"Vainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... superiors and inferiors. We fully recognize the relation which these words indicate. It is useless to quarrel with Nature, who has nowhere in the universe given us an example of the absolute, unqualified, dead-level equality which some pseudo-reformers have vainly endeavored to institute among men. Such leveling is neither possible nor desirable. Harmony is born of difference, and not ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... to room in an agony of suspense, Lady Cameron following her and vainly trying to speak words of comfort and cheer, while they waited for the return of those who had gone to ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... first great work, (a task perform'd by few) Is, that yourself may to yourself be true: No mask, no tricks, no favour, no reserve! Dissect your mind, examine ev'ry nerve. Whoever vainly on his strength depends, Begins like Virgil, but like ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... an alarm which he vainly tried to prevent appearing on his face. Gloucester advanced ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... "So," he exclaimed, vainly trying to appear collected, "I find that my firm has been conducting an uptown office for criminal business! This is one ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Dunham vainly struggled to look him in the eye. "Staniford," he faltered, with much more culpability than some criminals would confess a murder, "I lent him ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... a jet from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it vainly twice before, when Katie died of diphtheria and little Johnny of scarlet fever. Perhaps it is from overwork among the poor that Death has been reduced ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had hardly any intimates. Chitty, afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do. His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike. His failure was caused, perhaps, by scruples as to the use of live bait, which led him to look up some elaborate recipes in Walton's 'Compleat Angler.' Pike, though not very intelligent, have long seen through those ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... victor in seven duels, also fell. Hercules laid low eight others, among them three hunter companions of Diana, who, although formerly always certain with their weapons, today failed in their aim, and vainly covering themselves with their shields fell before the arrows of the hero. Even Alkippe fell, who had sworn to live her whole live unmarried: the vow she ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... on the very point of entering upon action. If the renunciation made at the treaty of the Pyrenees was not valid, it was foreseen, that upon the death of the king of Spain, a sickly infant, the whole monarchy would be claimed by Lewis; after which it would be vainly expected to set bounds to his pretensions. Charles acquainted with these well-grounded apprehensions of the Dutch, had been the more obstinate in insisting on his own conditions at Breda; and by delaying ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... whole year, vainly expected that some one would remonstrate against an illegal proceeding, and seeing myself abandoned by my fellow-citizens, I determined to renounce my ungrateful country in which I never had lived, from which I had not received either inheritance ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fact that Watson owed Busby money, and that he had vainly tried to collect it. He would not say that Rita left camp with Busby, but his keen anxiety to protect her was evident to every one in the room. He admitted that he expected Busby ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... he still waited vainly for Natacha's response. At seven o'clock, he decided to dress for the dinner. Just as he rose, a messenger arrived. There was still another letter for Joseph Rouletabille. This time it was from ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... kind compassion, Me to calm my grief conjure, Vainly strive my heart to comfort, It the ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... violence, with his heels aloft in the air, as if about to perambulate the field on his hands, while his horse came to the ground on its face and knees, suspended by its hind legs from the upper bar of the fence, and vainly essaying at extrication. The other cockney sportsman was similarly situated: his horse had not cleared the fence, neither had the rider, although he had reached the neck of his rosinante in his progress to the opposite side; in this position he assumed a permanent aspect, for his horse rested ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... is laid in the Himalayan forest. Pururavas enters, and in a long poetical soliloquy bewails his loss and seeks for traces of Urvashi. He vainly asks help of the creatures whom he meets: a peacock, a cuckoo, a swan, a ruddy goose, a bee, an elephant, a mountain-echo, a river, and an antelope. At last he finds a brilliant ruby in a cleft of the rocks, and when about to throw it away, is told by a hermit to ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third, and being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero, drove him to the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies, along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream, calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A fourth springing through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager's cudgel: but the wife being less dexterous than her company, though an Amazon in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... his name—HENRICVS DVX RICHMVNDIAE. The very view of such a book, while it gives comfort to a low-spirited bibliomaniac, adds energy to the perseverance of a young collector! the latter of whom fondly, but vainly, thinks he may one day be ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to the highest hill in the center of the island, where he would spend long periods, examining the sea from horizon to horizon with his strong glasses, searching vainly for a sail. He thought once of keeping a mighty bonfire burning every night, but he reconsidered it when he reflected on the character of the ship ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the officials of the Military Academy who had rejected him. The Colonel took it as an insult to his own good name and irreproachable standing as an officer; he promptly refused any other explanation, and vainly racked his brain to remember if any youthful folly of his could possibly have made him enemies among the teachers of the Academy. He at last felt satisfied that it was envy of his own greatness and rapid advancement which had induced the rascals to take vengeance on his son. Ralph reluctantly ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... His wife endeavored vainly to remember the amount she had been told it was; but the unaccounted-for washing changed the sum and destroyed her reliance on the result. And as the chicken was now approaching perfection, and required her undivided attention, she gave up the arithmetic ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... baffle the Fates' Bitter decrees, and break for a while their barrier gates, Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee bring me anon Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son, Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least, Doing the dead, though vainly, the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... exultation into the avenue from the central court. He had not been there before. The first thing he did was to stand fully five minutes gazing at the immensity of the enclosure trying to comprehend it, instinctively but vainly seeking adjectives with which to characterize it, and finally giving it all up, as a man gives up trying to measure the ocean or count the stars, conceding it to be too vast and wonderful for the range alike of his vision and his mind. No one told him which way ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... she dead?—and did they dare Obey my phrensy's jealous raving? My wrath but doomed my own despair: The sword that smote her's o'er me waving. But thou art cold, my murder'd love! And this dark heart is vainly craving For her who soars alone above, And leaves ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... equal to thy task," he said, addressing one who was vainly endeavoring to roll a bale to the side of the vessel, a little apart from the rest of the busy crowd; "thou wilt do better to assist the others, than ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... proceeded without further interruptions as far as the sentence, "'We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,'"—when Dooke, the sexton,—a queer, impetuous fellow,—who was vainly endeavoring to keep the boys away from the edge of the grave, seized suddenly the rope with which the coffin had just been lowered down, and, stooping forward, laid it like a whip-lash, "cut!" across the shins of a dozen youngsters, making them leap with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... shown, that He makes provision in His gospel for them to be made and kept holy. And it is precisely the standard of God's holiness which is set before us by the Saviour as the mark at which we also are to aim, and aim not vainly nor unsuccessfully. "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Not that our perfection or our holiness can be equal to His in degree. That would make the finite equal to the infinite, and would be an impossibility and absurdity, but that we are to be perfect in our sphere as ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... repeated, closing the door after him, and vainly attempting to imitate the thrill which he gave to the word. "What ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... ecclesiastical authors described all classes of unbelievers, sceptics, and innovators, under the general name of heretics. Persons who in matters of religion made a false choice, of whatever kind, were viewed as "vainly puffed up by a fleshly mind," or as under the influence of some ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... out; but after he had struggled vainly to get up the rock, and found no other support for foot or hand than the one projection just above him, by which he held, he looked toward her as he clung there out of breath, and saw her eagerly watching him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... live in perilous times," he muttered, speaking more particularly to John Effingham, out of respect to his appearance, "when the scions of the nobility entertain notions so loose. We have vainly fancied in England that the enormities of the French revolution were neutralized by Billy Pitt; but, sir, we still live in perilous times, for the disease has fairly reached the higher classes. I hear that designs are seriously entertained against the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... till he had gone through the house again; nor would he, in fact, eat here at all; for his second search ended as vainly as his first, and he was by this time so wroth, not only at the failure to recover his child, but at the loss which his dignity had suffered by this failure, that he had no sooner reached this spot, and found the young husband still standing where he had left him, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... than that of the beginning. Philosophy is the highest product and the goal of the world-process. As will, intuition, representation, and feeling are lower forms of thought, so ethics, art, and religion are preliminary stages in philosophy; for it first succeeds in that which these vainly attempt, in presenting the concept adequately, in ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... "But vainly doth a man contend with Fate! My father had less pity on his son Than wild things of the woodland desolate. 'Tis said that ere the Autumn day was done A great she-bear, that in these rocks did wonn, Beheld a sleeping babe she did convey ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... man!" called the farmer, vainly struggling to suppress his amusement at sight of Darby's deplorable and moist condition. "You forget that you've a heavier seat on the eggs than a hen, young sir, an' ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... invulnerable. They then stripped him to see what armour he wore, but they found only an amulet bearing the figure of a lamb (the Agnus Dei, we presume). This was taken from him, and he was then killed by the first shot. De Baros relates that the Portuguese in like manner vainly attempted to destroy a Malay, so long as he wore a bracelet containing a bone set in gold, which rendered him proof against their swords. A similar marvel is related in the travels of the veracious Marco Polo. 'In an attempt of Kublai Khan to make a conquest of the island of Zipangu, a ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... such as it was, would be all over, and the ladies would be induced to go peacefully to bed again; and Annie would retreat with them to her ignoble cradle, very much disappointed, and looking vainly back at the more martial scene below. The next morning she would seem to have forgotten all about it, and would spill her bread and milk by the fire ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... eminence at a beautiful bend of the Hawkesbury, saw no less than thirty stacks of wheat at one time floating down the stream during a flood, some of them being covered with pigs and poultry, who had thus vainly sought safety from the rising of the waters. The consequences of this unexpected disaster were very calamitous, and before the ensuing harvest could be begun, wheat and Indian corn attained an equal value, and were sold at 1l. 8s. or 1l. 10s. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... it several times that night and all through the following Sunday. She couldn't help thinking of it. A dishonourable trick! That thought stung Millicent. Monday evening Millicent flung down the book from which she was vainly trying to study. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an eventful one, both for Assyria and for the neighboring countries. Hezekiah, king of Judah, hoped with the aid of Egypt to achieve his independence. Sennacherib was obliged to raise the siege of Jerusalem, after Hezekiah had vainly sought to propitiate him with large offerings of silver and gold; but the Assyrian was prevented from engaging in battle with Tirhaka of Egypt by a great calamity that befell his army. Against Babylon, which frequently revolted, he was more successful. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... up at the ceiling and vainly tried to think of something else to say. As his eyes wandered over the gray painted joists and the spaces of plaster between, he saw, not without qualms, that the little chandelier with the old-fashioned cut-glass ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... bear him / vainly did he try: But all too great the burden / and there he still must lie. The dying knight looked upward / from his bloody bed And saw how that full gladly / him his ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... wretchedness and the pain of his face, and the suffering which was visible in his attitude, all touched me. He sat crouched down, shivering, shuddering, his teeth chattering, and presented a deplorable picture of one who struggled vainly against an ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... their history, are still more so by the heroic fictions with which the bards have decorated their fabulous origin. Lastly, in returning from this mountain is seen the house of Nicholas Rienzi, who vainly endeavoured to revive ancient times among the moderns, and this memento, feeble as it is, by the side of so many others, gives birth to much reflection. Mount Caelius is remarkable because there we behold the remains of the Praetorian camp, and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... then he turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:— "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, or yield. Is it with Rustum only thou would'st fight? 365 Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee. For well I know, that did great Rustum stand Before thy face ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... forth. He ceased his cries as their lights flashed into view. "Stop, stop!" he shouted, "don't come a step further. I am sinking a foot a minute. The ground is rotten here. I guess it's up to me to say good-bye, chums," he continued in a voice he strove vainly to make steady. "You can't help me, and I'm ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... foot, she would be floating in the air above his head; or she would go dancing backwards and forwards and sideways, like a great butterfly. It happened several times, when her father and mother were holding a consultation about her in private, that they were interrupted by vainly repressed outbursts of laughter over their heads; and looking up with indignation, saw her floating at full length in the air above them, whence she regarded them with the most comical ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... he grumbled angrily. "For three years I have vainly been trying to conquer it. I am struggling and killing myself, and yet, not ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... due course last week and yesterday your mother was up and brought me your last letter to her. It is a great pleasure to know you keep well and in good heart and courage. I see you have pains in your arms which you vainly think the waists of girls would alleviate. But they would not, they would only increase the pains I have tried it ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... it cut its way hundreds of horsemen were thrown up on either side of it, just as the earth is thrown up by a ploughshare, or more like still, as the foaming water curls over beneath the bows of a rushing ship. In, yet in, vainly does the tongue twist its ends round in agony, like an injured snake, and strive to protect its centre; still farther in, by Heaven! right through, and so, amid cheer after cheer from our watching thousands, back again upon ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... and ladies fair, So rosy-cheek'd and trimly dress'd, Be pleas'd to listen to my prayer, Relieve and pity the distress'd. Let me not vainly sing my lay! His heart's most glad whose hand is free. Now when all men keep holiday, Should be a harvest-day ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... SIR,—I should long ago have written to thank you for your kind and frank letter; but, in my state of health, papers are apt to get mislaid, and your letter has been vainly hunted for until this ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... unfavourable sentence, of my judges. The momentary sensation was painful; but their condemnation was ratified by my cooler thoughts. I delivered my imperfect sheets to the flames,—and for ever renounced a design in which some expence, much labour, and more time had been so vainly consumed. I cannot regret the loss of a slight and superficial essay, for such the work must have been in the hands of a stranger, uninformed by the scholars and statesmen, and remote from the libraries and archives of the Swiss republics. My ancient habits, and the presence of Deyverdun, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... that three doors off from him, Valencia was sitting up the whole night through, vainly trying to quiet Lucia, who refused to undress, and paced up and down her room, hour after hour in wild misery, which I have no skill ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... nursed it until he became a man and was able to buy for a couple of hundred rupees a good pedigree rifle—a rifle which had belonged to a soldier killed in a hill-campaign and for which inquiries would not be made. Armed with his pedigree rifle, Futteh Ali Shah lay in wait vainly for Rahat Mian, until an unexpected bequest caused a revolution in his fortunes. He went down to Bombay, added to his bequest by becoming a money-lender, and finally returned to Peshawur, in the neighbourhood of which city he had become ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the Thuringian Countries," says a Note-book, sometimes useful to us, "have most likely omitted Rossbach in their screaming railway flight eastward; and done little in Leipzig but endeavor to eat dinner, and, still more vainly, to snatch a little sleep in the inhuman dormitories of the Country. Next morning, screaming Dresden-ward, they might, especially if military, pause at Oschatz, a stage or two before Meissen, where again are objects of interest. You can look at Hubertsburg, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hunting in the foot-hills to the eastward, in hopes of getting a deer, his small black eyes fell on a pair of Bears, still love-bound, roaming in the woods. They were far below him. He was safe, and he sent a ball that laid the she-Bear low; her back was broken. She fell with a cry of pain and vainly tried to rise. Then Gringo rushed around, sniffed the wind for the foe, and Faco fired again. The sound and the smoke-puff told Gringo where the man lay hid. He raged up the cliff, but Faco climbed a tree, and Gringo went back to his mate. Faco fired again; Gringo made still another effort ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and he repeated the question in a louder voice. Still hearing nothing, he ventured to look back. The young man was nowhere in sight. Truth to tell, no sooner had Mr. Buxton begun his humorous exhibition than the youth, vainly trying to suppress his mirth, flung down the gun, turned about and entered the wood toward which he was running when so abruptly checked ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III.; an ambitious man; vainly seized the crown of Castile; supported the Wycliffites against the clergy; married Blanche of Lancaster, and was made duke by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the fair one, addressing herself to the hag, "why wilt thou vainly brandish thy rebellious arms against the powers of Heaven? If the Sultan, though he be the favourite of Allah, do wrong, the Mighty One, who delighteth in justice, will make thee the instrument of His vengeance on the offending Prince. But ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... will I vainly question Those pages of the mystic book which hold The story still untold, But without rash conjecture or suggestion Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... as he crossed the level—a patch of bare, sandy earth surrounding it; and the other buildings, with no sign of life near them. His gaze swept the corral, and he saw no horse in it. As he guided Red King toward the cabin he peered vainly for sight ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... her he would be motherless. Maude's position was now a trying one, for, when her mother became too ill to leave her room, and the doctor refused to hire extra help, saying, "two great girls were help enough," it was necessary for her to go into the kitchen, where she vainly tried to conciliate old Hannah, who "wouldn't mind a chit of a girl, and wouldn't fret herself either if ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... murder me, Of choke your sovereign with puddle-water? Gur. No, but wash your face, and shave away your beard, Lest you be known, and so be rescued. Mat. Why strive you thus? your labour is in vain. K. Edw. The wren may strive against the lion's strength, But all in vain: so vainly do I strive To seek for mercy at a tyrant's hand. [They wash him with puddle-water, and shave his beard away. Immortal powers, that know the painful cares That wait upon my poor distressed soul, O, level all your looks upon these ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... so that I could not move. His free hand went to my throat, and in that moment I knew the bitterest foretaste of death earned by one's own idiocy. Why had I trusted myself within reach of those terrible arms? I could feel other hands at my throat. They were Maud's hands, striving vainly to tear loose the hand that was throttling me. She gave it up, and I heard her scream in a way that cut me to the soul, for it was a woman's scream of fear and heart-breaking despair. I had heard it before, during the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... that he was a chivalric knight of romance—a being from a fairy story. She had heard of such men, but never met with one outside a novel. She glorified Raymond into something altogether sublime—as soon as she found that he liked her. He filled her head, and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care who knew it. Common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to common-sense, when it suggested ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the poor witness can do to keep on the chair. The judge is on his right, the counsel on the left, and the jury in front of him, and after vainly trying to keep his eye on them all at the same time, in obedience to his counsel's injunctions, he is requested by the opposing counsel to observe some witness in the court behind him. In my opinion the witness ought to be provided ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine had ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... To the playful gayety with which she used to intermingle her instructions suddenly succeeded an uniformity of manner, neither familiar nor severe, but which seemed to prepare me for some explanation. After having vainly racked my brain for the reason of this change, I mentioned it to her; this she had expected and immediately proposed a walk to our garden the next day. Accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... ballet did not prove a good preparation; Ralph failed. It quite shook him for the time, and he felt humiliated. He had not the courage to tell his father; so he lingered on from day to day, sat vacantly gazing out of his window, and tried vainly to interest himself in the busy bustle down on the street. It provoked him that everybody else should be so light-hearted, when he was, or at least fancied himself, in trouble. The parlor grew intolerable; he sought refuge in his bedroom. There he sat one evening (it was the third day after the examination), ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... crossed the threshold and entered the dear old house. Back, back, these tumultuous throbbings of the heart, and these tears which vainly rising to the eyelids, fall back upon the heart as wanting power to flow. Who, after an absence of many years, on entering the house where they first inhaled the breath of life, but has been overpowered by conflicting emotions, as the tide of Memory rolled in, like ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... that the day could ever come when thousands of Yankees would swarm over entrenchments, vainly held by the best ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tract, the world was and had been a waste indeed. Doubtless, in that waste, intellect had at different times put forth sundry barren shoots, such as a vigorous plant can make in the absence of the sun, but also like them immature, unsound, and groping vainly after the light in which alone they could expand and perfect themselves; ripening no seed for a future and richer growth. And flowers the wilderness had none. The affections were ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... shame me before Sir Percy," murmured the young girl, casting shy glances at the elegant cavalier before her, vainly trying to find in the indolent, foppish personality of this society butterfly, some trace of the daring man of action, the bold adventurer who had snatched her and her lover from out the very tumbril that ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they might be tried by a jury picked and packed from the anti-Irish oligarchy of the Pale. It was an act of gross illegality, hardship, and oppression. The illegality of such a course had been ruled and decided in the case of Mr. Gavan Duffy in 1848. But the point was raised vainly now. When Mr. Pigott, of the Irishman, was called to plead, his counsel (Mr. Heron, Q.C.) insisted that he, the traverser, was now in custody of the city sheriff in accordance with his recognizances, and could not without legal process ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... take a drink was to be assaulted ferociously. As we walked we could feel them resisting our progress, and it seemed as if we were forcing our way through solid banks of them. If we rested, they alighted in such myriads that soon we appeared literally sheathed in tiny atoms of insect life, vainly trying to pierce the mesh of our clothing. To bare a hand was to have it covered with blood in a moment, and the thought of being at their mercy was an exquisitely horrible one. Night and day their voices blended in a vast drone, so that we ate, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one. Where would be Death's triumph, if none lived to weep? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out, as if spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands, ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whatsoever pretexts they may hide them, simple folks led on by confidence in the clemency whereof we have heretofore made use." The bailiffs followed, for the most part successfully, but in some cases vainly, the instructions they had received. One morning in December, 1560, the Duke of Guise was visited by a courier from the Count de Villars, governor of Languedoc; he informed the duke that the deputies of that province had just been ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... echoed Polly, vainly trying to induce the child next to the baby to get into her lap; "something must be done. Oh, don't you want to hear about a funny cat, children? I'm going to tell them about Grandma Bascom's, Jasper," she said, seeing the piteous look ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... vainly striving to repress any longer the tears which now forced their way down her cheeks, "why will you break my heart with this kindness! why will you still compel me to love!— when now I almost wish ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... it flew, Where the flower was before it grew, Where bird and flower were one and the same. And thus it is I know so well Why the flower has odor, the bird has song. You have only to ask me, and I can tell. No, not vainly there did I dwell, Nor vainly listen all ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... salary and the church assessments. Any preacher who offended him was destined to be deprived of his subscriptions. Knowing this I took an anxious, economical view of the old rockaway heaving forward in the road ahead and vainly implored William to slacken his speed ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... that her sex would be no protection against a rifle bullet, should an Iroquois get a view of her, the girl instinctively drew back, taking care to conceal her person as much as possible by the leaves, while she kept her own look riveted on the opposite shore, vainly waiting for some time in the expectation of the stranger. She was about to quit her post in the bushes and hasten to her uncle, in order to acquaint him of her suspicions, when she saw the branch of an alder thrust beyond the fringe of bushes on the other ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... numerous and powerful, decaying and disappearing before this fatal and inexplicable influence; history WILL record, I fear, similar results for the many nations who are now struggling; alas, how vainly, against this desolating cause. Year by year, the melancholy and appalling truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies upon us, it becomes too fatally confirmed, until at last we are almost, in spite of ourselves, forced ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... darkened. It seemed to Mr. Pengarth as he sipped his tea under the cool cedars, drawing in all their wonderful perfume with every puff of breeze, that he saw two men in the low invalid's chair before him. He saw the breath and desire of evil things struggling with some wonderful dream vainly ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the rest of it, had he not been wounded and caused the Egyptians to fear that he might die. After receiving medical attendance he no longer assailed Oricum but journeyed about pillaging various places and once vainly made an attempt upon Brundusium itself, as some others had done. This was his occupation for awhile. When his father had been defeated and the Egyptians on receipt of the news sailed home, he betook himself to Cato. [-13-] ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... ineffective. Combination of capital, like combination of labor, is a necessary element in our present industrial system. It is not possible completely to prevent it; and if it were possible, such complete prevention would do damage to the body politic. What we need is not vainly to try to prevent all combination, but to secure such rigorous and adequate control and supervision of the combinations as to prevent their injuring the public, or existing in such forms as inevitably to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... with him some manuscripts that he had written while at school. He had the temerity to publish one, which was so brutally ridiculed by the critics, that the young genius, in despair, burned all the unsold copies—an unwitting prophecy of a later and more lamentable conflagration. Then he vainly tried various means of subsistence. Suddenly he decided to seek his fortune in America, but he was both homesick and seasick before the ship emerged from the Baltic, and from Lubeck he fled incontinently back to ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Vainly that ray of brightness from above, That shone around the Galilean lake, The light of hope, the leading star of love, Struggled, the darkness of that day to break; Even its own faithless guardians strove to slake, In fogs of earth, the pure immortal flame; And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their incessant labours see Crown'd from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow-verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all the flowers and trees ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men, two miles from town, met one of these self- reliant passengers with a carpetbag, umbrella, "Harper's Magazine," and other evidences of "civilization and refinement," plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... clear brain, who'll straight engage To sweep the Swanks from Gosh?" But the Lord High Stodge, from where he stood, Cried, "Barley! . . . Guard your livelihood!" And, quick as light, the teeming Swanks, The scheming Swanks touched wood. Sages, plainly, labour vainly When ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... emperor of Constantinople; he vainly attempts to remedy the civil and ecclesiastical confusion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... and had preferred, to avoid this evil, purchasing others, and taking them himself to his lodgings. Rudolph started with joy when he thought of the happiness for Mrs. George, who was at last about to see this son, so long and vainly sought. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... moment mark the recoil, the intolerable recoil, upon the Pagan mind, of that sting which vainly they pretended to have conquered on behalf of their Pantheon. Did the reader fancy that I was fatiguing myself with any task so superfluous as that of proving the Gods of the heathen to be no Gods? In that case he has not understood me. My object is to show that the ancients, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... my soul, of all attempts to try, or triumph over, my devotion to her. More than once, during that night of anguish, I almost imagined the scene of the day actually passing again before my eyes. I saw her sorrows, and vainly endeavoured to subdue them; I heard her convulsive tones, and attempted to calm them; I reasoned with her, talked of our common helplessness, acknowledged the dignity and the delicacy of her conduct, and even gave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... ambitions were frustrated. A few attendants were brushing off the insects with boughs of cedar, laving the sores, or administering cooling draughts. The second story of the dwelling was likewise occupied by wounded, but in a corner clustered the terrified farmer and his family, vainly attempting to turn their eyes from the horrible spectacle. The farmer's wife had a baby at her breast, and its little blue eyes were straying over the room, half wonderingly, half delightedly. I thought, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... whirlwind Riving wresteth amain; down falleth he, upward hoven, Falleth on earth; far, near, all crackles brittle around him, So to the ground Theseus his fallen foeman abasing, 110 Slew, that his horned front toss'd vainly, a sport to the breezes. Thence in safety, a victor, in height of glory returned, Guiding errant feet to a thread's impalpable order. Lest, upon egress bent thro' tortuous aisles labyrinthine, Walls of blindness, a maze unravell'd ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Newton's friendly influence, he was appointed deputy Controller of the Mint at Chester, an office which he did not retain for long, as it was abolished two years later. At last, in 1703, he received what he had before vainly sought, and he was appointed to ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... since, is under the ban. He came hither and tendered his services to this government, but failed to get the employment applied for, though his application was urged by Mr. Hunter, the Secretary of State, who is his relative. After remaining here for a long time, vainly hoping our army would cross the Potomac and deliver his native State, and finding his finances diminishing, he sought permission of the Secretary to return temporarily to his family in Maryland, expecting to get them away and to save some portion ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale streets, where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a fever of apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some word or comment on the part of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Catholic "gentilhomme," Maurevel by name, who, allured by the reward of fifty thousand crowns offered by parliament for the capture or assassination of Admiral Coligny, had entered the Protestant camp with protestations of great disgust with his former patrons the Guises, and had vainly sought an opportunity to take the great chieftain's life. Three years later that opportunity was to present itself in the streets of Paris itself. Loth to return to his friends without accomplishing any noteworthy ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... said this person, kow-towing profoundly, "the matter was designed to the end only that your incomparable versatility might be fittingly displayed. These barbarians sought vainly to raise phantoms capable of any useful purpose, whereupon I, jealous of your superior omnipotence, judged it would be an unseemly neglect not to ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: "What madness drives the Theban ladies fair "To give their incense to surrounding air? "Say why this new sprung deity preferr'd? "Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? "Or say why Caeus offspring is obey'd, "While to my goddesship no tribute's paid? "For me no altars blaze with living fires, "No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, "Tho' Cadmus' ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... Seized both his legs, and chucking Dobbs sideways, splash he went,— The wherry swayed, then righted, While I, somewhat excited, Over the water bent; Three times he rose, but vainly I clutched his form ungainly, He sank, while sighs and sobs Beneath the waves seemed muttered, And all the night-winds uttered In sad ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... starters, and her mount was appropriately named Champion. The late Lord William Beresford was second, and General Cook, her husband, was third. After I left India, Lord William gave a cup to be competed for by ladies only, which must have acted as a strong stimulant to those who had vainly tried to beat the "mere male." Mrs. Murray was a most plucky rider, and made more than one good bid for the Paperchase Cup, which she well deserved to win. I had a very good Australian horse named Terence, by Talk of the Hills, which got placed in these chases, but when I hoped ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... vainly flutters, like a bird that beats the bars, To be launched upon that ocean, with its tides of throbbing stars, To be gone beyond the sunset, and the day's revolving zone, Out into the primal darkness, and the world ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... this means,' he ruminated one day after vainly attempting to learn why Gabriel had returned so unexpectedly to Beorminster. 'The bishop seems unnecessarily polite, and young Pendle appears to be careful how he speaks. They surely can't suspect me of knowing about the murder. Perhaps ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... me a wet one. Where could I change? He showed me a room; and presently I was swimming in the sea, with such delight as he only can know who has ascended and descended Fuji without the chance of a bath. Returning to the inn, I wandered about in my wet costume seeking vainly the room in which I had changed. Laughing girls pushed me here, and pulled me there, uncomprehending of my pantomime, till one at last, quicker than the rest, pulled back a slide, and revealed the room ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... certain kind of vegetable. Of a sudden I found myself gazing at—the Bay of Avlona. Quite certainly my thoughts had not strayed in that direction. The picture that came before me caused me a shock of surprise, and I am still vainly trying to discover how I came to ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... began to appear which of our corporals were corporals indeed. Some squads were little Babels, each man uttering forth his voice, with the poor squad-leader either vainly trying to make himself heard, or silently trying to make his own ideas square with the contradictions of the other seven. Other squads may have been repressed volcanoes, but still they were repressed, with the corporal making his mistakes in his own way, but learning ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... had himself been exposed to serious danger by reason of his avowed sympathy with the imprisoned King of Navarre and his cousin of Conde. In fact, he was himself little better than a captive at the court of Charles—eyed with suspicion, unable to obtain favors for his friends, and vainly suing to be appointed to the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. It was perhaps not strange that, in looking about for a nominal head, the Politiques should have settled upon Alencon, who received their overtures with undisguised ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... we set off to find it. But how did we set off? With bare feet, carrying our boots in our hands, and looking the veriest scarecrows after our four days of amphibious life. We had tried to put on our boots, but vainly, for they had been flooded. Now, this was the chief cause of the unpleasantness that soon befell us, for no pilgrims ever had more disgraceful-looking feet than ours. Fortunately it was nearly dark, and the people whom we met did ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... would insist very emphatically upon marriage and the purity of the home, much more emphatically than we do now. Such a case as the one numbered 197, a beautiful instance of the sweet, old-fashioned, homely, simple life of the poor we Socialists are supposed to be vainly endeavouring to undermine—would certainly be dealt with in a ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... lighting up every detail of it. The riderless horses, though they opened and swerved, neither turned tail nor checked their pace, but heading suddenly towards the left wing of the troop went through it as water through a gate, the dragoons either vainly hacking at them with their sabres, or leaning from their saddles and as vainly attempting to grip the brutes. Grip there was none to be had. These were smugglers' horses, clipped to the skin, with houghed manes, and tails and bodies sleek with ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the natives said a French vessel of that name had been vainly striving, on a stormy day, to pass safely through the straits, and evade the power of the Charybdis; that she was drawn in, and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... scarcely needful now to scan in detail the various compromises and expedients by which Grey vainly endeavoured to satisfy the Colonists, first with nominated councils, then with local self-governing powers; or how, finally, he completely changed front, went further than Lord Grey, and drafted and sent home a constitution which, for that day, seemed the quintessence ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was perfectly amazed. Although he was accustomed to such outbursts on the part of his wife, he searched vainly in his heart for the cause of her intense bitterness to-day. He looked his astonishment; and the empress, mindful of her resolve not to reproach him, tried her best to smile. The emperor shook his head thoughtfully as he watched her face, and said half aloud: "All is not right with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hunting and the work about home there was no time to be dawdled vainly away. When there was nothing more pressing the wood-pile always stood suggestively near the door inviting attention, and it was necessary to saw and split a vast deal of wood to keep the big box stove supplied, for it had a great maw and would develop a marvellous ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well—perhaps Clarissa's nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done that night: nothing but to work out the details ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... like his we vainly seek To sound above the singer's grave, A voice empower'd like his to speak The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... find that which will engage the desire of the heart, as also that which will give boldness and confidence to act that desire. Eternal life is promised and proposed in him,—he offers rest to weary souls, and hath it to give. That which we ignorantly and vainly seek elsewhere, here it is to be found. For personal excellencies, he is the chief infinitely beyond comparison, and for suitableness to us and our necessities, all the gospel is an expression of it, so that he is presented in the most attractive drawing manner that can be imagined. And ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... from which he had devoured all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see, the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... he went out, after my vainly attempting to stop him, by throwing myself at his feet. He shook me off, though he seemed greatly moved too, and took Will away with him, who, I dare swear, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... fast, only stopping to eat the collector and the sportsman, who were still struggling to go up the slide—vainly, because they had no tails, and had never even heard of ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... fancies of capricious book-gatherers and bibliomaniacs have undergone so few changes in the last hundred years that modern writers on Bibliomania, after vainly searching the horizon for some new development in the way of symptoms of the disease, or characteristics of those afflicted, have wandered off into the verdure of adjacent fields to avoid repetition. Some of them, from sheer lack of anything new to say, have set upon each other in the most unflattering ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... afternoon, with a telegram that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room—dusty, disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms. But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sunshine that die in the dark: Rose, it is as if the sun had come into my prison; you are pale, but you are beautiful as ever—more beautiful; what a sweet dress! so quiet, so modest, it sets off your beauty instead of vainly trying to vie with it." With this he put out his hand and took her gray silk dress, and went to kiss it as a devotee kisses the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... which would represent this condition would be vainly sought in any exceptionally opulent citizen of that world. He would have, if nothing else, the distinction of his unmeasured millions, which would form a poetry, however sordid; the note of the world we mean is ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... found to make you amends. Come to me to-morrow morning." She then took up her fan which lay on the ground, and without even looking at Jones walked very majestically out of the room; there being a kind of dignity in the impudence of women of quality, which their inferiors vainly aspire to attain to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but enemies; and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the stranger, the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God in the midst of them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble history can ever be ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... he stepped aside on saying this, those who were watching, those who heard Lady Wilding's scream and Mr. Sharpless's snarling oath and saw them vainly try to spring apart and dart away, saw also that a steel handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one, and that they ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... "Merci!" and vanished in the gloom at the end of the chamber. The Count waited a few moments, vainly stretching his senses, but saw and heard nothing more. Then he resolved to return into the first room. When his eyes fell upon the writing-desk, he perceived that its contents were in the greatest confusion. However, he found the family papers that he had been sent for. After he had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... failed, and her trembling limbs refused their aid. At length moonlight came to her aid, and when all the house slept she stole downstairs with bare, noiseless feet, and sped like a ghost across the meadow to the river-bank. Poor weak hands! vainly they fumbled with the knotted rope that bound the skiff to a crooked elm over-hanging the water,—all in vain for many lingering minutes; but presently the obdurate knot gave way, and, turning to gather up her shawl, there, close behind her, so close that his hot breath ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... furiously towards him. Already he had turned over, and opened his huge, deadly jaws, when the youth, diving cleverly, seized the shark somewhere near the fins with his left hand, and stabbed him several times in the belly. The creature, mad with pain and streaming with blood, attempted vainly to escape. The crews of the ships near saw that the fight was over, but knew not which was slain, till, as the shark became exhausted, he rose nearer the shore, and the gallant assailant still continuing his efforts, was able, with assistance, to drag him on ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... characters, the heavens silently say to us, Make haste, mortals, if you would know or learn of the blessed souls anything concerning the public good or your private interest; for their catastrophe is near, which being past, you will vainly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... terrible to bear in the telling. I tried to find Naomi, without success. She had been always accessible at other times. Was she hiding herself from me now? The idea occurred to me as I was descending the stairs after vainly knocking at the door of her room. I was determined to see her. I waited a few minutes, and then ascended the stairs again suddenly. On the landing I met ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... into Mesopotamia. Finding himself, however, held fast by the clutches of the disease, he started to sail to Italy himself and left behind Publius Aelius Hadrian with the army in Syria. So the Romans, who had conquered Armenia, most of Mesopotamia, and the Parthians, had labored in vain and had vainly undergone danger. The Parthians disdained Parthamaspates and began to have kings according to their original custom. Trajan suspected that his falling sick was due to the administration of poison. Some declare it was because his blood, which annually descended into the lower ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,—no, his main care was to stimulate industry and raise hope. The ambition and emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... medical men of the watering-place, spread the report that he was in the habit of drawing caricatures of his patients. The patients were incensed, and almost all of them discarded him. His friends, that is to say all the genuinely well-bred people who were serving in the Caucasus, vainly endeavoured to ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... silent as he strained his eyes over the surface of the sea, looking vainly for the struggling figure which had been making so brave a fight for life. There was a terrible feeling of dread oppressing him, as for the first time he was face to face with death; and in those awful moments he was unconscious of the regular reports of the guns as the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... sticks were clattering together as they fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thin limbs quivered under the blows. The others ceased at last; but Baldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking at the man's head, which he vainly endeavoured to defend with his arms. His white hair was dabbled with patches of blood. Baldwin was still stooping over his victim, putting in a short, vicious blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when McMurdo dashed up the stair ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... bony fingers of a skeleton were extended to him. He shrank back aghast; for royalty shuddereth at the sight of Death as doth a beggar, and, in its presence, feeleth his power to be as the power of him who vainly commanded the waves of the sea to go back. Still the skeleton kept true measure before him—still it extended to him its bony hand. He fell back, in horror, against a pillar where a torch-bearer stood. The ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... lost control, though fortunately we were not going so fast now. Crazily, our car swerved from side to side of the road, as she vainly tried to control both its speed and direction. On the very edge of ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... suddenly loosened. Dan started back in terror at the sight, and was about to spring up the bank to a place of safety, when his eyes rested upon the form of a man out in the midst of that rush of destruction, vainly trying to free himself from the watery chasm which had suddenly yawned beneath his feet. Dan's heart beat wildly at the sight. But only for an instant did he hesitate. Then forward he leaped like a greyhound. Forgotten was the rushing torrent, and his own danger. He thought only of that frantically ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... years old, seemed merely a proof of that helpless desire to cling even to the feeblest consolations, which the approach of death so often brings with it. But the event showed that the trust so strangely placed had not been ventured vainly when it was committed to young and tender hands. The whole future existence of the child was one noble proof that she had been worthy of her mother's dying confidence, when it was first reposed in her. In that simple incident which I have just mentioned the new ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... to conceal, as long as possible, from the orphans the fresh misfortunes, which had befallen them, he was proceeding to open the door of their chamber, when he stumbled over Spoil-sport—for the dog had run back to his post, after vainly trying to prevent the Prophet from leading away Jovial. "Luckily the dog has returned; the poor little things have been well guarded," said the soldier, as he opened the door. To his great surprise, the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk,) but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... underbrush that scraped and ripped me in passing. But she never ruffled a hair. She knew the way. In the midst of the thicket was a large oak. I was very close to her when she climbed it; and in the forks, in the nest-shelter I had sought so long and vainly, I ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... those barriers and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors had washed through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once rigid boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated at once all that was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had clamored so vehemently and vainly at the doors of their minds in the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from an absurd and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable agreement upon which we and all the order ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... wake; he rubbed his eyes, As though some fearful dream to end. It was no dream, this fearful thing: There was the forest, there the skies, The shepherd—and his murdered friend. With feverish haste, bewildered, mazed, This way and that he vainly sped, Beating the air like one half crazed; With prayers and cries unnumbered, Searching, imploring,—vain, all vain. Only the echoing woods replied, With mocking booms their long aisles through, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... supplied him with a wooden limb. He then returned and spent another winter with the Lewises, assisting in the household work, and rendering services invaluable at a time when it was almost impossible to obtain female help. The next spring, hoping vainly to recover in a warmer climate from the disease induced by the drain his wounded foot had made upon his system, he went to Hayti, and there died; happy, we may well believe, to have escaped from slavery, though only to have won scarely two years of freedom as an invalid ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one after another, at various distances to ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the time expended, that it is impossible for a man to make too sure of his vocation before entering upon a career of critical scholarship. It is pitiful to see those who, for want of a wise word spoken in due season, lose their way and vainly exhaust themselves in such a career, especially when they have good reason for believing that they might have employed their talents to better advantage ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... to the world my narrative of many years of hardships and difficulties, happily not vainly spent in this great enterprise: should some un-ambitious spirits reflect, that the results are hardly worth the sacrifice of the best years of life thus devoted to exile and suffering, let them remember that "we are placed on earth for a certain period, to fulfil, according to our several ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the panes, fascinated by this monster of a boot, to see it again in dreams on the feet of horrid giants. This melancholy collection was flanked by odd bottles of polish and blacking, and cards of bootlaces of such unusual strength that elephants were shown vainly ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... red as a peony. Now I know a secret!' Charlotte vainly endeavoured to hide her confusion. 'Very well—not a word! I won't say more,' continued De Stancy good-humouredly, 'except that he seems to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the fawning, neck-craning, many-shaded mob of political henchmen and obsequious petitioners into the sacred hushed precincts of Panama police headquarters. A paunched "Spigoty" with a shifty eye behind large bowed glasses, vainly striving to exude dignity and wisdom, received me with the oily smirk of the Panamanian office-holder who feels the painful necessity of keeping on outwardly good terms with all Americans. I flashed my badge and mentioned a ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... generally so silent that Philostratus had vainly endeavored to discover from him any particulars as to the doctrine of the Brahmans, among whom Apollonius of Tyana declared that he had found the highest wisdom, or concerning the manners of his people. And yet the Indian was a man of learning, and could even read the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... men were vainly endeavouring to reach the new country, seven other men were suffering famine and extreme hardships to get away from it. They had arrived at the Old Port by sea, having been engaged to strip bark by Mr. P. W. Walsh, usually known ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale |
