"Wistful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kindly eye, let the wanderer go by. Woman-love and wistful heart, let the gipsy one depart. For the farness and the road are his glory and his goad. Oh, the lilt of youth and Spring! Eyes laugh and lips sing. Yea, but it is good to be ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... they were already standing back looking at it, and laughing and clapping their hands like children. Then suddenly they stopped. What had happened? A very strange thing indeed! Out of the two holes they saw looking at them two wistful blue eyes. Then the face of the little snow man was no longer white. The cheeks became rounded and smooth and radiant, and two rosy lips began to smile up at them. A breath of wind brushed the snow from the head, and it all fell down round the shoulders in flaxen ringlets escaping ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... before him with manful eyes that winked rapidly but shed no tears. His lips were pursed up as if to whistle, yet made no sound. At the sight of him and the withered poppies in the place where never a flower of memory blossomed, hot tears surged to the girl's eyes. It was wistful to think of a child remembering ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... it were otherwise. But so it shall be with all of us. So it cannot but be. Not until the day shall come when this wistful, blundering church of ours, loved with exceeding great and bitter love, with all her proud and solitary towers, shall turn to the voices of life sounding beneath her belfries in the street, shall she be worshipful; not until the love of all life and the love of all love is her ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that there might be no accusation that she did things by halves, closed the door leaning her back against it. The knight looked up at her and saw that she too had rested but indifferently. Her lovely eyes half veiled, showed traces of weeping, and there was a wistful expression in her face that touched him tenderly, and made him long for her; nevertheless he kept a rigid government upon himself, and sat there regarding her, she flushing, slightly under his scrutiny, not daring to ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... if he should have been crushed, grief-stricken, broken. He was inclined to reproach himself because he was not. Of course there was a sadness about it, a regret that the wonder of those days of love and youth had passed. But the sorrow was not bitter, the regret was but a wistful longing, the sweet, lingering fragrance of a memory, that was all. Toward her, Madeline, he felt—and it surprised him, too, to find that he felt—not the slightest trace of resentment. And more surprising still he felt none toward Blanchard. He had ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to find they had reached the door of Carmody's office and that further confidences were impossible, for she was discovering herself to be each moment deeper in his debt and correspondingly less able to withstand his wistful, shy demand. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... at that, sidled past her father with her eyes lifted, fascinated, and so out the door where she paused an instant to flash back a wistful appeal. Nothing but silence, and then her feet pattering ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... belonged wholly to herself, and plodded patiently on. The tears that she shed in secret were never allowed to trouble her family, and gradually the pain had grown into a great calm. No one ever came her way to touch her heart again. Only little children brought the wistful look to her eyes, and a wonder whether people had it made up to them in heaven when they had failed of the natural things ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... showed so plainly the debilitating effect of life in the city for eight months in the year that at twelve he was bundled off to a country school. Since then he has grown to manhood without our assistance. He went away undersized, pale, with a meager little neck and a sort of wistful Nicholas Nickelby expression. When he returned at the Christmas vacation he had gained ten pounds, was brown and freckled, and looked like a ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the pledge and is my firm friend. I chased him out of a public-house last night, and made him come home to my lodgings with me, where I gave him coffee, and sang songs to him. He followed all my movements with the big wistful eyes of a dog. There were tears in those eyes when he bade me good-night. He brushed them away with a dirty hand, and said, "I know I can keep straight now, sir, because you are my pal, and I ain't a-going against the wishes of my pal!" This morning ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... him suddenly, wondering and wistful. "Oh, have you?" she returned sympathetically. "But it is only like the devil, grandpa," she added hopefully, "and you know ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... little boy up higher so that his tousled yellow hair rested against her bosom. He put an arm around her neck and she flushed with pleasure like a girl; but, although she held him close to her with a sudden wistful tenderness, there was in her eyes a gloomy austerity which forbade me to sentimentalize over the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... and close the window; but Kenneth caught his hand and held it, looking up at him wet-eyed and wistful. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... outburst. But no outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he spoke, without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... everything that remained, except a heavy mouth and brown, lack-lustre eyes. For a while Donald crouched in the corner of the pew, his head sunk on his breast, a very picture of utter hopelessness. But as the Evangel began to play round his heart, he would fix the preacher with rapid, wistful glances, as of one who had awaked but hardly dared believe such things could be true. Suddenly a sigh pervaded six pews, a kind of gentle breath of penitence, faith, love, and hope mingled together like ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... words, accompanied though they were with a smile, she gave the baron such a sweet, wistful look that he could no longer resist; but the appearance of Pierre at this moment with a large omelette created a diversion, and interrupted this interesting conversation. They all immediately gathered round the table, and attacked the really good breakfast, which the old servant ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... hand, who threw Jehovah's thunderbolts across the world as if he liked them, and approved of them, and was ready for any further number of these celestial missiles, of an even vaster displacement, was in his heart of hearts a wistful believer in everlasting mercy. Few men have been born with a softer heart. He sometimes wondered whether in framing the Regulations of the Salvation Army he had not pressed too hard on human nature. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... yet inspired those who dwell upon them with songs uprising from the soil. The solitude of the hills over whose tops the summer sun seems to linger so long has not filled the shepherd's heart with a wistful yearning that must be expressed in verse or music. Neither he nor the ploughman in the vale have heard or seen aught that stirs them in Nature. The shepherd has never surprised an Immortal reclining on the thyme under the shade of a hawthorn bush at sunny noontide; ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... sees the misty depths below, Where plain and foothills, meet, And smiles a wistful smile to know The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... there motionless, looking down the alleyway after the retreating figure. From somewhere in the distance came the rumble of an elevated train. It drowned out the pound of the man's speeding footsteps; it died away itself—and now there was no other sound. A pucker, strangely wistful, curiously perturbed, came and furrowed her forehead into little wrinkles, and then she turned and walked slowly on along the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... to popular forces. Swayed as it is by public opinion, it is necessarily conventional in its conception of duty and earnestly materialistic; for the meaning of the word vanity never crosses the vulgar heart. In fine, it is the religion of a race young, wistful, and adventurous, feeling its latent potentialities, vaguely assured of an earthly vocation, and possessing, like the barbarian and the healthy child, pure but unchastened energies. Thus in the Protestant ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that he must let this best thing in his life go out of it. To go empty of heart through the rest of his days, while his very arms ached to hold her! And she was so near—just above, with her hand on his shoulder, her wistful face so close that, without moving, he could have ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... up stairs and into her room alone; she threw open the small casements, and stood there looking out with a somewhat vague and distant look. There was no mischief now in those dark and tender eyes; there was rather an anxious and wistful questioning. And her heart seemed to go out from her to implore these gentle winds, and the soft colors of the sea, and the dreamy stillness of the woods, that now they should, if ever that was possible to them, bring all their sweet and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... time in manifesting his obedience. A whole day passed in which, to my certain knowledge, he was not alone a moment with Miss Liston, and did not, save at the family meals, exchange a word with her. As he walked off with Pamela, Miss Liston's eyes followed him in wistful longing; she stole away upstairs and did not come down till five o'clock. Then finding me strolling about with ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... with the awed and wistful look which faces take on themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the vast building. His gloved hands were clasped in front over the handle of his umbrella. He lifted them. Some sacred inspiration perhaps ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... clothes I have on, I suppose," is the answer, half humorous, half wistful, as the interrogated party, the younger of two officers, glances down at his well-worn regimentals. "That's one reason I'm praying we may be sent to reinforce Crook up in the Sioux country. No need of new duds when you're scouting for old 'Gray ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... It was really wonderful. She sat upon a stool, over which an embroidered robe had been thrown, and played to them. Her hair was done in a coil back of her right ear, and her little brown face was sweet and wistful as she brought forth from the flute the most ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... for the Christmas Season—an oft-told tale with a wistful twistful of Something that left the Earth with a wing ...
— Second Landing • Floyd Wallace
... down a fortune from the green ivy-bushes that hung at the vintners' doors, the western continent, at which he had already cast wistful glances, remained the treasure-house of Spain. His unfortunate but indomitable half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, recalled it to his memory. The name of Gilbert deserves to be better remembered ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... from the wilderness, and encumbered with the stumps of the great trees which had been felled, some to be used as logs, others to be cut up into planks; but the place had a rough beauty of its own, while the wistful glances that fell upon him from the occupants of the porch sent a thrill through his breast, and raised a hope that if ever he came that way he ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... dwelt on with many tears was that the child seemed in a wistful mood and remained near her side—bringing her little chair and sitting by her as she worked, and rising to follow her from place to place as she moved from one room to ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... days. Arriving very late on a Friday night, he saw nobody but his mother over his supper, and thought her looking very tired. When he met her in the morning, there was the same weary, harassed countenance, there were worn marks round the dark wistful eyes, and the hair, whitened at Schwarenbach, did not look as incongruous with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deference showed her, partly because she had received it so long, partly because that detached frame of mind of the hopeless invalid made the life about her seem shadowy and unreal. Nothing really mattered much. She lay back in her chair with the little wistful smile, the somber light in her eyes that ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... you have ever tasted of the delightful cup of youthful friendship, and pressed with all the glow of early and sincere attachment the venerable hand of a kind instructor, or met the wistful eye and hearty grasp of parting schoolfellows, and ancient dames, and obliging servants, you will easily discover how embarrassing a task it must be to depict in words the agitating sensations which at such a moment spread their varied ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to much worse places; therefore, when she died, the angels buried her on Sinai," answered the prisoner; before whose wistful eyes drifted the memory of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... close hid shadow for our lair, Hollowed by Noah's mouse beneath the chair Wherein the Omnipotent, in slumber bound, Nods till the piteous Trump of Judgment sound. Perchance Leviathan of the deep sea Would lease a lost mermaiden's grot to me, There of your beauty we would joyance make— A music wistful for the sea-nymph's sake: Haply Elijah, o'er his spokes of fire, Cresting steep Leo, or the heavenly Lyre, Spied, tranced in azure of inanest space, Some eyrie hostel, meet for human grace, Where two might happy be—just you and I— Lost ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... perpetually moving spot where history ends and prophecy begins. It is our only possession: the past we reach through lapsing memory, halting recollection, hearsay and belief; we pierce the future by wistful faith or anxious hope; but the present is beneath ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of personal qualities unsupported by the facts of its local history. To the great Roman conqueror the inhabitants of this part of Britain opposed a resistance, which taught him, as he indirectly confesses, to look back with many a wistful glance toward the coast where he had left his transports, but ill-assured against the ocean or the enemy. Against the Norman conqueror, likewise, when all the rest of the island had yielded implicitly to his sway and to the substitution of feudal for native usages, the people of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the huge pink-lipped Tritons of the "Triumph of Galatea," down to fairy things, many-whorled, rainbow-tinted, which were included in the "handful for five cents" which Franci joyously proclaimed at intervals, when he thought the children looked wistful and needed cheering up, since they could not have all ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... plaintive look, under her wistful eyebrows, appealing to Faversham to come to her aid, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if I come after them to-morrow, would you?" she begged with big wistful eyes. "The stairway is so dark and so narrow in our house, I'm afraid something might happen ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... features in no degree improved by the cadaverous hue of illness, and the addition of a soiled nightcap, and a stiff, black beard of a week's growth. The dog sat at the bedside: now eyeing his master with a wistful look, and now pricking his ears, and uttering a low growl as some noise in the street, or in the lower part of the house, attracted his attention. Seated by the window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat which formed a portion of the robber's ordinary dress, was a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... there,—to carry her through, and to take her back in triumph home. My sister,—why that strange, piteous look upon thy countenance?—why that paleness of thy cheek?—why that whisper of thy lips?—why those wistful, gentle pleadings of thine eyes? Sweet eyes, and brow, and cheek, in which I have ever prided myself! Why so backward?—why so distant and unfriendly? Am I not come to rescue thee from a place where thou never shouldst have ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... at his left, while at his right sat a tall young lady, who though slightly pale was of an interesting appearance, notwithstanding. The somewhat tragic cast of her large and classic features was intensified by a pair of great mournful eyes and a wistful mouth, the whole framed in luxuriant masses of black hair, and altogether she was a girl whom one would give a second ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... had other duties to perform, before yielding to her own sad mood. "It will be time enough, madam, to be sorry when they are gone," she said to the Justice's wife, her good neighbour. "My boy must not see me following him with a wistful face, and have our parting made more dismal by my weakness. It is good that gentlemen of his rank and station should show themselves where their country calls them. That has always been the way of the Esmonds, and the same Power which graciously preserved my dear father through ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... creations,— his Prometheus,[264]—it is not Celtic self-will and passion, it is rather the Germanic sense of justice and reason, which revolts against the despotism of Zeus. The German Sehnsucht itself is a wistful, soft, tearful longing, rather than a struggling, fierce, passionate one. But the Celtic melancholy is struggling, fierce, passionate; to catch its note, listen to Llywarch Hen in ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes—and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me—even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ever a patient, wistful look as of one from home; and often he would sit musing in the cloister and scarce give heed to ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... rations. Here and there would be found a few hard-hearted and unsympathetic gluttons. They would never share a single thing with a comrade. A prisoner of this type would sit down to a gorgeous feast upon dainties sent from home, heedless of the envious and wistful glances of his colleagues who were sitting around him at the table with nothing beyond the black bread and the acorn coffee. He would never even proffer a spoonful of jam which would have enabled the revolting black bread to ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... his work when the great red dying sun began to fade into the west and his round eyes would grow wistful as he looked out over the great city that stretched in towering minarets and lofty spires of purest crystal blue for miles on every side. A fairy city of rarest hue and beauty. A city for the Gods and the Gods were dead. Kiron felt, at such times, the great loneliness ...
— The Ultimate Experiment • Thornton DeKy
... gate into the garden, the American soldier, the children and I together. The little girl, with that wistful confidence that all French children show for men in khaki, slipped her grubby little paw into my hand. I expect Joan was ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... satisfaction in the man's eyes told Philip enough. The sexton said in a low voice: "He belonged to the Southern Episcopal Church in Virginia." Something in the wistful look of the sexton gave Philip an inspiration ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... physiognomy of the place. In the glow of which retrospective admission I ask myself how I came, under my first flush, reflected in other pages, to fail of justice to so much proud domestic architecture—in the very teeth moreover of the fact that I was for ever paying my compliments, in a wistful, wondering way, to the fine Palazzo Lanfranchi, occupied in 1822 by the migratory Byron, and whither Leigh Hunt, as commemorated in the latter's Autobiography, came out to join him in an ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness with which those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the intense, wistful gaze of the man at the foot of the bed, must have aroused her, for she moved and opened her eyes and looked around aimlessly, passing over the faces of Miss Slocum, of the squaw, and of Overton, until ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "Be not alarmed: all shall be done." While she spoke, she cast a wistful look on the drawings on the bureau; then withdrawing her eyes with a deep sigh, she descended the stairs. At the street-door she took Mrs. Robson's hand, and not relinquishing it until she was seated ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... cherished me dying, have died herself to save me? Alas, no! It was because I had been drawn on to Siena by that lovely, haunting, beckoning, beguiling vision of Aurelia, my torture and stem of shame. Why, finally, were my eyes not lifted up to her wistful eyes, as she sat—poor sempstress—in that upper room? It was because of my accursed prosperity. It was because my eyes were cased and swollen in pride; because my fine horse held them; because I thought I had but to nod and be ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... in my own room arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held it—not expressed the less, because ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of that girl?—the girl with eyes of that deep, fathomless blue, the wonderful blue of the lake as it lay in the sunlight—the lake that was nearly a mile in depth. In her face I detected a strange, almost wistful look, an expression which showed that her thoughts were far away from the laughter and chatter of that gay restaurant. She looked at me without seeing me; she spoke to her father without knowing what she replied. There was, in those wonderful ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... highly-decorated hats, smooth-haired young men in coats that went in at the waist, a very few serious amateurs with longish hair, whose appearance did not quite come up to the standard of the Tailor and Cutter, and a small number of wistful professional feminine artists in no collars and pince-nez—in fact, the average fashionable, artistic crowd. The two young geniuses, George Ranger and Nevil Butt, had just given their rather electrifying ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... her face grew sad, while Thurston rebelled against an instinctive conviction that she knew a wistful expression was becoming to her and was calculated to appeal to a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... my supper, as I was passing through the kitchen, with my poor morsel of bread in my hand, I saw the meat turning on the spit; my father and the rest were round the fire; I must bow to every one as I passed. When I had gone through this ceremony, leering with a wistful eye at the roast meat, which looked so inviting, and smelt so savory, I could not abstain from making that a bow likewise, adding in a pitiful tone, good bye, roast meal! This unpremeditated pleasantry ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... for Meade to finish, but Meade, who suddenly realized to what he was leading, did not finish; and Lavis turned his head so as to look squarely at Cadogan. Through the half-closed, wistful eyes Cadogan caught a gleam that he again felt was an answer to Meade's unfinished question, and yet was again meant, not ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... head smilingly, and was terribly abashed. They waited a few moments longer—moments, during which a girl's face seemed to be looking at Dick with wistful, tender eyes—the same woman that Ormsby loved. And he saw, too, in a blurred mist, a vision of carnage and bloodshed that was horribly unnecessary and unjust. He could not explain all his reasons ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... satisfies you as a definition of life—of all the wistful wonder of the world!' And as I spoke I thought of Moses with mystically shining face upon the Mount of the Law, of Ezekiel rapt in his divine fancies, of Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, of Christ's agony in the garden; the golden faces of the great of the world passed as ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray bird-notes through a rattle ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... a wistful sigh. Tears filmed her eyes. He was her first lover, had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... did you think I was going to disappoint you?' said Alice, stooping to kiss the wan, wistful face. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... young girl flitting restlessly about the vine-covered porch of the roadside cottage. She laid the big binocular aside, for perhaps the twentieth time within the hour, with a sigh of impatience, a piteous quiver about the pretty, rosebud mouth, a wistful, longing look in the dark and dreamy eyes. Ever since stable call, and her father's departure to his never-neglected duty, she had hovered about that shaded nook, again and again searching the northward slopes and ridges. The scouts had been in three hours ago, reporting ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... less she thought it well to leave the girl under her influence. Mrs. Hamilton was not a keen woman, but she had a mother's intuitions, and she saw a subtle change in her daughter. At first the girl grew wistful and then impatient and rebellious. She complained that Joe was away from them so much enjoying himself, while she had to be housed up like a prisoner. She had receded from her dignified position, and twice of an evening had gone out for a car-ride with Thomas; but as that gentleman ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... eyes upon the world for the second time—it was as if he had been born again—he looked up into the eager, wistful face of Jane Cable. It was too much for her to expect that he could see and understand at once; he would not know what had gone before, nor why she was there. His feeble glance took in her face with lifeless interest. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... with sudden ebullitions, Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song; Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions, Mute little moods of misery and wrong. Only a girl of Nature's rarest making, Wistful and sweet—and with a ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... not think it was necessary to inform the young ladies, viz., that he had been calling at Mr. Sedley's house already, on the pretence of seeing George, of course, and George wasn't there, only poor little Amelia, with rather a sad wistful face, seated near the drawing-room window, who, after some very trifling stupid talk, ventured to ask, was there any truth in the report that the regiment was soon to be ordered abroad; and had Captain Dobbin ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Garibaldians were cut-throats, incendiaries, human bloodhounds waiting to fly at them. What did they behold? 'The beast is gentle,' as Euripides makes his captors say of Dionysius. The stalwart Romans saw a host of boys, with pale, wistful, very young-looking faces. If anything was wanting to seal the fate of the Temporal Power it was the sight of that procession of famished and wounded Italians brought to ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and Iseult sat and watched him at his task, marvelling at his power. "Ah," she thought, "had I been a man I would have been just like to him." And, without fear of danger, so perfectly did she trust in him, she lay and gazed at him with admiring, wistful eyes. From time to time he came to her to encourage and reassure her, but although she felt no fear, she did not tell him so, so dearly did she love to hear his voice, and feel ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... he's sent to school Well knows the mysteries of that magic tool— The pocket-knife. To that his wistful eye Turns, while he hears his mother's lullaby. And in the education of the lad, No little part that implement hath had. His pocket-knife to the young whittler brings A growing knowledge of material things, Projectiles, music, and the sculptor's art. His chestnut whistle, and his shingle dart, His ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... that to the attendance officer," said Mrs. Damper in a wistful tone. "But p'r'aps it might ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her hand instinctively and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... been widowed early and had eked out a meager income by making chocolate fudge, which the little girl peddled about town on Saturday afternoons. And now the child, though she must be thirty or thereabouts, had kept a certain grace of her youth, a wistful prettiness, a girlish unmarriedness, that marked her as an old maid by accident or choice, not ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... both her hands in his, but she took them away again. For one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful and despairing kindliness in them: then she stood before him, with her face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous. "I did wish to see you—for once, for the last time," she said. "If you had gone away, you would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... visiting the adjoining nunnery. As I was specially favoured by a general admission, I asked to be permitted to see some nuns' cells. They showed a Buddhist advance on Western ideas. The word "cells" was a misnomer for beautiful little flower-adorned rooms of a cheerful Japanese house. The fragile, wistful nun who was so kind as to speak with me had a consecrated expression. Her dress was white, and over it was brocade in a perfect combination of green and cream. Her head was shaven; her hands, which continually told her beads, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... wistful glance towards the wall behind which lay the house of the Commandant. "Leave it till to-morrow," he repeated, with his hand still ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the freshening breeze in a red knit shawl, and seated on a stool in the waist of the ship, in the Evangeline attitude, and with the wistful, Evangeline look in her face, as she gazed out over the far-weltering sea-line, from which all trace of the shore had vanished. She seemed to the young man very interesting, and he approached her with that kindness for all other ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... men of the settlement, have ascended to the azotea to obtain a better view; and there remain gazing down the valley in feverish impatience. Just as the sun reaches meridian their wistful glances are rewarded; but by a sight which little relieves their anxiety; on the contrary, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... she seemed unconscious of his presence altogether. He saw a slight, fair girl, dressed entirely in white, with her long hair streaming over her shoulders. The face was very sad and wistful, the blue eyes clouded with some suggestion of trouble and despair. Gurdon did not need a second glance to assure him that he was in the presence of one who was mentally afflicted. She came forward and took her place by ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... these things, and my heart was with the Incas and the Aztecs, and yet somehow I could not punish the Spaniards for their atrocious destruction of the only American civilizations. As nearly as I can now say, I was of both sides, and wistful to reconcile them, though I do not see now how it could have been done; and in my later hopes for the softening of the human conditions I have found it hard to forgive Pizarro for the overthrow of the most perfectly socialized state known to history. I scarcely realized ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Indian stars, Mumtaz Mahal, I am sitting, Watching them wind their silent way Over your wistful Tomb; Watching the crescent prow Of the moon among them flitting, Fair as the shallop that bore your ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... blithe serenity which had been his chiefest charm a month ago. Pausing in her rapid walk, as if arrested by the change that seemed to strike her suddenly, she recalled her thoughts from the dominant idea of her life and, remembering the youth she was robbing of its innocent delights, answered the wistful look which betrayed the hunger of a heart she had never truly fed, as she knelt beside her husband and, laying her soft cheek to his, whispered in her tenderest accents, "I am not wholly selfish or ungrateful, Manuel. You shall ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... watchman looked at the conjurer as if he thought he was mad, but he followed him down to the stage in silence. When he was there the conjurer leaned forward suddenly, and his face was filled with a wistful eagerness. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Greg came through the sally-port. In an instant he bounded across the road. He immediately took it upon himself to talk with Belle, and Dick turned to Laura with flushed face and wistful eyes. ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Italy the author of "Marmion" named his pet staghound Maida, or, as Scott pronounced it, "Myda." It was as the author of "The Twa Dogs" that young Ferguson and Scott regarded Burns on his entrance into the room with such wistful attention. The story is told in Lockhart, and we will not quote it further; but, leaving dogs of our own days and lands to Mr Jesse, who has given an interesting volume on them, we will close with a few paragraphs on the dog of the East—a very differently treated ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... dragged himself to his room. After he had closed the door, he stood leaning with his back against it for a moment. He was facing two pictures that gazed at him from the mantel: One was the patient, wistful face of his Aunt Eunice; the other was Philippa's, looking straight out at him with such honest, sincere eyes, such eager questioning, that he could not meet their clear gaze. He strode across the room and turned both faces to the wall. Then, without ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... word. And not another word was spoken on the subject that night. Harry was very silent, walking up and down the veranda with his pipe in his mouth—not lying on the ground in idle enjoyment—and there was no reading. The two sisters looked at him from time to time with wistful, anxious-eyes, half afraid to disturb ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... the things ye spak' to us, Miss Cam'ell. Ye'll have one less at the school now, ye see," he added, smiling sadly; and then turning with a look of tender pity on his grandmother, who watched him with wistful eyes, as if she knew that his lips were moving for her, he said, "Oh, tell her to listen to his voice, and let the sound into her heart. He was aye able to mak' deaf folk hear, wasn't he, Miss Cam'ell?" said Geordie, with a bright ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... tempest-tossed mariner in the midst of the ocean's storm. The howl had scarcely echoed over the dark wood, before it was answered by dozens on every side! And as the drover's keen eye pierced the gloom around him, the dancing, fiery glare of the wolf's eyes met his wistful gaze. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Like Ruth amid the alien corn, his heart is sad with thoughts of home, and he has been dreaming between these iron walls of the wide, sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his feverish brain counts and re-counts the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable otla; he hears once again the animated chatter of the wayfarers ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... her early make-believes. Oh, if it were only true that one could pass through the looking-glass into the wonderland behind it, what a charming picture gallery she would find! All the girls who had occupied the room since Warwick Hall had been a school! Blue eyes and brown, laughing faces and wistful ones, girls in gorgeous full dress, pluming themselves for some evening entertainment, girls in dainty undress and unbound hair, exchanging bed-time confidences as they prepared for the night, ambitious little saints and frivolous little sinners—they were all there, somewhere in the dim ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly banded golden hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie—"The Bad Little Lady" was approaching the end of its run—she did not show it. But there was some new quality in her face, some quality almost wistful, almost anxious, that made its appeal ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... a low, soft tone of profound sadness, and continued his wistful gaze over the stern of the Bounty. Presently he looked quickly round, and, taking Young's arm, began to pace the deck ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... appearing; the hue of her face was troubled, for she had deceived herself with the belief that it was Richard who knocked at the door. What more natural than for him to have come on Christmas Eve? She approached Alice with a wistful look, not venturing to utter any question, only hoping that some good news might have been brought her. Long watching in the sick room had given her own complexion the tint of ill-health; her eyelids were swollen and heavy; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... certain evening, Barnabas, leaning out from his narrow casement, turned wistful-eyed, to stare away over broken roof and chimney, away beyond the maze of squalid courts and alleys that hemmed him in to where, across the River, the sun was setting in a blaze of glory, yet a glory that served only to make more apparent all the filth and decay, all the sordid ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... a switch, and Isabel's wistful face was transformed into that of a drowned corpse, into a dreadful ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... is her name Marguerite? I do think Marguerite is the dearest name!" Billy's eyes and voice were wistful. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... back to you from the old lookin'-glass on summer mornin's, when the winder was open out into the orchard, and the May birds was singin' amidst the apple-blows. The red lips parted with a happy smile; the bright, laughin' eyes, sort o' soft too, and wistful— wishful for the good that mebby come to you, and mebby didn't, but which the glowin' face was sure of, on that spring morning with the May birds singin' outside, and the May birds ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... ludicrous side for anybody who had chanced to peep through the skylight. The spectacle of five men (for the presence of the indefatigable secretary was an indispensable part of the proceedings) all solemnly drinking tea, while a deer-hound kept a wistful eye on the sugar-basin, was unusual, and perhaps a little grotesque—to all save the participants. Seated at his easel in the characteristic position represented in our sketch, Mr. Furniss would now and again ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... she was in his presence to think of him as an audacious prevaricator—and perhaps worse. He was so kindly in his manner and speech to her. His brisk consideration for her comfort at all times—his wistful glances for Jerry, the ancient canary, and the tenderness he showed the bird—even his desire to placate Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat—all these things withstood the growing ill-opinion being fostered in Louise Grayling's mind. Who and what was this mysterious ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... patient, wistful watching, Educating thought and eye, Made the brakelet and the snakelet Types of weal for bye ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... gone out. He rose and tossed it into the fire, in front of which he remained standing—a slender, eager, restless young figure, with a touch of hunger in the fine face, strangely like and unlike the father, at whom he looked with half-wistful curiosity. ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... frontier settlement was pushing itself toward the Mississippi. No sooner had the pioneer built him a cabin and opened his little farm, than during every summer canvas-covered wagons wound their toilsome way over the new-made roads into the newer wilderness, while his eyes followed them with wistful eagerness. Thomas Lincoln and his Pigeon Creek relatives and neighbors could not forever withstand the contagion of this example, and at length they yielded to the irrepressible longing by a common ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... yawned an open pit. To the bottom of it I peered, and there beheld an empty coffin; the lid was laid against the side of the grave, and on a headstone, displaced from its upright position, sat the late occupant of the grave, looking at me with wistful, eager eyes. A stream of light from within the church fell across that one empty ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... passage in his correspondence—that mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man glides through scenes of insult and passes over what the humblest member of the House would often find it hard to endure. There is something indeed strange, wistful, almost uncanny, in the unbreakable gentleness of that white figure, with the ivory complexion, the scant white hair, the large white collar and broad white shirt-front—there is something which becomes almost an obsession to the observer in watching the figure with its strangely tranquil ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... pity for him," she would say; "for he has never, never been the same since Dorothy disappeared so suddenly." And they would look at the girl with wistful eyes, realizing that in her case, surely, pity was akin ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... resources of her wonderful brain to this task, and presently suggested reluctantly: "Well, you might keep me home from the ice-cream social to-morrow night." But her face was wistful. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... nor gesture were defiant, as they would have been a few weeks before. Rather her look was wistful—appealing—as she stood there, a perplexing, but most charming figure, in her plain black dress, with its Quakerish collar of ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry's eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fraeulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... "ravishingly pure" in her "pale constraint." Between these three persons the moving drama is played out, ending, like all Don Juan stories, with the triumph of the baser influence. Elvire, with her eloquent silences and wistful pathos, is an exquisite creation,—a wedded sister of Shakespeare's Hero; Fifine, too, with her strutting bravado and "pose half frank, half fierce," shrills her discordant note vivaciously enough. The principal speaker himself is the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... tall, slender woman, with round shoulders, stood over the red-hot stove, stirring the potatoes. She was a very beautiful, very worn edition of Judith, though one wondered if she ever burned with even a small portion of Judith's eager, wistful fires. She turned as Douglas came in and ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... and daylight the land leaped out of the sea, all clear blues and purples, incomparably fresh and incomparably 111 wistful in that one golden hour of the tropic day before the sun has risen very high—the disembodied spirit of an island. It lay, vague as hope at first, in a jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through the mists of creation's third morning, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... without any possibility of doubt, his coming would seal her fate—whatever it was to be. She must wait until then. A long, shuddering sigh ran through her. "Ahmed! Ahmed Ben Hassan," she murmured slowly, lingering with wistful tenderness on the words. She pressed her face closer into the cushions, clasping her hands over her head, and for a long time lay very still. The heat was intense and every moment the tent seemed to grow more airless. The room was stifling, and, with ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... right," as these amiable youths expressed it, and many a wistful eye followed the bright head as it flitted about the rooms as if it were a second Golden Fleece to be won with difficulty, for stalwart kinsmen hedged it round, and watchful aunts ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... admitted the other, and searched the face of Thurston with his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were also a bit wistful, but he went unsympathetically ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... exquisite small features, her thick dark hair, her clear white skin with a tracery of blue veins in the temples. Her high-bridged nose and firm chin suggested some force of character, but that suggestion was counteracted by her wistful tender mouth, with drooping underlip. The face, on the whole, was a paradoxical one, containing elements of strength and weakness, and the eyes were the index ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no wistful looks toward France.... In our colonies it is quite different; ... every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them live elsewhere. They call England ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... walked for exercise; these three garret bedrooms" (where his three [six] copyists sat and wrote) "were the place he kept his—pupils in": Tempus edax rerum! Yet ferax also: for our friend now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical: "I let it all in lodgings, to respectable gentlemen; by the quarter or the month; it's all one to me."—"To me also," whispered the ghost of Samuel, as we went pensively our ways.' Carlyle's Miscellanies, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to gather up his belongings while he followed the movements of Mr. Triscoe with a wistful eye. He would have liked to offer his lower berth to this senior of his, when he saw him arranging to take possession of the upper; but he did not quite know how to manage it. He noticed that as the other moved about he limped slightly, unless it were rather a weary easing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... brides elect—but the prettiest of all, and to him the most attractive, was Miss Leigh. He looked for her the first thing when he stepped on deck in the mornings, and in the evenings watched her departure with wistful regret. Meanwhile, between morning and evening he contrived to see as much of the young lady as possible—though when out of sight she was never absent from ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... softly; o'er her chamber still There lay her fragrant presence to beguile Numb heart, dead heart. I knelt before her chair, And praying felt her hand laid on my hair, Felt her sweet breath, and guess'd her wistful smile. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... atmosphere of golden sunset light that flooded the sky and crinkled along the wavetops in shimmering, mellow orange. Up in the bow of the Hoonah silhouetted against the glow, old Kayak Bill stood alone. In his hazel eyes was the wistful look that crept there sometimes when he watched the domestic happiness of those about him. A-top the cabin by the mainmast Jean and Gregg stood looking back over the lengthening stretch of water. Kon Klayu lay, an oblong of jade in the amber light, ringed with a wreath ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... of study, and had so distinguished himself above his fellows that there was little doubt that a good opening would be offered to him ere long. Dr Trevor was very proud of his clever son, but the mother's face took on a wistful expression as she looked round the table at her assembled family, and realised that the time was close at hand for the stirring up of the nest. She was unusually indulgent during those spring months, as if she could not find it in her heart to ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... with glorious eyes Here in our arms half sleeping— So passion wakeful lies; Then grows to manhood, keeping Its wistful, young surprise: I loved you once, but now— I ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... he whined and licked my face as I came alongside him, his wistful eyes saying as plainly as dog could speak, "Thank God, Tom, you've come to help me," or something to ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels—sweet, soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... indistinct affection,—NOT FOR HER; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to HER,—wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to me, however, that there was something ambiguous and wistful in the State man's attitude, and I thought I understood. When a country sends a spy to do some dirty job, they disown him officially if he is caught. Except for that U-2 fiasco some years ago, when the U.S. broke all the unwritten rules and made jackasses of us before the world. Now, obviously, ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... was alive with fleeting and chaotic fragmentary impulses. Memories connected with Cloe, Charles, Balmerino, and a hundred others occupied me. Trivial forgotten happenings flashed through my brain. All the different Aileens that I knew trooped past in procession. Gay and sad, wistful and merry, eager and reflective, in passion and in tender guise, I saw my love in all her moods; and melted always ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... absent as he sat there. Was he thinking of the Linn Moore of years and years ago who used to reveal to the companion of his boyhood all his high aims and strenuous ambitions—how he was resolved to become a Mendelssohn, a Mozart, a Beethoven? Whither had fled all those wistful dreams and ardent aspirations? What was Linn Moore now?—why, a singer in comic opera, his face beplastered almost out of recognition; a pet of the frivolous-fashionable side of London society; the chief adornment ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... given up hope. We had been there two weeks and Fujiyama was not to be seen. The mists, fogs, and clouds of winter had kept it hidden from our wistful, ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... talking earnestly. He heard the little iron gate open and close. He watched them disappear behind the hedge of laurels. A puff of breeze brought the faint odour of roses to him, and with it a sudden host of memories. His eyes grew wistful. He felt something tugging at his heartstrings. Only a few years ago life here had seemed so wonderful a thing—only a few years, but with all the passions and struggles of a lifetime crowded into them. The maelstrom was there still, but he himself had crept out of it. What was there left? ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... if there's any chance of a row?" said Denny, in a tone that sounded wistful. "Going to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... was the recipient of two letters. Between elections a letter was always a matter of sensational interest; it lay on the clerk's table, waiting to be claimed, and every lodger inspected it as he passed. Scores of men who never expected a letter would pick it up, handle it in a wistful and affectionate manner, and regretfully lay it down again. I have often wished I could analyze the thoughts of these men as they tenderly handled these rare visitors conducted by Uncle Sam into ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht Duerer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... my Jap boy waits on her. She is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children—they're growing indistinct. I—I like children. I've always wanted some for myself. I've dreamed about—that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful smile. "I guess that is ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... she cried, putting a possessive hand on Lady's flank while the latter turned her dainty head and regarded the girl out of softly-wistful brown eyes. "I wanted her as ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... gazed over the glowing tree-tops into the golden horizon, with a longing, wistful look. At the same time something like an electric shock passed through Nigel's frame, for was not this narrative strangely similar in its main features to that which his own father had told him on the Keeling Islands about ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... spring had come to the lonely little clearing in the backwoods. From the swampy meadow along the brook's edge, across the road from the cabin and the straw-littered barn-yard, came toward evening that music which is the distinctive note of the northern spring—the thrilling, mellow, inexpressibly wistful fluting ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... dismissed, each seized his basket, containing his provisions, or ran home to get his meal with his parents: I found myself sitting in the school-room tete-a-tete with Mr O'Gallagher, and feeling very well inclined for my dinner I cast a wistful eye at my basket, but I said nothing; Mr O'Gallagher, who appeared to have been in ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother's little shadow and constant companion. The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents' minds. Her high spirits had all dropped. She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth. The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He spoke with aroused energy, a little wistful smile softening the strain of his face. "You were wise to give me food, else I couldn't have solved this mystery. To the beginning, then: You, Prudence Corson, betrothed to me these three years and more; you have been ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... for a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no name. Je connais ca! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Cat couldn't help a wistful look. She was only come, she said, to pay her respects to her ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... as a friend; he almost worshipped Charlotte Bronte. He spoke of Tennyson as "the light and joy of my poor life." In 1868 he saw Sir W. Scott's portrait in London, and wrote: "Sir Walter Scott, shrewd yet wistful, boyish yet dry, looking as if he would ask and answer questions of the fairies—him I saw through a mist of weeping. He is my lost childhood, he is my first great friend. I long for him, and hate the death that ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... he could not help telling her of his visit. He did not tell her of the thoughts roused in him by his visit. But she divined them. He was tender and wistful as he spoke. He turned his eyes away from her and was silent every now and then. She looked at him and smiled, and Christophe's unease ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... is drawn up from me, All my angels, wet-eyed, tristful, Gaze from great Heaven's gate Like pent children, very wistful, That ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... kist her, as she did look so wistful in her little puzzlement; and immediately I removed her trouble very natural, and told that I should stand guard anigh to her, the while that she bathed. And, truly she did be at ease on the moment, and mayhap something surprised to know wherefore she ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... pleasure that I have just enjoyed over Mr. ARTHUR SYMONS' essays of travel in Cities and Sea Coasts and Islands (COLLINS) belongs to the wistful joy of recollection: remembered loveliness in the beautiful places of which he writes so vividly, remembered peace of the quiet unpreoccupied days in which they were written. The book is made up of three groups, studies of Spain, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... would come and draw her little velvet stool to my side, and lay her head on my knee as if she were very weary. And when I looked down and smiled on her, instead of smiling back as she was wont, the great, dark wistful eyes used to look up so sadly, as if her soul were looking out of them. Oh, it was pitiful to read the dear eyes, when they said, 'I am suffering: cannot you help me?' And as time went on, they said it more and more. When the Lady Queen came to ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... had not seemed so unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if it were not there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged into the railway carriage ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little wagging tail; I miss the plaintive, pleading wail; I miss the wistful, loving glance; ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... a long time since I began to lie here. I am afraid it will be many months before I get well again. I think I shall resign myself to proper invalids' fashions. I will have some pretty lace caps, Laura, and we will have more books." Then a wistful expression crossed her face and she said: "I would give anything on earth to walk, even only for ten minutes, by the side of the river; as I lie here I think so much about it. I know it in all its moods—when the wind hurries it and the little wavelets dash along; when the tide is deep and the ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... so," he went on, his eyes now on watch for the bad seas and again looking wistful-like at me. "I'd like to lie where my wife and boy lie, she to one side and the lad to the other, and rise with them on Judgment Day. I've a notion, Simon, that with them to bear me up I'd stand afore the Lord with greater courage. ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... took on fire and beauty with the music and excitement. Might not a man seeing her there be disappointed when he met her as she really was? She studied her face intently, viewing it at different angles, judging it by the standards of her world. By these she found it wanting, and with a wistful sigh she stretched out her hand and turned ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... in mute penitence and wistful worship, she prostrated herself before their divinity, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the balm which she proffered, I take the cup from her now, that I to-day may completely recover. And do you mark the pledge with which, grateful, I drink to our peace!" It is an answer, this enigmatic pledge, to her wistful question: "What have you to say to me?" He cannot pass into silence, and leave her forever with her unmingled contempt for him. By broken intimations he flashes light upon the thing which his lips are interdicted from revealing. Charged with emotion, the words ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... susceptible to music. One afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself. She was startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round, she beheld a little white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and over, with shy ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Fred wanted me to ask if you had a large safety-pin." Marjorie looked a little wistful, as if she did not quite like ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... looked round, and seen the pretty curly red hair and the eager little wistful humorous face for the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... an interesting scene from the wild and wonderful in Nature. Its romantic luxuriance must win the attention of the artist, and the admiration of the less wistful beholder; while the philosophic mind, unaccustomed to vulgar wonder, may seek in its formation the cause of some of the most important changes of the earth's surface. Our esteemed friend and correspondent Vyvyan, is probably familiar with the locality of Lydford: his fancy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... not everybody who would look well in calico and lace; yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair—brown, I think—and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to stroke her, and make her pur as ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps |
