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noun
Wont  n.  Custom; habit; use; usage. "They are... to be called out to their military motions, under sky or covert, according to the season, as was the Roman wont." "From childly wont and ancient use."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wont" Quotes from Famous Books



... you please," said Boone, turning away and marking the distressed yelping of the hounds, which indicated, from some unusual cause, that they did not enjoy the chase as much as was their wont. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... mood, as things, so far, had all turned out as he expected. His voice was loudest, and his oratory more decidedly effective than ever. The prospect before him was also of so seductive a character, that he yielded more than was his wont to the influences of the bottle-god: who stood little iron-hooped keg, perched upon a shelf conveniently in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... reader, in Canada, is not a great lumbering wooden edifice upon four wheels, whose broad circumferences occupy about four feet of the road, and contain some ton or two of iron, as our dear Kentish hop-waggons are wont to show in the Borough of Southwark, or throughout lordly London, those carrying coals. No, it is a long box, painted green or red, a perfect parallelogram, with two seats in it, composed of single boards, and occasionally ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... rock tumbling down, And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound. No other noise, nor people's troublous cries That still are wont t' annoy the walled town Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies Wrapt in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... of Mexican horses, riderless, saddled, starved for grass and wild for water, had come in to Forlorn River. They were a part of the horses belonging to Rojas and his band. Their arrival complicated the mystery and strengthened convictions of the loss of both pursuers and pursued. Belding was wont to say that he had worried himself gray over the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... occurrence, nothing could more contribute to Bonaparte's happiness than his union with Maria Louisa. He was wont to compare her with Josephine, by giving the latter all the advantages of art and grace; the former the charms of simple modesty and innocence. His former empress used every art to support or enhance her personal charms; but with so much prudence and mystery, that the secret ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... early to-night," said De Valette; "there is scarcely a face to be seen, except a few long-favored Presbyterians;—it is a Catholic holiday, too, and our soldiers are not wont to let such pass by without a merry-making. Ho, Ronald!" he continued, addressing the guard, "what is in the wind now, my honest fellow? are you all dead, or ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... harmless over his head, unseen and unheard, and lost itself in the dead leaves twenty yards beyond him. On another day, Raymond, riding along, hawk on wrist, ten lengths before the others, as was his wont, did not notice that they gradually fell behind, until he halted in a narrow path of the forest, looked round, and found himself alone. He turned his horse's head and rode back a few yards, when suddenly three masked ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... stone and sunk upon the spot. Next morning, the cloud had cleared from around the charcoal, but slender wreaths of similar appearance were rapidly rising from the sand in every other part of the Aquarium. The fishes came oftener to the surface than they were wont, and all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... perched on its sunny, fruitful hill, amid its vineyards. The situation of the city naturally suggests the figure which regards it as a sparkling coronet or flowery wreath, twined round the brows of the hill; and that poetical metaphor is the more natural, since revellers were wont to twist garlands in their hair, when they reclined at their orgies. The city is 'the crown of pride'—that is, the object of boasting and foolish confidence—and is also 'the fading flower of his sparkling ornament'; that is, the flower which is the ornament of Ephraim, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... these savages that they considered a favourable journey impossible without this uncouth ceremony. It was at this portage that their enemies had been wont to surprise them. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... so sweet and well, that no one remembered ever before to have heard the melody sung with so fair a voice as this. The sorceress thanked her for the song, and said: "She has indeed lured many spirits hither, who think it pleasant to hear this song, those who were wont to forsake us hitherto and refuse to submit themselves to us. Many things are now revealed to me, which hitherto have been hidden, both from me and from others. And I am able to announce that this period of famine ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... plot, the characters, the wit, the passions, the descriptions, are all exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy is wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons; and to portray these exactly, heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse. Verse, it is true, is not the effect of sudden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... Corot was wont to rely on Nature's gift as she bestowed it, merely allowing his sensitive picture-sense to lead him where pictures were, rather than upon any artful reconstruction of the facts of nature. His "Little Music," as he called it, came for the most part ready-made for him, and he ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... way or other he continued improving to the last. In drawing from nature, his habit was to sketch very slightly, making only such a memorandum as sufficed to work from. The scholars of Andrea were very numerous; but, according to Vasari, they were not wont to stay long, being domineered over by his wife; Pontormo and Domenico Puligo may be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... he said:—'Sir, I shall be very glad to have a new sense put into me.' He had been wont to speak slightingly of music and musicians. 'The first symptom that he showed of a tendency to conversion was upon hearing the following read aloud from the preface to Dr. Burney's History of Music while ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... yet both these men spell and pronounce the word alike. The ignorant man has only the faintest glimmering of the scholar's meaning of the word when he speaks or writes it. Still the word is in common use, and people who use it are wont to think that their conception of its meaning is universal. If the boor could follow the expansion of the word as it is invested with greater and greater content, he would, in time, understand Aristotle, Shakespeare, Gladstone, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... Bougiers; and there pass men a bridge of stone that is upon the river of Marrok. And men pass through the land of Pyncemartz and come to Greece to the city of Nye, and to the city of Fynepape, and after to the city of Dandrenoble, and after to Constantinople, that was wont to be clept Bezanzon. And there dwelleth commonly the Emperor of Greece. And there is the most fair church and the most noble of all the world; and it is of Saint Sophie. And before that church is the image of Justinian the emperor, covered with gold, and he sitteth upon an horse y-crowned. And ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... by a long line of Cardew women behind her, women who had loved, and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an inheritance from her fore-mothers, who had been wont to overlook the evil in a man for the strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical strength for moral fibre, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Greek myth, was the mountain on which the muses were wont to meet, and here Apollo had his chief seat. Here, in the fancy of the ancients, the poets and historians and dramatists came to draw inspiration. So Raphael has made a great company of gods and goddesses, ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... they brought him word that the important post of Moclin was but weakly garrisoned. This was a castellated town, strongly situated upon a high mountain, partly surrounded by thick forests and partly girdled by a river. It defended one of the rugged and solitary passes by which the Christians were wont to make their inroads, insomuch that the Moors, in their figurative way, denominated it the shield ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... square, men, women and children had packed themselves. The air was foul, and the smoke from the blazing pine knots, having no direct outlet, rolled and curled and sank. The savages sprawled around the fire, bragging and boasting and lying as was their wont of an evening. Near-by the medicine man, sorcerer so-called, beat upon a drum in the interest of science and rattled bears' claws in a tortoise-shell. A sick man lay huddled in skins at the farthest end of the hut. His friends and relatives ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... connection with this subject theologians are wont to discuss the question whether or not the forfeiture of sanctifying grace involves the loss of its ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... forget his fears, on the contrary tended more and more to aggravate them. The loss of her cheerful society tended also to depress his spirits; and in order to dispel the gloom, which often crept upon his mind after his daily occupations were over, he was wont frequently to ask Schalken to accompany him home, and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... to her wont, taken leave of him on the accustomed night of her retirement; and he found himself alone in his chamber. He mused, long and painfully, till he could endure his thoughts no longer; and, catching up his sword, he rushed to the tower, at the door of which he had parted ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... by a single race or by a single century is not likely to be widely or permanently acceptable. Long years ago the Italians were wont to speak of the Four Poets, quattro poete, meaning thereby Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso. But this was a choice far too local and far too narrow. Of these four Italian poets perhaps only the severe Florentine has won his way outside of the boundaries of the language he did so ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... our native land. When my warlike mood had passed, I sat down upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the passers-by in a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual professors and doctors and ministers who are wont to walk up and down the Edinburgh streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high degree and a few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their clan tartans; but for me they did not exist. In their places stalked the ghosts of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... blameless nephew. M. Mouillard, who has a long standing affection for chambertin, ordered two bottles to begin with. He drank the whole of one and half of the other, eating in proportion, and talked unceasingly and positively at the top of his voice, as his wont was. He told me the story of two of his best actions this year, a judicial separation—my uncle is very strong in judicial separations—and the abduction of a minor. At first I looked out for personal allusions. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... frien's! howdy an' welcome! I 'm des fixin' fer ter take a warm baff like Mr. Man gi' his hogs; wont you j'ine me?' Dey say dey aint in no hurry, but dey holp Brer Rabbit put de hot rocks in de barrel an' dey watch de water bubble, an' bimeby, when eve'ything wuz ready, who should walk up but ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris

... round to the other side. In the corridor we met the gardener, Akim, who had been wont to amuse us with his grimaces, but at this moment I could see nothing comical in him. Indeed, the sight of his thoughtless, indifferent face struck me more painfully than anything else. In the maidservants' ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... vehicle, of polished leather to the bodily eye, of redtape philosophy, of expediences, clubroom moralities, Parliamentary majorities to the mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest: but knowest thou whitherward? It is towards the road's end. Old use-and-wont; established methods, habitudes, once true and wise; man's noblest tendency, his perseverance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia; whatsoever of noble and ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations, strongest always ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... easier Reuben began to recover his natural voice, and to lose disagreeable self-consciousness in the delight of hearing Cecily and meeting her look. Had he known her better, he would have observed that she spoke with unusual diffidence, that she was not quite so self-possessed a. of wont, and that her manner was deficient in the frank gaiety which as a rule made its great charm. Her tone softened itself in questioning; she listened so attentively that, when he had ceased speaking, her eyes always rose to his, as if she had expected ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... I think how impossible it would be, now that the veneer of town life has been thinly spread over the life of our village, for the man of law to go wading, with tucked-up trousers, after rats; how impossible, also, for him to frequent with me the bathing pool, as was sometimes his wont, and swim idly hither and thither, while the moon peered between the trees and the vague witchery of the summer night filled his spirit and my own. My youthful feelings, long preserved, have been irrevocably lost; ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as these, and to speak as they are wont when they style themselves immortals and equals to gods?—and when, through the excessiveness and transcendency of the blessed things they enjoy, they rave even to the degree of whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... son, an effeminate fellow," his father, Andrei Nikolaevitch, was wont to say of him:—"but, on the other hand, he likes to go to God's church.... ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... works in English devoted to the subject. Previous to that time, those ten centuries lying between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of learning were generally referred to as the Dark Ages, and historians and other writers were wont to treat them as having been without learning ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... though the sociable friend be forever departed, yet in a degree he will be spiritually present with us; and still more will the empty forms which were once full of his rejoicing presence continue to rule our manners. We shall draw our chairs together as we and our forefathers have been wont for thousands of years back, and sit around some blank and empty corner of the room, babbling with unreal cheerfulness of topics suitable to the homely fireside. A warmth from the past—from the ashes of bygone years and the raked-up embers of long ago—will sometimes thaw the ice ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... wherefore dost thou not answer me? This terrible lord of the forest, of grim visage and gaping jaws, and famishing with hunger, filleth me with fright. Doth it not behove thee to deliver me? Thou wert wont to say always, Save thee there existeth not one dear unto me. O blessed one, O king, do thou now make good thy words so spoken before. And, O king, why dost thou not return an answer to thy beloved wife bewailing and bereft of sense, although thou lovest her, being loved in return? O king of ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... her; and no doubt was kept back by her shyness, and by the dreamy confusion of childhood between the real and unreal. One would have thought that a life in which these visions were of constant recurrence would have been rapt altogether out of wholesome use and wont, and all practical service. But this does not seem for a moment to have been the case. Jeanne was no hysterical girl, living with her head in a mist, abstracted from the world. She had all the enthusiasms even of youthful friendship, other girls surrounding her with the intimacy of the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... just as soon as we're educated up to it," he was wont to declare. "If we get it before then, it'll be a worse hash than capitalism. So let's go ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... neither was nor could be any surplus, and he said, that the only means which suggested themselves to him were a loan of a million every year. "The right honourable gentleman," he wittily remarked, "might say with the person in the comedy, 'If you wont lend me the money, how can I pay you?'" In conclusion, Sheridan moved a long string of objections, which were all negatived without a division; but on the day for reconsidering the report of the committee on the bill, an amendment, as moved by Fox, was adopted, to the effect, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... evening before the general dispersion, Laura, Cupid, and M. P. walked the well-known paths of the garden once again. While the two elder girls were more loquacious than their wont, Laura was quieter. She had never wholly recovered her humour since the day of the history-examination; and she still could not look back, with composure, on the jeopardy in which she had placed herself one little turn of the wheel in ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... fidelity," said the beggar, hobbling off up the street on his crutches, at a far more rapid rate than he was generally wont to move. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... I opened my vaulted room. My neighbor came in, as was his wont every morning, for he was a talkative man. "Well," he said, "what do you say about the terrible affair which has occurred during the night?" I pretended not to know anything. "What, do you not know what is known all over the town? Are you not aware that the loveliest flower ...
— The Severed Hand - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Wilhelm Hauff

... to join Paez, full of confidence in spite of the check at La Hogaza. It was now 1818. He was wont to say "This year will see the end of the Spanish power in Venezuela." His faith had more foundation than during his exile and the earlier expeditions, when, with a handful of men, he had started to fight against the great armies organized by the Spanish government. Public opinion ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... twenty feet deep. This Van realized as he sat there on his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There was one place only where he felt assured ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... judged to have aspersed the character, affected the rights, and injured the interests of the town. Their publication made a profound impression on the public mind, and they became the theme of every circle. At one of the political clubs, in which the Adamses, the Coopers, Warren, and others were wont to discuss public affairs, Otis, in a blaze of indignation, charged the crown officials with haughtiness, arbitrary dispositions, and the insolence of office, and vehemently urged a town-meeting. One was soon summoned by the Selectmen, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... meal had been eaten on shore close to where the proa lay, it was arranged that Sanders should sleep on board with his crew—if two men might be termed such—while the others should stay in their cabin, as was their wont. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... scandalous state of affairs was obtained, one sunny morning, in the most unexpected fashion. A fisherman named Luigi, paddling about the stern of the FLUTTERBY where, in consequence of the kitchen refuse thrown overboard, marine beasts of every shape and kind were wont to congregate, cast down his spear at what looked like a splendid caerulean flat-fish of uncommon size and brilliance. The creature shivered and collapsed at that contact in the most unnatural, unfishlike manner; and Luigi drew up, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Macfarlane arrived somewhat earlier than his wont. Fettes heard him, and met him on the stairs, told him his story, and showed him the cause of his alarm. Macfarlane examined the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the World - a Land, till of late happy in its Obscurity - the Asylum, to which Patriots were formerly wont to make their peaceful Retreat; even here the stern Tyrant has lifted up his iron Rod, and makes his incessant Claim as Lord of the Soil: But I have a firm Perswasion in my Mind, that in every Struggle, this Country will approve her self, as glorious in defending ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... from service, and the trousers owed a superficial smartness merely to being tightly strapped. This man had a not quite agreeable face; inasmuch as it was smoothly shaven, and exhibited a peculiar mobility, it might have denoted him an actor; but the actor is wont to twinkle a good-natured mood which did not appear upon this visage. The contour was good, and spoke intelligence; the eyes must once have been charming. It was a face which had lost by the advance of years; which had hardened where it was soft, and seemed likely to grow ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... as you have told it," said Amalie, the grey old governess. Every one turned and looked at her in astonishment. She was wont to sit silent and prim and faded in her place at table, never speaking unless some one spoke to her, and there were few who troubled themselves to make conversation with her. To-day a sudden volubility had descended on her; she continued to talk, rapidly and ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... with the fever of hope and fear, rose up at dawn, and, as in a former time he had been wont to do, ran to the seashore by the nearest path and walked beside the edge of the waves. He turned, as he had always done, towards the little island and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... little onward lend thy guiding hand To these dark steps, a little further on; For yonder bank hath choice of sun and shade: There I am wont to sit, when any chance Relieves me from my task of servile toil, Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me.— O, wherefore was my birth from Heav'n foretold Twice by an Angel?— Why was my breeding order'd ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... mealie field, and pulled-up pegs might well be expected. At midnight a clanking noise near my recumbent form, strongly reminiscent of our ancestral ghost, the dark Sir Jasper, dragging his clanking chain after him at that hour, as is his wont, aroused me. Of course, it was a horse which had pulled up his picketing peg and was searching for fresh fields or fodder new. I quickly grasped the situation and the peg, and now have no trouble when the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... commonness due to frequency of occurrence] — N. habit, habitude; assuetude|, assuefaction|, wont; run, way. common state of things, general state of things, natural state of things, ordinary state of things, ordinary course of things, ordinary run of things; matter of course; beaten path, beaten track, beaten ground. prescription, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... however, and from the poet's writings, we gather the nature of the man; and this appears to have been very amiable. There is an aristocratic tone in his poem, when speaking of the sort of people of whom the mass of soldiers is wont to consist; and Foscolo says, that the Count of Scandiano writes like a feudal lord. But common soldiers are not apt to be the elite of mankind; neither do we know with how goodnatured a smile the mention of them may have been accompanied. People often give a tone to what they read, more belonging ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... also, that I am improved in the matter of that excessive neatness which I was wont to observe, [11] though not wholly delivered from it. I do not discern that I am always mortified in this; sometimes, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and, as he was wont, he taught them again. And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?" ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark

... of these side poles were affixed, with small skewer-like twigs, the sides of a sack which had been cut open lengthways; and formed in all, an impromptu bedstead or stretcher, on which, by a bundle of blankets that there appeared, it was evident the occupier of the establisment was wont to court repose, free from the moisture of his mother earth. Under this rural bed, was a box of that description generally brought to the country by emigrants, and at once proclaimed its owner, to the practised eye of William, to be a "new chum;" ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... warranty of law, Thou hast set aside the custom of the land, And like some freebooter art carrying off What plunder pleases thee, as if forsooth Thou thoughtest this a city without men, Or manned by slaves, and me a thing of naught. Yet not from Thebes this villainy was learnt; Thebes is not wont to breed unrighteous sons, Nor would she praise thee, if she learnt that thou Wert robbing me—aye and the gods to boot, Haling by force their suppliants, poor maids. Were I on Theban soil, to prosecute The justest claim ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... Elizabeth not as was her wont, always busy, over the perpetual toil of those who have not yet learned the mysterious art of arrangement and order, nor, as sometimes, hanging sleepily over the kitchen fire, waiting for bedtime; but actually sitting, sitting down at the table. Her ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... much of him as possible for the rest of the afternoon. "The fellow was jealous, then, in addition to his other sins!" And Campbell, who felt that he had put himself unnecessarily forward between husband and wife, grew more and more angry; and somehow, unlike his usual wont, refused to confess himself in the wrong, because he was in the wrong. Certainly it was not pleasant for poor Elsley; and so Lucia felt, and bore with him when he refused to be comforted, and rendered blessing for railing when he said to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... given up urging his jaded animal, being too jaded himself for the effort. But, hearing a clatter of hoofs on the drive before him, he did rouse himself to holler into the darkness, supposing that his wife was ahead of him. If it were she, she was later in returning than was her wont, but no answer came back to him, and he did not repeat his call. After all, why should he hail her? He did not want her company, Heaven knew. That stately demeanour of hers which once had attracted him generally inspired in him a savage sense of ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... his wont, Mr. Jefferson withdrew to his study after breakfast and doubtless ran over the pages of a manuscript which he had been preparing with some care for this Fourth of March. It may be guessed, too, that here, as at Monticello, he made his ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... my cousin, I do,' replied Burbo, affectionately, as he swept the coins into a leathern receptacle, which he then deposited in his girdle, drawing the buckle round his capacious waist more closely than he was wont to do in the lax hours of his domestic avocations. 'And by Isis, Pisis, and Nisis, or whatever other gods there may be in Egypt, my little Nydia is a very Hesperides—a garden of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... to you for that Bracelett. it come just in the nic of time for me. The Mademoiselle Zabriski dodg is about Plaid out. my beard is getting to much for me. i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some other line of busyness, I dont no what now, but will let you no. You wont feel bad if i sell that Bracelett. i have seen Abrahams Moss and he says he will do the square thing. Pleas accep my thanks for youre Beautifull ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... eve, their daily work being done, Mother and child, according to their wont, Went, hand in hand, their chosen evening walk. A pleasant wind rose from the sea, and blew Light flakes of waving silver o'er the fields Ready for mowing, and the golden West Warmed half the sky: the low sun flickered through The hedge-rows, as they passed; while hawthorn trees ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... untangled state, an apparatus for confounding and enraging pedestrians. Stretched across the sidewalk between two tin cans its function was to catch in the feet of passersby, thus pulling the clamorous cans about the ankles of the victim. Keekie Joe had always found this game diverting and he was wont to vary its surprises by filling the cans ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... break a spell. The rider arose as if he had just remembered himself and had tarried longer than his wont. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... the vestrymen were not indifferent to creature comforts is shown by an entry in their records for 5th April, 1569, from which it appears that it was their wont to eat a calf's head pie in the vestry in celebration of Easter. The luxury was supplemented in 1600-1607 by the gift of a buck and 20s. from Sir Edward Dyer, to provide an entertainment for ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... loneliness in the sick room. Tom came to see Rad as often as he could, and did everything possible to make his aged servant's lot happier. But Rad wanted to be up and about, and it was pathetic to hear him ask about the little tasks he had been wont to ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... ranged along the wall. But the Cyclops himself was away in the pastures. Then the companions of Ulysses besought him that he would depart, taking with him, if he would, a store of cheeses and sundry of the lambs and of the kids. But he would not, for he wished to see, after his wont, what manner of host this strange shepherd might be. And truly he saw ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... shot up in the Spring and I Loose evry thing that I was working for all Last winter. I have Ritten a Letter to my Friend P. Christianson some time a goo & have never Received an Answer, I hope this wont Be the case with this one, I have an idea sir, next winter iff I can this summer make Enough to Pay Expenses, to goo to that school at McGrowville & spend my winter their. I am going sir to try to Prepair myself for a Lectuer, I am going sir By the Help of god to try and Do ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... accustomed from my earliest days to the sight of ships coming into or going out of the Downs, or brought up before our town, and I used to listen with deep interest to the account of his adventures in all parts of the world with which our neighbour, Captain Bland, was wont to entertain us when he came to our house, or when we went in to take tea with him and Mrs Bland and their daughter Mary. I can, therefore, scarcely remember the time when I did not wish to become a sailor, though as my eldest brother Bill ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... slightly disappointed tone. "You are not going to church to-day." For Thorne was more picturesquely careless in his apparel than is the wont of the British church-goer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... with the deep sympathy arising from kindred nobility of soul, had long cherished a high reverence for Carlyle, was very proud of having received such a guest under his roof, and during those few last weeks of life was wont to be in high spirits, talking with his several guests, and describing with much interest, his recent visit to Naseby with Carlyle, "its position on some of the highest table-land in England—the streams falling on the ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... whilst the stranger, pleas'd, Takes up the youngest boy upon his knee. Proud of its seat, it wags its little feet, And prates, and laughs, and plays with his white locks. But soon the soldier's face lays off its smiles; His thoughtful mind is turn'd on other days, When his own boys were wont to play around him, Who now lie distant from their native land In honourable, but untimely graves. He feels how helpless and forlorn he is, And bitter tears gush from his dim-worn eyes. His toilsome daily labour at an end, In comes the wearied master of the house, And marks with satisfaction ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... But he took to the cow-horn with the readiness of a child to a new plaything; and, having placed himself under the instruction of the Northumbrian Koenig, was speedily enabled to sound his octaves and go the complete unicorn (as he was wont to express it, in his peculiarly figurative eastern language) with a still more astounding effect than he had done on his former instrument. The little gentleman always made a point of thus signalling the times of the arrival ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... attitude of suspicion may cause impartiality to be regarded as indifference to truth, fairness as sympathy with error. I am not ashamed therefore to confess, that under the oppressive sense of these various feelings I have been wont to go for help to the only source where the burdened heart can find consolation; and have sought, in the communion with the Father of spirits which prayer opens to the humblest, a temper of candour, of reverence, and of the love of truth. In this spirit I have ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... logically, it attaches itself to the American outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, as others have mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick cells, lined with double and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont to incarcerate him, he calls the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... to be there," she thought, and started half an hour earlier than was her wont. She wanted to tell him all her rapture in the book; no one else ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... him here. Don't bother yourself about him, Herbert; you may be a great diplomatist, and have the politics of the whole country in your pocket, but I wont give my boy into your keeping; he belongs to me alone, and I intend to ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... demonstrations of affection. After a few days Mavra relapsed into her old habits; bent all day over her embroidery frame by the narrow window, in the evening standing leaning against the door, gazing, as was her wont, at the stars. More than ever she loved them; behind these marvelous lights, that she likened to tears—for she was often sad now—she saw the black eyes and handsome, indifferent face that had taken possession of her soul. As long as she was staying in the grand seignorial mansion ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville

... to us in the wilderness of your own accord, but we cannot get to your side by our own strength. You must look about and see where the hedge is thinnest, and then set to work to clear away here and there a little bough for me; it wont be missed: and if there is but the smallest hole made on your side, those on ours can get through; otherwise, we do but ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self—and then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel, started along the road ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... Greene, and he received this apology of Nash in a corresponding spirit; for instead of accepting it, in his "New Letter of Notable Contents," 1593, he rejects it with scorn: "Riotous vanity (he replies) was wont to root so deeply that it could hardly be unrooted; and where reckless impudency taketh possession, it useth not very hastily to be dispossessed. What say you to a spring of rankest villainy in February, and a harvest of ripest ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... I remark everything that happens, not because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... two difficulties soon presented themselves. There was a glut in our basket market, and Emile found life without being able to move out of the house almost more than a man born to the sea and the trail could bear. Small dogs in civilization are wont to fill this gap. But alas, "down North" small dogs are taboo—their imperious Eskimo congeners having ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... agony I endured. That I, the comrade of a hundred heroes—I, who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion, who against Sir Lancelot himself had couched a lance, and that not altogether unsuccessful, I to whom all damsels in distress were wont to look for succour—that I should run from varlets such ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... of the most wide-spread species of the Cat tribe, being found not only in America, but throughout nearly the whole of Europe as well as in Northern Asia. In many parts of the United States, where the wild cat was wont to flourish, it has become exterminated, owing to civilization and ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... left the old woman there shocked and terrified by his vehemence. She did not stay there long. Soon the scarlet cloak and black bonnet might have been seen wending their way slowly back to the little cottage, the poor old tidy bonnet drooping lower than it was wont. Meadows came back to dinner; he had a mutton-chop in his study, for it was a busy day. While thus employed there came almost bursting into the room a man struck with remorse—Jefferies, the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... fear of the dead is expressly affirmed of some tribes. Thus we are told that the Yuin "were always afraid that the dead man might come out of the grave and follow them."[222] After burying a body the Ngarigo were wont to cross a river in order to prevent the ghost from pursuing them;[223] obviously they shared the common opinion that ghosts for some reason are unable to cross water. The Wakelbura took other measures to throw the poor ghost off the scent. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... in his travels, to hear the noise of an earthquake just as he came opposite to the abode of one who was wont to conjure with human bones. Happening to mutter aloud to himself as he passed, "Does the conjurer really know what that noise is?" a voice answered, "Ketina, Ketina, why shouldn't I know? When the Holy One—blessed be He!—thinks of His ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young We both would unadvisedly recite 170 Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, deg. deg.171 Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alike Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, deg. did ye know! deg.177 He holds on firmly to some ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... became Mr. Millward's first and only curate—for that gentleman's declining years forced him at last to acknowledge that the duties of his extensive parish were a little too much for those vaunted energies which he was wont to boast over his younger and less active brethren of the cloth. This was what the patient, faithful lovers had privately planned and quietly waited for years ago; and in due time they were united, to the astonishment of the little world they lived in, that ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... flirtation with Emilie Heim, the wife of a conductor, who lived so near the Wagners that their kitchen-gardens adjoined. Emilie was a beautiful blonde with a beautiful voice, and she and Wagner were wont to sing duets together, as he wrote them; and she was the soloist in a concert he gave. How much cause Minna may have had for jealousy, we can hardly know, but it seems certain that she felt she had a sufficiency, and that she made so much ado about ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... by four great roads, usually called Roman roads, though there are some grounds for believing that the Ancient Britons themselves were the pioneers in making these trackways, their conquerors only improving the roads as was their wont, and erecting military stations along the line. These roads were severally called "Watling Straete," which ran from the coast of Kent, through London, to the Welsh coast in county Cardigan; the "Fosse," leading from Cornwall to Lincoln; "Erminge Straete," running from St. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... time Dame Margaret had achieved an ascendancy over the distinguished cavalry officer little short of that she had exercised over honest Michael since the very day she consented to become Mistress McGann. A sound sleeper was she, however, and not until morning police call was she wont to leave her bed. Then, her brief toilet completed, she would descend to the kitchen and set the major's coffee on the fire, started by her dutiful spouse an hour earlier. Then she proceeded to lay the table, and put the rooms in order ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... exhaustion.] named Halli and Leikner, whom the Jarl had retained about his person,—fancying that two champions of such great strength and prowess would much acid to his consequence on returning home. In vain. the Jarl warned him that personages of that description were wont to give trouble and become unruly,—nothing would serve but he must needs carry them away with him; nay, if they would but come, they might ask as wages any boon which might be in his power to grant. The bargain accordingly was made; but, on arriving in ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... fate thus stranded was when, as a lad of seventeen, he left school. Living alone with his mother in a quaint little house in Holland Street, Kensington, eagerly ambitious to make his way in the world and to obtain, it had dawned on him that there was something strange, unhappy, and not as it was wont to be with that, to him, most beautiful and beloved of women. The mere suspicion was as a blasphemy against which his young loyalty revolted. For Dominic, with the inherent pieties of his Latin and Celtic blood, had none of that ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... down the stairs and said good-bye to my foreboding friends. As I paused out of the door, the "help," a comely middle-aged woman, could not conquer a grin that twisted her lips and separated them till the throat, out of involuntary sympathy, made the uncouth animal noises we are wont ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... in this. Their camp was just off the road and the emigrant women were wont to pause there and pass the time of day. Most of them were the lean and leathern-skinned mates of the frontiersmen, shapeless and haggard as if toil had drawn from their bodies all the softness of feminine ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... any Clayes, Marles, or other Mineral Earths, yellow or liquid matters, that usually give notice of the Ore? And if there be more than one, how and at what depths they are wont to lye respectively? Of what thickness and consistence they are; and in what Order ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... a specialist, he regarded everything as a branch of his specialty; and would, I knew, be as ready to discourse on society as on anything else. Although, therefore, I disliked a certain arrogance he was wont to display, I felt that, since he was to speak, this was the proper place to introduce him. I asked him accordingly to take up the thread of the debate; and without pause his aggressive voice began to ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... slavery and not 'shamed of it, 'cause I can't help how I'm borned. Dere am folks what wont ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... the good man. The saint performed miracles, and was famed for curing the disease called after his name. In youth he was a swine-herd, and afterwards became the patron saint of swine-herds. To do him honour, the Romanists were wont to keep a hog at the public expense, which was venerated, and designated St. Anthony's hog. A picture or an image of the saint, hung up in a house, kept away the plague from the dwelling. As the relics of this saint were capable of curing St. Anthony's fire, so were those of St. Lucia useful in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could not have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which the mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was, he ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... upon my brain. This feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... who also discussed it very much at his ease. Sir Francis Geraldine among his friends in London had been congratulated on his safe but miraculous escape. With a certain number of men he had been wont to discuss the chances of matrimony. Should he die, without having an heir, his title and property would go to his cousin, Captain Geraldine, who was a man some fifteen years younger than himself and already in possession of a large fortune. There ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... in a fine sonnet told his patron, Admiral Lord Charles Howard, that 'his good personage and noble deeds' made him the pattern to the present age of the old heroes of whom 'the antique poets' were 'wont so much to sing.' This compliment, which Shakespeare turns to splendid account in Sonnet cvi., recurs constantly in contemporary sonnets of adulation. {140a} Ben Jonson apostrophised the Earl of Desmond as 'my best-best lov'd.' Campion told Lord Walden, the Earl of Suffolk's undistinguished ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... upon the heath, and it was said that if the villagers had not been too strong for them they would have rescued the witch as she was led out to die. But the Trevlyns, when a thing has to be done, are wont to carry it through; and your grandfather, Cuthbert, was prepared against any such attempt, and the thing was done as had been decreed. The old woman went bravely to her death, but she turned as she passed Sir Richard and cursed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... dark red colour; but otherwise the character of the country was unaltered. The column rested at Abu Rokba. A few starving inhabitants who occupied the huts pointed out the grave of the Khalifa's father and the little straw house in which Abdullah was wont to pray during his visits. Lately, they said, he had retired from Aigaila to Shirkela, but even from this latter place he had ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... whiskers with a thoughtful forefinger. Not thus had Judith been wont to reply to him. Always before, if there had been denial, there were too, reasons adduced, shy looks from the corners of those dark eyes and tender inquiries as to the health ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... in great numbers in Suffolk, Norfolk, and several other counties, whence they were wont to be driven to the London market in flocks of several hundreds; the improvements in our modes of travelling now, however, enable them to be brought by railway. Their drivers used to manage them with great facility, by means of a bit of red rag tied to the end ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... certain minute points of law that he wished to go to Jerusalem. At which Joseph was astonished that his father should have asked him such a thing.... Yet why not? For awhile back he was discussing such very points with some young gossips. His tongue wagged as was its wont on all occasions, though his mind was away and he suddenly stopped speaking; and when the stirring of his father's feet on the floor awakened him, he saw his father sitting pen in hand watching him and no doubt asking himself of what great and wonderful ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... soul, and to end the time which is allotted to me), through almost all the regions to which our tongue extends I have gone a pilgrim, almost a beggar, displaying against my will the wound of fortune, which is wont often to be imputed unjustly to [the discredit of] him who is wounded. Truly I have been a bark without sail and without rudder, borne to divers ports and bays and shores by that dry wind which grievous poverty breathes ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the illustrious Baron Percy was wont to declare that military surgery had its origin in the treatment of wounds inflicted by darts and arrows; he used to quote Book XI of the Iliad in behalf of his belief, and to cite the cases of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... contemporaries. A biographer writing now must try to explain why he has been so lightly esteemed by that posterity to which they confidently committed his fame. Blind Tom, the negro mimic, having once heard him speak, was wont for many years to entertain curious audiences by reproducing those swelling tones in which he rolled out his defense of popular sovereignty, and it is not improbable that Douglas owes to the marvelous ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... not used to being called "Sir," and the word fell pleasantly on ears that shrank from the detested syllable "Bub," with which strangers were wont to greet him. ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... had espoused. He was closely followed by Theodore Beza and Francour, whom the Protestants of Paris had deputed, the former on behalf of the church, the latter of the nobility, to demand of the king the punishment of the authors of the massacre. The queen mother, as was her wont, gave a gracious audience, and promised that an investigation should be made. But Navarre, being present, seemed eager to display a neophyte's zeal, and retorted by blaming the Huguenots for going in arms ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... different tale to tell. September might also have yielded more birds than June, for September is a season when the migrants are with us for a time. Then the little voyageurs of the upper air are wont to pause after a {230} night of tiresome flight, and rest for the day in any grove that chances to possess ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... Grimbard his kinsman were arrived there, every one, from the highest to the lowest, prepared himself to complain of the fox; at which Reynard's heart quaked, but his countenance kept the old look, and he went as proudly as ever he was wont with his nephew through the high street, and came as gallantly into the court as if he had been the King's son, and as clear from trespass as the most innocent whosoever; and when he came before the chair of state in which the King sat, he said, "Heaven give your Majesty glory ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... lamentations, but only in silent tears and heart-breaking sighs. These alarming symptoms soon revealed the truth: reason had fled. For hours at a time poor Edmee rocked to and fro, with a bundle of rags clasped tightly to her breast, crooning over it the same lullaby she had been wont to sing ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... veiled scorn with which it was their wont to look at society and the indulgent patronage which lurked in them for ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... told in simple words, that my own mother lay under one of those tall silent tombstones in the graveyard, where old Hannah, our tried and trustworthy servant, was wont to go at times and pray. No one had whispered to me that my father's second wife was, by right, a stranger to the most sacred affections of my young soul, but I learned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... book also gives a fair view of the customs and habits of the boys of that age. In the character of Moros, a youth enters the stage, "counterfeiting a vain gesture and foolish countenance, singing the 'foote' or burden of many songs, as fools are wont." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... His infinite power and justice, and all are consistent with His infinite love. To believe otherwise would be to believe that He made the world, to amuse His idle hours with the follies and agonies of mankind, as Domitian was wont to do with the wrigglings and contortions of insect agonies. Then indeed we might despairingly unite in that horrible utterance of Heine: "Alas, God's Satire weighs heavily on me! The Great Author of the Universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, is bent on demonstrating, with crushing ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... England spirit had roused itself, mightily, in the little country town. People had forgotten their own needs, and the provision they were wont to make, at this time, each household for itself. Money and material, and quick, willing hands were found, and a good work went on; and kindling zeal, and noble sympathies, and hearty prayers wove themselves in, with toil of thread and needle, to homely fabrics, and embalmed, with every ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... wont to take great delight in shooting at the bear with blunt arrows, and when it growled and snarled, then they would calm it again by throwing over bits of bread steeped in honey or syrup. So Sidonia, waiting ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... Hawthorne, either in words or music, must have for its basic theme something that has to do with the influence of sin upon the conscience—something more than the Puritan conscience, but something which is permeated by it. In this relation he is wont to use what Hazlitt calls the "moral power of imagination." Hawthorne would try to spiritualize a guilty conscience. He would sing of the relentlessness of guilt, the inheritance of guilt, the shadow of guilt darkening innocent posterity. All of its sins and morbid ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... to tap the underground wires his official position made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger's experience had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... legend with a skillful brush, but his daring simplifications were more akin to virtuosity than to that deep reflection and freedom from non-essentials which were the glory of the early masters. Herein are discerned the elements of decadence, which are wont to assume precisely this aspect of a mastery over difficulties. For such ends genuine research and the true grasp ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... beggars, two or three centuries ago, used to proclaim their wont by a wooden dish with a moveable cover, which they clacked to shew that their vessel was empty. This appears in a passage quoted on another occasion by Dr. Gray, (see 1765, I,331,9 and the note in the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... rain, which penetrates through the garments and strikes chill to the bones. On such a night as this, Sinclair was wont to be seated in his comfortable study, before a blazing fire, enveloped in a luxurious dressing gown, as he perused some interesting volume, or prepared his Sabbath sermon; then, he had but to ring a silver bell, and a well-dressed servant ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... that name at last When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... April, a large party of savages under a chief named Black Wolf, made a raid along Beargrass. Col. William Christian, a very gallant and honorable man, was in command of the neighboring militia. At once, as was his wont, he raised a band of twenty men, and followed the plunderers across the Ohio. Riding well in advance of his followers, with but three men in company with him, he overtook the three rearmost Indians, among whom was Black ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... somewhat high, thin voice of the old Marquis standing by the door, "the court-martial brands you as a traitor. Captain Yeovil and those who were with me last night think you are a thief and worse. But, by St. Louis," continued the old noble, fingering his cross, as was his wont in moments in which he was deeply moved, "I know that you are ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... him face to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the labouring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a sense of chill discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to think that I can read Homer, and, assuredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I; but can I for a moment dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his word is to me as to him who walked by the Hellenic shore when Hellas lived? I know that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... fiery exhalations of that enormous red beard, which always seemed to be kept in a state of moist, unkempt luxuriance by liquor; everybody knew the absurd dignity of manner and attempted precision of statement with which he was wont to disguise his frequent excesses. Very few, however, knew, or cared to know, the pathetic weariness and chilling horror that sometimes looked out of those ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... abroad in Scotland, that the new year, 1436, should see the death of a king; and this same carnival night, James, while playing at chess with a young friend, whom he was wont to call the king of love, laughingly observed that "it must be you or I, since there are but two kings in Scotland—therefore, look well ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... there be any truth in what hath been affirmed to me by several eye-witnesses, as well physicians as others, concerning the weapon-salve, and powder of sympathy, we may well conclude, that nature may perform divers cures, for which the help of chirurgery is wont to be implored, with much less pain to the patient, than the chirurgeon is wont ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... eyes tried not to twinkle as he removed the unusual offering, and passed on more quickly than was his wont. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... the doctors and masters, when this catastrophe occurred. "A wretched sight," said the Proctor of the German nation, "a wretched sight, to witness the sale of that ancient manor, whither the Muses were wont to wander for retirement and pleasure. Whither shall the youthful student now betake himself, what relief will he find for his eyes, wearied with intense reading, now that the pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two centuries ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Which, being translated, is this—The same spirit of daring enterprise, which is a condition of success in secular matters, is no less potent a factor in the success of Christian men in their enterprises for Jesus Christ. As long as we keep Him down, within the limits of use and wont, and are horribly afraid of anything that our great-grandfathers did not use to do, there will be very few fish in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... who had witnessed his discomfiture and his parting push to the chair, that Mr. Churchill would be off early in the morning—such was his wont when he was disturbed in vanity: but ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... reminds me of my friend Professor Dingo, to whom reference has been made in an earlier chapter. He had a strong admiration for the virile and masterful character of Henry VIII., and was wont to conceal the blots on his hero's career by this pathetic paraphrase—"The later years of this excellent monarch's reign were clouded by much ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Pete bore himself according to his wont, thinking to silence the evil tongues of the little world about him, and keep sweet and alive the dear name which they were waiting to befoul and destroy. By Tuesday morning the strain had become unbearable. On pretences of business, of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... had made an end of their dance, Zobeide arose, and, taking Amine by the hand, said, Pray, sister, rise up, for the company will not take it ill if we use our freedom; and their presence need not hinder our performance of what we were wont to do. Amine, by understanding her sister's meaning, rose up from her seat, carried away the dishes, the table, the flasks, and cups, together with the instruments which the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... know in the least what "refreshment" meant, she stared on, without a word. And Miss Parrott, pulling with more vigor than was her wont, a long red worsted cord that hung down by the piano, a stately butler made his appearance quicker than usual, took his directions from his mistress, and after regarding the small figure perched on one of the ancestral Parrott chairs ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... near and far[FN53] with him in words and profess love to him and win him to confess and after tell us the facts of his case." And she answered, "O my papa, I know how I will make proof of him." Then she went away and after supper her husband came in to her, according to his wont, whereupon Princess Dunya rose to him and took him under the armpit and wheedled him with winsomest wheedling (and all-sufficient[FN54] are woman's wiles whenas she would aught of men); and she ceased not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... the humane Body, which will scarcely be clearly & satisfactorily made out by them that confine themselves to deduce things from Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, and the other Notions peculiar to the Chymists, without taking much more Notice than they are wont to do, of the Motions and Figures, of the small Parts of Matter, and the other more Catholick and Fruitful affections of Bodies. Wherefore it will not perhaps be now unseasonable to let our Carneades warne Men, not to subscribe to the grand Doctrine of the Chymists touching their three Hypostatical ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... Aunt Rachel remained more sober than was her wont. I knew the cause, but did not attempt to remove from her mind any impression my words had made. One day, about a week after, I said ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... dog, now, the properest chirrup Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup— We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin 240 His sire was wont to do forest-work in; Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs" And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk-hose; What signified hats if they had no rims on, Each slouching before and behind like ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... little street car stood, as was its wont, at the terminus of the track, near the front of the wide grounds of the old mansion house. This was far out upon the edge of the little city, and few were the patrons that might be expected; but it was held but mere courtesy to offer the services of the street-car line to this family, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... at midnight, in old days, while hooded figures knelt and prayed around, and told their rosaries of beads. Thence, he took her above ground again, and showed her, high up in the old walls, small galleries, where the nuns had been wont to glide along—dimly seen in their dark dresses so far off—or to pause like gloomy shadows, listening to the prayers. He showed her too, how the warriors, whose figures rested on the tombs, had worn those rotting scraps of armour up above—how this had been a helmet, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... all,' said I, 'lead is the very identical thing. If a man don't like the statue and its price, and it's like as not he wont, he will like the lead. There is no duty on statuary, but there is more than thirty per cent. on lead. The duty alone is a fortune of not less than thirty thousand pounds, after ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... incantations, in the kingdom. It was never heard at that time that thieves or cheats or royal favourites ever behaved wrongfully towards the king or towards one another amongst themselves. Kings conquered on the six occasions (of war, treaty, &c) were wont to wait upon him in order to do good unto the monarch and worship him ever, while the traders of different classes came to pay him the taxes leviable on their respective occupations. And accordingly during the reign of Yudhishthira ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... cock, he crows as loudly as his father was wont to do," muttered the miller, casting an angry glance at the young gentlemen; "I shall have my revenge ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... ye in the wont of drawing up wi' a' the gangrel bodies that ye find cowering in a sand-bunker ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley



Words linked to "Wont" :   habit, wont to, custom, tradition



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