The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn vocabulary

I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering. Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines.

H. G. Wells. The Time Machine

---

I know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

---

‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?’

Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)