"Dumbly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sit down," said she. "It's a long story." So Lydia sank upon the zone left by the corset and stockings. "Who's been talking to you?" asked Madame Beattie: but Lydia looked at her and dumbly shook ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... substance and thy arms, Thy altars, country,—save thy memories, all. Ah! here, where yet a ray of glory lingers, Let a light shine unto all generous souls, And be Italia's hope! Unto these stones Oft came Vittorio[8] for inspiration, Wroth to his country's gods. Dumbly he roved Where Arno is most lonely, anxiously Brooding upon the heavens and the fields; Then when no living aspect could console, Here rested the Austere, upon his face Death's pallor and the deathless light of hope. Here with these great he ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of his pen, and watched him dumbly. He had apparently dismissed her and her small affairs from his mind. His hand travelled with swift decision over the paper. He was evidently immersed in his own private concerns. He wrote rapidly and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... his hand as she glided by him. He followed her dumbly into the front drawing-room, where the three lawyers waited for the end ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... that time did mark Stands under the staircase in the dark, Indulging in long deserved rest, As four times it saw a new little guest. Then when sun sunk, and all round slept, From some dark corner a shadow crept, And staggered dumbly and grew and rose, And crept with stretched arms to ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... hour before the dawn!—there was no star above, no light below but the pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less dark than this,—"Where is God?" I saw the tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless life-boat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... silently questioning each other, reading at last in each other's speechlessness some comfort in this strange common knowledge, for which, indeed, there were no human words, which must be forever borne dumbly between them. Then slowly, with solemn tenderness, the obligation of that unspoken knowledge came into Evelyn Strang's face. She saw the youth standing there with grief older than the grief of the world stabbing his heart, drowning his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... looked at him, dumbly, half-guessing, half-understanding, apologizing perhaps, anyhow saying as he had said, "It's none of my fault," straight and beautiful in body, her face like a shell within its cap, then he knew that cloisters and classics are no use whatever. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Kate had come down-stairs, and with pallid face was listening dumbly to her father's words. She seemed hardly to heed the presence of the strangers. Not until the captain had emerged from his furs and stood robust and ruddy, yet a little short of breath, did she lay her hand upon his arm ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... presently walked to the alley door, and remarked in a weak voice, "I'm sick at my stummick." He paused, then added more decidedly: "I'm goin' home. I guess I've stood about enough around here for one day!" And bestowing a last glance upon his friend, who was now sitting dumbly upon the floor in the exact spot where he had stood to fire the dreadful shot, Sam ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Pete looked dumbly up at him, his lips parted. Bella twisted her apron about her hands. Both seemed to know the hopelessness of protest. In the same anxious dumbness they watched Garth make ready for his trip. As he pulled his cap down close about his ears, Pete ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Malesherbes, i. 15-22.) And, alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,—except as pipe-matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing only for provender (of tithes); content if it can have that; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of 'haggard faces;' and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their dark struggle, 'a gallows forty feet high'! Certainly a singular Golden Age; with its Feasts of Morals, its 'sweet manners,' its sweet institutions (institutions ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... beings of flesh and blood who can still take a newspaper in their hands and not foam at the mouth with rage? Can one carry in one's brain the picture of wounded men lying exposed on slimy fields in the pouring rain, slowly, dumbly bleeding to death, and yet quietly read the vile stuff written about "perfect hospital service," "smoothly running ambulances," and "elegantly papered trenches," with which these fellows poetize themselves free from ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to study stenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did not have a dream-like or an Ann-like sound—but a very Wayne-like one!—but had entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable to enter ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. "Why have they done this thing to me?" they seemed dumbly to cry. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Court myself." he said good-naturedly. "So you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other arrangements for—hum, hum—ordinary cases." And as she looked at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at The Avenger inquest—a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to say ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... her when she herself returned from a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied him on the mountain-side leaning against a projecting ledge in an attitude so rapt and immovable that she felt compelled to approach him. He appeared to be dumbly absorbed in the prospect, which might have intoxicated ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... the midst of that general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. But perhaps the cause of his ill-success ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ceiling, and informed it obviously, though dumbly, that when nieces talked nonsense it was waste of breath to reply. Outraged dignity spoke in her rigid back, in the thin ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... failed less of its effect outside the city than it did within; but there again it depended upon the hearer. When the mellow tones floated above the heath where the gipsies camped, only one, perchance, might listen, lifting her bright eyes with pleasure and longing in them, dumbly, as a child might, yet showing for a moment some glimmering promise of a soul. But to many in the village close at hand the chime brought comfort. It seemed to assure the sick, counting the slow hours, that they were not forsaken, and helped them to bear their pain with patience; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... at her dumbly from the sofa. Would Val ever come to understand the place, and the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... against the fascination with which they dominated her, resisting him dumbly with tight-locked lips till he held her ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... awkwardly, and wavered a little and pitched, as if it were being carried by a throng struggling clumsily all about it. The doctor sprang to his apparatus and turned in four batteries at once. We shot up swiftly in a long curve, and from my window I could see the circle of amazed Martians, standing dumbly with their hands still held up in front of them, as they had been when the projectile left them, while they gazed open-mouthed into ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... Quite dumbly for an instant Rae Malgregor's natural timidity stood battling the almost fanatic professional fervor in Helene Churchill's frankly open face, the raw, scientific passion, of very different caliber, but no less intensity, hidden so craftily behind Zillah ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Topographical "sassiness," unmodified by culture and control, is a rude, rugged, and unattractive trait; and New England is, on the whole, "sassier" than I could wish. Let the dullish day's drive, then, be passed over dumbly. In the evening, we dismounted at Greenville, at the foot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... cannot doe, noble respect Takes it in might, not merit. Where I haue come, great Clearkes haue purposed To greete me with premeditated welcomes; Where I haue seene them shiuer and looke pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practiz'd accent in their feares, And in conclusion, dumbly haue broke off, Not paying me a welcome. Trust me sweete, Out of this silence yet, I pickt a welcome: And in the modesty of fearefull duty, I read as much, as from the ratling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with strips of gauze. Afterward he asked me for a cigar, providing I had one to spare, saying he had not tasted tobacco for a week and was perishing for a smoke. We began to take note then how the wounded men watched us as we puffed at our cigars, and we realized they were dumbly envying us each mouthful of smoke. So we sent our chauffeur to the public market with orders to buy all the cigars he could find on sale there. He presently returned with the front and rear seats of the automobile piled high with bundled sheaves of the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... cried the King, laying his hand on Denis's head as he dumbly looked up at him in protest, his eyes appealing the while that his monarch's favour should be awarded to him alone. "No, no; emphatically no! Neither of you will go alone. You hear, boys? I will not send you ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... at him dumbly. She began to realize that the knightly spirit of those gallant, long dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago lighted ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... slowly dragged away, And sickly yellow gaslights rise to mock the going day, Then flowing past my window like a tide in its retreat, Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street — Ebbing out, ebbing out, To the drag of tired feet, While my heart is aching dumbly for ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... the young girl and the veteran of politics walked up and down—sounding each other—heart reaching out to heart—dumbly—behind the veil of words. There was a secret link between them. The politician was bruised and weary—well aware that just as Fortune seemed to have brought one of her topmost prizes within his grasp, forces and events were gathering in silence to contest it with him. Ferrier had ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads, And his big blessing ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... The two were staring dumbly, sufferingly, at each other. Billy saw the agony he had awakened and his heart sank within him. After a moment of silent doubt, Janet arose and stood in front of Billy, laying her cold hands upon his shoulders. There was no need ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... the window. Prince Ivan still dumbly played the piano. There were a few minutes of absolute silence. Then the Prince hastily got up, shut ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... beside him, telling what he knew, Fenwick all the time dumbly vexed that this good-looking, prosperous fellow, this Academician in his new fur coat, breathing success and commissions, should know more of his best ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... movement almost quicker than the mouse's, Theodoric pounced on the rug, and hauled its ample folds chin-high over his dismantled person as he collapsed into the further corner of the carriage. The blood raced and beat in the veins of his neck and forehead, while he waited dumbly for the communication-cord to be pulled. The lady, however, contented herself with a silent stare at her strangely muffled companion. How much had she seen, Theodoric queried to himself, and in any case what on earth must she think of ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Ulemas kept silence. Dumbly they sat around as if they were not living men but only embalmed corpses, such as are to be found in the funeral vaults of the Pharaohs grouped around ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... around on the faces of the seamen. They said nothing; they even watched her with sympathy, as though, while dumbly backing Mr. Benny's petition, they felt him to be asking too much; yet she divined that ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest,— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not know what to do. He had never seen a woman cry so before.... Did girls always act this way when they became engaged? Was it the usual thing, or was something wrong with Ruth? He stood by, dumbly waiting, unhappy when he knew he should be happy; troubled when he knew there should be no cloud in his sky; vaguely apprehensive when he knew he should be looking into the future with eyes confident ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... expressed no emotion whatsoever. Outwardly he appeared unmoved. Inwardly he was a riot of bewilderment, incapable of speech. He stared at Jerry dumbly. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... herded into the long bare dining room where we sat dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly-for now began the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another at table. They cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must be conscious always of their ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... for instance—Tante Jeanne, Mademoiselle Lemaire, and Mother; each played her role quite admirably. There were the worthy sterling men who did their duty dumbly, regardless of consequences—Daddy, the Postmaster, and the picturesque old clergyman with failing powers. There was the dark, uncertain male character, who might be villain, yet who might prove extra hero—the strutting postman of baronial ancestry; there was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... withdrawal of Major Guthrie from her life which first made the woman he had dumbly loved realise all that his constant, helpful presence had meant to her. And then his worldly old mother's confidences had added just that touch of jealousy which often sharpens love. Lastly, his letter, so simple, so direct, and yet, to one who knew his quiet, reserved nature, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... cars gave a jolt, and Anna Moore was launched on her tragic fate. She never knew how the time passed after leaving Mrs. Tremont, till Sanderson joined her at the next station. She felt as if her will power had deserted her, and she was dumbly obeying the behests of some unseen relentless force. She looked at the strange faces about her, hopelessly. Perhaps it was not too late—-perhaps some kind motherly woman would tell her if she were doing right. But they all looked so strange and forbidding, and while ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... beside My Beautiful One, and reached out and took her hands very gentle into mine; but still they fluttered so needful; and she looked at me, dumbly; but her ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... dumbly. In the case of previous Belgian admirers affairs had been checked before they reached the extreme stage, and she found this, her first spoken proposal much less exciting than she had expected. As a friend pure and simple, she had thoroughly liked ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sympathy the spirit of secession—bearer now of the Stars and Stripes! How his heart thumped, and how his head reeled when he caught the staff and looked dumbly up to the folds; and in spite of all his self-control, the tears came, as they came again ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... went to Him with the sullen anger of a slave who is forced into obedience. During service her face showed nothing but cold hostility: but in the depths of her soul the whole of her religious life was a fierce, dumbly exasperated struggle against the Master whose reproaches persecuted her. She pretended not to hear. She had to hear: and bitterly, savagely, with clenched teeth, hard eyes, and a deep frowning furrow in her forehead, she ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... arm, the arm scarred with the fresh pricks of the useless hypodermic needle, across his burning eyes, his throbbing temples, before he finished out his phrase. Oh, God have mercy! What had he, albeit dumbly, allowed himself to ask of Olive? What right had he, henceforward, to call himself a man, or honourable, or brave, or anything else but an insufferably selfish cad, that he had ever once allowed one such instant of supine appeal to scar the surface of their perfect friendship? ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... piling into John's arms the flask of brandy, the homely medicines, the warm garments, such bits of food as she could catch up that were palatable and portable. Pap, with more vulnerable emotions and less resolute nature, was incapable of speech; he could only suffer dumbly. ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... him with a look of such strong interrogation as he was about to follow her into the house that he paused with his foot on the step and eyed her dumbly. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognisant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking feeling. I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... stared dumbly at him, looked suspiciously at Mother. Apparently she decided that, though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal everything in the house, Mother was a person to be trusted, and she ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... sitting. He had just done his afternoon's wash, and was resting himself by the fire, enjoying a thumbed football almanac. He had not risen when the visitors entered, and while his grandmother was speaking his lips still moved dumbly, as he went on adding up the football scores. He was a sickly, rather repulsive lad with a ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... oarsman's eyes narrowed and he crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him—Tedge of the Marie Louise who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... in the valley, and the well-fed, well-paid men needed wives; and, as time went on, Honora Killelia was sought in marriage by tall Scots and Swedes, who sat dumbly passionate on the back veranda, where she mended Sanford's clothes. Even hawk-nosed Jim Varian, nearing sixty, made cautious proposals, using Bill as messenger, when ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... or when we passed them, they would timidly and quietly ask us: "Is it much farther to the village?" And when we answered, they would sigh, and gaze dumbly at us. My travelling companion hated these irrepressible ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Then came a feint at Dreer's body, a lowering of his guard and a quick out-thrust of Amy's left fist. The blow landed on Dreer's cheek and he went staggering backward against the palings. He was too frightened to cry out. With a hand pressed to his bleeding cheek, he stared dumbly at Amy, trembling and panting. Clint, who had watched proceedings from a few yards away, felt sorry for ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of herself and Elsa she was thinking—two helpless women, lost in this place of terrible silence; she was smitten by the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... keel—keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize—ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Roland stared at him dumbly. It was like a line out of a melodrama. He feared, first for his own, then for the butler's sanity. The latter was smiling gently, as one who sees ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... for the hour for which she longed, yet dreaded, had proved too much. Only the day before she had fainted suddenly, and, honestly glad of an excuse, the local doctor had ordered her to bed forthwith. Valerie had obeyed dumbly. She knew that she had come to the end of her tether, and so to that of her wit; and since, to deal at all hopefully with Anthony's return to consciousness, her understanding must be on tiptoe, she knew that she was better away. If the change was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... with his plans, and the realisation was followed by a sickening moment of fear. How little he actually knew of her and of her way of thought. What assurance had he that she would not laugh, jump back upon the horse, and ride away? He was afraid as he had never been afraid before. Dumbly his mind groped about for a way to begin. Expressions he had caught and noted in her strong serious little face when he had achieved but a mild curiosity concerning her came back to visit his mind and he ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... said at last; and they looked from one to the other dumbly for a moment. Then the girl's sweet voice broke the dreary silence, and she prayed as one who has been long familiar with such words, and who, while praying, believes the answer will be given. The words of that prayer were never forgotten by the two young men who heard them; ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... for ever to that excellent man, with the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?" But alas! he had no choice: Mr. Tatler, whose career, he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly implored "the bringing home of bell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... control them, but McCoy's gentle presence seemed to rebuke and calm them, and the muttering and cursing died away, until the full crew, save here and there an anxious face directed at the captain, yearned dumbly toward the green clad peaks and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... holier yet than charity, something higher, something purer and further from selfishness, something into which charity shall willingly grow and cease, and that is justice. Not the justice of our Christless codes, with their penalties, but the instinct of righteous shame which, however dumbly, however obscurely, stirs in every honest man's heart when his superfluity is confronted with another's destitution, and which is destined to increase in power till it becomes the social as well as the individual conscience. Then, in the truly Christian state, there shall be no more asking ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Eleanor stared dumbly, remembering that this was the woman who had helped her to bed and had administered what had presumably ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... waning night, the cheerless dawn, the gray dark day. It cut him to the heart to see his soldiers go so silently and so sullenly. Here and there a regiment did cry: "Vive l'Empereur"; here and there a voice sounded it, but in the main the men marched dumbly, doggedly. It was only the old guard that gave him the imperial salute in full voice in the ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... departmental tyranny, governmental neglect, and a natural stupidity, he has made very small progress toward a mental independence. All that he has learnt to do is to hate his tyrants. When famine urges him, he goes blindly, helplessly, dumbly, and tries to take by force that ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... meat for Irish consumption. Irish judges are presented with white gloves with a regularity which may even be annoying to them, and were it not for political trouble they would be unable to look their salaries in the face. The Irish Bar almost weep in chorus at the words "Land Act," and stare, not dumbly, on destitution. These tales are meant for England and are sent there. They will cease to be exported when there is no market for them, and these men will perhaps end by becoming patriotic and social when they learn that they do not really command the Big Battalions. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... not given long to debate this new question. Even as he sat staring dumbly at nothing in his perplexity, little Abe crawled out of the yard with the news that "mamma was most deaded;" and though it was not so bad as that, it was made clear to her husband when he found her in one of her bad fainting spells, that things ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... tongues out, their eyes shining like balls of fire. They were just entering the water to come across to her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... shave, a hair-cut, and a wash. Crecy was populous and excited. It made us joyous to think we had reached a part of the country where the shops were open, people pursuing their own business, where there was no dumbly reproaching glance ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... wasn't only in healing the sick and going about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious orders in all times—the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... couple of doughnuts, or even a loaf of bread. She laid a lenient tax upon the neighbors and the town below. Was there a frying of doughnuts at Horn o' the Moon? No sooner had the odor risen upon the air, than Mattie stood on the spot, dumbly insistent on her toll. Her very clothes smelled of food; and it was said that, in fly-time, it was a sight to see her walk abroad, because of the hordes of insects settling here and there on her odoriferous gown. When Johnnie Veasey appeared, Mattie's soul rose in arms. Their ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... house, with its roofs and wings, its great gate-posts and splendid cedars. I could laugh at its dim terrors on regaining my freedom; but I had not the least spark of gratitude or loyalty; such kindnesses as I received I had taken dumbly, never thinking that they arose out of any affection or interest, but treating them as the unaccountable choice of my elders;—we stopped for an instant at the little sanatorium—that had been a happy place ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not write any more; a sense of weariness and futility comes over me. I will go back to my garden to see what I can see, only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, which ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... good. Better lie down. She says she's got it all reasoned out, don't I tell you?" He put a throttling hand over the anguished voice, and looked dumbly at Bean. He noted the evil sneer and traced it to the cuffs. Slowly he hung up the receiver and took one of the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... silent reaches of the park she lowered them and the face she lifted to Winthrop was pale and wet with tears. The man thought never before had he seen it more lovely or more lovable. Vera shook her head dumbly and looked up at him ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done, Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only to condemn him to be talked to death by B. Cohens in ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... that the tackler did not rise. Trumbull players gathered about Rudolph. "Water! Water!" A boy near Judd picked up a pail and went racing out on the field, dabbing a sponge in it as he ran. Judd stared dumbly at Burton, who said: "That's tough! ... ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... 6th of November, 1824, we set sail. I had been waiting three years to arrive at this starting-point,—my whole life, indeed, had been dumbly turning towards it,—yet now I commenced it with a coolness and tranquillity far exceeding that I had possessed on many comparatively trifling occasions. It is often so. We are borne along on the current like drift-wood, and, spying jutting rocks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... to roll—to Cis's face, seeing the truth written there, and the story of her long hours of suffering; to the countenance of the priest, to ask, dumbly, if any living man had ever heard anything more outrageous than this; then, "By the Great Horn Spoon!" he breathed, and again stomped one foot, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... value of one's utmost expressions. I felt as though I had cheated her, was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empire of my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to which one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me go on, but when I spoke again it ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... He shook his head dumbly, looking at his splayed fingers with the vacant stare of an invalid just recovering consciousness. "I want only the coffee; make it strong, please. I really am not hungry. The thought of food, somehow, is sickening. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had eyed the waistcoat dumbly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... with an emotion that was more than vanity. His heart filled with gladness that Jessie should choose him as guide and companion to snowshoe with her out into the white forests where her traps were set. For the young Indian loved her dumbly, without any hope of reward, in much the same way that some of her rough soldiers must have loved Joan of Arc. Jessie was a mistress whose least whim he felt it a duty to obey. He had worshiped her ever since he had seen her, a little eager warm-hearted ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring dumbly at her. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... dazed her; then she threw both arms about his neck, and burst into tears, sobbing as if her heart would break, while he dumbly sought to soothe her sorrow, by cuddling her head on his shoulder and rubbing his quivering cheek against hers, for he could not trust ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... true. She clings to her mistress, endeavouring to calm her. "What, dear heart, have you so long been concealing from me? Not one tear did you shed at parting from father and mother. Hardly a word of farewell did you speak to those remaining behind. Coldly and dumbly you left the land of home; pale and silent you have been on the voyage, taking no food, taking no sleep, deeply troubled, rigid and wretched,—how am I to endure to see you thus, to be nothing ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... heaped ashore be Suez, rifle, horse, 'n' man, 'n' tent, Where the land is sand, the water, 'n' the gory firmament. We had intervals iv longin', we had sweaty spells of work In the ash-pit iv Gehenner, dumbly waitin' fer ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... wear through our patience. We willed that this wracking tumult should cease; we willed it with all the force that was in us. Then, as this proved vain, we too humped our spiritual backs, cowled our souls with patience, and waited dumbly for the force of the storm to spend itself. Our faculties were quite as effectually drowned out by the unceasing roar and crash of the waters as our bodily comfort would have been had we lacked the protection ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... so continually and vehemently at the hurrying crowds. He did not know what might happen if he failed to sell one of his statues; it was a possibility so awful that he did not dare conceive of its punishment. But he could do nothing, and so stood silent, dumbly presenting his tray to ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color, and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as to a child. But something—some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... empty, and the nurse is gossiping in the distance. She runs on angrily—and stops! For, under a sheltering tree, He stands bidding their little child good-bye. She can hear his gentle words, and the soft, cooing answers, and she dumbly stretches out her arms, as a great wave of love surges in her heart and drowns the bitter thoughts for ever. In a little while he will go, and then this tide of love and repentance ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... motives seem to be unhappily scarce in the life of this age. Neither understandingly, like poets, nor unconsciously (or, at least, dumbly), like peasants, are we aware of the places in which we live. We make no pilgrimages to holy spots, nor have we wandering students who mark out and acutely set down the distinctions between this people and that. Facilities of travel have perhaps ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... grows thin and transparent, and that the glories and the truths of Heaven are visible with a special clearness and authority to the dying. It was for this moment, either in herself or in him, that Catherine's unconquerable faith had been patiently and dumbly waiting. Either she would go first, and death would wing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not their own; or, when he came to leave her, the veil of doubt would fall away perforce from a spirit as pure as it was humble, and the eternal light, the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that! As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting dumbly for the next move—quite non compos by ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... he looked down at the boy lying before him, he wondered in his heart if there was really a spark of life left in that still, pale, bleeding body. As for Elinor, after the first outburst, she sat dumbly trembling. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... out at last. He had blundered clumsily, and he knew it. The colour drained from Eileen's face and she stood rigid as a statue for a moment. Then slowly she swayed forward. He stretched out his arms to prevent her from falling. She waved him aside dumbly and tottered to a couch. His directness had been more merciful than he had thought. She was stunned, dazed by her calamity. Her very silence frightened the man. She sat bolt upright, her hand resting limply in her lap and her dull eyes staring ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... and use us—dolls, beasts of burden, and you expect us to bear it forever dumbly; but I won't! I shall cry out till I die. And now you say it almost out loud, "Go and breed for the empire." War brides! Pah! [Minna gasps, beginning to be terrified. Hoffman rages. Mother gazes with anxious ...
— War Brides: A Play in One Act • Marion Craig Wentworth
... in the Military Police—loomed into view, and with an imprecation the rough backed away from the girl, turned, and in a moment was lost in the gloom. I brought my eyes back to the girl who had confronted me in the red light of sunset, and I stood gazing at her dumbly, fascinated, but with never a word to say. She was burning with anger and shame, trembling like ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn't swim, but yet she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was alone, she didn't know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something for him, something splendid. He saved ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and grasped Baldos by the arm. His eyes were stern and accusing. Above, Yetive and Beverly had clasped hands and were looking on dumbly. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dumbly at the ruin wrought. His eyes sought for some trace of the package he had done so much to bring through with safety, but which, after all, had been taken while he slept. Certainly it was an unfortunate ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... a voice, "allow me if you please, monsieur"—and the sack has disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken him away, and the sack stood ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Nor did the girl herself know how much or how little Richard Gordon's gay camaraderie meant. She was of that type of women who love all that are kind to them. No man had ever been so considerate as this handsome curly-headed American. So dumbly her heart went out to him and made the most of his friendliness. Had he not once put his arm around her shoulder and told her to "buck up" when he came upon her crying because of Pedro? Had he not told her ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... dumbly, her eyelids sank, and her head fell back upon his shoulder, as he started up from his knees to support her sinking figure. She was in his arms, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... was not without its effect upon some at least of the mutineers, who regarded each other with startled eyes, which dumbly but plainly ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... usury and peddling. They were shut up in their narrow Jewries, huddled in wretched cabins, which clustered about the dilapidated synagogue in a shamefaced way. What strange homes! What gigantic misery, what boundless suffering dumbly borne, was concealed in those crumbling, curse-laden dwellings! And yet, how resplendent they were with spiritual light, what exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... affection for was a little pet dog which had been hers and which they sometimes allowed to be with him after the life sentence had been passed upon him and when he was awaiting removal. He would sit for hours with the little animal in his lap, caressing it dumbly. There was a mute sorrow in the eyes of both man and dog, and they seemed to take comfort in each other's presence. There was no need of any sign between them. They had both loved her, had they not? ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... for the wonderful sunset light had made her forget for the moment where she was, and it seemed a desecration to have mere mortals step in and announce supper, although the odor of pork and cabbage had been proclaiming it dumbly for some time. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... hour that the suffering girl knelt thus dumbly before the Lord of all happiness, that man whom she had worshipped in her heart so long, whom she must worship forever, was sitting just as sleeplessly beside his writing-table, separated from her only by two walls, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... show you," Professor Lightning said. He stood up and went to the flap of the tent. "Come with me," he said, and Charley got up, dumbly, and followed him out ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... methodically and steadily, just as she did everything else. When she had dug down as deep as she could and still manage to climb out, and had the hole wide enough and long enough, she got awkwardly to the grassy surface and sat for a long while upon a rock, staring dumbly at the gaunt, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Wentworth would conduct himself in such an emergency. On one side of the way Mr Wodehouse's hospitable house, shut up closely, and turning all its shuttered windows to the light, which shone serenely indifferent upon the blank frames, stood silent, dumbly contributing its great moral to the human holiday; and on the other, Elsworthy's closed shop, with the blinds drawn over the cheerful windows above, where little Rosa once amused herself watching the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... But dumbly sits the shattered house, And makes no answer: man and mouse Long since forsook it, and decay Chokes its deep ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... amateurs—she trots out Velma, or some equally perfect artiste, to show them how it really can be done; and suddenly the place is full of music, and a great hush falls on the audience, and the poor complacent amateurs realise that the noise they have been making was, after all, not music; and they go dumbly home. But they have forgotten all about it by the following year; or a fresh contingent of willing performers steps into the breach. The duchess's little joke always ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... had come to a sudden end. The girls ceased screaming and stood looking on dumbly, unable to understand what ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... Wally uttered a shout of relief as he came to the trees. Below in the wide, shallow pools, all the stock had taken refuge—carthorses and cows, sheep and pigs, all huddled together, wild-eyed and panting, but safe. They stared up at Wally, dumbly bewildered. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... it you, perchance, who ache to strain us Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast, Or with tragic gesture would detain us From the age-long ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... of frieze; and yonder again, a fragment of temple, half-gorged by the facade of a hideous Renaissance church; then a height of vaulted brick-work, and, leading on to the Coliseum, another arch, and then incoherent columns overthrown and mixed with dilapidated walls—mere phonographic consonants, dumbly representing the past, out of which all vocal glory had departed. The Coliseum itself does not much better express a certain phase of Roman life than does the Arena at Verona; it is larger only to the foot-rule, and it seemed not grander otherwise, while it is vastly more ruinous. Even the Pantheon ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... said she would. Then she turned her face to the wall and went into a convulsion out of which she never came. While the Peters family refused Kate's plea to lay Polly beside her grandmother, and laid her in their family lot, Kate, moaning dumbly, sat clasping a tiny red girl in her arms. Adam drove to Hartley to deposit one more paper, the most precious of all, in the safety ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... directly, he sent him up to the main-topgallant cross-trees with a spy-glass to carefully "sweep the offing," as he termed it, and then as Smith brought down the guns with a very inquiring look which said dumbly but plainly enough, "You won't leave me behind, will yer, gents?" ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... trouble, her face was anxious and strained. She went silently beside Mackenzie while the dogs worked the sheep along with more than human patience, almost human intelligence. Frequently she looked into his face with a plea dumbly eloquent, but did not again put her fear for him into words. Only when she stood beside her horse near the sheep-wagon, ready to mount and leave him to his solitary supper, she spoke of Hector Hall's revolvers, which Mackenzie had unstrapped ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... They sat dumbly a minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it was broken by a pink dot, which they ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I nodded dumbly. I could not speak just then—but the young woman in front of me could. Very distinctly as I passed ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... may be when the midnight Is heavy upon the land, And the black waves lying dumbly Along the sand; When the moonless night draws close, And the lights are out in the house; When the fires burn low and red, And the watch is ticking loudly Beside the bed: Though you sleep, tired out, on ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... to deny it. She nodded dumbly. Besides, she counted on his possession of common sense, though his use of ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... without a word, four determined bare legs ploughing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reach high-water mark—six hours ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... He stared dumbly at the evidence in his hand. He recalled distinctly the rage that was in his heart when he penned this note. The stage manager had lost some valuable manuscript that had to be rewritten from memory, the notes ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... fugitives fall pierced. Men rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed, helpless and living victims are thrown aside to await slow death. Children are torn from their mothers' arms—but there—memory ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... dim idea that he had heard of this piece before. He waited dumbly, admiring the fine old room, with its lofty ceiling, and florid cornice, and the sunny garden ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... brooding in the sun, little awnings to protect them from rough breezes, and a great weather-vane, on which the birds crowded for the chance of a ride. If the peasants of that day, whose small fields they plundered, noting all this, perhaps [160] envied the birds dumbly, for the brethren, on the other hand, it was a constant delight to watch the feathered brotherhood, which supplied likewise their daintiest fare. Who then, what hawk, or wild-cat, or other savage beast, had ravaged it so wantonly, so very cruelly destroyed the bright creatures in a ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the destruction of his Eden John Cardigan sat dumbly beside his wife, his great, hard hand caressing the auburn head whose every thought for three years had been his happiness and comfort. Then the doctor came to him and mentioned the matter of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne |
