"Vacant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... actor, whose life I may be said to have strangely influenced, for it was I who brought him and the Arcadia Mixture together. After that his coming to live on our stair was only a matter of rooms being vacant. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... a normal condition, and the swelling will probably be confined to both the inside and outside of the leg, and may be felt in the form of a puffy swelling on each side of the fetlock by placing the fore finger and the thumb on the joint. In more serious cases resulting from sprains, the vacant space between the back tendons and the suspensory ligament may also become filled with fluids. In other words, a Wind Gall has formed. In some cases the ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... frankly confessed that he had done all in his power for the boy, but that he was discouraged, and added: "Only yesterday, madam, Robert pertinaciously declared to me that his head was so full of original notions that there was no vacant chamber to store away the contents of any dusty books." The lad was only ten years of age at the time, and, as may be supposed, the good Quaker who directed his education was not a little dismayed ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... prisoner had reached the vacant lot in front of the store it appeared as if every man, woman, and child in the village were ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... he was out of her sight. They nicknamed him her "Paalangi dog," and would whistle to him derisively and shout, "Come 'ere!" secure in the chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all. When he answered, as he always answered, "Eh, what?" and raised his vacant, moody face, there would be an outburst of laughter, in which he himself joined with a mirthless geniality, like a man unbending to a lot of children. If a shell went off some one was sure to cry, "Eh, what?" and this ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... his thoughts kept drifting back to the great city, although he told himself that it wouldn't do. He gazed at the peaceful, spreading landscape, but his eyes were vacant and he saw nothing. The roar of the streets was in his ears. Suddenly his reverie was broken by a voice ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... that once arrayed him, The charm Admitto te ad gradum, With touch of parchment can refine, And make the veriest coxcomb shine, Confer the gift of tongues at once, And fill with sense the vacant dunce. Trumbull's Progress of Dullness, Ed. 1794, Exeter, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of jack-screws, that they were soon packed together in one homogeneous mass—so tightly squeezed that not even a cockroach could have crawled in between them, not a single crack or cranny being left vacant. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... prefixed to 'Poetical Exercises of a Vacant Hour' by King James VI of Scotland, 1591; twenty-three sonnets in Gabriel Harvey's 'Four Letters and certain Sonnets touching Robert Greene' (1592), including Edmund Spenser's fine sonnet of compliment addressed to Harvey; a series of sonnets to ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... The person who says 'Suffer me first' is usually hoodwinking conscience, and covering over, if not a determination not to do, at least a reluctance to determine to do, the postponed duty. And although we may think ourselves quite resolved in spirit, and only needing the fitting vacant space to show that we are ready to act, in the majority of cases the man who says 'Suffer me first' means, though he often does not know it, 'I do not think I will do it, after all, even then.' Now there are a great many good people who, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to its aid.... Heed me now right well. It pains me to think of Constantinople without inhabitants or commerce, its splendors decaying, its palaces given over to owls, its harbor void of ships, its churches vacant except of spiders, its hills desolations to eyes afar on the sea. If it become not once more the capital city of Europe and Asia, some one shall have defeated the will of God; and I cannot endure that guilt or the thought of it. 'Sins are many in kind and degree, differing ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... There was a small vacant room on the ground-floor of the Tower—into this the captain conducted Peter, and told him that he must consider himself a prisoner there till the smugglers were captured or driven out of the country, and it was safe for him again to go out by himself. He promised him, however, that ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... immediately he had saved that country from war, arriving in England on October 21, 1880. From then till about the end of the following April he spent on leave. During this month the post of officer commanding Royal Engineers at the Mauritius fell vacant, and two officers to whom the command was offered retired rather than go to Mauritius. Sir Howard Elphinstone was then offered the command, and would also probably have retired, but Colonel Gordon offered to go for him, and refused any money on account of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... generation. If other things had not intervened, like his father, he might have spent his life as a successful country pastor. But his father died January 5, 1813. The authorities refused to confirm Grundtvig in the vacant charge, and he and his mother, shortly afterward, were compelled to leave the parsonage that had been their home for more than forty years. His mother settled in Prastoe, a small city a few miles from Udby, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... nevermore Be what it was before. No one shall take your place. No other face Can fill that empty frame. There is no answer when we call your name. We cannot hear your step upon the stair. We turn to speak and find a vacant chair. Something is broken which we cannot mend. God has done more than take away a friend In taking you; for all that we have left Is bruised and irremediably bereft. There is none like you. Yet not that alone Do we bemoan; But this; that you were greater than the rest, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... machinery went on running smoothly; the dinner-table still reflected in its rich surface the lights of candles, the sheen of silver, the pallor of flowers. Nothing was neglected, everything was beautiful and exact, and Susan had carefully arranged the chairs so that the vacant space ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... occupied with the present that she was oblivious to the future. On her return she made several valuable suggestions for the development of the work in the various places, such as that the chapel in one city be moved to a more central location, that a vacant piece of property belonging to the mission would be an excellent site for a day school for girls, etc. "There ought to be a school in Whang Mai as a centre for women to work in," her report reads. "There are many women in that city who are friendly to the church.... ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... sat sometimes very still, with a bright, vacant face, Anna could see the suffering among the brightness. He was aware of some limit to himself, of something unformed in his very being, of some buds which were not ripe in him, some folded centres of darkness which ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... this rebuke in silence, gazing soberly at the empty sky. Soon the young girl's eyes stole up to his face. If he had been looking at anything in particular, I think she would have followed the direction of his glance; but as it seemed to be a very vacant one, she let her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... I should try. But you mustn't hurry me. There is a vacant corner in that davenport beyond the piano: please put me there and fetch me an ice. I'll ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... great statues with crowns and sceptres, but a niche over the central portal was empty and this the Prince Bishop intended to fill with a statue of himself. It was to be a very small simple statue, as became one who prized lowliness of heart, but as he looked up at the vacant place it gave him pleasure to think that hundreds of years after he was dead people would pause before his effigy and praise him and his work. And this, ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... surprising incident now occurred. There were eight vacant seats on the platform, and the girl's glance swept them all; he fancied it rested longest upon the chair beside him. Then, with the faintest possible little moue of disapproval, she seated herself beside the Japanese. The other man took the seat ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the winter I received an additional mark of the goodness of M. de Malesherbes of which I was very sensible, although I did not think proper to take advantage of it. A place was vacant in the 'Journal des Savans'. Margency wrote to me, proposing to me the place, as from himself. But I easily perceived from the manner of the letter that he was dictated to and authorized; he afterwards told me he had ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... wondering how he had missed her in the turn about the deck, and how she could have ensconced herself so snugly during his brief evacuation of the spot. Suddenly it occurred to him that she had returned to the chair only after discovering that his was vacant. It wasn't a very ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of eighteen. He was a universal favorite throughout the squadron. In the battles with the guerillas at Greeltop and Plain Hill, Deck had greatly distinguished himself. In the first of these actions, Lieutenant Gilder of the first company had been killed, and his place was vacant. Among themselves the company signed a paper in favor of the promotion of Deck to the grade ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... public scandal, not only before harvest, as they say, but even before the seed has been fairly sown. Such a state of affairs manifestly discourages the most enterprising, and it is quite rare that Madame de Breuilly has not two vacant seats on her right and on her left, despite her nonchalant grace, despite her great creole eyes, and despite her plaintive and beseeching looks, that seem to be ever saying: "Mon Dieu! will no one lead ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... with hasty steps in the direction of the huts. By a singular coincidence they were all vacant, the ivy wreath was displayed on none, and the prince could enter and convince himself that no one was within. He had visited twenty-three of the huts without finding the object of his search. "I will go to the last one," said the prince, gayly; "perhaps the gods have ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... up stairs into a large room, where there were a number of small beds, with a pale little face lying on every pillow. There was a vacant cot at the end, and he was laid upon it, after having his tattered clothes taken off him. His new boots were gone altogether, having been left behind on the steps of the warehouse. His hands and knees, bruised with crawling along the frosty stones, ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... well under way, he sucked and puffed and whiffed in an apparently vacant stupor, his legs crossed, and his eyes fixed on a projecting coal between the lower bars, as if intent on watching the alternations of flame and gas; though in reality he was running all the circumstances through his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to be shifted round," Miss Castlevaine observed. "I came up in the second car, Dr. Dudley's; but Mrs. Winslow Teed has my seat—I was in front with the chauffeur. So I took the first vacant place ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... were the throne vacant, but she could not succeed. The people would never accept her. In two days will you do me the honor of accompanying me to Court, as her ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... to the edge of the earth. Soon after you leave this place, you will hear a deafening sound: it is the sky descending on the edge, but it keeps moving up and down; you will watch, and when it moves up, you will see a vacant space between it and the earth. You must not be afraid. A chasm of awful depth is there, which separates the unknown from this earth, and a veil of darkness conceals it. Fear not. You must leap through; and if you succeed, you will find yourselves on a beautiful plain, and in a soft ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... suffering and misery cannot be alleviated by financial consideration, and humanity stands helpless in the face of death and destruction. At the fireside of practically every home in Christendom, there is a vacant chair, made so by war. For every vacant chair there was a ruined hearthstone; for every hearthstone there was a sorrowing widow; and for every widow there is a fatherless child. For every penny spent for war there is a sigh of grief; for every shilling there is a tear of sorrow; ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... a bird's wings, thrilled her with an exquisite pleasure; in her ascent towards cloudland she imagined herself on her way to heaven. But it always ended in some mishap. On one occasion she had been found clinging to the ropes of the swing in a swoon, her large eyes wide open, fixed in a vacant stare; at another time she had fallen to the ground, stiff, like a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 1056. Vacant conscientiae carnificina, nec pudefiunt, nec verentur, nec dilacerantur millibus curarum, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in the barber's window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly polished boots, his rusty, ...
— The American • Henry James
... and officers with titles and pecuniary grants, and in 1369, the first year of his reign after the capture of Pekin, he erected a temple or hall in that city in honor of the generals who had been slain, while vacant places were left for the statues of those generals who still held command. But while he rewarded his army, Hongwou very carefully avoided giving his government a military character, knowing that the Chinese resent ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the proposal in the leading English literary weekly, that the Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be conferred upon Mrs. Browning: though both rejoiced when they learned that the honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently admired as Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid to England, not one very much looked forward to by Mrs. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... She remembered that she did not want to go to a theatre, and warmly pressed the two men to go together and leave her to go home. The skipper remonstrated in vain, but the cook came to the rescue, and Miss Jewell, still protesting, was pushed on to a 'bus and propelled upstairs. She took a vacant seat in front, and the skipper and Mr. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... He had sought Peter in vain at the town-hall, and hoped to find him at home. One of the messengers sent to the Prince had returned from Dortrecht with a letter, which conferred on Dousa the office made vacant by Allertssohn's death. He was to command not only the city-guard, but all the armed force. He had accepted the appointment with cheerful alacrity, and requested ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... longer. Overhead there was a wonderful carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed, during all the time I was in that country the larks did not desert me. The air was alive with them from High Wycombe to Tring; and as, day after day, their 'shrill delight' fell upon me out of the vacant sky, they began to take such a prominence over other conditions, and form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that I could have baptized it 'The Country of Larks.' This, of course, might just ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he composed a skit purporting to be a Protest entered on the Journals of the Lords by the Bishop of Worcester, and signed it "Sydney Vigorn."[104] The Bishop of Worcester[105] died on the 5th of September 1831, and Lord Grey gave the vacant mitre to a Tory.[106] Sydney's emotions are not recorded; but on the 10th of September Lord Grey offered him a Residentiary Canonry of St. Paul's—"a snug thing, let me tell you, being worth full L2000 a year." It ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of garden chairs to where she saw a vacant one near Myra. She was greeted with delight, but hurriedly, by the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... on his brain, poor fellow," said that gentleman one day, when the patient was able to walk about, apparently nearly well, but his mind quite vacant. He talked, but the ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... they bound themselves, in the event of the fall of the Romanoff Dynasty and the Arch-Ducal oligarchy—which all Europe would be very glad to see the last of—to support Prince Zastrow as elective candidate for the vacant throne. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... when he made this challenge, for circumstances had changed sufficiently to justify any change of opinion. The plans of the Confederates were disarranged by the death of the Emperor, and the accession of his brother, the Archduke Charles, to the vacant crown. To give the crown of Spain in these new circumstances to the Archduke, as had been the object of the Allies when they began the war, would have been as dangerous to the balance of power as to let Spain pass to Louis's grandson, Philip of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... fascinated by the heroes at the head of the table, sat steadily on, sidling up towards them as the intermediate places became vacant, and at last attained the next chair but one to the Captain, where for the time he sat in perfect bliss. Blake and Miller were telling boating stories of the Henley and Thames regattas, the latter of which had been lately started with great eclat; and from these great yearly events, and the deeds ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... years, doubtless, Rochefoucauld's recollection of his disappointment led him to write the maxim: "We promise according to our hopes, we perform according to our fears." But he was not even to receive promises; he asked for the Governorship of Havre, which was then vacant. He was flatly refused. Disappointment gave rise to anger, and uniting with his old flame, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who had received the same treatment, and with the Duke of Beaufort, they formed a conspiracy against the government. The plot was, of course, discovered and crushed. Beaufort ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... British Lion within the man. It was evident in a moment that I had put my case in a new aspect to him. He would talk with the "missus;" he withdrew into the back kitchen, a short conference ensued, and both came out together and informed me that they had found a bed, unexpectedly vacant, for my accommodation. And they would get up some tea and bread and butter for me, too. Capital! A sentiment of national pride stole in between every two feelings of common satisfaction at this result. The thought would come in and whisper, not for your importunity as a common fellow ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... are often changed by adding fictitious or fraudulent entries in such spaces as may have been left between the regular entries or at the bottom of the pages where there is a vacant space. Where such entries are suspected, there should be at first a careful inspection of the writing as to its general harmony with that which precedes and follows, as to its size, slope, spacing, ink, and pen used, and ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... esaminato di nuovo il manoscritto Vaticano". This has since been done by D. KNAPP of Tubingen, and his accurate copy has been published by H. LUDWIG, the painter. The passage in question occurs in his edition as No. 833; and there also the drawings are wanting. The space for them has been left vacant, but in the Vatican copy 'niente' has been written on the margin; and in it, as well as in LUDWIG'S and MANZI'S edition, the text is mutilated.] four modes of growing one above another. The first, which is the most general, is that the sixth always originates over the sixth below ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair—"I daresay it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... time she had yet shown any tendency, so far as I had seen, to be interested in anything, or to talk to me. I seized the occasion, and gave her, as well as I could, the sad and pretty picture that remained, and always will, in the vacant air, when I think of her, on ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... after-dinner smoke. Farther down were Grace and Veath. Suddenly turning in their direction, Hugh perceived that they were not there; nor were they anywhere in sight. He was pondering over their whereabouts, his eyes still on the vacant chairs, when a voice tender and musical assailed his ears—a voice which he had heard ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... rose to her feet at once; her heart rising too almost with pleasure to the thrill of a new event. She hurried out to open the door of a large vacant room on the ground floor. "What was Lord Markland doing here?" she said. "He ought to have reached home ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... to wait. The time seemed long in that large vacant house, that sunburnt secluded garden, that glaring silent court. Bessie spent hours in the church. It was cool there, and close by if her summons came. The good cure saw her often, and took no notice. She was not devout. She was too facile, too philosophical of temper to have violent ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... news leaked out that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern was the officially accepted candidate for the throne of Spain, left vacant since the revolution which drove Queen Isabella into exile in 1868[23]. At once a thrill of rage shot through France; and the Duc de Gramont, Foreign Minister of the new Ollivier Ministry, gave expression to the prevailing ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... inside; but was exceedingly careful not to push any flakes, or part of the ceiling, down into the floor below. The attention I paid to this was very exact, for it was of the utmost consequence. Nor was I less accurate in pressing together the rubbish I scraped away into vacant corners between the joints, and leaving no traces ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... state: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952), represented by governor general Sir Paulius MATANE (since 29 June 2004) head of government: Prime Minister Sir Michael SOMARE (since 2 August 2002); deputy prime minister (vacant) cabinet: National Executive Council appointed by the governor general on the recommendation of the prime minister elections: none; the monarch is hereditary; governor general appointed by the National Executive Council; ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the medical profession of the town, they instituted a series of prosecutions against parents who refused to comply with the Vaccination Acts. Unluckily for the Conservative party, these prosecutions, which aroused the most bitter feelings, were still going on when the seat fell vacant; hence from an electoral point of view the question became one of ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... in the region on the south side of the Blackwater River and in Pamunkey Neck had requested in 1688 that colonists be allowed to settle across the boundary line in the area now made vacant by the gradual dying out of their tribes. The basis for the request seems to have been a desire for relief in their precarious economic condition and the fear of invasion by hostile Indians, whom they regarded with more apprehension than they did the English. By 1705, the colony, ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... attention became more and more fixed upon the Judge's stare. It did not seem to be a vacant gaze; on the contrary, it seemed to contain something. It seemed not only fixed; it seemed fixed on some object. It looked past me, behind me, and there, with all its terror and all its intelligence, it rested, motionless. It seemed to refute the notion that dead men cannot see; ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... only teaching him to read but to write. In a few weeks young Nicholas could do both in a very creditable manner. Having thus gained the knowledge he desired, dressed in a decent suit of clothes, he went round to various offices in Liverpool offering to fill any vacant situation for which he might be considered fit. Although he met with numerous rebuffs, he persevered, and was finally taken into the small counting-house of which Mr Peter Crank's father was the head. To the firm, through all its various changes, he had remained attached, and ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... overgrown fellow of nineteen, with a vacant face and an ever-running tongue. He now stood stock still upon the approach of Walter Skinner and gazed at him. He would have done the same if any creature possessed of the power of locomotion had come into his view. But of that Walter ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... properties, each face containing an altar to a Lar,—the presiding spirit of that allotment, or rather perhaps of the whole of the land of the familia, including that on which the house stood.[159] Thus the Lar fills a place in the private worship which would otherwise be vacant, that of the holding and its productive power. In this sense, too, we find the Lares in the hymn of the Arval Brethren, one of the oldest fragments of Latin we possess; for the spirits of the land would naturally be invoked in ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of the "antis" were conspicuously vacant. As the Speaker had not asked for a reconsideration, Mr. Riddick moved to call from the Journal the motion to reconsider. Speaker Walker ruled this out of order, giving among other reasons that Judge E. F. Langford of the Chancery Court had granted a temporary injunction restraining ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the corner; his gaunt, emaciated body shivered convulsively. In a few moments he took from his pocketbook a tiny silken bow in the Norwegian colours and began to tear it to pieces. He sat there quietly and plucked the threads apart. When he had finished he stared at the shreds with a fixed, vacant stare. The engine gave a hoarse blast; the train started. Coldevin opened the window slowly and emptied his hand. And the tiny bits of red and blue whirled away behind the train, fluttered and sank to the gravel, to be ground in the dust beneath ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... newer—for him better—land to which he has emigrated. He, even in Ireland, can now get eight and nine shillings a-week easier and with more constancy than he could get four some fifteen years since. But the other man has gone, and his place is left happily vacant. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... acclamations stifled the voice of sober criticism. In the realm of contemporary English prose he has left no adequate successor; [Footnote: The nearest being the now foremost prose writers of our time, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude.] the throne that does not pass by primogeniture is vacant, and the bleak northern skies seem colder and grayer since that venerable head was laid to rest by the village churchyard, far from the smoke and din of the great city on whose streets his figure was long familiar and his name was at ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... of the deceased have according to custom submitted to her charge a parcel made up of different cloths ornamented with bead-work and eagles' feathers which she is charged to keep by her side—the place made vacant by the demise of her husband—a reminder of her widowhood. She is therefore for a term of twelve moons not permitted to wear any finery, neither is she permitted to slicken up and comb her head; this to avoid attracting attention. Once in a while a female ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... working mood is on or off Mick. I believe his favourite relaxation of an evening, when he stays at home, is to discover in the wood embers the treasures which would have fallen to him if his love for his mother hadn't kept him from expatriating himself. The Hon. Miss Ellersby's vacant gate-lodge has been filled up by Kitty Keegan, who is Mrs. Sheehy's special aversion out ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... spell; and at that instant I saw one of the enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly appeared—whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... keeping the rabble out, passed the ladies in before the procession had appeared in the old Rue Conde. But now here it came, its music swelling, the crowd—shabbier than last month and more vacant of face—parting before it. Carrying their sabres, but on foot and without their pieces, heading the column as escort of honor, lo, Kincaid's Battery; rearmost the Chasseurs, masses and masses of them; and in between, a silver crucifix ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... There was a vacant chair at his left. Very shortly, without turning his eyes, he was made aware of the proximity of a woman, young, evidently a continental, from ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... king of the Franks, was the last king of the Merovingian dynasty. The throne had been vacant for seven years when the mayors of the palace, Carloman and Pippin the Short, decided in 743 to recognize Childeric as king. We cannot say whose son he was, or what bonds bound him to the Merovingian family. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... friends, who were desirous of setting him at length free from that indigence by which he had been hitherto oppressed; and, therefore, solicited sir Robert Walpole in his favour with so much earnestness, that they obtained a promise of the next place that should become vacant, not exceeding two hundred pounds a year. This promise was made with an uncommon declaration, "that it was not the promise of a minister to a petitioner, but of a friend to his friend." Mr. Savage now concluded himself set at ease for ever, and, as he observes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... not seen the last of the Captain, as it happened. Five minutes later she caught sight of him sauntering about near the entrance with a vacant eye and a restless manner. Simultaneously there approached her corner a short, enormously fat, overdressed woman, barging aggressively ahead towards the vacant table, her huge bosom well in advance like the prow of a ship. As the swarthy face drew ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... representations of our government. Mahtabar Singh, a nephew of the former prime minister, Bheem Singh Thapa, had meantime ingratiated himself with the Ranee (Queen), and through her influence succeeded in getting himself appointed to the vacant post of premier—when, as was to be expected, his first act was to decapitate his predecessor, and as many of the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... made against the clerk. If he should find these charges proved he may suspend or remove the offender from his office, and give a certificate under his hand and seal to the incumbent, declaring the office vacant, which certificate should be affixed to the door of the church. Then another person may be elected or appointed to the vacant office: "Provided always, that the exercise of such office by a sufficient deputy who shall duly and faithfully perform the duties thereof, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... call this," said Vane to himself, as he watched the spot where the lad had disappeared; and then he turned sharply round to question the one who was following him, but, to his astonishment, he found that the lane behind him was vacant. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Genseric's son and successor, Hunnerich, who reigned from 477 to 484, was at first milder. He had married Eudoxia, elder daughter of Valentinian III. The emperor Zeno had specially recommended to him the African Catholics. He allowed them to meet again, and, after the see of Carthage had been vacant twenty-four years, to have a new bishop. So the brave confessor Eugenius was chosen in 479. But this favour was followed by a much severer persecution. Eugenius, accused by the bitter Arian bishop Cyrila, was severely ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... waiting for some Arabian romance to be unfolded to him, with parted lips and a vacant smile ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... John III. in 573, Rome was so closely pressed that it was impossible to send to Constantinople for the confirmation of Benedict I., who had been elected his successor, and the papal throne remained vacant for one year. The same appears to have been the case on the death of Benedict, in 578, when Rome was held in siege by Zoto, duke of Beneventum, for the Lombard power had been distributed among thirty-six duchies. The particulars of this siege are unknown, but it probably ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... effects of her fall too severely to be able to go any further just then, and it was agreed that she should be left there while Mrs. Loveday and Molly went on for assistance, the elder lady deeming Molly too young and vacant- minded to be trusted to go alone. Molly suggested taking the horse, as the distance might be great, each of them sitting alternately on his back while the other led him by the head. This they did, Anne watching them vanish down ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... was strongly felt by stepfather and stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a reformer; the superiority of his proposed lamp and reflectors over open fires of coal secured his appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to the task than the interest of that employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he was to act, and where all had yet to be created—the greatness of the difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him—would rouse a man of his disposition like a call to battle. The lad introduced by marriage under his roof was of ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marvellous construction in its entirety," besides the economy of wax that results from the disposition of the cells, and the fact that this arrangement allows the bees to fill the comb without leaving a single spot vacant, there are other advantages also with respect to the solidity of the work. The angle at the base of each cell, the apex of the pyramidal cavity, is buttressed by the ridge formed by two faces of the hexagon of another ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... quite another creature when, armed with a paddle of her own carving, she knelt at the head of the canoe and sent it flying over the water; then her dark eyes, often so vacant and glassy, sparkled with delight, and her teeth gleamed with ivory whiteness as her face broke into smiles ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... him. The trifling inconveniences of the mode of life are as nothing compared with its satisfactions. The worm that never dies is dead in him. The great mystery of consciousness and of effort is quietly dissolved into the vacant happiness of sensation,—not base sensation, but the sensation of the dawn and the sunset, of the mart and the theatre, and the stars, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... amusement of that corrupt society. And then suddenly her brother's dreadful love seems to have turned to hate and she is a fugitive again with her two children at the court of her nephew Theodosius II. at Constantinople. In the very year of her flight Honorius died and the throne of the West was vacant. ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... became monks.(20) It has been handed down, that, near the time when these things occurred, around the Jetavana vihara there were ninety-eight monasteries, in all of which there were monks residing, excepting only in one place which was vacant. In this Middle Kingdom(21) there are ninety-six(21) sorts of views, erroneous and different from our system, all of which recognise this world and the future world(22) (and the connexion between them). Each had its multitude of followers, and they all beg their food: only they do not carry ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... from her plastic mind,—Miss Macnulty could discuss the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie, finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the "Faery Queen;" but the "Faery Queen" fared even worse than "Queen Mab;"—and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For poor Macnulty, if she could only be left alone, this was well enough. To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to stand shipping; so he come down to Red Gap and started to work. He couldn't get round with his machines yet; so he got a new Home Queen and parked himself in the doorway of a vacant store and made embroidered hat marks for the multitude at one dollar a throw. Yes, sir; he congested traffic there on Fourth Street for about two weeks, taking a strip of satin ribbon and embroidering people's initials on it, so they ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... archbishop then possessed, in addition to the usual sources of ecclesiastical income, a peculiar privilege, entitled the right of Deport; by virtue of which, he claimed the receipt of the first year's proceeds of every benefice which might become vacant in his diocese, whether by the resignation or death ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Latrobe. Kennedy, I shall put you next to Poe's vacant chair—he knows and loves you best. Seymour, will you and Richard take your places alongside of Pancoast, and Harry, will you please sit opposite ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the leafy ground to rest. The Osages breathed more freely, and advanced with less caution, until at length, when within half-a-dozen yards, they rose, gave the terrific war-whoop, and leaped madly upon the camp. It was vacant—their victims had escaped. The friends, amazed, were about to fly from their dangerous proximity to the light, when three ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... was at his post. He had put on his vacant, half-servile manner and soft voice, and he drew Thuillier at once ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... sister Thy place is vacant in this lonely hall, Where shines the river through the "Jeannie Vista," While twilight shadows lengthen on the wall: Our spirits falter at the close of day, And ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... with his eyes dull with the loss of reason, but the text had sunk into his soul—it had burned down deep. Oh, may the Spirit of God burn the text into your hearts to-night. When I got home again my mother told me he was in her house, and I went to see him. I found him in a rocking chair, with that vacant, idiotic look upon him. Whenever he saw me he pointed at me and said: "Young man, seek first the kingdom of God." Reason was gone, but the text was there. Last month when I was laying my brother down in his grave I could not help thinking ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... vanity in the wife: which, with a table, a chest, a few stools, and an iron pot, complete the catalogue of conveniences generally found as belonging to the cabin: while a spinning-wheel, furnished by the Linen Board, and a loom, ornament vacant spaces that otherwise would remain unfurnished. In fitting up the latter, which cannot on any occasion or by any display add a feather to the weight or importance expected to be excited by the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the group of gossips, and a man stepped inside and took the only vacant seat near the fire. He glanced at none, but stretched out his hands to the heat, looking at the coals ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... big dark dining-room, panelled to the ceiling with redwood, and hung with the progenitors of the haughty house of Yorba, the gliding Chinese servants, the eight stiff miserable little girls, with their starched white frocks, crimped hair, and vacant glances, oppressed even that indomitable spirit. On one awful occasion when even Helena's courage had failed her, and she was eating rapidly and nervously, the children with one accord burst into wild hysterical ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... light when the drapery of situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade, dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the vacant eye which plainly tells us that there ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... wind came to him it took shape in a furious soliloquy, addressed to the vacant space about. "Devil take the day!" he grunted, pressing his hands to his lean sides as if he were trying to squeeze back the breath into his jaded body. "The sun rides as sky-high as the King's pride, and the air blazes as dog-hot as the King's choler. I have climbed ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Milly, setting down the glass, while Barret seated himself on a vacant flower-pot-stand beside her, "that this conservatory is a favourite haunt of mine, to which, before my accident, I have resorted every morning since I came here, in order to sit with Uncle Allan. The doctor ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sleeper stirred, frowned, and started up with a bitter imprecation upon his lips that ended in a vacant stare. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... mischiefs." The "rebelling," of which he here speaks, (though it never, I believe, proceeded to any act of violence,) took place on the retirement of Dr. Drury from his situation as head master, when three candidates for the vacant chair presented themselves,—Mark Drury, Evans, and Butler. On the first movement to which this contest gave rise in the school, young Wildman was at the head of the party for Mark Drury, while Byron at first held himself aloof from any. Anxious, however, to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... into the tree again, as high as before. Then the stoning began anew. For my part I pitied the fellow sincerely, and wished him well out of the hands of his tormentors; but I found myself laughing with the rest to see him turn his head and stare, with his big, vacant eyes, after a stone which had just whizzed by his ear. Everybody that came along stopped for a few minutes to witness the sport, and Beacon Street filled up with carriages till it looked as if some holiday procession were halted in front of the State House. I left the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... that all the city must be there. But those who, hurrying to the scene, had occasion to pass near the Vigilante headquarters found the vacant square guarded on all sides by a triple line of armed men. The side streets, also, were filled with them. They stood in exact alignment, rigid, bayonets fixed, their eyes straight ahead. Three thousand of them were there. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White |
