"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up my mind ter go ter Louisburg to-morrer, stay ter dat funeral, an' come back nex' day. Seems ter me ole Mahs'r'd be kind o' glad ter see Nimbus at his funeral, fer all I wan't no gret fav'rite o' his'n. He wa'nt sich a bad marster, an' atter I bought Red Wing he use ter come ober ebbery now an' agin, an' gib me a heap ob advice 'bout fixin' on it up. I allus listened at him, tu, kase ef ennybody ever knowed nex' do' ter ebberyting, dat ar man wuz ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... down at her and saw that she was wan and thin and weak, and he did not dare to preach to her the old family sermon as to his rank and station. "But, Anna, why do you tell me this ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... her as patiently as they might. From haunting the wood, they soon got on to hovering round the cottage, and to looking in stealthily at the window. They saw her sitting on the same seat that she had always occupied, with a vacant chair opposite; her figure wasted, her face wan already with incessant weeping. It was a dismal sight to all who beheld it—a vision of affliction and solitude ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... after the disappearance that a wan, living skeleton staggered out of the wilderness in Africa, and blindly groped his way to the coast as a man might who had lived long in darkness and found the light too strong for his eyes. He managed ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... landscape made! Gems sparkle on the river's breast— Now covered by an icy vest— Upon the frozen hills A regal glory shines! And all the scene, as Fancy wills, Shifts into new designs. Yet night is still as Death's unbroken realms, And solemnly thy light, wan orb, is cast Through the arched branches of these reverend elms, As though it through the Gothic windows passed Of some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... compassionate clouds, and fling their fleecy veil around the pallid moon, and bear her softly on their snowy bosoms. But she moves on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the sad clouds. Deeper and deeper into the darkness. Closer and closer the Shadow clutches her in his inexorable arms. Wan and weird becomes her face, wrathful and wild the astonished winds; and for all her science and her faith, the Earth trembles in the night, and a hush of awe quivers through the angry, agitated air. On, still on, till the fair ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... maskers had finished the measures, and some few other daunces, the said page waved them forth with his wan, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the night before had seemed as averse as ever, showed her, as she crossed the hall on the way to luncheon, a letter directed to the Reverend Walter Lyddell. Her heart leapt, but as she smiled satisfaction, she saw Caroline's face so wan, dejected, and miserable, that she could not make herself too happy. There were other doubts, now that this point was gained, as to how Walter might be able to manage Caroline,—whether he would lead her to the right, or unconsciously turn her ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "G'wan! You're crazy!" Branch slipped to the ground, seized the bundle in his arms, and bore it to the roadside. With shaking hands he tugged at the knotted corners of the comforter. "Pure imagination!" he ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge in Lucetta's eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... bringing me small offerings with open hand. On me is placed a many-tinted wreath of early spring flowers and the soft green blade and ear of the tender corn. Saffron-coloured violets, the orange-hued poppy, wan gourds, sweet-scented apples, and the purpling grape trained in the shade of the vine, [are offered] to me. Sometimes, (but keep silent as to this) even the bearded he-goat, and the horny-footed nanny sprinkle my altar with blood; for ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... here profound, being increased by the dense masses of foliage beneath which he was riding. By the time, however, that he reached the summit of Snow Hill the moon struggled through the clouds, and threw a wan glimmer over the leafy wilderness around. The deep slumber of the woods was unbroken by any sound save that of the frenzied rider bursting ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... steered, Until the shadow of yon cliff is neared, And then, as if some barrier, hid below The river's breast, had caught its gliding prow, Awhile, uncertain, o'er its watery bed, It hangs, then vanishes, and in its stead, A wan, pale light burns dimly o'er the wave That rolls and ripples by ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... begorra,' said the man at the head of the table. 'It's sick I am of all the dirty stuff I've to listen to—An' dese boys is 'listed for de war, and dere's not wan of 'em knows he mayn't be stiff on de field in tree or four monts' time. An' be way of makin' ready for a soldier's end an' a sudden meetin' wid his God, dey're chewin' blasphaymious conversation from reveille to ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... stole into the church and by the wan light of a lantern carved his name deep on the girdle of the Virgin, and there do we read it today. The pride of the artist, however, afterward took another turn, for he never thereafter placed his name on a piece. "My ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... came upon a field of sleek purple lava sown all over with little lemon jets of silent smoke, which in their wan and melancholy glow might have been the corpse lights of those innumerable dead whose tombstone ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... her baby was born, but the poor child did not live a couple of days. She herself at the time was so worn with care, so thin and wan and wretched, that looking in the glass she hardly knew her own face. "Ferdinand," she said to him, "I know he will not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... her poor wan cheek on the merciful old book, as on her mother's breast, and gave up all the tangled skein of life into the hands of Infinite Pity. There seemed a consoling presence in the room, and her ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of my Lady's heart, Lovely and leprous; and a violet sigh Shook the wan, yellowing leaves of threnody, Bruised in the holy ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... room, Mrs. Swinton came downstairs, to find the house seemingly empty. She was not sorry to be left alone, for she was feeling out of sorts with all the world. In the bright daylight, she looked a little older; her fair skin showed somewhat faded and wan. She was nervously irritable just now, for last night she had lost three hundred dollars at bridge. The embarrassment over money filled her with wretchedness. There remained no resource save to appeal to her father for the ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... this gloomy peak That seems to thrust aloft its fearful head Even to God's footstool? Then as if there came Answer direct to my soul's questioning, A great voice lifted from the throng, which seemed To bear up heaven-high its might of words, Crying: "Thou wan inheritors of pain, Angels and princes, ministers of Hell, Hearken! The day of all great days is come, Commemorative of that legend old Whose prophecy is that when the time has run A million aeons out, if God relent, A symbol shall be set upon the top Of yonder mount—a blazing star—to ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... as she perched herself on the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies about you last night, and nearly slew me with a glance because I dared to touch my mandolin after dinner. Poor little Nick was rather blue too though he did at ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... forgotten place. 'Tis only my body. Who cares what becomes of that? As for the other, the soul, who can say? I have never been a good man; still, I believe in God. I am tired, tired and cold. What fancies a man has in death! A moment back I saw my father. There was a wan, sweet-faced woman standing close beside him; perhaps my mother. I never saw her before. Ah, me! these chimeras we set our hearts upon, these worldly hopes! Well, Jack, it's curtain and no encore. But I am not afraid to die. I have ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... Poplar Spring, he watched her little figure climb the Haunt's Walk and then disappear into the leafless shrubbery at the back of the house. While he looked after her it seemed to him that the wan November day grew radiant with colour, and that spring blossomed suddenly, out of season, upon the landscape. His hour was upon him when he turned and retraced his steps over the silver brook and up the gradual slope, where the sun shone on the bare soil ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected—the wind beating upon the loose, hot sand, driving ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Normans eftsoons fled awaie aghaste; And lefte behynde their bowe and asenglave. For fear of hym, in thilk a cowart haste. His garb sufficient were to move affryghte; 485 A wolf skin girded round his myddle was; A bear skyn, from Norwegians wan in fyghte, Was tytend round his shoulders by the claws: So Hercules, 'tis sunge, much like to him, Upon his sholder wore ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... said her husband, his eyes lingering tenderly upon the face looking so sweet, but so wan and pale above the black dress and crepe collar. "We know, we know, darling," he repeated, taking her in his arms. They were both thinking of the little mound looking so small upon the wide prairie, small ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... cold and calm. In the bewildering change of events we had forgotten the wan figure on the bed still gasping for the breath of life. I could not help wondering at the woman's apparent lack of gratitude, and a thought flashed over my mind. Had the affair come to a contest between various parties fighting by fair means or foul for the old man's money—Scott and Mrs. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... from the rock Tarpeian, could the wan burghers spy The line of blazing villages red in the midnight sky. The Fathers of the City, they sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman came with tidings of dismay. To eastward and to westward have spread the Tuscan ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... late in the afternoon, I was pacing the terrace of our Jorasanko house. The glow of the sunset combined with the wan twilight in a way which seemed to give the approaching evening a specially wonderful attractiveness for me. Even the walls of the adjoining house seemed to grow beautiful. Is this uplifting of the cover of triviality from the everyday ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... young people were ready to look the world squarely in the face, George Brotherton, thinking he heard some one moving outside in the deep, dark veranda, flicked on the porch light, and through the windows he saw—and the merry company could not help seeing two faces—two wan, unhappy faces, staring hungrily in at the bridal pair. They stood at different corners of the house and did not seem to know of one another's presence until the light revealed them. Only an instant did their faces flash into the light, as John Dexter was reading ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... arm and gave the rope a long pull. She must have been strong, for the skylight and all its burden opened on a hinge, and the snow could be seen sliding from it, could be heard in a heavy body rumbling on the roof. She closed the skylight, and now a wan light filtered down the funnel and turned their faces green. It was like life at the bottom of a well, and they felt as though the level of the earth was far above their heads, and its weighty walls pressing ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... which she had known so long; And that celestial face, that mouth, which he So long had coveted, which had, for years, The burden been of all his dreams and sighs, Close bringing unto his, so sad and wan, Discolored by his mortal agony, Kiss after kiss, all goodness, with a look Of deep compassion, on the trembling lips Of the enraptured lover ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... bundle proved to be a little girl, whom Jack took into his strong arms, and would have carried ashore had he been allowed his own way. But this was a point beyond even his power to enforce. For one thing they were sure the child was dead, the little face looked so wan. Secondly, if they were caught by the English gunboat it would mean heavy fines, and the men had no notion of throwing away ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its dirge of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the long dark pathway, Past Oceanus's great streams, Past the White Rock, past the Sun's gates Downward to the land of Dreams: There they reach the wide dim borders Of the fields of asphodel, Where the spectres and the spirits Of wan, outworn ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and described as a "durrty cross betune a skunk and a spitbox," a greaser Indian who would knife his best friend. As for 'Tonio, whom he had known ever since he came to Arizona in '65, and once held to be "the wan good Indian in it," 'Tonio had made him believe he too held Sanchez in contempt. Yet, to all appearance, the two, who up to this night had been confined entirely apart, had gone together. One of the counts in the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... answer me, but I thought he looked a little wan and limp as he sat down in one of the stiff-backed chairs. I inspected him with ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... sun had disappeared. The heat was as intolerable as before, but he inhaled the dusty, fetid, infected town air with greediness. And now his head began to spin round, and a wild expression of energy crept into his inflamed eyes and pale, meager, wan face. He did not know, did not even think, what he was going to do; he only knew that all was to be finished "today," at one blow, immediately, or he would never return home, because he had no desire to live thus. How to finish? By what means? No matter how, and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... if the darkness should bring The lean blockade-runners across With food for the hungry and spent.... Who could joy in the sudden release While the faces, still-smiling, but wan, Turned slowly to hallow ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... land. No lord or knight was there in the hall who had a more stately step, none who looked more proud. He waited not for salutation, but strode across the hall of state, and fronted Marmion, as peer meets peer. Beneath the cowl was a face so wan, so worn, a cheek so sunken, and an eye so wild, that the mother would not have known her child, much ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... (speaking as well of easy as difficult conception in women) the first consideration is to be had of their species; for little women are more apt to conceive than great, slender than gross, white and fair than ruddy and high coloured, black than wan, those that have their veins conspicuous, than others; but to be very fleshy is evil, and to have great ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... cross must wait until his return to the capital. And being hungry certainly made pathetic his prediction that some among those present would one day wear the medal for twenty-five years of faithful service to the Empire. Being hungry took the poet-hero's glow out of his wan cheek as he declared again that he, a Hapsburg, would never desert, for even then he heard Imperialist platoons shooting recaptured deserters. Or he thought of the wounded left to die on the grassy plain and lying there unburied. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... very little during supper, and when the meal was over, he sat smoking for some time in deep thought. Then he laid aside his pipe, and went to Whyn's room. He knocked gently upon the door before entering. The girl gave him a wan smile of greeting, and reached out her thin hand. The captain held it for awhile, and Whyn was content ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... now, fresh from the iron bane, 450 Went wandering in the mighty wood: and when the Trojan man First dimly knew her standing by amid the glimmer wan —E'en as in earliest of the month one sees the moon arise, Or seems to see her at the least in cloudy drift of skies— He spake, and let the tears fall down by all love's sweetness stirred: "Unhappy Dido, was it true, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... from the board of old. Than these no deadlier portent nor any fiercer plague of divine wrath hath issued from the Stygian waters; winged things with maidens' countenance, bellies dropping filth, and clawed hands and faces ever wan ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... don't think you are posing. It's getting on for dinner-time, and you've got that wan, sinking feeling that makes you look upon the world and find it a hollow fraud. The bugle will be blowing in a few minutes, and half an hour after that you ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... strange by the breathless waiting for the deeds that are drawing anear. For woe had grown into will, and wrath was bared of its sheath, And stark in the streets of London stood the crop of the dragon's teeth. Where then in my dream were the poor and the wall of faces wan? Here and here by my side, shoulder to shoulder of man, Hope in the simple folk, hope in the hearts of the wise, For the happy life to follow, or death and the ending of lies, Hope is awake in the faces angerless now no more, ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... of our party, and I have never appreciated the young man so well. His originality of perception makes his conversation both lively and in- teresting, and as he talks, his wan and suffering countenance lights up with an intelligent animation. His father seems to become more devoted to him than ever, and I have seen him sit for an hour at a time, with his hand resting on his son's, listening eagerly ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... two, t'ree. I don' remember. I t'ink Jo Bagneau. Nobodee he don' know, but dat ole man an' hees coureurs du bois. He ees wan ver' great man. Nobodee is ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... still more dismal by daylight, for all that the night had hidden in the shadows appeared then in the tardy, wan ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... day, balmy and gloriously bright, found four people seated together in the spacious, sunny morning-room of a great house on Belleair Avenue. A young man, pale and wan as from a long illness, but with a new steadiness and clarity born of suffering in his eyes; a girl, slender and black-robed, her delicate face flushing with an exquisite, spring-like color, her eyes soft and misty and spring-like, too, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... do with her as I pleased. I observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and, with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and horses, even though I harnessed them myself, was the work of many minutes; minutes, each freighted with the weight ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... up, and ev'ry door he shet,* *shut And window eke; and then this sorrowful man Upon his bedde's side adown him set, Full like a dead image, pale and wan, And in his breast the heaped woe began Out burst, and he to worken in this wise, In his woodness,* as I shall you ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his own acute and teeming brain at that moment of exaltation were by no means deficient in those energetic and highly vital globules on whose reparative worth he so eloquently descanted. "Sure, the Professor makes annywan see right inside wan's own vascular system," Callaghan whispered aside to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... The wan dawn turned the dead man's face from waxen yellow to stone grey. The servants saw it, whispered, and closed the inner shutters, and the yellow candle-light shone again in the room. Any light is better than ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... OH!" A young fellow, lying asleep in the furs, bearded and wan and weary, raised a moan of pain, and without waking increased the pitch and intensity of his anguish. His body half-lifted from the blankets, and quivered and shrank spasmodically, as though drawing away from a bed ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... delight, then break out in a volley of questions, now addressing Malcolm, now Travers. She tried Davy too, but Davy knew nothing except his duty here. The Thames was like an unknown eternity to the creature of the Wan Water— about which, however, he could have ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... most important business; so I ordered the brougham and drove here, with the blinds down all the way; and I'm sure, Clary, you won't think that I feel papa's loss any less because I come to see you just now. But I declare you are looking as pale and wan as any of us at Hale. You have not recovered ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... day's delightful experience confirms this. "If her face is so shocking that she must, in some degree, be conscious of it, her figure and air, she thinks, make ample amends for it." The sallow Miss Wan is a proof of this. Upon my telling the distasteful wretch, the other day, that her countenance spoke the pensive language of sentiment, and that Lady Wortley Montague declared that, if the ladies were arrayed in the garb of innocence, ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... shadowy-looking bird could be seen flapping its way over the desolate waste, but everywhere there was the feeling of returning spring in the air, and the light was lingering well in the west, making the planet in the east look pale and wan. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... question loomed large to those of us who came into intimate contact with the women and children. We saw that in the final analysis the real burden of economic and industrial warfare was thrust upon the frail, all-too-frail shoulders of the children, the very babies—the coming generation. In their wan faces, in their undernourished bodies, would be indelibly written the bitter defeat ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Weekly, and I want to thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly. The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that I am miserable; no—worse than that—indifferent. Indifferent to nearly everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it without purpose and without ambition; merely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you make me tired," Leach interfered. He was evidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle. "G'wan, you Kelly. You leave Oofty alone. How in hell did he know it was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... exultation of the public singing was giving way to a peculiar sensation of depression and sickness, and each longed to throw away half his cigar, but did not dare, Adam Gray came up to where they were seated, gradually growing pale and wan. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... asleep now, old Phebe Trull,—in the room off the brick kitchen, her wan limbs curled up under her check nightgown, her pipe and noggin of tea on the oven-shelf; he could smell the damp, musty odor of the slop-sink near by. What if he could reach shore? What if he were to steal up to her bed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... had but recently risen from a bed of pain, was wan and pale; his tall and stately form had shrunk, his massive head was bowed, his raven locks had ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... "Wan was her cheek which hung on my shoulder; Chill was her hand, no marble was colder; I felt that again I should never behold her; ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... her alone, and when I was shown into her salon I thought she looked rather wan and pale, but she greeted me affably and expressed delight that I should call before ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... ain't the edication I wan't," said Sneak, turning round with one or two dead bees in his hand, that he had found near the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... pattern of benevolence, was a sore check upon his self applause, and he formed many prudent resolutions to be more upon his guard in future. Some days after, in passing through his grounds, he was accosted by a man who exhibited an appearance of extreme wretchedness. His face was wan, and his features sunken. His dimmed eye seemed hardly able to discern the object on which it gazed; and his tottering limbs with difficulty supported his feeble frame. His moving lips appeared to be framing a prayer for compassion, but his hollow voice had not power to give ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... chalices and patens, the agate and crystal vessels, the reliquaries of gold and precious stones, the candlesticks, the two textus covers of golden cloisonne, and even the turquoise cup itself, turned dull and wan and common by ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... waste of lymph to do one only: get the other five.' After a short absence, I was back, reporting the other five not in a condition to do anything, even to be vaccinated. The ghost of a weary smile lit up the wan ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... motto:—And is not Johnson ours, himself a host? Under which stared you in the face—From Miss More's "Sensibility." This little incident amused us; but, alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed—spiritless and wan. However, he made an effort to be cheerful.' Miss Adams wrote on June 14, 1782:—'On Wednesday we had here a delightful blue-stocking party. Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott and Miss More, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Henderson, &c., dined here. Poor Dr. Johnson is in very bad health, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of energy, Laura tore her Minerva from top to bottom, while two great tears rolled down the cheeks grown wan with hope deferred. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and yet another morning and as the father, the mother, the cousin who was almost brother to both, the assistants, and poor broken-hearted Susan, looked into each other's wan, worn faces, they found nothing there but ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... again recovered her presence of mind; she glanced with a wan smile into the anxious ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... He took a vacant chair and produced the evening paper, but through its pages he had already glanced while at the club; over its pages he was glancing now at the slender, fragile-looking girl with those busy, flying fingers and the intent gaze in her tired eyes. He saw how wan, even sallow, she looked. The lines of care were on her forehead and already settling about the corners of the soft, sensitive mouth. He did not know that all alone she had returned to the office the previous evening and worked until midnight, then hied her homeward fast as cable-car ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... slight shudder went through him, as he came to the coffin and bent over it. What a change had three days made in the man! Ten years would not have taken so much youth and life from him and made him look so old and wan. He looked upon her as a man who looks his last upon what he loved best in the world;—his whole soul was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... between husband and wife was a thing too sacred for other eyes, and all disappeared as if by mutual consent. The rector's heart almost failed him as he stepped toward the carriage. He was bareheaded, and his face was wan and thin in the strong light. When his eyes fell upon the beautiful woman, his expression changed. It was he who was strong now, the wife who faltered. As his fingers closed upon hers, she broke down, and with a helpless sob dropped into ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Sara ever seen Avrillia? Certainly there never was another fairy so wan and wild and beautiful. When Sara caught sight of her she was leaning over the marble balustrade, looking down into Nothing, and one hand was still stretched out as if it had just let something fall. She seemed to be still watching its descent. Her body, as she leaned, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... Scotland than with us; of which some perhaps continue there still; these are but a few of them; 'wanthrift' for extravagance; 'wanluck', misfortune; 'wanlust', languor; 'wanwit', folly; 'wangrace', wickedness; 'wantrust' (Chaucer), distrust, [Also 'wan-ton', devoid of breeding (towen). Compare ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the morning," he directed, referring to the letters he had dictated. "G'wout 'n' 'muse yourself when you get time," he added hospitably. "Now I got to hobble to my room. If you see any women outside, tell 'em g'wan downstairs if they don't ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... by step perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold, Lisping again his broken words till all the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... tak tent till't till I come hame—ye sall hae a roosin' ingle, and a blast o' the goodman's tobacco-pipe forbye.' Wullie was naething laith, and back they gaed the-gither. Wullie sits down at the fire, and awa' wi' her yarn gaes the wife; but scarce had she steekit the door, and wan half-way down the close, when the bairn cocks up on its doup in the cradle, and rounds in Wullie's lug: 'Wullie Tylor, an' ye winna tell my mither when she comes back, I'se play ye a bonny spring on the bagpipes.' I wat Wullie's heart was like to loup the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... troublesome journey, that they would proceed no further than Highgate. The physician returned to town to report her state, and declared that she was assuredly very weak, her pulse dull and melancholy, and very irregular; her countenance very heavy, pale, and wan; and though free from fever, he declared her in no case fit for travel. The king observed, "It is enough to make any sound man sick to be carried in a bed in that manner she is; much more for her whose impatient and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the bunk house, fill the air-tight stove full of pitch pine and set down with a good book by Elinor Glyn. They never been at all mad about romping out in the keen frosty air that sets the blood tingling and brings back the roses to their wan cheeks. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... sea, under kindly auspices, to the "better land" beyond, and anon, in the broad Canadian fields or busy Canadian towns, growing into respectable farmers and citizens; and straightway each little grimed, wan face seemed to bear a new interest for me, and to look wistfully up into mine with a sort of rightful demand on my charity, saying to me, and through me to my many readers, "Come and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told, from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other's arms. But at the head of the gulch, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... I do. Get up there, boys. And down in my country they think that a man that don't know all about 'rithmetic is a fool. I have often told them that there wan't no record of the fact that the Saviour was good at figgers, except figgers of speech, but they won't have it that a man is smart unless he can go up to a barn and cover one side of it with eights and sevens and nines and all that sort of thing. I've got ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... to ketch the sorrel for me. He wuz cotched arfter a while, an' I hed some money, so I got some pine plank an' made a coffin dat evenin', an' wrapt Marse Chan's body up in de fleg, and put 'im in de coffin; but I didn' nail de top on strong, 'cause I knowed ole missis wan' see 'im; an' I got a' ambulance, an' set out for home dat night. We reached dyar de nex' evenin', arfter travellin' all dat night ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... man is not more fortunate. "Look at that for a nate patthern!" he says ecstatically, "that'd paper a bed! Come now, ma'am, wan ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "'Aggh, g'wan, ye bald-headed ol' pepper-mint lozenger!' she hollers. 'D'ye s'pose I niwer see a lookin'-glass? Where's the man'll marry me widout me money? "Me face is me forchune, sor," sez she. "Tek it to the gravel bank ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... a temptin' av Providence!" he exclaimed. "Plates! an' faaks! an' dishes! an' sacers! did ivver anny wan see the loike? F'what do ye expict nixt? Kid gloves to work in, maybe! That ivver I'd see the day whan sich degrading emblems av the ould superstitions of sassiety was ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... of the maiden as she leaned against the trunk. Generations of goat-moths in their early days of voracity had made a nice hollow for her hat to rest in, and some of the powdering willow dusted her bright luxuriant locks with gold. Her face was by no means wan or gloomy, and she added to the breezes not a single sigh. This happened without any hardness of heart, or shallow contempt of the nobler affections; simply from the hopefulness of healthful youth, and the trust a good will has in powers ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... woke me, and I thought of you. I am not a bit frightened; but one cannot sleep in such a noise. Hark at the rain; a perfect deluge! Come and lie down beside me, Edna, dear. You look quite wan and exhausted. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I do," Mostyn said, a sickly smile playing over his wan face, "and I'm in the mood for it. I feel as a man feels who has just escaped the gallows. I'm going to the mountains, and I don't intend to open a business letter or think once of this hot hole in a wall for a month. I'm going to fish and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays,—made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of 'fancies wan that hang the pensive head', of evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature!—It is ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... masquerade. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Grisell indeed was worn down with long watching and grief, and looked haggard and drawn so as to enhance all her scars and distortion of feature into more uncomeliness than her wont. She saw him shudder a little, but his lame arm and wan looks interested her kind heart. "I fear me you are still feeling your wound, sir," she said, in the sweet voice which was evidently ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few were proud ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... could often hardly believe that he was the same—yet it seemed as though some spring had been broken in his spirit. He fell into long sad musings, and waters of bitterness flowed across his soul. The monks thought that he would die, he became so wan and ghost-like; but he never failed in his duty, and though his life stretched before him like a weary road, he knew that it would be long before he reached the end, and that he had many leagues yet to traverse, before the night ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... written so late as last May; the gay processions, the gaudy liveries of watermen and servants, the gilded barges, the sound of viol and guitar, the harmony of voices in part songs, "Go, lovely rose," or "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" the beauty and the splendour; fair faces under vast plumed hats, those picturesque hats which the maids of honour snatched from each other's heads with giddy laughter, exchanging head-gear here on the royal barge, as they did sometimes walking about the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. 'I've got out of the habit of reg'lar aitin',' he says. 'It don't take much to kape me goin'.' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed three hungry men than wan "no occasion."' His appetite it grew on him wit' every mouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay there on the bench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him there wit' a big fire at night. And the next day at noon we h'isted him up beside ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... last, white as a corpse, and with red swollen eyelids which indicated a night of weeping. Her appearance was far from flattering to her husband, yet she gave him a wan little smile ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... roof on the land that he owns. Every tenant he has owns a decent house, with byre and barn, shed and stable, and he done it all out of the money he had, that never was lifted out of the land, and after all left them in at the ould rents. There has never been wan eviction on his place yet." "Has he been shot at yet?" I enquired innocently. "Arrah, what would he be shot for?" demanded the man, turning his swarthy face and black eyes full on me. "I thought maybe some one might shoot him for fun," I explained, feebly. "Fun!" growled ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... wan, white face A ray of glory fell; Then shadows came, the sunbeam fled; Its future ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... a rough tweed shooting-suit, presenting anything but an Imperial figure. I had expected to see him in uniform, like the thousand and one pictures which purport to represent him, instead of which I found a very ordinary-looking, bearded man, with deep-set eyes, a wan countenance, and rather lank hair. He was square-built, a trifle below the medium height, and a man whom, had you passed him in the Nevski, you might have taken for a Jew tailor or a small tradesman. But the room itself was a beautiful one, like all the apartments in Peterhof, semicircular ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat full upon the gleaming shoulders of his waterproof and upon his upturned features. It was a wan, sensitive, clear-cut face, with some subtle, nameless peculiarity in its expression, something of the startled horse in the white-rimmed eye, something too of the helpless child in the drawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... decolorize, bleach, tarnish, achromatize, blanch, etiolate, wash out, tone down. Adj. uncolored &c (color) &c 428; colorless, achromatic, aplanatic^; etiolate, etiolated; hueless^, pale, pallid; palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a corpse, white as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passing within them. He knew that none of them wished to propose it—as Basil was the real master of Marengo—but their glances were sufficiently intelligible to him. He looked at the downcast countenance of the once merry Francois—at the serious air of Norman—at the wan cheek and sunken eye of Lucien, whom Basil dearly loved. He hesitated no longer. His duty to his companions at once overcame his ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... my dogs, Ba'tiste an' Pierre an' Raoul an' Saint Jean, an' pack de sleigh. I cannot stan' my brother lost, so I go after heem. Bien donc! I hunt de distric' careful, but I fin' not wan track of heem. I go to trapper shanty one after de other. Peter Rainy, he gone four days before me, but I not even see heem. Tonnerre, sacre! De hair stan' on my head wit' fear of somet'ing I do not know. Mebbe wan ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... bloom are faded: Who hath thus Thy state degraded? Death upon Thy form is written; See the wan worn limbs, the smitten ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... indeed, but it was little more than quarter-moon, and a long train of funereal clouds were sailing slowly across the sky—so that, faint and wan as it was, the light seldom shone full out, and was often hidden for a minute or two altogether. When he reached the point in the glen where the castle-stairs were wont to be, he could see nothing of them, and above, no trace of the castle-towers. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... next met Dawn he was greatly dejected. She thought he appeared too old and wan for one of his years. The brow on which the light of hope and life should repose, was indeed wrinkled, and furrowed with unrest because the spirit was ill at ease. There was a claim upon him, a voice calling ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... declared Andy Flinn, laughing. "Three nights did he play the same joke, and then they got on to him. Wan officer do be sneakin' up to the loft, while the rist pretended to be huntin' around downstairs. He discovered the sthring, cript downstairs again, wint out on the sly, and, be the powers, followed it to the fince. Then he wint around, and jumped on Tid while the bhoy was a pullin' ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... off of a walk since nine years ago, and they told me to give him a loose rein, and he would go along all right. It's the same old horse that used to pace so fast on the avenue, years ago, but I didn't know it. Well, I wan't to blame. I just let him walk along as though he was hauling sawdust, and gave him a loose rein. When we got off of the pavement, the fellow that drives the hearse, he was in a hurry, 'cause his folks was going to have ducks for dinner, and ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Wan Lun, remembering. "It has been said that they not only do not inform others of the fact of treatment but frequently do not inform the man under treatment but seem to be only a new friend until—poof." He smiled. "I think the guild name is Manoba. ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... with candles, the patient fellows had kept alive their hope of a great day of joy and celebration, only to see it steadily receding from their view. At length they decided to carry their presents to the house where the wan little foundling lay, trusting the sight of their labors of love might cheer ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... walked with stooping shoulders, his hands behind him. He beheld the scene with the eyes of the many painters who have sought by means of the most charming garden in Paris to express their sense of beauty. The grass was scattered with the fallen leaves, but their wan decay little served to give a touch of nature to the artifice of all besides. The trees were neatly surrounded by bushes, and the bushes by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without abandonment, as though conscious of the decorative ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... betrayed emotion. I could feel her slim form, very close to me, all a-tremble. In the filtered silver of the crescent moon, I could see her face, wan and faintly sweet. Gently I prisoned one of her hands ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the floor, her face still wan, her attitude unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand, came over to her side, she was suddenly galvanized ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster |
