"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brick floor had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors of a bedroom and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy with accumulated grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually encumbered the floor, and more frequently than not the remains of Sechard's dinner, empty bottles and plates, were ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Matty asked Mrs Forrester "if she thought it was quite right to have come to see such things? She could not help fearing they were lending encouragement to something that was not quite"— A little shake of the head filled up the blank. Mrs Forrester replied, that the same thought had crossed her mind; she too was feeling very uncomfortable, it was so very strange. She was quite certain that it was her pocket- handkerchief which was in that loaf just now; and it had been in her own hand not five ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... meting out punishment and providing adequate remedies—are perpetrated, include many variations of procedure by which false certificates of citizenship are forged in their entirety; or genuine certificates fraudulently or collusively obtained in blank are filled in by the criminal conspirators; or certificates are obtained on fraudulent statements as to the time of arrival and residence in this country; or imposition and substitution of another party for the real petitioner ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... squares darted lightning point-blank on the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... had shopped them at Gentle's. They hung now lightly against the darkness. The blond girl who had sold them to her must be sleeping now, too, in this same curious pool of unreality. She lay sunk in a strange pause. Once she propped herself on an elbow, gazing across the street to the blank front of her parents' house. They were sleeping behind that middle upper window, their clothing folded across chairs, as if waiting. How eagerly they would greet their new day of small duties, small pleasures, and small emotions. What gave them the courage to meet the years of days cut off one ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... note-book, but not for the young man or woman who wants to keep a live, cheerful account of a happy and pleasant life. Sometimes you will have a picnic or excursion to write about, and will want to fill more space than the printed page allows. Buy a substantially bound blank-book, made of good paper; write your name and address plainly on the fly-leaf, and, if you choose, paste a calendar inside the cover. Set down the date at the head of the first page, thus: "Tuesday, October ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... plodded slowly along the base, with my rifle ready. Cougar tracks were so numerous I got tired of looking at them, but I did not forget that I might meet a tawny fellow or two among those narrow passes of shattered rock, and under the thick, dark pinyons. Going on in this way, I ran point-blank into a pile of bleached bones before a cave. I had stumbled on the lair of a lion and from the looks of it one like that of Old Tom. I flinched twice before I threw a stone into the dark-mouthed cave. What impressed me as soon as I found I was in no danger of being pawed and clawed round the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... blank to be filled out by boys applying for a position reads: 'Do you use tobacco or cigarettes?' A negative answer is expected, and is favourable ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and 11 degrees 40 minutes South latitude, and the meridians of 151 degrees and 154 degrees 30 minutes East longitude. About eighty are already known, and probably many others remain yet to be discovered in the north-west, a large space there being as yet a blank upon the chart. All the islands of the group, with the exception of the low ones of coral formation to the westward, appear to be inhabited, but probably nowhere very densely, judging from the comparatively small number of natives which ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... up too much space in the paper. Crowding out important local news. The Germans would probably get to Paris soon and put an end to it.... Why did Rachel run away? Should he ask her? Sometime. When he saw her. Ask her. Ask her.... His thought drifted into a blank. Then it said ... "The thing is meaningless. Meaningless. Houses, faces, streets. Nothing, nothing. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... met by blank disappointment. Mrs. Bixby was greatly interested in his story, and greatly concerned for Azalea's welfare, but she declared the girl ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the foreman wrote out the verdict on the blank provided by statute; he stood with his fellows while the clerk of the court read ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... be meant for Isaak), that he was sprung from a race more honored now than a hundred years ago. But the women declared that it could not be; and the rector desiring to christen him, because it might never have been done before, refused point-blank to put any "Isaac" in, and was satisfied with "Robin" only, the name of the man who ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the next time you meet him. If anybody gives you two fingers to shake, give him only one of yours. I tried that plan on a doctor of divinity once, and it worked admirably. His intended condescension somehow vanished in a mist, and the foolish confusion that overspread his blank features would have done ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... them lightly in lead-pencil. Next you sketch and paint your pattern,—flowers, leaves, birds, butterflies, or a set pattern, as you prefer,—putting the designs thickly together; and, lastly, you fill all the blank spaces in with gold paint, leaving the pattern in colors on a gilded ground. The outer edge of the frame should be broken into little scallops or trefoils in gold, and the card-board should be large enough to leave a space of at least three ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... areaway back of the buildings was another gate, that the fleeing Mexican had not time to close; beyond was the blank wall of fog filling the side street with soft gray density. In much less time than I write it, James was out through the gate on to the lustrous black sidewalk, polished with the moisture. But once again the man made ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... crying for the moon, or rather pretending to cry for it, for the writer is obviously insincere. I see the Saturday Review says the passage I have just quoted "reaches almost to poetry," and indeed I find many blank verses in it, some of them very aggressive. No prose is free from an occasional blank verse, and a good writer will not go hunting over his work to rout them out, but nine or ten in little more than as many lines is indeed reaching too near to poetry for good prose. This, however, is a trifle, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... him by indulgent mothers or doting grandfathers, he respects nothing and nobody. He is blase if you please. Watch him at a social function how condescendingly he deigns to select a partner for the popular waltz or two step how carelessly he shoulders older people out of his way, with what a blank stare he returns the salutation of some old acquaintance whom he may choose in his royal whim to forget! The unpleasant part of all this is that the young women he so condescendingly selects as partners for the dance greet him with ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... of the ether on each side of our limits of vision cannot be doubted; and if our eyes were acute enough to receive them, we could have the sensation of some color, which must under present conditions remain forever blank. The owl and bat can see when we cannot; their eyes can receive oscillations of ether, which pass by without affecting us. So with sound, which "is a sensation produced when vibrations of a certain character are excited in the auditory apparatus ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 12); so that, as in a dreaming fever we imagine distorted creatures and countenances moving and living in the quiet objects of the chamber, the Egyptian endowed all existence with distorted animation; turned dogs into deities, and leeks into lightning-darters; then gradually invested the blank granite with sculptured mystery, designed in superstition, and adored in disease; and then such masses of architecture arose as, in delirium, we feel crushing down upon us with eternal weight, and see extending far into the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... PODBURY would say! Wonder, by the way, if he expected to be asked to come with me. I've no reason for sacrificing myself like that any longer! (He sighs.) Ah, HYPATIA, if you could know what a dreary disenchanted blank you have made of my life! And I who believed you capable of appreciating such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... The family name of Burbadge, however, belongs not to Middlesex, but to Warwickshire. Alas! for the credit sake of 'Robert Burbadge, of Northend, Fulham,' in the place in the poor-rate assessment of 1625, where the sum should have been inserted, there is a blank; although twenty-two of his neighbours at North End are contributors of sums varying from 6s. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... he went away. He laughed to himself at this keen irony of fortune; he was prepared for the confirmation of his doubts; he was ready for relief from them, Heaven knew; but this blank that the turn of the wheel had brought, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... even more than that of Gwynplaine, was lost in clouds. In so young a child all remembrance melts away. She recollected her mother as something cold. Had she ever seen the sun? Perhaps so. She made efforts to pierce into the blank ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... closed softly behind Michael Clones, Dyck sat down on the bed where many a criminal patriot had lain. He looked round the small room, bare, unfurnished, severe-terribly severe; he looked at the blank walls and the barred window, high up; he looked at the floor—it was discoloured and damp. He reached out and touched it with his hand. He looked at the solitary chair, the basin and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... worst—we haven't faced that. I could face it, I believe, if I knew what you think it. I feel," he explained, "as if I had lost my power to conceive such things." And he wondered if he looked as blank as ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... frequent, in copious measure. In this world I have repeatedly undergone all those afflictions that flow from a perception of all pairs of opposites. After all this, one day, overwhelmed with sorrow, blank despair came upon me. I took refuge in the Formless. Afflicted as I was with great distress, I gave up the world with all its joys and sorrows.[8] Understanding then this path, I exercised myself in it in this world. Afterwards, through ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... M. Troplong—the legist, the orator, the philosopher—does not see that logically this interdict must be admitted, since it is the necessary complement of the two others, and the three united form an indivisible trinity,—to RECOVER, to MAINTAIN, to ACQUIRE? To break this series is to create a blank, destroy the natural synthesis of things, and follow the example of the geometrician who tried to conceive of a solid with only two dimensions. But it is not astonishing that M. Troplong rejects the third class of actions possessoires, when we consider ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Peking, were calling on my wife, and again I pursued my inquiries. "Do you know anything about the early life of the Empress Dowager?" I asked of the eldest. She hesitated a moment, with that same blank expression I had seen on the face of the princess, and then answered very deliberately,—"Yes, everybody knows, but nobody talks about it." And this is, no doubt, the reason why the early life of the greatest ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... possessions. It taught that nature was an open book of the Lord in which he who runs may read a divine message; and in contrast with eighteenth-century philosophy (which had described man as a creature of the senses, born with a blank mind, and learning only by experience), it emphasized the divinity of man's nature, his inborn ideas of right and wrong, his instinct of God, his passion for immortality,—in a word, his higher knowledge which transcends ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... SUFFRAGISTS.—We mail to every subscriber of the Woman's Journal a blank petition to Congress for a XVI. Amendment. Also, in the same envelope, a woman suffrage petition to your own State Legislature—Please offer both petitions together for signature. Thus, with the same amount of labor, both objects ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... first sentence of a letter which Byron wrote "on a blank leaf of the volume of 'Corinne,'" which Teresa [Guiccioli] left in forgetfulness in a garden in Bologna: "Amor Mio,—How sweet is this word in your Italian language!" (Life of Lord Byron, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... officer, remorse, had laid vigorous hold of his conscience. Be followed at random the foot-paths, lined by gardens by which he had passed so many times with placid brow and a clean heart; he walked on, he walked on, with bare head, and blank and haggard eyes, thinking of nothing but his crime, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not oven the bell which summoned him to his morning Mass, as it cheerfully filled the air with its ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... felt all over the door, but it was perfectly blank, not so much as a keyhole to be found, and though he pressed and strained at it, he could ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... young teacher for whom they had been watching, and escort her to her throne in the school-room, and evidently in their hearts. For a year or two after this visit I have no recollection of her, or indeed of any of the Payson family. Death, meanwhile, had been busy in my own home, and my memory is a blank for anything beyond ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... first impression his countenance gave me was one which I did not receive from Chantrey's bust of him—that of his being a very benevolent man. Have you seen Barry Cornwall's new volume? He is one of the best writers of blank verse we have, but I think blank verse is not much in favour with you. The rhyme that is now in fashion runs rather too wild to please me. It seems to want pruning and nailing up. A sonnet, like a rose tree may be allowed to grow straggling, but a long poem ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... a faint smile about the delicately lined lips. "She is a child in many ways, a blank page for most impressions to be made upon, but in other things she is very much of a woman, and I rather fancy that what you have to tell her will not be so much ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... print that on their paper bags for an advertisement. I'll show it to Mr. Gifford. There are plenty of blank ones lying around ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... the Sorrows we endure? 'Tis Man's Destiny, and Heaven's Pleasure, to mix our Joys with bitter Potions; and for some few Hours of Satisfaction, we meet with Ages of Ills and Troubles. Mr. Dryden, by the help of Blank Verse, and a little more ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... him with cold eyes. "But before you take leave of us," he said ironically, "I should like the true story of the night before last. Somehow, somewhere, a letter intended for me was exchanged for a blank paper. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... change which had come in Jan, who stood as straight and as still as the blank spruce behind them, with only his eyes showing that there was life in him. Those eyes held Thornton's. They burned upon him through the gray gloom as he had never seen human eyes burn before. He waited, half startled, and Jan spoke. In his voice there was nothing of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... A blank disappointment, not unmixed with apprehensive terror, succeeded the turbulent excitement of the Normans; for well they knew that the consequences, if not condition, of negotiations, would be their own downfall and banishment at the least;—happy, it might be, to escape massacre ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with—"Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Here's the ALIDA'S boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it. Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at Nerida, and ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... the American Embassy had already become historical souvenirs which won a smile. The name of every American resident in Paris and his address had been filled in the blank space. He had only to put up the warning over his door that the premises were under the Embassy's protection. Ambassador Herrick, suave, decisive, resourceful, possessed the gift of acting in a great emergency with the same ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... longer peppered each other on sight. The duel was quite gone. Indeed, the last one at the old university was in her father's time, and had been, he told her, a fake. A Texan had challenged another student, and the seconds had loaded the pistols with blank cartridges. After firing three times at his enemy the Texan threw his weapon down, swore that he could hit a quarter every time at that distance, pulled forth two guns of his own and demanded that they be used; and they had a terrible time appeasing the Westerner, who, failing ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... according to his invariable custom, he took his stand at the door of the supper-room to receive the ladies there. Four thousand five hundred tickets had been issued and a certain number of these, still blank, had disappeared. That was certain. And it was also certain that the King did not go to the door of the supper-room as usual. But the writer remarks that the tickets may have been stolen by, or for, people ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the room with blank eyes. He could not believe that he had not fallen asleep and dreamed it all. His gaze was arrested by Cynthia's portrait on the shelf—it seemed to be watching ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... to write a sermon, or secular discourse, (as I have done before) but I don't feel inclined to do so. This diary only gets my thoughts when they arise spontaneously and require no further labour than the mere putting of them into words. To-day my mind is a blank, and I am not going to search in hidden recesses for thoughts that may possibly be secreted there. Perhaps after dinner something may occur to ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... of sleep the next morning by shouts of "Whoa, mula! Whoa, you mongrel outcasts! Catch them blankety blank mules!" accompanied by a rattle of chain harness, and Quince Forrest dashed across our segundo's bed, shaking a harness in each hand. We kicked the blankets off, and came to our feet in time to see the offender disappear behind the wagon, while ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... "What the blank blank!" roared the mate, as he dragged the Dago across the deck. "What d'ye mean by it, eh? Get hold o' ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a blank in this work, which you shall fill up," said my aunt; "you must perform the office of an impartial historian for your friend, and before we proceed farther with this volume, give me the history of your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... liar!" he said with cold insolence when Cameron had finished his tale. "You look to me like a blank blank horse thief or ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... his linen. Christophe had never read much of the Book: but it was a comfort beyond words for him to find it at that moment. The Bible had belonged to his grandfather and to his grandfather's father. The heads of the family had inscribed on a blank page at the end their names and the important dates of their lives—births, marriages, deaths. His grandfather had written in pencil, in his large hand, the dates when he had read and re-read each chapter: the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said, thoughtfully: ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... wait. It needed just a moment's pause—no more—to be sure no sequel of recognition would follow the blank stare that met her gaze as she threw back the door, and looked this husband of hers full in the face. None came, and her heart throbbed slower and slower. It would be down to self-command in a few beats. Meanwhile, how about that ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his packet, and, after unfolding several pieces of blank paper successively, at last discovered a guinea, wrapt with great care in the inmost paper. He was vastly surprized at this sight, as he had few if any friends from whom he could expect such a favour, slight as it was; and not one of his friends, as he was apprized, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... thus separated from the origin of the race by a very long interval indeed, it is none the less true that he is separated from our own time by the intervention of a vast blank space, the space occupied by the coming on and passing away of the Glacial Epoch. A great gap cuts him off from what we may consider as the relatively modern age of the mound-builders, whose grassy barrows still cap the summits of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... or so out of St Waast, were attacked by a body of Jaegers, who appeared on a hill opposite. Foolishly they disclosed their position by opening rifle fire. In a few minutes the Jaegers went, and to our utter discomfiture a couple of field-guns appeared and fired point-blank at 750 yards. Luckily the range was not very exact, and only a few were wounded—those who retired directly backwards instead of transversely out of the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... too early for an extended and lasting reputation. In his sallies he did not spare his friends, and he wounded his opponents. On one occasion as we were upon the street I was induced to buy a paper by a boy's cry "Great battle!" When I opened the paper the sheet was a blank. I said: ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... eventually settled in a flushed red; his powerful hands and arms trembled so much, that he folded them to prevent his agitation from being noticed; the grimness of his face ceased to be stern, while it retained the blank expression of guilt; his temples swelled out with the terrible play of their blood-vessels, his chest, too, heaved up and down with the united pressure of guilt, and the tempest which shook him within. At length he saw Denis's ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... understood the loyalty of feeling which underlay this request, and he promptly responded to it. Taking from his pocket a number of old letters and envelopes, he searched out whatever scraps there might be of blank paper. Upon these scraps he issued to each man of his little company a peremptory order to return to his home, with an added statement in the case of each that he had "served loyally, bravely, and ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... he said, eagerly; 'I don't, mind being told point blank that I am a dunce, but that Mr. Potts—nay, by implication—my grandfather should be set at nought in that cool—But here I am again!' said he, checking himself in the midst of his vehemence; 'he did not mean that, of course. I have no one ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... best I could find at Tiffany's. Why, Jerry, what is the matter? You do not look glad a bit. I thought you wanted me to give them to her surreptitiously, and I did,' he continued, as the expression of Jerry's face changed to one of blank dismay and disappointment, and the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... did not pause, she did not look back, and she did not answer. Joe stood staring after her in blank amazement. Then he gave utterance to a low ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... then Austin visited the Lamb; but he brought no news of Robin. Isoult thought she had never realised how dearly she loved the lad till now. It was hard to thank God for such a blank in the home as this; and yet deep in the inmost heart she knew, as every Christian knows, that the Father was doing all things well, and that "there was no must be without a needs be." To wait on the Lord is no ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the men. In this manner I was less under the spell of the mesmerism of the snake, and could to some extent think and act. I wheeled around while I still held control of my faculties, and, perceiving a slight movement of the snake's coils, I fired point-blank at the head, letting go the entire chamber of soft-nose bullets. Instantly the other men woke up from their trance and in their turn fired, emptying their Winchesters into the huge head, which by this time was raised to ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... slowness. The swamp is alive. And I found again a certain advantage in forgetfulness; for I saw all this incredible country before I even remembered its name, or the ancient tradition about its nature. Then even the green plague-spots failed, and everything seemed to fall away into a universal blank under the staring sun, as I came, in the great spaces of the circle of a lifeless sea, into the silence of Sodom ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... at first being attended with very little injury, it appears probable that a large proportion of the muskets were, as stated by one or two of the witnesses, levelled over the heads of the prisoners; a circumstance in some respects to be lamented, as it induced them to cry out "blank cartridges," and merely irritated and encouraged them to renew their insults to the soldiery, which produced a repetition of the firing in ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they talked in the North and the South, they talked and they fought in the West, Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest— Had rest till that dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start, And the Devil bubbled below the keel: "It's human, but is ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... waiting till the foremost should pass the artemisia-bush; for by that he had calculated the point-blank range of his rifle. Another moment, and its crack would have been heard; but the horseman, as if warned by instinct, seemed to divine the exact limit of danger. Before reaching the bush, his heart failed him, and in a wavering, irresolute manner, he ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... to her, giving expression to his sympathy, and she accepted it; but she said such strange things, and answered him so utterly at random, that he began to fear that grief had turned her brain. She went on to ask him point-blank how much money she now had, and as he happened to know approximately, he could tell her; she clasped her hands, for how could any one human being who was not a king possess such enormous wealth! Finally she enquired whether he knew how a will should be drawn up, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... paper. My sheets are thus kept securely together and in place—important considerations in view of the gales often blowing through my study and the habits of a careless man. This method offers peculiar advantages for interpolation, as there is always a blank page opposite the one on which I am writing. After correcting the manuscript, it is put in typewriting and again revised. There are also two revisions of the proof. While I do not shirk the tasks ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... her, but at first it was consciousness in an utter dark. Everywhere was blackness, and in it she was quite alone. The whole universe seemed to centre in her solitary soul. Still she felt no fear, only a kind of wonder at this infinite blank through which she was being borne for millions and ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... a mere lovers' quarrel, and is only the prelude to more folly, like the blank green baize curtain, between the play and the farce. He affects anger—a thin disguise: he would give worlds to "kiss and be friends again." His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... news; that Lower House was so badly burned that there was no question of repairing it; that Mr. Whipple had been sent to the hospital at Lynnminster, seriously but not dangerously hurt; that Grafton Hyde had received no damage and was about this forenoon wearing a strangely blank expression due to the loss of his eyebrows; and that King, to whose disregard of the rules the fire had been due, had, previous rumors to the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... in the north wall. The masonry of the wall under these windows and the two lancets by which it is pierced indicate that advantage had been taken of an earlier building to form the substructure of the library. The west wall must always have been blank. Access to the library was obtained directly from the transept by means of the beautiful stone staircase in two flights which Pontis built in 1479. This staircase leads up to a door marked BIBLIOTHECA which opens into the vestibule above mentioned. In 1788 a room was built ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Poem, he said, "It was fine blank (meaning to express his usual contempt for blank verse[69]); however, this miserable poem did not sell, and my poor friend Doddy said, Publick Virtue was not a subject ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... countenance suddenly distorted by a contortion expressive of any thing but pleasure. Turning involuntarily to my left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Mr. Winston, I saw a grimace, almost similar, pass over his face, followed by a look of blank astonishment at me. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the words over again and again before he seemed to have the least comprehension of what they meant: then, in a stupor of dull despondency, he read on to the end, and learnt that all his hopes were over, that his life was a blank, and that the thing he had dreaded so much as to cheat himself into the belief that it could never happen had come to pass. And yet he was still Reuben May, and lived and breathed, and hadn't much concern beyond ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged long. I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell. The stars were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the anxious-seat. Brother Blank is just the man for her case. You've heard of Brother Blank, just from the West, and burning with zeal. Heard of the way he converted a blacksmith out there—a great, stout, burly, unregenerated fellow. Why, compared to him, this poor, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... those proposed as gobernadorcillo, the respective government orders the credentials corresponding to each class to be despatched. In the other provinces, because of their distance from the capital, the chief of each one appoints the nominee in the first place, and making use of the blank credentials entrusted to him by the superior government, writes therein the names of those interested, and places them in possession ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... Why did his words fail, and what was the reason of that scared look with which he regarded the blank faces of the other undergraduates? And what is the meaning of that gasp, and the rapid dropping of the head upon the breast, and the deadly pallor that suddenly put out the fair colour in his ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... chuckles and spiteful whisperings, and would have babbled tales to the Duchess had that remarkable, ancient lady been versed in the language of brooks. As it was, she came full upon Master Milo still intent upon the heavens, it is true, but in such a posture that his buttons stared point-blank and quite unblushingly towards a certain ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... rather to study, him at once. They could study no more ennobling teacher. If they are unfamiliar with Italian, they may read the faithful prose version of the "Inferno" by John Carlyle, of the "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso," by A. J. Butler, or the translations by Cary in blank verse, and the Dean of Wells in terza rima. If they desire to begin with some general introduction, they may read the fine essays by Dean Church and Mr. Lowell (in "Among my Books") and the excellent "Shadow of Dante," by Maria Rosetti. To such books, or to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... multitude of monks and soldiers, with staves, and swords, and chains, burst into the church; the trembling bishops hid themselves behind the altar, or under the benches, and as they were not inspired with the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed a blank paper, which was afterwards filled with the condemnation of the Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was instantly delivered to the wild beasts of this spiritual amphitheatre: the monks were stimulated by the voice and example of Barsumas to avenge the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... and waved her hands despairingly. "If you could see my desk! And the way I watch the mail so Clay won't see them first. They really ought to send bills in blank envelopes." ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... passions, with their fierce but flickering flame, sink down and die; and the strong brain that ever hath urged my course, and pricked me onward with perpetual thought, desert the rudder it so long hath held, like some baffled pilot in blank discomfiture, in the far ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... tears, expecting kind congratulations, but at the tone of Edith's voice almost more than at what she had said, and at the sight of the two girls standing a little apart looking into each other's faces in alarm and horror, her own countenance changed, and an expression of blank inquiry succeeded the smiles, and dried ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to cut asunder the Church from the State. Mr. Gladstone listened attentively to Dr. Doellinger's remarks, and then, in an absent kind of way, said, "But you forget how nobly the Nonconformists supported me at the time of the Eastern Question." The blank look of amazement on Dr. Doellinger's face showed the wide difference between the standpoint of the politician and the ecclesiastic. But Mr. Gladstone knew upon whom to rely in the hour of need, when great moral issues were at stake. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... and this, among the Ancients, was the Iambic; and with us, is Blank Verse, or the Measure of Verse kept exactly, without rhyme. These numbers, therefore, are fittest for a Play: the others [i.e., Rhymed Verse] for a paper of Verses, or a Poem [p. 566]. Blank Verse being as much below them, as Rhyme is improper for the Drama: and, if it be objected that neither are Blank Verses made ex tempore; yet, as nearest Nature, they are still ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Horn, My Hunter Boy. Wine-Cup is circling, The. With Moonlight beaming. Woman. Wonder, The. World was husht. Wo! wo. Wreath and the Chain, The. Wreaths for the Ministers. Wreath the Bowl. Write on, write on. Written in a Commonplace Book. Written in the Blank Leaf of a Lady's Commonplace Book. Written on passing ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... should like a few minutes' private conversation on business of great importance, which can be so managed as to turn out advantageously to us both. I do not wish to be overheard or interrupted. In these times even blank walls have ears, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one point ceaselessly—a dreary prospect, in which that slender girl-figure had no place—and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank, and the pain in his ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... however, recollected that he possessed no writing materials, and he might not again have the opportunity of communicating with Hempson. That moment it occurred to him that he had a small book in his pocket. It contained but a portion of a blank leaf. He tore it out, and with the end of a stick he wrote ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... aid from Matilda's brother Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the answer he received was a query, how much land in England he would allot as a recompense. He sent, in return, a piece of blank parchment; but others say, that instead of being an absolute blank, it contained his signature, and was filled up by Baldwin, with the promise of a pension ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... explain that he was merely a "geographical colonel"—that the title was constantly conferred in an informal sense on Americans, especially Southerners, and that the handle to his name had, therefore, no military significance. But the round-faced Teutons stared at his explanation in blank amazement; they couldn't grasp the point at all, and continued to ask his opinion ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... and he pointed to the card-table. Not finding it, in his shame for Adelaide and the Baroness, he looked at them with a blank amazement that made them laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat, and said, "I must have made a mistake. I have ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... metre is essential to the full sense of the meaning and of the beauty of all poetry. Even the rhymeless flow of blank verse is absolutely necessary to an accurate and entire perception of the effect the author intends to produce: it is in both cases as the colouring to a picture. It may be, indeed, that part of the composition which appeals most directly to the senses; ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... least, should be laid in such fashion as to bind well into the stone walls, and if of considerable height, should be strengthened by belts of stone, or iron anchors running through the brick and extending into the main wall several feet each way. Any large blank surface may be relieved by a little ingenuity in the selection of the stones for the main walls, introducing, perhaps, some of regular shapes and size, the raised mortar, which may be colored dark or red, marking the joints, or inserting a belt of different color. Horizontal bands ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... closing door struck on her ear. She turned—and there was a blank wall, without door or window, behind her. The hill with the sheep was before her, and she set out at once to ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... all is over with him, he has hopelessly perished forever. When the breath ceases, if nothing survives, if the total man is blotted out, then we challenge the production of a shadow of proof that he will ever live again. The seeming injustice and blank awfulness of the fate may make one turn for relief to the hypothesis of a future arbitrary miraculous resurrection; but that is an artificial expedient, without a shadow of justification. Once admit that the body is all, its dissolution a total death, and you are gone ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... against the blistered floor, he strives the fire to drown, And slowly, surely, steadfastly, he fights the demon down; And then he seeks the window-frame, all sashless, blank and bare, And wipes his plucky Irish face and gasps a bit for air; Then, standing on the slimy ledge, as narrow as his feet, He hums a tune, and looks straight down six stories to the street; Far, far below he sees ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that a conspiracy existed to commit fraud, the committee submitted valuable evidence contributed by the clerks of these courts. Instead of printing the usual number of blank certificates based on the annual average of 9,000, they ordered, between September 16 and October 23, more than seven times as many, or 69,000, of which 39,000 went to the Supreme Court. As this court had just gone into the naturalisation business the order seemed suspiciously large. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... exhausted; but the book is perhaps large enough. Everything which it contains has been indexed so clearly that a reader ought to be able to find what he wants in a moment. Moreover, by way both of supplying any deficiencies and of giving each copy of the book a personal character, an appendix of blank and numbered leaves (with a few spaces in the index) has been added, in which the owner may record such omitted games and employments ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here occurred, and of which the house had been the cause. He could discern the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom being just visible behind. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... States, reported in his old age that he had never heard a single one of them say anything worth hearing. These were vigorous and masculine men, and in a man's world they were successful men, but intellectually they were all blank cartridges. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... history of Moses and the life of Jesus. Above the lines of fresco, in the spaces between the windows and along the eastern end at the same height, Botticelli painted a row of twenty-eight Popes. The spaces below the frescoed histories, down to the seats which ran along the pavement, were blank, waiting for the tapestries which Raffaello afterwards supplied from cartoons now in possession of the English Crown. At the west end, above the altar, shone three decorative frescoes by Perugino, representing the Assumption of the Virgin, between ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... protest thou wilt not— Take his sword; [To an Officer.] I did not think to find this kite so tame. Good, honest Master Walton, tell me now What news from Langley, virtuous Master Walton? Nay, never look with that blank wonderment, Friend Arthur Walton— [ARTH. attempts to speak.] Tush, sir, not a word— As the Lord liveth, thou shalt die the death— Take him away. I hate his open brow More than a dozen dark-fac'd ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... on the night when Robin was born, on the night when Bruce Evelin and Guy had discussed Mrs. Clarke's divorce case and Mrs. Clarke. He shuddered in the warmth of the pavilion. Then resolutely he picked the book up. At the beginning, after some blank pages, there was a portrait of Sir Richard Burton. Dion looked at the strong, tragic face, with its burning expression, for a long time. Then he stretched himself on one of the divans and began to read ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... beginning with an M." [The woman thought it was a visiting-card, and guessed that doubtless it would begin with the words Monsieur or Madame.] M. Cornac, unknown to the magnetiser, who alone put the questions, passed a perfectly blank card to M. Dubois, who substituted it quietly for the one on which he had written the word Pantagruel. The somnambule still persisted that she saw a word beginning with an M. At last, after some efforts, she added doubtingly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... brought him to the center of the room. Knupf was standing near him, a perfectly blank expression on his face. His voice was the same rough rasp, but it ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... afterward conscious life returned to him he did not know. The blank might have been an hour or a century. He knew only that something had happened in the interval. What is was he could not tell. He found great difficulty in catching the thread of his identity again. He felt that he was himself; but the trouble was to make his connections, ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... Gordons, Imperial Light Horse, and Engineers, under Lieutenant Digby-Jones, R.E., were still holding their ground manfully on the extreme westerly crest of Waggon Hill. The Boers were within point-blank range of them on two sides, while beyond the crest and down into Bester's Valley hundreds of others were waiting for the first sign of panic among our men to rush the position, but held in check by a company of the 60th Rifles and a few Light Horse occupying a small ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... his music, in which there is no echo of any man's before him, found its own echo in the more prolonged but hardly more exalted harmony of Milton's. He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that the plants will be pricked out some day, and planted where they are meant to grow. The hearts that feel after absolute and perfect love, the spirits that can conceive the idea of an infinite goodness, the dumb desires, the blank misgivings that wander homeless amidst the narrowness of this poor earth, all these things proclaim that there is a region where they will find their nutriment and expatiate, and when we look at a man we can only say, He that hath wrought him for an ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... all out, that deep secret about their change of boarding-house; and the Hart boys had something to enjoy this time, for Dab and his friends looked at each other for a moment in blank amazement. ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... had been transferred to her husband. She wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up the stairs to Kennicott's office. On the door was a sign advertising a headache cure and stating, "The doctor is out, back at——" Naturally, the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... being written in verse, and unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine at Paris; and fetches his last breath at London, in most harmmonious and correct blank verse. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... he should give it up to them. The most cosy chair here is for himself, there is no one even to share the room with him, or to interfere with his doing as he likes in it—smoking included. Why, if such a room looked out both back and front on to a blank dead wall it would still be a paradise, how much more then when the view is of some quiet grassy court or cloister or garden, as from the windows of the greater number of rooms ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... wandered about the town there were groups of these trembling ones, on whose pallid faces were imprinted looks of maniacal horror or of blank despair. Little wonder! Some of them had beheld the fathers, brothers, lovers, around whom their heart-strings twined, tortured to death before their eyes. Others had seen their babes tossed on spear-points and bayonets, while to all the future must have appeared a fearful prospect of want and ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... there," the gambler-wind the snow is shuffling, Flake after flake down—dealing in despair; The bladeless field, the birdless thicket muffling, But now no more the river's stillness ruffling. Oh, bitter is the sky, and blank its stare— Back there! ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... writer's part "how to begin." It may be said that this is not peculiar to fiction; but extends from the poet who never can get beyond the first lines of his epic to the journalist who sits for an hour gazing at the blank paper for his article, and returns home at midnight, if not like Miss Bolo "in a flood of tears and a sedan chair," at any rate in a tornado of swearing at himself and (while there were such things) a hansom cab. Pastoral gives both ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled, Or crawling on their bellies through the wire. "What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?" Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire: Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead— Blank stars. I'm ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... had decreed that he was not to be troubled; so Nesta and mademoiselle besought him for a recital of his French adventures; and strange to say, he had nothing to tell. The journey, pregnant at the start, exciting in the course of it, was absolutely blank at the termination. French people had been very kind; he could not say more. But there was more; there was a remarkable fulness, if only he could subordinate it to narrative. The little man did not know, that time was wanted for imagination ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... work, I was brought back to life,—but a life worse than death. The Captain told Father Paolo that my mind was a blank, I could remember nothing of my past, I did not know my name. Then temptation came to Captain Vando. He took from me my belt, in which I had some English gold, a few English bank-notes, and the five bills of exchange, each for a thousand ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... us, as a little salt was still left in the bottom of a barrel of meat which the Imperialists had broken up. I let her take her own way, and having scraped some soot from the chimney and mixed it with water, I tore a blank leaf out of Virgillus, and wrote to the Pastor Liepensts, his reverence Abraham Tiburtius, praying that for God His sake he would take our necessities to heart, and would exhort his parishioners to save us from dying of grim hunger, and charitably ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... red, yellow, and white. From the west door a pattern, surrounded by a border, stretches as far as the fifth pair of columns. It consists of a central band of a wavy pattern, interrupted by inscriptions and medallions; the easternmost one is blank and has a running border, with the corners of the square (cut off by the band of inscriptions) filled with scroll-work. The side portions are cut up into squares by bands of open interlacings, with ivy leaves in the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... forget the anxieties of that terrible hour, and the blank faces of our guides as they waded backwards and forwards in search of the lost trail, pausing ever and anon to give a sort of melancholy wail, not unlike the Australian "co-o-o-ey," the cry of the Dyak when lost in the forest. L. and I had almost ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... the various boxes and parcels into the chest as he spoke, and we all looked at each other as men might look who, taking a way unknown to them, come up against a blank wall. But Chisholm, who was a sharp fellow, with a good ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... already showed behind them. Followed by Fireman Pearl, he ran up in the adjoining building, and presently appeared at a window on the third floor, separated from the one occupied by the two men by a blank wall-space of perhaps four or five feet. It offered no other footing than a rusty hook, but it was enough. Astride of the window-sill, with one foot upon the hook, the other anchored inside by his comrade, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Frank; a startled exclamation from the girl. Poltavo went red and white and his eyes glowed. T. B. Smith, to whom this portion of the will was known, watched the actors keenly. He saw the bewildered face of the girl, the rage in Poltavo's eyes, and the blank astonishment on the face of Frank as the ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the marquis was first to arrive, and so early that the hostess was not yet in the salon. In walking up and down the room, he noticed a small book under Mme. Necker's chair. He picked it up and opened it. It was a blank book, a few of the pages of which had been written upon by Mme. Necker. Certainly, he would not have read a letter, but, believing to find only a few spiritual thoughts, he read without any scruples. It contained the plan for the dinner of that ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... time when she should roar—no teaching her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems—her new versions of the Psalms and Scriptures—her blank verse elegiacs—oh! how blank!—beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'—or 'The evening veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'—or after some other equally threatening form and fashion—I can fancy how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... of portico, and red brick cheeks of vast extent, and that high, steeple-crowned hat—look at the smug, mean, insignificant dwarf of a meeting-house, sinking up to its knees in a narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, with a trap-door of a mouth, and a grating cast of eye. How yonder bridegroom, just cemented in an alliance that will not last out his lease of life, "spick and span new," all eyes, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... the room, stared for a second in blank amazement at the intruders. They were certainly unlike any other visitors who had ever come to Pendlemere. The speaker was a little, short, wiry man, in a slack-fitting, brown tweed suit, with a rather obtrusive striped tie. His raggy, grey beard straggled under his chin and up to his ears; his ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... disillusion has struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot. Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes and women and children—feeling to which modern civilised man had long been a stranger. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... consisting of ten horizontal rows of six stamps. The Crown and C.C. watermarks are arranged in the same manner upon the sheet of paper; each pane is enclosed in a single-lined frame. Down the centre of the sheet is a blank space of about half an inch wide; across the centre is a wider space, watermarked with the words CROWN COLONIES, which are also repeated twice along ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville
... strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank. ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... his head in a contrary fashion as though far from convinced, "I never did take much to the grab-bag business—putting your hand in, and groping around to pull out a prize or a blank." ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... different, but I knew the room. The servant crossed before me to a door which I could not recall having noticed in my dream. As he opened it I looked to the right; and where the other door had been before which I had many times crossed swords with the red musketeer I saw a blank wall." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... were allowed the alternative of exile, or of seclusion in their own country houses. But this was not the worst. The lettre de cachet was too often the instrument of private hate. Signed carelessly, or even in blank, by the king, it could be procured by the favorite or the favorite's favorite, for his own purposes. And if the victim had no protector to plead his cause, he might be forgotten in captivity and ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... see any light in Thorndyke's chambers," I said, as we crossed King's Bench Walk; and I pointed out the row of windows all dark and blank. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever jumbled-up form she'd been getting the impressions at that point—Telzey couldn't have begun to describe it—the whole thing ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... unconscious cerebration—by the long inevitable storing of disdained impressions—she had arrived at vision. That which had been, for her, alternate gibberish and silence, had become an intelligible tongue. The blank features had stirred and shifted into a countenance; she saw a face, where she had seen only odds and ends of modelling grotesquely flung abroad. With no stupid pantheism to befuddle her, she yet felt ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by some unknown process all infants are saved. Now if there be a method of saving infants, is it so hard to conceive that there may be a method of saving adults? To be sure, the adults may be great sinners, and so the process may radically differ. But the minds of very young infants are a perfect blank at first, and so every idea that they require to fit them for the better world has to be communicated. So there must be some process of education. It is easy then to conceive of a process of education for adults, combined of course with such discipline as each case may require. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... drawn is no valid reason for asserting that no real distinction exists; and it is certainly remarkable that a meteoric fusillade may be kept up for hours without a single solid projectile reaching its destination. It would seem as if the celestial army had been supplied with blank cartridges. Yet, since a few detonating meteors have been found to proceed from ascertained radiants of shooting-stars, it is difficult to suppose that any generic difference ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... by Mrs. Halket of Wardlaw. Mr. Lockhart stated, that on the blank leaf of his copy of Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen," Sir Walter Scott has written "Hardyknute was the first poem that I ever learnt, the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... that took it; it couldn't have been this artist girl," said Deering, excitedly whipping out his penknife and slitting one of the packages. A sheaf of blank wrapping-paper fluttered to the floor. His face whitened and he gave a cry of dismay. "Robbed! Tricked!" he ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... is a relic of high interest, and nearly all the sylvan portions of the play, in which Robin Hood and his "merry men" are engaged, are of no ordinary beauty. Some of the serious scenes are also extremely well written, and the blank-verse, interpersed with rhymes, as was usual in our earlier dramas, by no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the gentleman, a resident of Tangier, who was to be my companion. I accordingly interrogated the hotel-keeper, Mr. B. "What kind of a man is D.?" I asked. "Not a bad fellow," he replied, "if he wasn't such a blank, blank awful liar!" On the road to Wazan I became very friendly with D., and one day questioned him as to his private regard for Mr. B. of the hotel. "A fine fellow B. seems," I said, "very friendly and entertaining. What do you think of him?" "What do I think of him?" he shouted in his ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... paused, looking straight ahead in space. Perhaps he was looking for the hard grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his eye became a blank. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut |
