"Brown study" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spare time by devoting himself to the art of slipper-stitching. This man often beheld Halil prowling about on the house-top in the moonlit nights where Guel-Bejaze was sleeping, and after sitting down within a couple of paces of her, remain there in a brown study for hours at a time, often till midnight, nay, sometimes till daybreak. With his chin resting in the palm of his hand there he would stay, gazing intently at her charming figure and her pale but beautiful face. Frequently he would creep closer to her, creep so near that his lips would ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... never thought of the poor editor, leaning over his chair in a brown study, biting the pen-handle, and wondering how he can please "A Constant Subscriber," who objects to the rather light nature of the articles he is now giving to the public; or, "Sacerdos," who does not like poetry; or, "Senex," who asks sarcastically: ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... a person is lost in thought with his mind absent, or, as it is sometimes said, "when he is in a brown study," he does not frown, but his eyes appear vacant. The lower eyelids are generally raised and wrinkled, in the same manner as when a short-sighted person tries to distinguish a distant object; and the upper orbicular muscles are at the same time slightly contracted. The wrinkling of the lower ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... anything wrong was an idea inconceivable to him. Nor was there much chance of his discovering it if she did. When not at work, he was constantly reading. Most people close a book without having gained from it a single germ of thought; Mr. Craig seldom opened one without falling directly into a brown study over something suggested by it. But I believe that, even when thus absorbed, Phemy was never far from his thought. At the same time, like many Scots, while she was his one joy, he seldom showed her sign of affection, seldom made her feel, and never sought to make her feel how ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... bunk in a brown study, ever and anon turning his sharp little eyes from one to another of the men. Then, with a final sniff to the memory of his departed parent, he composed ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... meantime at the church he had seen people doing just that, following Him; doing as He did; and the whole thing impressed him as nothing had ever done before. So, when he went to the office next morning and found Udell strangely silent and apparently in a brown study, he was not at all surprised, and asked, "What's the matter, George? Didn't you sleep well last night either? Or did the thoughts of having been so generous with your property ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... they seem." I can not think of any thing, now, more certain to make one shudder, than to have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear with its cold, flabby under-lip. A camel did this for one of the boys, who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up and saw the majestic apparition hovering above him, and made frantic efforts to get out of the way, but the camel reached out and bit him on the shoulder before he accomplished it. This was the only pleasant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a brown study so deep about artificial sins, I didn't hear Liddy come in, she shut the door so softly and trod on tiptoes so light on the carpet. The first thing I knew was I felt her hands on my head, as she stood behind me, a dividin' of my hair ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... occupied with his thoughts to take notice of anything; and it was only when two magpies near him broke into a joyous duet, in which each strove to emulate the other's mellow notes, that he awoke from his brown study, and began to walk back again ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... near the outer shore of the island, opposite to the wreck, I came unexpectedly on Marble. The poor fellow was seated on a raised projection of coral rock, with his arms folded, and, was in so thorough a brown study, that he did not even hear my footsteps in approaching, though I purposely trod heavily, in order to catch his ear. Unwilling to disturb him, I stood gazing at the wreck myself, for some little ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... children up in the Hunter family," John replied, as usual falling upon the unimportant phase of the discussion and, instead of putting the child in bed, carried him off to the sitting room, where he fell into another brown study and let the baby ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Benden had not been in a brown study as he went into the Chequers to "sup his four-hours"—in modern phrase, to have his tea—and to give his horse a rest and feed before returning home, he would certainly have recognised two people who were seated in a dark corner of the inn kitchen, and ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... big Western chap," Mrs. Allen said to Patty one day; "but he seems preoccupied. Sometimes he sits as if in a brown study, and says nothing for quite some minutes. And then, when you speak to him, he answers abruptly, as if bringing his mind back ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... remark. He walked out on to the cobbled pavement in front of the inn, and when I had paid Claigue for my modest lunch, and had asked how far it was to Ravensdene Court, I followed him. He was still in a brown study, and stood staring about him ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... was too much absorbed in her own mysterious mental processes to take note of or analyze this observation. For a few moments she was lost in a brown study, and gazed about her with a glance that struck ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the willing Solomon, and Sarah studied the poster with intent, serious dark eyes. Driving on, Richard found her curiously self-absorbed. She answered him in monosyllables and was apparently deep in a brown study. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now, and talk your brightest and best,' ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... before her toilette-table that evening, gazing vacantly at the looking-glass. Not that the reflection of the eight curl-papers she had neatly twisted up was conveyed to her brain. She was in a brown study, during which the following thoughts passed through her mind, and they ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... dipping parts of it in some liquid, to give it the appearance of having become stained by wear. With a much-perplexed face, Riderhood looked from it to the sleeper, and from the sleeper to it, and finally crept back to his chair, and there, with his hand to his chin, sat long in a brown study, looking at both. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of Hope'?" said Croker to Hook. "Which do you mean, the Scotch poet's or the Irish Chancellor's? the real or the ideal—Tommy's four thousand lines or Jocky's four thousand pounds a-year?" inquired Theodore. Croker has been in a brown study ever since. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... how long you could keep it up—brown study as usual!" cried Charteris. "Why, I believe the beggar takes me for a ghost! Hal, old boy!" bending from the saddle he bestowed on Gerrard a most unghostly clap on the shoulder. "I'm come back to plague ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... cord!-It's a wonder I did not swoon away: for as sure as you're alive, he was going to hang to me that tree. I screamed like any thing mad, and told him if he would but spare my life, I'd never prosecute him, nor tell anybody what he'd done to me: so he stood some time quite in a brown study, a-thinking what he should do. And so, after that, he forced me to sit down in the ditch, and he tied my feet together, just as you see them: and then, as if he had not done enough, he twitched off my cap, and without saying nothing, got on his horse ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... to assist in securing the boat, and was rewarded by a hearty "Thank you, my boy!" from the younger man, and a brilliant smile from the lady, which covered him with blushes and confusion. The older man seemed in a brown study, and only glared at him absent-mindedly through his ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... sitting there. The huge boulder against which she leant sheltered her from the wind and the spot was bathed in brilliant sunshine. She finished her cigarette and lapsed into a brown study provoked by Tony's sudden question: "What will happen if one day you—or Robin—should get married?" She had never asked herself that question. It was so much an understood thing between brother and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... me for having startled you so," he said, gently, then adding with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. "You were surely in a very brown study." ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of your brown study, Grace," called Hippy. "I want you to settle an argument that has arisen between Miss O'Malley and myself. Never before have we had an argument. Timid, gentle creature that she is, she has always deferred to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Whatever his thoughts may have been, they made his face at first sad, then hard; I fancied that it was of himself as a boy he thought, and of his father and mother, whom he will not see when he goes home; so to bring him out of his brown study I began to tell him a story Mrs. Muir had told me about the border. It was the tale of the last Picts, and the secret of the heather ale. All, all the mysterious little dark people had been swept away in a great ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but Mac and his father, who was busy with the doctor. Aunt Plenty was counting the teaspoons in the dining room, and Phebe was helping her as of old. Mac and Rose were alone he apparently in a brown study, leaning his elbows on the chimneypiece, and she lying back in a low chair looking thoughtfully at the fire. She was tired, and the quiet was grateful to her, so she kept silence and Mac respectfully held his ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... putting on my boots just now in what the novelists call "a brown study." There was no urgent reason for putting on my boots. I was not going out, and my slippers were much more comfortable. But something had to be done. I wanted a subject for an article. Now if you are accustomed to writing articles for a living, you will know that sometimes ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the gaping sack-mouth, and lazily pulled at the buckskin draw-string, everybody sat wondering how much, if any, of the precious metal had escaped through the tear, and how soon Dillon would come out of his brown study, remember, and recover the loss. But a spell seemed to have fallen on the company. No one spoke, till Dillon, with that lazy motion, hoisting one square shoulder and half turning his body round, was in the act of returning ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... thoughts, and no longer amused by my surroundings, I must have forgotten myself for a moment in a brown study; for when I came to, I was surprised to find that we four had drifted some distance apart, and that K—— was now whispering rapidly to the Russian officer alone, and that the sergeant was standing far away, with his back turned to them, slily fingering the things on the tables. Then ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to the pier in a brown study. Mrs. Loraine had positively refused to let me see Kate, at the present time or in the future. She was again confined to her room, not to leave it, I judged, for weeks, unless I put my plan of intervention into execution. Her oppressor was away, and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... quite still on the platform as the train ran out of the station. He did not move until it had disappeared round the bend. Then he turned, lost in a brown study, and walked very slowly towards ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... notice. He was puffing away at his pipe, long-drawn-out, solemn puffs, and gazing at the fire in a brown study. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a brown study. Reynolds was poring over the note written to Braxton and comparing it with one he held in his hand,—an old one, and one that told an old, old story. "I know you'll say I have no right to ask this," it read, "but you're a gentleman, and I'm a friendless woman deserted by a worthless husband. ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... of a speaking-trumpet under his left arm, at right angles with his body. It had evidently seen much service, was battered, and the black Japan worn off in most parts of it. As we have said before, Mr Vanslyperken walked his quarter-deck. He was in a brown study, yet looked blue. Six strides brought him to the taffrail of the vessel, six more to the bows, such was the length of his tether—and he ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... boots to form a pool on the car floor. The heavy wool of his short driving trousers steamed in the car's warmth. His shoulders dried in a little cloud of vapor. He noticed none of these things, but stared ahead, his gaze vacant, the bronze of his face set in the lines of a brown study, his strong capable hands hanging purposeless between his knees. The ride to Mackinaw City was six hours long, and the train in addition lost some ninety minutes; but in all this distance Thorpe never altered his pose nor his fixed attitude of attention ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should have done for the packet? A Calabrian would cheat, if ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... before they left she came back to the hotel very late, to find him sitting in a brown study. He watched her, furtively, discarding the expensive cloak, and taking off the heavy pearl necklace he had been fool enough to buy. He stood up and stared for a moment, in silence, out over the moonlit sea. When he turned she was going ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... was a bill, large and generous. Miss Farwell handed the letter to Dr. Harry with the briefest explanation possible. For a long time the doctor sat in brown study. Then making no comment further than asking her to use the money as the minister had directed, he questioned her as to the patient's condition. When she had finished her report ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... laughed Katie, "one of them is quite fond of the red-skins; the other," glancing at her friend, "has gone into a brown study; I don't believe she's heard or seen anything for the last half hour. Elizabeth, when you fish up any pearls there out of the water, share ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... so serious, so self-contained, and not yet three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a brown study about ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... down now, then," Miss Ormiston said. "Mr. Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... enjoy happiness and longevity!" When his reflections reached this point, he felt the more dejected, and plainly betrayed a sad appearance, and all he did was to droop his head and to plunge in a brown study. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... into a brown study, eating mechanically. The men began an eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and bloodthirsty suggestion. Some suggested the kidnapping and sequestration of Reed until ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... surroundings, and the strange experience he had just gone through, which had seemed so long and which in reality had been so brief, left little more impression on him than that which remains with a man who has been immersed in a brown study or who has been staring at something, say a poster in the street, and has not noticed the passage ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... For a moment it seemed as if he were about to speak. But instead, he stared hard at Maida, falling gradually into a brown study. From time to time he came out of it long enough to look sharply at her. The sparkle had all gone out of her face. She was ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... answered that he did not remember when he had failed to take care of himself under such circumstances, and the father resumed his pipe and brown study. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... into a brown study with his eyes fixed upon the stamped-leather devil in the panel at the opposite end of the compartment. When he spoke again, Kent wondered at the legal verbiage, and still more at the clear-cut, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Calne. A little stream, or rivulet, trickled from the wood, and a rustic bridge—more for ornament than use, for a man with long legs could stride the stream well—was thrown over it. Val had reached thus far, when he saw someone standing on the bridge, his arms on the parapet, apparently in a brown study. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in a brown study. This is capital—I had no idea you would have so good a room as this, Nat. Did you ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... was some river," retorted Bobby. "Anyway, Miss, you didn't seem to be listening to a word I said. What were you thinking about in such a brown study?" ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... her toilette was accomplished, Kitty having dismissed her maid, sat for some time in front of her mirror in a brown study. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Julia sad, after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study—reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase—by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... they were espoused. But a block to the match came in Lincoln having no position. Awaiting his efforts as a law student, the wedding was postponed; but, meanwhile, death came quick where fortune lagged. She died and left her lover broken-hearted. He seems then to have been smitten with the brown study afflicting him all his life, and by some, like Secretary Boutwell, affirmed to be independent of the surrounding grounds for depression and grief. Fears of suicide led his friends to watch him closely; and he was known to go ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the door of the hospital tent looking after the Smithhurst, General Pepperell came along, alone, in a brown study, his brows knit and his face troubled. For though the French ship-of-war, "Vigilant" had been captured, Louisburg had not, and every day was adding to the list of soldiers in the hospitals. But when he saw her, he stopped, and his expression, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... that, on the misty afternoon when young Mr. Walter a Cleeve passed him unawares, Jim had been standing for twenty minutes flat against a tree on the upper outskirts of the plantation, sunk in a brown study. The apparition startled him, for the thick air deadened the sound of footsteps; and the sound, when it fell on his ears, held something unfamiliar. (Jim was unacquainted with sabots.) He stood perfectly still, let it go by, and at once prepared ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brown study as soon as the captain had left them, and Angela did not interrupt the current of his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... as he was roaming along in a brown study, thinking with no great comfort on what he had been and what he now was, and was like to be, all on a sudden there stood before him a little, rough-looking, black dwarf. 'Prithee, friend, why so sorrowful?' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... in Noah Hawker's ears, and he repeated it to himself as he stumbled downstairs. He was in such a brown study that he forgot to tip the door-keeper who let him into the street. He pulled his cap lower to hide his bandaged head, and struck off in the ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... sot, as I could see. And the very day of the shovel episode, along towards night he rousted out of a brown study,—a sort of a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... from his walk, white and worn and haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the evening wore on she muttered some expression of sorrow, something approaching to contrition. Boulte came out of a brown study and said, 'Oh, that! I wasn't thinking about that. By the way, what does Kurrell ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... go now?" I presently asked, quite subdued; for he had fallen into a brown study, and was still ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... melancholy countenance! What a brown study! Come, I have arrived in time to laugh to you and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... into a brown study. It wounded him to hear his father blamed, and yet in his heart of hearts he wished he would so far temper his zeal with Christian charity as to attend the meetings which were moving the hearts ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... last year, gives a bound and begins to beat high and irregularly in his breast. It seems as if he had never heard or felt or seen until that moment; and by the report of his memory, he must have lived his past life between sleep and waking, or with the preoccupied attention of a brown study. He is practically incommoded by the generosity of his feelings, smiles much when he is alone, and develops a habit of looking rather blankly upon the moon and stars. But it is not at all within the province of a prose essayist to give a picture ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... oblivious to the sights and sounds around you. We frequently witness the sight of two lovers to whom the outside world is non-existent for the time being, and to whom there is nothing in the world except themselves. Again, persons often fall into a 'brown study,' or 'day dream,' in which all consciousness of the outside world seems to be shut out, yet the person is fully conscious and wide awake. These mental states are very much akin to that of the trained clairvoyant, and is ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... some time in a brown study, staring into the red caverns, where the yellow fire-elves were beating out their rainbow gold on ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she answered, feeling very red, and thankful for the comparative gloom. Whereupon Mr. Holt shook hands with her, and expressed his conviction that she was the best and prettiest girl in the county; afterwards fell into a brown study, lasting till ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... her "brown study," as she called it, by various questions as to Mrs. Harris's route of travel, and also as to her travelling dress, which Lucy was very ill prepared to answer, having cast hardly a passing glance at it, in her sorrow ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... them sometimes, and sometimes we fight duels with them." I expounded in brief the distinction between these processes and their formalities, whereat he remained for a long while in a brown study. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... gradual change. She would never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "game sense." But at first she had played in a kind of stupor; again and again she would stand at the backline in a brown study until the passage of the ball woke her with an apologetic start. Now, she frolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going after every shot, smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily put out ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... brown study as he took the bundles from Izzy and dropped them on his bed. Izzy went out, and Gordon stood staring at the wall. Trench? Or the new Commissioner Crane? If Earth should win—and they had most of the power, after all—and Bruce Gordon had fought against Security, the mines of Mercury ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... in a leathern chair, at the farthest extremity of the room, occupied with holding a book, but reading Jacquelina. Suddenly he broke into her brown study ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pulling together in this world, Mr Simple, when we wish to hold on, and that's a piece of philosophy worth all the twenty-six thousand and odd years of my friend the carpenter, which leads to nothing but a brown study, when he ought to be attending to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... all very interesting to Edna, and she sat looking at the outstretched feet upon which she had just drawn her stockings till her mother reminded her that time was flying. "Wake up, dearie," she said. "Why, what a brown study you are in. Reliance will be ready long before you are. Hurry on with your shoes, and then come ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... something on his mind, but he said nothing more. Only Nan noticed his brown study. But when she asked him what it was about, he ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... too much for Mrs. Buck. She stopped peeling potatoes and fell into a brown study. The side porch was a pleasant place to sit and dream. Judith had sorted out her wares and stored them in the back of her blue car. She had caught two chickens and dressed them and set a sponge for the hot rolls. She had promised herself the pleasure of serving ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... any kind of a joke. After lingering a short time, he retired. The veteran remained thoughtful, taking some consolation from his briarwood and a steaming hot Scotch. For some minutes he continued in what for some reason or other is known as a brown study. How long he might have continued in that condition it is not necessary to speculate on. A tap at the window aroused him from his revery. He glanced in the direction from whence the sound came. There he beheld the well-known face of his first ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... too deep in a brown study to hear. Presently she spoke. "I believe that love is best founded upon a degree of respect and veneration which it is decent in youth to render unto ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... evidently had no suspicion of her existence, while Victor declared there was no trace of a white woman any where about the premises. Mr. St. Claire, he said, sat in the library, his feet crossed in a chair and his hands on top of his head as if in a brown study, while Aunt Phillis appeared far more impatient than usual and had intimated to him plainly that "in her 'pinion white niggers had better be at home tendin' to thar own business, of they had any, and not pryin' ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... in a brown study several times over these circumstances and her father's manner before she went ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... burned brighter, and his resolution mounted higher and higher, till he could even have seized his prey in Leith lane, and carried him off amidst the cries of the populace. But his opportunity was coming quicker than he supposed. To enable him to get deeper and deeper into his brown study, Durie was clearly bent upon avoiding the common road where passengers put to flight his ideas; and, turning to the right, went up a narrow lane, and continued to saunter on till he came to that place ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... discovered that she and Bruce were alone in the room. He was sitting at Mother Jess's desk, in as deep a brown study as she had been. The ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... a species of brown study all the way along Tudor Street; his companion also maintained silence in a fashion which showed that he was by nature and custom a man of few words. It was not until the two were climbing the old balustrated staircase of ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... her room and sat awhile, on a cricket with her head leaning on a chair. She was thinking. I cannot tell you exactly what passed in her mind, while she was in that brown study, because she never told me. You can guess, however, when I tell you that after thinking some five minutes, she rose up, and going to her table, took a pencil and wrote these words in big letters, on a sheet ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though her eyes still ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after nine o'clock? She had ceased to think of the young man, but the image of his sister haunted her. How stylish she was, yet how simple and quiet! "I wonder," thought Flossy to herself, "if I could ever become like her." The reflection threw her into a brown study in which she remained for weeks, and during which she refused the hand of a staid and respectable townsman, who, in her father's words, was ready to take her with all her follies. David Price was disappointed. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... had gone home, Dr. Alec paced up and down the lower hall in the twilight for an hour, thinking so intently that sometimes he frowned, sometimes he smiled, and more than once he stood still in a brown study. All of a sudden he said, half aloud, as if he had made ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... enchantment; and the Circean similitude was not a little enhanced by the antique masonry,{2} and the expanse of sea which was visible from the eminence. He leaned over the gate, repeated aloud the lines of the Odyssey, and fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by the approach of a young gentleman from ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled over his head in a leonine mass. His features were gray; but his eyes still glowed above the dark, purplish circles that shadowed his cheeks. His documents were finished. He had sat for two hours and more in this present brown study; and, tested as his endurance had been, his concentration was still absolute. On the table, near at hand, stood a flask of vodka, nearly empty, and a jar of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... carried a brass cowhorn, and made a practice of sounding it as he mounted the road leading to Culvercoombe. Its note, sounding through the clear morning air, aroused Tilda from her brown study, and she ran lightly up the slope to catch him on the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... falls into a brown study. Mademoiselle Genseigne has eight left, she is told, but she has no notion if it is eight hats or eight handkerchiefs, or possibly eight apples or eight feathers. The doubt has long tormented her. She can make nothing ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... with blood. A certain noble lord, of our country, when he was yet a commoner, on his travels, involved himself in a dilemma of this sort, at the court of Lorrain. He had been riding out, and strolling along a public walk, in a brown study, with his horse-whip in his hand, perceived a caterpillar crawling on the back of a marquis, who chanced to be before him. He never thought of the petit maitre; but lifting up his whip, in order to kill the insect, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... get out of that brown study, and have five minutes' talk with me. If you only knew the annoyance I have endured all this week concerning Agatha's fortune! How thankful I shall be to transfer it from my hands ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... "you are paying too much;" and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out of the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man whom Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago awoke from a brown study, in which he had been ever since, and came to him and said, "Yes, but the honey is none the worse for passing ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... off, and we got into the trap in which he and I had driven out from Berwick, and as soon as we had started homeward he fell into a brown study and continued in it until we were in sight ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... o'clock when Dudie Dunne turned the corner to go to the house where he was to spend the night. He was walking along lost in a brown study when suddenly a hand was laid lightly upon his shoulder. He turned and beheld a ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... was so entirely perfunctory and pointless, that I was sure he had not in the least followed my remarks. Every now and then he roused himself and put on some show of interest, asking me to repeat or to explain more fully, but it was always to sink once more into the same brown study. At last he rose and threw the end of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... delicately browned that toast, and scorched her own little cheeks, if Hilda would remember the old days, and the toast which she used to make her; but Mrs. Quentyns seemed to be in a sort of brown study that morning, and thanked the child absently when the crisp hot toast ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... days, if I remember," began Sefton, "after my military friend left, when one night I found myself alone in the drawing-room, just waked from a brown study. No one had said good-night to me. I looked at my watch; it was half past eleven. I rose and went. My bedroom was ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... by loud and increasing chirpings. I look about me: my window is surrounded with sparrows picking up the crumbs of bread which in my brown study I had just scattered on the roof. At this sight a flash of light broke upon my saddened heart. I deceived myself just now, when I complained that I had nothing to give: thanks to me, the sparrows of this part of the town will ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Lance good-night at the head of the saloon staircase; he raised his smoking-cap, and then returning sauntered up and down the poop for over an hour, with his hands behind him, and his eyes fixed on the deck, apparently in a brown study. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... absorbed for conversation, I had tossed aside the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair, I fell into a brown study. Suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... she exclaimed, flashing round on him; "it is more a white dream than a brown study. Fancy this room all lit with Chinese lanterns and the moon outside, and us sitting up until twelve o'clock, and music, Boris, and everybody dancing. The story books will have come true—oh, it will ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... whether he had gone too far; and, as the door closed behind him, put his hands in Captain Gething's pockets and went off in a brown study. Slowly and distinctly as he went along the various things grouped themselves together in his mind, and he began ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... bookstaller, for he says: 'Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair. "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired."' The first Lord Lytton had a fancy for these plebeian book-marts; ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... too, but not at all green; and beyond, for a time, the country was still in a grim brown study, though it ought to have remembered that it was now laughing Provence. It gave us crumbling chateaux, high-perched ancient rock villages without stint, and even a house (in the strangely named village of Malijai) where Napoleon had lain, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... at his face you would have supposed he was thinking; but it was only that sort of foggy vacuity which goes by the name of 'a brown study.' He never thought very clearly or connectedly; and his apathetic reveries, when his mood was gloomy, were furnished forth in a barren and monotonous way, with only two or three frightful figures, and a dismal ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there, looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.' ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... your honour, and all will be out as quick as directly—in the twinkling of a bed-post.—For three successive nights I sat up in a brown study, with a four-in-the-pound candle burning before me till almost cock-crow, composing a love-letter, a most elaborate affair, the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... and all my notes made and lines of action decided, I still did not feel like moving. I was standing in a brown study when I heard the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... whaler, or outfitted a wagon train, and started off. But generally we got only as far as Oh, Susannah! I remember once, in coming out from one of our meetings, finding myself next a solemn and earnest youth originally from my own rural village. He walked by my side for several squares lost in a brown study. Then suddenly he ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Nature, you shall know your Lord when he comes. He is searching, too. Perhaps you shall know him by the Quest in his eyes. He, too, is looking for the white presences.... You must know the world—so that you may not be bewildered. You must not be caught in the brown study of Pan. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... in a brown study all the way out to the baseball park. She arrived rather earlier than usual to find the grand-stand empty. The Denver team had just come upon the field, and the Kansas City players were practising batting at the left ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... and somehow when I was alone I too went into a brown study, and began wondering at Mr Preddle's curious ways, and thinking what a pity it was that a gentleman like Mr Denning, who was on a voyage for the sake of his health, should take such a dislike to Mr Frewen and Mr Preddle too. It hardly seemed ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn |
