"Cheerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absently, as she sat down on the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and Katrine did not ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... the father died, worn out with incessant toil, which ended only in disappointment. The family were so poor that Robert was obliged to work hard even when very young, and at fifteen he was his father's chief helper. In later years he described his life at Mt. Oliphant as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave." But poets are given to exaggeration, and doubtless the attractive picture of home life which he afterwards painted in the Cotter's Saturday Night is true in the main of the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... its claims and makes way for its gracious and all-conquering foe. Spring is upon everything with all the characteristic suddenness of the Canadian climate. A week—a little seven days—and where all before had been cheerless wastes of snow and ice, we have the promise of summer with us. The snow disappears as with the sweep of a "chinook" in winter. The brown, saturated grass is tinged with the bright emerald hue of new-born pasture. The bared trees don that yellowish ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... their side seemed cheerless, what of the land on the left bank? A swamp stretching endlessly on either hand, and back from the icy flood as far as eye could see, broken only by sloughs ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... and banisters were of oak; the staircase window was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than a house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... table, and a plentiful supply of the Catholic Truth Society books, Catholic papers and periodicals always at hand. Many a poor boy and girl, whose thoughts to-day are turning to Sydney or New York as an escape from cheerless drudgery, would then read a new meaning into the word "home." No matter how toil presses during the day, the prospective two hours of brightness and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... wall'd to heaven Should vanquish'd sink, and all her wealth be ours. No—now, like widow'd women, or weak boys, They whimper to each other, wishing home. And home, I grant, to the afflicted soul 350 Seems pleasant.[11] The poor seaman from his wife One month detain'd, cheerless his ship and sad Possesses, by the force of wintry blasts, And by the billows of the troubled deep Fast lock'd in port. But us the ninth long year 355 Revolving, finds camp'd under Ilium still. I therefore blame not, if they mourn ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... evening we rode into Carlsruhe. We made our entry in a crazy hackney cab behind a lazy horse that had been dragging us for a long time with cheerless industry between a double file of trees, along a road without a bend in it; a long, lanky, Quaker road, heavily drab-coated with dust; a tight-rope of a road that comes from Manheim, and is hooked on to the capital of Baden. Out of that allee we ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... losing her clear, sweet vision of that blessed night when Gaston and she had stood transfigured! If only she could have held to that, all would have been so simple—but with that fading glory gone she would be alone in a barren, cheerless place to act not merely for herself, but for ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... up their tools and separated to prepare their evening meals. Linton entered his tent, now empty, cold, and cheerless; Quirk set up his stove in the open and rigged a clumsy shelter out of a small tarpaulin. Under this he spread his share of the bedding. Engaged in this, he realized that his two blankets promised to be woefully inadequate to the weather and he cocked an apprehensive eye heavenward. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... hitherto presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even for that purpose, he retired—ill, helpless, and starving—into a broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils—the same clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence and evil conduct generally—heard of his pitiable plight, and collected for him what money they could, even to the point of selling their own necessaries. Only Chichikov, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... they veil their mighty forms in clouds and tempests. The living machinery of the mist, too, is continually varying the landscape, now engulphing valleys, now blotting out crags and mountain peaks, and suspending before the eye a cold and cheerless curtain of vapour; anon the curtain rises, the mist rolls away, and green valley and tall mountain flash back again upon you, thrilling and delighting you anew. What variety and melody of sounds, too, exist among ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the men had his arms outstretched. The cheerless group was made even more so by a small, almost blazeless fire, in the thin smoke of which ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... always been his own. The ready-to-hand food gave him leisure. His days were all dreams. Weary of crouching over the fire before the opening of his humpy, he began to wander in the flesh as he was wont to wander in mind. He was seen a mile away from the cheerless camp, where his companions, with smoke-dried eyes, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... social function develops solidarity and unison of action between individuals. The dances, feasts, and games of primitive people, wherein they rehearse hunting and war and act and dance out their legends, bring individuals and tribes together.[25] Work is menial, cheerless, grinding, regular, and requires more precision and accuracy and, because attended with less ease and pleasure and economy of movement, is more liable to produce erratic habits. Antagonistic as the forms often are, it may be that, as Carr says, we may sometimes so suffuse work ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... queerly dressed young man, with a parcel under his arm, who passed you just then, is an artist, and his home is in the attic of that tall house from which you saw him pass out. It is a cheerless place, indeed, and hardly the home for a devotee of the Muse; but the artist is a philosopher, and he flatters himself that if the world has not given him a share of its good things, it has at least freed him from its restraints, and so long as he has the necessaries of life and a lot of jolly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... with a warm feeling about his heart. That friendly face and kindly pressure of the hand had cheered him like sunshine in a wintry day, and transformed the cold, cheerless city into an abode of life and happiness. The crowds that thronged by him once more took on interest for him. The faces once ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... nor any of the families whom Kirtley met through them, went to church. The Protestant churches were, in fact, gloomy, tasteless and almost empty. Their services appeared cheerless and forbidding. Tremendous fear was their keynote. It seemed far more agreeable to a German to partake of the national sacrament out ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... the people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down. So, driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches on the high cites they could only steal away during the night and wander across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the sufferings of the sad fugitives. At the 'Creston' (name of the ruin) they halted, and probably found ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... — We anchored in the fine bay of Port Famine. It was now the beginning of winter, and I never saw a more cheerless prospect; the dusky woods, piebald with snow, could be only seen indistinctly, through a drizzling hazy atmosphere. We were, however, lucky in getting two fine days. On one of these, Mount Sarmiento, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... be treated with respect. It is the oldest and clearest of all proofs, and best adapted to convince the reason of the mass of mankind. It animates us in our study of nature. And it were not only a cheerless, but an altogether vain task to attempt to detract from the persuasive authority of this proof. There is nought to urge against its rationality ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a second deluge—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall rains"—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine, Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never there. It was the middle ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins—with all which this implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... abnormals; their temperaments are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike—but look at the results! Their ages are about the same—about around fifty. Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country journalism—and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture himself with vain regrets for not having done ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what a cheerless, forbidding place a deserted house is by night. The partly open door stuck fast; but we squeezed in, and Addison struck a match. One low room occupied most of the interior; there was a fireplace, but so much snow had come down the large chimney that the prospect of having a fire there ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... how to live without homes. As a consequence, girls come up to the factories from their schools with ideals,[36] so far as the school has shaped them, founded on unmarried school mistresses and George Washington; and they pass, by way of the altar, into cheerless tenements which the school still thinks of as places where children are cared for, family clothing is made and the family baking is done. Practically, of course, most education is given outside the schools, and there the evils of an unregulated time of transition ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... which never had entered her thoughts. It was a crisis with which she did not know how to cope or to bear. The world could never be blacker for her than it was when she clung sobbing to the little sorrel pony's thick neck that morning. The future looked utterly cheerless and impossible to endure. She had not learned that no tragedy is so blighting that there is not a way out—a way which the sufferer makes himself, which comes to him, or into which he is forced. Nothing stays as it is. But it appeared to Susie that life could never ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... cheerless was that resting-place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider-down! Through darksome ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... folk of malice used to play on a small school-boy, new kicked out of his nest into the draughty, uncomfortable outer world, his unfledged skin still craving the feathers whereinto he was wont to nestle. The barrack-like school, the arid, cheerless class-rooms, drove him to Nature for redress; and, under an alien sky, he would go forth and wander along the iron road by impassive fields, so like yet so unlike those hitherto a part of him and responding to his every mood. And to him, thus loitering ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... It was a cheerless journey, harassed by thoughts and speculations that could be hardly considered illuminating. Curiously enough he had no thought of making a run for it to a district where he was still unknown. Why should ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... from bodily ailments, but they were nothing compared to my mental trials. Grief, hatred, jealousy, and revenge had well-nigh bereft me of reason. I had lost a home of plenty, been reduced to almost abject poverty, and had become a cheerless woman,—could not smile without feeling ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hands in Philadelphia. So long a time has elapsed since we have been separated by events, that it was like a letter from the dead, and recalled to my memory very dear recollections. My subsequent journey through life has offered nothing which, in comparison with those, is not cheerless and dreary. It is a rich comfort sometimes to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... world in our neighborhood had fallen into the unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing like one that for all his weariness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... handsome, dreary room sat Giant Despair. The December day was damp and cheerless, and the coal fire in the ugly old-fashioned grate beneath the elaborate marble mantel burned in a grudging, spiritless way. Above the uncurtained windows, with their shutters thrown wide upon a view of moist, bare garden, ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... merely the choice of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance. If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the African, Hellenic, and Asiatic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... I do not say that there is no life beyond the grave: I simply say I do not know!" What pleasure could any man find in taking from a human, heart a living faith and putting in the place of it the cold and cheerless doctrine "I do not know"? Many who call themselves agnostics are really atheists; it is easier to profess ignorance than to ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Cheerless and wae, on yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and ashes into his face and beard: debts came instead of gold. I sang through the broken windows and cracked walls—came moaning in to the daughter's cheerless room, where the old bed-gear was faded and threadbare, but had still to hold out. Such a song was not sung at the children's cradles. High life had become wretched life. I was the only one then who sang loudly in the castle," said the wind. "I snowed them in, and they said they were comfortable. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... their parts. The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay Is twice an actor in a twofold play. We smile at children when a painted screen Seems to their simple eyes a real scene; Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne To seek the cheerless home he calls his own, Which of his double lives most real seems, The world of solid fact or scenic dreams? Canvas, or clouds,—the footlights, or the spheres,— The play of two short hours, or seventy years? Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pessimistic about the future of the universe; but I don't wonder, with such a cheerless life as he leads. He looked today as though his own nervous system was shattered. He had been splashing about in the rain since five this morning, when he was called to a sick baby case. I made him sit down and have some tea, and we had a nice, cheerful ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... not cheer like that, all together, unless there is very good reason to feel cheerless. They fight, each man according to his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs, until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossoms storms the world. A week ago the Sparrow was divine; The Bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet came; But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... inside the main entrance there was a bit of gold-leaf information to the effect that office hours were from 9 to 10 A.M. and from 2 to 4 P.M. There was a reception room and a consultation room in the suite. The one was quite as cheerless and uninviting as any other reception room of its kind, and the other possessed as many of the strange, terrifying and more or less misunderstood devices for the prolongation of uncertainty in the minds of the uneasy. During office-hours there was also a doctor there. Nothing was missing ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its ugly shabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there swept through her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it on a hot September evening. A blaze of light—delicious all-prevailing warmth—the moist bronzed ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and wise Vidura serve thy mandate and behest, Let a father's pride and gladness fill this old and cheerless breast." ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Winter, with his frosty beard, Thus once to Jove his prayer preferr'd,— What have I done of all the year, To bear this hated doom severe? My cheerless suns no pleasure know; Night's horrid car drags, dreary, slow: My dismal months no joys are crowning, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. Thereafter, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... disappeared, the tramp of a procession became audible, and soon torches glared feebly through the damp, cheerless dawn. The monarch descended from his state elephant, and, prostrating himself before ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... many of them for hours. The hall—brilliantly lighted up, and gaily attended, as was, and perhaps is still, the custom at the beginning the last evening of a session—had become cold, dark, and cheerless. Of the members who remained, to prevent the public business from dying for want of a quorum, most but himself were sinking from exhaustion, although they had probably taken their meals at the usual hours, in the course of the day. After the adjournment, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... morning Granny complained that the wind had blown down all the apples in the garden, and broken down an old plum tree. It was grey, murky, cheerless, dark enough for candles; everyone complained of the cold, and the rain lashed on the windows. After tea Nadya went into Sasha's room and without saying a word knelt down before an armchair in the corner and hid her face in ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wealth could purchase, worlds seemed all too cheap to give to have him with them. But this could not be. The soldier of three battles, he was not willing to admit that he was sick until his strength failed, and he was actually dying. He was carried to this cheerless room, a rude table the only furniture; no door, no window-shutters; the western sun threw its hot rays in upon him,—no cooling shade for his fevered brow: and so he lay unconscious of the monster's grasp, which would not relax until he had ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... hands and went his way, and Paul raced upstairs two steps at a time and burst into the room he had left less than three hours ago in a mood so cheerless and despondent He kissed the letter and clapped it to his heart, and strolled up and down exulting. He was not to be dismissed; he was not to be sent into the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the boats the dry skins and coverlets, the party lay down to rest, leaving Peter to keep watch lest they should again drift from their haven, and be exposed to the pitiless seas. All took their spell of duty; but the cheerless night passed without further incident, and the day found them still under the shadow of the great berg. As the day advanced, the storm swept the pack northward, and the party, ascending the berg, saw, one by one, the isolated crags of the island ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... her needlework and her painting adorned the walls. At such times as the fastidious mistress of the house condemned various articles of furniture as too antiquated for her taste, Gertrude would get them secretly conveyed up here; so that her lofty bower was neither bare nor cheerless, but, on the contrary, rather crowded with furniture and knick-knacks of all sorts. She kept her possessions scrupulously clean, lavishing upon them much tender care, and much of that active service in ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of late marriages, observing that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... in an A-tent; but, if you prefer two, be sure that one at least is nicely fitted and well provided with tapes or buttons, or both: otherwise you will have a cheerless tent in windy and rainy weather. The door-flap is usually made of a strip of cloth six to nine inches wide, sewed to the selvage of the breadth that laps inside; the top of it is sewed across the inside of the other breadth, and reaches to the corner seam. Tent-makers usually determine the height ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... of the Catamarans as they sat pondering upon that important question,—how they were to find food,—cheerless as the clouds of night that were now rapidly descending over the surface of the sea, and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream—old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was—that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cheerless shore is a belt of stunted trees, that sends a long tail up the high valley, till it dwindles away to sticks and moss, as it also does some half-way up the granite hills that rise a thousand feet, encompassing the lake. This is the limit of trees, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... iron of fact had entered into his flesh and spirit. Yet somehow he had hoped that his Master's large and keen perception of human things, his judicial mind, would have lifted him above the prejudices of Reason. He sat there cheerless, his college cap between his knees; and was seeking the moment to say good-bye when the Master suddenly sat down beside him. To any one looking in at the window, the two seated side by side on the hard sofa would have seemed an oddly assorted pair. Stewart's length of frame, the raven black ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later, he passed them again in the same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of the cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house, that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he recalled a long ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Hawke at once impressed the sleek door-opener, Francois, by the ultra refinement of his demeanor, and the suave elegance of his French. "Evidently the one necessary Adam in this Garden of undeveloped young Peris," thought Hawke, as he gazed around the cheerless room, with its globes, busts of departed sages, topographical maps, and framed samples of the "Execution" of the jeunes personnes, with brush ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... sunset of that evening the next morning was a dreary and cheerless one. It rained steadily, clouds resting upon the very treetops. We crossed the river to visit the Mormon settlement. As we passed through the water, several trappers on horseback entered it from the other side. Their buckskin frocks were ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a salon in days past. It had fallen to baser uses, however, and now served as dining-room. One side gave on the court, and another on an azotea where were tropical plants and a monkey. It was a bare, cheerless apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday. The tables were not alluring. The waiters were American negroes. A Filipino youth, dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour, was beating out ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... attic which she and Sophia Jane had made their play-room, and where they had had such merry games together. How deserted and cheerless it looked! Everything seemed to know that Sophia Jane was ill. It was late in the afternoon, dark, and gloomy; there was never too much light in the attic at the brightest of times, and now it was so shadowy and dull that Susan shivered as she glanced round it. There ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... he had gone, Herbert heard of his departure, and the letter containing the news arrived on a cheerless afternoon during which his doctor had visited him. After the doctor left, Herbert entered the room where his wife and Sylvia were, and took his place in an easy chair by a window. Outside, the lawn was covered with half-melted snow and the trees raised naked, dripping branches above the ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... drowsy traveller by rail how space and time are annihilated! He is barely conscious of progress, only when the brakeman with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far different. He had never noticed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... He observed with sickening distinctness that the night had begun to fall, the river's silver ribbon had become a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark and cheerless. "I guess I ought to be getting into my things," he said, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... with a half shrug, upon the cheerless room, with its bit of a table and the one chair and the low, curtainless window, and then her eyes fell upon the scantily-clad little girl by her side; and then she shivered, as the dampness of her clothes sent a ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... honest labor—anything that would furnish him with the means to buy bread. But as I should not feel justified in extending this story to such a length, I must content myself with a few glimpses that will show the heroic struggle he made to sustain himself during these dark, chilly, and cheerless days ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... his custom of strapping the pistol-holster under his left armpit outside his shirt. He did it with no particular thought and from force of habit. His steps carried him first into Washington Square, at this cheerless hour empty except for a shivering and huddled figure on a bench and a rattling milk-cart. The boy wandered aimlessly until, an hour later, he found himself on Bleecker Street, as that thoroughfare began to awaken and take ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... you makin' out with break—" She saw a look on his face that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Mecklenburg is thus described in a letter written by Stein during a journey in 1802:—"I found the aspect of the country as cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built farmhouses; ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... home, she says, "Even in this giddy place my heart is full to bursting; should I allow myself more time for meditation it would surely break, and pour forth its lava streams on the thirsty dust of human pride. In the dark, cheerless hour of midnight, my burning, throbbing brain still keeps its restless beating, scarce bestowing the poor refreshment of a feverish dream to strengthen the earthly tenement. My health is failing; there will soon be nothing left for me but the drifts of thought and memory, which gather around ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the next morning he was up to have a final look at the tree before Phoebe came down. A blizzard was blowing furiously; the windows were frosted; the house was cheerless. He built the fires in the grates and sat about with his shoulders hunched up till the merry crackle of the coals put warmth into his veins. The furnace! He thought of it in time, and hurried to the basement to replenish the fires. They ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... and his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... how cheerless looked the earth when first I came above it, so dull and black, save where a few snowflakes had been drifted by the wintry winds; all else was bleak and bare. There was not a gleam of sunshine athwart the leaden sky to cheer us, nor a bird to meet us with a friendly ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... page, he galloped to the convent of Chaillot. As there had been no warning of his approach, the grating still remained closed. He arrived just after the poor girl had fallen from the wooden bench upon the tesselated floor of the cold and cheerless anteroom. Her beautiful form lay apparently lifeless before him. Tears fell profusely from his eyes. He chafed her hands and temples. In endearing terms he entreated her to awake. Gradually she revived. Frankly she related the cause of her departure, and entreated ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... from Lake Athabasca, which he called Fort Enterprise. Here there was prospect of plenty, for large herds of reindeer were grazing along the shores of the lake, and from their flesh "pemmican" was made; but the winter was long and cheerless, and Franklin soon realised that there was not enough food to last through it. So he dispatched the midshipman Back to Lake Athabasca for help. Back's journey was truly splendid, and we cannot omit his simple summary: "On the 17th of March," he says, "at an early hour we arrived at Fort ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... to go to bed after that, and I left the matron to cool down from the boiling-point to which she had been suddenly lifted at sight of the ghost of 1854. My little room looked cheerless enough in the candlelight, but I had brought sleep with me as a companion, and knew that I should soon be as happy as if my bed were of down, and the roof-tree ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... know, all count of time. I became aware of the dawn as something that had happened suddenly, as if light had succeeded darkness in a flash. It had been night; I looked about me, and it was day—a steely, cheerless day, like a December evening. And I found that I was very cold, very tired, ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... gesticulating to him to hasten upon his journey. The long avenue so bright and pleasant when the perfumed limes scattered their light bloom upon the pathway, and the dog-rose leaves floated on the summer air, was terribly bleak and desolate in the cheerless interregnum that divides the homely joys of Christmas from the pale blush of coming spring—a dead pause in the year, in which Nature seems to lie in a tranced sleep, awaiting the wondrous signal for ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... wet, cheerless weather, and the mental discomfort of staying in a place where they were "shooting cannons" at us, and other kind of shooting might soon be expected, two of our men got sick, and went back to the position of our guns on the hill in the rear. The Captain appealed to them to go back, but their ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... had walked, when suddenly the walls fell away, and Donald found himself in a large, low room, bare-floored and cheerless, that occupied the other third. Smoky torches of wood standing out from crevices in the logs gave light, and around the wall he could see perhaps fifty men, standing or squatting. Directly before him at the opposite end was a sort of low platform, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... none. A Flemish servant divided the food with his pocket-knife. A farthing candle gave a Rembrandt-like effect to the scene. The boys slept that night on mattresses laid on the floor of one of the big empty rooms of the house. The first days at Bruges were cheerless enough.'[*] The religious houses, however, came to the rescue. Flemish monks and the nuns of the English convent helped the pilgrims, and the Jesuits soon established themselves at Bruges, where they remained in peace for a few years, till the Austrian Government drove them out. The same fate ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... when they drove up to the prison gate; and a mist beginning to gather above North Hessary, as at this time of year it often does after a clear morning. My grandfather, looking out from under the tilt of the cart, felt as he'd never felt before what a cheerless place it must seem to a new-comer, and his heart melted a little bit further towards the lad ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... speeding away to the homes of said worthies, to proclaim the audacious deed through the key-hole, in the most impudent and incomprehensible manner possible. It was on such an evening as this, a few months after the arrival of the Laytons at Aberdeen, that the Misses Simpkins sat in their cheerless back-room, hovering over a small fire, busily plying their noisy knitting-needles, and meantime indulging in their usual dish of scandal, which, however, it is but justice to say, was not quite so highly seasoned with the spice of envy and malice as was its wont. Whether it was that the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Worthing is a lonely piece of road, long and dreary, through bleak and bare open country, where the snow lay knee-deep, sparkling in the moonlight. It was so cheerless that I turned round to speak to my dog, more for the sake of hearing the sound of a voice than anything else. "Good Bose," I said, patting him, "there's a good dog!" Then suddenly I noticed he shivered, and shrank underneath the wraps. Then the horse required my attention, for he gave a start, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... his "Book of Martyrs." He had his imagination, and his pen. Above all, he had a good conscience. He felt it a blessed exchange to quit the "iron cage" of despair for a "den" oft visited by a celestial comforter; and which, however cheerless, did not lack a ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... completely choked, fountains were dried at their sources. The statues of monarchs which had adorned the Exchange, were smashed; that of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, alone remaining entire. The ruins of St. Paul's, with its walls standing black and cheerless, presented in itself a most melancholy spectacle. Its pillars were embedded in ashes, its cornices irretrievably destroyed, its great bell reduced to a shapeless mass of metal; whilst its general air of desolation was heightened by the fact that a few monuments, which had escaped destruction, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... space blank where the state of the weather for the despair or the delight of intending voyagers had been chalked up in happier days. The same men were in attendance at the office as before; but they seemed older and their politeness that of cheerless automatons. For five months they had been serving German officers as guests with hate in their hearts and, in turn, trying ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the proposed experiment, and, as I was the last, I remarked that I could not spoil such an interesting project by withholding my consent. But it seemed to me all the time that the whole thing was a joke and that it would end at once in a laugh. I thought of the cold and cheerless surface of the moon, comparing it in my mind with the delectable world we were leaving, and had no relish for the proposed trip. Something of my feeling must have been reflected in my countenance, for Zenith, who had been looking at me, said in a ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... family of Burness one long sore battle with untoward circumstances, ending in defeat. If the hardest toil and severe self-denial could have procured success, they would not have failed. It was this period of his life which Robert afterwards described, as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of galley-slave." The family did their best, but a niggard soil and bad seasons were too much for them. At length, on the death of his landlord, who had always dealt generously by him, William Burness fell into the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... is in the use of yellow and white, accented with touches of blue, which converts a dark and perfectly cheerless room into a ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... shelter from the rain, and too frail to afford protection from the burning heat of the noonday sun, or the chilling effects of the midnight blast. As their families increased, another and another cabin was added, as crazy and as cheerless as the first, until, admonished of the increase of their own substance, the influx of wealthier neighbors, and the general improvement of the country around them, they were allured by pride to do that to which they never would have been impelled by suffering. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... turn out now,' he said to Ida the night after the funeral, when they two were slowly and sadly pacing the terrace, in front of the drawing-room windows. It was the beginning of December—bleak, cheerless weather—and the woods looked black against a dull gray sky. There was only one feeble streak of pale yellow light in the west Bonder, behind gaunt ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Lord hath servants fain of piety, v. 277. My lord, this be the Sun, the Moon thou hadst before, vii. 143. My lord, this full moon takes in Heaven of thee new birth, vii. 143. My love a meeting promised me and kept it faithfully, iii. 195. My loved one's name in cheerless solitude aye cheereth me, v. 59. My lover came in at the close of night, iv. 124. My lover came to me one night, iv. 252. My mind's withdrawn from Zaynab and Nawar, iii. 239. My patience failed me when my lover went, viii. 259. My patience fails me and grows anxiety, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... third watch of the night the gambling-houses are in full blast. What though the hours of the night are slipping away, and the wife sits waiting in the cheerless home! Stir up the fires! Bring on the drinks! Put up the stakes! A whole fortune may be made before morning! Some of the firms that two years ago first put out their sign of copartnership have already foundered on the gambler's table. The money-drawer ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... interrupted; they bless not health, because they are never sick. They spend their lives in tame and uninterrupted indifference. Possessed of little politeness and goodness of heart, their conversation is cold and cheerless; their manners stiff and haughty. Without passions, they are crimeless; without weakness, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... frontier dwellings she had entered since coming to the hinterlands of British Columbia. She had a vague impression that any dwelling occupied exclusively by a man must of necessity be dirty, disordered, and cheerless. But she had never seen a room such as the one she now found herself in. It conformed to none ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Dexter fancied that he had hidden, and was watching him, and he turned in the other direction, looking hopelessly about the garden, which seemed to be more beautiful and extensive than the doctor's; but, in spite of the wealth of greenery and flowers, everything looked cheerless ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... For a little while yesterday there was spring in the streets. But now it has grown cold again. The wind blows. The buildings wear a bald, cheerless look. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... miserable haven in the rocks, where many boats have been lost as they returned from fishing; two or three score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets, one leading from the harbour, and another striking out from it at right angles; and, at the corner of these two, a very dark and cheerless tavern, by way of ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this lonely, cheerless place was one that brought no very pleasant reflections to either Parker or his wife. He was disappointed in his expectations, and she felt as if a heavy hand were pressing upon ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur |
