"Rambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presence of his mother; and on his father's entrance he hid his face in the pillows and trembled, of course to their exceeding distress and perplexity; and when he believed no one present but Bernard and Mrs. Halfpenny, he became more and more rambling, sometimes insisting that his father must not know, sometimes abusing all connected with the racing bet, and more often fancying that he was going to be arrested for robbing the firm, the enormity of the sum and of the danger increasing with the fever, and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... all hours. Even girls who have been good Sunday-school scholars are becoming insubordinate. She did not in the least mean to be improperly humorous—in fact she was quite tragic when she said that the rector felt that he ought to marry, on the spot, every rambling couple he met. He had already performed the ceremony in a number of cases when he felt it was almost criminally rash and idiotic, or would have been ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on Friday evening, Mr. Dicksey was rambling about the grounds, in the direction of the laurel walk. In the open ground it was still quite light, in the laurel walk it was growing dusk. As he drew near, he heard voices in the laurel walk—angry voices, though not very loud—the voices of a man and a woman. Peeped in and saw my lady. Yes, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... some sprigs of fragrant honeysuckle and carry them indoors. And so to bed, passing on the broad oak staircase the weird picture of the man who built this rambling old house more than three hundred ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... trial in the King's Bench, Mr. Erskine, counsel for the defendant, was charged by his opponent with traveling out of his way. Mr. Erskine in answer said, it reminded him of the celebrated Whitefield, who being accused by some of his audience of rambling in his discourse, answered, "If you will ramble to the devil, I ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... with Charles, one beautiful afternoon, rambling over the rocky cliffs at the back of the island, we came to a spot where the stillness, and the clear transparency of the water invited us to bathe. It was not deep. As we stood above, on the promontory, we could see the bottom in every part. Under the little headland, which formed the opposite side ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... look at the newspapers she offered him; but sat gazing out from the tawny awning, like the sail of a Neapolitan felucca, down the checkered shadows and the many-colored masses of the little, crooked, rambling, semi-barbaric alley. He was thinking of the Napoleons in his sash and of the promise he had pledged to Cigarette. That he would keep it he was resolved. The few impressive, vivid words of the young vivandiere had painted before him like a picture the horrors ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... When I see him rambling in the village, I begin to say: "Good people, the cock is loose, take care of your hens." It is ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... set forth as the sources from whence it was developed. Fables and anecdotes, having reference to less remote eras, were produced in great variety and in copious abundance. The presence in blazon of animated beings of whatsoever kinds, whether real or fabulous, led to rambling disquisitions in the most ludicrously unnatural of imaginary Natural History. From every variety also of inanimate figure and device, the simplest no less than the more elaborate, after the same fashion some "moral" was sought to be extracted. ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... am rambling on, and I wanted to tell you heaps of things! I shall never get them ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... back gate, and took his horse, but judged it advisable to put no questions about the news, while his master made his way in by the kitchen entrance of the rambling old manor house, and entered a stone-paved low room, a sort of office or study, where he received, and paid, money for my Lady, and smoked his pipe. Here he sat down in his wooden armchair, spread forth his legs, and took out the letter, opening it with careful avoidance of defacing the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any woman ought to be happy. It was a little island, fringed with a border of cocoanut-palms, which rustled and whispered day and night in the breeze. It was covered with tropical foliage, and there was a long, rambling bungalow, with screened "galleries," and a beach of hard white sand in front. The water was blue, dazzling with sunshine, and dotted with distant green islands; all of it, air, water, and islands, were warm. "I don't realize till I get here," she said, "I am never really happy in the North. I wrap ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... sight, a couple of lovers under a thorn-tree by the wayside, he with his arm about her waist: they did not seem to find it so cold as we. I have made a lot of progress to-day with my Portfolio paper. I think some of it should be nice, but it rambles a little; I like rambling, if the country be pleasant; don't you?—Ever your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long struggle, for a more desperate man we have seldom seen! he now dangles on a tree, like many others of his countrymen, a fit scarecrow to rambling adventurers." ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and rambling boy, My lodging's in the isle of Throy; A rambling boy, although I be, I'd lave them all an' ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... a little mad; but to me absorbingly interesting,' was my reply, 'And in the hope that it may prove so to others, I shall use it as a strange, rambling introduction to a recital of romantic events which have occurred in and about the great city since the breaking out of the rebellion, having to do with patriotism and cowardice, love, mischief, and secession, and bearing the title ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... originally belonged to the British fairyland. It was from the same source also, in all probability, that additional legends were obtained of a gigantic and malignant female, the Hecate of this mythology, who rode on the storm and marshalled the rambling host of wanderers under her grim banner. This hag (in all respects the reverse of the Mab or Titania of the Celtic creed) was called Nicneven in that later system which blended the faith of the Celts and of the Goths on this subject. The great ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... overrated in consequence of the great subjects which he treats (which again are 'great' by benefit of distance and the vast abstracting process executed by time upon the petty and the familiar), is loose and rambling in the principles of his nexus; and there lies the great effort for a biographer, there is the strain, and that is the task—viz., to weld the disconnected facts into one substance, and by interfusing natural reflections to create for the motions of his narrative a higher impulse than ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the hunter's eyes The landscape like a torrent flies. At last an ancient wood they gained, By pruner's axe yet unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by Nature reared, The oak's majestic boughs appeared; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew; No knife had curbed the rambling sprays, No hand had wove th' implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazle's stubborn stem intwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed around, And rough furze crept along the ground. Here sheltering, from the sons of murther, The hares drag their tired limbs ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... exist in India without some "canker-worm" to embitter the lives and unite the sympathies of large classes against their rulers or local governors, and make them think that they cannot shake it off without rebelling and becoming martyrs. I must pray your Lordship to excuse this long rambling letter, and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... and the last time they made a visit of two weeks. On both occasions Ellen was sent for to the parsonage, and kept while they stayed; and the pleasure that she and her little friend had together cannot be told. It was unmixed now. Rambling about through the woods and over the fields, no matter where, it was all enchanting; helping Alice garden; helping Thomas make hay, and the mischief they did his haycocks by tumbling upon them, and the patience with which he bore it; the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... old man asked in a rambling manner, "how did you ever come to marry him? I've wanted to ask you that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... him to spend Eastertide with her and bring along his roommate. I accepted the invitation with alacrity. Bill had once spent a whole summer at his aunt's home, and when we arrived there he had many old haunts to visit. We spent the first day rambling through the woods, in the hills ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... general she is regarded as thoroughly untrustworthy. This particular relative, who is most interested in her, tells us she thinks the girl is mentally peculiar. She states that in general her mind is both romantic and rambling. She constantly has the idea that her beauty will bring her a wealthy husband. She lies about other people to these relatives and about them to others. They have a comfortable home and are very anxious for Amanda to do well, and many times have had serious talks with her, all to no purpose. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... is the central point of the city's life, is thus described by a former resident, Mr. Charles L. Lyons: "A low, rambling structure divided into three parts. The higher portion is of stone, and surrounded by verandas of carved teak wood, which are very ornate and elaborate specimens of eastern decorative art work. Adjoining this is the section occupied as living ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... last Thursday. It took me some time to find the cottage. After much rambling I came upon it in the most secluded part of the Common, in a slight hollow. It is a sort of double cottage, partly thatched, standing in a good-sized garden. I marched through a rickety gate, and made for the house door. The ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... fall, they are wont to initiate legislation and to guide the course of the discussion. But in America the legislatures, having no such central points about which to rally their forces, carry on their work in an aimless, rambling sort of way, through the agency of many standing committees. When a measure is proposed it is referred to one of the committees for examination before the house will have anything to do with it. Such a preliminary examination is of course necessary where there is ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... do of dogs and of most other domestic animals; though the cats of the same country present a considerable amount of fluctuating variability. The explanation obviously is that, from their nocturnal and rambling habits, indiscriminate crossing cannot without much trouble be prevented. Selection cannot be brought into play to produce distinct breeds, or to keep those distinct which have been imported from foreign lands. On the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... and went on with his argument.—"Besides, there is the gratification of making yourself considered in society—which no single man is. A single man is a kind of protected or licensed vagabond—rambling to and fro without stamp or mark, as Witwould might say,—like a sheep that has been overlooked at tarring time. His home is a desert to him,—and the love of social converse, which is so natural, and so amiable at the same time keeps him eternally in a state ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... have no friends, no best of friends, but all men that he met he would treat the same and so evade the harsh hand of fate. Forewarned was forearmed, he would have no more pardners such as men pick up in rambling around; but in this as in all else he would play a lone hand and so ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... Hogg's 'Life' has been republished in a cheap edition by Messrs. Routledge, and there is a cheap edition of Trelawny's 'Records' in Messrs. Routledge's "New Universal Library." But both these books, while they give incomparably vivid pictures of the poet, are rambling and unconventional, and should be supplemented by Professor Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' (2 vols., 1886), which will always remain the standard biography. Of other recent lives, Mr. A. Clutton-Brock's 'Shelley: the Man and the Poet' ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... said the American. "Nice rambling ark, two stories high, and no two rooms on the same level. Architect built right out into the country till he got tired, and then turned round and came back. Obliged to have a valet to show you to your room ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... secluded spot among the hills of northern New Jersey stood the old DeBost mansion, a rambling frame structure of many wings and gables that was well-nigh hidden from the road by the half-mile or more of second-growth timber which intervened. High on the hill it stood, and it was only by virtue of its altitude that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... fear I shall damage His work." At length, as he rode from Holyhead to London, he was taken seriously ill; and arrived at Fetter Lane in a state of high fever and exhaustion. For a week he lay delirious and rambling, in the room which is now used as the Vestry of the Moravian Chapel; and there, at the early age of thirty-six, he died {July 4th, 1755.}. If the true success is to labour, Cennick was successful; but if success is measured by visible results, he ended his brief and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rambling story of how he had helped to fight the fire, how sparks had fallen on him, and how he had to tear his shirt off because it was in flames. He gave a lurid description of the scene. The woman clucked her tongue at intervals, the man exclaimed, "Don't say so!" repeatedly, and the ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... say "no."[93] Instead, he entered upon a rambling excuse for advocating acquiescence in Stanton's request for delay. He rambled on that he believed that Governor Gillett had been indiscreet; that he (Johnson) did not propose to be dictated to by a "fanatical ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Charlotte Bronte paid another visit to London, and later to Scotland, where she found Edinburgh "compared to London like a vivid page of history compared to a dull treatise on political economy; as a lyric, brief, bright, clean, and vital as a flash of lightning, compared to a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the Seminoles," explained Charley. "They come in to the outlying towns at rare intervals to exchange their venison and skins for ammunition and cloth, and it's wonderful how quickly they pick up the language. But I am rambling. The question before us is, shall we abandon all our things and run away with a fair chance of escaping with whole skins, or stay and fight it out with the certainty of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... were met by a crowd of local grandees, who looked as if they had spent the greater part of their lives in brushing back their whiskers, and we drove up at once, in European carriages, to the Maharajah's palace. The look of it astonished me. It was a strange and rambling old Hindoo hill-fort, high perched on a scarped crag, like Edinburgh Castle, and accessible only on one side, up a gigantic staircase, guarded on either hand by huge sculptured elephants cut in the living sandstone. Below clustered the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... appearance. One day the Dowager happened to see in a newspaper a mention of the fact that there was in Sydney a man named Cubitt, who kept what he called a "Missing Friends' Office." To Cubitt accordingly she wrote a long rambling letter, in which, among other tokens of her state of mind, she gave a grossly incorrect account of her son's appearance, and even of his age; but Cubitt was to insert her long advertisement in the Australian papers, and he was promised a handsome reward. Cubitt, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Kill ennything," wrote an Imperial Valley farmer. "Its lethal effect on plantlife is instantaneous," agreed a former Beverly Hills resident. "I know there is not anything like Salt to destroy Weeds" was part of a long and rambling letter on blueruled tabletpaper, "In the June of 1926 or 7 I cannot remember exactly it may have been 28 I accidentally dropped some Salt on ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... not, but at last my rambling steps brought me opposite to the great, solemn-looking towers of the "Temple." The gloomy prison, within whose walls hundreds were then awaiting the fate which already their friends had suffered; little groups, gathered here and there in the open Place, were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... The name signifies "water valley." Colorado, the thirty-eighth State, was received March 3, 1875. Its constitution, however, was not ratified by the people until July 1, 1876; whence it is known as the "Centennial State." This region was explored by Coronado in 1540, while De Soto was rambling over the site of the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... thitherward, By nature taught, and native melody, In prime of youth, he bent his eagle eye. No cost was spared—what books he wished, he read; What sage to hear, he heard; what scenes to see He saw. And first in rambling school-boy days Britannia's mountain walks and heath girt lakes, And story telling glens, and founts, and brooks, And maids as dew-drops pure and fair, his soul, With grandeur filled, and melody, and love. ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... your High-fed, Lusty, Rambling, Rampant Ladies—that are troubl'd with the Vapours; 'tis your Ratifia, Persico, Cynamon, Citron, and Spirit of Clary, cause such Swi—m—ing in the Brain, that carries many a Guinea full-tide to the Doctor. But you are not to be Bred this way; ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... in Boulogne, (Gessoriacum,) in Arles, (Arelata,) or in Marseilles, (Massilia.) Now, the old Irish nobility—that part, I mean, which might be called the rural nobility—stood in the same relation to English manners and customs. Here might be found old rambling houses in the style of antique English manorial chateaus, ill planned, perhaps, as regarded convenience and economy, with long rambling galleries, and windows innumerable, that evidently had never looked ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... himself on his love of every kind of sport; and before the huntsman had finished a long, rambling story of the woodland tragedy he had formed his plans for the punishment of the offender and was writing a brief, urgent letter to a distant friend. As the result, a few days afterwards three little terriers, specially trained for "drawing" a badger, arrived at the Master's house, and were ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... getting out for sitting on the beach, bathing, or rambling about, and they were at close ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... reading. The letter told of the will, of the property, whatever it might be, left in trust for the child, and of the writer's desire that it might be used, when turned into money, for her education. There were two pages of rambling references to stocks and investments, the very vagueness of these references proving the weakening shrewdness and lack of business acumen of Captain Hall in his later ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... off suddenly into a great hill-dimple, just where the walls were laid; that was why Grandfather Holabird had chosen the spot. There could be a cellar-kitchen; and it had been needful for the moving, that all the rambling, outrunning L, which had held the kitchens and woodsheds before, should be cut off and disposed of as mere lumber. It was only the main building—L-shaped still, of three very large rooms below and five ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... objectionable tripper, was accepted almost as one of the family in a most exclusive little household. Edith, cool and graceful, sitting back in her wicker chair behind the daintily laid tea-table, seemed to take it all for granted. Mr. Cowper, after rambling on for some time, made an excuse and departed through the French windows of his library. Afterwards, Burton walked with his young hostess in the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or admittance among the gods, having revisited his native country, and being one day (as curiosity led him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's name, though but a young man, was infirm and sickly. Of several dishes served up to ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... two roofless and moss-grown cottages, I entered the narrow and rambling street which leads through the town. This street a short distance down widens a little, as if to afford the wayfarer space to observe a remarkable old house that stands on the northern side. The house was built of stone, and in a noble style of architecture; it reminded ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... how's this?" he said, as they rode along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. "How came you to be rambling about and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... lose faith in Mr. Bullard. You and he had a great opportunity yesterday of learning definitely Christopher Craig's intentions regarding his diamonds, and now you come home with a rambling story about a crazy clock that's going to stop goodness ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... where the children were to lodge, for there had been allotted to them from time immemorial, ever since children were known in the Peabody family, a great rambling upper chamber, with beds in the corners, where they were always bestowed as soon after dark as they could be convoyed thither under direction of Mopsey and the mistress of the household. This was not always—in truth it was ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly opposite our cottage. It is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in the colonial period, with rambling extensions, and gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides—a self-possessed, high-bred piece of architecture, with its nose in the air. It stands back from the road, and has an obsequious retinue of fringed elms and oaks and ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... like the Scheme sent him out of England about the Parliament, that it would be very expensive, and that he expected no good from the Parliament; that Loch Gairy was trusted by him with most of his motions, and how to send to him; that he has been a Rambling from one place to another about Flanders, generally from near Brussells towards Sens, and on the Borders of France down towards Air, except some small excursions he made; once he went to Hamburgh. He told Pickle that another rising ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... of this rambling letter comes the end of it. Be kind to me, be my friend, and be somebody else's lover, dear Weston. For I am spoilt for you. 'Her mad folly'—that was what you thought it. Well, it isn't ended, not even death has ended it. He reaches me still from where he is—Ah, and what ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... better for us, and that nature has given them a just and moderate temper both to pleasure and pain; neither can it fail of being just, being equal and common. But seeing we have enfranchised ourselves from her rules to give ourselves up to the rambling liberty of our own fancies, let us at least help to incline them to the most agreeable side. Plato fears our too vehemently engaging ourselves with pain and pleasure, forasmuch as these too much knit and ally the soul to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... brass spurs, in the next room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in the Allee Verte!" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holding on to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his imagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a frogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was loitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailing slowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rambling structure, bad for the voice, but capable of seating a few thousands. The curbs glared with green and red fire, and a band blared out the songs of freedom. The crowds surged back and forth, grumbling and laughing and shouting. And the near-by saloons did a land-office business. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... All this may seem rambling, but to a spectator of war indulging in a little philosophy it goes to the kernel of the meaning of victory to the French and to my own happiness in seeing the French win. Sometimes the Frenchman ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... altogether on the island; the largest, a kind of general storehouse, being built upon the beach just above high-water mark, so as to be easy of access from the water; whilst the remaining three, consisting of a dwelling for Giuseppe and his principal officers, a long, rambling barrack-like structure for the men who might happen to be left on shore, and a cook-house, were all erected on the top of the hill. The schooner naturally attracted a great deal of attention. She was dismantled, all to her lower masts, and was hove right down on her ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... his energies for the welfare of the nation, my mother was giving her life to her children. Sons and daughters were welcomed into the Owen homestead, and the wide halls and great rooms of the rambling country house rang with the voices of children. Three of these little ones slipped back to Heaven before the portals had closed. The stricken parents with blinded eyes met only the rayless emptiness of unbelief. May God help the mother, fainting beneath a bereavement ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in Victoire's left, and, with her lids closed uninterruptedly, her cheeks a little red, her lips quivering, the somnambulist, after some rambling utterances, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... afternoon seemed to assault him from all points at once and did not cease its battery even at his front door, but hustled him into the passage, blew him into the sitting room, and then celebrated its own exit from the long, rambling house by the banging of doors throughout the halls and the slamming of windows ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the spiritual directors of Queen Adelaide of Austria, the late wife of Victor Emmanuel. The number of priests, monks and nuns is very considerable. There is a very large Franciscan monastery up at Cimiez on the hill, and a rambling old Capuchin convent at St. Bartolome. The Nice Capuchins are a splendid body of men, and a goodly sight to see marching in a procession with their chocolate-colored hooded robes and long, flowing beards. Their present prior is a marquis Raggi of Genoa, a man of high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... What sudden rambling Noise Made all this Place both shake and move? Ah what do I see? 'tis ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... both on law and fact without a judge to direct them, or advocates to sift testimony and contend for or against the prisoner's guilt. The process, for it could not be called a trial, consisted of a vast series of rambling and tangled interrogatories reaching over a space of forty years without apparent connection or relevancy, skipping fantastically about from one period to another, back and forthwith apparently no other intent than to puzzle the prisoner, throw him ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of enemies; All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States, reminiscences, institutions, All these States compact, every square mile of these States without excepting a particle; Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air, The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler southward but returning northward early in the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... in an absolutely business-like manner. She requested a consultation, and listened while the gipsy, decidedly nervous, gave a rambling description of a dark gentleman and an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is a part of a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls that blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here were no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered playgrounds with swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes; with exquisite doghouses good enough for little girls' dolls ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... the direction indicated, and presently he arrived at the end of the village, where in an old orchard he found a low, rambling, dilapidated barn, before which clusters of soldiers in blue lounged around smoking fires. As he drew closer he saw that most of them seemed fixed in gloomy abstraction. A few were employed at some task of hand, and several bent over the pots ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... bumped along over roots and stumps until it was a wonder how Religion kept herself on the board which served for a seat. All the swamps and woods in Sawny were in bad repute. There was an old cemetery, rambling over many acres, lost in ivy and briers and immense trees, but abundant in ghost stories. There was the swamp through which Sherman's soldiers had cut a road, and near by was the hill-side where many sunken hollows ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Not a rambling, hap-hazard collection but a vade-mecum for youth from the ages of six or seven to sixteen or seventeen. It opens with Nursery Rhymes and lullabies, progresses through child rhymes and jingles to more mature nonsense verse; then come fairy verses and Christmas poems; then nature verse ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... a long and slightly rambling letter which suggested rough copies and even some assistance from the old vintages of the "Bald-faced Stag." He refused most firmly, though thoroughly sensible of the honour done him by Mr. Vaughan's offer, but he couldn't go back ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Rambling along the shore of Iris Island, every step presenting a new scene, impressing the mind with the greatness of God and the insignificance of man, while "the voice of many waters" proclaimed to erring reason "there is a God:" also, here, under the shade of a noble oak, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... with intervening shrubbery carefully cut down, the Judson mansion was not one to inspire confidence in its possessor. Outwardly, it was grey and weather-worn, with the shingles dropping off in places. At the sides, the rambling wings and outside stairways, branching off into space, conveyed the impression that the house had been recently subjected to a powerful influence of the centrifugal sort. But worst of all was the front elevation, with its two round windows, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... sake I weave these rambling numbers, Because I've lain an hour awake, And can't compose my slumbers; Because your beauty's gentle light Is round my pillow beaming, And flings, I know not why, to-night, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... off in a blaze of glory. That dome, which looked like a great cone, roofed in with milk-pans set on edge, was the crowning glory of a new tabernacle—not the one built without hands, for it took a great many hands to build this great, rambling affair, besides the cottages and tents and long, open stoops, that look out on the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole, so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of beauty, and of the vague melancholy ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... stories—which on account of their popular and concrete form were handed down for generations, and some of which linger on still in the midst of our modern civilization. These rituals and legends were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling and childish in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we have seen, were ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... it seem to you that Hawthorne had forgotten the Old Manse enough so that it could be called a digression? or do you think that the delightful, rambling character of the essay permits it? Can you divide this paragraph on pages ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way into this house-place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they said; they would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be perfectly content with a share of the food which she provided for herself; or would procure what they required from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston. But no liberal sum—no fair words—moved ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... these themes," I remarked, after a long rambling talk, half reverie, half reason, "that language conceals the ideas, or, rather, the imaginations they evolve; for the word idea implies something more tangible than vagaries which the Greek poet would have called 'the dream of the shadow of smoke.' But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... violinist henceforth lost no opportunity of delivering his little lectures, and would harangue for an hour together, not only about music and musicians, but about a thousand other things—a queer, high-flown, rambling jumble, often enough, which Madelon could not possibly follow nor understand, but to which she nevertheless liked to listen. A safer teacher she could hardly have had; she gained much positive information ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... enthusiasm of the night had somewhat subsided. "Whence came the inspiration of Moses?" flew up to his mind almost as soon as he opened his eyes on the sunlit world. He threw open the protrusive casement of his bedroom to the balmy air, tinged with a whiff of salt, and gazed pensively at the white town rambling down towards the shining river. Had God indeed revealed Himself on Mount Sinai? But this fresh doubt was banished by the renewed suspicion which, after having disturbed his dreams in nebulous distortions, sprang up in daylight clearness. It was his babbling about Dom Diego that ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Sue—you darling fool—this is almost more than I can endure! ... Mrs. Edlin—don't be frightened at my rambling—I've got to talk to myself lying here so many hours alone—she was once a woman whose intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp: who saw all MY superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away with a word. Then bitter affliction came to us, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Maginnis himself, sat on at the piano, his great fingers rambling deftly over the keys. He was playing Brahms now and doing it magnificently. He was fifteen stone, all bone and muscle, and looked thirty pounds heavier, because you imagined, mistakenly, that he carried a little fat. He was the richest man in the club, at least so far as prospects went, but he wore ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... criminals, implying that men can learn politics, while virtue is taught by parents and tutors and the State. Socrates asks whether virtue is one or many. Protagoras replies that there are five main virtues, knowledge, justice, courage, temperance and piety, all distinct. A long rambling speech causes Socrates to protest; his method is the short one of question and answer. By using some very questionable reasoning he proves that all these five virtues are identical. Accordingly, if virtue is one it can be taught, not however, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... small property of his own, some fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in convincing him that the wisest course for him to pursue is to go to some ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... seen and lingered upon the mill. It was a rambling structure, the great, splashing millwheel at the far end, the long warehouse in the middle, and the dwelling attached to the other end. There were barns, corn-cribs and other outbuildings as well, and some little tillable land connected ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... which, (like Ovid, in his Metamorphoses) he has perpetually recourse to Pastoral. Especially in his Second Book; in which there are more pleasurable Pastoral Images in every eight Lines, than in all his Pastorals. We have Knights basking in the Sun by a pleasant Stream, rambling among the Shepherdesses, entering delightful Groves surrounded with Trees, or the like, almost in every Stanza; but thro' all his Pastorals, we have not half a dozen beautiful Images. 'Tis therefore the Pastoral ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... with her usual high hand, feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance; and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to plant ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... their rambling footfalls. At the corner of Twenty-second Street was a crowd gathered, and a man with the customary reverted cap in charge of a moving picture machine. A swift car drew up before the large house at the southeast corner. Thrill upon thrill: something being filmed for the movies! In ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... to Enfield Chase, with directions to search for that undiscoverable house, to make thorough investigation of it, and to take into custody every individual therein. They found the place—an old rambling house in the heart of the Chase, full of trap-doors, passages, unexpected steps up or down, holes, corners, and cupboards at every turn. But it had no inhabitants save servants, and they could tell little. Their mistress was Mrs Perkins, the widowed sister of Mr Mease, a Berkshire farmer. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... boys had undergone, cramped in the canoe, and not daring to wander out of sight of their camp-fire when upon shore, there was a delicious relief in rambling through the woods. The clear, pure air that was dry and cool in the shadow of the forest, the undulating, charming scenery, the novel look that rested upon all they saw—these possessed a charm to our young friends which they hardly could have resisted, even if they had the will to do so; ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... we put up at a neat cottage lodging-house, kept by Miss P., a colored lady. Bath is a picturesque little village, embowered in perpetual green, and lying at the foot of a mountain on one side, and on the other by the margin of a rambling little river. It seems to have accumulated around it and within it, all the verdure and foliage of a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the very middle of the town, a quiet, rambling, overgrown village too near New York to ever become more than a residence place. The school was spread over many acres and its buildings, most of which had been there many years, had a look of mellow antiquity which the newer Brimfield halls had not had time to acquire. Wide-spreading elms shaded ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fine, rambling old house, which had recently come into Jack Cheriton's possession through the death of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Aunt Josephine. Great was her surprise when Billy turned into a grass-grown driveway which led past a broken-down gate and stopped at the door of a weather-gray house; its walls almost concealed by the vines growing from ground to gable and even rambling over the patched roof. At the door of the house stood a noble apple tree, spreading its branches in loving protection over the old stone steps which led ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... to finish this rambling letter. In the meanwhile, my best love to you and yours, and mind you are a better correspondent ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... has been scraped off and the coral rock exposed and glazed with hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter acre in size. They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs, for the wells are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks." (Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... in her conversation up to this point, but she was getting tired, and it was a long, rambling story she told, with many digressions and much irrelevant matter, but Eloise managed to follow her and get a fairly correct version of the truth. Candida, whom Amy loved devotedly, and with whom she had been very happy, had died after a brief ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... slightly knowing him. Heavily and somewhat clumsily built, of a vast, disjointed, rambling frame, he can still pull himself together, and figure, not without admiration, in the saloon or the ball-room. His hue and temperament are plentifully bilious; he has a saturnine eye; his cheek is of a dark blue where he has been shaven. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rambling through light and sunny places, but with some vague object unattained which ran indistinctly through them all, she awoke to find that it was yet night, and that the stars were shining brightly in the sky. At length, the day began ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the death-bed of their dearest friends, And point the parting anguish! Thought fond man Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills, That one incessant struggle render life— One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate, Vice in its high career would stand appall'd, And heedless, rambling impulse learn to think; The conscious heart of Charity would warm, And her wide wish Benevolence dilate; The social tear would rise, the social sigh, And into clear perfection gradual bliss, Refining still, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... long time we had looked forward to this day with many bright anticipations of fun and enjoyment. The important day at length arrived, and so early did we set out upon our excursion that we reached Harry's home before eight o'clock in the morning. We spent the forenoon in rambling over the farm, searching out every nook and corner which possessed any interest to our boyish minds. Accompanied by Harry we visited all his favourite haunts—which included a fine stream of water, where there was an abundance of fish; also a ledge of rocks which contained a curious ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... in this way that, in the progress of the dialogue which took place between the chief and his subordinate, the rambling malignity would break through the cooler counsels of the villain, and dark glimpses of the mystery of the transaction would burst upon the senses of the latter. Rivers had the faculty, however, of never exhibiting too much of himself; and when hurried ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... one of the insignificant villages of which I had been confined for a few years, was now reduced to a speck. The agreeable hours I had passed with the Brahmin, with the little daughter of Sing Fou, and my rambling over the neighbouring heights, all recurred to my mind, and I almost regretted the pleasures I had relinquished. I tried, with more success, to beguile the time by making notes in my journal; and after having devoted about an hour to this object, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... doors were green; the leafy porches and their columns, the chimney pots, the window hangings,—all were the colour of the unchanging forest. And it was a place of huge dimensions, low and long and rambling. It seemed to have been forcibly jammed into the steep slope that shot high above its chimneys; the mountain hung over its vine clad roof, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... heart of the coal country, and is not a particularly lovely town. It has a dream of an old-world hotel, though, and one may go a great deal farther and fare a great deal worse than at Bethune's Hotel du Nord, a great rambling, stone Renaissance building, with heavy decorated window-frames, queer rambling staircases, and ponderous, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Verendrye was born, and spent his boyhood. He was one of ten children, so that he must have had no lack of companions. We have no exact description of the home of the governor of Three Rivers, but it was probably much like that of other seigneurs or landed gentry of New France—a low, rambling, stone building, with walls solid enough to resist a siege, perhaps a wing or two, many {3} gables, and a lofty roof. It would be flanked, too, with many outhouses. It must not be supposed, however, that the governor of Three Rivers and his family lived ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of Autumn, when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. I spent some time in Poet's Corner, which occupies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the abbey. The monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary men ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... warriors bobbed along in single file; at sunset the spear blades seemed still wet with blood. They raised their long shields, adorned with crude geometrical designs, and sang for the white man a rambling song of parting. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... he guarded a vault and kept a record of the money that went in or out. The duties were not arduous, and in his long intervals of leisure his mind wandered far afield. It dwelt on the charm of flitting wings and bird melodies, on the pleasures of rambling along country roads and into the woodlands; and, sitting before the Treasury vault, at a high desk and facing an iron wall he began to write. There was no need for notes. His memory was all-sufficient, and the result was the essays which make ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... our situation. We are the prisoners of the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand, —mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, talk about appearances ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... should happen to us for our folly in running away so by night from one of the most excellent inns I ever set my foot into. I am sure I never saw more good things in my life, and the greatest lord in the land cannot live better in his own house than he may there. And to forsake such a house, and go a rambling about the country, the Lord knows whither, per devia rura viarum, I say nothing for my part; but some people might not have charity enough to conclude we were in our sober senses."—"Fie upon it, Mr Partridge!" says Jones, "have a better heart; consider you are going to face an enemy; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the confusion and interruptions amid which I write have made this rather a rambling letter. Do you visit the North in the Summer? I would be very happy to welcome you ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... was a large and rambling old place, and it was some time before the searchers reached the neighborhood of the festive garret. When they did, however, there was no longer any room for doubt. Wild laughter, and high-pitched voices singing many favorite nursery airs and school-room ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... do, ma'amselle; but this is such a strange rambling place! I have been lost in it already: they call it the double chamber, over the south rampart, and I went up this great stair-case to it. My lady's room is at the other ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... B——'s brother, was a mine of rare information and queer experiences. Educated for the law, his innate honesty had shrunk from the practice of his profession, and he had taken to rambling as people take to drink, turning up at irregular intervals to claim whatever might be available of the l2 10s. per quarter bequeathed to him by his father. His strong point was finding his way into outlandish places, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... have fallen into second childhood to think of PRINTING such rambling hasty scrawls as I write. I never could write a good letter; and unless I gallop as hard as I can, and don't stop to think, I can say nothing; so all is confused and unconnected: only I fancy YOU will be amused by some of my 'impressions'. I have ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon |
