"Absent-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buttoned frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance. But when he came level with our pew I understood. Hurrying back from his morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... stood about everywhere; the chairs and the tables were in confusion. Anna, who had been locking up the silver for the night, had come into the parlor, and found her brother standing in a curious, absent-minded fashion in the middle ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... abuse. By and by I discovered that their greatest rages and worst language were when certain young gentlemen of the upper classes visited the spot to amuse themselves by baiting the lavanderas. The young gentleman would saunter about in an absent-minded manner and presently walk right on to a beautifully embroidered and belaced nightdress or other dainty garment spread out to dry on the sward or rock, and, standing on it, calmly proceed to take out and light a cigarette. Instantly the black virago would be on ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... was the somewhat absent-minded reply, for Mrs. Royal's attention was upon Rodney, who was creeping gaily about the floor, examining every nook, and ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... engaged for the performance of small parts at the Queen's Theatre. The first time he spoke to her was on the doorstep. She had forgotten her latch-key, and he said, 'Will you allow me to let you in?' She stepped aside, but did not answer him. Hubert thought her rude, but her strange eyes and absent-minded manner had piqued his curiosity, and, having nothing to do that night, he went to the theatre to see her act. She was playing a very small part, and one that was evidently unsuited to her—a part that was in contradiction to her nature; but there ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... scarlet cloaks, coquettes with roses in their hair, monks in cowls that might have covered the tall Minster Tower, demure little girls hugging paper dolls, and rollicking school-boys with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... stranger had been one of the earliest arrivals, he ate slowly, busied himself with important-looking papers out of his coat-pockets, and was the last to go. He paid his bill, and if he looked at Daisy while she made change it was in an absent-minded, uninterested way. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... symptoms when present are followed by diarrhea. The limbs are cramped and rigid, the feet bloated, and the patient becomes melancholy and relinquishes all hope of recovery. As the disease progresses, the patient lacks firmness and is absent-minded. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... influence of brandy he was sleeping from the effects of opium. In three days he was willing to pay anything the apothecary asked, and seemed scarcely conscious of the payments he made. He kept up a show of playing the accustomed game of cards, but he was absent-minded, and was not even angry at his daily losses. The apothecary had more money in his pocket than he had possessed for many a day. As Arnoldo Meschini sank deeper and deeper, the chemist's spirits rose, and he began to assume an air of unwonted prosperity. One ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... always tired and went through his tasks rather languidly, greatly preferring work to play. All diversions such as marching and circle games struck him as pleasant enough, but childish, and if participated in at all, to be gone through with in an absent-minded and supercillious manner. There were moments when his exotic little personality, standing out from all the rest like an infant Artful Dodger or a caricature of Beau Brummel, seemed to make him wholly ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Virginia sitting opposite Mrs. Burke in the kitchen at Thunder Cliff, knitting her brows and poking the toe of her boot with the end of her parasol in an absent-minded way. This ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... sitting looking at the old woman's sun hat with its painted flowers, and the very prettiest one of them all was a rose. The old woman had forgotten her hat when she charmed the others away. This is the consequence of being absent-minded. ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about us? However, after a very cursory glance we were passed on, got our good-byes said, and embarked on the launch. At any other time I would have hated saying good-bye to the Ormondes and the other dear people, but with the parting from Boggley looming so near, I was absent-minded and callous, though I hope I didn't appear so. The Socotra is quite a tiny ship compared to the Scotia. G. and I clambered on board, in great haste to find our cabin. We found it already occupied by our cabin companion (she is Scotch and has artificial teeth and ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... been a house-surgeon or a house-physician—little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago—the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Abel, with the thought of Molly throbbing like a fever in his brain, it was still possible to grind his grist and to subtract carefully the eighth part as a toll—while Judy, hushed in day dreams, went on making butter in a habit of absent-minded tranquillity. Life seldom deals in cataclysmic situations—at least on the surface. Living side by side in a married intimacy for months, Abel and Judy were still strangers to each other. Their bodies touched while their souls were ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Condamine carrying a square case under his arm; it did not escape Tinker's observant eye; but in the bustle of their removal he gave it but scant attention. In the evening Dorothy noticed that he was restless and absent-minded, and asked him ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... wise Yudhishthira. And Duryodhana, the son of Dhritarashtra, was so taken up with his thoughts then that he spoke not a word to Suvala's son even though the latter addressed him repeatedly. And Sakuni, beholding him absent-minded, said,—'O Duryodhana, why ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... moment, and looked from one to the other with his big, dreamy eyes. Margot was irritated to see that he looked even more absent-minded than usual, just when she was anxious that he should show to most advantage. He asked no questions in words, however, but Mr Elgood hastened to reply to the unspoken query in ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Chardon in tears; the three whose life had been so straightforward hitherto were overcome by the thought that David must go into hiding. And how, moreover, could they hope to escape the invisible spies who henceforth would dog every least movement of a man, unluckily so absent-minded? ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... I looked awful sorry at that, for the man said, his name was Mr. Garry Louden,—"Oh, let him come, Edith, I'll look after him"; and Aunty Edith said, "But you're such an absent-minded beggar, Garry, and this ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... morning Mamma had been absent-minded, and Grisha's presence, words, and actions seemed to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her behaviour that she made the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... I met you," continued Feuerstein. "I had an appointment at the Cafe Boulevard at four, and came hurrying away from my lodgings with empty pockets—I am so absent-minded. Could you convenience me for a few hours with five dollars? I'll repay you to-night—you will be at Goerwitz's probably? I usually look in there after ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... flushed, his eyes brightened, and for a few moments he felt as if his youthful days had come back, when he was one of the leaders in his college in athletics, and had more than once been in a town-and-gown row. All this before he had settled down into the heavy serious absent-minded student. There was now a curious tingling in his nerves, and he felt ready to agree to anything that would result in the punishment of the cowardly thieves who had left them in such a predicament; but just then his eyes fell upon Lawrence's slight delicate ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... hangedest things I ever see for makin' a man absent-minded," he communed that night, as he crawled into his blankets. Nor did he forget to call up the hillside, "Good night, Mr. Pocket! ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... out to Kate, the wish to do well was plainly imbedded in his breast, or he would simply fling the useless thing down at his feet. Conscience was not deadened in him; he was quite aware that matches should not be casually strewn upon a carpet, and in his most absent-minded moods he sent them in the direction of those approved receptacles—the window or fireplace. Let her blame others if the window was closed—the sole use of a window, as far as he could see, was to throw matches through,—or if the fireplace ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... go. But if any of you, except Father, should visit us this spring, or early summer, Julia says that Fred. may go home with you to spend a few months. She says she would be afraid to let him travel with Father alone; she has an idea that he is so absent-minded that if he were to arrive in Cincinnati at night he would be just as apt as not to walk out of the cars and be gone for an hour before he would recollect that he had a child with him. I have no such fears however. Fred does not read yet, but he will, I think, in a few weeks. ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... she was quiet, and absent-minded, and as soon as the meal was over she went back to ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... that brought me your letter I heard from our absent-minded friend, the Postmaster-General. You will be pained to learn that he is even more absent-minded than we thought he was. Although, when I handed him your parcel, I distinctly told him it was going to Westminster, the moment my back is turned he must ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... dagger just here, and gave her head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, but one couldn't be envious of Egeria. She charmed one ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shine." The tallow candles, which had been lighted when he came, needed snuffing by this time. The light was so dim that she could not see his face—blanched with bewilderment and pain and anger. What she did see as she looked across the room at him was his large black figure in an absent-minded awkward posture and his big head held very straight and high as though it were momentarily getting higher. He had remained simply silent. His silence irritated her; and she knew she was treating him badly and that irritated her with him all ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... them all waiting there, and went off into the inner apartments. When I stepped into our room I had another shock of surprise to find Bimala there with a distinct suggestion of being dressed up. The room, which from persistent neglect had latterly acquired an air of having grown absent-minded, had regained something of its old order this afternoon. I stood there silently, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... Are you listening? On The Green at five o'clock. Come towards me as soon as you see me and at once we'll walk together towards the avenue. Wait till six, and if I don't come, will you still hold yourself in readiness at home? Don't forget. Don't be absent-minded and forget what you are there for, and even if there's a barrel-organ playing dreadful tunes, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the fatal vice which held me fast, I should have been in love with Noemi two or three years later; but I was a slave to reasoning, and my whole time was devoted to religious dialectics. The flow of abstractions which rushed to the head made me giddy, and caused me to be absent-minded and oblivious of ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... no doubt he is by far the best preacher we ever had in Glen St. Mary church," said Miss Cornelia, veering a tack or two. "I suppose it is because he is so moony and absent-minded that he never got a town call. His trial sermon was simply wonderful, believe ME. Every one went mad about it— and ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he seen a pallor so death-like and chilling. The face was more than pale; it was white. Kimberlin's observing faculty had been sharpened by the absinthe, and, after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent removal of a full beard. Besides the pallor, there were deep and sharp lines upon the face, which the electric light brought out very distinctly. With ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... rude, my dear; I hope you will pardon me," he replied, stepping quickly forward, "but I am very absent-minded to-night." ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... better," grunted Farley, equally enraged with himself. "What on earth made us so absent-minded as to believe that a priceless relic would be kept in an old ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... and vanish again; then she would slowly raise her large dark eyes. 'Qu'a-vez-vous?' Mlle, Boncourt would ask her, and then she would begin to scold her, saying that it was improper for a young girl to be absorbed and to appear absent-minded. But Natalya was not absent-minded; on the contrary, she studied diligently; she read and worked eagerly. Her feelings were strong and deep, but reserved; even as a child she seldom cried, and now she seldom even sighed and only grew slightly pale when anything distressed her. Her mother ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... his coat with absent-minded slowness, and all the time that he was removing the dust and the stains of travel, he kept narrowing the eye of his mind to visualise more clearly that cumbersome chain which lay on the floor of the adjoining room. Now, the doctor was not of a curious or gossipy nature, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... straight very suddenly, and stared at the girl who was stepping from the canoe. But she did not speak, and Roderick was too absorbed to notice who had passed. And the young man with the lazy paddle wondered all the way home what had happened to make the lively young lady so silent and absent-minded. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... not limited to Yule, for when travelling in Russia many years ago, the present writer was introduced by an absent-minded Russian savant to his colleagues as Mademoiselle ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... been worse," said Sylvia, who always championed Rumple through thick and thin. "And of course no one expects quite so much from a poet as from a more ordinary person. People with teeming ideas are always rather absent-minded I find; it is one of the penalties of the artistic temperament. I suffer from it myself, and Rumple is far ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... when the Signora Malipieri read the letter on the following morning, she guessed the truth, as almost any woman would, without being positively sure of it; and she was absent-minded with her pupils all that day, and looked at her watch uneasily, and was very glad when she was able to go home at last and think ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... had paid him only an absent-minded courtesy. They were on the point of giving an evening of folk-dancing, under Miss Amabel's patronage, and young foreigners were dropping in all the time now to ask questions and make plans. And whoever they were, these ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... "I have a folding drinking-cup and a flask of sherry. It shows how absent-minded I am, for I ought to have thought of the wine long ago. You should have had a glass of sherry the moment we landed here. By the way, I wanted to say, and I say it now in case I shall forget it, that when I ordered you so unceremoniously ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... replied my wife, "because she is getting absent-minded. She let Diogenes go too near the fire. His shoes are burned, his hair singed, and his dress scorched. He woke up when I came in and he was so cross. He acted just the way he does when he ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... guy over in Washington," Troy said as they worked their way down through the trees, "that won the DivAg award as the most absent-minded ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... smoke, your cigar goes out; you read a newspaper by staring over the top of it; you bump into people on the streets, when there is plenty of room for you to pass; you leave your watch under the pillow and have to hike back for it; you forget, you are absent-minded. Now, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Fontaine in vain endeavored to gain attention to his verses; Sorel wanted to obtain a hearing for his quatrain. He was obliged to retreat before M. le Comte de Chanost whose arm Fouquet had just taken. L'Abbe Fouquet perceived that the poet, absent-minded, as usual, was about to follow the two talkers, and he interposed. La Fontaine seized upon him, and recited his verses. The abbe, who was quite innocent of Latin, nodded his head, in cadence, at every roll which La Fontaine impressed upon his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... plans, feverishly, and waited. He did not come back that night, or the next, or the next, or the next. In desperation I went to see the men at the office. No, they had not seen him. Was there anything that they could do? they asked. I smiled, and thanked them, and said, oh, Peter was so absent-minded! No doubt he had misdirected his letters, or something of the sort. And then I went back to the flat ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... in some of the stage-business. Thus, Ophelia pauses in her exit and comes up quietly behind the absent-minded Prince as if to play bo-peep with him: then, later on, after his apparently brutal treatment of her, Hamlet returns, and, while he is stooping and in tears, he kisses her hair and runs away noiselessly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-minded. I trust you will ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... clear and charming. When he recited his lessons he gave the verses their full harmony and rhythm, which made us laugh very much. During recreation he willingly joined our games, and he was not awkward, but he played with such feverish enthusiasm, and yet he was so absent-minded, that some of us felt an insurmountable ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... caught away strangely and suddenly into another world. Out of the abyss of the subconscious there rose a gesture prophetic and immense. The trivial phrase and that intercepted look opened a great door of wonder in his heart. In a second he grew "absent-minded." Or, rather, something touched a button and the whole machinery of his personality shifted round noiselessly and instantaneously, presenting an immediate new facet to the world. His normal, puny self-consciousness slipped a moment into the majestic calm of some ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... "I am awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... brother's son die—slip, as it were, away from him, his father's brother, who had taken the friendless lad to his heart, in the place of the younger brother he had well-nigh idolised? Only in his quiet, reserved, absent-minded way he had never thought how much he cared for him. He sent for his small niece—the child who had stolen into all their hearts with her gentle, unobtrusive love, and would stand aside from the bed when she came with a heavy sigh, while she spoke the boy's name. She ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... their ranks closed in around the automobile, we broke a chain with a pretty little tinkling noise, and some of the sheep tripped up on it, they did nothing but smile and merely mention "ba-a" in an indifferent, absent-minded way. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it, sir, you must look out and not hit the man behind you and knock the bomb out of your hand. That has happened before to an absent-minded fellow who was about to toss one at the Boches, and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... paced my room in my slippers in search of a subject. I had looked out of the window over the sunlit valley, watched the smoke of a distant train vanishing towards the west, observed the activities of the rooks in a neighbouring elm. I had pared my nails several times with absent-minded industry, and sharpened every pencil I had on me with elaborate care. But the more I pared my nails and the more I sharpened my pencils the more perplexed I grew as to the theme for an article. Subjects crowded on me, "not single spies, but in battalions." ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... what mood should you enter? Certainly not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... friends. In view of these recommendations, his eccentricities were treated with leniency by those who suffered from them; none the less, they were apt to occasion most of his acquaintances, including the Stanhopes, considerable alarm. For, a singularly absent-minded man, Mr Ward was not only in the habit of unconsciously uttering aloud his most secret reflections in a voice which could not fail to reach the ears of those most concerned, but his often uncomplimentary criticisms were sometimes, in complete mental aberration, actually addressed to the subject ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... he goes with his head in the clouds, damn him!" muttered Barker the grocer, one day, as Stephen in a more than ordinarily absent-minded fit had passed Mr. Barker's door without observing that Mr. Barker stood in it, ready to bow and smile to the whole world. Mr. Barker's sister had just married an overseer in the mill; and they had been very anxious to set up housekeeping in the Jacobs house, but had been prevented from applying ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... clothing did not improve his general appearance. The manner in which his garments were put on and buttoned, his untidy cravat, his rumpled shirt, were signs of the want of personal care with which men of science, all more or less absent-minded, are charged. As in the case of most thinkers, his countenance and his attitude, the development of his bust and the thinness of his legs, betrayed a sort of bodily debility produced by habits of meditation. Nevertheless, the ardor ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... answered, and told all that had happened, and ever and again broke out into rejoicing over their reunion. Who would have thought, to see them there, that any thing could be wanting to the perfect happiness of these four people? But Rico knew another tale. In the midst of all the merriment, he became absent-minded, and fell into one of his old dreamy moods. It did not last as long as formerly, however. He must have reached a satisfactory conclusion pretty soon; for suddenly his reverie was over, and he said these words, with the utmost decision, "Stineli must be my wife ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... was next day. Fernando was present, but a little absent-minded. When called on for a speech, his ideas were confused, and he was about to break down, when a voice ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... herself at the idea, but it recurred continually and gave her pain, and the pain grew to an intolerable fear. She began to feel that she must know where he was, at any cost, or she could have no peace. She was restless and nervous, and began to be absent-minded in her conversation with Sister Gabrielle. The good woman saw it, and advised a little change—anything, an excursion of a day for instance. Corona, she said, was too young to ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... washing it would look up, startled, as though to stare at the approach of some Invisible, cocking its little head sideways and putting out a velvet pad to inspect cautiously. Then it would get absent-minded, and stare with equal intentness in another direction (just to confuse the onlookers), and suddenly go on furiously washing its body again, but in quite a new place. Except for a white patch on its breast it was coal black. And its ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... his eyes were most disagreeable, and yet oddly fascinating. Greif thought about him and was not satisfied with his short interview. The man's remark about the future was either that of a visionary, or of an absent-minded person who did not always know what he was saying. Greif himself could hardly understand how he had been led, in a first meeting with one who was altogether a stranger, to speak so plainly of what disturbed him. It was not his custom to make acquaintances ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... convince my family that I had not been dreaming. I was very restless—could not sleep again. The next day (we were rehearsing "Zaza") I went out for luncheon during the recess with a member of my company. He was a very absent-minded man, and at the table he took a telegram from his pocket which he said he had forgotten to give me: it announced the death of my mother at the time I had seen her in my room. I am aware that this could be explained as ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... ought to suffer if I do—she's on the Suffering Committee! Good-by, Cornelia. Don't you go and tell anybody how absent-minded I was. They'll say ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... all the afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent an hour with the governor tonight—at my club. In fact, I supped with him in one of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but the major went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to know that every ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Erebus into the shop with a thoughtful air, and seemed somewhat absent-minded during her examination of the stoles. She was very thorough in it; and both of them were nearly sure that she had chosen the very best of them. The girl who was serving them made out the bill; and the Terror drew the little ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... more than one guest remarked upon the distrait and absent-minded appearance of the three Ministers, and deduced from the circumstance ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer,—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes at Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's elbow a thousand poetic abstractions. He so often disturbed Pelisson, that the latter, raising his head, crossly said, "At least, La Fontaine, supply me with ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... twenty, called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the university. Miuesov, with whom he was staying for the time, was trying to persuade him to go abroad to the university of Zurich or Jena. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and absent-minded. He was nice-looking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was a strange fixity in his gaze at times. Like all very absent-minded people he would sometimes stare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather awkward, but ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trees around; he besieged his nurse with a thousand queries, never waiting for an answer; and they were indeed long in coming, for poor Isolda was gazing upon him with that appearance of fascination which makes a mother absent-minded when her child is talking: Andre was eagerly telling her about a terrible boar he had chased that morning across the woods, how it had lain foaming at his feet, and Isolda interrupted him to say he had a grain of dust in his eye. Then Andre ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and, as if absent-minded, "yes, the proud empress-dowager hates me, and hastened to marry her daughter to a petty German prince rather than let her become the consort of the Emperor of the French.[44] Well, no matter! other princes have daughters, too, and one of them will assuredly ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... on this little elevation, she bowed to him and sometimes ventured a remark or two. He did not seem over-anxious to talk but he met her troubled face with calm and unvarying, though somewhat absent-minded courtesy. He replied to her questions perfunctorily, told her whom he served, betraying, however, in turn, no inquisitiveness concerning her. For him she was just some one who came and went, and incidentally interfered with his ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... in town in the evening for a walk and to see the moonlight in the streets, and afterwards to have supper.... He was very sad, and seemed to have grown an old man since a week ago. He was silent and absent-minded. On his previous visit he had borrowed Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Christina Rossetti's poems, but he had read neither of the books. He was overwhelmed with his grief, as if it were sometimes more than ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... was who had first miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne; and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel his ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Sigismond, in his narrow, stereotyped honesty, could not understand the delicacy of Risler's heart. At the same time, the methodical bookkeeper's habit of thought and his clear-sightedness in business were a thousand leagues from that absent-minded, flighty character, half-artist, half-inventor. He judged him by himself, having no conception of the condition of a man with the disease of invention, absorbed by a fixed idea. Such men are somnambulists. They look, but do not see, their eyes being ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... know; and I was perfectly sure of it; you're always so prompt, and I always wonder at it, such an absent-minded creature as you are. But you came near spoiling everything by getting here behind this pillar, and burying yourself in your book that way. If it hadn't been for my principle of always asking questions, I never should have found you in the world. But just as I was really beginning ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... scant forty and looking a neglected fifty, short-sighted, stoop-shouldered and absent-minded to a proverb, he cast a last fond look at the parcel containing his translation of the Bacchic epic and climbed the stairs to his bachelor bedroom, took off his shabby garments, and stretched himself out in the illiterate ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... man from the moment he first met him, and could scarcely answer him civilly. Mrs. Wheeler, always absent-minded, and now absorbed in her cherishing care of the visitor, did not notice Claude's scornful silences until Mahailey, whom such things never escaped, whispered to her over the stove one day: "Mr. Claude, he don't like the ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... tell some one, but was ashamed; and, when asked why I was so pale and absent-minded, I answered with ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... Surtaines had painfully talked against time. Immediately after the meal, Hal, on pretext of beating the storm to the office, left. His father took his forebodings to the club and attempted to lose them along with several rubbers of absent-minded bridge. Meantime the woman for whom his loyalty was concerned as well as for his son, was stimulating a resolution with the slow poison of liquor around the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and were prone to lose ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... a few days after this that a letter arrived for Mr. Gascoyne which almost turned the little Parsonage upside down. Gwen could tell from Father's manner that something had happened, he seemed so unusually agitated, so perplexed, and sometimes so absent-minded that he forgot all that was going on around him. Something was wrong, argued Gwen, and as she did not like to question Father himself, she plucked up her courage ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... reply, but a lump came into his throat. He stood and stared, and then turned in an absent-minded way and bent his head over the great ledger, though he seemed not to care which page opened. Jane to marry Dan! Was that what he had meant? Had it come to that? Once Job had not cared, but now the thought made him wild. Could it be true? Jane to marry ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... state of mind, Mr. Opp permitted himself only one opinion. He fiercely denied that she was absent-minded and listless when alone with him; he refused to believe his own eyes when he saw a light in her face when she looked at Hinton that was never there for him. He preferred to exaggerate to himself her sweetness, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... quite so definite in my life as that young man," said Felicity as she ate her toast, holding the Daily Mail upside down. She and Savile were sitting rather late over a somewhat silent breakfast. He appeared rather absent-minded and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Jasper and myself daily attended the vicarage, in order to be taught Greek, Latin, and other matters by the Reverend Mr. Timotheus Herrick, vicar of Beechcot. He was a tall, thin, spindle-shanked gentleman, very absent-minded, but a great scholar. It was said of him, that if he had not married a very managing woman in the shape of Mistress Priscilla Horbury, he would never have got through the world. He had one child, Rose, of whom you will hear somewhat in this history, and she was three years younger than myself. ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... use of it at once, I placed the foot of the exalted Princess Hermonthis on a stack of papers—sketches of verses, undecipherable mosaics of crossed out words, unfinished articles, forgotten letters, posted in the desk drawer, a mistake often made by absent-minded people; the effect was pleasing, bizarre, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer in stead of the letter-box, an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... it's any early mornin' joke to take a wash-up in that there Chinese coffin—why, try her yourself, about midnight." Then he addressed Shoop singly. "If I was you, and you got kind of absent-minded and done likewise, and I seen you, do you think I'd go snitch to the boss? Nix, for it might ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... I have," exclaimed the absent-minded old man. "However that can wait. A Viking flea would ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... by the unpunctuality of others. He was fully attired, hob-nailed shoes, leggings, leather coat and cap, gloves, scarf round his throat and all—and he behaved as if there was not a minute to lose. He had barely time to shake perfunctorily the hand Thorpe offered him, and utter an absent-minded "How are ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Gaudet, go away from here of your own free will, that it may not be said that Monsieur Desroches has dismissed you. You have been careless or absent-minded, and neither of those defects can pass here. The master shall know nothing about the matter; that is all that I can do for ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, free-handed ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... flocked to head us off on our way to the temple, despite a flurry of rain that freckled the deep sand of the landing hill. But nobody did have eyes for anything Roman, now that Cleopatra sulked in her throne-room, and our only archeologist was as absent-minded as if he had been his own astral body. He had seen the wisdom of "sticking to the trip," and not turning back by train with the Bronsons and Somebody Else, as he may have yearned to do (if Monny were right): but History had suddenly become as dry husks ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the pleasure of drawing him out, and bearing him in his arms to the Hotel Badrutt. "If only he could fall into a hole and break his leg!" Such was the daily wish of Count Abel Larinski; but savants have great license allowed them. Although M. Moriaz was both corpulent and inclined to be absent-minded, he plunged into more than one quagmire without sticking fast, more than one marsh ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... amply furnished; nay, it contained at least one article of supererogation, in the shape of a razor-case on the dressing-table. Mrs. Stimcoe swept this into her pocket with a turn of the hand, and explained frankly that her husband, like most scholars, was absent-minded. Here she passed two fingers slowly across her forehead. "Even in his walks, or while dressing, his brain wanders among the deathless compositions of Greece and Rome, turning them into English metres—all ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... persistence for a cold he had not caught and fatigue he had long since forgotten, and to buy him a new sort of hygienic all-wool combination underwear that was apt to get involved and turned partially inside out and partially not, and as difficult to get into for an absent-minded man, as—Society. And so for a space, and as far as this convenience left him leisure, he still continued to participate in the development of this new element in human history, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... two floors looked exactly alike to the virginal Western eye. The original point of my own story was that the man to be entrapped walked into his own house after all, in spite of it being differently painted and numbered, simply because he was absent-minded and used to taking a certain number of mechanical steps. This would not work in the hotel; because a lift has no habits. It is typical of the real tameness of machinery, that even when we talk of a man turning mechanically we only talk metaphorically; for it is something that a mechanism ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... were green with oak and poplar, though as we dropped the landscape darkened into desolation. The bleak corner of the world towards which we were speeding had that formless, featureless look which one sees on common faces, as if it had been shaken together carelessly by the great Creator in an absent-minded moment. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was forced, and all during the meal he showed a tendency to be absent-minded. I had no explanations to make, so I made none. But I noticed that he put on his old slippers. I thought ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Grace said. Nevertheless, although she agreed, she was more antagonistic than she had been. She had now something that intensely preoccupied her. Grace could see that she was always thinking about something that had nothing to do with Skeaton or Paul or the house. She was more absent-minded than ever, forgot everything, liked best to sit in her ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... choice for Trulease, Watling and Prosperity: and working-men followed suit. Victory was in the air. Even the policemen wore happy smiles, and in some instances the election officers themselves in absent-minded exuberance thrust bunches of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she said, with a surprised glance through the window, "if there isn't that absent-minded schoolteacher coming through the yard! What can he want? Dear me, I do hope Teddy hasn't been cutting capers in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... borrowed a small amount from the managing editor. He lounged about the office most of the time, and I frequently encountered him going in and out of the cheap restaurants on Tenth Street. When he was at the office he talked a good deal in a wandering, absent-minded fashion, and his conversation was uniformly frivolous. If he could not evade a serious question by a joke, he bolted. I cut my classes to lie in wait for him, confident that in some unwary moment I could trap him into serious conversation, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... wore off the self-made prince. The little creek, the long trail, the deep woods, the dug-out, and the salt pork barrel loomed up occasionally before his mind's eye. In absent-minded dreams he would find himself wandering among the stock on the range at his old ranch; or he would be drinking water from the creek in the old-fashioned, natural way; or chasing a deer at the other end of the long trail. His wife's ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... didn't notice anything special," Ruth replied. "But there is something queer about her, I must admit. She is so absent-minded at times. This morning I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk, and she said ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... with an attempt at an amused laugh. "I noticed it, too. Of course a man with all his cares and interests must git absent-minded ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... comedy to tragedy. Some of these masks grew dusty between ships, but could quickly be made presentable. Sometimes, when large touring parties came into port, he confused his masks, being by habit rather an absent-minded man. But he possessed a great fund of humor, and these mistakes gave him laughable ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... while dressing, to map out a plan of campaign, but the map was but a meaningless whirligig of lines leading nowhere when Primmie called from the foot of the stairs that breakfast was ready. During breakfast he was more absent-minded than usual, which is saying a good deal, and Martha herself was far from communicative. After the meal he was putting on his hat and coat preparatory to going out for his usual walk when Primmie ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... desperation. For he would take his stick and his hat and would walk to the window, and look perfectly absent-minded and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... overlook that particular hiding-place, the one just under our eyes, within reach of our hands! How could one imagine that a thief would leave sixty thousand francs in an open cardboard box, in which he places his hat when he comes in, with an absent-minded air? That's just the one place we don't look in.... Well played, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... something. I can't make shirts or knit comforters. I've tried and failed. My shirts look like pillow-cases, and anything more comfortless than my comforters I couldn't imagine. I wouldn't ask a beggar to wear an article I had made, much less an Absent-Minded Beggar." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not much suggest the tourist—they seemed more like a too well-worn town morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a number of scientific periodicals he had ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... as well. He saw how eagerly she watched for the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how she sought a quiet place at once in order to read and dream over her letters. She was restless a day or two before a certain letter came, with an eager, excited, expectant air. Then, after reading it, she was absent-minded, flighty in conversation, and at last listlessly uneasy, moving slowly about from one thing to another, in a kind of restless inability to take ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... persuaded to speak; the confined space made him restless; and, as often as not, if a question were asked him he would seem not to hear it, and would presently get up, walk out of the door, and return when it pleased him. "He do be growing terrible absent-minded," his wife would often say in these latter days. "I'm a'most afraid sometimes as he may be took in a fit." But in the old quarry he was another man. The open spaces of the sky seemed to bring him ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... well and often disapproved of her, but she had known her a long time and was genuinely fond of her and anxious for her success. Jean had complained of a headache at luncheon and seemed nervous and absent-minded. Kate wondered if she could possibly have broken down and spoiled her chance with Mr. Masters, thus disarranging ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... meal did not display a trace of irritation. From his appearance one might have judged that the niggers had returned to their work, and that everything was going well. At times he appeared absent-minded, and at times he wore a gloomy but triumphant look, as though some business which had unpleasant memories attached to it had at last been settled to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Weston, chatting to the patient and her nurse as she arranged them, with such sweetness, such smiles, such an abandonment of kindness, that both looked after her amazed, when, again, she vanished. What had become of the imperious absent-minded young woman of ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... person used to living alone, she could enjoy quite lonely romances, and never even envy real women, whose romances were always made for two. She was not a real woman, she was morbidly bodiless. Strange though it may seem, the kind, awkward, absent-minded touch of Richard as he had lifted her on to the Horse Vivian's back had been for her the one flaw in that enchanted ride. She could not bear touch. She had no pleasure in seeing or feeling the skin and homespun that encloses men and women. She hated to watch people feeding ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... would comfort Katerina Ivanovna, would flatter her and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Raskolnikov; she made him a hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the rest of the time she seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to him. She seemed absent-minded, though she kept looking at Katerina Ivanovna, trying to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna had been able to get mourning; Sonia was wearing dark brown, and Katerina Ivanovna had on her only dress, a dark striped ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... said absently. "Always doing that. Confusing them...." He dropped the tray where it belonged, shoved his hands into the chef's cleaning recess and waved them around, then came back, still looking absent-minded, and stopped before Trigger's chair. He studied her ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... sent me, that at one time Newman "took to walking from his house" (in town) "to the college and back in cap and gown." This, however, was not such a startling vagary of costume in a London street as was that of a certain professor of my acquaintance, very absent-minded and dreamy, who, intent on making some abstruse point clear to a young lady pupil, walked one evening round and round a London square with her, talking earnestly, and attired in his top ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Marie was different, more quiet, less demonstrative, sometimes plainly listless and absent-minded. Eveley ascribed the change to her newly developed interest in Lieutenant Ames, and patiently awaited the outcome of the ripening romance. For Eveley had a deep-seated sympathy with every appeal ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... that followed, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina ceased to be Lords Proprietors. Their government had been, save at exceptional moments, confused, oppressive, now absent-minded, and now mistaken and arbitrary. They had meant very well, but their knowledge was not exact, and now virtual revolution in South Carolina assisted their demise. After lengthy negotiations, at last, in 1729, all except Lord ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... rummaging among my manuscripts, books and letters, I was dressing myself in an absent-minded manner, neither hurrying myself nor the reverse. I made my toilette, shaved myself, and combed my hair; putting on mechanically a laced shirt and my holiday suit without saying a word, and without Messer-Grande—who did ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... reach the fishing-ground. We found the water there alive with fish, and anchored where they were thickest; and then the person who was guiding the expedition discovered that he had left the bait on the wharf. He is the most absent-minded man south of the Ohio anyhow. In the old days before Georgia went dry he had to give up carrying a crook-handled umbrella. He would invariably leave it hanging on the rail. So I should have kept the bait in mind myself—but I didn't, ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... visitors. John looked at Mrs. Goddard's face and was about to speak, and then changed his mind and grew red and said nothing. Had she noticed his shyness she would have made an effort at conversation, but she was absent-minded to-day, and was thinking of something else. Suddenly she started and laughed ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... worldly ones, who mock at such affection. But he, still thinking of her, neglected his cases and his clients, his robberies and everything. He went to the palace like a miser searching for a lost sixpence, bowed down, melancholy, and absent-minded, so much so, that one day he relieved himself against the robe of a counsellor, believing all the while he stood against a wall. Meanwhile the beautiful girl was loved night and day by the king, who could not tear himself from her embraces, because in amorous play she was so excellent, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... know them right away when you see them. There's paper and strings and ribbons, and cards for the names, besides the big boxes to send them in. Seems as if you ought to do it right, only—well, you know how utterly irresponsible and absent-minded ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... they reached the ranch house, Bet's eyes were glowing in an absent-minded way and she passed Ma Patten in ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... a sort of an absent-minded man. Perhaps that was his way. Really, I don't know a thing about their business, Miss Melody." The addition was made in sudden panic because the girl had grasped both the wrinkled hands and was gazing searchingly into the old woman's face as if ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... entirely indolent and good-natured, when he would stroll about, talk to the people in the village, and look after the little farm which he kept in his own hands under a bailiff. At another time he would be for long together in an abstracted mood, silent, absent-minded, pursuing some train of thought. At another time he would be very busy with what we were doing, and hold long interviews with us, making us read our work to him and giving us detailed criticisms. On these occasions he was extremely stimulating, for the simple reason that he ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I had listened to the conversation of these two men on philosophy and philosophers, which made a tremendous impression on me. I remember that Weiss was an absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt manner of speaking; he had an interesting and pensive expression which impressed me immensely. I recollect how, on being accused of a want of clearness in his writing and style, he justified himself by saying that ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... O'Brien was absent-minded, and Mucluc Charley nudged him in the ribs. Marcus O'Brien cleared his throat ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... herself. She got no answer, and ran up to their room, overhead. He was not there, either, and now it seemed but too probable that he had profited by her absence to go out for a walk alone, after his writing, and fallen from the rocks, and been killed—he was so absent-minded. She offered a vow to Heaven that if he were restored to her she would never leave him again, even for a half-day, as long as either of them lived. In reward for this she saw him coming from the direction of the beach, where nothing worse could ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers |
