"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disgusted, and this disgust by a sort of paradoxical logic reawakened his animosity against Lieutenant D'Hubert. Was he to be pestered with this fellow for ever—the fellow who had an infernal knack of getting round people somehow? On the other hand, it was difficult to refuse point-blank that sort of mediation sanctioned by ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... this may be, no copy of the Discourse was known to exist till the sale of Lord Valentia's collection, when Mr. Henry Stevens bought the manuscript here published. Its value seems to have been properly appreciated by him, owing perhaps to the following memoranda written in pencil on the second blank leaf, in the handwriting, it is ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... each other too well to part easily," he continued, "and, for a time, the world will all be a weary blank to you. May God, who knows how to pour a balm into every wound, which in his mercy He inflicts, grant that that time may not be long! Listen to me patiently, love. It is a strong sense of duty which makes me pain you; my memory ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Army on April 15, 1915, within a month of his 19th birthday. His application for a commission in the Infantry was refused point-blank because of his defective vision. The War Office authorities, much impressed by his school and athletic record, had requested him to undergo a special examination by an oculist; and on receipt of the oculist's report showing how extreme was his short sight, wrote to me on March 26, "It is quite impossible ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... to the blank period in the past, there is the blank period in the future. For of the seven sub-races required to complete the history of a great Root Race, five only have so far come into existence. Our own Teutonic or 5th sub-race has already developed many nations, but has not ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Fleets were join'd, and making the best of their Way for Barcelona. It will easily be imagin'd the Express was to be well paid; and being made sensible that he ran little or no Hazard in carrying a Piece of blank Paper, he undertook it, and as fortunately arriv'd with it to the Earl, at a Moment when Chagrin and Despair might have hurry'd him to some Resolution that might have prov'd fatal. The Messenger himself, however, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... instructions which might be necessary, under those circumstances, would reach him through Mr. Pedgift the elder. This done, and the letters sent to the post, his thoughts were forced back once more on himself. Again the blank future waited before him to be filled up; and again his heart shrank from it to the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... his bow with perfect poise and an eye for pretty faces; who had without a quiver faced the camera, many's the time, in difficult scenes; who had faced death more times than he could count, and what was to him worse than death,—blank failure. But these old range-men with the wind-and-sun wrinkles around their eyes, and their ready-to-wear suits, and their judicial air of sober attention,—these were to him the jury that would weigh his work and say whether it was worthy. ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... have desired this paper with a blank leaf to write business on, and for the convenience of the post; this is to give notice, that this day, and for the future, it may be had of Mr. Morphew, near Stationers' ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... outer covering, and realise the truth which they embody, it is necessary to feel as well as to see, and it is the loss of this power of feeling which Coleridge deplores in those bitterly sad lines in the Dejection Ode when he gazes "with how blank an eye" at ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... bride—wheezed the foul gossip, to hide his emptiness and do duty for amusement of the pretty little caged bird. Probably so. But Victor knew that Blathenoy needed him and feared him. Probably the wife had been enjoined to keep silence; for the Blachingtons, Fannings and others were, it could be sworn, blank and unscratched folio sheets on the subject:—as yet; unless Mrs. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answer carelessly: "Yes, my dear boy, we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the Pyramids." Then he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's mistress, to ask her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He knew that there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he questioned her, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... scarlet counterchanged. And yet, somehow, whether from the way of wearing it, or from the effect of the gold embroidery meandering over all, the effect was not distressing, but more like that of a gorgeous bird. The figure was tall, lithe, and active, the brown ruddy face had none of the blank stare of vacant idiocy, but was full of twinkling merriment, the black eyes laughed gaily, and perhaps only so clearsighted and shrewd an observer as Tibble would have detected a weakness of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... at 2. bists and a halfe the batman and lesse. 7 Rice at halfe a bist the batman. 8 Gals at halfe a bist the batman, 9 Cloues at 40. shaughs the batman 10 Yew for bow staues, at [Transcriber's note: blank in original.] ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... England who know that Catherine Trotter "published in 1693 a copy of verses addressed to Mr. Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery from the smallpox," and that "she was then fourteen years of age"? How many know even that she wrote a blank-verse tragedy in five acts, called Agnes de Cestro, and had it produced at Drury Lane at the age of sixteen? At the age of nineteen she was the friend of Congreve, and was addressed by Farquhar as "one of the fairest of her sex and the best judge." By the age of twenty-five, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... important words. It is unnecessary to place a period after a title, but a question mark or exclamation point should be used when one is appropriate. Do not underscore the title, or unnecessarily place it in quotation marks. Leave a blank line under the title, before beginning the body of ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... intended to tell him this point-blank, but he had taken such a line with her for not liking Limeton that she felt indignant, and not inclined to mince the facts at all. The result was what may have been expected: Tom stalked on in solemn silence, while she, all of resentment, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... nothing feeds the flame exactly like a letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the little excitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three times, four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is such a blank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill? Has he changed? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between lovers. Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her that it had not gone so far as that. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... like a flash and fired point blank at the Overland girl. Grace fired almost in the same instant. So close was he to her when he fired that she imagined she could feel the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... cloud and mist, predispose him to identify them with supernatural influences, which in his imagination take the form of monsters and genii. With no better guide than the untutored imagination of a mind which in religious matters is a blank, who shall wonder that this is so? I have myself often felt the influences of such surroundings, when dark clouds deepened the forest gloom, and the approaching storm set the trees whispering: if, at such a moment, the shaggy ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... her glance and given her eyes the limpidity of spring water. Absolute renunciation, slow physical and moral death, had little by little converted this crazy amorosa into a grave matron. When, as often happened, a blank stare came into her eyes, and she gazed before her without seeing anything, one could detect utter, internal void ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... aparatus for a few minutes and the contents of c and d washed into a small beaker and acidified with hydrochloric acid, boiled, barium chloride added, and the barium sulphate filtered off after standing a short time. A blank experiment must be done with each new lot of peroxide of hydrogen obtained, which always gives under 0.1 barium sulphate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... shares were in Craven's name, but they were transferred in blank and in Mr. Warren's safe. Together with his own hundred, they gave him control and a voting majority. That much we know by ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... c.c. of the Huebl reagent added, the stopper being then moistened with potassium iodide solution and placed firmly in the bottle, which is allowed to stand at rest in a dark place for four hours. A blank experiment is also performed, using the same quantities of chloroform and Huebl reagent, and allowing to stand for the ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... samples are recorded, they are sent to the crushing room, where they are reduced to the proper bulk and fineness for analysis. They are then sent, in rubber-stoppered bottles, accompanied by blank analysis report cards and card receipts, one for each sample, showing the serial numbers, to the fuel laboratory for analysis. The receipt card for each sample is signed and returned to the inspection office, and when the analysis has been made, the analysis report ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... Toryl and Sartan wore blank expressions as Okie slapped seven dollars and fifty cents change on the bar—four silver dollars, four half-dollars ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg
... her eyes shining, "there is my check book all signed in blank. I'll see that the money ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... things;'—and yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their slaves, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking, kicking, knocking down and shooting them as well as each other—the look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a study for a painter: and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and hands uplifted, 'Oh, indeed, I can't believe the slaveholders are so cruel to their slaves.' Most amiable and touching ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... regained in foreign eyes something of the interest that it had possessed in 1789. Each victory or defeat of the French popular cause awoke the joy or the sorrow of German Liberals, to whom all was blank at home: and when at length the throne of the Bourbons fell, the signal for deliverance seemed to have sounded in many a city ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... this day, by such temptations overcome! Thus he wraps his temptations up in such kind of words and suggestions as will carry it either way. But mark his holiness, or the way that he prescribes for holiness; it is, if not point blank against, yet without and besides the word, not by doing what God commands, and abhorring what he forbids, but by following the delusion of the devil, and their own roving fancies; as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Really very clever of you. [Slyly.] Come: would you like to have a peep at the list [beginning to take the blank paper from ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... married that Mortimer fellow in Sixty-first Street, you know—Clarence Mortimer's son. Ever seen their home? Well, the butler told me to go around to the rear entrance. I gave him my card and told him to take it up to MY DAUGHTER. I had a fellow in a drug-store write my name neatly on some blank cards, Mary. The butler threatened to call the police. He thought I was crazy. But just then old Clarence Mortimer came up the steps. It seems that he is living with his son, having lost all of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Terence. Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes. By Henry Thomas Riley, B.A. To which is added the Blank Verse Translation of George Colman. New York. Harper & Brothers. Reprinted from Bohn's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... certain of the way any man will behave in every case—and until one can do that a "character" is of no use to anyone. That, for instance, was the way with Florence's maid in Paris. We used to trust that girl with blank cheques for the payment of the tradesmen. For quite a time she was so trusted by us. Then, suddenly, she stole a ring. We should not have believed her capable of it; she would not have believed herself capable of it. It was nothing in her ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... ship is commissioned, is to open a muster-book. The requisite blank books and other papers are supplied to the captain by the superintendent of the dockyard, in order that the names of the officers and men may be entered as they assemble. The admiral being then informed that the ship is in commission, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... this work, I have been more and more confirmed in the opinion which I expressed at its commencement, that (whatever may be the extent of my own individual failure) "if justice is ever to be done to the easy flow and majestic simplicity of the grand old Poet, it can only be in the Heroic blank verse." I have seen isolated passages admirably rendered in other metres; and there are many instances in which a translation line for line and couplet for couplet naturally suggests itself, and in which it is sometimes difficult ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... top of the Pyramids. You know your ancestry in general back for thousands of years, and I am rarely fortunate in being able to go back as much as nine or ten generations to the Puritans of the "Mayflower," but there I stop and everything before that is a blank. David Starr Jordan tells us in his book that there is perhaps no man alive who has not kings or queens in his ancestry, but adds that we all have had murderers among our ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... her now from a visage that was an entire blank, though behind it conjecture was busy, and he was asking himself whether his companion was some new kind of hair-dresser, or uncommonly cultivated manicure, or a nursery governess obeying a hurry call to take a place in Mrs. Westangle's household, or some sort of amateur ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... But the blank hotel bedroom, so formal and cheerless, frightened her, and it seemed to her that she could not undress and climb into that high bed, and she had no clothes—not even a nightgown. The chambermaid brought her a cup of ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... yet," he muttered, his eyes dark with angry conviction, his face lowering with fury. "I'll hang him—I won't expect to prove it p'int blank. Jes' let me git a mite o' suspicion, an' I'll guarantee ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she had made ready for Creed's occupancy on the night of the play-party. It had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it—the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... my hostess, "to take in Mrs. Blank. She is charming. All through the War she has been with her husband in the South Seas. London is a new place ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... summoned four swart seamen out by name. His words went like a cold wind through their flesh As with a passionless voice he slowly said, "Take ye this fellow: bind him to the mast Until what time I shall decide his fate." And Doughty gasped as at the world's blank end,— "Nay, Francis," cried he, "wilt thou thus misuse A gentleman?" But as the seamen gripped His arms he struggled vainly and furiously To throw them off; and in his impotence Let slip the whole of his treacherous cause ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children's heads. M. Reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what Donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[142] M. Reymond's brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, entitles his suggestion to great weight. The angles of the cantoria where ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... contemplated assault. In the first place, it is impossible to take Vicksburg in front without too great a loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank range of their guns, not only from their water batteries, which line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills, while the enemy would be protected by the elevation from the range of our fire. By examining the map I enclose you will at once perceive why a place of so little ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... threats seriously, because they knew full well when Landy Smith once got asleep it required something like a young earthquake to arouse him. Elmer hardly anticipated another visit from the mysterious unknown that night. He fancied the fellow must have imagined Lil Artha really shot point-blank at him, and that it was only his good luck which enabled him to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be deposed.[257] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and great ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... country mansion to Berkeley Square. He found his wife very uneasy and nervous about the non-appearance of their only son. Arthur had sent home his groom and horses about seven o'clock, with a hurried scroll, written in pencil on a blank page torn from his pocket-book, and containing ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thumb-hand side as you come in on the New York train. On the strength of this document the claimant went to the grocery and bought an ecru-colored ham, a sack of corn meal and a pound of tobacco. In June Mr. Fitznoodle sent a blank to be filled out by the claimant, stating whether he had or had not been baptized prior to his enlistment; and, if so, to what extent, and how he liked it so far as he had gone. This was to be sworn to before two witnesses, who were to be male, if possible, and if ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... There was shock and excitement in it, as there is in all trials of strength between a man and a woman. She tried to hate and despise him, but she could not achieve it. She longed to answer and crush him, but her mind was a blank, her tongue refused its office. Surprise, resentment, wounded feeling made a tumult and darkness through which she could not find ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sat silent. Then Clare said, with something like a groan, "Would to God I could die here and now, or else that there was some spell by which one could make memory a blank!" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... an officer of the law, Schleisinger—more is the pity, both for you and the law—and you must do your duty. I have come to swear out another warrant. Get your blank and fill it in." ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... thee? Where are the pure, whom thou would'st choose to love thee? Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee? Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind."] ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... poetry is admirable in its kind—intentionally charged, to raise it to the second stage-level, above the blank verse, that is, of the drama in which it is set, as that blank verse is raised above the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Boers. The Dragoons chased them past a Red Cross tent, where a man was waving a Red Cross flag. They respected those gathered about the tent; but one ruffian, waiting until they came abreast, shot point-blank at a private. As he fell dead from the saddle Captain Derbyshire rode at his slayer and shot him dead with his revolver. A big Dragoon would put his foot to the back of a Boer and tug to get his lance out. Some of the Boers stood firing till the cavalry came within twenty yards. The ground was ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... I came upon you sleeping among the flowers, with roses and lilies for cheeks. Still forgetful? Know you not my voice? Those little spirits in your eyes have seen me before. They mimic me now as they sport in their lakes. All the past a dim blank? Think of the time when we ran up and down in our arbor, where the green vines grew over the great ribs of the stranded whale. Oh Yillah, little Yillah, has it all come to this? am I forever forgotten? Yet over ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... setting out, he requested the monarch to show him his collection of charms, which were written on sheets of paper, glued or pasted together. Amongst them he discovered a small edition of Watts' Hymns on one of the blank leaves of which was written, Alexander Anderson, Royal Military Hospital, Gosport, 1804. From the Wowow chieftain, as well as from his good old brother, and their quondam Abba, Richard and his ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... had been standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful and hopeless, with a face grim and blank—a sixty-year-old child of the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much part of his existence as his ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... all the world, if I could. If any engineering or mining work is projected which will really destroy the beauty of the Lakes, I will certainly oppose it, but I am not disposed, as Goschen said, to "give a blank cheque" to a Defence Society, the force of which is pretty certain to be wielded by the most irrational fanatics amongst ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... going back. He makes a choice between following a dream which he knows is only a dream, and following a hope which he knows his own devotion may help to make real. Communism is the faith which a man wins through blank and utter despair. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... different from this in regard to topographical phenomena. It was therefore not the natural, but, if I may so call it, the moral scenery in which I was interested, more particularly since the whole scene of nature here below was, shortly after the period at which the poem commences, to become a blank of desolate uniformity, as overwhelmed beneath ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... chasseurs a cheval of the Guard and "red" lancers joined them. More than 5,000 strong, these horsemen rode into the valley, formed at the foot of the slope, and then, under cover of their artillery, began to breast the slope. At its crest the guns of the allies opened on them point-blank; but, despite their horrible losses, they swept on, charged through the guns and down the reverse slope towards the squares. Volley after volley now tore through with fearful effect, and the survivors swerved to the intervals. Their second and third lines fared little better; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... worship Annolith, and all the people have prostrated themselves before Voth. Thrice the horologers have looked into the great crystal globe wherein are foretold all happenings to be, and thrice the globe was blank. Yea, though they went a fourth time yet was no vision revealed; and the people's voice ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the text of this work, a vast portion of the basin of the Colorado was a complete blank on the maps until our party accomplished its end; even some of the most general features were before that not understood. No canyon above the Virgin had been recorded topographically, and the physiography was unknown. The record of the first expedition is one of heroic daring, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... time, then emerge, pale and drawn, to play like a madman against the time of his next retirement. The pale and youthful father of a family, with the face of Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns for a living and blank verse tragedies and sonnet cycles for the despair of managers and publishers, hid himself in a concrete cell with three-foot walls, so piped, that, by turning a lever, the whole structure spouted water upon the impending intruder. But in the main, they respected each other's work-time. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... time required for the mail in those days was so long that they did not reach the destination until after the drawing. Major Dwight was notified that one of his twenty tickets had drawn $20,000 and all but one ticket had drawn some prize. Major Dwight paid for the one blank ticket and would not take a cent of the large prize money. This was worthy a son-in-law of Mr. Edwards, the progenitor of ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... of three men from their lurking-places in the brushwood. Two of them were soldiers, and Brocton's dragoons at that, a sample of the town-sweepings Jack had complained of. One seized the reins, the other held a carbine point-blank ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... I must finish this Chelsea narrative, with its most singular, though brief, adventure. One morning at breakfast, my father received a letter, which he opened, and found to be only a blank cover with a letter enclosed, directed "A Madame, Madame d'Arblay." This, upon opening, produced a little bank-note of five pounds, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... grovelling; the greatness of nature seemed to inspire no reverence. Unbelief gradually lost hold of monotheism; and in doing so never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism, but fell into blank atheism. The theoretical morality of the English deists, even when depending on expedience, was noble; but in place of it the French school presented the lowest form of theory which ethical science has ever stated, and which finds its refutation with the philosophy ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... his blue-yarn extremities in blank astonishment. "Well, now," he exclaimed, "if I hain't forgot ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... which another whiff of wind flirted straight over his head, sent it circling and soaring clear above Moody's store and dropped it down upon the roof. And there gazed Anna and all that multitude, utterly blank, until the martyr himself burst into a laugh. Then a thousand laughs pealed as one, and he stood smiling and stroking back his hair, till his men began ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... I had, no doubt, a groping instinct for the right complications, since I am quite unable to track the footsteps of those that constitute, as the case stands, the general situation exhibited. They are there, for what they are worth, and as numerous as might be; but my memory, I confess, is a blank as to how and whence ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... all round her in a blank, stupid sort of way, letting her eyes travel over Elsie's ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... signal was given; the six rifles were raised, and a volley of blank cartridges shot at the boy. The frightened birds flew into the air as the twisted frame of Silly Peter sank into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... more than a doll; when the oval face, with its long-lashed, pale blue eyes, expressed nothing; when it was no more than a lazy mask of wax. She was Henry Wimbush's own niece; that bowler-like countenance was one of the Wimbush heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in its female members as a blank doll-face. But across this dollish mask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamental bass, passed Anne's other inheritance—quick laughter, light ironic amusement, and the changing expressions of many moods. She was smiling now as Denis looked down at her: her ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... end of the island or the other, and fall upon us. Consequently, half must remain on board, and take their turn on shore tomorrow. I wish to give no advantage to any; therefore the boatswain shall put two pieces of folded paper in his hat, one being blank and the other having a cross upon it. If the blank paper is drawn, the starboard watch shall go ashore, and the larboard take their turn tomorrow. If the paper with the cross comes out, it will ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... were playing the Columbia at Cincinnati; Mama Blank traveled with the act; Mama was about five feet long and four wide; and she was built too far front; she was at least fifteen inches out ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... open it. He handled it, weighed it, examined it... And doubt made its way so swiftly into his mind that he was not in the least surprised, when he did open it, to find that it contained four blank sheets ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... enthusiasm ran over, inundating all those who were near. Courage is a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack; without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing—not even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Perugino was a success; he had orders ahead; he matched his talent against titles; power flowed his way. Raphael's serious, sober manner and spiritual beauty appealed to him. They became as father and son. The methodical business plan, which is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... sped again, but with no better result in the shape of an answer from her who was still the object of his day fancies and his midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. A third letter was despatched, but the returning period was equally a blank. We have been counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the termination of his year, and with growing changes too in himself; for as the notion began to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary was either dead or faithless, another power was quietly assailing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... toward her husband's countenance for a few moments in a manner expressive of blank despair; then falling on her knees before him, clasping her hands together, she screamed ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... like to tell the noble canon, and thinking that I was more likely to be acquainted with such emergencies she came up to me and told me all. I ordered the coachman to put in his horses instantly, and when the coach was ready I took up the countess and carried her to it. The canon followed us in blank astonishment, and asked me what was the matter. I told him to bid the coachman drive fast and not to spare his horses. He did so, but he asked ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... No hands had I, nor feet, Nor head, nor body, all was void. No heat Or cold I felt, no form could feel or see; And naught I knew but conscious entity. No boundary my being felt, or had; And speechless, deaf, and blind, and formless, sad, I floated through dark space,—a conscious blank! No breath of air my spirit moved; I sank I knew not where, till motionless I ceased At last to move, and yet I could not rest, Around me spread the Limitless, and Vast. My cheerless, conscious spirit,—fixed ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... The most perfect gravity dwelt in his own countenance meanwhile, alloyed by just a spice of lurking fun in his deep-set eyes, which altogether faded, as a candle blown out, when suddenly he perceived the accession to the company. Silence succeeded the dead blank on his features, down hung the violin and its bow on either side, and the corners of his mouth sunk into ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... mementoes that Capt. A.E. Forney, son of Major Abram Forney, has in his possession is a small leather memorandum pocket-book, filled originally with twenty-four blank leaves; also a powder horn, made by his father preparatory to an expedition to the mountains. The front, or opening sides, is handsomely ornamented with numerous small stars, arranged diagonally across the surface and around the borders. ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... document. When an indorsement has once been made by the shipper or consignee writing his name and nothing more on the back of the bill of lading, the rights in and under it may be transferred from hand to hand by mere delivery. A bill of lading so indorsed is said to be indorsed "in blank.'' But the shipper or consignee may restrict the negotiability of the bill of lading by indorsing it not "in blank,'' but with a direction requiring delivery to be made to a particular person or indorsee, or to his order. This is called an indorsement "in full.'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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
... committees to decide upon the style of the new building, and as you have never been in the habit of trusting to your own taste in such matters, you inquire who is the most celebrated, that is to say, the most employed, architect of the day. And you send for the great Mr. Blank, and the Great Blank sends you a plan of a great long marble box with half-a-dozen pillars at one end of it, and the same at the other; and you look at the Great Blank's great plan in a grave manner, and you dare say it will be very handsome; and you ask the Great ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... said, disappointedly, but after a blank moment he apparently took courage. "You're in ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... the asylum, when a former patient, a young lieutenant who had suffered from the persecution mania, was announced to see him. Bombarda rose and asked him how he was. Without a word the visitor produced a Browning pistol and fired point blank at the physician, putting three bullets in his body. Bombarda had strength enough to seize his assailant by the wrists and hand him over to the attendants who rushed in. He then walked down-stairs unaided before he realized how serious were his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of blind ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... stood at the foot of the bed, looking down upon us both, but I only saw their shadows falling across us. My eyes were fastened upon the face I should soon see no more. The little light there was seemed to be fading away from it, leaving it all dark and blank; eyelids closed, lips almost breathless; an unutterable emptiness and confusion creeping ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... furnished Eustacia with visions enough to fill the whole blank afternoon. Such sudden alternations from mental vacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. She could never have believed in the morning that her colourless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood before him, and looking straight in the murderer's face, exclaimed: 'Now is the time!' and shot him point-blank in the chest. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... to these outbursts, the fruit of his inability to execute the lasting, living works which he dreamed of. And at such times life became an utter blank to him, and he wandered about the streets, wrapped in the gloomiest thoughts, and waiting for the morning as for a sort of resurrection. He used to say that he felt bright and cheerful in the morning, and horribly miserable in the evening.[*] Each of his days ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... needn't take all that trouble. I can tell her what you want myself." Sallie was one of those persons who regard the pen as the weapon of last resort, not to be used until necessity compels. But Aleck continued writing on a blank leaf of his note-book. The ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... to use, in connection with the lessons of 1897, Klemm's Relief Map of the Roman Empire. Every scholar who can draw should have a copy of it. Being blank, it can be beautifully colored: waters, blue; mountains, brown; valleys, green; deserts, yellow; cities marked with pin-holes; and the journeys of Paul can be traced upon it."—MRS. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, President ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... took a long time to work out. Meanwhile Babs and Cochrane had swung down to the ground and went hiking. Cochrane was armed as before, though he had no experience as a marksman. In television shows he had directed the firing of weapons shooting blank charges—cut to a minimum so they wouldn't blast the mikes. He knew what motions to ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... How blank the space seemed when she had gone—dull and unspeakably uninteresting. He became impatient with the slowness of the waiters, who had seemed to hurry unnecessarily the night before. But at last his meal ended, and he went out under the trees. The ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... the wagonmaker, who made money patching up wagons, named a vehicle after you; and last, the shoemaker held a memorial fest in your honor. Then it was done! Your son-in-law, the burgomaster, sent out a subscription blank for a statue no one dared refuse, and now you ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... VIOLA. A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud, Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat, like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... cast your eye on Washy, please! He looks just like a piece of cheese: he's not a brilliant sort of chap: he has a dull and vacant map: his eyes are blank, his face is red, his ears stick out beside his head. In fact, to end these compliments, he would be dear at thirty cents. Yet Fame has welcomed to her Hall this ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Ninth National Bank lifted his eyes from the blank he was filling out and looked at Aunt Basha thoughtfully. "You understand, of course, that the Government—Uncle Sam—is only borrowing your money. That you may have it back any ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... discovers that some girl whom he has known all year isn't a girl at all, but a peachblow angel who is just stopping on earth to make a better man of him and show him what a dull, pifflish thing Paradise would be without her. Life becomes a series of awful blank spots, with walks on the campus between them. He can't get his calculus because he is busy figuring on a much more difficult problem; he is trying to figure whether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Her than charity. He gets cold chills every ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to stop the thefts in the store. Well, my girl, do this, and, while I can make no definite promise, I'll see what can be done about getting you out of your present difficulty." He picked up a pencil, pulled a pad of blank paper convenient to his hand, and looked at the girl expectantly, with aggressive inquiry in his gaze. "Tell me now," he concluded, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Dear old Pagan, wonderful in his death as in his life. When, shortly before he died, his house caught fire, and the mild curate of the parish begged him to withdraw from the library of books he loved so well, he flatly refused to listen, and cried roundly, in a line of vehement blank verse, "By the immortal gods, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Colia, that you were very foolish to bring your young friend down—if he is the same consumptive boy who wept so profusely, and invited us all to his own funeral," remarked Evgenie Pavlovitch. "He talked so eloquently about the blank wall outside his bedroom window, that I'm sure he will never ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Where the blank blank are yer comin' to?" roared the voice of another bargeman, as, tooting loudly on a fog-horn, one of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Heathcote to himself, "this is the fellow everybody tells me is a beast to be fought shy of, and not trusted for a minute." He was almost tempted to interrogate Pledge point-blank on what it all meant; but his shyness ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... see me, eh?" sputtered the major. "Blankety blank it to blank! Man can't even get his breakfast in peace! Oh, Mr. Curry. Show ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... fenced citywards behind a blank brewhouse-wall (as though its Founder's first precaution had been to protect learning from siege), and its precincts opening rearwards upon green playing-fields and river-meads—is like few schools in England, and none ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Omnipotent Saviour can bestow! As the great Steward of the mysteries of grace, He seems to say to His faithful servants, "Take thy bill, and under this, my superscription, write what you please." And then, when the blank is filled up, he further endorses each petition with the ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... assumed its modern aspect after Captain Cook's circumnavigation of the globe in high southern latitudes, accomplished between 1772 and 1775. Fact replaced the fiction and surmise of former times, and maps appeared showing a large blank area at the southern extremity of the earth, where speculative cartographers had affirmed the existence of habitable land extending far towards the Equator. Cook's voyage made it clear that if there ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... statement of anything to understand it. The gypsy is less exacting. I have observed among rural Americans much of this lottery style of conversation, in which one man invests in a dubious question, not knowing exactly what sort of a prize or blank answer he may draw. What the gypsy meant effectively was, "How do you account to the Gorgios for knowing so much about us, and talking with us? Our life is as different from yours as possible, and you never acquired such a knowledge of all our tricky ways ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... their walk to Englebourn, Harry, in answer to Tom's inquiries, explained that in his absence the stable-man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The keeper had joined in and accused him point-blank of being the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known, a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This brought on a challenge to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the introduction into our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and faithful version of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... who show you a scene all of a sudden, by means of a few magical words—just as if you opened your eyes at their bidding—and in place of a blank, a world. Others, again, as good and as great, create their world gradually before your eyes, for the delight of your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... her side; the rapt expression faded from her countenance, and the usual death-like blank overspread it. This trance passed away like others, and by midnight the house was profoundly still. Soon after that hour a vociferous peal at the great hall-bell roused most of the inmates from sleep. My rooms were in a distant quarter of the ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... nail-making machines. Notwithstanding the really complicated workings of the machines, the making of a screw seems to a casual visitor but a simple thing. From a coil of wire a piece is cut of the right length by one machine, which roughly forms a head and passes it on to another, in which the blank has its head nicely shaped, shaved, and "nicked" by a revolving saw. It than passes by an automatic feeder into the next machine where it is pointed and "wormed," and sent to be shook clear of the "swaff" of shaving cut out for the worm. Washing and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell |
