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Whimsically   /wˈɪmzɪkli/  /hwˈɪmzɪkli/   Listen
Whimsically

adverb
1.
In a fanciful manner.  Synonym: fancifully.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Whimsically" Quotes from Famous Books



... knew you two, I'd be mighty proud of both of you," the scientist said whimsically. "You for the job you did with Gee-Gee last night, and Scotty for pulling that ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... latitude 9 degrees 4' north, when the Nautilus returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of mountains about 2,000 feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted. After our position fix, I reentered the lounge, and when our bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... always see plenty of game when you haven't got a gun; and so I guess we'll run across all sorts of things, from bobcats to alligators!" Paul went on to remark, whimsically, but there was one scout who chose to take his words seriously, and this ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... moment, his face rigidly set, inscrutable to my glance. Then he relaxed into one of those whimsically appealing smiles that somehow are acutely eloquent of pathos. 'Serious parts—with this low-comedy face of mine!' he responded. And my query had been answered. Yet he went on, 'No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... Beatrice opened her big eyes at him. "That," she declared whimsically, "is the top of the world, and it is mine. I found it. I want to go up ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... fatal to his country,—measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are forever incurable. He made an administration so checkered and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement without cement,—here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white, patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans, Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies,—that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... news he seemed to think less of the distinction conferred upon him than of the unhappiness of being once more banished from his home. "It is hard—very hard," he murmured, half to himself; "yet," he added, whimsically enough (says his nephew), being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, "I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Later, however, Irving speaks of this as the "crowning ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next hostelry, where the process of converting "Love's Sweet Dream" into a nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... I have presently to relate of Nicolete, that no parents were ever so accommodating in the world of reality, I reply,—No doubt you are right, but none the less what I have to tell is true and really did happen, for all that. And not only did it happen, but to the whimsically minded, to the true children of fancy, it will seem the most natural thing in the world. No doubt they will wonder why I have made such a preamble about it, as indeed, now I think of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... the term "fool"; "unfortunate" might be the more accurate application. Besides, he was a Yale man. He might be unfortunate, but he would scarcely be a fool. The Yale spirit! Ah Cum smiled whimsically. After fifteen years, to find that peculiarly Occidental attribute—college loyalty—still alive in his heart! A Western idea that had survived; an idea that was merely the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... looked whimsically at her through the dancing bubbles of the foaming champagne. In ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... debate," she replied whimsically, her voice betraying nothing of the tumult within. "But we are having it in an unlocked for place and fashion. And you have the worst of it. Be careful, please. Don't try to get up. The men have gone back for help. Our affairs seem to be decidedly mixed; but never mind; we shall soon be out ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... Robert, whimsically, "though I don't believe the marksman could come so close to me again without finishing me. I think it was Peter's spy because I saw him come out of the house, and cried to him to halt, but he fired first. My own bullet, I'm sure, touched him, and Tayoga ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... gave countenance to the representations of his enemies by ridiculing his own unfitness for the office. During the interval between his appointment and his first appearance as judge in the Court of Chancery, he made a jocose pretence of 'reading up' for his new duties: and whimsically exaggerating his deficiencies, he represented himself as studying books with which raw students have some degree of familiarity. Caught with 'Cruise's Digest' of the laws relating to real property, open in his hand, he observed to the visitor who had interrupted his ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... pressure to which they are subject; the merchant, with a careless air, gives a slight push with his fist to the bottom of the crown, to raise it up, smooths the front upon his knee, and presents to your eyes an object at once whimsically fantastical, which recalls confusedly to your memory those fabulous head-dresses favored by box-keepers, aunts of opera dancers, or duennas of provincial theaters. Further on, at the sign of the Gout du ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... her meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative effect for her husband's general sense of her method that caused him to overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now frequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like the present, it gave him, and that Fanny had critically traced to the quaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, still ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... a man has ever paid to him is worded something like this: "Well, dear, you certainly know how to make love;" and this compliment is always the reward, not of passion however sustained, or sentiment however refined, but of humour whimsically fantasticating and balancing both. It is the gentle laugh, not violating, but just humanising, that very solemn kiss; the quip that just saves passion from toppling over the brink into bathos, that mark the skilful lover. No lover will long ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... Alexander P. Dill. It consisted chiefly of spending the nights where the noise clamored loudest and of sleeping during the day—sometimes—where was the most convenient spot to lay the length of him. He smiled whimsically at the contrast between them and their ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... as there. Ever after she stayed. She took possession of the alley and of headquarters, where the reporters had their daily walk, as if they were hers by right of conquest, which in fact they were. With her whimsically grave countenance, in which all the cares of the vast domain she made it her daily duty to oversee were visibly reflected, she made herself a favorite with every one except the "beanery-man" on the corner, who denounced her angrily, when none of her friends ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... Lord Wolseley or General Gordon had expected. Not until January 24 could the commander steam away southwards with 20 men of the Sussex regiment and the 190 Sudanese soldiers on the two largest of Gordon's boats—his "penny steamers" as he whimsically termed them. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... to escape the penitentiary if he doesn't? Well, we do learn to restrain ourselves in some things; and there are people who really want someone else to take the last cookie, though they aren't very common. But it's all right, the world seems to be getting on." She gazed whimsically upon her great-nephew and added, "Of course, when you watch a boy and think about him, it doesn't seem to be getting on ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... must." Sir Arthur smiled whimsically at his wife. "Judge for yourself how contentedly he did it to-day, my sweet one. The Durbar knew that the home mail had come in, and scented a glorious opportunity. Every man had to be satisfied of the health of her Majesty, Prince Albert, all the little princes and princesses, the Duke of Wellington, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... arrangement of the poem is matter which disturbs a reader's satisfaction, till he gets accustomed to the poet's way, and resigns himself to it. It is a heroic poem, in which the heroine, who gives her name to it, never appears: a story, of which the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclosure in the last book, which was never written. If Ariosto's jumps and transitions are more audacious, Spenser's intricacy is more puzzling. Adventures begin which have no finish. Actors in them drop from the clouds, claim an interest, and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... of brilliant sunshine, which found its way through a gap in the drawn curtains, showed that it was long past the usual hour for rising. She smiled whimsically and closed her eyes once more. She remembered now that she was not in her own little room in the other wing of the house. The curtains proved that. How often in the ten years she had been with Miss Wickham had she begged that the staring ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... community where he had experienced the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for a climate where a man might ride ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... wings, and now, dependent solely upon him, welcomed to his home and fireside, she nevertheless strove to dominate as of yore. He had had to tell her Angela could not and should not be subjected to such restraints as the sister would have prescribed, but so long as he was the sole victim he whimsically bore it without vehement protest. "Convert me all you can, Janet, dear," he said, "but don't try to reform the whole regiment. It's past ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... for November is a decidedly informal though exceedingly clever personal paper issued by Miss Edna von der Heide as a reminiscence of the Rocky Mount convention. Prose and verse of whimsically humorous levity are employed with success in recording the social ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Cardigan halted beside Shirley and stood gazing down at her. He was smiling at her whimsically. She met his glance for a few seconds; then her lids were lowered and she bit ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... of beef. As the hunters were stealing cautiously to get within shot of the game, two small white bears suddenly presented themselves in their path, and, rising upon their hind legs, contemplated them for some time with a whimsically solemn gaze. The hunters remained motionless; whereupon the bears, having apparently satisfied their curiosity, lowered themselves upon all fours, and began to withdraw. The hunters now advanced, upon which the bears turned, rose again upon their haunches, and repeated their ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... at breakfast and dinner. Papa doesn't approve, doesn't believe in young men keeping a stable as Caspar does. Mamma doesn't know what she believes. I am arbitrator—it's terrible, the new generation," she broke off whimsically. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... to have hurt you much—matrimony," he observed whimsically, as he dropped the hand. "You look just like you always did—with your hat on." In the West, not to say in every other locality, there is a time-honored joke about matrimony, for certain strenuous ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... insignificance, by continually placing himself in juxtaposition with the great lexicographer, has something in it perfectly ludicrous. Never, since the days of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, has there been presented to the world a more whimsically contrasted pair of associates ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... fellow he is anyway, and how thoroughly he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped with unilluminated knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was a fine bit of ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... solemnly, but her mother only laughed, and then fondly kissed her daughter and her granddaughter. "That is what I said to my mother when you were a month old!" she said whimsically. ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... moonless, and Cecilia, looking through the window, said whimsically, 'He has gone out into the darkness, and is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... all, then?" he retorted teasingly. "But of course not! How could you when you happen to come from the other side of the house? However," he continued whimsically, "there are such things as English roses, you know. I've always loved them, too, even ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr

... projections at the top, and falling abruptly to a bay; then, perhaps, masses of a low, dark rock, girding a basin of turf, as at Watermouth; again, a recess and beach, with the mouth of a stream; a headland next in order, and so the dark coast runs whimsically eastward, passing from one shape to another like a Proteus, until it unites with the massive sea-front of Exmoor.' At the eastern ridge of the county, the hill on which Oldbarrow Camp stands rises more than eleven hundred feet straight out of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... He smiled a little whimsically, a little wanly, as he stole back across the room. It was a strange life, a dangerous life! He wondered often enough, as he was wondering now, what the end of it would be—would he find the Tocsin—or would he find death at the hands of the underworld—or judicial murder ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... yesterday (at which only Mrs. Worden, my lady's woman, and my Polly attended) was so whimsically particular, (though I doubt some of it, at least, will appear too trifling) that I must acquaint my dear Miss Darnford with it, who is desirous of knowing all that relates to Lady Davers's conduct ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino, holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... way of passing out of existence. Several contemporary feminine writers have at least sufficient sense of humor to produce characters as deliciously humorous as delightful. Of such order is the Countess Claverley, made whimsically real and lovable in the recent book by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and A.L. Felkin, 'Kate ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... it would seem modest to assert that Meredith is as bracingly wholesome morally as he is intellectually stimulating. In a private letter to a friend who was praising his finest book, he whimsically mourns the fact that he must write for a living and hence feel like disowning so many of his children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his offspring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic ideal ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... eve of her departure she was staying with friends. At night they went into her room and found her weeping quietly in bed. They tried to comfort her, and she said half-whimsically that she had been overcome by the feeling that she was homeless and without kith and kin la her own country. "I'm a poor solitary with only memories." "But you have troops of friends—you have us all—we all love you." "Yes, I ken, and I am grateful," she replied, "but"—wistfully—"it's ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... door of the apartment, when Miss Vernon, whose movements were sometimes so rapid as to seem almost instinctive, overtook me, and, catching hold of my arm, stopped me with that air of authority which she could so whimsically assume, and which, from the naivete and simplicity of her manner, had an effect so ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... girls to know it, they'd think it was so funny, but—" She paused uncertainly, and looked questioningly into his face. "Maybe you won't understand what I mean, but sometimes I'd like to be good myself. Awfully good, I mean." She smiled whimsically. "Wouldn't Connie scream if she could hear that? Now you won't give me away, will you? But I mean it. I don't think of it very often, but sometimes, why, Professor, honestly, I wouldn't care if I were as good as Prudence!" She paused dramatically, and ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... said whimsically, as he pulled her toward him determinedly. "I've a notion to chastise you! Talking like that with the whole of life before you! Such ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... Uncle Jack, whimsically. "I haven't the advantage of being a girl with a brother and a baker's dozen of beaux in bell buttons and gray. I'm only an old fossil of a 'cit,' with a scamp of a nephew and that limited conception of the delights of West Point which one can derive from running up there every time that versatile ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... hand, in an absolute fervor of interest. It was Miss Terroll and again she was alone. Once more she impressed him as someone purring with pleasure, and when the performance ended he found himself on the sidewalk whimsically waiting for her to come down from her dollar seat, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... one), to borrow a suit of the Mayor's clothes—into which he gets in time to interview that worthy when he returns with his grim lady. "You'll get a month," says she with damnable iteration; and the resourceful Felix, with an eye to the whimsical will, whimsically suggests that justice would be better fulfilled by his putting in the month at the Mayor's house as odd-job man than by his being conveyed to the county jail. And the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various

... had his turn at autobiography. He told rather whimsically of his three months' experiences at the tail of the juvenile whirligigs, and his auditors listened to them with mild smiles. He ventured upon numerous glowing parentheses about Julia, and they at least did not say that they did not want to know ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... in that passive state which made me perfectly willing to have him say good-night and go home or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. I knew he needed me; a good many men need their mothers once in a while as much as they ever did when boys. There was something whimsically boyish about Charlie as he leaned over the back of a tall chair and debated secretly whether or not he should ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... spoken to David by the men whom, out of all the world, she would have chosen to have praise him. She looked at Miss Morrison, who had come trailing down in a cerise evening gown as if she were a bright creature of another species, somewhat, Kate could not help whimsically thinking, as a philosophic beaver might have looked at a bird of paradise. Then Honora ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... upon her cheeks, but gay, sprightly, jaunty, in a superb travelling-dress of green velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and looped up on either side to allow a glimpse of satin petticoat. Her blond hair escaped in thick ringlets from beneath a broad black felt hat, decorated with white feathers whimsically twisted into various shapes. In one hand she held a little riding-whip terminated by a golden whistle. She tapped me lightly with it, and exclaimed: 'Well, my fine sleeper, is this the way you make your preparations? I thought I would find you up and dressed. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... the morning down at the brook. Shirley was enchanted to be allowed to help build a dam—the height of his ambition, Doctor Hugh whimsically told them. Shirley paddled around in the brook and brought him stones and he laid them in a chain that made a crude dam, both getting very warm and very wet and having a ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... rollicking good-humor about Lund. This morning he was grim, his face, with its beak of a nose and aggressive chin beneath the flaming whiskers, and his whole magnificent body gave the impression of resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... to business—particularly sorry about Gray, for that is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you both were going to sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and the Senate, and fight it out"—he smiled whimsically—"some day for the nomination for the Presidency. The poor old commonwealth is in a bad way, and it needs just such boys as you two are. The war started us downhill, but we might have done better—I know I might. The earth ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... said Mr. Morris, sinking down luxuriously in a chair before the blazing logs. "I had almost forgot what the sight of one was like, and I was beginning to wish that this"—he looked down and tapped his sound leg, laughing a little whimsically, "were wood, too. I would have ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... Dolores smiled whimsically, for she was too wise to be ignorant of the fact that such men as were in that schooner must first be caught before they might be commanded. Yet the giant's plan suggested ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... to him as he commenced to puff at his pipe, using a match for the first time in many moons and smiling whimsically when he struck the same, as memory ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... I'm good," he remarked whimsically, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks. But I reckon He knew what He was about, as a good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely or the purty ones—like Miss Mary there—wouldn't show up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... her movement, which is to me more captivating than a pretty face; and when I had opportunity to observe more closely, I was greatly attracted by the sensibility and refinement expressed through a countenance which otherwise would have been plain. As I seemed to be whimsically cast in the part of host, and as I perceived the lady was too well-bred to make my position at all awkward, I proposed the piazza as a pleasanter place of waiting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... whimsically, "for two weeks you have been getting me not to do things. When I think of all the things I have promised you, I can feel my hair turning white. Having polished me off on the don'ts, you aren't going to begin ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... troubled spirits have come as near happiness as they are like to get . . . for after all, happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote. . . . The frequenters of this alley call themselves whimsically The Ludlow Street Business Men's Association, and Charles Lamb or Eugene Field would have been proud to preside at their annual dinners, at which the members recount their happiest book-finds of ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... the hunter whimsically. "Robert and Tayoga, this is Master Jonathan Pillsbury, chief clerk and man of affairs for Master Benjamin Hardy. They are two old bachelors who live in the same house, and who get along well together, because they're so unlike. As for Master Jonathan, his heart is not as sour as his face, ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... to stay with me unless you like," Ben had said more than once; but each time Grannis had displayed his own wound, at first openly, at last, carefully concealed by bandages, whimsically. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... printer until the middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it." Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object to this, I do not know why." And, in a moment of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... his thinking ran together; there is free quotation, free play of wit and satire, grace of invention too, but always unconventional. The story is always pleasant, although always secondary to the play of thought for which it gives occasion. He quarrelled with verse, whimsically but in all seriousness, in an article on "The Four Ages of Poetry," contributed in 1820 to a short-lived journal, "Ollier's Literary Miscellany." The four ages were, he said, the iron age, the Bardic; the golden, the Homeric; the silver, the Virgilian; and the brass, in ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... casually at the bruised faces of Yorke and Redmond. "You men must have had quite a tussle with that fellow, Moran!" he remarked whimsically. "You seem to have come off the best, Sergeant. You're ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically represented by the rapid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... was an ancestor in uniform to the present situation? It would have been better to have inherited Quaker blood. Derry smiled whimsically as he thought how different he might have felt if there had been benignant men in gray with broad-brimmed ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... horse—how stupid of me!" The tone of the man's answer was one of half apology, and he was smiling whimsically now as if at his own predicament, as he continued. "I have no horse. Really, you know, I wouldn't know what to do with one ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... Have you reduced me to the ranks already? I was looking to be a general by the time I got back," he complained whimsically. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... that to a theory of art and life that can be thus whimsically described we should be indebted for some of the best writing of modern years. Our poet has very little sympathy with fact, whether heroic or the reverse, whether essential or accidental; but he is a rare artist in words and cadences. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... sentiment which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair one, counts lovers in her train. And indeed, even by her kindest friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Alderlings, unless it was because they both, in their different ways, saw the joke of the thing. At any rate, I found that in their charm for each other they had somehow not ceased to be amusing for me, and I waited confidently for the answer she would make to his whimsically abrupt bidding. But she did not answer very promptly, even when he had added, "Wanhope, here, is scenting something psychological in the reason of my laughing at you, instead of accepting the plain inference in ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... Chicago," George went on, whimsically, "we're going to write up a story of our capture by two bold, bad men who gave their names as Red Mike of the Gulch and Daring Dan of the Devil's ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... accomplishments consisted of some skill in bakery and the handling of half-broken teams; but she had once or twice given him what he recognised as excellent advice. There was something incongruous in the situation, but, as usual, he preferred to regard it whimsically. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... where you go, do you, Dot?" asked her father whimsically. "The main idea with you seems to be to keep moving. How about it, Mother—want to take a little drive?" Mrs. Blossom glanced toward ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley

... From behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew, no one could imagine; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... it, if you can, and I promise you shall have my assistance; for, besides my natural contempt for his lordship, I have at present the enmity of a rival towards him. Fash. What, has he been addressing your old flame, the widow Berinthia? Col. Town. Faith, Tom, I am at present most whimsically circumstanced. I came here a month ago to meet the lady you mention; but she failing in her promise, I, partly from pique and partly from idleness, have been diverting my chagrin by offering up incense to the beauties of Amanda, our friend Loveless's wife. Fash. I never have ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... belongs to the coasting-trade in letters," Kate Wilkes went on whimsically. "He has emerged from a most stubborn case of boyhood. Now he's got Vina's big spirit, and she has her happiness and is doing ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... whimsically. "I met a tourist with spectacles walking along Duke of Gloucester Street. 'Sir,' he said courteously, 'I am looking for Kingsborough. I am told that it is a city.' 'Sir,' I responded, with a bow that did honour to my grandfather's ghost, 'it was once a chartered ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... out as it were in jest, whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But can we, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... more you give the more you have to give. This give-and-take of friendly conversation develops mentality, and fluency in expression. Longfellow said: "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books," and Holmes whimsically yet none the less truthfully declared that half the time he talked to find out what he thought. But that method must not be ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Whimsically, and almost mechanically, he set himself, in his mind, to count the men. There were twenty mercenaries all told, excluding Fortunio and himself. On Arsenio he might rely not to attack him, perhaps ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... babbling voices rose and fell in alternations of argument that was almost quarrel, narrative that was sometimes diverting, and ribaldry that was never wit, it would seem as if the ruffianism of half Europe had called a conference in that squalid, horrible little inn. Guttural German notes mixed whimsically with sibilant Spanish and flowing Portuguese. Cracked Biscayan—which no Spaniard will allow to be Spanish—jarred upon the suavity of Italian accents, and through the din the heavy steadiness of a Breton voice could be heard asserting itself. Though every man spoke in French, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... such a place. That we knew would be the road for us. From their point of view, the road we were on was as bad as could be; but, as I said, the undertaker evidently understood us, and had sent us into a region of whimsically sudden hills and rock and wooded wilderness, a swart country of lonely, rugged uplands, with but a solitary house here and there for miles. It was resting at the top of one of these hard-won acclivities that we came upon—and ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... were small and tender, perhaps white. And there was a grace in her movements, dispite the ungainly dress and shoes, which suggested a more intimate knowledge of velvets and silks than of calico. In my mind's eye I placed her at the side of Phyllis. Phyllis reminded me of a Venus whom Nature had whimsically left unfinished. Then she had turned from Venus to Diana, and Gretchen became evolved: a Diana, slim and willowy. A sculptor would have said that Phyllis might have been a goddess, and Gretchen a wood nymph, had not Nature suddenly changed her plans. What I admired in Phyllis was her imperfect ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... his head over the air with which his friend held forth thus—an air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion—when a shuffling was heard at the outer door, and then an undecided knock, as though some hand were groping for the knocker. 'The frolicsome ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... so ingenious, yet so bewildering) to flush with pink blossom and to make one wish to sit on benches—under this magic of expansion and condonation Mrs. Bonnycastle, who during the winter had been a good deal on the defensive, relaxed her vigilance a little, became whimsically wilful, vernally reckless, as it were, and ceased to calculate the consequences of an hospitality which a reference to the back files or even to the morning's issue of the newspapers might easily prove a mistake. But Washington life, to Count Otto's apprehension, was paved with mistakes; ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... a chap for a Hamlet, I am," he went on, whimsically. "I believe I'll chuck you into the fire, M'sieur Janette. ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... her regularly rebellious, and that was the pious reading which came punctually at half-past eight every morning. She was bored by all the holy heroines who seemed to have taken vows of celibacy at the age of four. "Devil take them all," she thought whimsically one morning. "But I dare say these good little people have no more reality than our 'little good people' who dance reels with the dead on November Eve. I wish Dan O'Leary had taught them all to shake their ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never comes—we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"—his voice swelled on the word, and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—"to cope with ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... Carl. "One mad, eloquent lie of love and she would have softened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsically into his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is it that when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why that mad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Why the swift black flash of hatred now? Are ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... of grumbling. When I discuss I almost always grumble about something. It is good for the progress of the world." And she laughed whimsically. Then, with one of her sudden changes, "How long do you expect to stay on trying to dig up a fortune, and pretending it is worth while when you know you hate it like ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... Colonies were brought to a head by the breaking out of civil war. Lord Rockingham's ministry, which succeeded Mr. Grenville's, had, as is well known, but a brief existence, and was replaced by the cabinet so whimsically composed by Mr. Pitt, who reserved to himself the office of Privy Seal, with the Earldom of Chatham; the Duke of Grafton being the nominal head of the Treasury, but the direction of affairs being wholly in the hands of the new Earl, till the failure of his health ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... should. But will you?"—whimsically. She glanced at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede shoes and filmy stockings—every detail of her dress and person breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised civilisation of the city. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... really the heroine of practically all of his stories and plays. From her, this man, shy of women, has learned all he knows of her sex. This accounts in part for the goodness and purity in his works. From his mother, too, he inherited his whimsically gay vision of life. Thus, his plays and novels, so much purer than those of many of his contemporaries, are never dull, for they are lightened by his wit, his fanciful humor, and ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... burnt-out fires of Opdyke's professional ambition. For a minute or two, he lay quite silent, while two scarlet patches glowed upon his cheeks, and while the eyes above them seemed to fix themselves on distant vistas far beyond the limits of Dolph's sight. Then at last, he spoke, whimsically as far as his mere wording went, but in a voice which Dolph found ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... parallel which he runs between past and present is false—whimsically false. At one time we hear it uttered as an impeachment against our age, that every thing is done by committees and companies, shares and joint effort, and that no one man, or hero, can any longer move the world as in the blessed days ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... do it, though," he meditated whimsically. "It would be a mean, low trick to make it think so. This yere job rightly belongs to a water-tank. Oh, gosh! And ten miles yet, across that darned dry ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... care much for it. Little pillars, quaint window models, and other architectural devices, are heaped upon each other in curious profusion, and it is difficult to get at their real meaning. They relieve the walls a little, but they do the work whimsically, and you can neither get a smile nor a tear from them. The chancel arch is strong and ornamental; within it there is another arch, the intervening roof being neatly groined and coloured; and beyond there is the chancel—a small, somewhat cimmerian, yet pretty-looking place. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... detract from his credit. Every general fights with two heads—his own and his adversary's; and, for the rest, we have to do what we can do with our material." The Commandant halted and gazed down whimsically upon the courtyard, in the middle of which his twenty-five militiamen were being drilled by M. Etienne and Sergeant Bedard. "My whole garrison, sir! Eh? you seem incredulous. My whole garrison, I give you my word! Five-and-twenty militiamen to defend a post of this importance; ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... whimsically, "suppose that I am Sir Gaston Belward, Baronet, who is thought to lie in the church yonder, the title is mine, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... to hoist the Aurora Borealis by main strength up the rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically termed the steamboat's great, clumsy tender—its official name of "sturgeon-head" was more descriptive—was brought alongside; and a half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The end of this ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... Providence has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved from age to age, in spite of the inevitable decay of the works in which they were first produced? We see that Nature has wisely, though whimsically provided for the conveyance of seeds from clime to clime, in the maws of certain birds; so that animals, which, in themselves, are little better than carrion, and apparently the lawless plunderers of the orchard and the corn-field, are, in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... Allen retorted whimsically. "They're not used to seeing two such good-looking people together," he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... then, half unconsciously and quite in spite of herself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishing things were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsically unworldly ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... was warm, and quiet, and bright. In her bathroom, that glistened with blue and white tiling, were those redundant towels. Fanny stood in the doorway and counted them, whimsically. Four great fuzzy bath towels. Eight glistening hand towels. A blue and white bath rug hung at the side of the tub. Her telephone rang. It ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... Bill grinned whimsically and assented. He could keep quiet when he had to; but the day following found him again restlessly investigating anything that seemed worth the trouble and the afternoon saw him standing looking upward toward the same ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... She smiled whimsically upon the young man. "Tell the truth," she said. "Don't you fairly detest going into business with ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... his eyes and looked at her whimsically. Nature, in fact, had put forth a supreme effort; from that moment he ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... on Miss Cullam's mind; yet she kept step with Ruth when they came to the corridor on which the rooms of the three Briarwoods opened. Ruth could always find something pleasant to say. This woman with the care-graved countenance smiled whimsically as she listened, ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson

... in Mr. Brewster's suite, when we had an interesting talk on the subject of Mr. B.'s objets d'art. You may recall being particularly interested in a small china figure. To assist your memory, the figure to which I allude is the one which you whimsically referred to as Pongo. I informed you, if you remember, that, could the accompanying figure be secured, the pair would ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... but the sand was beautifully white and fine, and there were great weather-beaten, wave-washed boulders lying half buried in the sand, also trunks of trees, their roots uprearing grotesquely like strange heads of animals. Kit thought whimsically how the Dean might have added them with profit to his prehistoric collection. There was no glimpse or hint of the town to be seen down here. Not even a boat house, only one long pier. About a mile and a half from shore was a lightship, and farther out a white steamer showed in perfect ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... whimsically, "I do hope if they've got their German appetites along, they don't clean out that pantry before I get my look-in, that's all. Twenty-four hours without a single bite would be the limit for me. I don't think I'd survive the ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... major often tells me he wishes he had him back, and me in the place he has instead of the one he had," answers the clerk, whimsically. "Does he know you're to command the escort in? You got him into such a scrape then that he's never tired ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... of things rather more picturesque; some of the booth-keepers knocking down the temporary structures, and putting the materials in wagons to carry away; other booths lighted up, and the lights gleaming through rents in the sail-cloth tops. The customers are rather riotous, calling loudly and whimsically for what they want; a young fellow and a girl coming arm in arm; two girls approaching the booth, and getting into conversation with the folks thereabout. Perchance a knock-down between two half-sober fellows in the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... living-room, attired in a raincoat, standing and looking at the closed door leading to Simon's study. Miss Ocky settled herself in a chair by the lamp on the center table, drew the dagger from its worn leather sheath and proceeded to cut the pages of Henner's "Through Asia." She glanced up whimsically at her nephew. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... the war quickly, Tom," she had said to him whimsically, not long before Tom had gone back to France. "I do not feel as though I could return to college, or write another scenario, or do another single solitary thing until ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself—which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went farther; agonised ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... with a harsh laugh. For a while he sat silent, gazing down at the table. Then he got up, went over and lifted the garter from where it had fallen and replaced it in his pocket. "Oh, well," he chuckled less bitterly and whimsically added, "—any idiot can smile at th' mornin' star even if th' darned thing is beyond his reach! Besides, she don't need to ever know—" Leaving the bunk-house he ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... Wick, the village on the opposite bank, resided the witty but profligate Sir Richard Steele, in a house which he whimsically denominated "the hovel;" and "from the Hovel at Hampton Wick, April 7, 1711," he dedicated the fourth volume of the Tatler to Charles, Lord Halifax. This was probably about the time he became surveyor of the royal stables at Hampton Court, governor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... we call Fate whimsically sent him a mate; curious, I suppose, to see what would happen when the two whose trails had lain so ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... Nor was a suitable termination to the festival wanting, for Alexander, pleased with the genial character of these demonstrations, repaired himself to the bridge, where he was received with shouts of rapture by his army, thus whimsically converted into a horde of fauns and satyrs. Afterwards, a magnificent banquet was served to the soldiers upon the bridge. The whole extent of its surface, from the Flemish to the Brabant shore—the scene so lately of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the dreaming of this ballad of mine that led me to think of Monna Vittoria, whom you will remember if you bear in mind the beginning of this, my history, the lady that Messer Simone of the Bardi was whimsically pledged to wed if he failed to win a certain wager that I trust you have not forgotten. And thinking of Monna Vittoria led, in due time, to a meeting with Monna Vittoria that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... I think I shall name it Susan Lathrop Bates Hall (Granger is willing), and make it a girls' dormitory. They'll call the girls 'Susans,' I dare say; but I sha'n't mind, and I don't suppose they will either. Besides, boys would be sure to be called 'Grangers,' so what's the difference?" She smiled whimsically, and made ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... bears come out in the white glitter," she muttered, whimsically. "I will turn about; he spoils the fairy picture. I had forgotten there were boys, or men, in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me—stood and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us. "Well—so ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... remarked Uncle John, whimsically, "you remind me of Wampus. You should strut around and say: 'Behold me! ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... start, and realized the full extent of the loss. To her surprise his furrowed brows relaxed and he smiled whimsically. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... in the pasture—fit for anything. But the doctor won't have it that way. He says I'm an invalid," returned the young man whimsically. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... discretion," he replied whimsically, "but I can't teach 'em to use their eyes. Frau Wirth could remember nothing about this fellow except that he wasn't tall and wore a brown ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... disclaimed whimsically. "He done busted himself!" She touched Pard with her heel and rode up so that the rope slackened, and she could throw off the loop. "Did you see how Pard set himself?" she questioned eagerly. "I could have gotten off and gone clear away, and Pard would have ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... as if you were a tailor," said Miss Bordereau whimsically; and then she added quickly, in a different manner, "This house is very fine; the proportions are magnificent. Today I wanted to look at this place again. I made them bring me out here. When your man came, just now, to learn if I would ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... busy with these reflections when the colonel once more entered and began pacing moodily up and down the room. The adjutant rose, but at a signal resumed his seat and waited. He was, as he whimsically described himself, "a relic of the previous administration." In those days officers might serve long years on the staff and never know an hour of company duty. Barker had been in the adjutant's office under three different regimental commanders, and, as etiquette ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... later in the day is of course contemporary history. If the interruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal, what is to be said of that general scatter of the company which, under the Doctor's rule, began to take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as I was to have ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... interested in cuckoldry, Mrs. Ford in mockery, Ford, Evans and Caius in jealousy and rivalry, Bardolph is going to be a tapster, the others are plying their suits. Even in this his most trivial play, Shakespeare's idea that punishment follows oath-breaking is expressed (whimsically enough) by Falstaff— ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... funny about it. You stick with them, Loney, and find out. I'm taking Al's trail with Yack. You fix it." And he added whimsically, "Not so much tobacco, Lone. I don't eat it or smoke it ever in ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... out in delight at the prospect of a ride. David lifted her up, and Joe settled her comfortably in the saddle, encircling her with his arm. Then he looked down whimsically into David's disappointed eyes. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: "Then let Guienne serve as ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... keep pace with her, she's like a whirlwind," he said whimsically. "She raced me off here before I ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... her cheek had fallen in and her hair gray and wispy. But being a young man and never good at talking, it made no difference with him except that as they walked home across the pastures he was more than ever careful of her and teased her more whimsically. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... done it, if you had seen us first," Theodora responded half whimsically, half discontentedly. "Hope and Hubert are all right; but the rest of us are enough to turn your hair white. I was bad enough; and now Phebe is forsaking the world and taking to skeletons, and Allyn is at war with ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... always do as he says?" he queried whimsically. "I have no sister, but I did not understand ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... and learn," said his father whimsically. "Our blunders are often very expensive. The only redeeming thing about them is that we pass our experience on to others and save them from tumbling into the same pit. Thus it was with the early railroad builders. When the Boston and Providence Road was constructed this mistake was not repeated ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... she might do as other women she knew of, who gave up their lives of ease and pleasure and spent their days in the crowded courts and alleys of great cities, waging war against the giants of dirt and ignorance and disease. Or, she thought whimsically, she could join the ranks of Women with a capital W, and hurl herself into a vortex of meetings and banner-wavings, like other unemployed. No, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... am in the mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, I must admit." He glanced up whimsically. "May I ask you a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge



Words linked to "Whimsically" :   fancifully



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