"Dismal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at last. The gray and dismal dawn of the November morning stole chilly through the curtained casements. A half-blown rose from Miss Hunsden's bouquet bloomed in Sir Everard's button-hole, and it was Sir Everard's blissful privilege to fold Miss Hunsden's furred ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... "bilian" or iron wood. This is a tedious business. The wood is cut a considerable distance up river and floated down in rafts, an operation which sometimes detains a ship here for three or four months. Deaths are frequent on board these timber ships, as the country for miles round is one dismal mangrove swamp, and very productive of fever. A great quantity of this timber is exported yearly to China direct from Rejang, and it must be a lucrative speculation for the shippers, as the cost is merely a nominal charge of 1 dol. per ton to Government, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... wonderfull things: namely that seuen Sleepers had rested in mount Caelius two hundred yeeres, lying upon their right sides but in the very houre of his laughter, that they turned themselues on their left sides; and that they should continue so lying for the space of 74. yeeres after; being a dismal signe of future calamitie vnto mankinde. For all things should come to passe within these 74. yeeres, which, as our Sauiour Christ foretold vnto his disciples, were to be fulfilled about the ende of the world: namely that nation should rise against nation, and kingdome ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... was employed yesterday and to-day, in copying some actual and accurate surveys, which we had had made of the country round about Portsmouth, as far as Cape Henry to the eastward, Nansemond river to the westward, the Dismal Swamp to the southward, and northwardly, the line of country from Portsmouth by Hampton and York to Williamsburg, and including the vicinities of these three last posts. This will leave him nothing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dreariest of dusty high-roads, bordered with mean houses and disreputable-looking estaminets; and the Bois de Boulogne itself, then undivided from Paris by the fortifications which subsequently encircled the city, was a dismal network of sandy avenues and carrefours, traversed in every direction by straight, narrow, gloomy paths, a dreary wilderness of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... very repulsive picture of bestial atavism. The meaner character was not "reformed by mercy", but merely withheld from wholesale vice by isolation. Mr. Hart is so plainly in earnest when he relates this dismal tale as a sermon, that we must not be too harsh in questioning his taste or condemning his free standards of civilized morality; yet we doubt seriously if stories or essays of this type should appear in the press, and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... I remember the evening of my arrival!—a bleak dreary evening at the close of January, made still more dismal by a drizzling rain that had never ceased falling since I left my father's snug little house at Briarwood in Warwickshire. I had had to change trains three times, and to wait during a blank and miserable hour and a quarter, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... every day more and more dismal. Dinner-time brought its bone, but bones soon failed to comfort me. The gardener said I was "off my feed," and his wife feared I should mope to death. All day I wandered about looking for Lily, and at night retired to my kennel, under ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... eager spirit of application manifested by the busy population, produces an impression on the mind of no common character. Besides which, the town itself, so ill-arranged and ugly, is a spectacle; and in the people that inhabit the dismal streets, the visitor may find studies in morality as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... his hands {804} A goblet wreath'd with ivy, fill'd it high With the grape's purple juice, and quaff'd it off Untemper'd, till the glowing wine inflamed him; Then binding round his head a myrtle wreath, Howls dismal discord:—two unpleasing strains We heard, his harsh notes who in nought revered Th' afflictions of Admetus, and the voice Of sorrow through the family that wept Our mistress. Yet our tearful eyes we showed not, Admetus so commanded, to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Frequently flooded by the river, these dungeons were exceedingly damp and unwholesome; and they were reserved for such prisoners as had incurred the censure of the inexorable Court of Star-Chamber. It was in one of the deepest and most dismal of these cells that the unfortunate Sir Ferdinando Mounchensey ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... in the rock yonder look so dark and dismal. And there might be dark-skinned men with red bandanas bound around their heads, and knives in their belts, along with the rest of the ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... the Apostle Peter warmed himself," said the student, stretching out his hands to the fire, "so it must have been cold then, too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An utterly dismal long night!" ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and grew cloudy and cold. Saturday morning broke drizzly and dismal. A northeast wind tore off the tops of the drearily tossing billows. All was gray—enduring, hopeless gray. Along the coast the waves kept roaring on the sands, persistent and fateful; the Scaurnose was one mass of foaming white: ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... freshening, as we had feared, died gradually away. For this, we had reason to be thankful; for though our situation that night seemed dismal enough, yet how much more fearful would it have been, if the rage of the elements, and danger of immediate destruction, had been added to the other circumstances of terror by which ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue. "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said. "Do ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... her shoulders. But she prided herself on her loyalty to the successive partners of her dismal adventures. She had never played any tricks in her life. She was a pal worth having. But men did get tired. They did not understand women. She ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... steam beer in the Bowhead saloon, and the commodore, stifling his own agony, watched his comrades until their lips and tongues, parched with thirst, refused longer to produce even a moan, and silence settled over the dismal camp. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... remuneration for their performance. Some writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon. In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, whom he describes as being "a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship," it is more likely that he will be a cultured, indolent ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... our late victories passed over my delighted thoughts; happy Carolina! dear native country, hail! long and dismal has been the night of thy affliction: but now rise and sing, for thy "light is breaking forth, and the dawn of thy ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last for ever and a day. Honest old Laughter, the true LUTIN of your inspiration, must have life left in him yet, and cannot die; though it is true that the taste for your pathos, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... daze he came at last to realize this much: that the master-player's house was very tall and very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and wavered along the wall in the dim light of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... advantage of his present apparent discontent, which showed at least some sensibility of his situation, in order to point out to him the necessity of an immediate inspection into his affairs, which, with a total change in his way of life, was her only chance for snatching him from the dismal despondency into which ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also cry—after that, there would be the dismal silence again, silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping from ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... this fort, a sight of unparalleled grandeur broke upon us. The western horizon was yet ruddy with the last light of sunset, and was attracting my attention, contrasted as it was with the dull stream and dismal jungle around us. Suddenly I observed a bright flame rush, as it were, over the distant surface of the swamp: at the same moment we opened a noble reach of the river, and a vast fire was perceived, steadily advancing over the prairie land on our left, which character of surface ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... circle of the wide sea-line Swept them together again. He saw her staggering With mast snapt short and wreckage-tangled deck Where men like insects clung. He saw the waves Leap over her mangled hulk, like wild white wolves, Volleying out of the clouds down dismal steeps Of green-black water. Like a wounded steed Quivering upon its haunches, up she heaved Her head to throw them off. Then, in one mass Of fury crashed the great deep over her, Trampling her down, down into the nethermost ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... girl, "nothing, dear. I was thinking—how lonely I shall be when you and he are married, and they send me to a convent, or to our dismal ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... that the party followed a wedding which had taken place in the morning. If it had followed a funeral it could not have been more gloomy and depressed than it was. I played the piano and the fool for three-quarters of an hour, and anything more dismal than the result it would be impossible to conceive. A temptation seized me suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and gentlemen,—I am going to reveal to you a secret. Pray don't let it go any further. This ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... to be amazed at my dismal comments on latter-day literature. The fact is, you have dissected our present book-makers better than I could do it myself, for the reason that I am too amiable (I presume, you see, that I have the wit) to judge my fellow-workers with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... followed, holding his under-jaw in his hand, looking very dismal and very frightened, for two reasons; one, because he thought that his jaw was broken, and the other, because he thought ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... second floor of the city hall for two months. All through the spring the association thrilled to its own talent in that dismal room. They cleared out the bunting, ballot-boxes, handbills, legless chairs. They attacked the stage. It was a simple-minded stage. It was raised above the floor, and it did have a movable curtain, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... a rug on the earth floor, covered me with another, and in a few minutes I was fast asleep, forgetful even of the dismal ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... last to a door which Leo remembered having opened once, but finding that it led to a passage which was dark, dismal, and unused, he had not cared to explore it. He now followed the elf through it, but not without misgivings, for as he groped along he stepped on a round object which, to his horror when the little blue flame of the elf's lantern ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... monosyllable LA (no) and his signature. The frightfulness of his intention stood like a spectre before me. I clapped one hand upon the other and wept. I made inquiries in the city and in the neighbouring places, but to no purpose. Oh, that dreadful, dismal day, when everywhither I went something seemed to whisper in my heart, 'Khalid is no more.' It was the first time in my life that I felt the pangs of separation, the sting of death and sorrow. The days and months passed, heartlessly ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... certainly was improving. Thanks to Mrs. Barrington's regimen her complexion had cleared up, she kept her hair in a tidier fashion. May Gedney had insisted upon her wearing something beside the dismal browns. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... received with an explosion that would have been combated, laughed at, and disposed of, but treated with silence, and each sinking down to be added to the weight of cruel injuries. There was no complaint; Sophy obeyed all orders with her old form of dismal submission, but everything proposed to her was distasteful, and her answers were in the ancient surly style. If attempts were made to probe the malady, her reserve was impenetrable—nothing was the matter, she wanted nothing, was vexed at nothing. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a Quixotic knight, had no element of timidity in his character. He led his troops. He never said "Go," but "Follow." Pressing rapidly forward, the little band soon arrived upon the border of a vast and dismal morass, utterly pathless, stretching ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... led them up the rugged steeps far into the recesses of the mountains. At length they reached an open level, encompassed on all sides by a natural rampart of rocks, where they had deposited their valuable effects, together with their wives and children. The latter, at sight of the invaders, uttered dismal cries, and fled into the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... consequence, as the very last of the rehearsal. Oh Lord, says Underhill, we are all undone! how! says Crowne, is the Playhouse on fire? the whole nation, replies the player, will quickly be so, for the King is dead; at the hearing of which dismal words, the author was thrown almost into distraction; for he who the moment before was ravished with the thought of the pleasure he was about to give the King, and the favours which he was afterwards to receive from him, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... retorted Tom Reade half savagely, as he landed on the floor and began to dress. All were soon up except Hen, who, when a more dismal and bloodcurdling wail than ever came along, hid his head under one of the overcoats ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... put up at an inn at the west end, near Exeter 'Change; and while dinner was getting ready, we went to see the wild beasts which dwelt there in those days. I thought London a very smoky, dismal city, and that is all I can remember ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... peak, which I ascended. The prospect from this is very extensive, but disheartening, apparently the same sort of scrubby country that I have endeavoured to break through to the north-west. The view to the north is dismal; there are a few isolated hills, seemingly the termination of John range, and of the same formation as this that I am now on. To east-south-east there appears to be a creek, to which I shall now go. At three miles I reached what I had supposed to be a creek, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... agreed on arrived, towards the middle of 1776, Derues found it impossible to pay. It is certain that he never meant to do so; and a special peculiarity of this dismal story is the avarice of the man, the passion for money which overruled all his actions, and occasionally caused him to neglect necessary prudence. Enriched by three bankruptcies, by continual thefts, by usury, the gold he acquired promptly ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... The dismal calling of a cat outside irritated her, and the loud complacent ticking of the clock seemed to mock her misery; but still she worked on, the busy fingers turning the needles, as the wool unwound itself from the balls which danced upon the floor. There was life ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... be spotted by his corruption. He had not then betrayed, and brought to the scaffold, and slandered his benefactor. The power and honours of which he was to be stripped, were yet to be won. His glory and his shame alike were latent. He was beginning hazardously a career of brilliant and dismal vicissitudes, to finish it with a halo of immortal glory blazing ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... summer sun was never on the street but in the morning, about breakfast-time.... It was soon gone again, to return no more that day, and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it left it a prey to the most dismal of organs and ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is done, the dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch's was a dismal time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the French King remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, and the Dutch in the Medway—all this was disaster. None the less, having the vanity of new clothes and a pretty figure, did we—especially ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... butcher and baker, that very often we had not too much for dinner, and that at last my father was arrested." He never forgot—how could he, knowing what we know the lad to have been?—often carrying messages to the dismal Marshalsea. "I really believed," he wrote, "that they had broken my heart." His first visit to his father ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... By the thunder's dreadful stound, Yells of spirits underground, I charge thee not to fear us; By the screech-owl's dismal note, By the black night-raven's throat, I charge thee, Hob, to tear thy coat With thorns, if thou come ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... was a rainy day; not a shower, but a steady rain-an unusual thing in midsummer in the West. A cold, dismal day in the fireless, colorless farmhouses. It came to Howard in that peculiar reaction which surely comes during a visit of this character, when thought is a weariness, when the visitor longs for his own familiar walls and pictures and books, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... which, the coal having been worked out, the old engine, which had grown "dismal to look at," as one of the workmen described it, was pulled down; and then Robert, having obtained employment as a fireman at the Dewley Burn Colliery, removed with his family to that place. Dewley Burn, at this day, consists of a few old-fashioned low-roofed cottages standing on either side ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer—so far as I am aware—has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... himself arrived with Master Hope in the afternoon. Jasper sprang to his brother, crying, "Simon! Simon! you are come to take me out of this dismal, evil place?" But Master Hope—a tall, handsome, grave young man, who had often been much disturbed by his little brother's pranks—could only shake his head with tears in his eyes, and, sitting down on the roll of bedding, take him on his knee ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a new stragem does Troy betray; While to the taken, she becomes a prey. But other monsters there enform our eyes, What mighty seas from Teuedos arise! The frighted Neptune seems to seek the shore, With such a noise, with such a dreadful roar: As in a silent night, when, from afar, The dismal sound of wrecks invades the ear: When rolling on the waves two mighty snakes, Unhappy Troy descry'd; whose circling stroaks, Had drove the swelling surges on the rocks. Like lofty ships they on the billows ride, And with rais'd breasts the foaming flood ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... it was very dark, just light enough to show that, instead of a wall on one side, there was a grating of iron which parted off a dismal dungeon, whence issued the groans of those poor victims whom the cruel giant reserved in confinement ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... too: so that a very successful opening is rashly neglected. "Surely it cannot keep on like this all day," she says, presently, in a dismal tone, betraying by her manner the falsity of her former admiration: "we shall have a dry winter if it continues much longer. Has any wise man yet discovered how much rain the clouds are capable of containing at one time? It would be such a blessing if they had: then we might know the worst, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... without her, yet it certainly seemed, from this time, that she was incomplete without a party. She was the starving wolf after the sledge in which sat the gay world. If the sledge escaped her, she was left to face darkness, snow, wintry winds, loneliness. In London do we not often hear the dismal howling of the wolves, suggesting steppes of the heart frigid ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Prussians struggled on, dragging themselves forward with the greatest difficulty through mud, through slush, through a rain of grape from upwards of two hundred cannon, and through a storm of musketry fire from the infantry. Regiment after regiment, as it reached the edge of the dismal swamp, plunged in ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... present you to our star? Surely she will exorcise your dismal thoughts. Mademoiselle," he added, addressing Jane, "one of your most ardent admirers solicits the honor of ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... their opponents felt, dimly at first, keenly afterward. It was the fastest game that had been played for many a year at Hamilton and it ended in a complete whitewash for the juniors. They retired from the floor too utterly vanquished to do other than indulge in a dismal cry in concert once the door of their dressing room ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Cliffe to his last blood-stained rest, did her mind sink in dreams of Ashe—and in the dismal reckoning up of all that she had so lightly and inconceivably lost. Sometimes she found herself absorbed in a kind of angry marvelling at the strength of the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unattended to. When they arrived at Scutari, it was difficult to land them; after that there was a steep hill up which they had to be carried to the hospital, so that by the time they arrived they were generally in a sad condition. But their trials were not over then. The hospital was dirty and dismal. There was no proper provision for the supply of suitable food, everything was in dire disorder, and the poor fellows died of ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... us women, because we were cleverer than all the painters, and architects, and doctors of logic in the world, for we could make black look white, and yellow look pink, and crooked look straight, and, if anything was forbidden, we could find a new name for it—Holy Virgin! the Piagnoni looked more dismal than before, and somebody said Sacchetti's book was wicked. Well, I don't read it—they can't accuse me of reading anything. Save me from going to a wedding again, if that's to be the fashion; for all of us who were not Piagnoni were as comfortable ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... as I traversed the bank of the creek, these dismal meditations were uncommonly intense. They at length terminated in a resolution to throw myself into the stream. The first impulse was to rush instantly to my death; but the remembrance of papers, lying at my lodgings, which might unfold ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... went inside. Doughy saw her and, having reached the maudlin stage, got up and lurched across the street, anxious to make it up and be friends. Quite like the old times, thought Mrs Yabsley, when the street was as good as a play. And suddenly remembering her dismal thoughts of an hour ago, she saw in a flash that she had grown old and that the street had remained young. The past, on which her mind dwelt so fondly, was not wonderful. It was her youth that was wonderful, and now she was grown old. She recognized ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... hall, which led to a spacious staircase, at the bottom of which stood two pages, with very grave countenances, whom I recollected afterwards to have formerly been very eminent undertakers, and were in reality the only dismal faces I saw here; for this palace, so awful and tremendous without, is all gay and sprightly within; so that we soon lost all those dismal and gloomy ideas we had contracted in approaching it. Indeed, the still ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... dismal to read of Englishmen suggesting for the Boers the same old methods that were used in Ireland, "colonization," stamping out the native language, stamping out the love of independence, banishment, depriving of weapons, the greatest severity, no mercy. The Irish ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... stillness when one woke up by accident away in the night, and forgotten sins came flocking out of the secret chambers of the memory and wanted a hearing; and how ill chosen the time seemed for this kind of business; and how dismal was the hoo-hooing of the owl and the wailing of the wolf, sent mourning by on ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the dismal out-look. If the movement succeeds through non-violent non-co-operation, and that is the supposition Mr. Stokes has started with, the English whether they remain or retire, they will do so as friends and under a well-ordered agreement as between partners. I still believe ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... companions, while a constant playmate of the children is a little laughing monkey of a kind that is found in the woods beyond Tali. At night a watchman passes round the courts every two hours, striking a dismal gong under the windows, and waking the foreigner from his slumbers; but the noise he makes does not disturb the sleep of the Chinese—indeed, it is open to question if there is any discord known which, as mere noise, could disturb ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo! Cringing spirit of those great men Diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent of hair Expression Felt that it was not right to steal grapes Fenimore Cooper Indians Filed away among the archives of Russia—in the stove For dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince Free from self-consciousness—which is at breakfast Fumigation is cheaper than soap Fun—but of a mild type Getting rich very deliberately—very deliberately indeed Guides Have a prodigious quantity of mind He ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... being that bloodletting is a good thing for soroche. As soon as the timid arrieros reached a point where they could see down into the canyon, they spotted some patches of green pasture, cheered up a bit, and even smiled over the dismal ignorance of the "guide." Soon we found a trail which led ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... lovers galore at your feet? In those long winter evenings? the household work is done—the greasy dishes washed, the floor scrubbed; the excellent child is asleep in the corner; the one-and-elevenpenny lamp sheds its dismal light on the darned table-cloth; you sit, busy at your coarse sewing, waiting for Hero Dick, knowing—guessing, at least, where he is—! Yes, dear, I remember your fine speeches, when you told her, in stirring language the gallery cheered to the echo, what you thought of her and of such women ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... time spent by me in that dismal confinement during our voyage. Old Muzzy visited me pretty often, and once Rupert himself came down and made offers towards ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the nature of the ground changed somewhat—became more hilly, and the path, if such it could be styled, more rugged in some places, more swampy in others, while, to add to their discomfort, rain began to fall, and night set in dark and dismal without any sign of the village of which they were in search. By that time the porters who carried Verkimier's boxes seemed so tired that the hermit thought it advisable to encamp, but the ground was so wet and the leeches were so numerous that they ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... screech she would have been nearer the mark. The puppies, Ruby and Remus, had, after the manner of the young, human and canine, not failed to distribute their malady among their elders, and the pack, straitly coupled, went for dismal constitutionals, and the kennels reeked to heaven of remedies, and Freddy's new hunter, Mayboy, from shortness of work, smashed the partition of the loose box and kicked his neighbour, Mrs. Alexander's cob, in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... when she had spoken to him, for the first time in her life, of the dismal shadow which rested upon their names, Mary Potter felt that there was an indefinable change in her relation to her son. He seemed suddenly drawn nearer to her, and yet, in some other sense which she could ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... which lead to the Pope's private apartments. Another Guard met them here and likewise saluted,—in fact, almost at every step of the way, and on every landing, guards were on duty, either standing motionless, or marching wearily up and down, the clank, clank of their footsteps waking dismal echoes from the high vaulted roofs and uncarpeted stone corridors. At last they reached the Sala Clementina, a vast unfurnished hall, rich only with mural decorations and gilding, and here another Guard ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Now how kind this is! not only "to do us good," but "to enjoy." So you see He means you to be happy with what He gives you, to smile and laugh and be glad, not to be dismal and melancholy. If you do not enjoy what He "giveth," that is your own fault, for He meant you to enjoy it. Look up to Him with a bright smile, and thank Him for having given you richly ...
— Morning Bells • Frances Ridley Havergal
... of the nation groping in a darkness that might be felt, the emblem of ignorance, sin, and sorrow, and inhabiting a land over which, like a pall, death cast its shadow. On that dismal gloom shines all at once a 'great light,' the emblem of knowledge, purity, and joy. The daily mercy of the dawn has a gospel in it to a heart that believes in God; for it proclaims the divine will that all who sit in darkness shall be enlightened, and that every night but prepares the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... more vexatious case, and in moments of depression his father thought that he would really turn in his grave at the dismal idea of Michael having stepped into his honourable shoes. Physically he was utterly unlike a Comber, and his mind, his general attitude towards life seemed to have diverged even farther from that healthy ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... with the snow. The cold gleam of the lake in the moon which had begun to shine out now met their gaze; and the familiar outline of Snakes Island, its solemn timber bleak and leafless, standing in a group, seemed to watch Mardykes Hall with a dismal observation across the water. Through the gate and between the huge files of trees the carriage seemed to fly; and at last the steaming horses stood panting, nodding and snorting, before the steps in ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... cracked plaster beneath. The whole place had a tone of yellowish-grey grime all over it, save where, in the centre of the room, on a rough double post, shaped like the guillotine, a scarlet cap of Liberty gave a note of lurid colour to the dismal surroundings. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... youth and blasted in our prime. The demon gold was running loose; everything and everybody was corrupt; truth, (p. 089) conscience, and virtue were regularly made matters of barter and sale. A succession of English travelers repeated from year to year the same dismal story, and their statements were caught up and paraded and dwelt upon in the English periodical press. In "The Quarterly Review," in particular, our condition was constantly held up as an awful example of the results of democratic institutions and universal suffrage. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... and filthy alley, long ago one winter's day, Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay, While beside him sat his sister, in the garret's dismal gloom, Cheering with her gentle presence ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... were in the heart of the resident section when a snore from Spencer explained his long silence. The warmth and motion of the limousine, combined with his overindulgence in wine, had lulled him to sleep. With an effort Kathleen roused herself from her dismal reflections. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... post-prandial hours, preferred sticking to the refectory. A hasty attempt has been made to modernise it; but the light furniture of French Creole fabric, brought along from Louisiana, ill accords with its heavy style of architecture, while its decayed walls and ceilings lezardee, give it a gloomy dismal look, all the more from the large room being but dimly lit up. As it is not a drawing-room party, the ladies expect that for a long while, if not all evening, they will be left alone in it. For a time they scarce know how to employ themselves. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... "slave-ship," could have asked no better model. There is no name upon the stern, and it exhibits merely a carved eagle, with the wings clipped and the head knocked off. Only the lower masts remain, which are of a dismal black, as are the tops and mizzen cross-trees. Within the bulwarks, on each side, stand rows of black blocks, to which the shrouds were once attached; these blocks are called by sailors "dead-eyes," and each stands in ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... but worry, fretfulness, friction,—these are our foes in America. You should not go here and there, making prominent either your bad manners or a gloomy face. Who has a right to rob other people of their happiness? "Do not," says Emerson, "hang a dismal picture on your wall; and do not deal with sables and ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... herself entirely, yet not without bitter anguish. She accepts the sacrifice, but it costs her infinite pangs. She is separated from her husband forever. Nor was the convent agreeable to her. It was dull, monotonous, dismal; imprisonment in a tomb, a living death, where none could know her agonies but God; where she could not even hear from him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... along to kick up a dust at home. The brute! may he have to sharpen saws with bad files for half an eternity! He swore—how awfully the fellow swore!—that I should be turned from his inhospitable roof immediately—and my gentle nurse, adding her tears to my squalls, through that dismal, sleety morning, which was then breaking mistily upon so much wretchedness, was compelled to carry ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... humanity, having left the primitive gods that we see here, to embrace the Christian conception, which, even yesterday, made it live, is in way of denying everything, and struggles before the enigma of death in an obscurity more dismal and more fearful than in the commencement of the ages. (More dismal and more fearful still in this, that plea of youth is gone.) From all parts of Europe curious and unquiet spirits, as well as mere idlers, turn their steps towards Thebes, the ancient mother. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... think this probably attracted the sharks, though it was not very nice to swim through. None of us were any the worse for our romp ashore, but the long day and the hot sun tired us all out. Nearly all the afterguard slept on the upper deck that night, and, but for the dismal roar of the swell breaking on the rocks and the heavy rolling of the "Terra Nova," we spent quite a comfortable night. Dr. Atkinson and Brewster had been left ashore with the gear, but they got no sleep because all night the terns flew round crying ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... that chance might lead them at last upon the right trail, insisted that they knew the way and so led on through a dismal forest along a winding game trail trodden deep by the feet of countless generations of the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... English youth, Had learned to kneel by beds forlorn, and stoop Under foul lintels. He could touch, with hand Unshrinking, fevered fingers; he could hear The language of the lost, in haunt and den,— So dismal, that the coldest passer-by Must needs be sorry for them, and, albeit They cursed, would dare to speak no harder words ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... leggings, ponderous boots, steel-creepers, gauntlets of skin, iron-pointed alpenstocks, and forty or fifty other articles which the exigencies of space and time will not permit me to mention. On one of the darkest and most dismal of these April days, I was trying to kill time in my quarters, when Jack Randolph burst in upon my meditations. Jack Randolph was one of Ours—an intimate friend of mine, and of everybody else who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Jack was in every respect a remarkable man—physically, intellectually, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... wonder and despair of the queen to find herself in this dismal lair! The approach to it was by ten thousand steps, which led downward to the centre of the earth, and the only light was that which came from a number of lofty lamps, reflected in a lake of quicksilver. This lake teemed with monsters, each of which was hideous ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... growing so weak that Yeo gave him more cordial. After a pause Caranby resumed with a last effort, and very swiftly, as though he thought his strength would fail him before he reached the end of his dismal story. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... desiring to make his country envied by all men, when they should see, in that alone of all Greek cities, that the most important shrines were not adorned with Grecian spoils, nor with offerings obtained by the slaughter of men of their own race and blood, dismal memorials at best, but with spoils of the barbarian, whose inscriptions bore noble testimony to the justice, as well as the courage of the victors, telling how the Corinthians and their general, Timoleon, having freed the Greeks who dwell in Sicily from the yoke of Carthage, set up these thank-offerings ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... most decorous as regards the deceased, and most soothing to the feelings of surviving friends. Every one has seen burying-places of all conceivable kinds, and every one knows how prominent a feature they form in the English landscape. There is the dismal corner in the great city, surrounded by blackened walls, where scarce a blade of grass will grow, and where the whole thing is foul and pestilential. There is the ideal country churchyard, like that described by Gray, where the old elms and yews ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... o'er the seas, Westward to the Hebrides, And to Scilly's rocky shore; And the hermit's cavern dismal, Christ's great name and rites baptismal, In the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... piece of ice down the well-like shaft. I hastily returned and dragged forth the corpse of my double and with it everything I had myself brought into the mine. Straightening out the stiffened body I plunged it head foremost into the opening. The sound of a splash echoed within the dismal depths. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... spring that Bessie was fourteen years old, her father sold the beautiful home where she had spent so many happy days, and bought a tract of land in a dense wood farther up the lake. On account of the dense forest, the place appeared very dismal. As the purchaser of their old home wanted possession as soon as possible, Mr. Worthington had time to build only a barn before removing his family. In this building they lived during the first summer. Though these circumstances were discouraging, the Worthingtons ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... venerable mansion there was one chamber whose dismal and singular constructure left no doubt of its having been a part of the original monastery. It was supported by the mouldering arches of the cloisters, dark, Gothic, and opening on the minster sanctuary, not only by casement ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... itself apparently came from the further end of the room, from the level of a table. He clung on, undecided how to proceed. It appeared that the only thing to do was to wait and listen for some indication of the purpose of the dismal illumination. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... colony was but about one hundred men. Three hundred of the pioneers, dismayed by the cloud of menace, every hour growing blacker, had returned across the moutains. There were but twenty-two armed men left in the fort at Boonesborough. The dismal winter passed slowly away, and the spring opened replete with nature's bloom and beauty, but darkened by the depravity of man. On the fifteenth of April, a band of a hundred howling Indians appeared in the forest before Boonesborough. With far more than their ordinary audacity, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the roads so heavy with incessant rain, that king William's departure from his own foggy country, or his welcome to our gloomy one, where this month is melancholy even, to a proverb, could not have been clouded with a thicker atmosphere surely, than was mine to Milan upon the fourth day of dismal November, 1784. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Bok-su was not the sort to spend these dismal days repining. Indeed he had no time, even had he been so inclined. His work filled up every minute of every rainy day and hours of the drenched night. If there was no sunshine outside there was plenty in his brave heart, and A Hoa's whole ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... place. The natives were in abject poverty and their habitations dismal, to say the least. The huts were partly underground, and the top aperture of the domed roof was screened by a hood with an opening to the north-east. No firewood was obtainable at this place, and the only water the natives ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... seen, I sought my gunyah, where I passed the night a prey to the most dismal forebodings. Next morning I became ill, with violent pains and headache, which incapacitated me for some days, during which time a lubra named Moira sat beside me, apparently anxious to do what lay in her power to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... just as I might have carried off the family silver,—if there'd been any! They take the view that there were just so many prizes in the bag; I reached in and took them, so there were none left for the others. At my age, that's a dismal ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... of him for some time. Then very suddenly she drew him to one side out of the throng, into an almost empty anteroom—a dismal little apartment lined with shelves full of blue books and ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gave a bound, and he broke out into an immense laugh of relief, and clapped Halleck on the shoulder. "You looked deucedly as it' you wouldn't, old man! By George, you had on such a dismal, hang-dog expression that I didn't know but you'd come to borrow money of me, and I'd made up my mind not to let you have it! But I'm everlastingly obliged to you, Halleck, and I promise you ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... hands reaching out for free rations of olives, pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, schwartenmagen, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles—such a gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the dismal shudra than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism almost ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... that I may say, without risk of laying myself open to an action for slander, that a more filthy den than the osteria before which my charge and I alighted no imagination, however disordered, could conceive. It was a vast, dismal building, which had doubtless been the palace of some rich citizen of the republic in days of yore, but which had now fallen into dishonoured old age. Its windows and outside shutters were tightly closed, and had been ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... moods before we enter society. To look pleasantly and to speak kindly is a duty we owe to others. Neither should we afflict them with any dismal account of our health, state of mind or outward circumstances. Nevertheless, if another makes us the confidant of his woes, we should strive to appear sympathetic, and if possible help him to be stronger under them. A lady who shows by act, or expresses in plain, curt words, that ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... of the sorrows of the children of the mines and mills in those dismal days, and it must be said for the great heart of England that its beat was still true. The coal- owners made the pitiful plea in extenuation of all the misery and indecency of the mines that without ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... him. Besides, though Cassy had laughed, there had been a tugging at her heartstrings. Shabby, unkempt, in a frayed dressing-gown, his arm in a dismal sling, he looked so out of it, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... and is gone. He, like Harrowby, is very dismal about the prospects of the country, and thinks we are gravitating towards a revolution. He says that the constituency of the great towns is composed of ultra-Radicals, and that no gentleman with really independent and conservative ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else: continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds; which now, by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, they cannot be rid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... like so many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors, sat day and night 'with tearful psalms.'... In the Grassmarket, stiff-necked covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honorable, sacrifice of their ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... 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, But ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... often and so long anticipated. Still, he was disordered by waking to such sudden loneliness, and could not prevent his mind from running upon odd tales of people of undoubted courage, who, being shut up by night in vaults or churches, or other dismal places, had scaled great heights to get out, and fled from silence as they had never done from danger. This brought to his mind the moonlight through the window, and bethinking himself of it, he groped his way back up the crooked stairs, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Once within the double row of walls, flanked by more than fifty towers, any preconceived ideas that one may have had of what it might be like will be dispelled in air. It is the most stupendously theatrical thing yet on top of earth, unless it be the sad and dismal Pompeii or poor rent ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... at any time; doubly so when your native land has not yet been evacuated by a venturesome enemy. It was the time of the Commune. Traffic at Versailles was of that intensity that circulation was almost impossible. In spite of a dismal April rain the town was full of all sorts and conditions of men. The animation of the crowd was feverish, but it was without joy. A convoy of prisoners passed between two lines of soldiers with drawn bayonets. They were Frenchmen, but they ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... and come reluctantly to the transactions of that dismal night, when in such quick succession, we felt the extremes of grief, astonishment and rage; when Heaven, in anger, for a dreadful moment suffered Hell to take the reins; when Satan with his chosen band opened the sluices of New England's blood, and sacrilegiously ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... I declined the evening walk, which had been my only recreation, merely because the happy laugh and continued jests of (my friend) Henry Richards annoyed and distressed me while contrasted with my own heaviness of heart. Evening after evening, sometimes through a whole dismal night, I worked at my melancholy employment; and as my master was poor, and employed no other journey-man, I worked most commonly alone. Frequently as the heavy hammer descended, breaking at regular intervals the peaceful silence of night, I recalled some scene of sorrow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... secrets of her soul to any one, but the more so to M. de Breulh-Faverlay, who had asked for her hand in marriage. She uttered no word on her way home, where she arrived just in time to take her place at the dinner table, and never was a more dismal company assembled for the evening meal. Her own miseries occupied Sabine, and her father and mother were suffering from their interviews with Mascarin and Dr. Hortebise. What did the liveried servants, who waited at table with such an affectation of interest, care ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... sinking into the ground for lack of foundations, the scrubby evergreens which had not yet had time to grow, all the provisional slop kind of mourning that one saw there, imparted to that vast field of repose a look of poverty and cold, clean, dismal bareness like that of a barracks or a hospital. There was not a corner to be found recalling the graveyard nooks sung of in the ballads of the romantic period, not one leafy turn quivering with mystery, not a single large tomb speaking of pride and eternity. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... saw these portents with my own eyes, but I cannot say whether they were indeed warnings sent from heaven or illusions springing from the accidents of nature. The land was terror-struck, and it may happen that the minds of men thus smitten can find a dismal meaning in omens which otherwise had passed unnoticed. That Papantzin rose from the dead is true, though perhaps she only swooned and never really died. At the least she did not go back there for a while, for though ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her own shadow over ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... being over, and Mr. Adams having consented that I should see him down the steps of the capitol, I proceeded onward, and soon found myself, with my revered convoy, in the vicinity of the western gate of the capitol grounds 'The wind whistled a dismal tale,' as we trudged onward, looking in vain for a cab; and the snow and sleet, which, early in the day, had mantled the earth, was now some twelve inches deep on Pennsylvania avenue. I insisted ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... I pray you, accumulate reasons why I should receive such a dismal, awful superstition. Oh, do not, Marchdale, as you ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... pine- wood made a wall before. There came across him then a sharp memory of the boding words which Stone-face had spoken last night, and he felt as if he were now indeed within the trap. But presently he laughed and said: 'I am a fool: this comes of being alone in the dark wood and the dismal waste, after the merry faces of the Dale had swept away my foolish musings of yesterday and the day before. Lo! here I stand, a man of the Face, sword and axe by my side; if death come, it can but come once; and if I fear ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... about it which I never experienced in any previous public dinner. Next morning I breakfasted with Jowett and his guests, found that return would be difficult: while as the young men were to return on Friday there would be no opposition to my departure on Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, but after luncheon there was a chance of getting a little air, and I walked for more than two hours, then heard service in New Coll.—then dinner again: my room had been prepared in the Master's house. So, on Thursday, after yet another breakfast, I left by the noon-day train, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and universal coercion, moral and physical, would have brought about a state of universal sameness,—a dismal uniformity and monotony in all life's manifestations. But such monotony existed only as to the life of the commune, not as to that of the race. The most wonderful variety characterized this quaint civilization, as it also characterized the old Greek civilization, and for precisely the same reasons. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... up with a sprained ankle, that was all, after the upset. But Joel found it dismal enough to play out in the snow alone, and he kept pretty close to the window, so that he could look up and sing out once in a while to Dave seated by it in Mamsie's big rocking chair. And pretty soon, one day, Ben brought Davie out, all bundled up, and set him ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... waters of lakes George and Champlain, and the majestic scenery, with the life-giving atmosphere, of the Adirondacks. The contrast seemed to increase the smoke, and no cheerfulness was added to the scene by the dismal- looking holes in the mountain-sides I now passed. They were the entrances to mines from which the bituminous coal was taken. Some of them were being actively worked, and long, trough-like shoots were used to send the coal by its own gravity from the entrance of the mine ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... straight up from the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards its upper extremity—for the land rises a little—it has always had a peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil house which filled the end of the tenth century with ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... yesterday I made fourteen of these enormities, and mean to stuff them (the children, not the pies!) so that they won't want any more for a year. I want to tell you about some pretty coincidences; we went to church in a dismal rain, and Mr. Prentiss preached on the beauty of holiness, and every time he said anything that made sunshine particularly appropriate, the sun came in in floods, then disappeared till the next occasion. For instance, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... sanctified the grave by Thine own presence, and divested it of all its terrors. My soul! art thou at times afraid of this, thy last enemy? If the rest of thy pilgrimage-way be peaceful and unclouded, rests there a dark and portentous shadow over the terminating portals? Fear not! When that dismal entrance is reached, He who has "the keys of the grave and of death" suspended at His golden girdle, will impart grace to bear thee through. It is the messenger of peace. Thy Saviour calls thee! The promptings of nature, when, at first, ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... what philosophical truths can be more advantageous to society than these here delivered, which represent virtue in all her genuine and most engaging charms, and make us approach her with ease, familiarity, and affection? The dismal dress falls off, with which many divines and some philosophers have covered her; and nothing appears but gentleness, humanity, beneficence, affability; nay, even at proper intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks not of useless austerities and rigours, suffering ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... journeyed to the cave Tainaron, which was an entrance to the Underworld. Far into that dismal cave he went, and then down, down, until he came to Acheron, that dim river that has beyond it only the people of the dead. Cerberus bayed at him from the place where the dead cross the river. Knowing that he was no shade, the hound sprang at Heracles, but he could neither bite nor tear through ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable cause to doubt. He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive. That thought drove me as with a whip ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wind, the raw, chilling December wind, driven in, wet and salty, from the sea, tore over the dunes and brown uplands and across the frozen salt-meadows, screamed through the telegraph wires, and made the platform of the dismal South Harniss railway station the lonesomest, coldest, darkest and most miserable spot on the face ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... live on, and that so bad as barely to hold body and soul together. Afterwards the heavy fetters that were put about our ankles set up sores and galled us so that we scarce could move for pain. And if the iron galled my flesh, my spirit chafed ten times more within those damp and dismal walls; yet all that time Elzevir never breathed a word of reproach, though it was my wilfulness had led us into ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... further heard. I forbear to mention the natural sounds of many animals which challenge admiration by their different peculiarities, as, for instance, the deep bellow of the bull, the wolf's shrill howl, the dismal trumpeting of the elephant, the horse's lively neigh, the bird's piercing song, the angry roar of the lion, together with the cries of other beasts, harsh or musical, according as they are roused by the madness of anger or the charms of pleasure. In place ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Ukko here and there interposes. Thus, when the Sun and Moon were stolen from the heavens, and hidden away in a cave of the copper-bearing mountain, by the wicked hostess of the dismal Sariola, he, like Atlas in the mythology of Greece, relinquishes the support of the heavens, thunders along the borders of the darkened clouds, and strikes fire from his sword to kindle a new sun and a new moon. Again, when Lemminkainen is hunting the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... "This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the morning I cannot bear to think that any one should die and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... full of doleful creatures, who move about demanding our sympathy. I have nothing to offer them but doses of logic, and stern commands to move on or fall back. Catholics in distress about Infallibility; Protestants devoting themselves to the dismal task of paring down the dimensions of this miracle, and reducing the credibility of that one—as if any appreciable relief from the burden of faith could be so obtained; sentimental sceptics, who, after labouring to demolish what they ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... from the room, and young Bawdrey and Captain Travers carried the stricken man up the stairs to his own bed-chamber, his wife flying in advance to see that everything was prepared for him, Cleek, standing all alone beside the shattered cabinet, could hear Mr. Robert Murdock's dismal croakings rumbling steadily out as he mounted ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... downward and lay huddled up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we stood there watching them—for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I turned away from the scene at last as a man ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... "that now was the world to end, and the day of judgment to begin." And at this there followed a general consternation in the whole assembly, and all men forgot the business they were met about, and betook themselves to their prayers. This, added to the horror raised by the storm, looked very dismal, insomuch that my author—a man of no ordinary resolution and firmness of mind—confessed it made a great impression on himself. But he told me "that he did observe the judge was not a whit affected, and was going on with the business of the court in his ordinary manner;" from which he made this ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... mountain-height, Walk in the noon of thy blessed light, Round mountain-caverns with spirits hover, Float in thy gleamings the meadows over, And freed from the fumes of a lore-crammed brain, Bathe in thy dew and be well again! Woe! and these walls still prison me? Dull, dismal hole! my curse on thee! Where heaven's own light, with its blessed beams, Through painted panes all sickly gleams! Hemmed in by these old book-piles tall, Which, gnawed by worms and deep in must, Rise to the roof against a wall Of smoke-stained paper, thick ...
— Faust • Goethe |
