"Somnolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them, as one might say, several thousand parasangs to the rear in my mad race for daily sustenance. Well, I may not leave any vestiges on the sands of time, but, please God, I shan't die hungry,—not if I keep my health. Dear old Prexy! He was a nice old chump, though a trifle somnolent in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the lower levels. While Karstens and Tatum were tossing uneasily in the bedclothes, the writer sat up with a blanket round his shoulders, crouching over the primus stove, with the thermometer at -21 deg. F. outdoors. Walter alone was at ease, with digestive and somnolent capabilities proof against any invasion. It was, of course, broad daylight all night. At three the company was aroused, and, after partaking of a very light breakfast indeed, we sallied forth into the brilliant, clear morning with not a cloud in the sky. The only packs we carried that day ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... up to the fire, where, with a conventional sentence, he extended his legs to the low blaze. A man regarded him with a peering suspicious gaze; but any doubts were apparently laid, for the other silently resumed a somnolent indifference. His clothes were an amazing and unnecessary tangle of rags; his stubble of beard and broken black hat had an air of unreality, as though they were the stage properties of a stupid and conventional parody ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... close-cut hair. He stood lean and long-limbed, easy and indifferent in his pose, as it would seem to look at him as one might glance in passing, the smoke of his cigarette rising straight from its fresh-lit tip in the calm air of the somnolent day. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... holds good regardless of size. The whole fringe of Arabia, from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene of incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its race. Its accessible coast, forming a ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... proceedings, without bringing fresh light to bear upon our investigations. After the luncheon interval, I was pleased to observe that for one cause or another—I repeat, for one cause or another—he was distinctly—shall I say somnolent, gentlemen? Yes, I will say somnolent. And I wish to inform him that the more somnolent he remains, the better we shall all ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... born and bred. For instance, the flowering kaia-ooh! with its exquisite perfume (suggestive of the Californian Poppy), the veemuawees (a small hard fruit suggestive of the oak apple), and the perennial "Pooh!" (merely suggestive) all combined to enwrap the infant Ah! Ah! in a somnolent cocoon of sensual languidness, from which in after life she was hard put to it to escape. To say that her dazzling beauty completely hypnotised any native for miles round into instant submission—would perhaps be exaggerating; but if one is to judge from the accounts of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... he was still in this half-somnolent, semidetached frame of mind that he rode into a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... from Signet's lips in the turquoise and gold of the afternoon. It was like the babble of some monstrous and harmless mythology. And all the while, as he kicked his bare heels on the deckhouse and harassed me with his somnolent greed for "talk," one could see him wondering, wondering, in the back of his mind. So he would have been wondering through all the hours of weeks, months—it had come to the dignity of years, on the beach, in the bush—wondering ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sink into a somewhat somnolent condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a dozen different ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His pictures—Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of artistic perception, save a certain sentiment ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... apartments with the preparation of food, and in the labors of the loom and spindle; while young children, half-naked, play around the house doors and through the lanes with an activity in strong contrast with the prevailing tone of grave and somnolent repose. ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... his intention of marching upon Rome, an echo woke in many a poet's heart "by rose hung river and light-foot rill," but left Ibsen simply disconcerted. If Rome was to be freed from Papal slavery, it would no longer be the somnolent and unupbraiding haunt of quietness which the Norwegian desired for the healing of his spleen and his moral hypochondria. In October the heralds of liberty crossed the Papal frontier; on the 30th, by a slightly prosaic touch, it was the French who entered Rome. Of Ibsen, in these ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... and this is tantamount to saying that he was not capable of ignoring the somnolent influences of human nature. To his own extreme surprise his head fell forward with an abrupt nod while he was engaged in the act of depicting Big Waller's nose, and he found, on resuming work, with an imbecile smile at what he deemed his weakness, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... down into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... in, therefore, amongst the chattering party, and stood, dark, shy, his head down, like the man in Millet's 'Angelus,' his hands folded on his cap, in front of his unspeakably buttoned blue baggy trousers, as though in attitude of prayer to the doctor, who, uniformed and grey-bearded, like an old somnolent goat, beamed on him through spectacles with a sort of shrewd benevolence. The catechism began. So he had something to ask, had he? A swift, shy lift of the eyes: 'Yes.' 'What then?' 'To go home.' 'To go home? What ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... calmly awaiting his return; and this feeling presently grew so strong within him that he could scarcely credit his eyes when, upon passing through the screen of concealing foliage, he saw only the three seamen curled up in the boat. They roused themselves from their semi-somnolent condition and sat up to receive him, with glances of mute ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did not in the least care whether it was a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... enfant terrible of the drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy which pictured to him all high aims as possible of realization ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... routine of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... smoke bathed, drowned them, and they seemed to sink into a somnolent and sad inebriety, in that taciturn and morose intoxication peculiar to men ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... amatory or otherwise (the amatory ones were the worst), usually faded slowly, like the light from the setting sun or an exhausted coal in the grate, about the end of Puffin's second tumbler, and the gentlemen after that were usually somnolent, but occasionally laid the foundation for some disagreement next day, which they were too sleepy to go into now. Major Flint by this time would have had some five small glasses of whisky (equivalent, as he bitterly observed, to one in pre-war days), and as he measured ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... he might have remained in this somnolent condition if left to himself, it is impossible to state, for a vigorous alarm upon his door cut short his slumbers, and startled him ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has its legend, quaint or tragic: Dunfermline, in whose royal towers the king may be still observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood- red wine; somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith; Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled"; Burntisland where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table carried ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the vibra-currents through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought-life-force set his every ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... old man, with fat hands, a red, minutely wrinkled face, and very small eyes. Greeted with the respect due to the owner of Cocknage Gardens, a sporting resort where all the best foot-racing and rabbit-coursing took place, he accepted it in somnolent indifference, and immediately took off his coat and sat down in cotton shirt-sleeves. Then he pulled out a red handkerchief and his tobacco-box, and set them on the table. Big ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... camp began to rouse. The heavy eyes, the languid stretch, the unmeaning contemplation of the noontide sunlight, the slow struggles of a somnolent brain. These things were suggested in the gradual stirring of the place to a ponderous activity. The heavy movement of weary diggers as they lounged into camp for their dinner had no suggestion of the greedy passion which possessed them. They ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... chopping sea for which this gulf is renowned. In the Mediterranean, even in the calmest weather, a light pleasant breeze springs up after sunset; this and the cloudless sky, and unobscured brilliancy of the stars, are attractions sufficient to allure the most somnolent and unromantic mortal to ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... a sort of bunk that let down underneath the wagon. If it were daytime, the cattle were allowed to graze under supervision of one of the Kikuyus. If it was night time they were tethered to the long chain, where they lay in a somnolent double row. A lantern at the head of the file and one at the wagon's tail were supposed to discourage lions. In a bad lion country fires were added to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... and it would seem that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... conclusion, for either his eyes closed before he came to the "Amen," or else worldly images crowded round him, and forced him to begin his devotions again from the beginning, when he had succeeded in recollecting himself. In this half-somnolent state he obtained not one moment of inward collectedness, of quiet reflection; not even when he gazed up at the starry heavens, or looked down on the oasis, veiled in night, where many others like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as she sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother—a dark-faced, pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes—and waited for her to speak. The reply came ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... houses which lined the meandering unpaved streets, or rather passages, of a certain village in northern India; crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes; inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town, unprodded even by the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... exhausting program, finally conclude that unless they take a vacation they are going to break down. The doctor tells them so and they know it. Whereupon they rush off for a week or ten days; some of them enter upon an orgy of exercise, others relax into a somnolent state of lying around and thanking their stars that they can rest at last. They certainly do feel better and do improve, but they come back to work merely to begin the same old vicious round. They have had their lesson, but ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... practices of a mechanical devotion, and dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives; and as I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent woman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips as in the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene with the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... restlessly in the caressing softness of his bed. He turned a knob in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere. He turned another knob, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... of Tinkletown is a slow-going, somnolent sort of place in which veils are worn by old ladies who wish to enjoy a pleasant snooze during the sermon without being caught in the act. That any one should wear a veil with the same regularity and the same purpose that she wears the dress which renders the remainder of her person invisible ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... of darkness and the larger silence of darkness, the veldt awoke. Animals that had dozed through the hot hours and grazed through the cooler hours in somnolent content now quivered alert. There were runnings here and there, the stamp of hoofs, sharp snortings as taut nerves stretched. Zebras uttered the absurd small-dog barks peculiar to them; ostriches boomed; jackals yapped; unknown birds uttered hasty wild calls. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Bixby was in its usual condition of somnolent cheerfulness, that same afternoon. The mail had come in, being brought in Abner Colt's green wagon from the railway-station two miles away. The appearance of the green wagon, with its solitary brown ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... mounted its perron with the springy confident step of youth; and that same spring and confidence of gait carried him past the usually vigilant porter. A marble staircase led him to the lordliest smoking-room in London. He frowned, perceiving that his favourite arm-chair was occupied by a somnolent Judge of the High Court, and catching up the Revue des Deux Mondes, settled himself in a window-bay commanding the great twilit square of the Horse Guards ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... minutes stewards and other members of the crew were sent round to arouse the people. Some utterly refused to get up. The stewards had almost to force the doors of the staterooms to make the somnolent appreciate their peril, and many of them, it is believed, were drowned like rats ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... to have something light sent in to him, as he wished not to be disturbed in his investigation of the documents. He had scant need to apprehend interruption, however, while the long afternoon wore gradually away. The universal Southern siesta was on, and the somnolent mansion was like the castle of Sleeping Beauty. The ladies had sought their apartments and the downy couches; the cook, on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the raisins for the frozen pudding ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... caught and reflected the light. The tattooing that framed them appeared like black holes from which the sparks glinted uncannily, and the kava mounting to his brain or to mine gave those sparks a ghastliness that fascinated me in my keen, somnolent state. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... duties in connection with the science of secret investigation, had been sufficiently fulfilled for the day, and he prepared to wend his way back to the house, when the sound of voices, once more aroused his somnolent attention. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... vermilion hue. At its western curve the Colorado River split the red walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods; when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless. Safe from the storms of the elements as well as of the world ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... moment sous le porche, dans l'ombre. L'homme posa sa malle par terre, je le payai, et il s'en alla bien vite.... Derrire lui l'norme porte se referma lourdement, lourdement.... Bientt aprs, un portier somnolent, tenant la main une grosse lanterne, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with his habits. Later on, perhaps, he would accustom himself and grow resigned to this luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of it fretted him, and it was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent M. de Kercadiou that Andre-Louis was ushered in the early hours of the afternoon of that Sunday in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been the custom at Gavrillac. This because Benoit, M. de Kercadiou's old seneschal, had accompanied his seigneur ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... villa, promising to return in a few hours; and Brendon joined Albert in his sleeping apartment. For a time they were alone together and then came Jenny with some soup. She stopped to chat for a little while and, finding her uncle apparently somnolent and disinclined to talk, turned to Mark and spoke under her breath. She was still agitated ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... lewd, libidinous read, peruse lie, prevaricate hearty, cordial following, subsequent crowd, multitude chew, masticate food, pabulum eat, regale meal, repast meal, refection thrift, economy sleepy, soporific slumberous, somnolent live, reside rot, putrefy swelling, protuberant soak, saturate soak, absorb stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive house, domicile ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... late September morning. There was an easterly haze driving in from the Baie des Chaleurs and the darkness was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour of rain would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent travelers yawned in the waiting room, which smelled horribly of smoky lamps. The telegraph instrument in the ticket office clicked spasmodically for a minute, and then relapsed into a gloomy silence. The imperturbable station master was tipped back against ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... muttered. "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... thought for the morrow or indeed even for the day. He was entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy. His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he had been engaged in the preparation of his magnum opus, which periodically was just on the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... coverings, disheveled forms and shaggy heads. In my own corner nothing had been molested. The world outside was strangely quiet. The trail was open. So with no attention to my roommates I hastily washed and dressed, buckled on my armament, and stumped freely forth, down the somnolent hall, down the creaking stairs, and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... sofa in the drawing-room for a quiet hour before dinner and lit a cigar. He had hardly realised his pleasantly tired and rather somnolent condition when his daughter entered carrying a large Teddy-bear, two dolls, a toy trumpet and a box containing a wooden tea-set. She dropped several of these articles just inside the door. "Come and help me pick up my sings," she ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... these after-dinner evening visits, he had often allowed himself to lapse into occasional silence that was slightly somnolent, and was accustomed to fall into the easy attitudes of an old friend who does not stand on ceremony. But now he seemed suddenly to rouse himself and to show the alertness of men who do their best to be agreeable, who take thought as to what they wish to say, and who, before ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... looked out so that that keen one eye of Blind Charlie might not perceive the exultation he could no longer keep out of his face. Bruce did not see the tarnished dome of the Court House—nor the grove of broad elms, shrivelled and dusty—nor the enclosing quadrangle of somnolent, drooping farm horses. He was seeing this town shaken as by an explosion. He was seeing cataclysmic battle, with Blind Charlie become a nonentity, Blake completely annihilated, and himself victorious at the front. And, dream of his dreams! he was seeing himself free to reshape ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped, it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point at, 'fore I leave this ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... some months before it had entirely perished, though I stood motionless, every thing which I looked at seemed in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapor seemed to have settled on my forehead and temples, which usually occasions a sort of somnolent pressure upon my eyes, and particularly from dinner till evening. So that I often recollect what is said of the poet Phineas ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... the summit of our eastern hill." From its clerical occupants the place had inherited a mild mustiness of theological association—a vague reverberation of old Calvinistic sermons, which served to deepen its extra-mundane and somnolent quality. The three years that Hawthorne passed here were, I should suppose, among the happiest of his life. The future was indeed not in any special manner assured; but the present was sufficiently genial. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... friends to purchase shares in the Spiritual Railway Society—it is under Him the safest of all associations yet established. The arrangements are admirably adapted for the projects in view. All the seats are delightfully soft, and as somnolent as church pews, to which they bear a close resemblance. The machine men, and all those appointed to situations on the line, are mostly in orders; but belong to different denominations. The scheme originated ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... height to instant and terrible destruction upon the green, slimy boulders over which the water dashed and roared continuously far below. Here he had sat, that arrogant lover of hers, and slipped from somnolent enjoyment into that dreadful gulf. At her feet—proof indisputable of the truth of the story she had been told—lay a charred fragment of the cigar that had doubtless been between his lips when he had sunk into that fatal sleep. The ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... cursed and swore; others shook their sides with merriment; others reasoned and remonstrated with their neighbors; some very composedly stretched themselves upon the sofas, having first borrowed chair-cushions enough to support their somnolent heads; other bivouacked on three chairs, while some, not finding a convenient couch, stretched themselves flat on the floor of the House, with, perhaps, a volume of the Laws of the United States as ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... pale, listened to her. Beauclair had positively told him that the cure would come like a lightning flash, that under the influence of extreme excitement a sudden awakening of will so long somnolent would take place ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... they reached Lake Drummond, that placid pool in the somnolent shades, and Mr. P. put up at the house of a melancholy man, with a fur cap, who lived in a cabin on the edge ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... only be opened by a key of peculiar construction. Seaton took out his key, opened the door, and called to the mate, but received no reply. However, he took the precaution to go round the store, and see whether Wylie, rendered somnolent by liquor, might not be lying oblivious among the cases; Wylie, however, was not to be seen, and Seaton, finding himself alone, did an unwise thing; he came and contemplated Wardlaw's cases of metal and specie. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... that night and, in the agent's car, returned jubilantly to the somnolent and dilapidated Marietta Inn, which was too broken for even the chance immoralities and consequent gaieties of a country road-house. Half the night they lay awake planning the things they were to do there. Anthony was going to work at an astounding ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the choicest dishes known to the modern cuisine, and in my disturbed slumber's would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... and for whom will the End be? All grows, and seeks and endures its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether we think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a changed world. In that seven-years' sleep of his, so much has changed! All that is without us will change while we think not of it; much even that is within us. The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... grasshopper has a sabre, an oviscapt which plunges into the earth and sows the eggs at the desired depth; the Leuscopis has a probe which finds its way through the masonry of the mason-bee and lays the egg in the cocoon of the great somnolent larva; but the Balaninus has none of these swords, daggers, or pikes; she has nothing but the tip of her abdomen. Yet she has only to apply that abdominal extremity to the opening of the passage, and the egg is immediately lodged at ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... mooring "Lorelei" at the bridge, the girls laughed and chatted together, but involuntarily they hushed their voices on entering the green shadow of the little town under its slow-marching procession of great trees; and the spell of somnolent silence ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the international boundary, the Charlotte drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line those inland waterways began to ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... discontinued, the Churchwarden should find out by private inquiry from his Rector the why and the wherefore, and if the change is for the better he should not let love of existing practice be stereotyped into a desire of a never changing system, which may perchance easily slide into lethargy and somnolent repose. In these days it does ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... like a pall. Far off, over the black sea, pulsed the fitful glow of an occasional gleam of lightning, faint with the distance which it traversed. There was no moon; the stars were gone; the sky was inky and the air somnolent. The smell of smoke hung about her. She could not help wondering if his fine, strong body was lying up there, burnt to a crisp. It was far past midnight; she was alone in the garden. Sixty feet below her was the ground; above, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... painfully aware of a somnolent tendency in Frederick (which had no existence out of his own imagination), and after dinner, when Frederick had withdrawn, privately apologised to Mrs General for the poor man. 'The most estimable and affectionate of brothers,' he said, 'but—ha, hum—broken up altogether. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... had less to do in the way of handling and nursing the schooner. Their plans when the "Boomskys" should be reached were rehearsed over and over again. Then came spells of card and checker playing, story-telling, or hours of silent inertia when, man fashion, they brooded over pipes in a patch of sun, somnolent, the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... in food, and especially—in the light of what has been said above—temperance in drink, are all incidentally of value as aids to the maintenance of purity. So also is the avoidance of the habit of lying in bed in a semi-somnolent condition after true sleep has finally departed. A Christian's body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and no other spirit, whether of impurity or of sloth, should be allowed to have ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... styles and moods of expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased reasonably cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read and liked to read! Think of the French, who had once had a Villon, intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then, the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels of Scudery. Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics and diseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the great diffusion ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... younger races dream; the oldest of races knew better. The race that was first to dream the beautiful dream of a Millennium was the first to discard it. Nay, was it even a beautiful dream? Every man under his own fig-tree, forsooth, obese and somnolent, the spirit disintegrated! Omnia Vanitas, this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the rooms. The somnolent boots will carry our things upstairs. Which of the two rooms will I have? They are en suite. I make no choice. It is, I protest, a matter of perfect indifference to me; but one room being infinitely superior to the other, I select it, apologetically. DAUBINET, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... merely copies of general-ledger balances, or parts thereof. Evan saw his way from beginning to end of the routine, and wondered that anything so simple as bank work could ever worry a man. He recalled the first week of his clerkship in Mt. Alban, and a grin crept over his somnolent features. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... is the offspring of a lioness, by a leopard that coerces her, and, for this reason, cheetas are sterile like mules and all other hybrids. No animal of the same size is as weighty as the cheeta. It is the most somnolent animal on earth. The best are those that are 'hollow-bellied,' roach backed, and have deep black spots on a dark tawny ground, the spots on the back being close to each other; that have the eyes bloodshot, small and narrow; the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... walked slowly back together, while on the corners twilight played at somnolent black-and-white checkers with the ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... further obligations to Herr Renwick was an added bitterness to her wounded pride, but hope had already beggared her and she could not choose. She got into coat and hat, and after another careful scrutiny of her somnolent guardian, quietly opened the shutters of the side window, stepped out into the shadow of the hedge, and made her way toward ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Morgan Shuster had carried on his work in Persia until Persia had become of a strength to threaten the world. Lu was growing strong; and Ts'i—renowned military Ts'i—thought she ought to be doing something. Thus in our own time, whenever somnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia, land-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt a call to send down emissaries, and—see that the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in the symbol of the old Apostle, "in Him we live and move and have our being." She recalled that God had been defined in the consciousness of the race as Love. Deep draughts of new existence whelmed her. No longer life coursed somnolent through unconscious veins. Life ran riotous of gladness tingling to a living joy so poignant it became pain. Was it fool-joy born of swifter pulse and time-old inheritance in the flesh? Was it the rhapsody of self-hypnotism, which ancients would have called vision? Of such dreams does creation ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... A somnolent atmosphere, still touched by the smell of gunpowder, greeted him as he strode majestically down the halls. Somehow each person who bowed to him seemed to do it with the melancholy precision of one who has been up for six ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... learnt long ago in the land of Lotus Eaters, "that slumber is more sweet than toil!" The back benches of that room were strewn with shattered hopes. Small intelligent scholars came up and passed by on their way to Balliol Scholarships; but the faces at the back of the room remained terribly somnolent and happy. A certain Banbury had been there for three years and had earned the nickname of "old Father Time," and Mansell, too, swore he would enrol himself with the Lost Legion, while even Gordon said that nothing would shift him from there ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... by compression. Many of the best episodes of the Ramayana are quite omitted by Kalidasa: for example, the story of the jealous humpback who eggs on Queen Kaikeyi to demand her two boons; the beautiful scene in which Sita insists on following Rama into the forest; the account of the somnolent giant Pot-ear, a character quite as good as Polyphemus. Other fine episodes are so briefly alluded to as to lose all their charm: for example, the story of the golden deer that attracts the attention of Rama while Ravana is stealing his wife; the journey of the monkey Hanumat to Ravana's ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... midst of this silence a church bell began its merry pealing, but the chimes were lost in the somnolent city. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... with you; or, even if you do, you will probably think the performance little to be admired. As a general rule, the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot Question—oldest of dialectic nightmares—is often found astride of a somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and Romans, too, are reserved as sort of GENERAL-UTILITY men, to do all the dirty work of illustration; and they fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at the 'Princess's,' which I ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did in fact attack the presumably somnolent Americans, more happened than either he or they expected. A third was also waiting to strike for the sake of a woman. He was Dupin, who wanted nothing better than the allies at each other's throat. Crouching warily near, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Corona on her youthful appearance. The men were almost all grandees of Spain of the first class and wore their ribbons by common consent, which lent the assembly an imposing appearance; but several of them were of a somnolent disposition and nodded after dinner, which did not contribute to prolong the effect produced. Orsino thought their stories and anecdotes very long-winded and pointless, and even the old prince himself seemed oppressed by the solemnity ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... reply, having just lit my pipe and feeling uncommonly drowsy; and, my companion having followed my example, we smoked in silence, becoming more and more somnolent, until the train drew up in the terminus and we turned out, yawning and shivering, on to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... poked a somnolent head up from a pile of lumber near the tracks and yawned welcome to the recruit. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... process, which Christina protracted on that very account. She then dressed and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim—as no one else in the castle would do—the basin of soup, with which she then fed her patient as he leant back in the corner of the settle, at first in the same somnolent, half-conscious state in which he had been ever since the relief from the severe pain; but after a few spoonfuls the light and life came back to his eye, and he broke out, "Thanks, thanks, gracious lady! This is the Lady Baroness ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day had been somnolent, enlivened in the Carey household only by the solemn rite of paying the annual rent of the Yellow House. The votive nosegay had been carefully made up, and laid lovingly by Nancy under Mother Hamilton's portrait, in the presence not only of the entire family, but also ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... resigned acquiescence, and at the finish was fast asleep. Every evening after that Deidrick proposed in perfect good faith, the girl repeated her objections with equal candour, and they were received with somnolent approval. Love-making is very agreeable, and by the usuage of long years it becomes a confirmed habit. In less than a decade it became impossible for Katrina to enjoy her supper without the regular proposal, and Deidrick could not sleep of a night without the preliminary nap ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Park Avenue owned its personal atmosphere of somnolent isolation, in strong contrast with the bustle of proletarian Fourth Avenue at its one extreme and the roar at the other of traffic-galled Forty-Second Street. Of the residences a few, whose awninged windows resembled heavy-lidded eyes, overlooked wayfaring folk with drowsy ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... it. She certainly did go about a great deal, and she used to carry her husband away from his library every night of every season and left him standing in the doorways of drawing-rooms, outwardly courteous and distinguished looking, but inwardly somnolent and unhappy. She was a born and trained social leader, and her daughter's coming out was to have been the greatest effort of her life. She regarded it as an event in the dear child's lifetime second only in importance to her birth; equally important with her probable marriage ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis |
