"Gaping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exertion kept us both from brooding over our own difficulties, yet in the long run it tended only to embitter and infuriate our minds. The frightful scenes of hopeless misery which we witnessed—the ever widening pit of pauperism and slavery, gaping for fresh victims day by day, as they dropped out of the fast lessening "honourable trade," into the ever-increasing miseries of sweating, piece-work, and starvation prices; the horrible certainty that the same process which was devouring our trade was slowly, but ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a profound sleep, and, from time to time, the young man trembled convulsively. He opened a gaping mouth, he muttered some unintelligible words, but ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... representative of an intelligent community should thus speak of that nation to which his own country is indebted for nearly every valuable institution she possesses; but when such ridiculous vituperation is received with shouts of applause from the gaping rowdies who throng around him, does it not clearly demonstrate the truth of my previous statements as to the effects which the celebration of the 4th of July, as now observed, may naturally lead to? I say, may lead to, because I would fain hope, for ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... on this occasion. From the ancient clerk (who kept a life-interest in what were now the duties of a choir) to some gaping farm-lads at my back, everybody said and sang to the utmost of his ability. I may add that Isaac and I involuntarily displayed a zeal which was in excess of our Sunday customs; and if my tongue moved glibly ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... contest about to occur. As he reared up on his hind legs, with his wings outspread, and his long scaly tail, with a huge red fork, extending far away behind him, his sharp claws wide open, each of the size of a large ship's anchor, his gaping mouth armed with double rows of huge teeth, between which appeared a fiery red tongue, and vast eyes blazing like burning coals, while his nostrils spouted forth fire, and the upper part of his body was covered with glittering green scales brighter than polished silver, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... was incomprehensible to me, who then knew foreign lands only as places which received tourists with open arms and hotels gaping for guests. He, on the other hand, found me quite as incomprehensible for, like many another Balkan man, he could conceive of no travel without ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... who that knows the modern man, with his small knowingness, and his utter incapacity for reverence, would doubt that were Mr. Edison actually to be the Columbus of the Unseen, it would soon be as overrun with gaping tourists as Switzerland, and that within a year railway companies would be ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... way with Scots peasants—caught some suspicious words as two unmistakable Covenanters passed him in the high street. If mischief was brewing for his master, it was his business to find it out and take a hand in the affair. He followed the pair as if he were a countryman gaping at the sights of the town and the stir of those days, when armed men passed on every side and the air was thick with rumors. When the Covenanters, after glancing round, plunged down a dark entry and into an obscure tavern, Grimond, after a pause, followed cautiously, assuming ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... part occupied; and "the cry is, still they come." Indeed many think the immigrants do not come quickly enough. Every ship brings a fresh batch; and the "new chums" may be readily known, as they assemble in knots at the corners of the streets, by their ruddy colour, their gaping ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... followed by showers of type, chair-legs, table-tops, and then, piece by piece, the battered cogs, wheels, and forms of a printing-press. The crowd made little noise. In fifteen minutes the house was a shell with gaping windows, surrounded with a pile of chaotic rubbish, and the men who had done the work quietly disappeared. Chad looked at the school-master for the first time: neither of them had uttered a word. The school-master's ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... after another, and in spite of her crooked turban I think they all grew frightened. Then she caught hold of me, and just whisked me behind her. Next she spied out Mrs. Hambledon, who had been asleep inside the coach, and now tumbled forth, yawning and gaping. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... my horse at once," remarked Agias, a little abruptly. "Time presses." And he turned on his heel, and leaving the boy gaping after him, went into the squalid ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the window over there, that screeches and becks and pats herself, all for showing off! And you, Hugo Gottfried, like a great oaf, thinking all the time how innocent and sweet and—oh, I have no patience with you!—to neglect and think nothing of—of Katrin Texel, and—and then to go gazing and gaping after a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... began pacing the little study. "You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... rouse yourself for her sake! She has no father, brother, or male relative to take direction of affairs in this awful crisis of her life. You, her betrothed husband, should do it—must do it! Rouse yourself at once. Look at this stupefied and gaping crowd of people! Do not be like one of them. Something must be done at once. Do WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE!" ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... ears, or nose, seems to have been a favourite method of criticism in the sixteenth century. One John Stubbs had his right hand cut off for protesting against the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou, which bold act he committed in his work entitled Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes by letting her Majestie see the sin and punishment thereof (1579). Hallam states that the book was far from being a libel on the Virgin Queen, but that it was written with ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... him: a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had thought him insane, like the others—had regarded his confession as the maundering of a maniac. The discovery froze Granice with horror—he seemed to see the mad-house gaping for him. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Domini's fingers and rolled upon the sand at the Diviner's feet. But though he had surely come to ask for alms, he took no heed of it. While the Arabs round him fell upon their knees and fought like animals for the plunder, he stood gaping at Domini. The smile still flickered about his lips. His hand was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... "I cannot stand gaping like a fool forever. An omen, by every god an omen! Ah! what am I to do?" He glanced toward the sky in vain hope of a lucky raven or eagle winging out of the east, but saw only blue and brightness. Then his eye went down the street, and at the glance the warm blood ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... momentary effect some tale of a great lord, once fabulously rich, who had not left himself the price of a halter or of a pauper's bed. And thus, for the sake of extorting a stare of wonderment from a mob of gaping readers, he did not scruple to give birth and currency to the grossest of legendary lies. The Duke's death happened a few months before Pope's birth. But the last of the Villiers family that wore a ducal coronet was ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... to a place of safety. Therefore the courtyard of this department store presented a unique appearance, filled with twenty or thirty Peking carts, empty, tilted back on their haunches, with shafts gaping toward heaven. Also, the horses had been removed from innumerable little coupes of ancient date, with the superstructure all of glass, so that the occupant within is completely visible from all sides, like a fish in an aquarium. Horses and mules, in gorgeous, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... nothing." The huntsmen, however, he left behind, to their great joy, for this wild boar had already so often hunted them, that they saw no fun in now hunting it. As soon as the boar perceived the Tailor, it ran at him with gaping mouth and glistening teeth, and tried to throw him down on the ground; but our flying hero sprang into a little chapel which stood near, and out again at a window, on the other side, in a moment. The boar ran after him, but he, skipping ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... is a great skirt of darkness, But human kindliness has torn it through, So that it shows ten thousand gaping rents ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... filled their inkhorns; the poets went without their dinners, either that they might buy paper and goose-quills or because they could not get anything to eat; Antiquity scowled sulkily out of its grave to see itself outdone, while even Posterity stood mute, gazing in gaping ecstasy of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the road towards Amiens, the ruins of the sugar refinery are very distinct. A sugar refinery is an affair of big iron receptacles and great flues and pipes and so forth, and iron does not go down under gun fire as stone or brick does. The whole fabric wars rust, bent and twisted, gaping with shell holes, that raggedest display of old iron, but it still kept its general shape, as a smashed, battered, and sunken ironclad might do at the bottom of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... foot of the gallows itself, and I escaped only by an alarm from the royal troops. Had they been a quarter of an hour later, I must have died. There was I placed in the midst of unfeeling men, and gaping women and children, as a monster to be cursed. When I would pray to God, my ears were insulted with the history of my crimes; and when, in all that multitude, I looked around for a single face that showed me any pity, I could find none—no, not even one; all cursed me as a wretch who would sell ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... aptitude to locomotion, than the callow nestlings of the dove, and of the wren. The parents of the former only find it necessary to shew them their food, and to teach them to take it up; whilst those of the latter are obliged for many days to obtrude it into their gaping mouths. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... dare not pronounce judgment. They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave, and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they show him the thief breaking open his doors, and the murderer stealthily watching his sleep. We confess we cannot understand how we can reconcile ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... a bein' o' this warld," observed Blackrod, gaping with alarm, for the stout keeper was easily assailable on the side of superstition; "an there is a mowdy air about him, that gies one the shivers to see. Ey've often heer'd say the Abbey is haanted; an that pale-feaced chap looks ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side. But even then I could only barely make out down there the shape ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... doctor stood still; so did Sary Jane, half risen from her chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... you ever been called upon to sing Pop Goes the Weasel in a falsetto voice before a fractious baby, a small but intensely critical child, a stolidly contemptuous nurse, an agitated mother and a gaping photographer, with the knowledge that success or failure hangs upon your lips, and that all the time a diabolical machine in the street below is scoring threepence against you every minute or so? Of course you haven't; but possibly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... behind Lord Hastings's back, and as he turned and pushed the wine to me, the incorrigible joker, catching sight of the handkerchief sticking out of my lord's coat-tail, quick as thought drew it open and emptied his full glass into the gaping pocket. A few minutes later Lord Hastings, who took snuff, discovered what had happened. He held the dripping cloth up for inspection, and with perfect urbanity deposited ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... began straightway an excited duet between her and the Dean; a comparison of old and new, a rivalry of heroines, a hot and critical debate that presently silenced all other conversation in the room, and brought Lord Grosville to stand gaping and astounded behind the Dean, reflecting no doubt that this was not precisely the Dean of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the same poor man As when he went to rest.— He hears the blast against his window beat, And wishes to himself he were a lord, That he might lie a-bed.— He rubs his eyes, and stretches out his arms; Heigh ho! heigh ho! he drawls with gaping mouth, Then most unwillingly creeps out of bed, And without looking-glass puts on his clothes. With rueful face he blows the smother'd fire, And lights his candle at the red'ning coal; First sees that all be right amongst his cattle, Then hies him to the barn with heavy tread, Printing his ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... question but that the explosion had given everyone a bad fright, that not an actress or actor but would have preferred to have been nearly anywhere else but under the heat of the glass roof, now a constant reminder of the accident because of the gaping hole directly above them. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... had the ambition of Bumpus got the better of his judgment, and he had endeavored to follow in the wake of the active member of the party; but always with disastrous results; so that for some time now he had taken it out in gaping, and wishing, and longing for the time to come when he could get rid of his surplus fat, so that he might ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... thought proper to send a ball through the suspected foliage which concealed that part of the cliff. Soon he redoubled his attack, when another ball having torn away the leafy screen, disclosed a gaping aperture ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... of the thickest wood A ramping Lyon rushed suddeinly, Hunting full greedy after salvage blood. Soone as the royall virgin he did spy, With gaping mouth at her ran greedily, To have att once devoured her tender corse; But to the pray when as he drew more ny, His bloody rage aswaged with remorse, And with the sight amazd, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... to strike Rob's defenceless hand, for Shaddy's keen knife-blade met it a couple of inches below the gaping jaws, cut clean through its scale-armed skin, and the head dropped among the lovely petals of the orchis, while the body, twisting and twining upon itself in a knot, went down through the bush and could be heard rustling and beating the leaves out ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... through the ranks, he counted the number of his soldiers. He had arrived yesterday at the bridge of St. Lawrence with nearly four hundred men; scarcely one-half of them were left now; the other half lay slain at the bridge of St. Lawrence, or, exhausted by the loss of blood and by the pains of gaping wounds, had sunk down on the road and been unable to continue ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... church are the oldest in Germany, and they won't let you in to see them at any price. This of itself is an attraction, for as a rule there is no spot so sacred, so old, or so queer in all Europe that you can't buy admission to it. But when I found the cloisters of the Convent Church closed to the gaping public, I thanked God and took courage. We found another spot in Salzburg where they allow only men to enter, but as we found plenty of those in Turkey, we paid no particular attention to the Franciscan Monastery for barring women, except that we ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... I did, except that we should have a gaping crowd round the gate, and the fire-brigade coming to see if we had a fire. So, if that's your inspiration, I'm inclined to agree with you that my waiting for it ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... thumbs, the clicking sound of moving wheels smote my ear, and the elephant head began slowly to raise itself and revolve backward on some concealed pivot, forming a gaping opening right across the body of the Ganapati. And, as the opening gradually widened, by some devilish contrivance the hammer of a gong concealed within the idol was set in motion, and there resulted a loud continuous clanging din that could have been heard at a far distance. Instinctively ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... Ireland, and I would place the whole patronage in the hands of the Crown. Now, I appeal to any human being, except Spencer Perceval, Esq., of the parish of Hampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown, and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from L100 a year at Sligo, to L300 in Tipperary? This ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... a short gun of a kind I have never seen before or since. Five times, one after another" (the Mugger must have met with an old-fashioned revolver); "and I stayed open-mouthed and gaping, my head in the smoke. Never did I see such a thing. Five times, as swiftly as I wave ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... trying to obtain a share of James's favour, as mere hypocrites who hated the King at heart. If they held themselves out as his friends, or he held himself out as theirs, James was not to believe it. He excused himself for 'casting sometimes a stone into the mouth of these gaping crabs' to prevent them from 'confessing their repugnance to be under his Majesty's sovereignty.' He hoped to be pardoned if from ancient 'private affection' he had the semblance of supporting Ralegh in particular, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... outside I got clear of the gaping crowd, but the chill of the night after that heated court pierced my very bones. I had on the clothes I had been taken in. It was June then, and now it was late in October. I remember that on the day when they caught me I wore my coat open ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... black. The accusers looked toward the gallery of the Bishop of Poitiers, but discovered no expression in his dull countenance. He was one of those old men of whom death appears to take possession ten years before all motion entirely ceases in them. His eyes seemed veiled by a half sleep; his gaping mouth mumbled a few vague and habitual words of prayer without meaning or application; the entire amount of intelligence he retained was the ability to distinguish the man who had most power, and him he obeyed, regardless at what price. He had accordingly signed the sentence of the doctors of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hang the baby's mattress out of the window, then get the wagon and take him for a little walk along the road. In front of the house, mind—where I can see you. Don't stand there, gaping! Then come in when I call you and help me cut ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... gaping youngster, "ye're discharged fur to-night. I'm doing yer job for the avening, but you git your wages just ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... your teeth. Soldiers, by gad, you turn my stomach to look at you. Win this war, when England sends out such samples as I have in my Brigade! Not likely! Now, sir, tell me what you don't know about this affair. Speak up, out with it. Don't be gaping at me like a fish. Spit ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... matron views in mortal fight Her husband falling in his country's right; Frantic through clashing swords she runs, she flies, As ghastly pale he groans, and faints and dies; Close to his breast she grovels on the ground, And bathes with floods of tears the gaping wound; She cries, she shrieks: the fierce insulting foe Relentless mocks her violence of woe: To chains condemn'd, as wildly she deplores; A widow, and a slave on ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... his horse, and straightway he proceeded to the bridge beyond the northern gate, and waited for Hseh P'an. A long while elapsed, however, before he espied Hseh P'an in the distance, hurrying along astride of a high steed, with gaping mouth, staring eyes, and his head, banging from side to side like a pedlar's drum. Without intermission, he glanced confusedly about, sometimes to the left, and sometimes to the right; but, as soon as he got where he had to pass ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... found the black maid gaping at her sleepily and wondering what invisible lover she was waving at. Mamise made no explanation, but went in, feeling a trifle foolish, but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... and seizing the animal by the bit he led horse and rider into a black, gaping fissure in one side of the canyon, that had hitherto escaped Redburn's notice. It was a large, narrow, subterranean passage, barely large enough to admit the horse and rider. Redburn soon was forced to dismount and bring up ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... small and slight as she was, she elbowed her way swiftly through the gaping crowd. "Oh, father!" And she flung her arms about him joyously, unconscious of the admiring eyes of the Adams Express man, and the telegraph operator, and old Harvey Reel, whose eyes were always admiring when girls ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... arrows foil'd, And from the plaited armor of his scales The glittering sword recoils. Where he reclines, Who is so daring as to rouse him up, With his cold, stony heart, and breath of flame? Or to the cavern of his gaping jaws Thick set with teeth, draw near? The Hand alone That made him ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... terrible sight met our eyes. The captain was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with an enormous wound in his throat, and his sword bayonet, that had been taken from his rifle, was sticking in the red, gaping wound. A few minutes afterward he died, without having been able to ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... suddenly breaking in upon her. "Please wait, Colonel Quinnox." He hesitated, his broad shoulders between her and the gaping crowd below. She saw with grateful heart that Yetive and Lorry were holding the steps as if against a warlike foe. "Is she—is she ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the gaping cow-punchers. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... are we Jews or Christians? See where she comes, amid a gaping crowd! And she a child. Oh, pitiful! pitiful! There's blood upon her clothes, her hands, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... as he ran, was just then the worst place in the world for a boy who wanted very much to go on living. Through its gaping doorway he saw a few odds and ends of food lying on the table, but he dared not stop long enough to get them. The Indians were thundering down to the corral, and as he rounded the cabin's corner he glanced back and saw the foremost riders whipping their horses on the trail of ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... stood open, its Gothic archway gaping wide and mysterious. Still with that nightmare dread upon her, she descended and passed into the old chapel ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the seam, and the closeness with which they clung to the leg. The waistcoat, on the other hand, had two characteristic signs which attracted attention; it had been pierced by three balls, which had the holes gaping, and these were stained a carmine, so like blood, that it might easily have been mistaken for it. On the left side was painted a bloody heart, the distinguishing sign of the Vendeans. Morgan examined the two articles with the closest attention, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and gentleman of estate kept great horses for a man at arms. Lords had their armories to furnish some hundreds of men. The halls of justices of the peace were dreadful to behold, the skreens were garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouth, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown bills, batterdashers, bucklers, and the modern colivers and petronils (in King Charles I.'s time) turned into muskets and pistols. Then were entails in fashion, (a good prop for monarchy). Destroying of manors began temp. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... and in exceeding conformity with the most received doctrines," returned the stranger, slightly gaping, either from want of rest the previous night, or from disinclination to so grave a subject; "but it hath little connexion with present duties. My charge beareth especial concern with the further destruction ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... press of gaping faces, Which seemed to swallow up his sound advice; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice; Some high, some low, the painter was so nice. The scalps of many, almost ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... throbbing glow, that, like the reflection of blue water on a sunlit ceiling, hovered and hung above the ugly shabbiness of the engines and trucks, the rails with scattered pieces of paper here and there, the iron arms that supported the vast glass roof, the hideous funnel that hung with its gaping mouth above the water-tank. The faint blue light was the spring evening—the spring evening that, encouraged by God knows what brave illusion, had penetrated even these desperate fastnesses. A little breeze accompanied it and the dirty pieces of ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... thing about it, except its beauty, upon our insect. The flower is large and tubular, and the bee to reach the honey must enter it; to see the bee almost disappear within the folds of the corolla, one would think that it was about being swallowed, when the hideous mouth was gaping to receive it; but unharmed, soon it emerges from the yellow prison, covered with dust; this is not brushed into pellets on its legs, like the pollen from some other flowers, but a part adheres to its back between the wings, which it is apparently ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... blackened handle, the heavy head of the hammer buried in the snow, and looked after his brother, who was walking along the road northward, toward the wood. Above this wood a sharp, orange red streak now seemed to slash through the monotony of the landscape like a gaping wound. The sun was sinking. The dark, still and motionless wood seemed to keep watch and ward over the young man's path, above this the flame colored band, against which the separate treetops were outlined as if a fret-saw had cut them out of the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... verse of the song, where Pille-Miche had begun it, she was entering the courtyard of her home; her tongue suddenly stiffened, she stood still, and a great cry, quickly repressed, came from her gaping lips. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of futile journalism or fleeting impression which are here collected are very like the wrecks and riven blocks that were piled in a heap round my imaginary priest of the sun. They are very like that grey and gaping head of stone that I found overgrown with the grass. Yet I will venture to make even of these trivial fragments the high boast that I am a medievalist and not a modern. That is, I really have a notion of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... these, a grim monster to my eyes, with bulging sides towering high above the water, and masts uplifting heavy spars far into the blue sky, rendered especially formidable by gaping muzzles of numerous black cannon visible through her open ports, floated just beyond the landing. I measured carefully the apparent distance between the flat roof of the sugar warehouse, against the corner of which ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... second or two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it. But presently they saw that it was a man laced-up in a jaguar skin, with teeth, claws, and tail complete, the face of the man peering out from between the gaping jaws. He was not only dancing vigorously, if indeed dancing it could be called, which consisted in leaping violently into the air and springing from side to side over a bundle, the nature of which the intruders ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... disturbers of a quiet soule, Sad, greedy, gaping, hungrie Canibals, That ioy to practise others miseries. Gentles, prepare your teare-bedecked eyes, To see two shewes of lamentation, Besprinckled every where with guiltlesse blood, Of harmlesse youth, and pretie ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... must be wearing thin. Hell's bells, do you have to stand there gaping like a moronic ninepin? I tell ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... the freighter's deck were bent over another cargo net, working at cases that evidently were heavy. Rick kept the camera on them, shooting steadily, rewinding when necessary. Then he shifted his view to the trawler. The men were standing over a gaping fish hatch. Evidently they were stowing the first load while the men on the ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... adjectives. Take an interest in the games of children; in the common round and daily task of servants and employes; in the toils and tears of working-girls; in the struggling lot of the charwoman who scrubs your floors, and the lad who cleans your boots. Do not be always gaping at the window for bands to come down the street; but be on the pavement before your house with a helping-hand and kindly word for the ordinary folk that labour and are heavy-laden. It is remarkable that in all these there are tragedies and comedies; the raw ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... you dirty little rascals. What can it be that sets you all a-gaping? Get home to your beds, get home, lazy rascals, Or you shall all ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... room and closed the door. The heavy six-shooter in his hand was at his hip, the long barrel horizontal, the big muzzle gaping forebodingly into Maison's face. There was a cold, mirthless grin on Sanderson's face, but it seemed to Maison that the grin was the wanton expression of ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... another had been knocked off his brilliant dream, one jet of flame upon another quenched. The single eye that fills the body full of light was a thing so rare that its possession woke suspicion. Even of money generously given, so little reached its object; gaping pockets and grasping fingers everywhere lined the way of safe delivery. It sickened him. So few, moreover, were willing to give without acknowledgment in at least one morning paper. 'Bring back the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the retreat were more horrible than ever: "The gallows gaping for us; and only this one opportunity, if even this!" thought the agitated Cossack to himself. Our poor friend Nissler had a sad tale to tell of them; [In Busching, Beitrage, i. 400, 401, account ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... therefore, were generally the overplus not desired in the harems of those who had captured them in war; and as the most beautiful brought the highest market-price, the public exhibitions of the poor unfortunates drew thither crowds of gaping people—some merely curious, some intent on business. Even in more modern days, the slave-markets of the East, and in the Southern States of the American Republic, have attracted crowds of spectators—some to condemn the horrible ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... grounds and an arable field so broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered, for a time, neither fit for the plough or safe for pasturage, till considerable labour and expense had been bestowed in levelling the surface and filling in the gaping fissures. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... graveyard stretching from the foot of the Swiss mountains to the margin of the North Sea. Here a charred and blackened mass of stones, which had once been a group of houses; there a cottage by the roadside, once sweet and pretty under its mantle of wild roses, now hideous with a gaping hole torn in its walls, and its little bed visible behind curtains that used to be white. And yet Nature was going on the same as ever—hardly giving a hint that the Great Death had passed that way. Our boys at the front wrote home that the leaves were beginning to show ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... words, and for a moment Freddy felt his heart sink within him. He looked at the broken walls, the gaping roof, the dying man, and his blood chilled at the thought of the long hours before any one could return to him. Standing at the door of the Old Light, his eyes followed Dan's sturdy figure leaping swiftly through the bramble bush, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... heart, if those cheeks were ever moistened with the drops of sacred pity, oh, hear me now! But I will address myself to the rocks. I will invoke the knotted oaks and the savage wolves of the forest. They will not refuse my cry, but Matilda is deaf as the winds, inexorable as the gaping wave. ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... even more disastrous to the tall hat. A man may mix up in a crowd and carry off an overdose of valley tan in a soft hat or a cap, but the silk hat will proclaim it upon the house-tops, and advertise it to a gaping, wondering world. It has a way of getting back on the rear elevation of the head, or over the bridge of the nose, or of hanging coquettishly on one ear, that says to the eagle-eyed ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... boiler and its accessories only a few shapeless fragments remained. The funnel had gone, the dome, the steam chest; there was nothing but torn plates, broken, twisted tubes, split cylinders, and loose connecting rods—gaping wounds ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... to be done to-day that I may augment the number of my suite, and by it impose upon the gaping multitude and the attending deputations?"—"Command," said De Segur, "all the officers of Your Majesty's staff, and of the staff of the Governor of Paris, General Murat, to surround Your Majesty's sacred person, and order them to accoutre ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... crew worked on the skin of the Platform itself. The plating curved in and there was a wide flat space parallel to the ground. There was also a great gaping hole beyond. Though girders rose roofward even yet, this was as high as the plating had gone. That opening—Joe guessed—would ultimately be the door of an air lock, and this flat surface was designed for a tender rocket to anchor to by magnets. When a rocket came up from Earth ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... principles upon which the Rawa men were accustomed to work; but as soon as he had parted with his kris, all the necessary conditions had been complied with. At a sign from their Chief, three of the Rawa men snatched up their guns, and a moment later Che' Jahya rolled over dead, with three gaping holes drilled through his body. There he lay, motionless, in an ever-widening pool of blood, on the very spot where, so few hours before, he had dreamed those dreams of power and greatness—dreams that had then soared so high, and now lay ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... parade yesterday. The man or woman who attempts to get pleasure out of sitting in a finer seat, or living in a finer house, or wearing finer duds than his neighbor, or even his enemy, will miss it, unless he is of a low order and taste. When I saw all them good folks gaping and staring at me like I was a comet with a tail, right there in the house of God, while a good man was teaching humility, and prayers, and songs was going up to the throne—I say, while all that was taking place I felt like a cheat and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... affirmatives and negatives did not seem to enter Count Ericson's head—his grammatical education having probably been neglected. He stood gaping at his prey as a tiger may be supposed to cast insinuating looks upon a lamb, and made every now and then an attempt to conceal either his awkwardness, or satisfaction, or both, in immense fits of laughter, which formed the accompaniment of all the remarks—and they were nearly as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... wall, Manned without an interval! Round and round, and tier on tier, Cannon's black mouth, shining spear, 30 Lit match, bell-mouthed Musquetoon, Gaping to be murderous soon; All the warlike gear of old, Mixed with what we now behold, In this strife 'twixt old and new, Gather like a locusts' crew. Shade of Remus! 'tis a time Awful as thy brother's crime! Christians war against Christ's shrine:— Must ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... a window in my school-house in the glen of Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to the waterspout that suspends its "tangles" of ice over a gaping tank, and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... target fine, But their bold fronts to chance of war expose, And gainst those towers let their virtue shine, The scaling ladders up to skies arose, The ground-works deep some closely undermine, The walls before the Frenchmen shrink and shake, And gaping ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... looked at the two little girls, covered with snow, their faces flaming with excitement, and at the black hole gaping behind them. "I always TOLD Father we ought to put a fence around that pit," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Some day a sheep's going to fall down there. Shep came along to the house without you, and we thought most likely ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... have understood and hated. It acted powerfully upon Beauty Stanton. Neale believed she was importuning him. To him her look, whisper, touch had meant only the same as to these coarse human animals gaping and grinning as they listened. The sweetest and best and most exalted moment she had ever known was being made bitter as gall, sickening, hateful. She must speak openly, she must make ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey |
