"Aimlessly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and firing, until perhaps between them a dozen deer had been killed. Then the Indian gave the signal to stop firing; but they continued to watch them for several minutes more while panic-stricken and bewildered they aimlessly ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... prevent our arriving very soon to relieve Mlle. de Berensac's depression, for the middle of the next day found us at Avranches, and we spent the afternoon wandering about somewhat aimlessly and staring across the bay at the mass of Mont St. Michel. Directly beneath us as we stood on the hill, and lying in a straight line with the Mount, there was a large square white house, on the very edge of the stretching sand. We were told that ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... one of the old barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble, proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the Maryland Yellow-Throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and gives me a good view. Lead-colored head and neck, becoming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... this sort. The words, for no reason in themselves, fell oddly, and were followed by a silence which was disturbing and made for sudden self-consciousness wholly to be condemned, and to be banished, if possible, directly. Jane, who did not fidget aimlessly with things, began diligently to pluck a long white feather out of her fan, and said in a voice that was deliberately commonplace, 'We ought to go back now, oughtn't we? Let me see who your next partner is, Peter, that I may send you back ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... with a "Well, then!" and the air of one who has said all there is to be said on a subject, and again crossed the room toward the door. Her mother drifted aimlessly in that direction also, as though swept ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... countless icebergs, borne southward by the Arctic current that hugs the Labrador coast, drift aimlessly over its troubled surface, and even at midsummer it is a passage to be dreaded. White, being familiar with its many dangers, had good cause for anxiety, as he saw one of them about to enfold his little craft. He consulted the compass, took his bearings with ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... seemed sadder than any scene of disarray. It symbolized the senseless paralysis of a whole nation's activities. Here were a houseful of women and children, yesterday engaged in a useful task and now aimlessly astray over the earth. And in hundreds of such houses, in dozens, in hundreds of open towns, the hand of time had been stopped, the heart of life had ceased to beat, all the currents of hope and happiness and industry been choked—not that some great military end might be gained, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... looked like a man who might appreciate good literature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if I mention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder. Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to do should be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do I quarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than the minority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine and inalienable right to lay down the law? The truth with me was that I had nothing better to do. I confess it without ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... Every man was shouting at his neighbor to the lung-straining limit of his ability. Three exhorters, their eyes ablaze with fanaticism, began to thunder forth dire warnings of the wrath to come—and gained a hearing. Men rushed to and fro aimlessly. The gentleman with the side-whiskers, who looked like the caricatures of the trusts, having at last succeeded in making his imperial wishes known, clambered into a taxicab, and sat back, apparently ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... is done, some of them emancipate themselves, think they will have a look at the country before retiring for good and all. It is these whom we sometimes meet wandering aimlessly and dragging their bag behind them. Sooner or later, however, the vagrants return home; and the month of August is not over before a straw rustled in any burrow will bring the mother up, with her ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... has really no very clear idea of what happened to him after he missed the Cape. He seems to have wandered aimlessly up wind till he hit an island; he walked all round this; says he couldn't see a yard at this time; fell often into the tide crack; finally stopped under the lee of some rocks; here got his hand frostbitten owing to difficulty ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... as under the coercion of so much confidence, had stood in place longer than for any previous moment, and the spell continued for a minute after Mitchy had paused. Then nervously and abruptly he turned away, his friend watching him rather aimlessly wander. "Our host has spoken of you to me in high terms," he said as he came back. "You'd have no fault ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... he packed up his violin and left. He did not go back to the cafe, even at the appointed hour. Instead, he wandered aimlessly about. All day he tramped the streets. He listened to street-fakirs, peered into shop-windows, threw himself upon the grass of the public squares and stared up at the blue sky. He had very little personal consciousness; he seemed to have lost track of himself. He had an absurd feeling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... faint—at another weighed down by despair and fear, with all their mental terrors. Has he met death by accident, or may he be injured and unable to move, and be suffering the horrors of starvation and fever? Has he wandered aimlessly hither and thither until bereft of reason? As I contemplate all these possibilities, it is a relief to think that he may have lost his life at the hand of ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... further, aimlessly penetrating to the very heart of the jungle of departments. He had glimpses of departments that he had not seen for weeks. At length he came to the verdant and delicious Flower Department (hot-house branch), and by chance he caught a word which brought ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... the plain cause of it was the abuse of the day before. In the summer time baseball games were played in Milton on Sunday. In the fall and winter very many people spent their evenings in card-playing or aimlessly strolling up and down the main street. These facts came to Philip's knowledge gradually, and he was not long in making up his mind that Christ would not keep silent before the facts. So he carefully prepared a plain ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... is of legitimate force, because if the religious instincts of the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly, and therefore the fact of man being, as it is said, 'a religious animal'—i.e. presenting a class of feelings of a peculiar nature directed to particular ends, and most akin to, if not identical with, true instinct—is so far, in my opinion, a legitimate ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... mesquite in old Chihuahua, Aimlessly one day I strode, Till I chanced upon a figure Standing silent in the road. Such an odd, ungainly figure! I stopped, then staggered back, Thinking it an ancient spirit That had wandered from ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... strokes to give the necessary headway to the boat; and Knott was again ordered to stand by to haul him in. The great wave ingulfed and swept over him, and again left him aimlessly battling with the killing billows. The bowman was in position, and leaned over so far to reach the sufferer, that the officer ordered the next two men to seize him by the legs, to prevent him ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out, one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was in Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a north-bound ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... and emperors stood aghast. The sun of Austerlitz was the rising sun of his glory and power, but it went down, veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, and stunned by the dreadful shock that annihilated the Grand Army and the Old Guard, "wandered aimlessly about on the lost field," in the gloom that palled a fallen empire, as Hugo describes him, "the somnambulist of a vast, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... in thorough confusion. Several waiting maids rushed into the room, stared at their mistress and the little prince, and, seeing what had happened, stood silently wringing their hands in fright, or fled aimlessly through the halls. One of the king's councilors had come in, stopping, bewildered, at the scene ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle of vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with strange, half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying to realize the Thing which was breaking the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I did positively nothing. For hours together I would sit and look through the windows at the sky, the birds, the trees and read my letters over and over again, and then for hours together I would sleep. Sometimes I would go out and wander aimlessly ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Miss Bessie! I can see that your friend is really suffering for a strawberry ice-cream soda. And you mustn't talk as if I would be taking any trouble. I'm just riding around the country aimlessly, for want of something better to do. I'm not going anywhere in particular, and it doesn't matter when I get there or if I never get there at all. I'm just a useless man, too old to work any longer. Surely you won't refuse to let me make myself useful to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... geographers have now given the name of the fifth continent, from the dawn of creation lay sleeping between the seas known as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. A few thousand savages, said to be the lowest type of the human family, roamed aimlessly over its extensive wilds. Out of the ordinary route of circumnavigating explorers, few European ships had reached its coast, when the Dutch attempted to form establishments on its southern and western sides, giving it the name of New Holland. At the end ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... love, pure and inviolate! Tower of ivory! red rose of fire! Thou hast come down our darkness to illume: For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate, Wearied with waiting for the World's Desire, Aimlessly wandered in the House of gloom, Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine, And the white glory ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... alongside, he saw it was a single carriage, unlighted and solitary, rolling aimlessly on towards the level ground through ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... cannot go back to my church. I do not wish to go. I realize, that I am wholly unfitted for its duties. I feel, that I have made life a failure! In fact, Fillmore, you see before you in your friend George Gaylord, a man who is aimlessly drifting on the sea of life, like a ship without a rudder. A man not yet thirty, without a home, without ambition, hope or purpose! Possibly, I may be in the clutches of some approaching attack of nervous prostration, I hope not, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... in pursuit of her new fancy for philanthropy and the sick poor, had wandered somewhat aimlessly into other wards beside those set apart for women and children—at first the object of her search. She strayed—I use the word "strayed" designedly, for she certainly did not do it of set purpose—with one of the nurses into accident wards, into the men's wards, where ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Barry felt that without at least the beckoning of a light to denote the wakefulness of the cook, he could not in propriety go there, even for an inquiry regarding the condition of the woman whom he felt that some day he would marry. Aimlessly he wandered about, staring in the moonlight at the piled-up remains of his mill, then at last he seated himself on a stack of lumber, to rest a moment before the return journey to Ba'tiste's cabin. But suddenly he tensed. A low whistle had come from the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... for I could not stand it any longer. I actually believe that if I had kept silent another hour the dreadful consciousness of guilt would have swelled within me to such a bulk as to have burst me into fragments, which would now be travelling around aimlessly in space, like the lost Pleiad, or like the dismembered and stray tail of a comet. So I called my next neighbor, Rush, out behind his barn, and, under oath of secrecy, revealed the good news to him, and then I did likewise by neighbor ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... aimlessly about the room, Sylvia began to feel unaccountably nervous and oppressed. She longed to be away from this still, empty house, and yet it seemed absurd to leave just as the Wachners would be ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to me," announced Dick thoughtfully, "that there is no sense in kicking a ball around the field aimlessly. There isn't much use in rushes or mass plays, either, until we know what we are doing and can do it according to the rules. So, fellows, what do you say to seeing who knows the rules best? Let's have a ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... name—did not disappoint my judgment for he proved one of the most aggressive men I ever hired. The Brother Paul hocuspocus, which he quickly dropped, had merely caught and canalized an abounding energy that would otherwise have flowed aimlessly in a stagnant world. In Consolidated Pemmican he found his true faith; his zeal for our products proved as great if not greater than his former hysteria for the salvation of mankind. It was no fault of his that the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... poured his golden light down upon the emerald turf, the leafy trees, the brilliant flowerbeds and the white walls of the villa. Under the green arch of the trees, where luminous insects, white and flame-colored butterflies, aimlessly chased one another, Marsa half slumbered in a sort of voluptuous oblivion, a happy calm, in that species of nirvana which the open air of summer brings. She felt herself far away from the entire world in that corner of verdure, and abandoned herself ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... be forced. Sleep will not come again. She can only think, and thoughts are madness. She gets up and moves to her desk. Aimlessly at first, as a respite, she begins to write. Her thoughts take words as she writes, and a great determination, an impulse of the moment, comes to her. She takes up fresh paper and writes sheet after sheet, swiftly. Passion sways the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... high on the painted front. Inscribed within, in iridescent letters, was: "The Blue Goose. Pierre La Martine." Beneath the spring of the rainbow, for the benefit of those who could not read, was a huge blue goose floating aimlessly in a sheet of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... day the girls wandered about the new golf course knocking the balls aimlessly; it was all they could do. Even Cecil Tharp, who had received from Bee the qualified affirmative natural under the circumstances, was infected. The off foreleg of her grey mare was being treated by a process he had recently discovered, and in the stables he confided to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their course fought against her. Silver, having started the machinery, was already handling the steering gear, and bent only upon saving his own miserable self, had put the car in motion. He could only drive in a slip-slop amateur way and aimlessly zigzagged down the sloping bank which fell away to the high road. As the motor began to gather speed Miss Greeby ran for her life and liberty, ranging at length breathlessly alongside. The ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... But how is this? Only two days ago the Petrograd campagna was full of leaderless bands, wandering aimlessly; without food, without artillery, without a plan. What had fused that disorganised mass of undisciplined Red Guards, and soldiers without officers, into an army obedient to its own elected high command, tempered to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... have been astonished at another time; for Harriet to be paying compliments was indeed something novel. There was a flush on the latter's usually sallow face; she did not sit down, and kept moving aimlessly about. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... on the treasure at the close of the first day. I ought not to be thus discouraged, and yet I am. Still there is one more thing to do. If I can but watch Long Robin, surely I shall learn somewhat from him. I vow that that is better far than prowling aimlessly about the dell. Let me spend my time and strength in building for myself some nook high up in one of yon trees, from which vantage ground I may spy upon his doings. If I can but get me up high enough, I can watch him from spot to spot. Sure ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... no fear added to my loneliness, the loneliness itself was bad enough. Having none to provide for except myself, I had no difficulty in finding food. For the first few weeks, I think, I did nothing but wander aimlessly about and sleep, still using my winter den for that purpose. As the summer came on, however, I began to rove, roaming usually along the streams, and sleeping there in the cool herbage by the water's edge during the ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... finest degree of intellect, Stoner was far from being a fool, and it had not taken him very long to explain to himself why Cotherstone had scribbled the name of that far-off south-country town all over that sheet of paper, aimlessly, apparently without reason, amidst his figurings. It was uppermost in his thoughts at the time—and as he sat there, pen in hand, he had written it down, half-unconsciously, over and over again.... ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... the first word flung at his head. He stood on the high gable-steps and set down his load of bricks. That "Slacker!" played about in his head like the smarting pain of a lash. He stood looking aimlessly into space, indifferent to all that moved and lived around him. A shudder ran through his body. The wall tottered ... and he was so high up, all alone, seen by nobody: such a small creature in that blue sky, in that endless space. ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... gray. At times an arrow of sunlight breaks through the shields of clouds, and kisses the brown earth with a quivering spot of light. Across the sloping, unkept lawn, about midway between the house and the whitewashed gate leading from the yard, a rabbit hops, aimlessly, his back humped up, and his white tail showing plainly amid his sombre surroundings. I can see the muscles about his nostrils twitching, as he stops now and again to nibble at a withered tuft of ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... began to walk aimlessly up and down the room, in that restless manner which was well suited to emphasise ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... dejected and cast down. Even if I had a shadow of a chance it was gone by this. I felt like one who was condemned to execute himself. After a little I moved towards the supper-table, and sitting down there stared aimlessly before me. My eyes fell on the little heap of plucked rose leaves that had been left on the table, and I began, at first half unconsciously, to try and read the meaning of the signal, for such it was I was sure. In the light of her last words, the sting ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... there was who, with others, had aimlessly hastened up the line, and who seemed now verging on hysterics—the major's wife. It was Mrs. Graham who rebukefully sent her own braw young brood scurrying homeward through the gathering dusk, and then possessed herself of Mrs. Plume. "The shock has unnerved you," she charitably, soothingly ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... that Rufus Blight was not only neglectful of our claims, but had been so with purpose, and as I wandered aimlessly through the fields in the wake of James, and as in the evening I sat again with him on the barn-bridge, looking over the darkening valley, there held one enduring thought in the chaos of my brain. Looking back now, I see in my childish enmity toward Rufus Blight the impulse that ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... paused. There were so many enemies, he knew not which to pursue first. But straight ahead, in the very middle of the open, and far from any shelter, he saw a huddled group of children and nurses fleeing impotently and aimlessly. Shrill cries came from the cluster, which danced with colors, scarlet and yellow and blue and vivid pink. To the mad buffalo, these were the most conspicuous and the loudest of his foes, and therefore the most dangerous. With a bellow he flung ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself in a room that smiled "Auld lang syne" ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... well. It had been his second home before.... He put the bitter thoughts determinedly behind him. There was work ahead. The stooped, hollow-cheeked creature shambled aimlessly up to the entrance. It ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... and occasional smears of blood on the leaves of the shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the track, however, on the stony ground beyond the stream where I had seen the Beast Man drinking, and went wandering aimlessly westward shouting Moreau's name. Then M'ling had come to him carrying a light hatchet. M'ling had seen nothing of the puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. They went on shouting together. Two Beast Men came crouching and ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... wearied of seeking motives that would place his conduct in a more favourable light. Whatever he might have withheld from her, he was nevertheless the best and noblest of men, and as she limped aimlessly on, the conviction strengthened that the mere sight of him would dispel the mists which, on this sunny spring day, seemed to veil everything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the interview which he had determined to have with his confederate can easily be understood by anyone who has ever tried to sever his relations with an enamoured woman. In fact the outlaw dreaded it so much that he decided to postpone it as long as he could. And so, after sauntering aimlessly about the room, and coming, unexpectedly, across a woman of his acquaintance, he began to converse with her, supposing, all the time, that Nina Micheltorena was too occupied with the worshippers ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... same time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude. A few jetty hairs hung sparsely from his upper lip, he had a salient nose, a thin, long jaw, and a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye, small and deep-set, twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly affable. The few European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted into the neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity of their faces their impression that the general must ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was impatient to know where they were to go: 'Where are we going?... Shall you take us to the Grand Palais? (The Automobile and Aviation Exhibition).... Wouldn't you be a brick!...' When they arrived, he was not one of those many curious people who circulate aimlessly around the stands with their hands in their pockets, without reaping anything but fatigue, like a cyclist on a circular track. His plans were all made in advance, and he knew where the stand was which he meant to visit. He went directly there, where his ardor and his free and easy behavior ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... undersized, insignificant-looking chap toddling aimlessly along the street a few blocks away from the station. We grappled with him and hustled him back to the crowd. He slept with us on the floor, and no one paid any further attention to him, except to remark that he talked to himself a good bit. He and I awoke earliest next morning. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... dead; and Marise felt herself blown upon by an icy breath that froze her numb. The doctor had come and gone, queerly, and bustlingly alive and full of talk and explanations; Agnes had come back and, silently weeping, had walked endlessly and aimlessly around the house, with a broom in her idle hand; one after another of the neighbors had come and gone, queerly alive as usual, they too, for all their hushed and awkward manners; Neale had come, seeming to feel that cold breath as little as ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and strength came back, I took to running along the edge of the lagoon like one demented, staring down into those placid waters and searching the white sands with eyes of dreadful expectancy, yet nowhere could I discover sign or trace of my companion. None the less I continued to run aimlessly back and forth, heedless of my going, slipping and stumbling and often falling, but never staying my search until the sweat poured from me. And ever as I ran I kept repeating these words to myself over and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... she had ever had before, and so frightful in their import, that they changed all her nature. She became melancholy, self-absorbed, and preoccupied. Silent and distrait, she wandered about the Earl's room aimlessly, and did not seem able to give to him that close and undivided attention which he needed. Hilda found it necessary to reproach her several times in her usual affectionate way; and Zillah tried, after each reproach, to rouse herself from her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... opened the window and stepped out into the air. His vitality was at as low an ebb as if from physical overwork and fasting. He made no attempt to think, or to comment on the events just past. For the moment they lost their interest, and he strolled aimlessly about the park, his exhausted forces slowly recuperating. At the end of an hour he returned to the house and took a cold shower-bath and ate his breakfast. Then he felt more like himself. He had a strong desire to return ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... staring audience, they gazed eagerly about, seeking an admiration from which they might draw profit when their infantile task was over. Presently they retired, running skittishly, taking small leaps into the air, and aimlessly blowing kisses to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... his head as he slipped his ophthalmoscope into his pocket, and Rey, the trainer, who had been holding the bear's head still while the oculist made the examination, opened the door of the cage for him. The bear—a medium-sized black animal—wandered aimlessly about, stumbling over the water pan and knocking its head against the bars, its eyes, which were evidently sightless, shining like two fiery opals as they reflected the ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... on aimlessly under the deep June shadows of Maplewood Avenue his mother's last words formed an ironical accompaniment to his thoughts. "Now that things are comfortably settled—" he knew so well what that elastic epithet ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... letter for her when she stopped at the post-office to inquire for the mail. The girls on whom she called afterward were not at home, so she rode aimlessly around the Valley until nearly lunch-time, wishing for once that it were a school-day. It was the longest Saturday morning she had ever known. She could not practise her music lesson for fear of making her mother's ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... lived, doing his own work except for the occasional aid of a woman whom he called Mrs. Swastika. If he had had any particular work or hobby which necessitated solitude Owen could have understood it; but Herrick seemed to spend his days as idly, as aimlessly, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the world over of vast instruments like national armies being played against each other as idly and aimlessly as the checker-men on the cracker-barrels of corner groceries. And this invention, the kinetoscope, which affects or will affect as many people as the guns of Europe, is not yet understood in its powers, particularly ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... from a sudden jar to find the driver sound asleep, the horses wandering aimlessly along, a precipice of many hundred feet below us on one side. The road takes sharp turns every hundred yards, rendering it impossible to see far ahead, and traffic even at night is not uncommon. Drivers shout when nearing a corner, particularly on coming downhill, which they do at ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... single-footed over the uneven road. Unconcerned, perhaps unconscious that he bestrode a horse, his head was thrown back and his gaze penetrated the lace-work of branches to a sky exquisite blue where a few white, puffy clouds were aimlessly suspended. And, like these clouds, his thoughts hovered between unrealized hopes and the realistic mountains he was leaving; thoughts interwoven with ambitions which had obsessed his waking hours and glorified his dreams—dreams, desires, ambitions, always before ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... not have put it into words. He felt as if his old happiest self were rising once more from the tomb in which his resentment had buried it. It was not the light-hearted self which had once been, but it was the old loving, unselfish Tom for all that. He wandered on aimlessly at first, but afterwards with definite intentions. He would go to Brooks's cottage. He could bear to do so now. He would see how the neglected garden had done without him, and perhaps ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... swarmed down into the gulch; the fire on either side of them was dying out along the gulch's edge; they cursed its heat when it offended them, took advantage of its light at all times, and more like ants than ever appeared to be running back and forth foolishly and aimlessly. But, apparently, Bettins got his stakes and his friends' back and the men with whom he had returned hastily staked out their own claims, all feverishly and by crude guesswork. There was perhaps not a man among them who knew the first ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the queer-looking men wandered aimlessly, moaning and wailing. They were lost. Suddenly the blacks appeared. Two of the strangers, glad of the company of any sort of human beings, smiled and gesticulated pleasantly, making it plain that they were hungry, tired, and frightened, and, longing to get back to the coast, would bestow upon their ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... a chair, staring aimlessly at the outspread papers. How was he to work, while on the other side of the door she sat with that volume in her hand? The door did not shut her out—he saw her distinctly, felt her close to him in a contact as painful as the pressure ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... at Southsea, with Rupert Gunning's sister, Maudie Spicer, where she again encountered Captain Carteret, and entered aimlessly upon a semi-platonic and wholly unprofitable flirtation with him. During this epoch she wore out the remnant of her summer clothes and laid in substitutes; rather encouraged than otherwise by the fact that she ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Scuffling about aimlessly, the professor suddenly dropped wearily into a big oaken chair, and as Mary turned toward him she too caught sight of the shadows now flickering through the leaded glass, with sinister effect and creepy significance. It might be the shaded glow ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... in this wood, lights that flamed out like sunsets and died, lights that came like lightning in the night and were gone. This wood was never quite dark, it was so full of these lights that flickered aimlessly. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... in the distance, and it caused her to start so violently that she dropped one of her few treasured sixpences, which went rolling about aimlessly ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... been taken to baffle pursuers. Apparently the blacks had just wandered off aimlessly in obedience to a whim of the moment. There was nothing but conjecture to support the opinion that the decampment had anything to do with the disappearance of Soosie. Probably the blacks were aware, in advance of ourselves, that she had stolen away. If so, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... is that one word, "patiently!" All too eager before, that was the lamb's fault, "and grievously hath [he] answered it." He has turned over a new leaf, and wandering aimlessly about, now nibbling a cowslip, now rolling in the young grass to still the remorse gnawing at his heart, we can imagine him resolving to be a better lamb in the future,—to grow ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... scar with which the earth had closed the wound in her breast—and a stately shaft of white marble were all that remained to the world of "Rosa, wife of Frederic Chilton." But, while the mould was being heaped upon the coffin, he raised his eyes, and let them rove aimlessly over the crowd, neither avoiding nor courting observation—the cursory regard of a man who had no strong interest in any person or group there. They changed singularly in resting upon the family from Ridgeley. A stare of stupefaction gave place to living fires of angry ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridge-poles. These were merely stout sticks an inch or so in diameter. On them rested the brush and branches. These seemed to have been tossed on almost aimlessly. There was no attempt at thatching. And I must confess that the roof leaked miserably in ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them, called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice other women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... she took her huge market-basket on her arm, the basket which was so familiar by this time as a part of 'Crazy Bet's' outfit, and with it swinging at her side, humming a tuneless song, she passed down the street, smiling aimlessly in return for mocking glances—and all the while in her hand she held the key to ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... beginning to my venture! What should I do now? I had not once given a thought to Belloc's being away, and without him I was completely lost. After wandering about aimlessly for some time I remembered Raoul Beauchamp, and decided to seek news of him at La Boule d'Or. Without knowing it, I had strayed into the very street where the curious shopkeeper lived, and there he ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... work on board had been thorough, he almost regretted it, for it was instantly seen from the shore and greeted by a babel of yells caught up in different parts of the town and fort. As at a signal the torches no longer flickered hither and thither aimlessly, but all took the same direction towards the jetty. The ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... spoiled our whole day," said Helen in a grumbling tone, as they all sauntered somewhat aimlessly across ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... Sally," said Don, who had sauntered aimlessly in with Jem, and as he stared round the neat little kitchen with the pleasant meal all ready, he felt as if he should like to stay to ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... hundred yards out at sea lies a long curved black line, beautiful, severe, and still, amid those white wild leaping hills. A murmur from the crowd, which swells into a roar, as they surge aimlessly up and down. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of windows and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at hand; and fell, a fluttering, broken thing, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... impressed, as I seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people, from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the community, as members of which they passed monotonous lives, but to stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like wildfire, and they ran to the scene with haste, pulling on their coats, wiping food from their mouths, scratching their heads en route, one trouser-leg up and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... aimlessly for several minutes and by chance stopped at the table. She started to take up the quill and ink-well to carry them back to her parlor, which was in Darius (Darius was the name of the tower that rose from the castle battlements immediately above Castleman's ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... like the announcement of a holiday, and leaving the groom making the usual long stretches with his broom, Dexter went on aimlessly to the river-side, where, for the first time for many months, he ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Greenland. He was soon battling with ice upon the southern end of "Desolation," whence he crossed to the snowy shores of Labrador, sailing into the great straits that bear his name to-day. For three months they sailed aimlessly about that "labyrinth without end" as it was called by Abacuk Prickett who wrote the account of this fourth and last voyage of Henry Hudson. But they could find no opening to the west, no ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... had no heart for pleasure. He mingled with the crowd without seemingly seeing it, and jostled against groups of people chatting at the corners, without hearing the imprecations occasioned by his awkwardness. Where was he going? He had no idea. He walked aimlessly, more disconsolate and desperate than the gambler who had staked his last hope with his ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... beautiful and pitiless in its far fathomless spaces. To the southwest a triple fold of deeper purple on the horizon line—mere hint of commanding headlands thitherward. Across the face of the prairie streams wandering through shallow clefts, aimlessly, somewhere toward the southeast; their course secured by gentle swells breaking into sheer low bluffs on the side next to the water, or by groups of cottonwood trees and wild plum bushes along their right of way. And farther off ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... no answer. She felt herself flushing, and could not trust her voice to be casual. He continued for a moment to thumb over the music aimlessly, as though waiting for her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... same lack of sense and reason that marks the loafer's gravitation toward a lighted groggery. Moreover, in the beetle phase, it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... aimlessly, and then walked back, examining the blank faces of the people. He spied through the lowered window of a carriage Brome Porter and Carson, going in the direction of the Northwestern station. The carriage skirted the curb near him, but the occupants were looking the other way. He recalled ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... no longer revolving, but wavering aimlessly in the midst of the basin. Ridiculous! This must be seen to! In the down of dark hairs that connected her eyebrows there was a marked deepening of that vertical cleft which, visible at all times, warned you that here was a young woman not to be trifled with. Her brain despatched to ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... smoke rising from its stump poured through the gratings on to the gun-deck, where the thermometer now stood at 120 deg.. At about the same time the tiller-chains were shot away from their exposed position over the after-deck. Losing thus the power of directing her movements, the Tennessee headed aimlessly down the bay, followed always by the unrelenting Chickasaw, under the pounding of whose heavy guns the after-end of the shield was now seen, by those within, to be perceptibly vibrating. The Manhattan and Winnebago were also at work, and the Hartford, Ossipee, and other vessels were seeking ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... motionless about a mile away, with a film of smoke issuing from her funnels and "feathers" of steam trembling at the top of her waste pipes, a whole flotilla of boats pulling slowly and apparently aimlessly hither and thither, and a few masses of ice of varying dimensions, from small fragments of a square foot in area to a great berg fully sixty feet high, thinly dotting the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... power of attention, of keeping an object or a subject steadily in view until it is absorbed or mastered, is held by some to be the most distinctive element in genius. Most people have not this habit of concentration of the mind, but allow it to wander aimlessly on, flitting from subject to subject, without mastering any; but then, most people are not geniuses. The habit to be cultivated is that of thinking persistently of only one thing at a time, sternly preventing ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the horse to obey him, and the efforts of Cap to reach his master were defeated by the wrenching at the bit. It looked as if the horse had been seized with the frenzy that possessed every one, and was fighting and struggling aimlessly ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... him with an eerie oppressiveness. He sat up and lit a lamp. The light fell on the bare logs of his hut; he had never known before how bare they were. He got up and shuffled about; took a lid off the stove and put it back on again; moved aimlessly about the room, and at last sat down on ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... almost unbearable to man and beast. Had it not been for the condition of the herd, all might yet have gone well; but over three days had now elapsed without water for the cattle, and they became feverish and ungovernable. The lead cattle turned back several times, wandering aimlessly in any direction, and it was with considerable difficulty that the herd could be held on the trail. The rear overtook the lead, and the cattle gradually lost all semblance of a trail herd. Our horses were fresh, however, and after about ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... automobile drew up noiselessly at the corner of Market Street, a broad enough thoroughfare, but broken and battered in appearance, the only visible forms were those of three or four patrolmen, who were sauntering aimlessly along the sidewalk. But there were eyes watching through unknown chinks in shutters, or peering through soiled curtains behind dirt-stained windows, and the quiet concentration of the police in one special quarter evidently ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... he ran some risk, not of becoming depraved, but of wasting valuable years in a spendthrift life among unworthy companions. It certainly was not alone the increasing dissatisfaction of his father which at that time destroyed his peace of mind and tossed him about aimlessly, but quite as much that inner discontent, which leads an unformed youth the more wildly astray the greater the secret demands are which his mind ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... longer in the house. Inspired by this restlessness, I attired myself for the adventure of the evening, not neglecting to place a pistol in my pocket, and, walking to the neighbouring Tube station, I booked to Charing Cross, and presently found myself rambling aimlessly along the crowded streets. Led on by what link of memory I know not, I presently drifted into New Oxford Street, and looked up with a start—to learn that I stood before the shop of a second-hand bookseller where once two years before I had ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... themselves with no special duties, wandered aimlessly about, getting into the way ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... anguish over my mother's death caused him to break loose from all ties. His grief goaded him so that he went about aimlessly. He roamed from state to state, haunted by her memory. He worked at all sorts of jobs. Once he even dug ditches for seventy-five cents a day. He had all sorts of adventures, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... was an excellent one, and through its aid he could discern the figures of people moving aimlessly hither and thither. He saw two men enter a canoe, formed from a hollowed log, and paddle to the other side of the stream, where they stepped out and advanced into a rocky wood. He thought one of these warriors carried a gun and the other a bow, but could not assure himself on ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... with, by introducing the appliances we have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... offered dreary food for thought, and the two old men were still conversing when a maid entered to lay the cloth for supper. Then Billy proceeded to the village and Mr. Lyddon, unnerved and restless, rambled aimlessly into the open air, addressed any man or woman who passed from the adjacent cottages, and querulously announced, to the astonishment of chance listeners, that his daughter's match was ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... busily with her ironing, waiting for him to begin. But Eddie seemed to experience a certain embarrassment in coming to the subject. While she took article after article from the clothes-basket at her side, he wandered about the room aimlessly, puffing at a pipe which seemed never ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Tony, a mere chip tossed aimlessly hither and yon by eddies and cross currents, the only person in this melodrama of motive whose interests were not being considered by anybody, was arraigned at the bar and, without being consulted in the matter, heard Mr. Hogan, the fat, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... he once fancied he heard when tramping aimlessly during the day, was now so distinct that he knew he must be near a stream. The path crossed ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... to herself, and then begins to look rather aimlessly about her. She picks up her sunshade and opens it. She comes to the hammock, picks out her handkerchief, says, "Ah, there you are!" and puts it away. She goes slowly towards the house. TREMAYNE enters from L. and with his back to the audience tries latch of imaginary ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... running my fingers aimlessly over the keys, thinking of a new song, Lady Adelheid, who had been sitting in one of the corners of the room, ran across to us, and, kneeling down before the Baroness, begged her, as she took both her hands and clasped them to her bosom, "Oh, dear ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... He walked aimlessly about, waiting for Molly to cool a bit before he let her drink preparatory to starting on his tiresome ride over the range. Both he and the Colonel believed that the thieves would soon grow bolder, and his strongest hope lay in coming upon them at work. He had noted that ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... way home the vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself. Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... ceased, and Tommy lay relaxed and inert, sleepily watching the curtains blow in and out at the open window. Thirty stories above the street the noises were pleasantly muffled and remote, and his senses drifted aimlessly to and fro on the tides ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... steed of the plains. And as he lay beneath the spreading branches during the whole night long his thoughts were not of the victory he had won, but of the princess, who was as far away from him as ever. He passed the night without sleep, and when the morning came he rose and walked aimlessly through the woods. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... blue-lipped survivors in their clinging garments were wandering aimlessly along the shore, the veriest pictures of utter misery, as they mumbled a few words to each other, or stared absently around. They seemed to be partially bereft of their senses, and were probably somewhat dazed from the ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... life. It is for this reason that a quietism is to be found in Chinese poetry ill appealing to the unrest of our day, and as dissimilar to our ideals of existence as the life of the planets is to that of the dark bodies whirling aimlessly through space. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... The talk drifted aimlessly, round and about from the western ranches to Flicker Alley and the London Music Halls, only to return in the end, as it naturally would, to the water hole at Rugged Rocks and our chances of finding lion. The discussion was lengthy ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the Thirty-fourth Street ferry Garrison idly boarded a Forty-second Street car, drifting aimlessly with the main body of Long Island passengers going westward to disintegrate, scatter like the fragments of a bursting bomb, at Broadway. A vague sense of proprietorship, the kiss of home, momentarily smoothed out the wrinkles in his soul as the lights ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... and the cold morning fresh in her cheeks. But no one would guess—no one could ever guess, from Faith's brown dress and white rufffles, that she had just been flying about in the kitchen—to use Cindy's elegant illustration—"like shelled peas"; not quite so aimlessly, however. And her smiling glance at her teacher spoke of readiness for ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... reporter who supposes that newspaper men wander aimlessly up and down the streets of a city, watching and hoping for automobiles to collide and for men to shoot their enemies, will have his eyes opened soon after entering a news office. He will learn that a reporter never leaves the city room without a definite idea of where he is going. If newspapers ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... aimlessly for a while about the silent village hoping to find a cafe where he could sit for a few minutes to take a last look at himself before plunging again into the grovelling promiscuity of the army. Not a light showed. All the shutters of the shabby little ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the boot, Phil so far satisfied the man's curiosity as to inform him truthfully of their names and nationality, adding the fictitious information that, having quarrelled with their captain, they had been forcibly put ashore somewhere in the Gulf of Darien, and had since been wandering aimlessly about the country, not knowing where to go or how to escape from it. The story was well enough concocted, considering that it was made up on the spur of the moment; but it was evident that it did not altogether satisfy his Excellency, who finally ordered them to be taken ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... confusion that followed Maxime's death, this inward prayer pressed more on the one less able to resist. Clerambault was prostrated by his grief, his wife aimlessly busy, and Rosine was out all day at her war work. They only came together at meals. But it happened that one evening after dinner Clerambault heard her mother violently scolding Rosine, who had spoken of wounded enemies whom she wanted to take care of. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... had perhaps been on his way to a chair when suddenly caught and immobilized by one of those hazards which do notoriously occur—the victim never remembers how—in drawing-rooms. Hands in pockets, he looked aimlessly about, smiling perfunctorily, and wondering where he should settle or whether he should remain where he was. In the deep embrasure of the large east bow-window Lois was lounging. She beckoned to him, not with her hand but with a brief, bright smile—she ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... intense sympathy as agonized cries came from those pinned down to the ruins of buildings or felled by falling bricks or stones, and as the sight of dead bodies incrimsoned with blood met the eyes of the survivors in the streets. From wandering aimlessly about, many of these went earnestly to work to rescue the wounded and recover the bodies of the slain. In this merciful work the police and the soldiers lent their aid, and soon there was a large corps of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... brighter and more beautiful land that lay in the direction thought of rather indefinitely as the East. "If I do not move and keep moving I'll become like father, like all of the people about here," Hugh said to himself. He thought of the man who had bred him and whom he occasionally saw drifting aimlessly along Main Street or sleeping away a drunken stupor on the river bank. He was disgusted with him and had come to share the opinion the station master's wife had always held concerning the people of the Missouri ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... and wandered aimlessly around. She found a strange interest in being in Paul's home. She felt, too, as though she had a right there; and why should she not have that right, since Paul was her brother? More than once she looked toward the garden gate as if expecting that he would come in. She did not think of him as ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... hard and slim, gesticulated madly from the poop at Mr. Baker: "Steady these fore-yards! Steady them the best you can!" On the main deck, men excited by his cries, splashed, dashing aimlessly, here and there with the foam swirling up to their waists. Apart, far aft, and alone by the helm, old Singleton had deliberately tucked his white beard under the top button of his glistening coat. Swaying upon the din and tumult of the seas, with the whole ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... just in good time," answered the girl, without looking toward Yates, who stood aimlessly twirling his cane. The young woman put her foot on the buggy step, and sprang lightly in beside the driver. It needed no second glance to see that he was her brother, not only on account of the family resemblance between them, but also because he allowed her to get into the buggy without ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... went rambling down into a dell of deep green shadow. It was a reprobate of a road,—a vagrant of the land,— having long ago wandered out of straight and even courses and taken to meandering aimlessly into many ruts and furrows under arching trees, which in wet weather poured their weight of dripping rain upon it and made it little more than a mud pool. Between straggling bushes of elder and hazel, blackberry and thorn, it made its solitary shambling way, so sunken into ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the house. He experienced a feeling of suffocation in the dwelling over which such a dense cloud of misfortune seemed to be hanging. He longed for the outer air, the fierce blast of the tempest, and spent a part of the night in wandering aimlessly up and down the banks ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... little knots of members stood in the aisles, whispering together; all about the House others sat in all the various attitudes that express weariness; some, tilted back, had one or more legs disposed upon their desks; some sharpened pencils indolently; some scribbled aimlessly; some yawned and stretched; a great many lay upon their breasts upon the desks, sound asleep and gently snoring. The flooding gaslight from the fancifully wrought roof poured down upon the tranquil scene. Hardly a sound disturbed the stillness, save the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Phebe so round and fair and supple, making a pretty-enough picture for any artist. Olly, little Maggie Dexter, and an assortment of sturdy urchins known throughout Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were dancing and chattering aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a clumsy old boat where Phebe had made a comfortable niche for Miss Delano, who every day at about this hour was afflicted with a remarkable disorder which had grown upon her wholly of late years, and whose symptoms, so far as she was willing to admit them, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... would never do to attempt that; not with her. Perhaps alone he might scramble up somehow, but with her the feat would be impossible. He dismissed this as hopeless, his memory of their surroundings drifting from point to point aimlessly. He saw the whole barren vista as it last stood revealed under the glow of the sun—the desolate plateau above, stretching away into the dim north, the brown level of the plains, broken only by sharp fissures In ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... later train down the hill; deposited his trunk in a hotel bedroom; and spent his wedding-night under the stars; walking, ceaselessly, aimlessly, to deaden the ache at ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... hat, and strode out of the house as if his errand was of the utmost urgency. Once upon the street, however, his pace slackened. There was still a good deal of daylight outside, and he loitered aimlessly about, walking with bowed head and hands clasped behind him, until dusk fell. Then he squared his shoulders, and started straight as the crow flies toward the residence of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Presley reached Hooven's place, two or three grimy frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches of mistletoe and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... glad thrill in her heart, one likely purchaser after another being borne in gorgeously draped litter away from this scene of a mother's cruel anxiety. Already the ladies had withdrawn. Now there was only a group of men left around the rostrum; Hortensius Martius still lounging aimlessly, young Escanes who had not yet found the paragon amongst cooks, and a few others who eyed the final proceedings with the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to wander aimlessly about for a few minutes, and then, finding a piece that must have been about a hundredweight, he began to prise it about using the iron bar as a lever, and to such good effect that he soon had ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... Walking as aimlessly as he could pretend, Floyd started toward a break in the natural wall that ran in front of the prison cavern. He wanted to see if he could catch a glimpse of the ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... smoothly, surely, and unhurriedly, carrying him aimlessly along the resilient walkway, under the warm glow of the streetlights. The people around him walked as casually and with seemingly as little purpose as he did. There was none of the brisk sense of urgency that he felt inside the walls ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the stuttering man, whose voice I had heard before the stable-door, and at a moment when I thought that my movements would attract no attention I took advantage of the freedom of a public-house and sauntered aimlessly into the room as if I had no particular business there. I saw with surprise that the chap who had proposed to steal the horses was one of the merchants of the town at whose store I had occasionally traded. ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... were restless and noisy, rushing aimlessly hither and thither, from the corner of the bridge, up the Rue du Palais, fearful lest their prey be conjured away ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... into the Ionian Sea. But a storm drove them out of their course, and the darkness was so thick that they could not tell night from day, and the helmsman, Palinurus, knew not whither he was steering. Thus they were tossed about aimlessly for three days and nights, till at last they saw land ahead and, lowering their sails, rowed safely into a quiet harbor. Not a human being was in sight, but herds of cattle grazed on the pastures, and goats sported untended on the rocks. Here was ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Zoie, at last fully convinced of the strength of Alfred's resolve. "But he shan't," she declared emphatically. "I won't let him. I'll go after him. He has no right——" By this time she was running aimlessly ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... The first was that, "if the religious instincts of the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly."[6] And this first conviction was only the preparation for a second. Speaking again of his Candid Examination of Theism, he says: "In that treatise I have since come to see that I was wrong touching what I constituted the basal argument for my negative conclusion ... Reason ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... like walking about rather aimlessly in the town's narrow streets, with the mud-daubed cabins on either hand. This simple life under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was opened he could see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting its yellow tongues up the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... chair turned to the unfinished basket on the table beside him and handled his work aimlessly, as if in sorrow that he had no word of comfort ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... was "so very exclusive" turned out not a bad little thing, when once one had succeeded in breaking through the ring-fence with which she surrounded herself. She had an endless, quenchless restlessness, it is true; her eyes wandered aimlessly; she never was happy for two minutes together, unless she was surrounded by friends, and was seeing something. What she saw did not interest her much; certainly her tastes were on the level with those of a very young child. An odd-looking ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... ensued. The girl looked from the aviator to Lanyard, then turned away from both and, trembling with fatigue and enforcing self-control by clenching her hands, stared aimlessly off into the mist. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... admittance or was received so strangely, and with such a measure of constraint and conversational awkwardness and absence of mind and embarrassment, that he began to fear for the sanity of his hosts. Again and again did he strive to divine the cause, but could not do so; so he went wandering aimlessly about the town, without succeeding in making up his mind whether he or the officials had gone crazy. At length, in a state bordering upon bewilderment, he returned to the inn—to the establishment whence, that every ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... feeling of terror began to gain ground. She was like a creature enmeshed in a net weak in its cordage, but many-stranded and hampering; turn whichever way she would some petty restriction met her. She moved aimlessly forward, reasonably sure that she was not followed or observed, since she was going away from rather than toward the Card place. About a mile from the cabin of old Hannah Updegrove, a weaver of rag carpet, she ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... we used to call Magic Music—we oldsters, when we were children? You know how, from your seat at the piano, you watched your listener striving to take the hints you strove to give, and wandering aimlessly away from the fire-irons he should have shouldered—the book he should have read upside down—the little sister he should have kissed or tickled—what not? You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he missed fire, and balked the triumphant outburst that ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... morning. The ground had frozen after a heavy rain, and the wagon jolted roughly over the ruts in the canyon road, making slow progress. The sky was overcast and straggling snowflakes wandered aimlessly up and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... never been sure of it before, he knew now that he loved her. Everything in the house, now she was gone, told him so. As he wandered aimlessly through the deserted rooms, and his glance fell on the corners and objects with which she was associated—the deep easy chair in the library in which she would bury herself for hours with an interesting book; her baby grand piano, still open with the sheets of music ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow |
