I suppose I was breathing hard, or perhaps I was crying, for after a time I heard a
listless voice that had never been
listless before say, 'Is that you?' I think the tone hurt me, for I made no answer, and then the voice said more anxiously 'Is that you?' again.
I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and
listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure, and on my return I met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart.
But when it came to almagest and astrolabe, the counting of figures and reckoning of epicycles, away would go her thoughts to horse and hound, and a vacant eye and
listless face would warn the teacher that he had lost his hold upon his scholar.
He was a tall, sun-burnt, man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance and
listless manner.
I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy, or
listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like cherubs, by the ink-smeared tops of the high desks that were surely put there to make us round-shouldered and hollow-chested.
He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the
listless woman he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with the forces of life.
The pettishness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a
listless apathy; there was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and teases on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, and ready to regard the good-humoured mirth of others as an insult.
I considered how impossible it was to preserve my life in so desolate a place, and how miserable my end must be: yet found myself so
listless and desponding, that I had not the heart to rise; and before I could get spirits enough to creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced.
If the power of affording it be placed under the direction of the Union, there will be no danger of a supine and
listless inattention to the dangers of a neighbor, till its near approach had superadded the incitements of self-preservation to the too feeble impulses of duty and sympathy.
The children of the poor are therefore allowed to "feel" from their earliest years, and they gain thereby a precocity and an early vivacity which contrast at first most favourably with the inert, undeveloped, and
listless behaviour of the half-instructed youths of the Polygonal class; but when the latter have at last completed their University course, and are prepared to put their theory into practice, the change that comes over them may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science, and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance their Triangular competitors.
The result of the long strain was seen later in the afternoon, when he sat locked within the turret-room before the still baffling trunk, distrait,
listless and yet agitated, sunk in a settled gloom.
But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold
listless gaze fixed itself upon nothing.