"Groping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gay through the open window and sinking his voice. The crowd had pressed round her and were clamourous for her to sing again. Some had thrown her a few pence for which a couple of urchins were groping on the ground. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... thus deals with the lamb, let us see how he treats the wolf. We have neither space nor taste for groping through the long and dark labyrinth of Cromwell's proverbial duplicity and audacious apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two facts, which, though stated in the gentlest way by Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the opinion which all mankind, except ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Van by the cords of his heart. He went blindly away, with a vision in his eyes of Beth groping weakly up the stairs—a doe with ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that had reared to the skies in the many years of his long sleep. But very slowly, month by month, he had gained a second impression which seemed to him deeper and more real. To the eye they were grown women all, but inwardly they were children still, each groping for her happiness and each held back as he had been, either by checks within herself or by the gay distractions of the absorbing city. He saw each of his daughters, parts of himself. And he remembered what Judith ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... speaking with natural pathos. "It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Tiresias;—but the Gods, Who give them vision, Added this law: That they should bear too His groping blindness, His dark foreboding, His scorn'd white hairs; Bear Hera's anger Through a life lengthen'd ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... her corner, shaken to additional palsy by an aroused memory. She strained her dim eyes towards the singer, and then bent her head, that the one ear yet sensible to sound might avail of every note. At the close, groping forward, she murmured with the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... not those dreamers, who are incapable of attaching any one positive idea to the causes of which they unceasingly speak, true deniers? Are not those visionaries, who make a pure nothing the source of all beings, men really groping in the dark? Is it not the height of folly to personify abstractions, to organize negative ideas, and then to prostrate ourselves before the figments of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... eleven at night. The road was of the roughest sort, and we were jerked up and down the ruts so as with difficulty to keep our seats : it was also very dark, and the drivers could not help frequently going out of their way, though the guide, groping on upon such occasions on foot, soon set them right. It was every way a frightful night. Misery, both public and private, oppressed us all, and the fear of pursuit and captivity had the gloomy effect of causing general taciturnity ; so that no kind voice, nor social suggestion, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... vociferous, here are singers whose faces are alight with a mysterious radiance. Though they promise us little, saying that they themselves are blinded by the transcendent vision, so that they appear as men groping in darkness, yet may they not unawares afford us some ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... They fled, groping for their usual shelter—it might be almost called their home—in the old calaboose; came drenched into its empty chambers; and lay down, three sops of humanity on the cold coral floors, and presently, when the squall was overpast, the others could hear in the darkness ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... researches of our antiquaries have rendered it probable that America is as ancient, as an inhabited continent, as Europe. Evidences have been brought to light, leading to the conclusion that many thousands of years before the Christian era, America was the seat of a civilization far from rude or savage. Groping into the remains of the far past, we find skeletons, skulls, implements of war, and even basket-work, buried in geological strata, which have been overlaid by repeated convulsions and changes of the physical earth. But so ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it, her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out a groping hand and caught at the corner of the corral to keep herself from falling. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the coin came un-stuck, and dropped with a rattle into the aisle. Come- Back Stumper stooped to recover it. Whereupon, to Judy, Tim and Uncle Felix, watching him, came a sudden feeling of familiarity, as though all this had happened before. The bent figure, groping after the hidden coin, seemed irresistibly familiar. It was very odd, they thought, very odd indeed. Where—when—had they seen him groping before like that, almost on all fours? But no one, of course, could remark upon it, and it was only Tim and Judy who exchanged a brief, significant glance. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the palaces above, and the mass, so sunk in obscurity that it looked like a dark layer of mist itself, of the rifted fortifications. A smile of exultation passed over the Pagan's countenance, as he perceived the shrouding and welcome thickness of the atmosphere. Groping his way softly through the thickets, he arrived at the base of the wall. For some time he passed slowly along it, feeling the width of the different rents wherever he could stretch his hand. At length he paused at one more extensive than the rest, drew from its concealment ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... under the shade of a great chestnut near the house, and an hour glided pleasantly away. As it happened, however, he did not open one of the books he had brought with him. A thought had struck him as he sat down, and he went groping in his pockets in search of a yellow-covered brochure, which, when found, proved to be a new play by Dumas, just about to be produced by a French company in London. Langham, whose passion for the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fighting men, though I'm not saying that we ain't better, and good fighting men don't hate one another. We got one of your blokes the other day. He came on with the attack, and when we'd beaten it off, there he was still coming on. He'd dropped his rifle and his helmet was off, and he was groping about with his hands, and he wasn't shouting "Hock! Hock!" but he didn't stop. We didn't loose off at him, there was something so funny about him, and in another minute he tumbled in right atop of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... words, 'Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,' it makes me fear that many, indeed, of this generation shall say in vain at that day, Lord, Lord! It is a fearful thing for those who profess to know Him, to go up into His presence, leaving behind some still groping in darkness because of their unfaithfulness. If it is possible now for the Saviour ever to be unhappy, surely lukewarm Christians must pain ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... streamed fast down poor Jo's cheeks, she stretched out her hand in a helpless sort of way, as if groping in the dark, and Laurie took it in his, whispering as well as he could with a lump in his throat, "I'm here. Hold on ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... toward the sound, in expectation of an upflaring match. Discovery would mean instant attack by the huge-framed scoundrel. Of that he had no doubt. Slade would not be groping about in the dark in this stealthy manner unless intent upon ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... would have lighted my cell, if a square beam supporting the roof which joined the wall below the window had not intercepted what little light came into that horrid garret. After making the tour of my sad abode, my head lowered, as the cell was not more than five and a half feet high, I found by groping along that it formed three-quarters of a square of twelve feet. The fourth quarter was a kind of recess, which would have held a bed; but there was neither bed, nor table, nor chair, nor any furniture whatever, except a bucket—the use of which may ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the moral icicles with which their doctrine is fringed (and the fringe is the beauty of it) must needs melt under any passionate human clasp,—such clasp as I should want to give (if I gave any) to a great hope for the future. I should feel more like groping my way into such hope by the light of the golden candlesticks of Rome even. But do not be disturbed, father; I fear I should make, just now, no better Papist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... was tired and drowsy, and clambering down from his perch, set out for his bed, groping his way up the steep staircase that led to the half-story above, where he had his cot. He never went up that staircase in the dark—and a light was a luxury not to be thought of—without imagining all manner of horrors which he might ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... its cousins the gerardias, the Downy False Foxglove is only a partial parasite, attaching its roots by disks or suckers to the roots of white oak or witch hazel; not only that, but, quite as frequently, groping blindly in the dark, it fastens suckers on its own roots, actually thieving from itself! It is this piratical tendency which makes transplanting of foxgloves into our gardens so very difficult, even when lifted with plenty of their beloved ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... darkness filling our heads with heavy dreams and fond fancies, with shrieking and crying in many deformed shapes: and sometimes when men go forth without light, there falleth to them a fear, that their hairs standeth up on end, so many start in their sleep, thinking there is a spirit by them, groping or feeling for him, going round about the house in their sleep, and many such like fancies, and all this is, because in the night the spirits are more familiarly by us than we are desirous of their company, and so they carry us, blinding us, and ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... sight of the light, and again he caught it, till it became brighter and brighter, and very soon he came to a high rock, on the top of which was perched a tall, dark tower. After groping about, he found a narrow path that led up to the tower, from one of the windows of which the light was brightly shining. He ascended a flight of steep steps till he reached a massive door covered with iron. He knocked as loud as he could, when a large dog began barking ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod
... it," resumed Jackson, rising and commencing to strip. "It's only by groping and feeling that we can find the arms, and when once we've tumbled on 'em, it will be easy enough to get 'em up with one hand, while we swim with the other. We must plunge here from the stern," he added, as the men whom he had named jumped ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... moment could think of nothing further to say. The thing was incomprehensible to her, appalling, yet strangely touching. This twenty-year-old girl, groping her way toward safety, that refuge of the middle-aged, as eagerly as other young things grasp at happiness, at romance!—She recalled phrases spoken by another startled mother to another girl quite as headstrong: "You are only a child! He is twice ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us. In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees, feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter might well have been a further development of the Mexican system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... The horse is tied to a post, a curtain unbuttoned and raised, and from a bed upon the uneasy floor a pale, delicate boy, shrinking from the light, is lifted by his burly father. The child is carried to the spring, and puts out a groping hand when his father bids him drink. He cannot find the glass, and his father must put it to his lips. He is blind, except to light,—and that only visits those poor sightless eyes to agonize them! Where the water flows off below the basin in a clear jet, the father bathes his boy's forehead, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... it was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came out into the light,—even as the wide white flower over yonder had come out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that flashing instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought to belie, took final command. All that ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... then that Patmore failed to get at the root of the neglected truth after which he was groping, and thereby fell into a one-sidedness just as real as that against which his chief work was a ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Philadelphia in the midst of colleges, this organization is purely national in its aims. It brings with it system out of chaos. While university extension was groping aimlessly about, it came to the attention of one of the leading educators of our country. As provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Pepper has proved himself to be a man of great executive ability. Comprehending to the fullest ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... we was hung up by the heels," said D'ri, groping his way to the straw pile. "Ain' no use ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... him, and he groped along the passage, with hands outstretched on each side to guide him. The feet were lifted and set down without noise, and by and by he came to the opening leading to the bedroom. Across this he made his way with the same noiseless stealth, until the groping hand touched the battered rifle, which he lifted from its resting place. Back into the hall again, and then through the dining room, inch by inch, to where he remembered seeing the head of the stairs, though he knew nothing beyond that. He would have struck a match but for fear ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... dab, came these horrid footsteps, and there was I groping about the room in an agony. I heard them coming nearer and nearer to my door. Another moment, and they must have reached it, when my ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... When his groping hand failed to connect with the rifle he was compelled to turn his head quickly and saw, to his dismay, that the gun no longer occupied the spot where he ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... toys. How often one of those marvelous moments when their attention is fixed, and that process of organization which is to develop them begins in their souls, is roughly interrupted; moments when the spontaneous efforts of the young child are groping blindly in its surroundings after sustenance for its intelligence. Do we not all retain an impression of something having been forever ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... it was pitch dark. The sun had set and fog obscured the starlight. But Trevennack, all on fire, wandered madly forward and scaled the rocky tor by the well-known path, guided not by sight, but by pure instinctive groping. In his present exalted state, indeed, he had no need of eyes. What matters earthly darkness to angelic feet? He could pick his own way through the gloom, though all the fiends from hell in serried phalanx broke loose to thwart him. He would reach the ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... to call at the house today in answer to my advertisement (which was read for a laugh) and while I am waiting for him I might as well practice my song," grew so wearisome that it had to be served with a special notice in many vaudeville theatres, that these groping two-acts returned to the pure forms from which they never should have strayed. But even today you sometimes see such an act—with a little less inappropriate opening—win, because of the extreme cleverness ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer to the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale and featureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint coming of the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheriting each of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggle to express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this very reason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once in it, and that all things may be given a chance to be ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... so childlike in this that it almost overcame the woman's steadily guarded calm. She had been warned to be careful that there should be no excitement to agitate a mind which was slowly groping its way out of the shadows of ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... now and then to put an idea that strikes me from German or Italian into English; but think of my painful groping with a dictionary, before the cramped and crippled idea can reach my mind! I am the translator most in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "This sirocco!" she sighed, groping dramatically for a chair. "It makes me feel so funny. Oh, dear! I shall go off in a faint. Ah, do be a kind young man and fetch me some brandy and soda. A large tumbler. Ah, do! And very little soda, please—on account of my heart. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to the gate. By now it was quite dark. In the south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets dark rapidly. Towards ten o'clock it is so dark that you can't see an inch before your nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before, almost groping, I found my ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... up with a groping motion as though tears obscured her sight. She came to meet Lady O'Gara and held out her hands with a piteous gesture ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... broke the hush. They could see a figure on the path below. It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished. They heard the sounds of groping hands, of a creaking door, of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... teacher need? So that he may select the best and continue to improve them, he needs a knowledge of the different methods and aims in the teaching of his subject, and, so far as possible, of the results attained by each. Too much of college teaching is a blind groping, chartless and without compass. Instead of expecting each inexperienced teacher to start afresh, he should set out armed with the epitomized and digested teaching experience of those that have ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the snowshoes. To her great surprise she found that many of the other girls and some of the boys had done the same thing, and not half of the original contestants were still in the race. And, indeed, it proved to be much greater fun to watch those who were still blindly groping along, than to stay in ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... week-days, and yet no one knew more than the merest rudiments of Christian truth; none could read. A teacher had gone from Asang, but he was himself only at the stage of the first standard in the schools, and could impart but the crudest instruction. They were groping for the light, and worshipping what to most of them was still the Unknown God, and yet were already able to withstand persecution. The pathos of the situation broke her down. "Why," she cried, "cannot the Church send two ladies there? Why don't they ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... with his sightless orbs groping towards me with a knife in his hand, muttering imprecations, and he caught hold of me, and we had a desperate struggle, and he plunged a long knife into my chest, with a loud laugh of derision and malice; ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... J. P. could be one of the most fascinating and entertaining of men, but when it didn't, well, he wasn't. The truth was that you could never tell what he really thought at any moment; it made you feel as though you were blind and not he; you found yourself groping around all the time for a good lead and coming unexpectedly up against a ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... GROPING. An old mode of catching trout by tickling them with the hands under rocks or banks. Shakspeare makes the clown in "Measure for Measure" say ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... rain. It was rather a lazy way of spending the afternoon certainly, but Miss Tempest was out of humour with her little world, and did not feel equal to groping out the difficulties, the inexorable double sharps and odious double flats, in a waltz of Chopin's. She watched the straight thin rain, and thought about Rorie—chiefly to the effect that she hated him, and never could, by ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... jiffy Sergeant Hupner was out of bed. His groping right hand found the switch and turned on the electric lights. Then Hupner jumped for his uniform trousers ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... as soon as coffee had been served; for on the first occasion when she rose, saying that she would have her coffee with Mrs. Talcott, Tante said with some sharpness—after a hesitation: "No; you will have your coffee here. Tallie does not have coffee." Groping her way, Karen seemed to touch strange forms. Tante cared so much about this young man; so much that it was almost as if she would be willing to abandon her dignity for him. It was more than the indulgent, indolent interest, wholly Olympian, that she had so often ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... loth to abandon Mr. Schnackenberger, but unwilling to lean too much on my somewhat hazy remembrance. It seemed almost hopeless to obtain the necessary evidence. MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY were long dead, and after groping about like a detective, no one could tell me what had become of the records of The London Magazine. Suddenly there came light in October last. I ascertained that a son of one of the Publishers is the ARCHDEACON of MIDDLESEX, the Venerable J. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and except the beautiful lawns (not to be had in the Fatherland) and the infinite possibilities, there was nothing to interest the intelligent and garden-loving foreigner, for the good reason that you cannot be interested in gardens under an umbrella. So I went back to the fogs, and after groping about for a few days more began to long inordinately for Germany. A terrific gale sprang up after I had started, and the journey both by sea and land was full of horrors, the trains in Germany being heated to such an ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... beasts they lie along the sands;, Look where the sky against the sea-rim clings: Foot stretches out to foot, and groping hands Have ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... up at the study-windows ere I went into the tower. I took out the key, for it fastened only on the outside, and closed myself tightly in. A moment of utter darkness, then the thread of light was let down to me from above. I caught at it, and, groping up the stairs, gained my high window-seat. Without the tower, I saw the deep-sea line, crested with short white waves, the far-away mountain, and all the valley that lay between, while just below me, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... two flights of stairs to his home in the cellar. As he pushed open the door of the room which served as kitchen and living room in the daytime and as sleeping apartment for himself and baby at night, the damp chill of the place struck him as it never had done before. Groping his way to the table he lighted the candle upon it. Then, after wrapping baby in his mother's old shawl and depositing her upon their bed in the corner, he proceeded to make a fire in the cracked and rusty stove. Peter was only eleven, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... somewhere in the thick darkness, but the little air tremors that came to me were so faint that it was impossible to tell in which direction they were. I had lost all trace of Holman. With extreme caution I crawled toward what I thought to be the spot where I had left him, but my groping fingers found only the fragments of bone that covered the dusty floor ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... discover," said I, and drew her (though not ungently) to the door. I found it after a little groping and, lifting the latch—for the gust of wind had fastened it—thrust it open upon a light which, though by no means brilliant, dazzled me after the darkness ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... later the two were in the building groping their way from one point to another in the hope of finding a place ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... stretched out their hands, groping eagerly to snatch the eye out of the hand of Scarecrow. But, being both alike blind, they could not easily find where Scarecrow's hand was; and Scarecrow, being now just as much in the dark as Shakejoint and Nightmare, could not at once meet either of their hands, in order to put the eye into ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... unbattered go now about our work with cooler, more critical eyes, but mostly with lips closed against our three or four years' experience. Khaki has disappeared; the war is over; let us forget it. If there is a people to be pitied, swarming and groping on this tormented earth, we say, it is the German people; but that seems an insufficient reason for hating them in saecula saeculorum. A German is a human being, and very likely Mr. Bottomley is one too, and not a big-head in a pantomime; such also may be Mrs. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... opinion: "To be carried along by somebody's suggestions from the time you begin until the time when you are thrust groping and helpless into the world, is the very negation of education. By the nursing process, by the coddling process you are sapping a race; and only loss can possibly result except upon the part of individuals here and there who are so intrinsically ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... "If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored,—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man,—such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care,—such as Union appeals ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... climbed the flight of stone steps which led far upward to the platform edged by the parapet from which the spring was to be made. The young man walked up and down the promenade, unheeding those around him, seeming like one in a dream, groping for something he failed to find. The onlookers watched him curiously, wondering ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... soul or spirit withdraws from the physical body, the physical body is not the man, and as long as our materialistic writers who endeavor to interpret dreams fail to grasp the nature of the inner man, the real self, they will be forever groping ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... should be the first to spread the news wherever we go. The reason is, that we get the authentic news through our friends and bankers, and circulate it in the inns, instead of the ridiculous stories invented by those groping in ignorance. The feelings of the people seem excellent every where; the troops alone maintain a gloomy silence. The country, from Montpellier, is the same as hitherto, flat and insipid: but the crops are much farther advanced than in Provence. We had some fine peeps at the Mediterranean ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... confusion. Rowing hard we managed to get back into the main river by dusk, and looked out for a place to cook our suppers. It happened to be high water, and a very high tide, so that every piece of sand or beach was covered, and it was with the greatest difficulty, and after much groping in the dark, that we discovered a little sloping piece of rock about two feet square on which to make a fire and cook some rice. The next day we continued our way back, and on the following day entered a stream on the south ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... her so closely, saw the blood ebb from cheeks and lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded, and the strange groping motion of her hands. She staggered toward the platform, and when the Magistrate caught her arm, she fell against him like some tottering ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... he stood, ankle-deep in water, groping for his shells and oblivious of the review, the firing that echoed far away, the flight of time—everything. Kitty, with one fore-leg through the bridle, was cropping on the brink. Minutes passed, and the doctor ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of pungent smoke that filled his eyes, and made them smart in a way that was almost unbearable. Of course under such conditions he could not distinguish a single thing, and would have to depend on groping his ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... town lay in shadow, while the last beams lingered upon the cloud of smoke which flushed to a pale pink, then deepened to a rosy glow. The girl's eyes rested on the scene below her; then, surprised at the continued silence of her escort, she glanced at him once more. He was still groping about underneath his hat, with the same strained, upward roll to his eyes; but, as she looked at him, a new light burst in upon Louise's mind, for two long locks of tawny hair had straggled down over his right ear, and lay in a feeble ringlet against the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... posted in the heart of a thicket, who fired at me without challenge. To a soldier an unexpected shot ringing out at dead of night is fraught with an awful significance. In my circumstances—cut off from my comrades, groping about an unknown country, surrounded by invisible perils which such a signal would call into eager activity—the flash and shock of that firearm were unspeakably dreadful! In any case I should and ought to have fled, and did so; but how much or little ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... seemed to conspire for his death: the wind, lightning, thunder, rain and storm, as well as the beasts and falling trees; for in his mind he did not differentiate animate from inanimate objects. Slowly, through his groping mind there evolved the thought, due to past experience, that he could not contend with these things by physical force, but must subdue them with magic; his magic consisted of the beating of crude drum-like instruments, dances, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... thought, Henri grabbed the big stone which Stuart thrust into his hand, and, groping about, quickly secured another. Then he slowly raised himself into a kneeling position, ready to spring to his feet and carry out the duty Stuart had given him. Nor was it likely to be a very difficult matter to strike the sentry at that ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her straight-falling night-dress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with their bones broken—others, though not so seriously injured, lappered in their blood—some were crawling up, but were instantly knocked down by their enemies—some were leaning against the walls, or groping their way silently along them, endeavoring to escape observation, lest they might be smashed down and altogether murdered. Wives were sitting with the bloody heads of their husbands in their laps, tearing their hair, weeping and cursing, in ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... moment; then she rose from her seat, her wrap falling away from her shoulders. Her tears were done, and a white look of intense feeling showed the despair that she felt. All the isolation which tortured her, that pain which souls like hers, blind, groping, and helpless, are least able to bear, had left its stamp upon her. Perhaps even her sin had been a desperate and only half-conscious attempt once more to draw in sympathy really near a human heart. She had learned little from the changed conditions into which the fates of her life had brought ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... both, and after groping for some time for the hand of Mr. Clark, who was still intent upon the mantelpiece, pressed it warmly and withdrew. Mrs. Bowman saw him to the door, and a low-voiced colloquy, in which Mr. Clark caught the word "afternoon," ensued. By the time the widow returned to the room he ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... If we happen to hit it off, we can hold on to St. Helier, but if when we think we ought to be within sight of Guernsey we see nothing of it, we must lie to again, till the storm has blown itself out or the clouds lift. It would never do to go groping our way along with such currents as run among the islands. Put the last reef in the trysail before you hoist it. I think you had better get the foresail down altogether, and run ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... again named the child, nor by the least word or look confessed the change. But when, a little later, a fire swept down Dupont Street and laid the poor tent in ashes, spoiling the desolate house whose beautiful lar had flitted,—when his wife went moaning maudlinly among the yet warm ashes, and groping, in mean misery, with a stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as, with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to see, the shocking scene. Presently the woman, poking with the stick, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had turned him of his back to the wall, the blood ran out of his belly as out of a bowl, and soaked quite through the bed to the boards, and through the chinks of the boards it ran pouring down to the ground. Some said that when the neighbours came to see him, he lay groping with his hand in his bowels, reaching upward, as was thought, that he might have pulled or cut out his heart. It was said, also, that some of his liver had been by him torn out and cast upon the boards, and that many of his guts hung out of the bed on the side thereof; but I cannot confirm ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sleep so filled was her mind with wild schemes of escape though each new one must always be discarded as impractical. Half an hour after the warrior had returned her to her prison he rose and entered the hut, where he tried to engage in conversation with her. Groping across the interior he leaned his short spear against the wall and sat down beside her, and as he talked he edged closer and closer until at last he could reach out and touch her. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... It was so long since the States-General had been convoked that the very forms and ceremonies incidental to or essential to its convocation had passed out of living memory, and had to be painfully ascertained by much groping after authority and precedent. In the end, however, authority and precedent were ascertained, and the States-General, composed of representatives of the three estates of the realm—the Church, the Nobility, and the People—met with much ceremony at Versailles. They were called together ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sprang out of bed, darted to the spot where the noise was, and tried to grasp the intruder in my arms: my arms met together, but enclosed nothing. The noise passed to another part of the room, and I followed it, groping near the floor to prevent anything passing under my arms. It was in vain; I could feel nothing; the noise had passed away through the Gothic door, and all was still as death. I lighted a candle and examined the Gothic door, but it ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... began groping, comprehension came to me—a sudden comprehension that left me stunned and dazed: The open trunk, the thief, the descent by the fire-escape, the girl's calm denial, turning us from the suspected floor. Yes, the girl! Heavens, what a blind dolt I had been! No wonder ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... pitfall of water, the pitfall of snow, and the pitfall of sand. This last is the most dangerous of all, because the most illusory. To know the peril we face is alarming; to be ignorant of it is terrible. The child was fighting against unknown dangers. He was groping his way through something which might, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Roman Catholic Church issued in the atheism of the French Revolution, and has created the infidelity of modern European nations; so like causes had precipitated a similar result in America. Men were groping as the blind grope in darkness, and then came, during the first half of the present century, the proclamation of primitive and apostolic Christianity. Alexander Campbell, John Smith, Jacob Creath and Samuel Rogers in Virginia and Kentucky, and Walter Scott, the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... she had been climbing for hours, in such a maze, amidst such a turning and twisting of stairs that she would never be able to find her way down again. Inside the studio there was a shuffling of heavy feet, a rustling of hands groping in the dark, a clatter of things being tumbled about, accompanied by stifled objurgations. At last the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... off into a murmur of questions. Why? why? always holding fast by the little Pilgrim, always gazing round her, groping as it were in the dimness with her ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... steed into the thick underwood, through which he spurred onward, until his passage was fairly barred up by an impenetrable network of vines and bushes. Here he halted; and, dismounting, led his horse to a tree. He then commenced groping about, to find some spot where he might in safety obtain a few hours of repose, after the fatigues he ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... tone and felicity of diction. It has the broad liberality of her more elaborate work on the same subject, and in the mellow light of life's sunset her words seem touched with a tender pathos and beauty. "All we poor mortals," she says, "are groping our way through paths that are dim with shadows; and we are all striving, with steps more or less stumbling, to follow some guiding star. As we travel on, beloved companions of our pilgrimage vanish from our sight, we know not whither; and our bereaved hearts utter cries ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... irresistible repugnance to it. He understood that, even should he possess Lygia, he would not possess her completely, for he would have to share her with Christ. Finally, he was living as if not living,—without hope, without a morrow, without belief in happiness; around him was darkness in which he was groping for an exit, and could ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... they knew as he did, but that it was a story of the old time, when men were walking in darkness, and when no one knew the true meaning even of what he himself did, but had to go on as if blindly, stumbling and groping with their hands. And, "Oh, brethren," he said, "though all is more beautiful and joyful here where we know, yet to remember the days when we knew not, and the ways when all was uncertain, and the end could not be distinguished from the beginning, is sweet and dear; ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Sir Simon Burley; and the rest of the council having approved, a scanty meal was hurriedly snatched, and the advance resumed under the cover of the darkness. All night they led their horses, stumbling and groping through wild defiles and rugged valleys, following the guidance of a frightened peasant who was strapped by the wrist to Black Simon's stirrup-leather. With the early dawn they found themselves in a black ravine, with others ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... into the place where the geomancer was sleeping. The man, mistaking him for the tradesman, seized the geomancer and with a sharp awl pierced his eyes, blinding him for ever. But, having thus effected his revenge as he thought, in groping his way out of the house he stumbled into the well and broke his foot. The tradesman, taking him for the geomancer, come for more gold, upbraided him for his insatiable avarice, and the man, in his turn, supposing him to have been thrown into the well by the tradesman, replied, "Be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... divine plan in action. The truly scientific spirit will neglect no possible curative agent. When scientific men ridicule prayer, they are thinking not of the real thing which is above all possible criticism, but of the feeble and often pathetic groping for the real thing. We ask in our prayers for impossible blessings that would invert the laws of God and change the face of nature—very well, we must be prepared for disappointment. The attitude ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... and back and forth. At the same time the palm of his right hand gently moved over the leaves, touching them as lightly as the falling snowflakes, and with as wonderful delicacy as that of the blind reader, when his fingers are groping over the raised letters of the Book ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... way is never realized until we are following it through an unknown country, or groping along it in almost absolute darkness. I remember, during a tour in Switzerland, on starting for a long day's march, the comfort of the assurance that I had only to keep to one road which was clearly defined, and it would inevitably bring me to my destination. How different ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... blood grows cold and freezes in his veins, His heart sinks, and upon his lips the breath Curdles, as if in death! Vainly he strives in flight, His trembling knees deny—his strength is gone! As one who, in the depth of the dark night, Groping through chambered ruins, lays his hands On cold and clammy bones, and glutinous brains, The murdered man's remains— Thus rooted to the dread spot stood the chief, When, from the tomb of ages, came the sound, As of a strong man's ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... followed the mysterious evolutions of this sinister accordion player as had Juve; but now he wondered whether there might not be a connection between Vagualame and Fantomas.... All this was obscure: Fandor felt he was groping ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that," her husband protested, groping for the idea that he caught imperfectly; "it means practically that we are living under the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... feeling the rock on either side, I came to a place where there was a recess about three feet above the floor of the passage. Raising myself into this recess, I found it to be about four feet in height. This led back a considerable distance,—how far I never discovered,—and as I was groping about, being obliged to stoop all the time, I stumbled over something that rolled and rattled like a bone. I felt for it, and found it to be one, and with it were a number of others. As far as I could judge in the darkness, they were the skeleton ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... internal convulsion. At half-past nine the boys would go to school, and, in the commotion of their departure, Bluebell resolved to pass from the threshold and go forth to her fate. She got her hat,—unnoticed and unquestioned was in the street, and groping her way through the fog with swift, unsteady steps. In two turnings from the door Dutton met her, a relieved, triumphant smile lighting his features as he placed her in a cab. The man, previously instructed, drove rapidly off to the register office. Bluebell, now the die was cast, felt almost ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... forgotten; that the interests of white men alone have been taken into account, and that their true interests as well are being sacrificed. There is a silent white South, uneasy in conscience, darkened in counsel, groping for the light, and willing to do the right. They are as yet a feeble folk, their voices scarcely audible above the clamor of the mob. May their convictions ripen into wisdom, and may their numbers and their ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... dusk crept into the room and stilled the tiny winged lover of the sunshine. Then Beethoven came and rubbed himself against his master's leg, and Lancelot got up as one wakes from a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell mechanically for tea. He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had found them. He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie. He started to find it was ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... Gordon might have justified his Scotch descent by making a fortune. Wealth was to be gained in other and surer ways than by groping for it in the goldfields. But he was indifferent, and allowed himself to drift. Australia was attractive to him only as a place of adventure, of freedom, of retirement, of oblivion. All but the latter he found it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the mechanism. The mechanisms of "repression of impulse" and of its symptomatic symbolization can be illustrated in the most unexpected corners of individual and group psychology. A more general psychology than Freud's will eventually prove them to be as applicable to the groping for abstract form, the logical or esthetic ordering of experience, as to the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... been long there before a poor blind man came groping his way out with a couple of sticks. 'Good morning to you, gaffer,' said the boy; 'pray, did you see a little girl come this road, with a basket of eggs upon her head, dressed in a green gown, with a straw hat upon her head?' 'God bless you, master,' ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... near that curse. But I reckon that a good deal of it will have to be wasted. There isn't a man living who could stand it for long. Still, if you name the man for us, I'll do the best I can with him. I may not be able to work the blindness and the groping just as you'd wish, but I'll undertake that his life hangs in doubt before him for ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Certainly he assigns motives enough; the difficulty is that he assigns so many. A man moved by simple passions due to simple causes does not stand fingering his feelings, industriously enumerating their sources, and groping about for new ones. But this is what Iago does. And this is not all. These motives appear and disappear in the most extraordinary manner. Resentment at Cassio's appointment is expressed in the first conversation ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... in until quite plainly he could distinguish the staring eyes all centered upon him. He piled on more fuel, and as the flames sprang up they fell back. As the flames died down, they advanced as by a given signal. He kept on adding to the fires until his fingers, groping for fresh reeds, found none, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. In one hour at least there would not be light enough from the smouldering heaps for him to see a mark, and then—something had to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... adventure to the East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad affidavits, but was a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward in commerce and wealth for Portugal. At that very moment Columbus was groping round the mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast of Cathay, and the Garden of Eden, and God knows what other cosmographical—theological abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her arrangements for making money, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... From time to time her brooding eyes flashed and fastened upon a priceless Rembrandt "Laughing Cavalier" on the wall opposite; they flashed again when her gaze shifted to a colossal Rubens "Rape of the Sabines"; her face lighted for an instant when her fingers in groping closed upon a cobwebby golden net, scintillating with cunningly wrought jeweled insects caught in the meshes, which had once graced the all-powerful head ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... business of men, more like the mental operations of sleep than of waking. From the height of an upper window one could look down and feel the city's efforts to break the mesh of its weird captivity, with an invisible stir in all directions, as of groping. Of course, life had to go on, upon such terms as it could, and if you descended from your window that showed nothing, and went into the street, and joined the groping, you could make out something of its objects. With a cabman who knew his way, as a pilot ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... serves." Such was the first utterance of the President who in a few weeks was to appear as the champion, not of the special interests, native and foreign, in Mexico, but of the fifteen million Mexican people, groping blindly, through blood and confusion, after some form of self-government, and who in a few years was to appear as the champion of small nations and the masses throughout the world in a titanic struggle against ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... end of him, this is best. He will never lie on his couch awake, Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak. Never again will he smile and smile When his heart is breaking all the while. He will never stretch out his hands in vain Groping and groping—never again. Never ask for bread, get a stone instead, Never pretend that the stone is bread; Nor sway and sway 'twixt the false and true, Weighing and noting the long hours through. Never ache and ache with the choked-up ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... "Oh, what have I done to be used so as I am here? They drive me to despair, then drive me to hell for despairing. Patience, or I shall go mad. Patience! Patience!" This hour was passed cursing and weeping and groping for warmth ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the duke's aide de camp stammered out in great agitation, 'By G——, sir, I remember the sword ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shadowy recognition of this former friend had passed across that broken mind—but the head, pale, carven, would only move slowly in its sole gesture toward the light as if something behind the blind eyes were groping for another light long ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming shapes of ill he bated no jot of heart or hope. He was cheered by vague stirrings of ambition, which he pathetically compares to the "blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." Sent to school at Kirkoswald, he became, for his scant leisure, a great reader—eating at meal-times with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other,—and carrying a few small volumes in his pocket ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... groping for fame, And hardly knows where he will find her: She don't seem to take to the name Of Gally i.o. the Grinder. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... he spoken than the English sailors knew that they had found the spot where the Spanish galleon had been wrecked, so many years before. The other Indian divers plunged over the boat's side and swam headlong down, groping among the rocks and sunken cannon. In a few moments one of them rose above the water with a heavy lump of silver in his arms. That single lump was worth more than a thousand dollars. The sailors took it into the boat, and then rowed back ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture: these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How incredible it would seem on other planets to hear ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to stir a slow current of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... fire started, which was now a sea of flames, Frank saw a figure groping with outstretched arms, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... swung it to its usual place beside the wall, banging it down with spiteful energy enough to break it. Having stooped to make sure that it was not actually broken, she brushed her eyes again, and wept a little. Then, on a sudden thought, she sprang to the curtained corner, and, groping among mattresses and sweat-stained coverlets which the ladies from the Mission never dared turn over, brought forth a picture of the Blessed Virgin which Iskender had made for her with the help of a paint-box given to him by the Sitt Hilda on his eighteenth birthday. This she set upon ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... He had made up his mind, and was even then groping for the end of the vine which Fred was reaching ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... I said soothingly. I had heard what I had been afraid to hear; but why should Biddy's trip be spoiled by another worry if I could shield her? We could not know that the oiled hand had been groping for that bag; and I resolved not to distress Brigit by putting the idea into her head at present. "Go to sleep again in peace, both of you," I went on. "All's well, since you are well. Probably some prowler has been sneaking ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... passage; lying breathless and half-stunned, I heard the slam of the door, the rattle of a bolt and thereafter the sound of his voice, hoarse and muffled and very evil to be heard. I was upon my knees and groping for my hat when powerful arms caught me and lifted me ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... groping round for a subject of general interest, his profession and his affection being alike debarred, "there's that young Enbra' lad that's come till the manse. He's a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... fleet of Henry's time was represented by 'row-barges' of his own invention. Now that the pinnace was growing in size and sail power, while shedding half its oars, some new small rowing craft was wanted, during that period of groping transition, to act as a tender or to do 'mosquito' work in action. The mere fact that Henry VIII placed no dependence on oars except for this smallest type shows how far he had got on the road towards the broadside-sailing-ship ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... notice of this, for I was at the moment groping my way into a side chamber of the cave. I was feeling my way back towards the torch, when Thora called me to her as though she had made some new discovery. But as I hurried in the direction whence her voice sounded, I was startled by a loud and piercing scream ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... you. It is my servant." She hesitated, groping for a word. "A machine. A robot. It ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... established they should choose as President King Peter or the Prince-Regent or King Charles. But we should remember that in 1907 a printing press was founded by the Peasants' party at Zagreb, and those who gave their money for this cause were, to a great extent, illiterate. The people are groping towards the light, and they are willing to be told by those they trust that they have much to learn as to the nature of the light. Republicanism was fanned into flame by Radi['c]'s imprisonment and ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not, That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened;— Listen to this simple story, To the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... fumbling and groping he succeeded fairly well in securing his load. He felt for his whip, and found it on the snow at the rear of the komatik, where he had dropped it after compelling the ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... gloomy, dark, dreary nooks, poor lass! in her youthful boldness and lavishness; and our little feminine Curtius in the scoured silk, with the powdered brown curls, had not merely to penetrate them in one plunge, but had to descend, stumbling and groping her way, and starting back at the sense of confinement, the damp and the darkness. Who will blame her that she sometimes turned her head and looked back, and stretched up her arms from the desert to the flesh-pots of Egypt? She would have borne anything for her husband; and she did work marvels: ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... print.[1] They define both the mood of the stories as works of art and their burden and direction as criticisms of life. Like Dreiser, Conrad is forever fascinated by the "immense indifference of things," the tragic vanity of the blind groping that we call aspiration, the profound meaninglessness of life—fascinated, and left wondering. One looks in vain for an attempt at a solution of the riddle in the whole canon of his work. Dreiser, more than once, seems ready to take refuge behind an indeterminate ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... had ceased, and Noll left his seat and went groping his way along the dark, echoing hall, through the dimly-lighted dining-room to the library-door. Entering, he found his uncle still seated before the organ, but with his head bent forward upon the music-rack, and apparently ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... heard her repeating that line to herself. It was an easy step to poetry from flowers, and evidently June was groping for it. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to retrace ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... discovery are most wondrous—yet who will dare to say they take precedence over the wondrous ways of the stomach? And the ways are ironic; is it not conceivable that the two should align in devious fruition? For Gral found answer, not in his groping hands, but tangled ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... affluence, from joy to joy, from heaven to heaven, from happiness to happiness, proceed they that are possessed of faith, that are self-restrained, and that are devoted to righteous deeds. They that are unbelievers have to pass, with groping hands, through regions infested by beasts of prey and elephants and pathless tracts teeming with snakes and robbers and other causes of fear. What more need be said of these? They, on the other hand, that are endued with reverence for gods and guests, that are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... caught such a glimpse of the general significance of the picture, of the spirit that prompted it, as deeply impressed me. It seemed as if my own searching dimly with a candle in the inside of a dark sepulchral cave into the meaning of this fresco of death was emblematical of the groping of the ancient Etruscans, by such feeble light of nature as they possessed, in the midst of the profound, terrible darkness of death, for the great truths of immortality. They had not heard of One who alone ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn There came a groping shape of mystery Moving among us, that with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, Laughing on Lethe-bank—and in my throat I felt the wing-beat ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... one have a foreshadowing of the real things that affect life! One may be heavy hearted for days groping about fearsomely and suddenly the cloud lifts without any misfortune. Then swift in the happiest hour comes the stroke that crushes one. Lilian looked straight ahead in her life. She would serve her time here and repay Mrs. Barrington for her ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... cautiously forward, myself in the lead, and feeling blindly in the darkness for the loosened shutter previously located. At last my groping hand touched it, and drawing the bottom outward as far as possible by mere grip of the fingers, I inserted the stout oaken bar within the aperture, and, after listening intently to detect any presence close ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... stones and overhanging banks of the burn. This was indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. The largest we got might have been a quarter of a pound; but they were of good flesh and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would have overwhelmed Joel in a single rush. Without that support, he would still have faced any reasonable attack. But there was something baffling about Joel's movements, his tones, the manner of his command, that stupefied Finch. He felt that he was groping in the dark. The mutiny must have collapsed.... It may have been only a snare to trap him.... He was alone—against Joel, and with none ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... and, blindly groping to reach what she feared was a hallucination, she stumbled down the steps, and was caught up in the arms flung wide to catch her, and which folded about her as if forever. She sighed his name again, upon the passionate young lips which had inherited the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... benighted, groping minds Their noble precepts, star-like, shine; Each soul, that wisely seeks them, finds The ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... attempt to offer resistance he had been dragged beneath the surface. The sudden plunge bewildered him, but only for an instant. Then he began struggling, frantically, the three free feet, with claws unsheathed groping blindly for a foothold. At first they encountered nothing but the unresisting water; and then one hindfoot grazed the crocodile's back, but the tough hide turned the sharp claws aside. The fact that there was a footing somewhere within reach changed ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... my life whilst I was groping about in vain for a home and fellowship amongst Churches gave me to understand, as only experience can, what are the thoughts and feelings of the millions in Christian lands, who not only never enter a church, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... letter his heart warmed within him. He said to himself, "John Wesley, Jr., is 'beginning to see,' he says. Please God he musn't stop now until he gets his eyes wide open. The thing is working out. He's groping around for something, and some day he'll ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt |
