"Dumbly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each other across its moss-grown fanes and battlements; he looks down on the earth, full of graves, a vast necropolis of once radiant dreams, with the living for its phantoms,—and there is no comfort anywhere. Happy is he if some simple human duty be at hand, which he may go on doing blindly and dumbly—till, perhaps, the light come again. It is difficult to offer comfort to such a one. Comfort is cheap, and we know nothing. When life holds nothing for our love and delight, it is difficult to explain why we should go on living it—except on the assumption that it matters, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... horn, that Lancelot wound to summon them, and gathered in horror around their unhappy comrades. As for me, I was so amazed at the news that Cornelys Jensen was alive that I stood for awhile like one stunned, and could say nothing, but only stare at those pale faces and wonder dumbly. When after awhile the power of speech did return to me I strove with many questions to find out how Jensen was thus restored to life and to evil deeds, but as to that they none of them knew anything. If the marvel of Jensen's reappearance was the greatest marvel, marvel ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his look was returned dumbly by the woman who had played so strange a part in the late passages of his life. Never a word with her had Law spoken regarding his plans or concerning what he had learned from Pembroke. As to this, Mary Connynge had been afraid to ask, nor dare ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... room where a telephone waited: McGuire sensed this but dumbly, and the way to that room was long to his stumbling feet. He was blinded: his mind would not function: he saw only those fluttering things, and the moonlight on their wings, and the shadows that took them so softly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the suffering girl knelt thus dumbly before the Lord of all happiness, that man whom she had worshipped in her heart so long, whom she must worship forever, was sitting just as sleeplessly beside his writing-table, separated from her only by two walls, and was thinking and writing about her, and often wiped his eyes that filled ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... had exulted, how jubilant, even intoxicated, he had felt when he had received the ten dollars for the first load of wheat he had hauled to Fort Scott. Now, with a check for sixteen thousand—SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!—in his hand, he stood dumbly, curiously unmoved. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... that a worse thing had befallen. He had no voice. It had gone. He knew that, try he never so hard to speak, he would not be able to utter a word. A nightmare feeling of unreality came upon him. Had he ever spoken? Had he ever done anything but sit dumbly on that rock, looking at those sea ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... became frightened. After a period of immobility in the arms of Mrs Fyne, the girl, who had not said a word, tore herself out from that slightly rigid embrace. She struggled dumbly between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs Fyne to put Flora de Barral ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... fellows—and fine women. They are men and women, if I understand it, who have sloughed off the conventions, that are conventions simply for convention's sake, and who are reaching out towards the realities. Most of them haven't an idea what those are, but dumbly they know. Tommy knows, for instance, who is a good chum and who isn't; that is, he knows that sincerity and unselfishness and pluck are realities. He doesn't care a damn if a chap drinks and swears and commits what the Statute-Book and the Prayer-Book call fornication. And ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... fascination with which they dominated her, resisting him dumbly with tight-locked lips till he held her palpitating ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... a voice, "allow me if you please, monsieur"—and the sack has disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken him away, and the sack ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, the wife who had divorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the ground that he had repeatedly outraged her feelings by wearing a white waistcoat with a dinner-jacket. She continued to look at him dumbly, and then uttered a sort of strangled, ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... enslaved as well; that the able-bodied soldier in the trenches, who depends on the able-minded civilian at home to guard the liberties of his country and protect him from carelesness or abuse of power by the authorities whom he must blindly and dumbly obey, is to be betrayed the moment his back is turned to his fellow-citizens and his face to the foe, is not patriotism: it is the paralysis of mortal funk: it is the worst kind of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Let us hear no more of it, but contest our elections like men, and regain ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... an effort that was like a physical exercise. He stared at Billie dumbly. Then, recovering speech, he invited her to sit down, and seated himself at ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... away, just as he had done every time she had made the attempt. She flushed and lifted her head, for there was no lack of pride or spirit in her softness. Yet by and by she could not help looking at him across the table with another soft appeal in her sweet eyes which plead dumbly for old times' sake. And after breakfast was over she tried again, knowing that this would be the last opportunity, and yearning with all her loving heart to win back some of the old friendliness that she still prized as a ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, turmoil, and danger of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... upon her too. Sieglinde, however, implores him to remain and await the return of her husband. Almost as she speaks Hunding enters the house, and, allowing her to divest him of his weapons, seems dumbly to inquire the reason of the stranger's presence at ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... hurrying crowds. He did not know what might happen if he failed to sell one of his statues; it was a possibility so awful that he did not dare conceive of its punishment. But he could do nothing, and so stood silent, dumbly presenting his tray to the people ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... dim idea that he had heard of this piece before. He waited dumbly, admiring the fine old room, with its lofty ceiling, and florid cornice, and the sunny garden ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the midnight Is heavy upon the land, And the black waves lying dumbly Along the sand; When the moonless night draws close, And the lights are out in the house; When the fires burn low and red, And the watch is ticking loudly Beside the bed: Though you sleep, tired out, on your couch, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... brought Mary Hope down from her horse. All her life she had taken it for granted that lemonade was sacred to the Fourth of July picnics, just as oranges grew for Christmas trees only. She followed Belle dumbly into the house, and once inside she remained dumb with awe at what seemed to her to be the highest ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Dumbly she stood and watched Biddy lay the inanimate figure back upon the pillows. Isabel had sunk into a state of exhaustion that ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... most excellent omelette and then a shave, a hair-cut, and a wash. Crecy was populous and excited. It made us joyous to think we had reached a part of the country where the shops were open, people pursuing their own business, where there was no dumbly reproaching glance for us in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... case. However, perhaps the question only lay very deep down in her consciousness, for the justification presented itself, that to refuse to see him, would be to confess both to his sister and himself that there was danger in it. Diana never could confess that, whatever the fact. So, answering dumbly the doubt that was as wordless, without stopping a moment she caught up her sleeping baby out of its cradle, and drawing the cradle after her went into her husband's study. Basil was there, she knew, at work. He looked ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... easy tricks of the trade—the a, b, c's of it—and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room, and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bishop only reckoned with two things: Firstly, he had forgotten that the Governor was an old Indian fighter, and ready for surprises; and, secondly, he had not taken into account the usual apathy of the common people when their leaders fight. Dumbly and quite unmoved the people stood, staring like armadillos at a snake, and made no sign. Then word was brought that the Governor had left the church and was assembling ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the electric battery because the dial is unsatisfactory! In like manner, when, by physical incapacity, or inherited disease, the brain can no longer receive the impressions or electric messages of the Spirit, it is practically useless. Yet the Spirit is there all the same, dumbly waiting for release and another chance ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Simpson and his entire male army to a certain warm climate where he thought they might go with mutual advantage to himself and them, the morning breeze carried within earshot another note, higher in the scale, but unmistakable in significance. Silently the old man stood and dumbly watched a procession of petticoats march up to his gate and turn ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... there, a dozen feet away, were her pursuers, their tongues out, their eyes shining like balls of fire. They were just entering the water to come across to her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the sage brush, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... dumbly at the evidence in his hand. He recalled distinctly the rage that was in his heart when he penned this note. The stage manager had lost some valuable manuscript that had to be rewritten from memory, the notes ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... garden are slowly darkening. The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen. A bat flitters dumbly by. Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it. We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and assurance ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... that the glories and the truths of Heaven are visible with a special clearness and authority to the dying. It was for this moment, either in herself or in him, that Catherine's unconquerable faith had been patiently and dumbly waiting. Either she would go first, and death would wing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not their own; or, when he came to leave her, the veil of doubt would fall away perforce from a spirit as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beat and rush of waters began to wear through our patience. We willed that this wracking tumult should cease; we willed it with all the force that was in us. Then, as this proved vain, we too humped our spiritual backs, cowled our souls with patience, and waited dumbly for the force of the storm to spend itself. Our faculties were quite as effectually drowned out by the unceasing roar and crash of the waters as our bodily comfort would have been had we lacked the protection of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... coming when it did, after I was betrothed to Ruth Gardner, is the capping madness of the whole nightmarish situation in which I find myself. 'Nightmarish' isn't an exaggeration, honestly. By all the empty, senseless conventions I ought to seal my lips on my love and to go dumbly away, because I'm engaged to Ruth Gardner." He turned abruptly to her. "Do you ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... as blasphemy, for they contradicted the whole spirit of the teaching which she had received. But she did not dare to contradict her mother's opinions. She looked down, and reflected dumbly that her mother knew more about the subject than she could possibly do. The good Sisters had talked to her about heavenly love; she had made no fine distinctions in her mind as to the kind of love they meant—possibly there were ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... as he looked down at the boy lying before him, he wondered in his heart if there was really a spark of life left in that still, pale, bleeding body. As for Elinor, after the first outburst, she sat dumbly trembling. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... suggestions of the unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals, from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as that ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... the protection that should be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... his side. Arriving there, she looked at him heavily, dumbly, and laid her head on his shoulder. He held her fast as he looked round. They were safe enough from all but the small, lonely cows over the river. He sunk his mouth on her throat, where he felt her heavy pulse beat under his lips. Everything ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... as it were, on the bosom of her family and friends? May she never seat herself on the living green, amid roses and violets, or on the mossy bank studded with cresses or cowslips, and laved by the crystal stream? May she never view the silver fish as he leaps up, and "dumbly speaks the praise of God?" May she never wander abroad for the sake of wandering, or ride for the sake of riding; or gaze on the blue ethereal by day, or the star-spangled ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for leading ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... had stared sullenly, not grasping the situation. Then very slowly it dawned on him that his prison walls had fallen. Yes, surely, there at last lay his way to freedom, his path to the great open spaces for which he dumbly and vaguely hungered. With stately deliberation he marched down from his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... conditions. She could not imagine an existence in which her mother had no part. She wondered dully how it would be possible to go on living without her. Aunt Sally Doane came in presently and took her in her arms and said the comforting things people usually say at such times, and Mary submitted dumbly, as if it were a part of a bewildering dream. At times she was sure that she must wake up presently and find that she had been in the grip of a dreadful nightmare. It was that certainty which helped her ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sickening moment of fear. How little he actually knew of her and of her way of thought. What assurance had he that she would not laugh, jump back upon the horse, and ride away? He was afraid as he had never been afraid before. Dumbly his mind groped about for a way to begin. Expressions he had caught and noted in her strong serious little face when he had achieved but a mild curiosity concerning her came back to visit his mind and he tried desperately to build an instant idea of her from these. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... magical brilliancy of the big arc-lights, to the humor and action of the crowd, to the quick shifts of colors; they were stupefied by this great flux of life which swept them on day after day to another day. Often unexpressed, this, but felt dumbly below the chatter and dry laughter. They waited, waited, circling about in a gray maelstrom until the grave sucked them in. He himself had been in the clutch of ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the two comrades moved dumbly into the lighted room, Penrod's mother rose, and, taking him by the shoulder, urged him ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... scaredly. The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him—Tedge of the Marie Louise who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing—he never would ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... plan. They put on their sweaters and boots, as the spring was young and the ground soft. Mrs. Benjamin marvelled at their restraint, but laid it to their commendable desire to appear well before their guest. Two by two they marched dumbly behind the Benjamins and the Bryces. Up hill and down they went. Isabelle felt their eyes like javelins in her back, even while she kept up a ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... He looked at her dumbly, hopelessly; then his arm twitched and he relieved the wrist from the weight of his head, sitting upright, his eyes ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of herself and Elsa she was thinking—two helpless women, lost in this place of terrible ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... blast of air that tore at him meant nothing at first! But it was happening! Before his eyes it was happening! Chet watched dumbly, uncomprehendingly, as that great overhanging rock tore itself into fragments that rose screamingly into the air or fell ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... give thee food and wine," she said; "then I have much to say to thee. I have commanded that thy ship and thy men be cared for; to-night ye are my guests. Come! But first give me thy swords. Thou'rt with friends." They complied dumbly, dazed ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... dumbly. Vulcan's tone hadn't been unfriendly; he had merely been warning a stranger, in the shortest and clearest manner possible, against the dangers of feeling the merchandise. Not, Forrester thought, that the warning was necessary. He would as soon ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Rector. The two stood eyeing the culprit who, crouching where he fell, gazed up at them dumbly, pitifully, as a ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her fingers fumbling impotently at the neck of the night-dress, the girl still continued to stare dumbly into the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... fists till they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white, rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on, still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him, as on a cloth, was the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... shouted something hidden round the corner of his mind, it would not let his lips articulate the desperate cry. He stared at the passing moment as a castaway, gagged, and bound to a raft of pirates, might wake from a delirious sleep, stare dumbly up at the steep side of a galleon that rides slowly, and know that with it rides away his chance of life because he cannot speak. Love of this girl meant infinite joy and a relief such as nothing before had ever promised him from the black regiment of moods ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... dumbly. She began to realize that the knightly spirit of those gallant, long dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago lighted them through quest and adventure, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... another word. For seconds they became one of the speechless couples, standing dumbly in the great ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... invariably attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... done, she stared dumbly for a moment; then, leaving the rest of the introductions to her father, she ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... as his virtues, were in unison with the powerful body they inhabited, and in such a crisis as the present but one of two reliefs were possible to him; either wrathful denunciation, expostulation and despair, or the abandon of a child. Against the former he had been struggling dumbly till Sylvia's words had turned the tide, and too entirely natural to feel a touch of shame at that which is not a weakness but a strength, too wise to reject so safe an outlet for so dangerous ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... face white, her breath coming in sobs. At first he thought the vision a dream, a delirium born from his long struggle; he could not conceive the possibility of such a presence in this lonely place, and staggering to his feet, gazed wildly, dumbly at the slender, gray clad figure, the almost girlish face under the shadowing dark hair, expecting the marvellous vision to vanish. Surely this could not be real! A woman, and such a woman as this here, and alone, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... if her heart had been struck a merciless blow. She was a little consoled by Perigal's letter, but, in her heart of hearts, something told her that, despite his brave words, the marriage was indefinitely postponed; indeed, it was more than doubtful if it would ever take place at all. She suffered, dumbly, despairingly; her torments were the more poignant because she realised that the man she loved beyond anything in the world must be acutely distressed at this unexpected confounding of his hopes. Her head throbbed with dull pains which gradually increased in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... ploughing? I suppose you don't walk all round him and say "Oo!" What does your Uncle George wear when he's reaping? I suppose you don't—By the way, I wish you'd tell me your name. (ERN gazes at him dumbly.) Oh, come! They must have told you your name when you ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... George's dying message, and to thank him on her own account for all that he had done to help her journey. The letter was phrased as Nelly could not help phrasing anything she wrote. Cicely, to whom Nelly dumbly shewed it, thought it 'sweet.' But on Farrel's morbid state, it struck like ice, and he had the greatest difficulty in writing a letter of sympathy, such as any common friend must send her, in return. Every word seemed to him ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... War Time. When its shadow beckoned He had walked dumbly where the flag had led Through swamp and fen,—unknown, unpraised, unreckoned,— To famine, fever, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... at him dumbly. For a few seconds neither of them stirred; then Ricardo lowered his glance, and, opening his fingers, let the whole pack fall on the table. Schomberg sat down. He sat down because of the faintness in his legs, and for no ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed, her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten something—some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his heart dumbly. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Mate reached me, and I pointed, dumbly; and yet, as I did so, it was with the knowledge that he would not be able to see what I saw. (Queer, wasn't it?) And then, almost in a breath, I lost sight of the thing, and became aware that Tammy was ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... what does it mean?" and, worried and heartsick, lest she should have made a mistake, she sat looking dumbly ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... what to do. He had never seen a woman cry so before.... Did girls always act this way when they became engaged? Was it the usual thing, or was something wrong with Ruth? He stood by, dumbly waiting, unhappy when he knew he should be happy; troubled when he knew there should be no cloud in his sky; vaguely apprehensive when he knew he should be looking into the future with eyes confident of finding only ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... creature's words, something vague but repulsive in her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work by which she could barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. She looked out dumbly over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering of the world was eating into her soul; the suffering of this vast travailing East London, where people trod each ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... her sad companion agreed, shaking his head. "Nobody at all, Julia. Nobody at all." Rousing himself, he went back for the golf tools, and with a lingering gentleness set them in a corner. Then, dumbly, he ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... City and Palo Alto were next telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done, Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only to condemn him to be talked to death by ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... violently, and the lips fluttered dumbly under mine; her breast swelled against mine; her soft hand tried ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... him, telling what he knew, Fenwick all the time dumbly vexed that this good-looking, prosperous fellow, this Academician in his new fur coat, breathing success and commissions, should know more of his best ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and self- seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude abandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation became uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her "naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orr but stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome, social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless tiresomeness of their ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Claire nodded dumbly. In the case of previous Belgian admirers affairs had been checked before they reached the extreme stage, and she found this, her first spoken proposal much less exciting than she had expected. As a friend pure and simple, she had thoroughly liked Mr Judge, and at the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now than when he saw the flames of the burning oil threatening the destruction of the building, and he dumbly wondered why Gladys did not make ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... with us a week, and she still fascinates me. She is installed in the annex, and seems calmly satisfied with her surroundings. She brought everything she owns tied up in an oat-sack. I have given her a few of my things, for which she seems dumbly grateful. She seldom talks, and never laughs. But I am teaching her to say "yes" instead of "yaw." She studies me with her limpid blue eyes, and if she is silent she is never sullen. She hasn't the heavy forehead and jaw of ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and dumbly and helplessly inspected the ruins of my projects—or, rather, the ruin of the one project upon which I had my heart set. I had known I cared for her, but it had seemed to me she was simply one more, the latest, of the objects on which ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... His steps; are we? How the dark places of the earth are crying out for all the powers of giving and living and loving that are locked up in hearts at home! How the waste places are pleading dumbly for the treasure that lies there in abundance, stored as it were in the seedvessels of God's garden that have not been broken, not emptied for His world, not ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... and laughter; all around The moonlight washed us like a silver lake, Save where that silent, sealed sepulchre Was hung with shadow as a purple pall. A faint wind stirred among the olive boughs . . . Methinks I hear the sighing of that wind In all sounds since, it was so dumbly sad; But as the night wore on it died away, And all was deadly stillness; Claudia, That stillness was most awful, as if some Great heart had broken and so ceased to beat! I thought of many things, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Venus noteth, 1057 Over one shoulder doth she hang her head, Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth; She thinks he could not die, he is not dead: 1060 Her voice is stopp'd, her joints forget to bow, Her eyes are mad that they have wept ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had eyed the waistcoat dumbly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... checked itself, and his knees began that sickening tattoo. He was instantly so miserable that he longed to die. Yet he faced her big eyes, brown and good-natured and smiling with recognition, and dumbly pushed the check and ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn't swim, but yet she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was alone, she didn't know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something for him, something splendid. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... was in a fever of discomfort. She wished dumbly that the man would go away, but for the wealth of the world she could not have brought herself to hurt the feelings of so big a man. To endanger the very natural dignity of a big man was a thing which no woman could do without a pang; the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But he had not abandoned himself ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... mission, but told it dumbly by pressing a bottle of hot coffee in each man's hand, waiting while it was consumed, and then returning to get the bottles refilled, their thanks being a warm, hearty pressure and a shouted warning from the captain to take care as they turned to creep back under such shelter as they ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... nephew fell back in consternation and eyed her dumbly as she laughed. All mirth is not contagious, and he was easily able to refrain from ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... They sat dumbly a minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I'd not be pitying— I could forget him now— But for the childish look of trouble That fell across his brow, For the twisting hands he looked at dumbly As if they'd ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring dumbly ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... distances. One night he got out of the road and walked completely around a cornfield. He counted the stalks in each hill of corn and computed the number of stalks in a whole field. "It should yield twelve hundred bushels of corn, that field," he said to himself dumbly, as though it mattered to him. He pulled a little handful of cornsilk out of the top of an ear of corn and played with it. He tried to fashion himself a yellow moustache. "I'd be quite a fellow with a trim yellow moustache," ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... the loosened waves of her black hair, had for him all the remoteness that surrounded her memory; and yet, though he knew it not, the appeal she made to him now, and had made long ago, was that he recognised in her, however dumbly, a creature born, like himself, with the power to experience the fulness of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... force that they must take chances with through the long watches of the night, while the thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they foresaw what would in all probability happen; they thought of their women, of all that most strongly bound them to life, and they sat and waited dumbly. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... moved like a swift bird about the cabin, getting water and bandages and pillows, and the sight of fresh blood and of Cassidy's dead-white face brought a glow of tenderness into her eyes. McKay, sitting dumbly, saw that her hands were doing twice the work his own could have accomplished, and not until he heard a low moan from the wounded man did he come ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Forbes stared dumbly. I knew he had known what was coming but had held back for fear of what he knew had always happened to informers in the circle to which ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... do for him. Why, I couldn't have that young fellow think that I tricked him into this thing for you or all the rest of the women of your kind on earth. God! I might have known that you, and the others like you, couldn't be square. [The girl looks at him dumbly. He glances at his watch, walks up stage, looks out of the window, comes down again, goes to the table, and looks at her across it.] You've made a nice ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes? Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken, we were wholly strangers: and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of a giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cursed coat off!" he dumbly sobbed. "If only I could get rid of these damned laced boots!" Bad words would have been forgivable even had he ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest.— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... own office again, trying to get the events of these last few days into some sort of perspective, Phyllis Bruce entered. He motioned dumbly to a chair, but she came and stood by his desk. Her face was very white and her lips trembled with the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... My Beautiful One, and reached out and took her hands very gentle into mine; but still they fluttered so needful; and she looked at me, dumbly; but her eyes beseeching. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... a sad, majestic motion, With a stately, slow surprise, From their earthward-bound devotion Lifting up your languid eyes— Would you freeze my too loud boldness, Dumbly smiling as you go, One faint frown of distant coldness Flitting ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... He could not see the drift of this, and he was about to whisper to Parpon, when the little man sent him a look, commanding silence, and he fretted on dumbly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less dark than this,—"Where is God?" I saw the tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... as helplessly as a frightened child. "The air!" he groaned. "It is hot!" and then he held out his hand to the princess, and showed her a flake of soot on it, and he dumbly pointed to others that were falling ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... He dropped his hand sheepishly when he realized it was only a sneeze—though a gargantuan one. Brion came up, sniffling, huddling down into his coat. "I'm going out before I catch pneumonia," he said. The guard saluted dumbly, and after checking his proximity detector screens he slipped out and the heavy portal thudded shut behind him. The street was still warm from the heat of the day and he sighed happily and opened ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... at sunset for the Keep. Half the village went with them, for Peter Rosskopf had babbled the whole story to an open-mouthed crowd of wondering men and women, and as to an execution the awe-struck crowd followed the two boys dumbly, curious to see if they surely would put their plan into execution. But none went farther than the outer doorway of the stairs, for it was already growing twilight. In absolute silence they watched the two foolhardy ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other arrangements for—hum, hum—ordinary cases." And as she looked at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at The Avenger inquest—a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to say ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... looked at her torturer dumbly. She did not know what to say—what to admit, and what ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... fear turned to hating As I saw him dumbly waiting, For it was my true likeness that he ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... last; and they looked from one to the other dumbly for a moment. Then the girl's sweet voice broke the dreary silence, and she prayed as one who has been long familiar with such words, and who, while praying, believes the answer will be given. The words of that prayer were never forgotten ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... are dazed. You think that you will awake and find that it is all a dream. You cannot believe that it is the sleeping room of your own sister that has been thus invaded and desecrated. At last from one of the older and more trusted servants you hear the truth, and while he speaks, you listen dumbly, wonderingly." ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... watched below, half asleep and waiting. He was alone with a mad woman; Bruennhilde gone crazy and frantic with grief because she was old and her voice was gone. She was dragging at his hand, and pulling him towards the stair-case. He followed her dumbly. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... was in accordance with his earlier presumption— but he was silent; and she was not sure that she liked him as well thus as when he overwhelmed her with the boldness of his suit. For Glenister it was delightful, after the perils of the night, to rest in the calm of her presence and to feel dumbly that she was near. She saw him secretly caress a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... automatically. Consciously, he did not know where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbed brain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter imaging—which, if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a hopeless task. But he did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw, optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain was ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... Austin reentered the barn. Without a word he strode over and emptied a pan of raw meat on the floor in front of the dog. Then he calmly departed, but Crosby could have sworn he heard him chuckle. The captives looked at each other dumbly for a full minute, one with wet, wide-open, hurt eyes, the other with consternation. Gradually the sober light in their eyes faded away and feeble smiles developed into peals of laughter. The irony of the situation bore down upon them irresistibly ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... count upon him though he never reverted to the matter. Somehow she could not bring herself to speak to him of the strange avoidance of her husband that was being practised by the rest of the station either. She endured it dumbly, holding herself more and more aloof in consequence of it as the days went by. Ever since the days of her own ostracism she had placed a very light price upon social popularity. The love of such women as Mary Ralston—and the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... that the chime failed less of its effect outside the city than it did within; but there again it depended upon the hearer. When the mellow tones floated above the heath where the gipsies camped, only one, perchance, might listen, lifting her bright eyes with pleasure and longing in them, dumbly, as a child might, yet showing for a moment some glimmering promise of a soul. But to many in the village close at hand the chime brought comfort. It seemed to assure the sick, counting the slow hours, that they were not forsaken, and helped them to bear their pain with patience; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... elect." I respect them for their good sense in most practical matters; for their laborious, honest lives; for their kindness, their good-will; for that aspiration towards something better than themselves which seems to stir, however dumbly, in every human breast not abandoned to literary pride or other forms of self-righteousness. I find every man interesting, whether he thinks or unthinks, whether he is savage or civilized; for this reason I cannot thank ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it is!' the other drawled; and then, taking advantage of the moment when Julia's attention was engaged elsewhere—she dumbly refused to sit, 'Where is ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... in her chair, her eyes shining under the stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing herself—through the Times. Cliffe looked at the small figure a moment, then seized a chair and sat down in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had cheated her, was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empire of my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to which one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me go on, but when I spoke again it was at a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... door, and remarked in a weak voice, "I'm sick at my stummick." He paused, then added more decidedly: "I'm goin' home. I guess I've stood about enough around here for one day!" And bestowing a last glance upon his friend, who was now sitting dumbly upon the floor in the exact spot where he had stood to fire the dreadful shot, Sam ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... grown curiously darkened, so that we moved as through an obscuring veil; and I dumbly wondered whether this was night (had it been morning or evening when I started for the pond?) or whether I was dying myself. I peered and again made out the sober, stern faces hedging me, but they gave me no answer to my mutely ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... primeval void and brought therefrom order, light, beauty and life, so the spirit of suffering brooded above the torn and saddened heart of womanhood, till at last the angel of awakening appeared, and the heart that had dumbly, patiently endured, stirred to the impulse of defence, and opened to the thought of freedom. The hour had struck, the call had come. The "arrow had been hidden in God's quiver," waiting His time. When His ringers guide to the mark, what can the ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... He looked dumbly at the man who addressed him, a stout, black-haired captain, who fixed him menacingly ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... husband raised his hand as she glided by him. He followed her dumbly into the front drawing-room, where the three lawyers waited for ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... caught at seemed, as it fell upon the air, to impregnate it with some benumbing quality. The husband and wife looked dumbly, almost vacantly at one another, for what appeared ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... on a boulder, Jack scarcely took in the fact that anything out of the way was about to happen. His only concern was not to be too far from Fetuao, and so long as he had her in his sight he was dumbly content. He was as solitary among the thronging warriors as any castaway in mid-ocean, and his patient, stolid, inexpressive face, grown older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to reflect the coming conflict. Fetuao, on the contrary, was ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Racey Dawson gazed dumbly down at the muzzle of his sixshooter from which a slim curl of gray smoke spiralled lazily upward. Then his eyes veered to the man he had shot and to the man's sixshooter lying on the edge of the sidewalk. It, too, like his own gun, was thinly smoking at the muzzle. The burly youth put a hand ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... closer terms, when the words and deeds, the feelings and fancies of the boys, among whom he was to live, were of the deepest and most vital importance, he entered upon the new life, dull and careless, without interest or excitement, simply going because he was sent, just dumbly desirous of ease and tranquillity. He had been elected on to the foundation of an ancient school, and the surroundings of the new place did indeed vaguely affect him with a sort of solemn pleasure. The quaint mediaeval chambers; the cloisters, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... within a few minutes of midnight, when the ladies of Moorsedge themselves, after an exhausting resistance to their dearest relative, were at the hall-door of the house with Victor, saying the good-night, to which he responded hurriedly, cordially, dumbly, a baffled man. They clasped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impulse, she put both arms about her, and held her close with a strong but silent tenderness better than any bonds. At first, Helen seemed unconscious of it, as she stood rigid and motionless, with her wild eyes dumbly imploring help of earth and heaven. Suddenly both strength and excitement seemed to leave her, and she would have fallen but for the living, loving prop ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... usury and peddling. They were shut up in their narrow Jewries, huddled in wretched cabins, which clustered about the dilapidated synagogue in a shamefaced way. What strange homes! What gigantic misery, what boundless suffering dumbly borne, was concealed in those crumbling, curse-laden dwellings! And yet, how resplendent they were with spiritual light, what exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The torch of ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... speech?" continued this easy and agreeable young man, whom Laurence Varney, a great distance off, stood dumbly and watched from the swirling void with a certain remote admiration. "Of course not. I was never better in my life and the walk will be pleasant on so nice an afternoon. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... universe. For nowadays the pride of man denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another genus: and in him too, we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with the dog? We look at our feet where the ground is blackened with the swarming ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that we can scarce trace and scarce ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boy of about fourteen was sitting. He had just done his afternoon's wash, and was resting himself by the fire, enjoying a thumbed football almanac. He had not risen when the visitors entered, and while his grandmother was speaking his lips still moved dumbly, as he went on adding up the football scores. He was a sickly, rather repulsive lad with a ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gave out on the street of the Consuls which as usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling of security and peace which ought to have been associated with it. It is, I believe, generally ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... George turned dumbly to his mother, and Isabel shook her head reassuringly. "People are always starting rumours," she said. "I haven't paid any attention ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... silence that followed the man and woman stood gazing dumbly at each other, and for a brief moment love and faith hung quivering in the balance. Then the balance tilted. The heavy burden of suspicion weighed it down, and without another word Eliot ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand, She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... them dab at their eyes with their handkerchief, and smile the next breath—but this was different. For a minute he didn't quite know what to do; he could hear the blood hammering against his temples while he stood dumbly watching her. He went hesitatingly up, and laid a gloved hand deprecatingly upon ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower |
