. So young—so happy—so confident!— plunging headlong into ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... You know you won't." Carl rose from the chair and stretched hugely. "You're a good egg, Hugh," he said in the midst of a yawn, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... with it a cloud of apprehensions, for darkness must ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clocks had struck the mystic hour "when churchyards yawn," that the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was dismissing ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... seem so much harder to learn when one's just come back after the holidays?" propounded Marjorie Butler with a melancholy yawn. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... paused and glared around, the spectators fearfully pressed backward, and drew their breath more quickly. But the tiger lay quiet and extended at full length in his cage, and only by an occasional play of his tail, or a long impatient yawn, testified any emotion at his confinement, or at the crowd which honored him with ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... child of stormy dawn, Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse; Chilled early by the bigot's curse, The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... Does not approve me further, who was wont To call them woollen vassals; things created To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak of peace ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... 'e 's a ghost,' said Tip Taylor, splitting his sentence with a yawn, as he lay on a buffalo robe in ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... poor men; and no doubt this other poor man, the parson, would be able to put all into his head that was necessary, just as much as would pay, and no more—a process the mere thought of which made Clarence yawn, yet which he had wound up his noble mind to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... at dust and stone; And glozing night-gnomes love the sight That geysers toss upon their crest, Feal afrites bathe in a pool And wash each harlot's bloody bone. Scorpions on serai's height Peer at each forge's raging breast, Whilst faffling gumps and hairless seers Stretch shanks and arms and yawn till hoarse, And vapours green and beacons red, Feared coming Dawn, and fled in haste; The bulwarks that each hoodlum fears, Sink in a cajon's livid course; The winds and storms are silent, dead, As barriers red bathe the waste. What of the sight when Horrors swirl, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... enjoying the gaiety by which I am surrounded; but, alas! amidst the many faces with which his mansion is thronged, that one which is dearest to me is wanting, and all becomes a blank in my eyes; and I yawn with irrepressible weariness in the midst of the glittering pageants given to honor my arrival; and you may rest assured that I shall hail with delight the termination of a visit, which seems already to have swelled the period of our separation into ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... saw everything, as only a boy could. Later, when the flagship was cruising among the islands, and the Admiral, worn out by long anxiety, lay asleep in his cabin, the helmsman, smothering a mighty yawn, called Pedro to him. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... startled by such an expression of feeling, and tried to remember whether he had ever sighed before in his life, but if he had, he could not recall the circumstances. He tried to console himself with the absurd supposition that he was sleepy and that the long-drawn breath had been only a suppressed yawn. Then he walked on, gazing before him into the purple haze that filled the deep street just as the sun was setting, and a vague sadness and longing touched him which had no place in his catalogue of permissible emotions and which were as far removed from the cold cynicism which ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... medicine, much taken, loses its effect. Those dear creatures who are the most indifferent to their husbands, are those who are cloyed by too much surfeiting of the sugar-plums and lollipops of Love. I have known a young being, with every wish gratified, yawn in her adoring husband's face, and prefer the conversation and petits soins of the merest booby and idiot; whilst, on the other hand, I have seen Chloe,—at whom Strephon has flung his bootjack in the morning, or whom he has cursed before the servants at dinner,—come ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the heavy traffic, the fainter but never ceasing foot-fall of the multitudes. He had sat there before dawn and watched the queer, pinky-white light steal with ever widening fingers through the darkness, heard the yawn of the city as it seemed to shiver and tremble before the battle of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights spring up one by one, at first like pin pricks in the distance, growing and widening until the grotesque shapes of the buildings from ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... with these hardy young fresh-water navigators the reader will not ask to be "put ashore" until the home port has finally been made. Manliness and pluck are reflected on every page; the plots are ingenious, the action swift, and the interest always tense. There is neither a yawn in a paragraph nor a dull moment in a chapter in this stirring series. No boy or girl will willingly lay down a volume of it until "the end." The stories also embody much useful information about the operation and handling of small ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... saw Ebo's face in the opening, and cutting a yawn right in half I followed my uncle out into the darkness, for though the birds of paradise were calling, there ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... should enter to his chamber And suddenly touch him, Would he fade to a thin mist, Or glow into a fire-ball, Or burst like a punctured light-globe? It is impossible that he would merely yawn and rub ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... of the wells with the greatest violence; the openings of the earth were in some places so broad, that the streets appeared twice as wide as they were before: in others, the ground yawned and closed again continually, swallowing, at each yawn, two or three hundred of the wretched inhabitants: sometimes the chasms suddenly closing, caught them by the middle, and crushed them instantly to death. From openings still more dreadful than these, spouted up cataracts of water, drowning such as the earthquake ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... said the Ensign, springing up in bed, and abruptly breaking off a loud sonorous yawn, with which he had opened the business of the day, "you won't deteen a gentleman who's on life and death? I give ye my ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sahib, it is less fear than lack of sleep that Yussuf Dakmar feels. I could hear him yawn through the window lattice. Now a man in that condition is likely to act early in the night for fear that sleep may otherwise get the better of him, and the sahib will do well to be keenly alert from the ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... the essential, distinctive character of Schiller's work; and where I have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at my sins of omission, or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at my sins of commission, I have boldly accepted the first-named horn of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... information is very correct," I said, affecting to yawn slightly. "This is mere gossip of the gutter and I am surprised at you, who ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... Half-Rome, the Tertium Quid, which is perhaps most masterly and finished of the three, show us how ill truth sifts itself, to how many it never comes at all, how blurred, confused, next door to false, it is figured even to those who seize it by the hem of the garment. We may, perhaps, yawn over the intermingled Latin and law of Arcangeli, in spite of the humour of parts of it, as well as over the vapid floweriness of his rival; but for all that, we are touched keenly by the irony of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... send you a copy of Esmond to-morrow or so which you shall yawn over when you are inclined. But the great comfort I have in thinking about my dear old boy is that recollection of our youth when we loved each other as I do ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... distance; and another when the gates of death actually rise in sight. He wondered in what mood he would see his own rooms again. Then he yawned slightly—and was a little pleased that it was natural to yawn. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... down, but could see nothing below us but the dense cloud of black soot resulting from the destruction of the heaviside layer. Like Carpenter, I felt sleepy, and I suppressed a yawn as I turned again ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... he mumbled, and began feeling stupidly for his cigarette papers. "E—a-ough!" he yawned, if so inarticulate a sound may be spelled. "I knew you'd have to work your story over," he said, more normal of tone after the yawn. And he added bluntly, "Rosemary's one grand little woman—but she couldn't act if you trained her a thousand years. What's ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... moan, Help us to | sigh and groan Heavily, | heavily. Graves, yawn and | yield your dead, Till death be | uttered Heavily, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the young lady, with a wondering face to her companion. "Oh aren't you hungry?" she added with a yawn. "I am, dreadfully. I hope we shall get ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... measures' not a few. But no: the men of the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses; listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawn; and signified, in short, that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such was the candid theory these men of the Asphalt Lake formed to themselves of Moses, That probably he was a humbug, that certainly he was ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... stifling what seemed to be a yawn. "You have awakened me from a long sleep, so let your news be ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... weeping loves are seen: Now with Palemon, up a rocky steep, Whose summit trembles o'er the roaring deep, With painful step he climb'd; while far above Sweet Anna charm'd them with the voice of love: Then sudden from the slippery height they fell, While dreadful yawn'd beneath the jaws of hell. 690 Amid this fearful trance, a thundering sound He hears, and thrice the hollow decks rebound: Upstarting from his couch, on deck he sprung, Thrice with shrill note the boatswain's whistle rung: All hands unmoor! proclaims a boisterous cry; All hands unmoor! the cavern'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... and more especially bicycling have conferred, by the force of circumstances, a freedom which strength of argument, entreaty, and tears failed to effect. Mothers and and chaperons do not, as a rule, bicycle, and play tennis and golf; they cannot always go to club meetings, even to yawn through the sets, and so the young people play by themselves, and there are fast growing a lack of restraint and a healthy freedom of intercourse which are gravely deprecated by grand-mammas, winked at by mothers, but enjoyed ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... as she had done the night before, and again with the feeling that something had wakened her. And the queer thing was that the moment she was awake she felt so very awake—she had no inclination to stretch and yawn and hope it wasn't quite time to get up, and think how nice and warm bed was, and how cold it was outside! She sat straight up, and peered out into the darkness, feeling quite ready ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... line, running right and left, and roughly parallel with the crest of the range, came into view. It was an eighth of a mile in length and the narrow width rapidly increased until there was a rent or yawn of several hundred feet, zigzagging from one side to the other. The dark color of this chasm was due to rocks and ground, and marked the break between the two sections or divisions of the avalanche. The upper portion caught and held, while ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... became communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for the most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such ecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred his attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional 'Very true, Carker,' or 'Indeed, Carker,' but he tacitly encouraged Carker to proceed, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... and covered a yawn. "I don't think, darling. I can't. I'm going to bed, and you are going to sleep. Aren't ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... and though Hilderman was the tenant of the furnished house he had contrived to impart a suggestion of his own personality to the room. The furniture was arranged in a delightfully lazy manner that almost made you yawn. The walls were hung with photographic enlargements of some of the most beautiful spots in the neighbourhood. I remembered what Myra had told me as to his being an enthusiastic photographer, so I ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... had exhausted the lessons, the suggestions of these awful events, their inspirations, exhortations,—that she had wept as became the horror of the tragedy. No: the curtain had not yet fallen, yet our young lady had begun to yawn. To yawn? Ay, and to long for the afterpiece. Since the tragedy dragged, might she not divert herself with that well-bred man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... at many of them he appeared to enjoy himself hugely. At the musicals and purely literary entertainments, however, Miles Dawson always looked, as he was, extremely bored. Once Miss Henderson had seen him yawn at a Shelley reading. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or perhaps, to be more accurate, of the horse horsey. Intellectual pleasures were naught to him but fountains of ennui, and being a very honest, frank sort of a person, he took no pains ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... have said, "hoping for a yawn" for anything that could have been offered me; but the young woman who stood for Mrs. Ascher's Psyche must have longed for that relief. The attitude in which she was posed suggested yawning all the time, and we all know how fatal it is to think of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... sweated blood. Then he heard the clash of weapons and saw the glare of the torches, and longed to warn Him but could not; saw the bitter shame of the kiss and the arrest and the flight; and followed to Caiaphas' house; heard the stinging slap; ran to Pilate's house; saw that polished gentleman yawn and sneer; saw the clinging thongs and the splashed floor when the scourging was over; followed on to Calvary; saw the great Cross rise up at last over the heads of the crowd, and heard the storm of hoots and laughter and the dry sobs of the few women. Then over his head the sun grew dull, and the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow, shaved and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same seat with me. As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn—and said, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... a slight yawn. "I've got here some papers somewhere;"—he began to feel in his coat pocket languidly;—"but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken sort of place! Let's go up to Welker's, and you can look at them over ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... The banality of her performance was an added grace. It made her piteous. Damn them, they were sorry for her. Little Noaks was squatting in the front row, peering up at her through his spectacles. Noaks was as sorry for her as the rest of them. Why didn't the earth yawn ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... snatched at a yawn. He stood up, stared at me for a moment, and smiled. "You have had two eventful days," said he. "I should advise some sleep. I'm glad it's all clear. Good-night." He thought me over for a moment, then went out by the ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... said with a yawn. "After this hand, I'll drop out; I dare say one of the other two will take my place. Crestwick, I believe your sister and Miss Leslie will be waiting. You're going with ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... stooping now and then to pounce joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... To himself it was an intolerable nuisance. He suspected his daughter not at all. He was so far from suspecting her that he imagined her to be safe, though half-a-dozen Mosses should surround her. He could only stand idle behind the scenes, or sit in her dressing-room and yawn. But still he did it, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... some rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the valleys of death,—a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of all-devouring Poseidon,—Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the tempest and terror. From such argosies, while ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Caroline turned her head aside as one deeply moved by the poet's magic. But Marcella Eubanks, glancing at that moment into a mirror on the opposite wall,—a mirror in a plush frame on which pansies had been painted,—caught the full and frank exposure of a yawn. It was a thorough yawn. Miss Caroline had surrendered abjectly to it, in the belief—unrecking the mirror—that she could ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... lost four or five games in succession, excusing his own careless play every time by some dexterous compliment to his betrothed. More than once he stifled a yawn—more than once his glances wandered away to the group near the piano, amidst which Clarissa was seated, listening to Lizzy Fermor's brilliant waltzes and mazurkas, with an open music-book on her lap, turning over the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... again he will have himself apparelled and his great sword girded upon him, and he will come down into the court-yard and walk in the sun for hours. You should see those lazy rascals of guardsmen scatter at the first sight of him—like mice running to their holes when puss begins to yawn and stretch herself." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... verging on seven o'clock, throws its cheerless stare into the private drawing-room of MARIE LOUISE, animating the gilt furniture to only a feeble shine. Two chamberlains of the palace are there in waiting. They look from the windows and yawn.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... take long rides on trolley-cars. He calls them his vaudeville in miniature, and sometimes the performance is amusing—I acknowledge it freely. But to-night the actors were few and the play dull. I began to yawn. The car, one of the Eighth Avenue line bound down-town, swung round a curve into Abingdon Square, and Indiman touched ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... horses, until he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is. Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain—and no family here!" as he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... Mary, "she'd only say, 'Oh, all right,' and yawn and change the subject—and what could I do then?" She answered herself, "Nothing," and thoughtfully added, "It will take a lot ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... never becoming, sir," said Blakeney, politely smothering a slight yawn, "and it is vastly unbecoming in the presence ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... all that seems now to be more unsubstantial than the fabric of a dream. I cannot think of Clara or of my mother without despair. For oh, Herbert, between me and them there seems to yawn a dishonored grave! Herbert, they talk, you know, of an attack upon the Molino-del-Rey, and I almost hope to fall ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... to tinkle, bite his lower lip, and make various other signs of that description. When she is looking at him he should speak to his friends about her and other women, and should show to her his liberality and his appreciation of enjoyments. When sitting by the side of a female friend he should yawn and twist his body, contract his eyebrows, speak very slowly as if he were weary, and listen to her indifferently. A conversation having two meanings should also be carried on with a child or some other person, apparently having regard to a third ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... had found the thing they sought. It looked so unbelievably adequate and modern and alive standing there, drawing its perfectly measured breath; it was so eloquent of power and the work of men's hands that there seemed to yawn a gap of half a thousand years between it and the raid in which it was being made a factor. That this pet toy of the modern millionaire should be set to work out the crude vengeance of wild men in these primitive surroundings, crowded up ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most business-like of human beings—for you know you are business-like, and a great deal too much for us ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... again, the rising sun shines down upon the moors, And 'neath his beams rise ramparts high and frowning embrasures, And on each proud abattis yawn, with menace stern and dread, Grim-visaged messengers of death: the watchful sentry's tread In measured cadence slowly falls; all Nature seems at ease, And over all the Stars and Stripes are ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... friends began to yawn. They felt sleepy very early, after all their adventures; and, Light—ever kind and thoughtful—made them live as they were accustomed to on earth. So as not to injure their health by altering their habits, she had set up their little beds ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... who had dropped her skirt and put up her hair so that the eye of the law might wink at her stigma of youth, hung the shimmering gowns away for another day's display. Gertie Dobriner patted her ringed fingers against her mouth to press back a yawn and trailed across the room, adjusting her hat before a full-length mirror. In the light from a single electric bulb her hair showed three colors—yellow gold, green gold, and, toward the roots, the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... graves yawn for the future victims of these mechanical devices. The skill of the Northern inventor, and the devilish perfection of the heart-cleaving blade of the Southern duellist are a shame to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... other French islands. Until they heard of the Rights of Man they were flourishing and happy, but as soon as this system arrived among them, Pandora's box, replete with every mortal evil, seemed to fly open; hell itself to yawn; and every demon of mischief to overspread the country. Blacks rose against blacks, whites against blacks—and each against the other in murderous hostility: subordination was destroyed, the cords of society snapped asunder, and every man appeared to thirst ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... day's work. So the group about the table felt free to talk as they liked. But Polly Brewster and her friend Eleanor Maynard were almost talked out by the time they finished the last bit of Sary's delicious dessert; and Barbara Maynard tried her best to hide a yawn behind her hand, while Anne Stewart, the pretty teacher who was the fourth member in the party that spent a night in the cave, was eager to continue planning for the future of the mine, but Nature demanded rest ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... felt that the doctrine of union with God enshrined a truth of great value. And if we remember the great Mystical paradox, "He that will lose his life shall save it," we shall partly understand how they arrived at it. It is quite true that the nearer we approach to God, the wider seems to yawn the gulf that separates us from Him, till at last we feel it to be infinite. But does not this conviction itself bring with it unspeakable comfort? How could we be aware of that infinite distance, if there were not something within us which can ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... crocodile, which made some difference in our ideas of its vivacity. Presently the creature really began to struggle, and the united efforts of the men could hardly restrain it from getting into deeper water. The monster now began to yawn, which so terrified the men that they would have dropped the rope and fled had they not been afraid of the consequences, as I was addressing them rather forcibly from the bank. I put another shot ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... now not quite alone, having an old acquaintance and school-fellow with me, so old, indeed, that we have nothing new to say on any subject, and yawn at each other in a sort of quiet inquietude. I hear nothing from Cawthorn, or Captain Hobhouse; and their quarto—Lord have mercy on mankind! We come on like Cerberus with our triple publications. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Sita to come out and see their early history drawn on the terrace of the palace. They move about and the different parts of the picture are shown to Sita, when the eyes of Sita turn on the 'yawn-producing' weapons. Rama asks her to salute them so that they would attend also on her children. Sita then feels tired and lays her head on the arm of her husband ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... functions of the season, and at many of them he appeared to enjoy himself hugely. At the musicals and purely literary entertainments, however, Miles Dawson always looked, as he was, extremely bored. Once Miss Henderson had seen him yawn at a Shelley reading. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or perhaps, to be more accurate, of the horse horsey. Intellectual pleasures were naught to him but fountains of ennui, and being a very honest, frank sort of a person, he took no pains to conceal the fact, and it ruined ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... Dark hillside; rain in large warm drops; night dark, with a star or two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... Brion had forgotten the hate campaign he had directed against himself. "Suit yourself," he said shortly, getting back into the role. "But the next time you yawn there'll be a negative entry in your service record. If that's clear—you can brief me on this organization's visible relations with the Disans. How ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... the Nursery Blarney-Stone has been made over, to have and to hold, to the writers of the Children's Astor-Place Library. We yawn over poetical justice in novels, and only tolerate it as an amusing absurdity in genteel comedy, for the sake of getting the curtain rapidly down over the benedictory guardian and the virtue-rewarded fair, who are impatient themselves to be off to a very different distribution of cakes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Mrs. Fox elected to walk home as a tribute to the glorious moonlight, and Jack was commandeered to act as her escort. It was a good opportunity for the lady to show that renegade, Master Bobby Smart, that he was not indispensable. His yawn at ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... the baron, "will it be changed?" and he poked the fire to conceal a yawn. Excellent man! his time latterly had been more given to the investigation of opera than of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... der Donk replied, and said all that he had said before, prating on till the boys began to yawn and to shift their feet from one side to the other, for they had been standing all this time, and ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh

... were the towering, craggy peaks, with many a rent and yawn and table-land and lesser elevation, until, as if to check the climbing ambition of the prodigious monster, nature had flung an immense blanket of snow, whose ragged and torn edges lapped far down the sides of the crests. Ages ago the chilling blanket was tucked around the mountain ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... put aside all glum-faced discussion, with a little yawn, and sprang to his feet. "Then we can but hope that somewhere, somehow, Mistress Katherine yet lives and in her own good time may reappear. And while we speak of reappearances—surely the Lady Ursula is strangely ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... animals when it rains. Who can help laughing at sight of a flock of them huddled up under lee of a barn, limp, draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, looking as if they would die for want of a yawn? One sees just such groups of other two-legged creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances. The truth is, a hen's life at best seems poorer than that of any other known animal. Except when she is setting, I cannot help having a contempt for her. This also has been recognized by that common ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... the attack, she said, with a poor pretense at a yawn, "So you think a man may love a woman even after—after she has turned him out of doors, ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... grumblings died away when it occurred to him that, fixed as he was to his place, to uproot himself was utterly impossible. Meanwhile Madame Astier, sitting on the edge of an armchair in her dressing-gown, with a lace wrap round her head, watched his proceedings and murmured between yawn and yawn with placid irony, 'Really, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt. He yawned automatically at regular intervals—long, dismal yawns that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day. Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have looked reproof ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice there ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... To yawn in the presence of others, to lounge, to put your feet on a chair, to stand with your back to the fire, to take the most comfortable seat in the room, to do anything which shows indifference, selfishness, or disrespect, is unequivocally vulgar ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn, and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... insolence that once took the world by storm, until the author's mentality was revealed by his commitment to a mad-house. Von Kettler read till midnight, closely observed by the guard at the trap, then laid the word aside with a yawn, lay down on his cot, and appeared to fall ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... a gigantic yawn, stretched her beautiful long body till the tips of her fingers almost touched the low rafters, and said, "It's a good thing Charleton and Peter will be going along to protect us from ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... my mouth again to-night, except to yawn," said Sam, and it was not long before the ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... streaming in through the window—bright and sunshiny day. He stretched his arms to yawn; but a shooting pain darted through all the muscles, and his arms came down more rapidly than they had gone up. He looked at them with a bewildered stare, till suddenly the events of the night rushed in upon him, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... sat apart talking together until nearly midnight. Finally, with a yawn, Zoya suggested that they try to break up the party. For a little while they looked on. Not understanding the game of baccarat, Nina watched the faces of ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... of those ravines or clefts in the earth seemed to yawn before them, and entering it at the upper end, the spectre knight, with an attention which he had not yet shown, guided the lady's courser by the rein down the broken and steep path by which alone the bottom of the tangled ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... sleepy during the process of digestion: Mr Carker became communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for the most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such ecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred his attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional 'Very true, Carker,' or 'Indeed, Carker,' but he tacitly encouraged Carker to proceed, and inwardly approved ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... is not the same. Men fall in love—or protest as much. And at wine they boast of their good fortunes, swearing each that his mistress is the fairest, and bragging till I yawn to listen.... And yet you say you never ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... now between the jaws of rock that yawn so hungrily. Beyond and below are vast walls, shelving toward the floor of the gulf a thousand feet beneath—their brilliant colors shining in the sun of morning that sheds as peaceful a light on wood and hill as if there were no such thing as brother hunting ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... plunge, then a reactionary lift back, and then she opened her eyes and her mouth with such a yawn! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... my mother Does not approve me further, who was wont To call them woollen vassals; things created To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... familiar things. There stand the kine, knee-deep in grass; there runs the water; and there grows the corn. Also you can stop if you like. By-and-by it is different. By-and-by, when the travellers tread the heights of passion, precipices will yawn and torrents rush, lightnings will fall and storms will blind; and who can know that they shall attain at last to that far-off peak, crowned with the glory of a perfect peace which men call Happiness? There are those who say ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... but a fellow makes some bloomin' mistakes sometimes. I am not interested very much though," continued Matlock Styles, and gave a yawn. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... plump fat lies as you would wish to hear. I said I "was obliged to go into Hollingford on business," when the truth was there was no obligation in the matter, only an insupportable desire of being free from my visitors for an hour or two, and my only business was to come here, and yawn, and complain, and lounge at my leisure. I really think I'm unhappy at having told a story, as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... a few neat clues for Anonyma? After all, we ought to give her all the pleasure we can, I sometimes think we are a disappointing family for her to have married. We lie to her, she lies to us, her enthusiasms make us smile behind our hands, ours make her yawn behind her notebook. Send us a good encouraging letter, addressed to the house in Kensington. We always wire our address there as we move. Give us details about Trelawney, and, if possible, the name of the nearest post town. If we ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... endless questions to be asked and answered on both sides, but at last Dab yawned a very sleepy yawn and said: "Ford, you've had your nap. Wake up Dick there, and let him take his turn at the tiller. The sea's as smooth as a lake, and I believe I'll go to sleep for an hour or so. You and Frank keep watch ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... heavily on their hands. The evening had not been so interesting to them as to their juniors. Lady Darcy was tired with the preparations of the day, and the countess with her journey from town. Both were fain to yawn behind their fans from time to time, and were longing for the moment to come when they could retire to bed. If only those indefatigable children would say good-night and take themselves off! But the echo of the piano still sounded from the ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... house all sodden with woe Where the deed was done, long, long ago, And filled with himself his new body full— To haunt for ever his ghastly crime, And see it come and go— Brooding around it like motionless time, With a mouth that gapes, and eyes that yawn Blear and blintering and full of the moon, Like one aghast at a hellish dawn!— The deed! the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... enthusiasms and tolerated him while he told us about his own. But a sense of boredom begins to creep into our hearts at the end of the second evening, which, if there were not the pleasure of bidding him "Good-bye" on the morrow to keep our spirits up, would end in exasperation to be fought down and a yawn to be suppressed. The man who invented "long visits" ought to be made to spend them for the rest of his life as a punishment. There is only one thing longer—though it sounds rather like a paradox to say so—and that is a "long day." To ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... stars were shining through gaps in them. On the horizon, in the direction of the lines, there was a broad belt of blue sky. The wind was blowing into Germany. He came back yawning. "We'll go up—ho, hum!"—tremendous yawn—"through a hole before we reach the river. It's going to be clear presently, so the higher we ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... a prodigious yawn which came from the Girl there was an ominous quiet hanging over the place that chilled the man. Sudden sounds startled him, and he found it impossible to make any progress with his preparations for the night. He was about to make some remark, however, when ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... be horrible. To meet him daily in the world, to speak to him and to hear his voice, perhaps to touch his hand, and all the while to smile coldly, and to be still and for ever above suspicion, while her own burning consciousness accused her of the past, and seemed to make the dangers of mere living yawn beside her path at every step,—all this would be terrible to bear, but by God's help she would bear it to ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... they are," returned Diana; "and pray, suppose them paid, and accepted with a gracious smile, for I do not care to be troubled with hearing them in good earnest, and am much more likely to yawn than to behave becoming. In short, Mr. Frank, I wished to serve you, and I have fortunately been able to do so, and have only one favour to ask in return, and that is, that you will say no more about it.—But who comes here ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... nowhere, as a rule, does the gulf between the sexes yawn so wide as in America. One can often observe it in the brothers and sisters of the same family. And it runs in the opposite direction from the gulf in Europe. With us, as a rule, the men are better ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... That sleepiest sound in the world, the terminal yawn. Mrs. Babbitt yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned, "How about going to bed, eh? Don't suppose Rone and Ted will be in till all hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet—Gosh, I'd like—Some day I'm going to take a long ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... the point in her romance where one of them, she was not quite sure which, should rescue the other from a runaway horse, when the boy suddenly called her back to the present by throwing his open book on the ground, with a vigorous yawn. ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... Easington-cum-Liverton, listening to his revered grandfather bubbling forth orthodoxy. Up in Distinguished Strangers' Gallery sat a little boy on his father's knee. Long he listened to the gentle murmur, broken now and then by a yawn from a back bench, or the rustling of the manuscript as it was turned over folio by folio. It was a great occasion for him; his first visit to the Chamber which still echoed with the tones of his father's uncle, JOHN BRIGHT. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various

... a thing for Peer," said Ferdinand, rising and lifting his hand to hide a yawn. "Leave trifles like that to ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... to the last entry, in which, while the size of the mountains was mentioned with some approval, the saltness of the hotel butter was made the subject of severe comment, he shut the book up with a yawn. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... themselves into them; those trees which had been cut down because they inspired men with the idea of hanging themselves; that contagion of suicides, of robberies, of murders, at certain epochs, by desperate means; that strange and subtile enticement of example, which makes you yawn because another yawns, suffer because you see another suffer, kill yourself because you see others kill themselves—and my hair stood ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... feet is a long distance when two hundred feet yawn beneath. Let him come. We have food enough for a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... her innocent memories. Kessler suppressed a yawn. "Oh, my," Margaret said, "the poor man! How embarrassing if he was ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith

... her go and got up with a yawn, watching her approvingly as she crossed the tent. The easy swing of her boyish figure and the defiant carriage of her head reminded him of one of his own thoroughbred horses. She was as beautiful and as wild as they were. And as he ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... Cavender stifled a yawn, blinked water from his eyes, watching Ormond walk over to a small polished table on the left side of the room in front of the rows of chairs. On it Mavis Greenfield had placed a number of enigmatic ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz

... a mere form!" returned Kate with a yawn. "Gerty says she's marrying for love—not of the man but his money," and Kate laughed as if it was ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... an owl as he leaned against the yard gates watching the detective backing the car down the declivity of the passage into Bridge Street. Before they had reached it, he banged the gates behind him with another tremendous yawn, and went back to his interrupted slumber in the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... am glad the day has come at last," said Edith, as she rose that morning with a yawn. "Oh, dear, and it's going to be splendid, too. Kitty, what dress are you going to wear at ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... slowly opening, as if it were a monster mouth taking a lazy yawn. The children clustered together and watched it eagerly, when, to their great amazement, out popped a little figure, not more than six inches high, dressed in a suit of sky blue velvet with white lace ruffles at the throat and wrists. The ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various

... could do that. The fact of their being one kept your heart quite quiet, and often made you yawn; but she said it was not necessary, as long as you could make theirs so that they ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... deuce do you want at this early hour?" said Godfrey with a heavy yawn. "Now do be quiet, Tony, and give a man time to ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... do," said Nigel, with a half-suppressed yawn, that was irresistibly dragged out of him by the sight of another ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... begins to yawn like a trained seal. That's how I came to fall in with—this." He indicated the giggling Clyde. "I didn't have anything better ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... round the house by the path just then, and Nils rose, with a yawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric and I will take a little tramp before bed-time. It will make ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... had not told me," continued Walter. "Bob, however, talked nothing else morning, noon, and night. Often I would drop asleep while he was chattering of induction coils, wave lengths, and antenna. It makes me yawn now to think of it. My goodness, weren't Ma and I sick to death of hearing nothing but radio! Bob would rush into the house at mealtime, swallow his food whole, and tear off to Hicks's with a piece of pie in his hand, leaving ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... said Tom, stifling a yawn, "it looks like we did it. But I could use some more sleep. That five hours was just enough to ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... showed signs of friendliness and nearer approach, I aroused Stepan, who sprang to his feet, and, with one heave of his mighty shoulders, sent the intruder flying into the darker recesses of the stancia. "It's only a Shaman," muttered the Cossack with a yawn, as he rolled back into the dirty straw, and I then regretted that I had not more closely examined this High Priest of, perhaps, the weirdest faith in existence, for an hour afterwards, when the rekindled fire had once more rendered objects clearly visible, the "Shaman" had left the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... gone to bed at midnight. Now this was unprecedented, even impertinent. If the river is not open by the middle of May, your Sour-dough may go to bed—only he doesn't. Still, he may do as he lists. But your cheechalko—why, this is the hour of his initiation. It was as if a man should yawn at his marriage or refuse to sleep at his funeral. The offenders were some of those Woodworth fellows, who, with a dozen or so others, had built shacks below "the street" yet well above the river. At two in the morning Sour-dough Saunders knocked ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... forward into the cool, dark shadow, and the woman followed me, while the man, stepping out with a yawn, stood in the entrance, stretching himself in the sunshine. The roofless tower, which smelled dank and unwholesome, was empty, or cumbered only with rubbish and heaps of stones; but looking through the inner door I saw ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... her head to see who was behind her or at the other end of the pew; she rarely found the places in the prayer-book or knew just when to kneel down; when she did kneel down she sank into an awkward little bunch; every now and then she stifled, or did not stifle, a yawn. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... lying on the grass, would look at him soberly, submit to his endearments without one answering wag of the tail, and at last, after the utmost patience that courtesy could require, would slowly get up, yawn, and stroll off to his kennel or to some pretended business behind the barn. His big heart harboured no resentment against the child, whom he knew to be a child and irresponsible. His resentment ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... with a laugh and a yawn. "Just give me the chance—that's all!" Then she turned her head—"Lulu!—you mustn't eat any more toffy!"—and she flung out a mischievous hand and captured a box that was lying on the table, before a girl, who was sitting near it with a book, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... journals? Because human nature is filled with egotism. There is nothing so interesting to oneself as oneself; and journals cannot yawn in one's face, no matter how lengthy the expression of one's ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... at last to become the sovereign seat for hunting—the Melton Mowbray of the South! May thy genius loci forbid it; may thy goddess of fever visit the hounds in one of her ugliest types; loimos or limos destroy them; old Tiber rise with his yellow waves to drown, catacombs yawn to ingulf, and aqueducts fall to crush them! Or, should inanimate nature disregard our row, two other hopes remain: the one, that the foxes, made aware by this time of the love with which the Roman princes contemplate il loro brush, will send them a yearly tribute ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... the sea these suave lines become broken. The pinyons give place to pine and fir, and the somber canyons begin to yawn. It was just here, where the grassy hills began to break into savage walls, that Bidwell made his camp beside a small stream which fell away into Bear Creek to the south. From this camp he could ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... ears, Her stifled groans as when he knelt upon her Always he heard; always he saw her stand Before his eyes; even in the dead of night Distinctly seen as tho' in the broad sun, She stood beside the murderer's bed and yawn'd Her ghastly wound; till life itself became A punishment at last he could not bear, And he confess'd [2] it all, and gave himself To death, so terrible, he said, it was To ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... matters it how faultlessly we paint or write or sing if no one will care to look or read or listen? He is all fault that hath no fault at all, and we poor outsiders all but yawn in his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... Grammont, with a faint yawn, "why must I only lie in a hammock in the Summer, and then, where nobody can see me? I will have a hammock made for the winter, to lie in and watch my ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... dress was washed off by the rain. The square itself was deserted, save for a pack of dogs and a few little boys, rolling about in the mud puddles. Once in a while an old man would come out of the gamal, yawn and disappear. In short, it was a lendemain de fete of the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... and cheerful A little while agone; Now he is pale and tearful, And—yes, I've seen him yawn. So tired is he of kisses That he can only weep; The one dear thing he misses And longs for now ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... a sleepy yawn. "Hello! Hello! Why the deuce don't you yank a man out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and have done with it, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... stood up with a yawn. "I thought so," he said to his companion. "Mind the door, Gregg, and see that nobody steps in and busts up my ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... through the poor bronze, that is Time. As for Eternity, it is a question of the calculus, and does not enter into a singer's first appearance, nor into the recognition of a lover. If it did, I would give you an eloquent dissertation upon it, so that you would yawn and take snuff, and wish me carried off by the diavolo to some place where I might lecture on the infinite without fear of being interrupted, or of keeping sinners like you unnecessarily long awake. There will be no hurry then. Poor old diavolo! he must have a dull time of it amongst all ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... the earth did yawn between Both wheels, and I saw rise from it a Dragon, Who through the chariot ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... end of the study came the clear voice of Quinton, in something between a yawn and a yell ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... fall! Thy coming doom the round earth shall appall, And all the hearts of freemen beat for thee, And all free souls their fate in shine foresee— Theirs is thy glory's fall! One look below the Almighty gave, Where stream'd the lion-flags of thy proud foe; And near and wider yawn'd the horrent grave. "And who," saith HE, "shall lay mine England low— The stem that blooms with hero-deeds— The rock when man from wrong a refuge needs— The stronghold where the tyrant comes in vain? Who shall bid England vanish from the main? Ne'er be this only Eden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... Towards the middle of the afternoon she saw with joy that it had lulled, and though very cold, was so bright and calm that she might venture. She had eagerly opened the kitchen door to go up and get ready, when a long weary yawn from her old grandmother made her look back. The old lady had laid her knitting in her lap and bent her face down to her hand, which she was rubbing across her brow, as if to clear away the tired feeling that had settled there. Ellen's conscience instantly brought up Alice's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... he asked with a yawn. Then a sudden groan escaped him, and he put his hand to his head. "Thousand devils!" he swore, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... of the pups, usually Finn, would open his eyes and yawn, realize once more how good life was, and plunge forthwith upon his still sleeping brothers and sisters, tumbling them triumphantly into the midst of a new romp before they knew whether they were on their heads or their ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... a smile that was partly a yawn, stole quietly away. Butterflies did not excite his ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... fretful parts never a shade. "A little Irish girl," he wrote once during a painful crisis of his life, "is now reading my book aloud to her sister at my elbow; they chuckle, and I feel flattered.—Yours, R. L. S. P.S.—Now they yawn, and I am indifferent. Such a wisely conceived thing is vanity." If only vanity so conceived were commoner! And whatever might be the abstract and philosophical value of that somewhat grimly stoical conception of the universe, of conduct and duty, at which in mature ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on—and the reader, I think, can bear me out when I say that, after an hour of it, I distinctly saw—for I was there, near the front—several ladies yawn behind their fans, and otherwise show signs of fatigue, so that when the poor little Babies, who had done as honest work as anybody, toddled up to get their little prizes, scarcely anybody looked at them, and were ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... the waters yawn, And cruel monsters grin, My comrades sink to depths below, All in a ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie

... aim has been to disengage and bring clearly into view the essential, distinctive character of Schiller's work; and where I have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at my sins of omission, or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at my sins of commission, I have boldly accepted the first-named horn of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, as might a child ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... a yawn and carefully struck off with his little finger the firm ash of an excellent cigarette. He was consuming thirty or forty cigarettes a day, and his nerves were beginning to show ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... door, the great task was at hand! He tried, while standing, to simulate indifference, but his legs were weak and his teeth chattered, just a little, in spite of his effort to control himself. It seemed as if he were forever wanting to yawn, conscious of the ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... a commonplace. Fear of fire had been blunted by their terrible suffering, and although the soldiers roused the sleepers and warned them against possible approaching flames, they would only yawn, wrap their blanket about them and stolidly move on to find some other place where they might drop and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... Marsh's appetite for local history was so slight as to be cloyed even by the very much abbreviated account she had given them, for he now said, hiding a small yawn, with no effort to conceal the fact that he had been bored, "Mrs. Crittenden, I've heard from Mr. Welles' house the most tantalizing snatches from your piano. Won't you, now we're close to it, put ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... that women were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... Elsie, flinging up her arms with a yawn that distorted her pretty mouth out of all proportion. "Thank heaven, they are gone! I am sure another half ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... auctioneer, with a yawn; for the excitement of the sale was over, and he did not waste professional jokes except on well-to-do hearers. 'Rosewood armchair, upholstered in best wool damask! Now, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... exerting themselves in trials of strength or slipping in and out of the conjurers' tents. There was not a man unaccompanied by a woman. Many a one came to a stand at the refreshment-tents, but the woman pulled him past; then he would yawn and allow himself to be dragged up into a roundabout or a magic-lantern tent where the most beautiful pictures were shown of the way that cancer and other horrible things made havoc ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... ran by. One or two of the chairs creaked. James Tapster yawned, and he put up his hand rather unwillingly to hide his yawn. He thought all this sort of thing very stupid, and so absolutely unnecessary. He had enjoyed listening to Miss Bubbles' cheerful, inconsequent chatter. It irritated him that she should have been dragged away from him—for ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... the directors but Webb. All that counted, that is. One would imagine it a meeting of the board. Then why was he here? Suddenly he lost himself in a great yawn, and realized that he was dying of sleepiness. Neither last night nor the night before had he closed ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... stabbled down into paths by hippos, and just as I have realised who are the road-makers, they appear in person. One immense fellow, hearing us, stands up and shows himself about six feet from us in the grass, gazes calmly, and then yawns a yawn a yard wide and grunts his news to his companions, some of whom—there is evidently a large herd—get up and stroll towards us with all the flowing grace of Pantechnicon vans in motion. We put our helm paddles hard a starboard ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... it as if she were taking snuff, and pronounced it perfect. Just then the opera began. I withdrew into the shade, and Josephine was silenced for a while in admiration of the scenery and the dresses. By and by, she began to yawn. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... his arm round her waist. She has a Titian head, a fine profile and good figure. Her brilliant earrings, her necklace, her shapely shoulders and arms seem to proclaim her sex, when suddenly disengaging herself from the embracing arm she turns away with a yawn, saying in a bass voice, 'Emile, why are you so tiresome to-day?' The novice hardly believes his eyes: the ballet dancer ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... poet's heart in angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... seat with a yawn, and intimated that it was time to go to bed. It was long past twelve now and the hotel was gradually retiring to rest. The Grand Empire was not the sort of house to cater to the frivolous type of guest, and usually within an hour of the closing of the theatres the whole of the vast building ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... when it comes to cheek, pure and unadulterated, commend me to a Virginia gentleman who has acquired the proper modicum of Western bluff," he laughed. Then, with a cavernous yawn dating back to the sleepless night: "Since there is nothing immediately pressing, I believe I'll go and call on the ladies. Won't you come along for ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... saloon passengers of an Atlantic liner—that appearance of resignation to an enforced idleness and a monotony to be broken only by meals. Lord Emsworth's guests gave the impression, collectively, of being just about to yawn ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... monastic gall! What Fancy sad or lightsome hast thou given? Thy vision-scaring sounds alone recall The prayer that trembles on a yawn to heaven; And this Dean's gape, and that Dean's nosal tone, And Roman rites retain'd, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... boss would come," said Jim with a yawn. "I want to get into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go in. I ain't got a decent rag to me back. I don't suppose there's ten bob amongst the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... now sufficiently distended, greeted the story with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his listless, pleasant way, and turned ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... an expression of feeling, and tried to remember whether he had ever sighed before in his life, but if he had, he could not recall the circumstances. He tried to console himself with the absurd supposition that he was sleepy and that the long-drawn breath had been only a suppressed yawn. Then he walked on, gazing before him into the purple haze that filled the deep street just as the sun was setting, and a vague sadness and longing touched him which had no place in his catalogue of permissible emotions and which were as far removed from the cold cynicism ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... in the hands of Providence; we must take what is sent us." And caressing his bare chin John gave a hearty yawn. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... is very correct," I said, affecting to yawn slightly. "This is mere gossip of the gutter and I am surprised at you, who really ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... world which would require the unexpected appearance of the water ghost in this on nights other than Christmas Eve, and before the mystic hour when weary churchyards, ignoring the rules which are supposed to govern polite society, begin to yawn. Nor would the maids themselves have aught to do with him, fearing the destruction by the sudden incursion of aqueous femininity of the costumes ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... who, journeying, checks the rein in haste Because a chasm doth yawn across his way Too wide for leaping, and too steeply faced ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... your knock, however you vary it. Nobody knocks like you. I suppose no two people would make three taps just the same." She was far too polite to yawn; but she made as much of the movement as she could not control, and then put a mark in her book, and laid it down. A very different girl, indeed, was she from her younger sister; a stranger would never have suspected her of ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... There's the full title and description for you. There's nothing else in the paper." Iver handed it to her with a stifled yawn. She read and turned to Neeld with a quick jerk of ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... Phantasmagoria by that writer quaint but grand, Who penned The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland. And I thought I knew a thing or two, or might be even three, About a Ghoul, and a Fay or Troll, and a Brownie or Banshee. I knew that a Banshee always howled, whilst a Goblin might but yawn, I also knew that a Poltergeist was not a Leprechaun, But the Psychicals, I'm bound to say, had me on "buttered toastes" With the wonderful changes which they rang on the good old ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... point where we couldn't be interested in anything any more. We were as little ones unable to prop their eyelids open and yet quarreling with bed. We were surfeited, but not satisfied. We sat there and pouted because there wasn't any more, and yet we couldn't but yawn at the act before us. We were mad at ourselves, and mad at everybody else. We clambered down the rattling bedslats seats, sour and sullen. We didn't want to look at the animals; we didn't want to do this, and we didn't want to do that. We whined and snarled, and wriggled and shook ourselves with ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... as a friend who was a fool to care for a man as she cared." Mrs. Mundy put her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. "She said—" ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... with these [1] the king awoke, And in his chair himself uprear'd, And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and spoke, "By holy rood, a royal beard! How say you? we have slept, my lords, My beard has grown into my lap." The barons swore, with many words, 'Twas ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... you yawn by mentioning long, unfamiliar Latin names. I will not astonish you with descriptions of complex reproductive methods and beautiful survival strategies. Gardeners do not really need this information. But managing the earth so that soil animals are helped and not destroyed ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... by this time, he thought. He was getting through this period of probation better than he had expected. Mrs. Tempest gave a little stifled yawn behind her huge black fan, upon which Cupids and Graces, lightly sketched in French gray, were depicted dancing in the airiest attitudes, after Boucher. Roderick would have liked to yawn in concert, but at this juncture ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... only." [Footnote: Id., footnote, p. 158.] And then because we try to think of ourselves having continuous opinions, without being altogether certain what a broad principle is, we quite naturally greet with an anguished yawn an argument that seems to involve the reading of more government reports, more statistics, more curves and more graphs. For all these are in the first instance just as confusing as partisan rhetoric, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Mrs. Perkins had only one favourite, "Home, Sweet Home," with variations; that was the only tune she was real sure of. When the Doctor got these two orders filled he began the real business of the evening with Handel's "Largo." Mr. Perkins began to yawn and soon took his departure, closely followed by Mrs. Perkins. They unitedly declared that they "didn't like a die-away ducky piece like that that hadn't any swing ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... arrive. The old women, in everything clean and new, are already drawn up in a row, waiting. Near them struts the old garrison rat—the superintendent with his mawkish, sneaking smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but are afraid to complain. We wait. The junior steward gallops up. Half an hour later the senior steward; then the superintendent of the accounts' office, then another, and then another of them . . . they keep arriving ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... pretty salutation, crossed the lawn, passed her husband, who had just ridden up on a powerful sorrel, and called brightly to Coursay: "Take me fishing, Jack, or I'll yawn my head off ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... little more eagerly than most of them responded—while Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him understand that he must abandon this method of reassuring himself. They were close upon ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... answered David, with a yawn, stretching himself out on a seat, and in less than half a minute he ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... gone only a few minutes when the door of the cardroom swung open before a sharp thrust, and Mr. Leslie stepped into the library, followed by Mrs. Gantry. Mr. Leslie closed the door, and each took advantage of the seclusion to blink and yawn and stretch luxuriously. They had just risen from the card table, and were both cramped and sleepy. Also neither perceived Blake, who was hidden from them by the back ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... funeral which elderly people always wish to know, went to her room, for she was tired and longed for sleep. But Harriet entered almost immediately and sat down. She barely had spoken since Monday; but it was evident that she was ready to talk at last, and Betty stifled a yawn and sat upon the edge of her bed. Harriet was a delicate subject and must be treated with vigilant consideration, except at those times where an almost brutal firmness was necessary. She looked sad and haggard, but very beautiful, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... thinking Socrates was a fool to want to be killed when he had done nothing to deserve it," said Thornton, with a yawn, as ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Mountains. They had followed the falls-filled Snake and the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among basaltic bastions buttressing the mountain sides, or through the lava lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the sullen ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... crowd of spirits in his ferryboat. They land and are received by devils, who drag them before Minos, judge of the infernal regions. He towers at the extreme right end of the fresco, indicating that the nether regions yawn infinitely deep, beyond our ken; just as the angels above Christ suggest a region of light and glory, extending upward through illimitable space. The scene of judgment on which attention is concentrated ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... poor Sychaeus' hap, 20 My husband dead, my hearth acold through murderous brother's deed, This one alone hath touched the quick; this one my heart may lead Unto its fall: I feel the signs of fire of long agone. And yet I pray the deeps of earth beneath my feet may yawn, I pray the Father send me down bolt-smitten to the shades, The pallid shades of Erebus, the night that never fades, Before, O Shame, I shame thy face, or loose what thou hast tied! He took away the love from me, who bound me to his side That first of times. Ah, in the tomb let love be with ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... kind of life? Can you picture me devoting myself to the keeping of a house tidy, the overseeing of meals? I fancy I see myself spending the long, quiet evenings, my husband busy in his office or out among his patients while I dose and yawn and grow fat and old and ugly, and the great world forgetting. Dick, I should die! Of course, I love Barney. But I must have life, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... . I have hitherto known myself to be merely a stop-gap; but my action, or rather inaction, as a stop-gap, has come terribly to an end. That gap will never be filled now, till God restores all the noble ruin that we name the world; and the wisest know best that the gap will yawn as hopelessly in the history of England as in the story of our private lives. I must now either accept this duty entirely or abandon it entirely. I will not abandon it; for every instinct and nerve of intelligence ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... they would have requested the others to lower their voices, so that the noise should not disturb them. And then suddenly when least expected the count was absurd enough to leave his seat in an absent-minded way with a yawn, and walk off by himself and sit at a corner of the table; whilst Fernanda, on her side, was also very whimsical, for she would take the opportunity to start an animated conversation with the son of the Chief Magistrate ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid. Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to yawn. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... late, isn't it?" says Tita, with a yawn, "but I'll stay a minute or two. Why, what we arranged was, that we should ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... spring day, and the Homestead was at its best. The entire demesne was without a weed, and the blooming berry patches, the sprouting asparagus beds and the budding grape vines all come in for the eminent sculptor's enforced inspection, until at last with a yawn of unconcealed boredom he turned away. "You seem to like your slavery," he remarked to Zulime, a note of comical accusation in ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... weary of bending over the books, and of the persistent fixedness of attention required for the pursuit of fine shades of meaning in many different languages. He threw his arms up in aid of a yawn, and turned partly around, his eyes outrunning the movement of his body. The half-introverted glance brightened with a gleam, and remained fixed, while the arms dropped down. He could only look in wonder at what he saw—eyes black and almost large as his own gazing ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... me, I will own; but it was not so much these that wrought me to sudden, cold fury, as that contemptuous yawn. Even as I stood mute with righteous indignation, all my finer feelings thus wantonly outraged, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... extends her lesser fingers when she lifts her cup, or breaks a bit of bread. It was a delicate suggestion of exquisite appreciation, and of most excellent manners. Once he began a whine, but recollected himself and suppressed it, as the dainty lady might a yawn. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... will sometimes yawn, And yield their dead unto life again; And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn In golden glory at last ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... not the habit of listening to words without understanding them, yawn and writhe with manifest symptoms of disgust, whenever they are compelled to hear sounds which convey no ideas to their minds. All supernumerary words should be avoided in ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no button-hole. Then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and wish himself back in his friends' studios in London. I almost pitied the wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had never been more wretched. "Why," I asked, "was your mouth not always full of the 'Greek spirit,' and did ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... Tillie, a great throb of relief thrilled through her as she heard the doctor utter this Napoleonic lie—only to be followed the next instant by an overwhelming sense of her own wickedness in thus conniving with fraud. Abysses of iniquity seemed to yawn at her feet, and she gazed with horror into their black depths. How could she ever ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... there," Georgiana gushed, dropping her lace-trimmed petticoats about her feet and struggling to unhook her corsets. "It was grand, but I'm tired to death; and oh, dear! I've another blow-out to-night, and the 'Clover Leaf' to-morrow night!" With a weary yawn, the society queen ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age of fret and fume, of stalk and strut, of trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now I fear we should hiss; I am quite sure we should yawn. She must have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... am, but a fellow makes some bloomin' mistakes sometimes. I am not interested very much though," continued Matlock Styles, and gave a yawn. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... unobserved in a place of safety. When I had carefully locked my trunk, I tiptoed toward the door with the intention of going out to look for a decent restaurant where I might get something fit to eat. As I was easing the door open, my porter friend said with a yawn: "Hello! You're going out?" I answered him: "Yes." "Oh!" he yawned again, "I guess I've had enough sleep; wait a minute, I'll go with you." For the instant his friendship bored and embarrassed me. I had visions of another meal in the greasy restaurant of the day before. He must ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... he asked with another yawn. "The lights are so bad I can't see good. Guess I'm a little groggy anyway. I was too danged tired when I went to sleep to take off ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... of resolution to "turn out" under such unpromising circumstances; but Bush, after two or three groans and a yawn, made the attempt to get up and dress. Climbing hurriedly down when the ship rolled to windward, he caught his boots in one hand and trousers in the other, and began hopping about the cabin with surprising agility, dodging or jumping over the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... which were famous in their day, but at present are little more than historical shadows. The conversations were often learned, doubtless sometimes pretentious. One is inclined to wonder if these noble cavaliers and high-born woman did not yawn occasionally over the scholarly discourse of Corneille and Balzac upon the Romans, the endless disputes about rival sonnets, and the long discussions on the value of a word. "Doubtless it is a very beautiful poem, but also ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... back door of the cabin and stretched in a long and luxuriant yawn. Carelessly and casually his eyes wandered over the aspens and into the corral. For a moment he stood frozen, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... late," says she; with a yawn, and rings the hand-bell. "Scipio," she cries, "why ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... which means that I'll have another now. That's the thing for ideas! Oh, certainly. Picture to yourself an editor writing like mad. He indulges in a pipe to soothe his rampant brain, and while lighting it he leans back for a complacent yawn. When he gets up again, his dominant idea is that the back of his chair must have been suffering from a diseased spine. Isn't that a striking picture? The earth hitting a poor man on the back of his head, eh? Well, it's quite a true one, and the incidents it portrays are also of ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... panther, a dark yellow creature with black spots, bigger than Pummy, swinging his tail. Clare turned at the noise he made. The panther made a bound and a leap to the height and length of his chain, and uttered a cry like a musical yawn. Clare stretched out his arms, and staggered toward him. The next moment the animal had him. The captain darted to the rescue. But the beast was only licking him wherever there was a bare spot to lick; and Clare wondered to find how many such spots there were: he was in rags! The panther kept ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of Sun and Moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration." —Act ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... gloom and lighted naught for me save my dear lady's face, pensive now and saintly sweet as it had been that morning when I had dwelt upon it the while she knew it not. And in the background stood the sleepy tire-woman, giving no sign of life save now and then a tortured yawn behind her hand. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... began to yawn, the medicated women to slip away. Good citizens who had watched in anxiety, fearful that this rash champion of the new order would find a bullet between his shoulders before midnight, began to breathe easier and seek their ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... a mere joke,' Edwin cuts in, with a provoking yawn. 'A little humouring of Pussy's points! I'm going to paint her gravely, one of these days, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... Rosemary, with a yawn, "if there was nothing more for me to do. It's such a nice day, and I'd like a breath ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Snark and Alice in Wonderland. And I thought I knew a thing or two, or might be even three, About a Ghoul, and a Fay or Troll, and a Brownie or Banshee. I knew that a Banshee always howled, whilst a Goblin might but yawn, I also knew that a Poltergeist was not a Leprechaun, But the Psychicals, I'm bound to say, had me on "buttered toastes" With the wonderful changes which they rang on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... pleasure nor study appeal. Her caprices in fashion are received by the wives and daughters of the universe as laws, and obeyed with an unwavering faith, a mute obedience that few religions have commanded. Women who yawn through Italy and the East have, when one meets them in the French capital, the intense manner, the air of separation from things mundane, that is observable in pilgrims approaching the shrine of their deity. Mohammedans at Mecca must have some such look. In Paris women find themselves in ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... is less fear than lack of sleep that Yussuf Dakmar feels. I could hear him yawn through the window lattice. Now a man in that condition is likely to act early in the night for fear that sleep may otherwise get the better of him, and the sahib will do well to be keenly alert from the first. I shall be asleep ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... impediment from old madam, as Mistress Betty would have been swift to suppose. He perfectly approved of Mr. Spectator's standard of virtue—"Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise a pasty, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid;" but then, it only made him yawn. The man was sinking down into an active-bodied, half-learned, half-facetious bachelor. He was mentally cropping dry and solid food contentedly, and, at the same time, he was a bit of a humourist. He loved his little Prissy and Fiddy, as dear god-daughters, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... a rest in the attentive perception of the slightest sound from the fatiguing wanderings of his sleeplessness. He was cheered by the rattling of blocks, reassured by the stir and murmur of the watch, soothed by the slow yawn of some sleepy and weary seaman settling himself deliberately for a snooze on the planks. Life seemed an indestructible thing. It went on in darkness, in sunshine, in sleep; tireless, it hovered affectionately round the imposture ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to be supposed, never set much ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... evidently a tourist, from his costume, and though he was clean-shaven, some instinct caused Dan to classify him as a German. He glanced back at Chevrial at last, but the latter was gazing dreamily out over the water and stifling a little yawn with his hand. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... keenly examined the top of the funnel, and tried simultaneously to yawn and light a cigar. In the result he nearly choked himself. Mr. Winter, somewhat more prepared for emergencies, endeavoured to interest Gros Jean in the wonderful clearness ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... through the leaves and branches of the trees and down in through the tangle of bushes in front of the cave where Nero had hidden. The lion rolled over, stretched out his heavy paws with their big, curved claws, and opened his mouth and yawned, just as you have often seen your dog or cat yawn after a sleep. ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... smothered yawn, she rose from her chair, and went over to the canary cage, raising the silk cover, while she put her lips to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... the horse out yet," said Thompson, with an artificial yawn. "Good lad, Willoughby! stick ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... darkness, and with the music Edith forgot, for a time, the slight shock which she had received. The opera was Samson et Dalila, and a very famous tenor was making his reappearance after a long absence. Edith gave herself up to complete enjoyment of the music. Then suddenly she was startled by a yawn at her side. Burton was sitting back, his hands in ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... There are signs of the contagiousness of the idea even in the house of the adversaries. The triumph comes with time, and the turbulent waves of controversy recede into gentle ripples of approval. And for many a cause for which men have suffered and died, posterity has but a yawn. "Just think of it—all that fuss and all that turmoil over something ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... patroness—to whom I am alike bonds-man in my medical and official capacity, deal reasonably with me. If this, mine illustrious patient, will not answer a question, saving with sighs and moans—if that other honourable lady will do nought but yawn in my face when I inquire after the diagnostics—and if that other young damsel, who I profess ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... lasted—let the world break over him when it must? Why should he stand in an orchard of ripe fruit, and refuse to pick what lay luscious to his hand, what this stupid mealman below would pick, and eat, and yawn over? There was the point. Wouldn't the girl rather have him, Valmond, at any price, than the priest-blessed love ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... boys began to yawn, and betrayed unmistakable evidences of being sleepy, their host showed them how he had arranged it so that ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie

... departed, Gwen got her opportunity. "Don't keep your father up too long, child," said the Countess, over the stair-rail. "It makes him sleep in the day, and it's bad for him." And vanished, with a well-bred yawn-noise, a trochee, the short syllable being the apology ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Michael, feeling, apparently, that he had done his share. "My friend will tell you all about it," he added to Gideon, with a yawn. "Excuse my closing my eyes a moment; I've been sitting up with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... makes another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment,—in the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone,—it has vanished like a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have glimpses of those still higher and drearier ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... slight yawn. He had been waiting for an hour already, and it was small amusement to him. However, he rose and cast ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... beautified by plantain trees, obstructing it for the sake of the safety of Bhima. With the object that Bhima might not come by curse or defeat, by entering into the plantain wood, the ape Hanuman of huge body lay down amidst the plantain trees, being overcome with drowsiness. And he began to yawn, lashing his long tail, raised like unto the pole consecrated to Indra, and sounding like thunder. And on all sides round, the mountains by the mouths of caves emitted those sounds in echo, like a cow lowing. And as it was being shaken by the reports produced by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... the matter of the Rangership for him whilst John was here. Even if the Prince had unduly favored Hubert in the archery contest, it did not necessarily follow that he would be unjust in such a plain business as this. Robin kissed the dame, struggled with a yawn, and got him to rest. He slept uneasily, his dreams being strangely compounded of ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... world's madness, because of the human fear and weeping everywhere, because of the new abysses which seemed to yawn every day on every side, that both soul and senses were so abnormally overstrung. He was overwhelmed by exquisite compassions in his thoughts of Robin, he was afraid for her youngness, her sweetness, the innocent defencelessness which was like a child's. He was afraid of his own young rashness and ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladies who yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the kitchen ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the terrified senior gods, possessed of great might, created Jrimbhika to kill Vritra. And as Vritra yawned and his mouth opened the slayer of the Asura, Vala contracted the different parts of his body, and came out from within Vritra's mouth. And thenceforth the yawn attaches itself to the living breath of animated beings in three worlds. And the gods rejoiced at the egress of Indra. And once again commenced the terrible fight between Vritra and Indra, both full of ire. And it was waged for a long while, O best of Bharata's race. And when Vritra, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... days of Ezra and not associated with the names of any early Old Testament worthies, was due to a narrow conception of divine revelation, directly contrary to that of Christianity which recognized the latest as the noblest. These later Jewish writings also bridge the two centuries which otherwise yawn between the two Testaments—two centuries of superlative importance both historically and religiously, witnessing as they do the final development of the life and thought of Judaism and the rise of those conditions and beliefs which loom so ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... said no husband could do that. The fact of their being one kept your heart quite quiet, and often made you yawn; but she said it was not necessary, as long as you could make theirs so that they would do all ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... came off, or rather since it went down, for it isn't off yet; even now, that taste——Do you know what it is, Sir, to have your jaws hang?—to be always on the eve of a gape?—to be afraid of the tongs or the snuffers, or a tall man, especially in tights, lest the next yawn may wholly tear up your spinous process, your spheroid cartilage?—hang the doctors!—do you understand? Well; I am in that way; and it's all from those confounded Zounds ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... had secured the provender, and was ready to resume his journey, he began to yawn, and to exhibit the ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... Schluesselburg, at the outlet of the lake. Here the Neva, just born, sweeps in two broad arms around the island which bears the Key-Fortress,—the key by which Peter opened this river-door to the Gulf of Finland. The pretty town of the same name is on the south bank, and in the centre of its front yawn the granite gates of the canal which, for a hundred versts, skirts the southern shore of the lake, forming, with the Volkhoff River and another canal beyond, a summer communication with the vast regions watered by the Volga and its affluents. The Ladoga Canal, by which the heavy barges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... help laughing at sight of a flock of them huddled up under lee of a barn, limp, draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, looking as if they would die for want of a yawn? One sees just such groups of other two-legged creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances. The truth is, a hen's life at best seems poorer than that of any other known animal. Except when she is setting, I cannot ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... them. Not one of these stories is convincing. Mr. O'DONNELL taps you on the chest and whispers hoarsely, "As I stood there my blood congealed, I could scarcely breathe. My scalp bristled;" and you, if you are like me, hide a yawn and say, "No, really?" There is a breezy carelessness, too, about his methods which kills a story. He distinctly states, for instance, that the story of the "Headless Cat of No. ——, Lower Seedley Street, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... With labouring step To tread our former footsteps? pace the round Eternal? to climb life's worn, heavy wheel, Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat The beaten track? to bid each wretched day The former mock? to surfeit on the same, And yawn our joys? or thank a misery For change, though sad? to see what we have seen; Hear, till unheard, the same old slabbered tale? To taste the tasted, and at each return Less tasteful? o'er our palates to decant Another vintage? strain a flatter ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... the equal of these squalid brutes in that respect. She is in love with you already, but she doesn't know it. All that is necessary is a show of masterfulness to make her realize it." He stifled a yawn. "Lord, what dreary piffle!" he confided to himself. He painted Keith as a contemptible renegade from his own class, currying favour with those below him, a cheap demagogue, a turncoat ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... awake bright and early, and stretching himself with a long-drawn yawn, set out to find some way of procuring for himself a breakfast. First at one shop-door and then at another he stopped, popping in his shaggy head and asking the man inside, "Give me a job, Mister?" and being in reply promptly invited to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... man-servant, who was now also sleepy, but who saved the respect due the young ladies by putting his hand over a yawn when he let them in, brought Cornelia a letter which he seemed to have been keeping on his professional salver. "A letter for you, miss. It came about an hour after you went out. The messenger said he wasn't to wait for an answer, and Mrs. Maybough thought she ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... it will be child's-play," he said, stifling a yawn—"hope I shall feel keener after a night's rest!" He ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or—or anything wrong with the country?" he added, when his nephew ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... open my mouth again to-night, except to yawn," said Sam, and it was not long before the whole ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... sighed a yawn, as he tossed his hat into the rack above his head. "We shall both be the better for some pure air. London quite does me up. And you—you've been sticking at it months on end, haven't you? You look rather fagged—or at all events you did yesterday. You've ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... illusions; he had reviewed more twinkling columns than a sergeant of drill. Indifference his note, leaning to ennui. He said so, bluntly, piquantly, in half a dozen memorable words, fetching yawn for period. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... the gold filling out of your teeth, if you happened to yawn," said Argyle. "Why, have you left valuables in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... bed!" he said with a sleepy yawn. "The attendants will show you your room," he added, aside, to Sylvie and Bruno. "Bring lights!" And, with a dignified air, he held out his paw for them ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... "Parsifal' and the Ideal Woman," "'Parsifal' and the Thing-in-Itself," "The Swan in 'Parsifal' and its Relation to the Higher Vegetarianism." It knows the name of every leit-motif, and can nearly pronounce the German for it; it can refer to the Essay on Beethoven apropos of Kundry's scream (or yawn) in the second act; it can chat learnedly of Klingsor, in pathetic ignorance of his real offence, and explain why Amfortas has his wound on the right side, although the libretto distinctly states it to be situated on the left. It is ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... long one," the young surgeon answered. As the door slammed behind him, the black-haired Miss Clark turned to the assistant stenographer with a yawn. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... him. When he attempted to follow in the same vein he would get lost. And his really considerable learning counted for nothing. He reached the height of his mortification when the slim gentleman dropped his eyelids and began to yawn. I was wickedly delighted. He could not have been better met. Another such encounter, and I would warrant the captain's illusions concerning the gentry to go up in smoke. Then he might come to some notion of his own true ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... undertake to interest and edify a modern congregation by talking about a virtue so prosaic as goodness. "He was a good man." We do not thrill when we hear that. It is not a word that quickens our pulse beat. We do not sit up and lean forward. We rather relax and stifle a yawn and look at our watches and wonder how soon it will be over. We are interested in clever men, in men of genius. We are interested in bad men, in courageous men, in poor men and rich men, but good men—our interest lags here, nods, drowses, ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for the most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such ecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred his attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional 'Very true, Carker,' or 'Indeed, Carker,' but he tacitly encouraged ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Caesar, I neuer stood on Ceremonies, Yet now they fright me: There is one within, Besides the things that we haue heard and seene, Recounts most horrid sights seene by the Watch. A Lionnesse hath whelped in the streets, And Graues haue yawn'd, and yeelded vp their dead; Fierce fiery Warriours fight vpon the Clouds In Rankes and Squadrons, and right forme of Warre Which drizel'd blood vpon the Capitoll: The noise of Battell hurtled in the Ayre: Horsses do neigh, and dying ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... thou, Jack; so must seek for better company in town than either of you. I have been forced to read sometimes to divert me; and you know I hate reading. It presently sets me into a fit of drowsiness; and then I yawn and ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... thereunto, viz. that trembling Motion and Titillation, which they perceive in their own Throat, whilst they of their own accord do give forth a Voice; that therefore the Deaf may know, that I open my Mouth to emitt a Voice; not simply to yawn, or to draw forth a Mute Breath, I put their Hand to my Throat that they may be made sensible of that tremulous Motion, when I utter my Voice; then I put the same Hand of theirs to their own Throat, and command them to imitate me; nor am ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman

... rash demonstrations. After soliciting the honor of admission to this little circle, where he flattered himself he could snatch the blossom from the constituted authorities who guarded it, he was so unfortunate as to yawn in the middle of an explanation Dinah was favoring him with—for the fourth time, it is true—of the philosophy of Kant. Monsieur de la Thaumassiere, the grandson of the historian of Le Berry, was thenceforth regarded as a man entirely bereft ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... other hand, those steadfast natures which can better be depended upon, which in a battle are impregnable to fear and immovable, are equally immovable when there is anything to be learned; they are always in a torpid state, and are apt to yawn and go to sleep ...
— The Republic • Plato

... portentous yawn. Ben heard her, came and sat down on an ottoman not far off, and began ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... trembled all over, and there was a look in his eyes as of a hunted animal. That one in whose courage, presence of mind, and resources he trusted so entirely should be affected to such a degree as this, appalled poor Edwards; what a black gulf, indeed, must yawn before them! ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... tendrils of hair at the white neck's nape, and two curls at the temple, and as clean and thoroughbred a sweep of jaw and chin as the bows of the Belle Helene herself. She did not look at me, but studiously gazed across the river, pretended to yawn, idly looked back to see if she were followed; as she knew ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... The sky was overcast and threatening. A light snow began to fall. One of the men shivered and opened his eyes. Looking stupidly about him, with a long-drawn-out yawn, first at the dying fire, then at his still unconscious mate, he jumped up with a shout. At first he was too dazed with sleep to stand straight, and his teeth chattered from the cold. He was also ravenously hungry. But first they must think ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... mouth somewhat, and as her eyes met his, full and startlingly, he placed three fingers across the orifice, and also offered a slight vocal proof that she had surprised him in the midst of a yawn. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... personal habits. Do not yawn in people's faces, lounge in your chair, scratch head or person, or clean ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... going to have "calculated," according to custom; but sleepiness overpowered him at the moment, and he terminated the word with a yawn of such ferocity that it drew from Redhand a remark of doubt as to whether his jaws ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... most brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Prince of Orange, and entered Hollandsdiep, a wide branch of the Meuse which separates South Holland from North Brabant. All that we saw from the ship was a wide expanse of water, two dark stripes to the right and left, and a gray sky. A French lady, breaking the general silence, exclaimed with a yawn, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... sighed—and masked a yawn behind a small uplifted hand. "I wonder," she mused as though to herself, yet quite loud enough to be heard, "why some men find it so hard to make money, and to others ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... Pardon, goddess of the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... knew that it would come to this! Are we not already parted? Does not a stream, boundless as ocean, deep as vacuum, yawn between us?" ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... 's a ghost,' said Tip Taylor, splitting his sentence with a yawn, as he lay on a buffalo ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... himself one day. Foolish Natzmer found this noble young gentleman in a remote corner of the Soiree; went up, nothing loath, to speak graciosities and insipidities to him: the noble young gentleman yawned, as was too natural, a wide long yawn; and in an insipid familiar manner, foolish Natzmer (Wilhelmina and the Berlin circles know it) put his finger into the noble young gentleman's mouth, and insipidly wagged it there. "Sir, you seem to forget ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... lady smiled as she heard him speak, and had not an unfortunate yawn accompanied those two tender words, in all probability they would have terminated this chapter. But the word yawn is not found in Love's dictionary, and consequently the unlucky husband was forced to rise from his bed preparatory to going forth to perform deeds of valor in obedience ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... than trouble them for my convenience. Their indecorous manner of doing their lessons was quite as remarkable as the caprice displayed in their choice of time and place. While receiving my instructions, or repeating what they had learned, they would lounge upon the sofa, lie on the rug, stretch, yawn, talk to each other, or look out of the window; whereas, I could not so much as stir the fire, or pick up the handkerchief I had dropped, without being rebuked for inattention by one of my pupils, or told that 'mamma would not like me to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... hobbles were placed about her feet; after which the shade was lifted slightly, leaving the eyes covered, whilst the blood-soaked thong was cut away from the torn flesh, and a kind of leather cage slipped over the muzzle, which would certainly prevent her from biting, or indulging in her usual wide yawn of indifference. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... holding each one to the light, and then dusting it with exaggerated care before placing it in the bag. While she was thus employed Zut advanced from a secluded corner, and, stretching her fore legs slowly to their utmost length, greeted her acquaintance of the morning with a yawn. Finding in the cat an outlet for her embarrassment, Esperance made another effort to give the interview a ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... which ensue when two "champions" meet. In the silence which followed, the Judge was looking attentively at the back of the Colonel, and thinking that the old thief was getting about down to skin and bone. He turned with a yawn to Robie, saying:— ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... listening to the exciting music of golden coins. In spite of which his vanity seemed highly gratified, when on Saturday evenings, after dinner, Mlle. Gilberte sat at the piano, and Mme. Desclavettes, suppressing a yawn, would exclaim, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... Mrs. Dodd, delighted. Julia assented: she even added, with a listless yawn, "I had no idea that a skeleton was such a gentlemanlike thing; I never saw ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... who appeared the more keen and the more alert; the Englishman seemed undecided what to do next, remained silent, toying with the pistol. He even smothered a yawn. Chauvelin saw his opportunity. With the quick movement of a cat pouncing upon a mouse he stooped and seized that packet of papers, would then and there have made a dash for the door with them, only that, as he seized the packet, the string which ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... has read much that is strange— And the thought suddenly overcame him, Like a timid person who gets gooseflesh, And the way the person who stuffs himself Starts to burp, Like a mother in labor: The great yawn might perhaps be a sign, A nod from fate, To lie down to rest. And the thought would not leave him. And then he began to undress... When he was stark ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... the situation itself was still too bewildering in its many phases for Larry to give concentrated thought to what should be its attempted solution. Not until dawn was beginning to awaken dully, as with a protracted yawn, out of the shadowy Sound, was he able really to hold his mind with clearness upon the problem of what use he should make of these facts of which he had been appointed guardian. He decided against ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... mass," he said, "and Mademoiselle is in the studio quite alone. We have been at work since six o'clock this morning," added the child with a rueful yawn which the dog caught on the wing, making him open wide his pink ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... like to see them dancing in the moonlight, and hear the clatter of their trinkets and shields? You would like to meet old King Alberich, and Mimi the smith? You would like to see that cavern yawn open... [points to right] and fire and steam break forth, and all the Nibelungs come running out? Would you ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... things to do in the afternoon, but when night comes"—Nellie smothered a contented yawn—"I love getting into something comfy, and just ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... you always yawn?" The wife exclaimed, her temper gone, "Is home so dull and dreary?" "Not so, my love," he said, "Not so; But man and wife are one, you know; And when alone ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey









Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |