"Wakeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweet to brood on memories and sorrows. The monotonous twitter soothes to sleep like a lullaby; you drive and feel you are falling asleep, but suddenly there comes the abrupt agitated cry of a wakeful bird, or a vague sound like a voice crying out in wonder "A-ah, a-ah!" and slumber closes one's eyelids again. Or you drive by a little creek where there are bushes and hear the bird, called by the steppe dwellers "the sleeper," call "Asleep, asleep, asleep!" while another ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... had settled into seemed more a genuine physical condition than an affected one. The head, back-tilted, and sunk between the shoulders, looked abnormally large, while the features of the face appeared peculiarly child-like—especially the eyes—wakeful and wide apart, and very bright, yet very mild and very artless; and the drawn and cramped outline of the legs and feet, and of the arms and hands, even to the shrunken, slender-looking fingers, all combined to most strikingly convey to the pained senses the fragile ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... pipe, took a final sweeping survey of the strange room which was the last word in comfort, pressed off the lights, and found himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms of silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw that inimitable knee-lift of her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... strangeness of the new world where he might, in the reaction from the first excitement, have been feeling lonely. He was too solidly set on getting all that was possible out of his fresh life. But in his most curious searchings into the likely future as he lay that night for an hour or so upon a wakeful pillow, he did not picture anything as delightful as, in after years, he was to realise Hilaria Eliot had been for those boys who at the time so casually and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... few minutes on this occasion, said that I was quite at liberty to choose the subject of my remarks. So I have chosen as a text a discovery I have made very much like that of Benjamin Franklin, who advised the people of Paris that he had made a great discovery—that being wakeful one morning he discovered that the sun rose at Paris at five o'clock, and that if they would rise with the sun and go to bed with the sun they would save an enormous sum—millions of francs —in the cost of candles and lamps, and greatly improve their health and morals. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lay wakeful still, When Paul arose and sat upon the sward. He said: 'I cannot sleep; unbidden thoughts That will not down crowd on my restless brain. Captain, I know not how, but still I know That I shall see but one more sunrise. Morn Will bring the clash ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... ago. Poor Mrs. Day had grown to think her predilection to indulge in slumber when she went to bed was a failing to be apologised for and hidden, if possible. She was often driven fictitiously to protest that she also had lain wakeful. He received a like statement when she made ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... is to slide cautiously the strong bar and undo the chain which fastens the gate. It is done skilfully enough, but the chain clanks or the hinges creak. The wakeful Robertson springs quickly to his feet. His keen eyes catch sight of the swift, dark figures, moving ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... passed a somewhat wakeful night after the scene in which Helena Pitstone had bestowed her first confidences on her new companion. For Lucy Friend the experience had been unprecedented and agitating. She had lived in a world where men and women do not talk much about ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... starlight night is awakened by the harsh bark of the elk; the lofty mountains, grey with the silvery moonlight, echo back the sound; and the wakeful hounds answer the well-known cry by a prolonged ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... given comfort to thousands. You, in your safe, tranquil homes, cannot know the pleasure it gives to look out of the window in the wakeful nights and watch those wheeling comets circling, circling to catch ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... regions are more dreadful than the days, for "night is the time for care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair comes to our lonely tent;" and often when I lay me down I fall into a dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet "dreaming dreams no mortals had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... into the Red House and went up to bed and lay wakeful. Very certainly she loved Barry, with all her imagination and all her mind, and she would have given him more than all that was hers. Very surely and truly she loved him, even if after all he was to be her uncle by marriage, which would make their family life ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... to the association of ideas; but it was a good, dull, leaden, drowsy place, where every article of furniture reminded you that you came there to sleep, and that you were expected to go to sleep. There was no wakeful reflection of the fire there, as in your modern chambers, which upon the darkest nights have a watchful consciousness of French polish; the old Spanish mahogany winked at it now and then, as a dozing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... blessing few can find, Our joys with those we love are intertwined, And he whose wakeful tenderness removes The obstructing thorn that wounds the breast he loves, Smooths not another's rugged path alone, But scatters ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... the horn of his saddle in his weakness. The horse's head is hanging heavy with sleep, but the man's great, wild eyes are wide open and alight with burning eagerness. The horse sleeps and frequently has to be awakened by its rider as it stumbles beneath its burden; but the man is as wakeful as the night-owl seeking its prey, and the grim set of his wasted face implies ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... precipitation with which this new friendship had been formed, and the subsequent abrupt exchange of confidences, had scarcely impressed him as unusual. He was wholly absorbed by the radical thought which the man had voiced. He mulled over it in his wakeful hours that night. He could not prevent it from coloring the lecture which he delivered to his class in ancient history that day. And when the sun at length dropped behind La Popa, he hurried eagerly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... night she nursed her with unremitting care. And in the morning, when the fever waned, and the patient was wakeful, though exhausted, she left her only to bring the refreshing cup of tea and plate of toast prepared by her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a brief good-night; but lying awake nearly two hours afterwards, she heard him pass her door on the way to his room. He too was wakeful, therefore, and full ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... did; but I am one of the wakeful kind. Being an invalid, I am more easily annoyed by small inconveniences. You, with your sturdy health, are ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... their regulated seats they took: The strutting prior gazed with pompous mien, And wakeful tongue, prepared with prompt rebuke, If monk asleep in sheltering hood was seen; He wary often peeped ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... day as best he could with small tasks, was smoking beside his fire and enviously watching his dog. Job had no cares to keep him wakeful. It was about eight o'clock, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Indians, encamped among the shrubberies on the back lawn, secretly buried their dead behind the crumbling walls of its weedy garden—the "dead" provided by the children's battles, be it understood. Wakeful ears in the night-nursery had heard strange sounds coming from that direction when the windows were open on hot summer nights; and the gardener, supreme authority on all that happened in the night (since they believed that he sat up to watch the vegetables ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... of danger, but danger of a kind that never daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it. The apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the kitchen, Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of the aged, the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close surveillance of the girl in the day-time,—all these things were obstacles, and made success a thing well-nigh impossible. But ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... of light I wandered; In blank darkness I stumbled, And fear led me by the hand; My feet pressed earthward, Afraid of pitfalls. By many shapeless terrors of the night affrighted, To the wakeful day ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... scholars maintained the services. But often she would struggle up and conduct the Sunday meetings herself, although it meant a sleepless night. "I am ashamed to confess," she wrote, "that our poor wee services here take as much out of me as the great meetings at home did." To fill in the wakeful hours she would rise in the middle of the night, light a candle, and answer a batch of correspondence. There were friends to whom she did not require to write often: "Ours is like the life above, we do not need to tell; we can ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... wreck occur. This was trying, as I lay there, wakeful and hopeful, with plenty of time to study the perplexing question whether it is legitimate, under any circumstance, to wish for a wreck or ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the door—a handsome, dishevelled fellow—with hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a second voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his friends. Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once to napping. From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each arriving more unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his fee and no more messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in his chair. McLean and Barker ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... decided that he wished to say something to me, tell me something, and could not. But I was selfishly sleepy, and it seemed to me that anything he had on his mind would keep there till morning, at least, and that if he got it off on mine now, it might give me a night of wakeful speculation. So when I got into bed and pulled the sheet up under my chin, I said, "Well, I don't want to turn you out, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... cuddled the forlorn little things to the best of her ability, but it was past midnight before the last weary, sobbing baby was fairly asleep, while all night long one or another would start up terrified from some frightful dream, to be soothed into quiet by the patient motherly tenderness of their wakeful protector. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... most of the Strangers slept around them. Those who were awake recognized them, shook hands and said a few words. They were a taciturn lot. After supper Carstairs and Wharton dropped upon the grass and were soon sound asleep. Scott was inclined to be wakeful and he walked along the edge of the glade, looking ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a great dread of masturbation as a vice, she does not hesitate to relieve her physical feelings when it seems best to her to do so. "I am usually able to direct my thoughts from these sensations," she writes, "but if they seem to make me irritable or wakeful, I relieve myself. It is a physical act, unassociated with deep feeling of any kind. I have always felt that it was a rather unpleasant compromise with my physical nature, but certainly necessary in my case. Yet, I have abstained from gratification ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting with her former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and wakeful nights, the past relinquished its false claim upon her life. She saw that it was false, that she had been frightened where no fear was, that her deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in the handcuffs with which until now she had bound ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... emotional person in a spasmodic and egotistical fashion, he found himself thinking presently of Janet Merryweather, as he had thought more than once during the wakeful hours of the night. He felt, somehow, that she had been treated detestably, and he was angry with his uncle for having left him, as he described it, "in such a deuce of a hole." "One can't acknowledge the girl, I suppose, though for the matter of that those tell-tale eyes of hers are not ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... week in March. Wilfrid could not keep from sobbing aloud. In the early period of such a captivity, imagination, deprived of all other food, conjures phantasms for the employment of the brain; but there is still some consciousness within the torpid intellect wakeful to laugh at them as they fly, though they have held us at their mercy. The face of time had been imaged like the withering mask of a corpse to him. He had felt, nevertheless, that things had gone on as we trust them to do at the closing of our eyelids: he had preserved ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "soles, broiled fowl, and mushrooms," in the private sitting-room at the Bull, when all the other Pickwickians had, "after the cosy couple of hours succeeding dinner, more or less succumbed to the somniferous influence which the wine had exerted over them," and he and Mr. Jingle alone remained wakeful, and were discussing the idea of attending the forthcoming ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... one house only, nobody has gone to rest. Every living thing there is wakeful, from the master of the house to the watch-dog. It is the squire's house. All its windows are lit up and all its ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the wakeful starry crowd Their vigil begin to keep; And the hovering mists the flowerets shroud, And their buds ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... filled with silent, wakeful coolies, armed with rifles. The grim and watchful silence of the procession, the black mystery of the night with the sinking, cold moon aloft, and the uncertainty of the whole affair, set Peter's nerves to tingling; and his heart was beginning to react to the high excitement ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... manager a wakeful twenty-four hours to untangle the industrial snarl which was the receiver's legacy to his successor; and David Kent slept through the major part of that interval, rising only in time to dress for dinner on the day following ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... for he had a fever soon after the last recounted domestic occurrences, during which illness his brain once or twice wandered, when he shrieked out, "Broken! Broken! It never, never can be mended!" to the silent terror of his mother, who sate watching the poor child as he tossed wakeful upon his midnight bed. His malady defied her skill, and increased in spite of all the nostrums which the good widow kept in her closet and administered so freely to her people. She had to undergo another humiliation, and one day little Mr. Dempster beheld her at his door ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with tears. In the room at the end of the passage she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in silence then so she listened in ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and hears from day to day. Even amongst the English (whose good sense and sound religious knowledge would be likely to guard them from error) I have known the calculating merchant, the inquisitive traveller, and the post-captain, with his bright, wakeful eye of command—I have known all these surrender themselves to the really magic-like influence of other people’s minds. Their language at first is that they are “staggered,” leading you by that expression to suppose that they had been witnesses to some phenomenon, which it was very difficult ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Allan has gone to bed, worn out by our long day's journey, and has left me in the room they call the library, to tell you the story of our journey to Norfolk. Being better seasoned than he is to fatigues of all kinds, my eyes are quite wakeful enough for writing a letter, though the clock on the chimney-piece points to midnight, and we have been traveling since ten in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... she went to bed) was in the hall, nursing Illuminato, who couldn't sleep—a small bundle of scarlet night-shirt and round bullet head, burrowing under his mother's left arm and staring out from that place of comfort with very bright and wakeful eyes. When, indeed, it might have been asked, did any of the Margerison family take their rest? No one of them ever felt or expressed any surprise at finding any other awake and active at any hour ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... is to remember that gunshot, many a wakeful night. For the forecast of a mishap in that fatal pool is soon to be dissipated. As the party draws nearer the dog runs back in his eagerness, then forward again. And then Lady Gwendolen follows him into the wood, and the men follow her in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... mighty prince who sends me here; Upon his distant throne he thinks of thee; For as the sun, with his great eye of flame, Sheds light and plenty all abroad the world, So sweeps the sovereign's eye on every side; Even to the farthest limits of his realm His care is wakeful and his ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... and paused to grasp again his broken thread of thought. In the fatal moment when his wakeful consciousness was diverted, and before Lord James could interpose to avert the act, his subconsciousness automatically caused his left hand to raise the glass which it held ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Captain Harewood besought Wilmet to rest—the latter declaring himself to be too much of an East Indian to sleep at dawn; and she consented to lie down in the little room, where she had enough of wakeful slumber to strengthen her for the heat of the day, when the fever ran high, and all ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... therefore dost not ask me who I am, Or why to thee more joyous I appear, Than any other in this gladsome throng. The truth is as thou deem'st; for in this hue Both less and greater in that mirror look, In which thy thoughts, or ere thou think'st, are shown. But, that the love, which keeps me wakeful ever, Urging with sacred thirst of sweet desire, May be contended fully, let thy voice, Fearless, and frank and jocund, utter forth Thy will distinctly, utter forth the wish, Whereto my ready answer ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... he the prison door did pass, He ran as fast as both his feet could bear, And never looked who behind him was, Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear That creeping close among the hives, to rear An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy, And him assailing, sore his carcass tear, That hardly he away with life does fly, Nor stays till safe himself he ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... contrary, was very wakeful. He had an unpleasant sensation about his throat as though he had been hanged, and cut down before he was dead; and he suffered the unutterable mortification of knowing that, after a long and successful social career, he had been detected by his worst enemy in a piece of disgraceful ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... mourn over. He could only commiserate others. Your intensest grief must begin with yourself. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Ennis, and sprang in pursuit of the leaders, "Shoe," and Mayhew following. "It's fire!" went up the cry along the hillside. "Fire!" echoed the nearest sentry, letting fly the load in his rifle. "Fire!" shouted the few wakeful fellows in barracks, tumbling instantly every man from his bunk to his boots and into his ready clothes. "Fire!" yelled the sergeant-of-the-guard, as he tore in among his sleeping comrades. "Fire!" echoed the cry from barrack to barrack, ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... grandeur. The inspiration of the prophet elevates the fancy to flights of more than usual boldness. Its import is exactly what that of a religious drama ought to be: on earth, the struggle between good and evil; and in heaven the wakeful eye of providence beaming, from unapproachable glory, rays of constancy and resolution. All is animated by one breath—the poet's pious enthusiasm, of whose sincerity neither his life nor the work itself ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... The Lady Anne visits the Court II The Sleeping Innocence—the Wakeful Crime III New Dangers to the House of York—and the King's Heart allies itself with Rebellion against the King's Throne IV The Foster-brothers V The Lover and the Gallant—Woman's Choice VI Warwick returns-appeases a Discontented Prince-and confers with a Revengeful Conspirator VII The ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not a soul hears this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three days, and cannot last until sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsily hushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to the birds ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... earth outside the hospital, were answered only by an "order" to keep myself tranquil—prevent the discomposure of my pulse, and duly drink my ptisan. All this, however, was for the general ear. The feebleness which kept me confined to my bed during the day, had made my nights wakeful. On this night, whether on the anxiety of the day, or the heavier roar of the siege, for the bombardment was now at its height, I exhibited signs of returning fever, and the Beguine remained in attendance. But when the crowd had gone to such rest as they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... quiet conscience. I was sorry that he should think that I was so easily knocked up; but it was not over-fatigue, nor yet his scolding, that had brought the tears to my eyes. To-day was the second anniversary of Charlie's death, and through that long, wakeful night, as I sat beside poor Mary's bed, I was recalling the bitter hours when my darling went down deeper into the place of shadows,—when he fought away his young life, while Lesbia and I wept and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... growth; what a stain on our character; and what an impediment to the fulfillment of our destiny! Could our worst enemies or the worst enemies of republics, wish us a severer judgment?" How could one know that wakeful and sagacious enemies without would not discover the vulnerable point and use it for the country's overthrow? Or was there not danger that among a people goaded from age to age there might at length arise some second ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... of it, I doubt not. No, he who hath been so vigilant throughout the day must needs tire of the task as night draws on. Fare thee well, wakeful Dudley; if thine eyes should open on the morrow, be thankful that the maidens have not stitched thy garments ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... breath of flowers and of the woods was in the morning air, and from some cabin afar on the side of a distant mountain a wakeful watchdog barked till the crags reverberated with ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... out you'd calmly pass him by, For nothing in his make-up or his way would catch your eye. He seemed indifferent to the world, the kind that doesn't care— That's satisfied with just enough to eat and drink and wear; That doesn't laugh when others do or cry when others weep, But seems to walk the wakeful world half dormant and asleep; Then came the war, and soldiers marched and drums began to roll, And suddenly we realized his body ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... Never once had Laughing Water Shown resentment at the outrage. All had they endured in silence, That the rights of guest and stranger, 140 That the virtue of free-giving, By a look might not be lessened, By a word might not be broken. Once at midnight Hiawatha, Ever wakeful, ever watchful, 145 In the wigwam, dimly lighted By the brands that still were burning, By the glimmering, flickering fire-light, Heard a sighing, oft repeated, Heard a sobbing as of sorrow. 150 ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all night. "They never seem to sit down like other people," one of the Chinese said pathetically. "They walk all night, all night, and we cannot sleep." Parkes sent sympathetic messages, but he remained courteously firm. Perhaps he thought a few wakeful hours were not too high a price to pay for ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow; but this night he was very wakeful. The stories he had heard, both from his teacher and his mother, led him to think of the end of wicked men; and he resolved, as he had never done before, that, with God's help, he would try ...
— The Lost Kitty • Harriette Newell Woods Baker (AKA Aunt Hattie)
... of what passed between Mr. and Mrs. Markland remained distinct enough in both their minds, on the next morning, to produce thoughtfulness and reserve. The night to each had been restless and wakeful; and in the snatches of sleep which came at weary intervals were dreams that ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... dutifully walking with her to her car. Miss Toland said nothing of the visitor when Julia came back, but she knew the girl was troubled, and lay awake a long time herself that night, conscious that Julia, in the next room, was restless and wakeful. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he grasped a thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face, and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic. The boy almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the owl's cry. It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah believed, and sometimes he believed it with ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... had seal'd each mortal eye, Stretch'd in the tents the Grecian leaders lie: The immortals slumber'd on their thrones above; All, but the ever-wakeful eyes of Jove.(76) To honour Thetis' son he bends his care, And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war: Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight, And thus commands the vision ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... servant of an unworthy master was indeed in a pitiable condition. His ordinarily neat and clean dress was crumpled and disarranged, as though he had not changed it during the night, but had rather been tossing and wakeful. His eyes were swollen, and tears were trickling down his cheeks. His voice had sunk to a husky choking, and when he stood before Agias he was unable to get out a word, but, after a few vain attempts ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... moaning; and the Pacific would not be pacified. However, the reputation of the ocean was good enough to go to sleep on, but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting and plunging ship. It was not a "sound of revelry by night," to which the wakeful listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a high sea—grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes rising and smiting like ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... some remedies which he thought would relieve Elsie, and left her, saying he would call the next day, hoping to find her better. But the next day came, and the next, and still Elsie was on her bed,—feverish, restless, wakeful, silent. At night she tossed about and wandered, and it became at length apparent that there was a settled attack, something like what they called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... idea suggested itself to the active mind of the artist, that this wonderful and but partially explored agent might be rendered subservient to that system of intercommunication which had become so important a principle of modern civilization. He brooded over the subject as he walked the deck, or lay wakeful in his berth, and by the time he arrived at New York, had so far matured his invention as to have decided upon a telegraph of signs, which is essentially that now in use. After having sufficiently demonstrated his discovery to the scientific, a long period of toil, anxiety, and suspense intervened ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... was the midnight air, Whose gentle motions hush'd the silent grove; Silent, unless when prick'd with wakeful care Philomel warbled out her tale of love: While blooming flowers, which in the meadows grew, O'er all the place their blended ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... pleasure, forgotten, his entire thoughts being given to the invalid. No more beautiful picture of filial devotion could suggest itself to the painter of domestic subjects than this, Dore with table and sketching materials seated in his mother's sick-room, or at night ministering to her in wakeful moments. At dawn he would snatch a few hours' sleep, but that was all. No wonder that his own health should give way so soon after the death-blow of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a succession of forebodings, dreamed or half-wakeful. Spent and dispirited, he rose at an hour quite out of accord with the habits of The Retreat, sped his car to New York, and put his inquiry to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the noon of night: And Phosphor, on the confines of the light, 120 Promised the sun; ere day began to spring, The tuneful lark already stretch'd her wing, And flickering on her nest, made short essays to sing. When wakeful Palamon, preventing day, Took to the royal lists his early way, To Venus at her fane, in her own house, to pray. There, falling on his knees before her shrine, He thus implored with prayers her ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... in that posture seemed perfectly well satisfied to doze away the night. The singularity of my night's lodging made me awake several times, when I always found some of the Esquimaux eating, though, after we lay down, they kept quite quiet for fear of disturbing us. Mr. Halse, who was still more wakeful, told me that some of them were incessantly employed in this manner for more than three hours. Indeed, the quantity of meat that thus they contrive to get rid of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... devoted himself almost wholly to this publication and the advocacy of the cause of peace until 1829, when he relinquished its editorship. "This must be looked upon as a very remarkable work," wrote Henry Ware, the younger. "To his wakeful mind everything that occurred and everything that he read offered him materials; he appeared to see nothing which had not a bearing on this one topic; and his book becomes a boundless repository of curious, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... that Mr. Fotheringham understood what inexpressible gratitude was conveyed in those words, only to be appreciated after watching those six wakeful, straining days and nights. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resting place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider down! Through darksome night till dawn of day, Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay Of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and to reckon up the sums, to see if they would enable me to meet the demands upon me. The next thing was to do the same thing over again; and the next, to do it over again a third time. All this was accompanied with long and deep-drawn sighs, which were listened to by a fond and wakeful bedfellow, who silently sympathized with me in all my trials, and who was as restless and anxious as myself. Sometimes I moaned, and sometimes I prayed; and when I was wearied out with my fruitless labors, I fell asleep. It would have been better, if I could have done it, to ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... his guest his own bed—the bear-skin bed he was so proud of and loved so much to sleep on—spreading for himself instead a buffalo-rug on the floor. In a little while the spirit of sleep had descended on every weary soul in the fort—all save the wakeful Grumbo, who, crouched on his bear-skin out there under the shed, maintained, as was his habit, vigilant watch through the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Celia had it out with herself, and spent a wakeful night. But she brought a cheerful face to Lansing's early breakfast, and when the younger members of the family came down later she was ready for them with the sunshine they had dreaded ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... and the scent of the byres from Jean's shoes and her clothes stealing round her while her father prayed. She was bewildered by him: very often, when he prayed long and she was falling asleep after her wakeful night, she would feel impatient with him, especially when he prayed loud and long that she might be brought to a conviction of sin. He puzzled her unendurably; sometimes her old docility to his autocracy made her feel that she really must be the miserable ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... had struck, and still Morva lay wakeful, with wide-open eyes, watching the hurrying clouds. At last she slept for an hour or two, and her uninterrupted breathing showed that the invigorating sleep of youth had at length fallen upon her weary eyelids. For ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... of mine, and of the house of Pitcullo and the ash-tree at the door, and the sea beyond the ploughed land of the plain. So, after some space of silence, he went to his bed, and I to mine, where for long I lay wakeful, painting on the dark the face of Elliot, and her blue eyes, and remembering her ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... a lovely time on Christmas. The night before the children hung up their stockings, but it was midnight before I could get round to fill them, they were so excited and wakeful. I "hied me softly to my stilly couch," and was just dropping off into delicious slumber when at 1 A.M. the strains of musical instruments (which you had sent) were heard below. Then I appreciated to the full the sentiment of that ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... grief in thy heart and bred misery? Or doth memory of maiden in beauty deckt * Cause this doubt in thee, this despondency? O night, thou art longsome for love-sick sprite * Complaining of Love and its ecstacy: Thou makest him wakeful, who burns with fire * Of a love, like the live coal's ardency. The moon is witness my heart is held * By a moonlight brow of the brightest blee: I reckt not to see me by Love ensnared * Till ensnared before ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... we did not fail to hear every night afterward, though at no time so incessantly and so favorably as now, was the barking of the house-dogs, from the loudest and hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves of heaven, from the patient but anxious mastiff to the timid and wakeful terrier, at first loud and rapid, then faint and slow, to be imitated only in a whisper; wow-wow-wow-wow—wo—wo—w—w. Even in a retired and uninhabited district like this, it was a sufficiency of sound for the ear of night, and more impressive than ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Anne a good while to go to sleep that night. Blue dimity dresses and shining slippers danced before her wakeful eyes, and a white ribbon to tie back her hair. Already she was trying to decide what her present to Amanda should be; and it seemed to her that she had just gone to sleep when Rose was shaking her gently and saying: ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... was decidedly in their favour, for it would help to screen them from the observation of any wakeful and inquisitive coastguard. In fact, the unusual combination of wind and fog seemed like a special sign of good omen to ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... day with him, merely sitting by the bed and reading while he himself read or dozed. His nights were wakeful—he found it easier to sleep by day—and he liked to think that some one was there. He became interested in Hardy's Jude, and spoke of it with high approval, urging me to read it. He dwelt a good deal on the morals of it, or rather on the lack of them. He followed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the time that the bo'sun had made an end of explaining these matters, we had ceased from eating, and soon after this we made each one of us a comfortable place in the sand within the tent, and lay down to sleep. For a while, I found myself very wakeful, which may have been because of the warmth of the night, and, indeed, at last I got up and went out of the tent, conceiving that I might the better find sleep in the open air. And so it proved; for, having lain down at the side of the tent, a little way from the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... and unfortunately they prevented him from completing his work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life, and when in his final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did later, back into life, he repented of all he had written, and in the frenzy of a wakeful night burned all his manuscripts, including the second part of Dead Souls, only fragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part to be written. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice. Accounts ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... But my poor old head, what shall I do with it! You ask about my health; I am as well as I can be without sleep. I have had only one really good night since the baby came, to say nothing of those before; some worse than others, to be sure; but all wakeful to a degree that tries my faith not a little. I don't see what is to hinder my going crazy one of these days. However, I won't if I can help it. George goes to Germany this week. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... and unattended Let me descend to Hades. Though thou shouldst In thine own veil enwrap the guilty one, Thou couldst not shroud him from his wakeful foes; And e'en thy sacred presence, heavenly maid, But driveth them aside and scares them not. With brazen, impious feet they dare not tread Within the precincts of this sacred grove Yet in the distance, ever and anon, I hear their horrid laughter, like the howl Of famish'd wolves, beneath the tree ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... endeavouring to look as wakeful as possible, 'what is it you complain of? I really came home with every wish and desire to be happy. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... it possible that such a state of things can be desirable, or beneficial to any of the parties concerned. I might occupy a hundred pages on the subject, and yet fail to give an adequate idea of the sore, angry, ever wakeful pride that seemed to torment these poor wretches. In many of them it was so excessive, that all feeling of displeasure, or even of ridicule, was lost in pity. One of these was a pretty girl, whose natural disposition must have been gentle and ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... secretion in the folds of his blotting-paper during examination. The said enamoured youth had evidently placed it there for the sake of its inspiring qualities; and it was said that all his hopes of gaining the hand of the fair original depended upon his passing that same examination. But the wakeful eye of a stern examiner had watched him as he turned again and again to consult the sweet face which beamed from beneath his blotting-paper; and he narrowly escaped expulsion from the Senate-house on the charge of 'cribbing.' Certainly he ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... very soft, sir, because of the old lady. She's abed, but she might be wakeful, specially to-night. She's been awful ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... It moves a little, accompanying it you unconsciously move it more. The experiment is curious because, on some days, the table will not budge, on others it instantly sets up a peculiar gliding movement, in which it almost seems to escape from the superimposed hands, while the most wakeful attention cannot detect any conscious action of the muscles. If you try the opposite experiment, namely conscious pushing of the most gradual kind, you find that the exertion is very distinctly sensible. The author has made ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... against a piece of board, such as is used in binding books, for a desk. This plan was necessary for one so short-sighted as she was; and, besides, it enabled her to use pencil and paper, as she sat near the fire in the twilight hours, or if (as was too often the case) she was wakeful for hours in the night. Her finished manuscripts were copied from these pencil scraps, in clear, legible, delicate traced writing, almost as easy to ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... carried him beyond bounds. The weight to be given to Schopenhauer's opinion touching any religious subject may be measured by the following quotation: "The happiest moment of life is the completest forgetfulness of self in sleep, and the wretchedest is the most wakeful and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... In Bombay, during my wakeful moments in the hottest part of the day, I had passed the time and imbibed instruction by reading the three delightful books of the late E. H. Aitken, who called himself "Eha"— "Behind the Bungalow," "The Tribes on My Frontier" and "A Naturalist on the Prowl." No more amusing and kindly studies ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... outward purpose, till an hour, When wakened by the wind which with full voice Swept bellowing through the darkness on to dawn, He rose, and out of slumber calling two That still had tended on him from his birth, Before the wakeful ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... them, however. Whether it was the cake, or the change of air, or the strange bed, or still stranger circumstances, or all combined, it would be hard to say, but it seemed to Dick that the longer he lay in bed the more wakeful he became. The thought of the diamond began to worry him, and soon assumed gigantic proportions in his mind. Suppose it got lost. Perhaps it was worth a hundred pounds, as Jerry had suggested. Suppose a magpie flew off with it. It might be worth ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... wakeful priest oft drops a tear For human pride, for human woe, When, at his midnight mass, he hears The infernal ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... my heart is fainting 'Neath its weight of sin and fears, And my wakeful eyes are failing With these ever-falling tears! For the morning I am sighing, While I earth's long vigils keep; Here the loved are ever dying, And the loving live ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... an almost physical pang. "I must go and get her right off," he said; "this thing is serious!" And yet, after a wakeful night, he decided, with the extraordinary respect for her individuality so characteristic of the man—a respect that may be called foolish or divine, as you happen to look at it—he decided not to go. If he dragged her away ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... mother's mysterious sorrow, that could claim from one usually so calm, sympathy so intense and painful. Then she sat down again to listen and to wait. How long the time seemed! The lids fell down over the baby's wakeful eyes at last, and Graeme, gathering her own frock over the little limbs, and murmuring loving words ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... whose last words to me, as I tipped her with a gratuity, were oracular:—"Forty long years and more have I lived in lodgin'-houses and never before seen a sarpint. It behooves all on us, now, to be watchful for what may be coming next, and wakeful. Circumspectangular." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... woman was gone. She, all day-sunshine, would have none of the moon. Always she must live like a bird, looking down on all the world at once, so that it lay all subsidiary to herself, herself the wakeful consciousness hovering over the world like a hawk, like a sleep of wakefulness. And, like a bird, she went to ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... e'er a grief, dear? Lock it in thy heart! Keep it, close it, Sacred and apart; Lest another, at thy sigh, Hear his sorrow stir and cry. Wakeful watch doth sorrow keep: Hush it! ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... too, which interested me much. During the two wakeful nights in question, and immediately after the disappearance of Mrs. Wyatt into the extra stateroom, I was attracted by certain singular cautious, subdued noises in that of her husband. After listening to them for some time, with thoughtful ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... in her berth, staring at the shadows overhead, the rush of the wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles of wakeful lucidity. The sleeping-car had sunk into its night-silence. Through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of hurrying blackness. Now and then she turned her head and looked through the opening in the hangings at her husband's curtains ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Out of which the little Anthony and he drank doubtless at all pores, vigorously as they had done in no school before. A change total and immediate. Somniferous green Llanblethian has suddenly been blotted out; presto, here are wakeful Passy and the noises of paved Paris instead. Innocent ingenious Mr. Reece in drab breeches and white stockings, he with his mild Christmas galas and peaceable rules of Dilworth and Butterworth, has given place to such a saturnalia of panoramic, symbolic and other teachers and monitors, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... willingness to obey orders, and soon after all were hushed in sleep, the ever-wakeful stars only looking down upon one erect figure, and that was the form of Dr Lascelles, as he stood near the faintly glowing fire, leaning upon his rifle, and listening intently for the faintest sound of danger that might be on its way ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... the front door like a letter-box, with a slit outside for them to drop change into, and the pole rope pulls down through the window-frame. There ain't so much travel by night as there used to be, and a body learns to be wakeful anyhow if they've ever had the care of sick ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... us to picture his first night in New Zealand. The son of the Yorkshire blacksmith, the voyager in convict-ships, the chaplain of New South Wales in the days of rum and chain-gangs, was not the man to be troubled by nerves. But even Marsden was wakeful on that night. Thinking of many things—thoughts not to be expressed—the missionary paced up and down on the sea beach by which a tribe was encamped. The air was pleasant, the stars shone brightly, in front of him the sea spread smoothly, peacefully ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... probably do but carry the semi-vigilant experience to a higher degree, as do the beholders of visual hallucinations, when wide awake. In this way, at least, we can most nearly attain to understanding their experiences. To a relatively small proportion of people, in wakeful existence, experiences occur with distinctness, which to a large proportion of persons occur ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... and listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps, and then went up to her chamber to pass the night, wakeful, too content to be willing to lose the time in sleep, and so the dawn of morning ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... Arch-priests of intercession, Of undivided heart. The fulness of anointing On these is doubly shed, The consecration of their God Is on each low-bowed head. They bear the golden vials With white and trembling hand; In quiet room Or wakeful gloom These ministers ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... Wrangler replied, with evident sincerity. "I'm not what you'd call a connoisseur in infantile disorders, but I guess she's sick. Anyhow, something's the matter. It may be malaria, or chills, or measles, or whooping-cough, or Bright's disease. But whatever it is, it keeps her very wakeful at night. It disturbs her rest sadly. That might, perhaps, be overlooked; but as an intimate consequence it also disturbs mine. At first I supposed it was because she did not get enough nourishment, so, as she wouldn't drink any more milk from her bottle, I bought a syringe, ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... the chamber warm, the business to be transacted monotonous; and Blondel, far from well and interested in one thing only—beside which the most important affairs of Geneva seemed small as the doings of an ant-hill viewed through a glass—had fallen asleep, or nearly asleep. Naturally a restless and wakeful man, of thin habit and nervous temperament, he had never done such a thing before: and it was unfortunate that he succumbed on this occasion, for while he drowsed the current of business changed. The debate grew serious, even vital. Finally he awoke to the knowledge of place and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... silent and unexciting on board the Gull, and I went shivering below with exalted notions of the courage, endurance, and businesslike vigour of our coast heroes. I now lay wakeful and expectant. Presently the ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... wakeful man was at his sick wife's side, supporting her in bed as she sat up wildly ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... her mother meant? Was it all a mistake? Had his wretched days and wakeful nights been for nothing? Was there nothing for him to be grieved about? He knew now how much he loved her—and she? He was not a part of her life, at all. Would he dare speak the words ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... your bed, when you ought to be refreshing your body with sleep; and, finally, when they have ravished your sleep, they open your mind to all the hideous spectres and shapes that are always waiting, like hungry unemployed, to get busy in a wakeful ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... wonder by the very fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his meditative and wakeful hours. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... dark, it shines indeed Like the sign of a lover who turns to the dark of sleep. Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks still In darkened waves whose breaking echoes o'er The wondering world of my wakeful day, till I'm lost In the midst of the places I knew ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... ultimate fate of the mutineers. But as the boat grew smaller and smaller in the distance, so did their consciousness of their own situation grow more and more distinct; and when at last the boat had disappeared in the shadow of the brig, all started, as if from a dream, to the wakeful ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... she hopes that fear will come to me lying wakeful in the night. Wherefore 'tis but a question of going gently to sleep. O Svearek, Torbek, and Beorna, could you but see how I am ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... determined to state to Lord Glenfallen freely and accurately the substance of the communication which I had just heard, and in his words and looks to seek for its proof or refutation; full of these thoughts I remained wakeful and excited all night, every moment fancying that I heard the step, or saw the figure of my recent visitor towards whom I felt a species of horror and dread which I can hardly describe. There was something in her face, though her features had evidently been ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... end as abruptly as it lad begun, and the singer, having nothing better to do, went fast asleep. His companion, more wakeful, lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes upon the splendor of the firmament. Lying so, he could not see the valleys nor the looming mountains. There were only the dome of the sky, the grass, and himself. He stared at the moon, and made pictures of her shadowy places; then fell ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... their couches, and Julia, worn out by the excitement of the day, soon slept. But anxious and burning thoughts rolled over the mind of the wakeful Thessalian. She listened to the calm breathing of Julia; and her ear, accustomed to the finest distinctions of sound, speedily assured her of the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel. At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these meditations, and his health was far from being benefitted by this severe mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking, and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the greatest patience, perseverance, energy and hopefulness. He watched ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... he had not actually caught any, but that he would have caught several but for accidents, which he explained to me in technical language. Then he asked me in his turn where I was going to that evening. I said I had no object before me, that I would sleep when I felt sleepy, and wake when I felt wakeful, and that I would so drift down Thames till I came to anything unpleasant, when it was my design to leave my canoe at once, to tie it up to a post, and to go off to another place, "for," I told ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... notions which had given them birth found, as she perceived more and more clearly, a warrant in her feelings, if not in her conduct. Look at it how she would, she was wrapped up in Harry Tristram; she spent her days watching his fortunes, any wakeful hour of the night found her occupied in thinking of him. Was she a traitor to her friend Janie Iver? Was that treachery bringing her back, by a roundabout way, to a new alliance with her uncle? Did it involve treason to Harry himself? For certainly ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... kind at last, and this indeed Is recompense for all the ills I've past; For all the sorrows which my heart has known, Each wakeful night, and ev'ry day of anguish. This, this has sweet'n'd all my bitter cup, And gave me once again to taste of joy, Joy which has long been stranger to this bosom. Hence—hence disgrace—off, ignominy off— But one embrace—I ask but one ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... he cried, and started from his seat, "when she is there yonder waiting for me. A word would rouse her from her sleep, if she does sleep. She may be sitting at her window even now, wakeful and wretched as I, and ready to trust me, to let me lead her far away from all this misery and despair. Heaven never could mean us to suffer as we do. It is a natural prompting. She must ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... too. I ate and slept, and morning came at length And brought my Lady's letter to my bed: Thrice read and thirty kisses, came a thought, As the sweet morning laughed about the room Of the poor face downstairs, the sunshine there Playing about it like a wakeful child Whose weary mother sleepeth in the dawn, Pressing soft fingers round about the eyes To make them open, then with laughing shout Making a gambol all her body's length Ah me! poor eyes that never open more! And mine as blithe to meet the morning's glance As thirsty ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... There was another source of insomnia beside the prospect ahead. They had both cajoled Annie into putting their hair up in curl papers, because all the girls, even to Becky Davis, were going to do something new and wonderful with their hair. So the two victims of fashion slept in half-wakeful discomfort, until Elizabeth's heavy locks overcame their bounds and gave her relief and rest. But there was great disappointment in the morning, for while Mary's short, flaxen hair stood out round her head in a very halo of frizzly curls, Elizabeth's hung ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... With the rash moods of terror and of pain, I did not think ye could, in such an hour, So steal from me, as in a sleep, a dream— What is't that comes between me and the light? Protect me, Jove! Lo, what untended flowers, That all night long, like little wakeful babes, Darkly repine, and weep themselves asleep, In the orient morning lift their pretty eyes, Tear smiling, to behold the sun their sire Enter the gilded chambers of the east— Strange droopingness! What ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Satan's snare and evil fetter. Here is A Kempis's forest of vices out of which he hewed down one every year. Restless lust, outward senses, empty phantoms, always longing to get, always sparing to give, careless as to talk, unwilling to sit silent, eager for food, wakeful for news, weary of a good book, quick to anger, easy of offence at my neighbour, and too ready to judge him, too merry over prosperity, and too gloomy, fretful, and peevish in adversity; so often making good rules for my future life, and coming ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any remorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night,—a monster that kept her wakeful with a dull, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... with a blanket and Winchester, the other two retired to the hut prepared for their reception, and lay down, as they thought, for the night. Duff was soon asleep, but Ralph remained wakeful. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... clouds—and (shame on the confession!) I have performed head worship to the front of my seat, instead of keeping an immovable post-like position, before his reverence. However, a church doze is seldom admired by the wakeful. Should an embryo snore escape from one's nose (and this is possible,) some old grandam, or an upright piece of masculine sanctity, is sure to rouse you; the former will either hem you into awakening shame, or drop her prayer-book on the floor; the latter will most likely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... men's oars at first, and latterly the suppressed sounds of their voices, had excited the wrath of the wakeful sentinel in the courtyard, who now exalted his deep voice into such a horrid and continuous din that it awakened his brute master, as savage a ban-dog as himself. His cry from a window, of 'How now, Tearum, what's the matter, sir? down, d—n ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in love, and might be seen through the hotel window writing, candles all around him, at a table, covering one pale blue sheet after another with impassioned farewells. Sergeants and corporals and men were wakeful. Some of these, too, were writing letters, sending messages; others joined in the discussion as to the theatre of war, or made knots of their own, centres of conjectures and prophecy; others roamed the streets, or down by the river bank watched the dark stream. Of these, a few proposed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... game of whist, and determined to look about him without loss of time for some quiet, respectable club. At eleven he retired with his wife to bed, but could not sleep. He tossed and turned, and turned and tossed, but grew only more and more wakeful and energetic. A little after midnight an overpowering desire seized him to go and wish the children good-night. He slipped on a dressing-gown and stole into the nursery. He did not intend it, but the opening of the door awoke ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... for boulders, stumps, and rising ground impeded him. Darkness descended when he was but half-way home and nearly on a level with the top of the wall. Forced to stop, he threw himself down, exhausted, yet nervous and wakeful, as any other animal in a strange place. But the familiar moon came out, shining through the foliage, and this soothed him ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... mounts the winged winds Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds, That high through fields of air his flight sustain O'er the wide earth, and o'er the boundless main: He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly, Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye; Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria's steep, And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep. So watery fowl, that seek their fishy food, With wings expanded o'er the foaming flood, Now sailing smooth the level surface sweep, Now dip their pinions ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... her. Her eyes were not only open, but wakeful, and her small face looked white against ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a low, deep note grew softly out of the distance. For a time it blended musically with the murmuring of the bustling creek and the wakeful insect life. Then it dominated both, and its music lessened. Its note changed rapidly, so rapidly that its softer tone was at once forgotten, and only the harshness it now assumed remained in the mind. Louder and harsher ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... light was beautiful as the light of stars; and, night after night, as the lonely wight sat alone and read in his lofty tower, through the mist, and mirk, and dropping rain, it streamed out into the darkness, and was seen by many wakeful eyes. To the poor Student Hieronymus it was a wonderful Aladdin's Lamp; for in its flame a Divinity revealed herself unto him, and showed him treasures. Whenever he opened a ponderous, antiquatedtome, it seemed as if some angel opened for him the gates of Paradise; ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Justin noticed that she looked less youthful and comely than on the occasions when he had previously seen her. She had the gray and care-worn look excusable in a woman approaching the fortieth mile-stone who has spent a wakeful night. He was conscious of a sense of annoyance in noting the distinctness of the triangle formed by her firm mouth and the lines that slanted obliquely back from its corners. Her persistence, too, troubled him. He was well aware that there is no more serious ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Arrowhead had also withdrawn from the group of drunkards as soon as he found that they were losing their senses, and had taken possession of a hut, where he had thrown himself on the straw, and sought the rest that two wakeful and watchful nights had rendered necessary. It followed that no one was left among the Indians to care for Mabel, if, indeed, any knew of her existence at all; and the proposal of the drunkard was received with yells of delight by eight or ten more as much intoxicated and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr'd prison house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well, Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of—Hell!' ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... woman lay, with her unconscious tyrant of a husband snoring beside her, desolately wakeful under the night-light in the large, luxurious bedroom—three servants sleeping overhead, champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe, valuable lace round her neck at that very instant, grand piano in the drawing-room, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
