"Rambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the convalescents had been for two months drinking in the grand old Devon air, Nic was rambling through the combe with Pete, both pretty well strong again, when ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... back as Melissa Merriam could remember, she had lived with her family in the roomy, rambling, white-painted house on Locust Avenue. She knew intimately every detail of its being. She had, at various points in her childhood, personally supervised the addition of the ell and of the broad porch which ran round three sides of the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven; some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others so modern that they might have been added only ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... things creeping and climbing, and hanging on for life. Inside the walls there was a riot of flowers—hollyhocks and giroflees, dahlias and phlox, poppies and huge daisies, and roses everywhere, even climbing old tree trunks, and sprawling all over the garden front of the rambling house. The edges of the paths had green borders that told of Corbeil d'Argent in Midwinter, and violets in early spring. He leaned out and looked along the house. It was just a jumble of all sorts of buildings which had evidently been added at different ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England pending the settlement of certain ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... and astonishment which had seized every faculty of Cecilia, now changed into certainty that Delvile indeed was present, all her recollection returned as she listened, to this question, and the wild rambling of fancy with which she had incautiously indulged her sorrow, rushing suddenly upon her mind, she felt herself wholly overpowered by consciousness and shame, and sunk, almost fainting, upon ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... ancient, timbered house, long, low, and rambling, with a yard by its side full of barrels, anchors, and other marine stores such as rope, that had to do with the trade I carried on at ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... in love, and went mad! I wot she was ever sighing and rambling about the house, and would seldom venture out alone, looking as though she were in jeopardy, and dreaded ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... man stammered out some rambling excuse about his turf losses, debts of honour which he was compelled to pay. Then Mr. Hugh asked him whether the forged signature was his own doing, or the work of any body else. The cornet hesitated for a little, and then ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the hill brought him to the dwelling,—a rambling addition of sheds to the usual log cabin. But he was surprised to find that its exterior, and indeed the palings of the fence around it, were covered with the stretched and drying skins of animals. The pelts of bear, panther, wolf, and fox were intermingled with squirrel ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... feigned eagerness to be off, and Salomon, its owner and chauffeur, shabby and sulky as usual, was giving the car a few last oily caresses which should have been bestowed long ago in the privacy of the garage. Have I forgotten to mention in these rambling notes that Somerled's Vedder regards our Salomon with a silent yet plainly visible contempt, akin to nausea? Whenever they happen to be thrown together for a few minutes I see the smart-liveried Vedder criticizing with his mysterious eyes the mean features of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Pelham had had a little too much whisky toddy when he wrote that rambling, meaningless string of words. Or we can suppose that Mrs. Piper was dreaming. We see in the last sentence a curious mixture of ideas that must have been in her mind. She ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being of light-colored stone; but I never saw anything that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, crowded, and rambling street. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Here Chatterton frequently ruminated; indeed, the whole church abounds with memorials which call to mind the sources of his inspiration; near the door is an effigy inscribed "Johannes Lamyngton," which gave name to one of his forgeries. He was never weary of rambling in and about the church, and all his early works ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... draw the story of her afflictions to a close. And lest her "solid" reader's eyes reject the rambling recital as utterly unworthy the honor of their notice, she is tempted to whittle it down to a moral before saying farewell. For you must know that Keturah has learned several things from her ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... lately been rambling over by Dumbarton and Inverary, and running a drunken race on the side of Loch Lomond with a wild Highlandman; his horse, which had never known the ornaments of iron or leather, zigzagged across before ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Smote full the cup-bearer; on the hall-floor Loud rang the fallen beaker, and himself Lay on his back clamouring in the dust. Strait through the dusky hall tumult ensued Among the suitors, of whom thus, a youth, With eyes directed to the next, exclaim'd. Would that this rambling stranger had elsewhere 500 Perish'd, or ever he had here arrived, Then no such uproar had he caused as this! This doth the beggar; he it is for whom We wrangle thus, and may despair of peace Or pleasure more; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... one; waited again, again saw the moon, now clearing; shaped some sort of course by it—then saw flare on Cape and came on rapidly—says he shouted to someone on Cape quite close to him, greatly surprised not to get an answer. It is a rambling tale to-night and a half thawed brain. It is impossible to listen to such a tale without appreciating that it has been a close escape or that there would have been no escape had the blizzard continued. The thought that it ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... a counter accusation, only that yours would be the epic form," answered Marta. "For you, too, seem fond of rambling." ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Hull's tavern, a rambling structure erected in 1812, is still an interesting stopping-place for summer excursionists and travelers through that mountainous section of Pennsylvania. Situated on the south side of the beautiful South Mountains and overlooking the richest of ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Though largely ecclesiastical, its author— a college A. M.—realizes the value of statistics in references to population, necrology, taxes, militia, farming, and other industries, and weaves them into his rambling story. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... resorted to in former days. Another sect of philosophers do declare, that certain fiery particles exhale constantly from the earth, which, concentrating in a single point of the firmament by day, constitute the sun, but being scattered and rambling about in the dark at night, collect in various points, and form stars. These are regularly burnt out and extinguished, not unlike to the lamps in our streets, and require a fresh supply of exhalations for the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Seminoles," explained Charley. "They come in to the outlying towns at rare intervals to exchange their venison and skins for ammunition and cloth, and it's wonderful how quickly they pick up the language. But I am rambling. The question before us is, shall we abandon all our things and run away with a fair chance of escaping with whole skins, or stay and fight it out with the certainty of being ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... shroud of sheeted snow, we turn our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in also our feelings from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each other's society, and are brought more closely ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... who read these rambling paragraphs may be the fortunate possessor of a few pieces of that willow-pattern, blue or pink china table ware which was but too lightly esteemed when it was a common heritage of English and American families. If not, a vivid remembrance of the ware and of the fancies which it inspired, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... gone off into a rambling conversation that had led Hermione's attention far away from the starting-point of ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... aspect of desolation and pity-my-sorrows so common at the faded resorts of the unhappy South, yet a pleasant rurality is impressed on the entertainment. The principal hotel is a vast building, curiously rambling in style: the dining-room, for instance, is a house in itself, planted in a garden. Here, when the family is somewhat small and select, will be presented the marvels of Old Dominion cooking—the marrowy flannel-cake, the cellular waffle, the chicken melting in a beatitude of cream gravy: when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the style of the character be plain and easy, "without any of those Points and Turns, which convey to the Mind nothing but a low and false Wit." The piece should not be tediously rambling, but compact. It must have perfect unity of structure: each sentence should add a significant detail to the portrait. The manner ought to be lively, the language pure ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... night discovered that the Romans were making their escape, they did not pursue, but at daybreak they came upon those who were left in the camp, to the number of four thousand, and massacred them; and they rode about the plain and overtook many who were there rambling about. Four complete cohorts, while it was still dark, under the command of Varguntinus the legate, got separated from the rest and lost their way, and, being surrounded by the Parthians on an eminence, they fought till ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... And so, on the Sunday evening preceding the celebration of Father Letheby's first Christmas in Kilronan, I spoke to him at length on my ideas and principles in connection with this great day; and we went back, in that rambling, desultory way that conversation drifts into,—back to ancient prophecies and forecastings, down to modern times,—tales of travellers about Bethlehem, the sacrilegious possession of holy places by Moslems, etc., etc., until the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... ought to be happy. It was a little island, fringed with a border of cocoanut-palms, which rustled and whispered day and night in the breeze. It was covered with tropical foliage, and there was a long, rambling bungalow, with screened "galleries," and a beach of hard white sand in front. The water was blue, dazzling with sunshine, and dotted with distant green islands; all of it, air, water, and islands, were warm. "I don't realize till I get here," she said, "I am never really happy in the North. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... rejoicing at the sight of her, rejoicing that he has kept his faith, has lived the whole year discreetly, without drinking or swearing. There are no blueberries yet to gather-it is only springtime-yet some good reason they find for rambling off to the woods; he walks beside her without word or joining of hands, through the massed laurel flaming into blossom, and naught beyond does either need to flush the cheek, to quicken the beating of ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... dozens,— But, alas! they return'd not; and she had no taste To appear in a costume of vine-leaves or paste. The Woodcock preferr'd his lone haunt on the moor; And the Traveller, Swallow, was still on his tour; While the Cuckoo, who should have been one of the guests, Was rambling on visits to other Birds' nests. But the rest all accepted the kind invitation, And much bustle it caused in the ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... listened to this long and rambling exposition with increasing curiosity and interest, broke into ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... different schools—one at Cheltenham, one at Saint Andrew's, one at Wycombe, and she declares that Hurst beats them all. It must be so, since it has adopted all the good ideas and abandoned the bad." She went on with a rambling statement which seemed to imply that Miss Bruce had been in turn sole proprietor of each of these well-known schools before abandoning them in favour of her new establishment; that Hurst Manor buildings had been recently erected, at vast expense, to provide ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper of most kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built on the inventions ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... had made up as the mathematical professor. In a nasal tone he made a rambling speech, in which he introduced mathematical allusions, and used some of the favorite phrases of the rather dull and prosy instructor, with whom all the students were familiar, some to their sorrow. It seemed to be very amusing to the boys present, as shown by their ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... rose again, solemnly, in all the majesty of his ermine. "The prisoner is discharged," he said, in a loud, clear voice. "I am here to do justice—justice against myself. I enter a verdict of not guilty." Then he turned to the polices "I am your prisoner," he went on, in a broken, rambling way. "I give myself in charge for the manslaughter of Montague Nevitt. Manslaughter, not murder. Though I don't even admit myself, indeed, it was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... was set down in the very middle of the town, a quiet, rambling, overgrown village too near New York to ever become more than a residence place. The school was spread over many acres and its buildings, most of which had been there many years, had a look of mellow antiquity which the newer Brimfield halls had not had time to ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... So in a rambling, unsystematic way Philo embarks upon a discourse on idealism and psychology, making a fresh start continually from a verse or a phrase of the Bible. The Biblical narrative in the earliest chapters offered a congenial soil ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... was first introduced we were told that one of its chief advantages was that it encouraged "browsing"—the somewhat aimless rambling about and dipping here and there into a book. Obviously this can not be done in a closed-shelf library. But of late it has been suggested, in one quarter or another, that although this may be a pleasant occupation to some, or even to most, it is not a profitable one. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime—these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the vicissitudes of fortune; stranger the links in the chain of life. CLAUDE and ALICE ASKEW, who wrote popular serial novels in the daily papers, lived in a rambling old home at Wivelsfield Green, in Sussex, known as "Botches." This they enlarged and modernised; they developed the gardens and filled the grass with bulbs. Then came the War. Mr. and Mrs. ASKEW threw themselves into foreign ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... left the highway and turned into a beautiful green valley, following a very bad trail deeper and deeper into the mountains, the soft meadows gay with flowers forming a charming contrast to the snow-peaks that barred the upper end of the valley. We came first to the New Palace, a large rambling building having no more architectural pretensions than an ordinary Chinese inn. As the king's brother, who makes his home there, was away, I saw nothing more of the place than the great courtyard filled with mangy, half-starved dogs and unkempt ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... rambling query crept back into the inner recesses of her brain and fired once more the one great question that lay dormant there. Impetuously she ran forward and stared into Helene Churchill's face. "How do you know you were meant to be a Trained Nurse, Helene ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... parent little dreamed of. On one occasion, when on a visit to a neighbouring farm, the youth had tasted a hare, and ever afterwards he longed to regale himself again on such delightful food. One unlucky morning Carlo was rambling about his father's farm with a gun on his arm, merely to shoot the rooks and frighten away the sparrows, when a hare jumped out of her form and ran away straight before him. The opportunity was too tempting. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... the mist and topless towers rose up spectral to baffle memory. Perspective fled, shadow and stuff were one, and, save where the radiance of the shops in some proud thoroughfare made gaudy noon of evening, the streets of Town were changed to echoing halls and long, dim, rambling galleries, hung all with twinkling lights that stabbed the gloom but deep enough to show their ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... rational part on the subject. He gives his ambassador a sum on which a private gentleman can live, and no more. He has not the slightest sense of giving superb feasts, furnishing huge palaces, supplying all the rambling Jonathans with balls and suppers, or astonishing John Bull by the tinsel of his appointments. Yet he is at least as well served as others. His man is a man of business; his embassy is no showy sinecure; his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... admittance among the gods, having revisited his native country, and being one day (as curiosity led him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's name, though but a young man, was infirm and sickly. Of several ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... where is his work on any subject whatever? Hogg has bound together a number of beautiful ballads, by a string of no great value, and called it the 'Queen's Wake.' Scott himself has left no solid poem, but instead, loose, rambling, spirited, metrical romances—the bastards of his genius—and a great family of legitimate chubby children of novels, bearing the image, but not reaching the full stature, of their parent's mind. Croly's poems, like the wing of his own 'seraph ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a comfortable, old, rambling structure, in a green yard and flower garden, not ugly, but quite innocent of any pretensions at comeliness. Neither was there, to many, a bit of picturesque beauty in the flat surroundings; and yet this very flatness did lend a charm peculiar to itself. ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... this western continent. As for me, I felt its chill even under the burning rays of the tropical sun of Yucatan, notwithstanding I am, or ought to be, well inured to them during the four years that my wife and myself are rambling among the ruined ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... five hundred each, and if every one of them had to go to Church every Sunday, they would want their respective seats, Prayer Books, footstools, and all that sort of thing. They don't like to see strangers rambling about, in search of a resting place; they are particularly solemn-looking, and give symptoms of being on the border of some catastrophe, if an unknown being shows any disposition to enter their pews. And some of them would see a person a good deal beyond the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... rambling through the country, denotes that you will be oppressed with sadness, and the separation from friends, but your worldly surroundings will be all that one could desire. For a young woman, this dream promises a comfortable home, but ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of the Three Bears" is perhaps the only instance in which a piece of literature by a known English author is found among accepted folk tales. It appeared in Robert Southey's rambling miscellany, The Doctor (1837). He may have taken it from an old tale, but no amount of investigation has located any certain source. In the most familiar versions the naughty old woman gives place ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... out of the haze of the distance,—a straggling village of weather-beaten wood and weather-beaten white paint, picturesque, but no longer a vision of gray stone and pale marble. A coal-yard, and a brick locomotive house, and rambling railroad sheds stretched along the water-front. They found their way easily enough through the sparse shipping to the steps at the end of the wooden pier, where Libby dropped the sail ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Emmett and Agnew, not the names of dead ancestors, but the living spirit and example of Napoleon and the magic word Empire. No longer could the harpsichord charm or the strings of the viol allure. The music-books gathered dust in the alcove, and the "Iliad" stood unopened on the shelf. Instead of rambling in the woods, or strolling on the banks of the Ohio, or galloping to Marietta clad in a crimson cloak, or giving banquets or balls to entertain the admiring gentry of Belpre, Madam Blennerhassett spent busy days and anxious nights working and planning for a potential greatness, a prospective ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... unequal merit. He was a prolific writer, producing, besides many volumes of poetry on various subjects, about three thousand hymns and songs. Among much that is excellent in this vast production there are also dreary stretches of rambling loquacity, hollow rhetoric and unintelligible jumbles of words and phrases. He could be insupportably dull and again express more in a single stanza, couplet or phrase than many have said in a whole book. A study of his poetry ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... every figure of any type sent over the keyboard, the Cow sent back a half-yard of confused, rambling figures and would ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... publication of this letter the Dean of Christ Church of that day, Dean Liddell, wrote to me a long rambling letter which I could not then, and cannot now, publish because ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... first been put on the scent by his old friend and fellow-waif, the Slogger. That juvenile burglar, chancing to meet with Slidder, entertained him with a relation of some of his adventures. Among others, he mentioned having, many months before, been out one afternoon with a certain Mr Brassey, rambling about the streets with an eye to any chance business that might turn up, when they observed a young and very pretty girl looking in at various shop windows. She was obviously a lady, but her dress showed that she was very poor. Her manner and colour seemed to imply that ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... the great stone buildings and also took a brief view of the Intendant's palace, where they expected to dine in the evening. It was a palace in extent, but not in beauty, a great rambling building of both timber and masonry, with a green lawn and flower gardens near by. It was said that Bigot and his predecessors had spent huge sums on the interior decoration, but that Robert expected soon to see ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... that hotel on the lake front built during the World's Fair days? A roomy, rambling, smoke-blackened, comfortable old structure, ringed with verandas, its shabby facade shabbier by contrast with the beds of tulips or geraniums or canna that jewel its lawn. There Hannah Winter went to live. It was within five minutes' walk of Marcia's ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... In rambling about the town, we naturally enquired for the chapel of skulls, the ugliness of which had shocked us when here formerly, and were not sorry to find that that hideous monument of bad taste is falling fast to ruin. I cannot imagine how such fantastic horrors can ever have been sanctified, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... how's this, how's this?" he said, as they rode along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. "How came you to be rambling ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... softly. The gable window gave a view of a little harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran. Half a mile up the brook was the only house in sight—an old, rambling, gray one surrounded by huge willows through which its windows peered, like shy, seeking eyes, into the dusk. Anne wondered who lived there; they would be her nearest neighbors and she hoped they would ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had already seen and lingered upon the mill. It was a rambling structure, the great, splashing millwheel at the far end, the long warehouse in the middle, and the dwelling attached to the other end. There were barns, corn-cribs and other outbuildings as well, and ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... It was a large rambling stucco house, somewhat decayed looking, and evidently built on the ruins of an older building. We came upon it at a broad Italian-looking loggia, supported by stone pillars bowered in with vines—very cool and pleasant—with ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... after this, as the Swabian page was rambling in the wood near the convent, he heard a great outcry of ravens around a nest in an ancient fir-tree, and prompted partly by curiosity to know the cause of the disquiet, and partly by the wish to have a young raven for sport in the winter ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... do you think of Mrs. Gamp? And how do you like the undertaker? I have a fancy that they are in your way. O heaven! such green woods as I was rambling among down in Yorkshire, when I was getting that done last July! For days and weeks we never saw the sky but through green boughs; and all day long I cantered over such soft moss and turf, that the horse's feet scarcely made a sound upon it. We have some ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... rambling mansions numerous descriptions have been handed down to our day. The following, written in 1774, is an account recorded in his diary by the tutor, Philip Fithian, in the family of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... He had known at the time that his father, had he lived, would have condemned the step; but he himself was a believer in fortunate chances. Besides, it was preposterous for a young couple of fashion to continue living in a rambling old house that belonged to neither town nor country, at a time when the whole trend of life was cityward. They had discussed the move, with its large increase of expenditure, from every point of view, and found it one from which, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... rambling talk and vague accounts of the Dent and Weir affair Martinez was able to piece together the fragments in a clear statement. This was that Saurez had seen Weir and Dent in Vorse's saloon. The pair had gambled for a time with Vorse, Burkhardt (at that time sheriff), Sorenson ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Matthew, and the vessel will be at sea, most likely, or in a South American port, when that happens; and you can't throw her back on me until you deliver her in her home port. And meantime your charter to me keeps rambling right along, and I'll attach your bankroll if you're a day late with your payment in advance. Yes, sir; I'll break you in two for the good of your immortal soul. Matt—Matt, my son—something tells me you're monkeying with fire and ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... chapel—a handsome structure, in the style of an ancient Venetian palace—may vindicate this assumption of decorum. There is but one hotel at the Villa—calm, dignified, and frigid; the remainder of a long rambling street of which the place is composed, consists entirely of lodging-houses, having gardens attached to each, where little children may be seen playing at the doors, and English nurse-maids pursuing their laborious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... absolutely business-like manner. She requested a consultation, and listened while the gipsy, decidedly nervous, gave a rambling description of a dark gentleman and an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... over-good to babies, and they think 'em such a lot of trouble, poor little motherless dears! And there's Poppy, too; she's been ever such a good little girl to me, and she'll feel so lonesome-like in that big, rambling place. I don't suppose they'll let her be with the babies, for ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... end of the first night's march from the front the battalion camped in the streets of a little, half-wrecked village on the banks of the Avre. Up on the hillside was a long, rambling building which had once been a convent but was now a hospital. Pen knew that somewhere in a hospital back of the Somme Aleck was still lying, too ill to be moved farther to the rear. It occurred ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... paid closer attention to her studies, made her little presents from time to to time, and spoke to her always with studied gentleness that was quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of making little boxes which ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... I was staying in Flintshire and near Capel Curig, rambling through the dells or fishing in the brooks, it was surprising how soon the companionship of a Gorgio would begin to pall upon me. And here the Cymric race is just as bad as the Saxon. The same detestable habit of looking upon nature as a paying market-garden, the same detestable inquiry as to ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Martha learned many things. She had her own neatly-appointed little dining-room in her own well-ordered little wing of the great, rambling colonial house which Peggy Stewart called home, a house which could have told a wonderful history of one hundred eighty or more years. We will tell it later on. We have left Peggy too long perched upon her snake-fence with Shashai ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... think, at your time of life, you'd stop rambling over the Common before breakfast,—in carpet slippers, too,—when you know I've been up so late the night before at a meeting in ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... on a rambling story of how he had helped to fight the fire, how sparks had fallen on him, and how he had to tear his shirt off because it was in flames. He gave a lurid description of the scene. The woman clucked her tongue at intervals, ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... roofless and moss-grown cottages, I entered the narrow and rambling street which leads through the town. This street a short distance down widens a little, as if to afford the wayfarer space to observe a remarkable old house that stands on the northern side. The house was built of stone, and in a noble style ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... one day, and Lady Diana was telling me of the great rambling house at Killy Marey, and how, when she arrived as a bride, none of the doors would shut except two that would not open, behind one of which lived the family ghost; how the paper hung in festoons on the walls, and the chairs ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as he grasped Johnston's arm in a clasp of iron, "I see; you are undeveloped, unfit—none but the healthy and strong are allowed to live in Alpha. It is right, of course; but it is hard to bear. But I must lie down. I am wearied with constant rambling. I am nervous too. I fell asleep awhile ago and dreamt I heard all my friends in a great clamoring body calling my name, 'Branasko!' and then I awoke and cried ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... he had never won her love, that she had never been really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing themselves in the country, she had withdrawn more and more from him—where? Into herself. She had her own room and dressing-room, beyond the children's quarters, in the rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on in those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed discontentedly, as if there were not a husband in the situation. Well, he reflected philosophically, women were like that,—American women; they thought they owned themselves even after they ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... sailing) I got on board the Tantallon Castle, finding Commander Dundas on board and coming home in the same mail. We left Durban on a beautiful day, and I was glad to find myself in possession of a large cabin. And so I must end this long and rambling Journal on seeing the last of Natal, merely adding that we had rather a rough passage, after touching at Port Elizabeth, up to Mossel Bay, a most picturesque place on account of the towering peaks and ranges of hills running ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... young man of about twenty-two years of age, at the time he suffered. Having a tolerable genius when a youth, his friends put him apprentice twice, but to no purpose, for having got rambling notions in his head, he would needs go to sea. There, but for his unhappy temper, he might have done well, for the ship of war in which he sailed was so fortunate as to take, after eight hours sharp engagement, a Spanish ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and races, and rustic gatherings, wherever there is pleasure, and throng, and idleness. They are the oracles of milkmaids and simple serving girls; and sometimes have even the honour of perusing the white hands of gentlemen's daughters, when rambling about their father's grounds. They are the bane of good housewives and thrifty farmers, and odious in the eyes of country justices; but, like all other vagabond beings, they have something to commend them to the fancy. They are among the last traces, in these matter-of-fact ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the best of it once one finds himself alive, whether by seeking wisdom or by pursuing pleasure. But here too Job is a long poem, and the argument does not progress very rapidly or very far. Ecclesiastes is rambling rather than analytic, and on the whole mostly negative. The Talmudists were visibly puzzled in their attitude to both books, wondered whether Job really existed or was only a fancy, and seriously thought of excluding Ecclesiastes from the canon. But these attempts at questioning the meaning of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which besieged me while writing that part of my paper; which part being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of latitude), can not be corrected or improved. But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium—viz., to opium-eaters in general—that it establishes for their consolation and encouragement ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... together — The hod-carrier, the low mechanic, the tapster, the publican, the shopkeeper, the pettifogger, the citizen, and courtier, all tread upon the kibes of one another: actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen every where rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, justling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption — All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... feeling for the imaginative effects of architecture in a landscape is extraordinarily subtle. One, at least, of these effects is hardly to be experienced among the hedgerows and farmsteads and placid rambling towns of England. Travellers in Italy, or in the East, are better able to understand the transfiguration of a landscape by the distant view of a small compact array of walls and towers perched on a vantage-ground among the hills of the horizon. The lawlessness of Nature, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Notwithstanding all this, he found her always more and more inclined to the reception of her neighbour copes-mates, that day by day his jealousy increased. In sequel whereof, one night as he was lying by her, whilst in his sleep the rambling fancies of the lecherous deportments of his wife did take up the cellules of his brain, he dreamt that he encountered with the devil, to whom he had discovered to the full the buzzing of his head and suspicion that his wife did tread ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in the Allee Verte!" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holding on to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his imagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a frogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was loitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailing slowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshing himself with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... connected with Mr. Floyd, whose reputation was national, and she went on reviving reminiscences of him while we strolled about. She addressed me with such unhesitating talkativeness that I succumbed at once, and became an easy prey. What she said was quite uninteresting, besides being rambling in a degree which hindered my getting the smallest idea of her meaning; but her own enjoyment of her loquaciousness never once faltered, and she discoursed as fluently as an eighteenth-century poet, and without any more idea of the grace of finishing within a reasonable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... was, according to her custom, rambling round about the courts and yards of the palace to see if she could smell any fresh meat, she heard, in a ground room, little Day crying, for his mamma was going to whip him, because he had been naughty; ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... into a rambling statement. He spoke the Kosnovian language with the fluent inaccuracy of his class; but Alec's alert ears had no difficulty in following his meaning. His story was that several customers of the cafe had denounced him to the proprietor ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... book I was going to write in the autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or—I blush to write it even now—croquet. Croquet, though, is a much maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the old, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... had many strange experiences in my life, but never a stranger one than that I felt when I came out of those rambling, sightless, and seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous and hospitable dining-room, surrounded upon almost every side by faces that I knew. There was Mr Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seated between the two brisk young men who were occasionally vicars, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... in her arms and rocked her for a long time in the rocking-chair, crooning over her queer little rambling tunes without meaning; only once she spoke, and then what she said was this: "Libby Anne, I hope you will never be as lonely to see me as I am right now to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... millionaires, were it not likewise observed that the material is but coarse blue cotton, woven and dyed by the wearer's wife, mother, or sister. One of the most conspicuous features about them is that their shape—if they can truthfully be said to have any shape—seems to be a wild, rambling pattern of our own ideas concerning the shape this garment ought to assume. The legs, instead of being gathered, Oriental fashion, at the ankles, dangle loosely about the feet; and yet it is these same legs that are the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... were other times when maybe the very next day after our hero had fought with great valor with his fellows he would go a-rambling with them up the Bouwerie Road with the utmost friendliness; perhaps to help them steal cherries from some old Dutch farmer, forgetting in such an adventure what a thief ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... exercise of my thoughts. Yet I will endeavor to divert them. Send me some new books; not such, however, as will require much attention. Let them be plays and novels, or any thing else that will amuse or extort a smile. Julia and I have been rambling in the garden. She insisted upon my going with her into the arbor, where I was surprised with Major Sanford. What a crowd of painful ideas rushed upon my imagination! I believe she repented of her rashness. But no more of this. I must lay aside my pen, for I can write ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... day I heard my eldest brother tell my mother that he had seen a primrose. She said, "Do not tell Salome, for if she knows there will be no keeping her at home." But I had heard, and that was enough. Early next morning away I went, rambling all day from field to field, picking primroses. First a handful of the common yellow ones, then some coloured ones, and did ever a Queen prize jewels as I did those coloured flowers? But the joy in them only lasted a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... thoughts, and rather obstinately, too—he knew that the time would pass more quickly in the old castle than anywhere else. At forty years of age, the idea of beginning again the wandering life he had led so long, rambling from one country and capital to another, now spending a year at a University and then six months in Paris, or a winter in St. Petersburg, never settled, never at home, though at home everywhere—the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... could proceed but slowly. We finally reached Winchester, and from there, because of the better road, crossed the river to Frederick, where a great surprise awaited us. For scarcely were we off our horses at the little tavern, than the host, learning our names, rushed away down the wide, rambling street, crying the news aloud, to our great wonderment, who saw not why it should interest any one. In an incredibly short time, above a hundred people had gathered before the inn, cheering and hallooing with all their might, while we looked at them in dumb amazement. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... differed beyond the possibility of harmonizing. When they said that a road was good they meant that it was straight, level, and businesslike. When they said that a road was bad they meant that it was rugged, rambling and picturesque. So, to their bewilderment, whenever we had a choice of good or bad roads, we always chose the bad. And, to get at what we really wanted, we learned to inquire which was the worst road to such and such a place. That we knew would be the road for us. From their point of view, the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... first time they saw the house and heard what it was called. I don't know if it will spoil the prettiness and the quaintness if I reveal its real origin. Not so very long ago, the old house was a queer, rambling inn, and its sign was the redbreasted bird himself; somewhere up in the attics, the ancient board that used to swing and creak of a windy night, was still hidden—it may perhaps be there to this day! And somebody (it does not matter who, for it was not any somebody ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... farm, but in the intervening years successive owners had so altered it by pulling down and building on, that, when it passed into the possession of Hartley Parrish, little else than the open fireplace in the lounge remained to tell of the original farm. It was a queer, rambling house of only two stories whose elongated shape was accentuated by the additional wing which Hartley ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... which can be (and are being) vividly described by "war correspondents" from the safe vantage ground of comfortable cafes miles away. The real human interest end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling around the operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American manner, trusting in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on your emergency passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial Consul at Cologne, to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... at once apparent that he must make no rambling talk. The history of the past five days, while illuminating and diverting, could not be calculated to inspire the casual onlooker with religious awe. If aught was to be said, it must, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... given them a just and moderate temper both to pleasure and pain; neither can it fail of being just, being equal and common. But seeing we have enfranchised ourselves from her rules to give ourselves up to the rambling liberty of our own fancies, let us at least help to incline them to the most agreeable side. Plato fears our too vehemently engaging ourselves with pain and pleasure, forasmuch as these too much knit and ally the soul to the body; whereas ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... I'll have too much to do while I am here. I'd better be alone." And with that he set off walking smartly up the long rambling street that led to the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Lau. You'll be rambling too, Aurelian; I do not doubt it, if I would let you; but I'll take care to be as little a wife, and as much a mistress to you, as is possible: I'll be sure to be always pleasant, and never ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... hand—very friendly apparently. Then, requesting me to be seated, he drew out a chair from the wall and sat down, tilting it back on two legs and leaning against the wall, with his hands folded before him. Some commonplace remark about the weather, which I answered, led to a rambling conversation, in which he expressed the greatest curiosity as to worldly matters, and asked several purely local questions about the city of New York. Perhaps his ignorance was feigned. I do not know, but I ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... rambling and dreaming again;" but the old man heard her not, he had left the lattice, and in a few seconds he appeared within the passage. During this interval, Rebecca had not been quiet, for she had seized the arm of Tamar, and the young girl had shaken her off with some difficulty, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the wags abroad do call Each other forth to rambling: Anon you'll see them in the hall For nuts and apples scrambling. Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound! Anon they'll think the house goes round: For they the cellar's depth have found, And there they will ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... and the Japanese authorities have no power within its walls. Its large population of Japanese servants, about one hundred and fifty in all, are free from the burden of Japanese taxes; and, since the police may not enter, gambling, forbidden throughout the Empire, flourishes there; and the rambling servants' quarters behind the Ambassador's house are the Monte Carlo of the Tokyo betto (coachman) and kurumaya (rickshaw runner). However, since the alarming discovery that a professional burglar had, Diogenes-like, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... While rambling about in search of flowers during our afternoon rests, we found many interesting spots. To the northwest, over the high, bare ridge, lay Snow Gulch, from which fabulous sums had the summer before been taken, the blue and winding waters of famous Glacier Creek lying just beyond. Walking ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the sun. Such is the constant custom with the Suders in India." "That the Gipsies and natives of Hindustan resemble each other in complexion and shape is undeniable. And what is asserted of the young Gipsy girls rambling about with their fathers, who are musicians, dancing with lascivious and indecent gesture to divert any person who is willing to give them a small gratuity for so acting, is likewise perfectly Indian." ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Durdles, adjusting it, and continuing to talk in a rambling way, as he and Jasper ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... his most tranquil strains. When observed within a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable gentleness and intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view unless one wears clothing of about the same color as the rocks and trees, and knows how to sit still. On one occasion, while rambling along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large stone close to the water's edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on that part of the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... last baby. When a man has Florine, who is in turn duchess, bourgeoise, Negress, marquise, colonel, Swiss peasant, virgin of the sun in Peru (only way she can play the part), I don't see why he should go rambling after ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... I abominate indebtedness. For this reason, I bequeath to you now the monument more enduring than brass—my one book—rude and imperfect in parts, but oh how rare in others! I wonder if you will understand it. It is a gift more honorable than.... Bah! where is my brain rambling to? You will mutilate it horribly. You will knock out the gems you call Latin quotations, you Philistine, and you will butcher the style to carve into your own jerky jargon; but you cannot destroy ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... God, obeyed on high, His signal to open the granary And send forth his heavily loaded wains Rambling and roaring down the sky And scattering the ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... During which strange rambling speech Effie was partly insensible; yet she heard enough to afford her clouded mind a glimpse of her condition, and of the meaning of what was said to her. For a time she kept staring into his face as if she had doubts ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... if I may so call it, set our author upon drawing aside the veil from the prophetic writings; and his view of their mystical sense is diffused over the indigested and rambling works bearing the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... title-page of Robin Hood is a fair example of its kind. The Norfolk gentleman's "Last Will and Testament" turns out to be a rambling rhymed version of the Two Children in the Wood. In the first of its illustrations we see the dying parents commending their babes to the cruel world. The next is a subject taken from ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... magistracy; he saw too many sides of every question; he chose rather to fail in justice than in humanity. In 1565 he acquired a large fortune by marriage, and having lost his father, he retired from public functions in 1570, to enjoy a tranquil existence of meditation, and of rambling through books. He had published, a year before, in fulfilment of his father's desire, a translation of the Theologia Naturalis of Raimond de Sebonde, a Spanish philosopher of the fifteenth century; and now he occupied himself ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... whispered the schoolmaster, 'she is rambling, she may go to sleep when you are out ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... record of the money that went in or out. The duties were not arduous, and in his long intervals of leisure his mind wandered far afield. It dwelt on the charm of flitting wings and bird melodies, on the pleasures of rambling along country roads and into the woodlands; and, sitting before the Treasury vault, at a high desk and facing an iron wall he began to write. There was no need for notes. His memory was all-sufficient, and the result was the essays ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock clasped the other, while her head rested on his shoulder. The rambling conversation in which they had been engaged ever since Crevel went out may be ticketed, like certain lengthy literary efforts of our day, "All rights reserved," for it cannot be reproduced. This masterpiece of personal poetry ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Eager to know Jacintha's business in which Antonia seemed to be concerned, He was almost distracted while listening to the rambling of this prosing old Woman. He interrupted her, and protested that if She did not immediately tell her story and have done with it, He should quit the Parlour, and leave her to get out of her difficulties by herself. This threat had the desired effect. Jacintha related her business ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... way, if need were, in the night as well as in the day. All the houses I knew and their occupants; all the good apple trees and whose was every cow grazing in the roadside pastures or resting beneath a tree. If I could have my will I would spend the remainder of my days rambling once more and every day those familiar roads and lanes, like Juno descending the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... down to Enfield Chase, with directions to search for that undiscoverable house, to make thorough investigation of it, and to take into custody every individual therein. They found the place—an old rambling house in the heart of the Chase, full of trap-doors, passages, unexpected steps up or down, holes, corners, and cupboards at every turn. But it had no inhabitants save servants, and they could tell little. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... calm lasted, and not the slightest sign of change could be seen. Our throats were parched, our lips cracked, our eyes bloodshot and staring. One of the crew, a plump, chubby, round-faced man, began talking aloud in a rambling manner, and presently, with a scream of excitement, he sprang into ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... slim, slip-shod housekeeper, at midnight ferreting over a rambling old house in the country, startling at fancied witches and ghosts, yet intent on seeing every door bolted, every smouldering ember in the fireplaces smothered, every loitering domestic abed, and every light made dark. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... for a summer villa for the Shelleys, who, a little weary perhaps of Byron's world, had determined to leave Pisa and to spend the summer on the Gulf of Spezia. Byron was about to establish himself just beyond Livorno, on the slopes of Montenero, in a huge and rambling old villa with eighteenth century frescoes on the walls, and a tangled park and garden running down to the dusty Livorno highway. The place to-day is a little dilapidated, and its statues broken, but in the summer months it becomes the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... on a rambling and flowery appreciation of Martin's implied thanks. Martin gave attention with his ears, but his eyes roved. He had been puzzled since his entry into the room by a certain oddity, familiar oddity, about ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Beethoven's devotion to nature many curious anecdotes are told by his contemporaries. A harp manufacturer named Stumpff met him in 1823 and wrote an account of his visit in "The Harmonicon," a London journal, in which occurs this passage: "Beethoven is a capital walker and delights in rambling for hours through wild, romantic scenery. I am told, indeed, that he has sometimes been out whole nights on such excursions, and is often absent from home for several days. On the way to the valley [the Hellenenthal, near the Austrian Baden] he ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays. Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made few demands on his time ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... Time who is travelling fast on while I am rambling after the wind, he has puzzled the artists a good deal I should say, for with all their skill at representation they have never hit upon any better idea of him than an old Man with wings. An old man with wings! Can you fancy anything ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have a home of her own, and later perhaps—Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... one more proposal, that France should hold the peninsula of Otranto for ten years if Great Britain retained Malta for that period; but if this suggestion was made in good faith, which is doubtful, its effect was destroyed by a rambling diatribe which Talleyrand, at his master's orders, sent shortly afterwards.[256] In any case it was looked upon by our ambassador as a last attempt to gain time for the concentration of the French naval forces. He crossed the Straits of Dover on May 17th, the day ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of his quiet, unencumbered domain, that property has its plagues as well as pleasures. True, there was the land; but not a plant, or a seed thereon or therein, nor an agricultural implement of any kind to work it with. The walls of the old rambling house were standing, and the roof, except in about a dozen places, kept out the rain with some success; but the nimble, unrespecting fingers of preceding patriots had carried off not only every vestige of furniture, usually so called, but coppers, cistern, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various |
