"Vainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impatient voice: My Seer, he cried, When shall my children cross the lonely tide? Here, here my sons, the hand of culture bring, Here teach the lawn to smile, the grove to sing: Ye laboring floods, no longer vainly glide, Ye harvests load them, and ye forests ride; Bear the deep burden from the joyous swain, And tell the world where peace ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... cessation, except perhaps some accidental and momentary respite. During the winter months, while the principal common schools in our country are in operation, it is sad to reflect how many teachers come home every evening with bewildered and aching heads, having been vainly trying all the day to do six things at a time, while He who made the human mind has determined that it shall do but one. How many become discouraged and disheartened by what they consider the unavoidable trials of a teacher's life, and give up in despair, ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... fearful legends that he had known from childhood and then believed, he regarded now as built upon facts distorted, overlaid by imagination, and quickened by superstition. Even the strange summons at the threshold, that he himself had vainly answered, was, after the first shock of surprise, rationally explained by him as malicious foolery on the part of some clever trickster, who withheld ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... fell out better than I could have hoped, for under the porte cochere was the coach in which we had come to Lady Newcastle's. My sister, learning that I had gone home with Madame van Hunker, had driven thither to fetch me, and Nicolas was vainly trying to find some one to tell me that she was waiting. I carried the child, now sobbing and calling for her mother, to the carriage, and explained the state of affairs as well as I could while trying to hush her. Annora was quick ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vainly endeavored to trace any affinity between the Chinese language and that of other nations, ancient or modern. It is unique,—an original tongue, and, what is equally remarkable, no other nation, except the neighboring Japanese, have ever borrowed from it, or amalgamated ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... commanded him to stay there. Suddenly dog and child darted at each other, and then, to Sir Edward's amazement, he saw his little niece seize Fritz by the throat and bring him to the ground. When both were rolling over one another, and Fritz's short, sharp barks became rather indignant in tone, as he vainly tried to escape from the little hands so tightly round him, Sir Edward thought ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... Cause is dead, Vainly he died and set his seal— Stonewall! Earnest in error, as we feel; True to the thing he deemed was due, True as John ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... but, thanks to their pistols, and the extraordinary strength of the half-breed, four of the assailants were killed. The fifth was dragged away by the fugitives, who reached a boat which had been pulled up on the beach and was laden with three huge turtles. A score of natives pursued and vainly tried to stop them; the former were driven off, and the boat was launched successfully and steered ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Lexow disclosures of inconceivable rottenness of a Tammany police; the woe unto you! of Christian priests calling vainly upon the chief of the city "to save its children from a living hell," and the contemptuous reply on the witness-stand of the head of the party of organized robbery, at the door of which it was all laid, that he was ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... growths of a soil well guanoed by ferocity. They sported the scarlet suit of the Carib, but of a dye less innocent, as if the fated islands imparted this color to the men who preyed upon them. A cotton shirt hung on their shoulders, and a pair of cotton drawers struggled vainly to cover their thighs: you had to look very closely to pronounce upon the material, it was so stained with blood and fat. Their bronzed faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... effort. The Governor declined to use his authority to purchase arms, assured as he was on all sides that there was no danger of war, and that the United States arsenal at Baton Rouge, completely in our power, would furnish more than we could need. It was vainly urged in reply that the stores of the arsenal were almost valueless, the arms being altered flintlock muskets, and the accouterments out of date. The current was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... long for them, but I'm afraid my nice little plan for Laura will be spoilt," said Jessie Delano to herself, as she shook her head over a pair of small, dilapidated slippers almost past mending. While she vainly pricked her fingers over them for the last time, her mind was full of girlish hopes and fears, as well as of anxieties far too serious for ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... nearly four months! My right-hand neighbor, a citizen of Beaucaire, assures me, “It will be nothing, only a strong ‘mistral’ for to-morrow.” An electrician is putting the finishing touches to his arrangements. He tries vainly to concentrate some light on the box where the committee is to sit, which is screened by a bit of crumbling wall, but ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... to avoid this evil, purchasing others, and taking them himself to his lodgings. Rudolph started with joy when he thought of the happiness for Mrs. George, who was at last about to see this son, so long and vainly sought. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... finally refractory he was to be sentenced as a felon. This terrible measure, intended partly to reduce lawless vagrancy, partly to supply cheap labor to employers, failed of its purpose and was repealed in two years. Its re-enactment was vainly urged by Cecil upon Parliament in 1559. As a substitute for it in this year the law was passed forbidding masters to receive any workman without a testimonial from his last employer; laborers were ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Lady Coryston called the "revolution"—a man who had suffered cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, married ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this general Maxim in Philosophy, some of them have endeavoured to place Men in such a State of Pleasure, or Indolence at least, as they vainly imagined the Happiness of the Supreme Being to consist in. On the other Hand, the most virtuous Sect of Philosophers have created a chimerical wise Man, whom they made exempt from Passion and Pain, and thought it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... John's—with these she could cope, her lord had had them all. But in Richard she was shy of the bleak isolation, the self-sufficing, the hard, chill core. She dreaded it, yet it drew her; she was tempted to beat vainly at it for the passion's sake; and so in this case she dared to do. She would cheerfully have killed the minion, but she dared the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Sir Ingoldsby Bray, Rise up, rise up, I say to thee; A soldier, I trow, Of the Cross art thou; Rise up, rise up, from thy bended knee! Ill it seems that soldier true Of Holy Church should vainly sue:— —Foot-pages they are by no means rare, A thriftless crew, I ween, be they; Well mote we spare A Page—or a pair, For the matter of that—Sir Ingoldsby Bray, But stout and true Soldiers like you, Grow scarcer and scarcer every day!— Be prayers for the dead Duly read, Let a mass be ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... deeds we know them, as heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain. Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that she is but a poor dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts, in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... business of the country consequent upon the war, some of our statesmen who had held different and sounder views were induced to yield their scruples and, indeed, settled convictions of its unconstitutionality, and to give it their sanction as an expedient which they vainly hoped might produce relief. It was a most unfortunate error, as the subsequent history and final catastrophe of that dangerous and corrupt institution have abundantly proved. The bank, with its numerous branches ramified into the States, soon brought many ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... planted in us by inheritance from our ancestors, that none of us should love the other, but that ever brother should strive with brother and son against father? I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of our hereditary right nor vainly seek to rob us of our nature." Henry loved his children, and could never bring himself to make war very seriously against them. Henry died young in 1183, and Geoffrey in 1185. Richard was now the heir of all his father's lands, from the Tweed to the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... repeat it aloud; though I said it a hundred times, I would never blush for it. It is not I who speak; and the wonderful empire, the amiable violence of your presence, sway my voice as soon as I begin to speak. Vainly does my modesty take secret offence at it; vainly would my sex and decency bind me to other laws; it is your eyes that dictate my answer, and my lips, the slaves of their almighty power, no longer consult me on the self-respect I ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... to act among the bushes and broken ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they would have remained ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... boys!" cried Jack. And not giving the sappers more than time to scramble up, we were off in a swift rush through the darkness. The quickly formed line broke irregularly, as we ran over the space between us and the abatis, the sappers vainly trying ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance," mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and are vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia. Jealousy and revenge are clearly indicated. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... O warning vainly said In present years, as in the years gone by; Love flings a halo round the dear one's head, Faultless, immortal—till they change or die." ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and Van were once more back at Colversham greeting the boys and vainly endeavoring to settle down to the work ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do. His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike. His failure was caused, perhaps, by scruples as to the use of live bait, which led him to look up some elaborate recipes in Walton's 'Compleat Angler.' Pike, though not very intelligent, have long ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lava shag; Their fruit he would string 'bout his neck; Their fruit he finds wilted and crushed, Mere rubbish to litter the road— 10 Ah, the perfume! Pana-ewa is drunk with the scent; The breath of it spreads through the groves. Vainly flares the old king's passion, Craving a sauce for his meat and mine. The summer has flown; winter has come: 15 Ah, that is the head of our troubles. Palsied are you and helpless am I; You shrink from a plunge in the water; Alas, poor me! ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... alone through hate; through lawless love Have I still more abused the sovereign good. My heart was vainly turned towards the man Who left me in misfortune, who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of this publication is to prove from example that the pain of disappointment will be much increased by ill-temper, and that to yield to the force of necessity will be found wiser than vainly to oppose it. The contrast between the principal character with the peevishness of her cousins' temper is intended as an incitement to that placid disposition which will form the happiness of social life in every stage, and which, therefore, should not be thought beneath ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... over her arm she reached up and took hold of the saddle, doubtfully at first, and then desperately; tried to reach the stirrup with one foot, failed and tried again; and then wildly struggling, jumping, kicking, she vainly sought to climb back to the saddle. But the pony was not accustomed to such a demonstration at mounting and he strongly objected. Tossing his head he reared and dashed off, almost throwing the girl to the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... reaps the reward of his victory; and in proportion as he reaps that reward fear is overcome. Our primary fear being fear of matter, much is gained by grasping the fact which modern science for the past ten or fifteen years has been carefully putting before us—vainly as far as most of us are concerned—that what we call matter is a force subject to the control of mind, while the directing of mind rests wholly with ourselves. Since we have controlled matter to make it in so many ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... girls in their Camp Fire bathing suits were in the waters of the lake near their camp, Polly and Betty swimming with long even strokes toward its center, Mollie hovering near the shore, while Esther stood shivering in a foot of water trying vainly to warm herself by splashing and throwing handfuls of water ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... reveal? Come close then to me, dearest, listen well, While what I am no longer I conceal. I serve my fellow-men, a glorious right; Thanks for that smile, dear maid, I know 'tis due. Yes, many have I served by day and night; With me to aid them, none need vainly sue. Nay, do not praise me, love, but nearer come, That I may whisper, I'm a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, Mrs. Oke would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed scrutinisingly on his wife, as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. During our walks and rides, which we continued ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas, walking in ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think, (there is nothing new,) it is only genuineness; it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... After vainly pounding and kicking the door, they lifted a heavy steel shaft and using this as a battering ram, proceeded to smash the door from its fastenings. At first this did not avail. But at last each succeeding blow left a slightly ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... it doing the same thing in a don't-care-a-bit sort of way. Regarded from five hours later, I fancy my performances with the two noble steeds in my charge must have been distinctly amusing to view, had anyone been unoccupied enough to watch me. Vainly did I try to induce them to drink of the printer's-ink-like fluid, water and mud, already stirred up by hundreds of other horses. When they did go in, they went for a splash, a paddle, and a roll, not to imbibe, and I had to go with them a little way, nearly up to my knees, in the mud. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... carpet of dried grass and wild camomile, with pale-red sand peeping through the burnt and scanty herbage. On the low mounds, that looked like heaps of sifted ashes, struggled now and then into sickliness a ragged, twisted shrub. There were flowers too, but so sparse, that they sparkled vainly in the colorless waste, which stretched to the horizon. The farmhouses were twenty miles apart, and nine out of ten of them were new ones built by the Boers since they degenerated into white savages: mere huts, with domed kitchens behind ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... no advocate and no defence. Its great proprietor, the Public, is perfectly satisfied with his purchase and his agents. He thinks himself providentially guided in the choice of his Superintendent, and does not vainly pique himself upon his sagacity in selecting Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted for the post. This gentleman, in his place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is precisely the man for the place,—and that is precisely the place for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... frantically back and forth. He ceased his cries as their lights flashed into view. "Stop, stop!" he shouted, "don't come a step further. I am sinking a foot a minute. The ground is rotten here. I guess it's up to me to say good-bye, chums," he continued in a voice he strove vainly to make steady. "You can't help me, and I'm ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it: "undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand decrees only renders its fall ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The cheerful conception of this service on the part of a deaf-mute was to fill the air with violent gestures to indicate—and it was vivid enough—that we could not possibly escape destruction. One of his series represented with uncomfortable clearness a drowning man vainly striving to climb up a vertical wall. This pantomime was the last thing I saw from my position at the oars as we turned a bend and left ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... what it was to hold your being upon the breath of another. You can reason calmly, because you cannot know the extent of feeling you are vainly ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... affliction, it purified and sanctified. To Eric, as he rested his aching head on a pillow wet with tears, and vainly sought for the sleep whose blessing he had never learned to prize before, how odious seemed all the vice which he had seen and partaken in since he became an inmate of that little room. How his soul revolted with infinite disgust ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... too, the singular influence the man has upon me. It is the undefinable in his art—black art. Seriously, dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the eyes with those unfathomable orbs of his, which I have already vainly attempted to describe to you. How dreadful if we have the power to make one fall in love! Do you know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power— ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... room for four months. Feeling a little better one day, he ordered his yacht to be brought up to the Neva, opposite his palace, and embarked to visit some of his works on Lake Ladoga. His physicians, vainly remonstrating against it, accompanied him. It was the middle of October. The weather continuing fine, the emperor remained upon the water, visiting his works upon the shore of the lake and of the Gulf of Finland, until the 5th of November. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... bands of savages, under French instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, in desperate campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of peace between England and France confirmed and reconfirmed the French claims to the main part of her American domain. The advances of French missions ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in those words, he rose to take his leave. The landlord vainly invited him to drink a parting glass; the landlady vainly pressed him to stay another ten minutes and try a cup of tea. He only replied that his sister expected him, and that he must return to the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... there," was his answer. And he went on talking over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse. I tried to dismiss it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick. Presently Dominic, hailing ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Growing weary of him, Rochester found a more worthy object for his favour in Thomas Otway, a poet rich in all the miseries which afflicted genius in those days. Son of the rector of Woolbeding, pupil at Winchester School, and commoner of Christchurch, Cambridge, he had on his arrival in town vainly sought employment as an actor, and barely earned bread as a play-writer. Before he became a PROTEGE of my Lord Rochester he had written "Alcibiades," a tragedy, he being then, in 1665, in his twenty-fifth year. His next play was "Don Carlos, Prince ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... walked up the street, he trod on air. It was like a dream come true. He would be crossing the Pacific, going to foreign lands, getting the very job he had been vainly longing for—and getting ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... so," she whimpered complainingly, trying vainly to steady the glasses. He slipped his arms around her, and let her lean against him; she did not even seem to realize it. Just then she had caught sight of something, and her intense interest steadied her so that she stood ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... went, and he turned ignominiously after it. If he was running the Charlestonian was flying. He shot across first base, and on, just grazing second base—unseen by Tug, who had turned his back and was yelling vainly to the center-fielder to throw him the ball he had not yet caught up with. On the Charlestonian sped in a blind hurry. He very much resembled a young man decidedly anxious to get home as soon as possible. He flew past third base and on down like an antelope ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she would not have treated him so outrageously at a time ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Thus the day passed vainly; the night brought no more success. The two following days brought no tidings, though nothing was neglected in the search. Of the male searchers, scarcely any one knew Surja Mukhi by sight; so they seized many poor women ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... dear mother," said the boy, looking archly round at his attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by signs to silence her ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the Governor of the Havanna was apprised of the surrender of the fort, vainly imagining he had overthrown half his enemies at least, he caused great rejoicings to be made in the island, as if he had gained a decisive victory, or carried a citadel of importance. He also sent off several vessels to victual and refresh his warriors, who, according to him, must have been greatly ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Simon Lee, Give me your tool" to him I said; And at the word right gladly he Received my proffer'd aid. I struck, and with a single blow The tangled root I sever'd, At which the poor old man so long And vainly had endeavoured. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be throbbing violently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not pleasant to witness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... accustomed for so many years to act as beaters for this well-known animal that they had not the slightest nervousness; they knew the ground thoroughly, and the old mucharns, which had been vainly occupied so often, had simply been strengthened, but were ready ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two or three of the papers, looked at the theatre announcements, made a face seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet; hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new tooth-powder of which he had heard, and threw down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering, "These papers become more and more stupid every day." A moment after, a carriage ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Unto each prescribed His destined path, Which the happy one Runs o'er swiftly To his glad goal: He whose heart cruel Fate hath contracted, Struggles but vainly Against all the barriers The brazen thread raises, But which the harsh shears Must ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Other critics of the administration, mainly Republicans, became interested in the Liberal revolt—those who deprecated the President's choice of associates and advisors, the civil service reformers who were aroused by the dismissal of Secretaries Hoar and Cox, and the tariff reformers who had vainly attempted to arouse ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, as well as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use any inappropriate freedom. At last, one day while she waited vainly outside the cabinet in which the King was retired with a few of his councillors, Jeanne's patience failed her altogether. She knocked at the door, and being admitted threw herself at the feet of the King. To Jeanne he was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... weariness of the week's work. I may have passed and repassed in the street some of the families that they were the mothers of; it was in that fortnight of the great heat, whose oppressiveness I am aware of having vainly attempted to share with the reader, and the street children seemed to have been roused to uncommon vigilance by it. They played about far into the night, unrebuked by their mothers, and the large babies, whom the little girls were always lugging, shared ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... striking his thigh with his hand with a sort of convulsive motion, he exclaimed, "No, gentlemen: I will have no Regency! With my Guards and Marmont's corps I shall be in Paris to-morrow." Ney and Macdonald vainly endeavoured to undeceive him respecting this impracticable design. He rose with marked ill-humour, and rubbing his head, as he was in the habit of doing when agitated, he said in a loud and authoritative ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the hither side a flood of logs was sweeping and tearing down, like a mighty breastwork suddenly loosened. Dan started back in terror at the sight, and was about to spring up the bank to a place of safety, when his eyes rested upon the form of a man out in the midst of that rush of destruction, vainly trying to free himself from the watery chasm which had suddenly yawned beneath his feet. Dan's heart beat wildly at the sight. But only for an instant did he hesitate. Then forward he leaped like a greyhound. Forgotten was ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... is the sentiment which finds expression in the pathetic speech of Henry V.'s father when he vainly seeks that sleep which thousands of his poorest subjects enjoy. The sleepless king points to the irony of reclining on the kingly couch beneath canopies of costly state when sleep refuses to weigh his eyelids down or steep his senses in forgetfulness. The king is credited with control of every ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... had disappeared from the tableland as suddenly but not as' tracklessly as a phantom. Lonely men in their tents and three or four mothers of families in their slab humpies looked out vainly for him for three days, anticipating necessary vegetables, and, being disappointed, slandered him courageously, while they found consolation in the reflection that if he ever came his round again they would distress and vex him by withholding payments for the vegetables of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... up at the ceiling and vainly tried to think of something else to say. As his eyes wandered over the gray painted joists and the spaces of plaster between, he saw, not without qualms, that the little chandelier with the old-fashioned cut-glass pendants ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Peter took for a human voice. And again he lay shivering close to the foot-deep carpet of needles under him, while his heart thumped against his ribs, and his whiskers stood out in mortal fear. There followed a weird and appalling silence, and in that stillness Peter quested vainly for the sunlight he had lost. And then, indistinctly, but bringing with it a new thrill, he heard another sound. It was a soft and distant rippling of running water. He knew that sound. It was friendly. He had played among the rocks and pebbles and sand where it was made. His courage came ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... has been alluded to. He found himself unable to sleep as formerly. Long after retiring to rest he would lie wide awake, vainly courting the gentle influence that seemed to shun him the more it was wooed. The rays of the morning sun would sometimes stream into the window before sleep had visited his eyelids, and he would rise haggard, and weary, and desponding. And if he did sink into ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the viscous scum,—in strange contrast to his splendid appearance now! And Kearney well remembered the same, noting in addition a scar on Santander's cheek—he had himself given—which the latter vainly sought to conceal beneath whiskers since permitted to grow their ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the Legislature ought to extend the Factory Acts to Hillsborough trades, and so check the heartless avarice of the parents. At present, no class of her Majesty's subjects cries so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and the humanity of Parliament as these poor little children; their parents, the lowest and most degraded set of brutes in England, teach them swearing and indecency at home, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... want particularly to emphasize here is just this: that trees and plants don't grow out of the ground at all, as most people do vainly talk, but directly out of the air; and that when they die or get consumed, they return once more to the atmosphere from which they were taken. Trees ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... trying vainly to turn his head so that he might see her. "What has happened—why have ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Vainly had every possible attempt been made to catch him off his guard; he had proved himself to be too crafty for the best revenue officers put upon his track. And when failure after failure became the rule, the Big Boss had decided to change the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... passage, as if to escape from the horror of what she had done. In almost a state of panic she ran across the quadrangle, and, turning into the garden, sought refuge inside the tool-shed. Here she was found some time afterwards by Janie, who had been sent to look for her, and had vainly searched St. Chad's and every other likely spot ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... lavish pomp, they had to grind their vassals and tenants, and if there be a beautiful pony or a fine cow which my lady covets, she will have them, and well it happens if the daughters, yea, even the wives, escape the lust of their lord. And the small free-holders around them must either vainly follow or give bail for them, resulting in their own ruin, the loss of their possessions, and the sale of their patrimony, or expect to be hated and despised, and forced to every idle pursuit. Oh ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... hand with the exterminating angel! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one. Where would be Death's triumph, if none lived to weep? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out, as if spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands, ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the study fire, and Milly stood before him, one little hand resting upon his knee and the other holding her tiny handkerchief to her eyes, and vainly trying to ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... village had often, but vainly, endeavored to lead these unhappy people to a sense of religion, but he was always received by them with scoffing ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... Astronomical Society,—I congratulate you and myself that we have lived to see the great and hitherto impassable barrier to our excursion into the sidereal universe, that barrier against which we have chafed so long and so vainly—aestuantes angusto limite mundi—almost simultaneously overleaped at three different points. It is the greatest and most glorious triumph which practical astronomy has ever witnessed. Perhaps I ought not to speak so strongly; ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... (by way of parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not active? Was ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... it would insist very emphatically upon marriage and the purity of the home, much more emphatically than we do now. Such a case as the one numbered 197, a beautiful instance of the sweet, old-fashioned, homely, simple life of the poor we Socialists are supposed to be vainly endeavouring to undermine—would certainly be dealt with in a drastic ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... ashore. Seated on a stone on shore, watching operations, is The Other Man. The sun vainly tries to get through, and the intense cold is almost unendurable. No hitch is to occur this time. The toughest and stoutest bamboo hawsers are dexterously brought out, their inboard ends bound in a flash firmly round the mast close down ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... empire, Moravians and Hungarians came to their assistance, but the imperial forces were too powerful and the rising was suppressed, only to be renewed in 1624, when Denmark espoused the Protestant cause, but struggled vainly against Catholic armies under Wallenstein and Tilly. The tactless oppression of the Emperor Ferdinand again fanned into flame the fires of rebellion; Swedish armies now came to the assistance of the Protestants, and under Gustavus Adolphus ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: "What madness drives the Theban ladies fair "To give their incense to surrounding air? "Say why this new sprung deity preferr'd? "Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? "Or say why Caeus offspring is obey'd, "While to my goddesship no tribute's paid? "For me no altars blaze with living fires, "No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, "Tho' Cadmus' palace, not unknown to fame, "And Phrygian nations all revere my name. "Where'er ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... to arrive and the young surgeon, after listening vainly for a promising flutter of the heart, officially pronounced the merchant dead. When the coroner arrived, he was assured that nothing in the private office had been disturbed, after which he proceeded ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... vainly, tough unbending was the bow, Slightly bent, rebounding quickly, laid the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shore, and begins to experience the various little annoyances that a "new-chum" must necessarily undergo, he realizes most thoroughly the pleasures and comforts he has left behind him on board ship; and, very frequently, vainly endeavours to suppress the wish that he was back on board "the old hooker" making the voyage out ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Lord's abiding Vainly sought 'mid shadows dim? Lo! His purpose wisely hiding, Thee He ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall |
