"Gaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... royal exchequer. The custom dues of the Duchy of Lancaster were another source of profit, and retainers of the King were occasionally quartered on them. Thus in 1372 one Rankyn, a follower of John of Gaunt, was retained on condition that he "in time of peace shall be at board at court ... and that he shall have and take for the term of his life, in the whole, twenty-five marks sterling from the farm of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... dispute, and in the same year he became Rector of Lutterworth, where he remained until his death. His liberal and patriotic views on the questions in dispute between England and the Pope gained for him the favour of John of Gaunt and Lord Percy, who accompanied him when, in 1377, he was summoned before the ecclesiastical authorities at St. Paul's. The Court was broken up by an inroad of the London mob, and no sentence was passed upon him. Another trial at Lambeth in the next year was equally inconclusive. By this time W. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Boar, and every savage name, Wild in effect, though in appearance tame, Lay waste thy woods, destroy thy blissful bower, And, muzzled though they seem, the mutes devour. More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race 160 Appear with belly gaunt and famish'd face: Never was so deform'd a beast of grace. His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears, Close clapp'd for shame; but his rough crest he rears, And pricks up his predestinating ears. His wild disorder'd walk, his haggard eyes, Did all the bestial citizens surprise. Though ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... It was sheltered from the east wind by a clump of scarecrow-looking pine trees, and a spur of barren rock rose behind it on the north. I could imagine those trees, though I have never seen them; we have some such in our little wood behind the presbytery. Gaunt-looking figures they are indeed! Some have been twisted into uncouth shapes by adverse winds; others stand draped in veritable garments of gray lichen—weird and shaggy. The latter, seen in the dusk, are calculated to terrify a chance comer who might find himself in their neighborhood; for he would ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... dreams, for they are more than real; They have a passion in them in whose birth The heart receives again its beau ideal— Its Platonized embodiment of worth. Call ye them dreams! then what a mortal dearth Throws its gaunt shadow o'er our little life! Our very joy is mockery of mirth, And our quiescence agony of strife: If dreams are naught but dreams, what is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... bells, and bring The people to see the marrying! Let the gaunt and hungry and ragged poor Throng round the great cathedral door, To wonder what all the hubbub's for, And sometimes stupidly wonder At so much sunshine and brightness which Fall from the church upon the rich, While the poor get ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... and he expressed the feeling of Drumtochty. No one sent for MacLure save in great straits, and the sight of him put courage in sinking hearts. But this was not by the grace of his appearance, or the advantage of a good bedside manner. A tall, gaunt, loosely made man, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, his face burned a dark brick colour by constant exposure to the weather, red hair and beard turning grey, honest blue eyes that look you ever in the face, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... account of the accident to my team that I'm forced to intrude at a time like this," she apologized to Nicola. He was an old man, gaunt and bowed, and his festal trappings ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... O'Regan. From the day of his son's death until the illegal papers were found in the eave of his house, he had never rested one moment. His whole soul seemed darkly to brood over that distressing event, and to have undergone a change, as it were, from good to evil. His brow lowered, his cheek got gaunt and haggard, and his eye hollow and wolfish with ferocity. Neither did he make any great secret of his intention to execute vengeance on those who hurried his dying child out of life whilst in the very throes of dissolution. He was never known, however, to name any names, nor to mark out ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the wondrous parallel,— Both gave Bibles to their land; While, the rage of Rome to quell, Princes stood on either hand, John of Gaunt, and Saxon John, Cheered each ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the other, was almost terrifying. His nose had been eaten away by the disease till it formed a sharp but irregular point: part of the muscles of the chin were contracted, and it was drawn in with unnatural seams and puckers. He was tall, gaunt, and thin, seldom smiled, and when he did, the smile produced a ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... little town, in their evening assemblies round it. The memories of boyhood rose up radiant before him, and as he was immersed in the past, the grim present, the perils that threatened his life, the savage, gaunt rocks without a trace of greenness that girded him, the privations to which he was exposed, were all forgotten, and he longed for one more draught of the water that tasted so cool and sweet to memory. Three of his 'mighty men,' bound ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of affairs was in the hands of the duke of Lancaster, well known by the name of John of Gaunt. This prince had very free notions of religion, and was at enmity with the clergy. The exactions of the court of Rome having become very burdensome, he determined to send the bishop of Bangor and Wickliffe to remonstrate against these abuses, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... decisions against us to the Appellate Division, and other technical delays; so that four months passed before, at last, we were forced to go to trial. By this time my health had suffered; and when I looked at myself in the glass I was shocked to find how gaunt and hollow-cheeked I had grown. My hair, which had up to this time been dark brown, had in a brief space turned quite gray over my ears, and whatever of good looks I had ever possessed had vanished utterly. Gottlieb, too, had altered ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... with his overcoat off and his hair in a mop; and in a faltering jumble of several languages he was trying to tell something to a gaunt, fierce woman in a wide ragged skirt, a shapeless, torn man's coat, with a faded woolen scarf over her head. In her arms she had a baby, and a woman with a baby in her arms knelt beside her; while a dozen other women with children, ragged, ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... elderly woman. She was over fifty, and had grown grey in the service. Her features, even in her prime, had been gaunt, like the rest of her person. But she had mellowed with age, and had become what the Germans call charakteristisch, and what we may term original and sagacious. She dressed well—that is, soberly ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... coincidence, proved to a startling extent insufficient. The financial loss in that disastrous harvest, in the reckoning of experts, amounted to between fifteen and sixteen millions sterling. Fever and dysentery made fatal inroads on the dwindling strength of the gaunt and famished peasantry, and in one district alone, out of a population of 62,000 inhabitants, no less than 5,000 persons died, directly or indirectly, of starvation in the course of three months. 'All our thoughts,' wrote O'Connell, 'are engrossed with two topics—endeavouring to keep the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... a man of large frame and gaunt face, wicked and wild-looking, spoke out, "Say, Smith, or whatever the hell's yore right handle—is this hyar ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... harder and harder it blew, till the hillocks were bare as the boulders. To the southward the buffalos fled, and the white rabbits hid in their burrows; On the bare sacred mounds of the dead howled the gaunt, hungry wolves in the night-time, The strong hunters crouched in their tees; by the lodge-fires the little ones shivered; And the Magic-Men[BK] danced to appease, in their teepee, the wrath of Waziya; But famine and fatal disease, like phantoms, crept into the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... her doom. She, poor soul, was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant, reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... a tired, gaunt man in a ragged uniform of gray who stared up the long, hot road ahead of him with eyes in which there was, in spite of every discouragement the light of a certain ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... sovereignty), and thereupon came into Flanders, where my father received him nobly. Then presently he sent for the wise Grimbard, my nephew, and for Isegrim the Wolf, and for Tibert the Cat; then these five coming between Gaunt and the village called Elfe, they held a solemn council for the space of a whole night, in which, by the assistance of the evil one, and the strong confidence of my father's riches, it was there concluded that your Majesty should be forthwith murdered; which to effect, they took a solemn oath ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... Engineer, which position was equal in honor and dignity to that of Prophet or High Priest. He was a busy, hard-worked man, black haired and gaunt, small of stature and fiery eyed; he looked rather like an overworked department-store manager rather than like a prophet. He was finding his hands more full every day, both because of the extraordinary fertility ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Dante in exile, condemned to be burnt alive on false charges of embezzlement. Look at his starved features, gaunt form, melancholy, a poor wanderer; but he never gave up his idea; he poured out his very soul into his immortal poem, ever believing that right would at ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt Flemish graciousness, murmured names. "Mrs. Rankin—" Mrs. Rankin nodded insolently and turned away. "Miss Bartrum—" Miss Bartrum, the rather charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet eyes. "Dr. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... for a moment and passed his knotted hand over the parchment-like skin of his gaunt temples, then he went on: "Isaac offered up Jacob—or leastways he stud ready ter do hit. Ye calls on us ter trust ye an' stand with ye, an' we calls on you in turn fer a pledge of faith. Fer ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... is all a blaze of gold and russet, and the distant hills stand out in strong blue masses. Winter also brings fascination. Strahov, its many windows severely closed and reflecting a sullen sky, seems to stand out more austerely from among the gaunt tree-trunks, their grey and sombre outlines broken by a fantasia of gnarled and twisted branches glittering under snow. But within those walls, in the high altar's mysterious depth, in the long bare corridors and tiny cells where useful work continues as it has done for centuries, there is ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... came the harsh voice again, accompanied by another sharp clap of the hands, and a bundle of intense fighting energy bounced out from the right tormentor wing, in the shape of a gaunt, fiercely-mustached and entirely bald man of about forty-five, who appeared perpetually to be in the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... the trees were gaunt scarred trunks, without branches or leaves, reminding one of an ancient gloomy picture in the old-time family Bible, known as "Dry Bones in ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... giving, and are giving now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government's part toward resuming productivity and promoting fortunate and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... giving its name to Anderida (or Pevensey) on the edge of it; to the Saxons it was Andreaswald. Wolves, wild boar and deer then roamed its dark recesses. Our Ashdown Forest—all that now remains of this wild track—was for long a Royal hunting ground. Edward III. granted it to John of Gaunt, who, there's no doubt, often came hither for sport. It is supposed that he built a chapel near Nutley ("Chapel Wood" marks the site) where, on one occasion at least, John Wycliffe the reformer officiated. At Forest Row, as we have seen, the later lords who ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's appearance from various sources, and I own that the situation has always seemed to me picturesque in the extreme: the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her severe, dull dress striding through the pastures, and behind her, stealthily as an Indian—or an Italian avenger—the dark, lovely child, now crouching amongst the bayberry, now ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... of the quatrefoils, just above the mullions, is a figure surrounded by a heraldic border; this represents John of Gaunt, who was Governor of Carlisle from 1380 to 1384. It is said that he supported the prior, William de Dalston, who refused obedience to the bishop, and had been excommunicated; and that, out of gratitude, he was thus represented in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... room, Is an antidote to the wild night storm, Lamplight and firelight banish the gloom, No poverty stalks there with cold gaunt form. ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... of syphilitic parents show the disease at birth or usually within one or two months. They present a gaunt, wasted appearance, suffer continually from snuffles or nasal catarrh, have sores and cracks about the lips, loss of hair, and troublesome skin eruptions. The syphilitic child has been described as a "little old man with a cold in his head." The internal organs are almost ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... "You wouldn't care much about seeing her again. She is a tall, gaunt, disagreeable looking woman; while Ida is fair, and sweet looking. I didn't fancy this Mrs. Hardwick when I first set eyes on her. Aunt Rachel was ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... been a kind, motherly woman, she might have done much to reconcile the boy to his new home; but she was a tall, gaunt, bony woman, more masculine than feminine, not unlike Miss Sally Brass, whom all readers ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my venerable ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... himself again, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that there were no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him; and his heart awakened to a mighty love, which never wavered once in its fidelity whilst life abode ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Wiclif's opinions is unknown, but John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV., who was Chaucer's life-long patron, was likewise Wiclif's great upholder against the persecution of the bishops. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the poor ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... not answer. It was what he wanted to do, but he looked at the gaunt, granite headstone in the door-yard, then dropped the butt of his gun to the dead sod again. "Can't you be ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... mocassins; his long hair was tied back, and a red silk handkerchief was loosely knotted round his brow. He leant upon his old brown gun, and the tall trees, through whose leafless branches the sunshine fell in long streaks on the snow and moss, formed a fitting background for his gaunt figure. Unheeding the hoarse barking of the dogs, he replied to Carriere's "Bon jour" with a guttural "Bon jour, nitchee;" but until we were out of sight remained ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... as he announced himself, was a darkey of ancient and venerable mien, tall, gaunt and weatherbeaten. His steed was taller, gaunter and apparently twice as old—an interesting study for the osteologist if there be any such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the pool; and the frogs, growing accustomed to the light, hazarded a few shrill and uneasy notes; the rugged branches of the old trees, bristling with dim-colored lichens, crossed and intertwined themselves, like great gaunt arms, above the travelers' heads. It was a lovely spot, but so lonely and so sad that Germain, unable to endure it more, began to sing and throw stones into the water to forget the dread weariness of solitude. He was anxious also to wake little Marie, and when he saw her rise ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... be occupied by the boys and girls were close together, and that used by Mr. Franklin and his wife was not far off. All three were near to the water, and back of them was a forest of big trees, gaunt and bare now, their black limbs tossing restlessly in ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... "comforter" of Mrs. Varden. A tall, gaunt young woman, addicted to pattens; slender and shrewish, of a sharp and acid visage. She held the male sex in utter contempt, but had a secret exception in favor of Sim Tappertit, who irreverently called her "scraggy." Miss Miggs always sided with madam against master, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of the city, where the belt of protecting verdure grows thin and the gaunt face of the desert presses against the city walls, rose the square, white dwelling of Ahmed Ali, and his garden was the largest and most beautiful of the city. High white walls enclosed it on every side, and ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Jones would be a tall, gaunt, swarthy, raw-boned, swearing man of the sea. He was a sleek, silent, modest little man, with delicate hands and features. He wished to be alone with the Doctor, and so I did not hear their talk. I know that he needed money and that ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... home-made leather shields covered the front of his forelegs and ran up well to his wide breast. What otherwise would have been muscular symmetry of limb was marred by many a scar and many a lump. He was lean, gaunt, worn, a huge machine of muscle and bone, beautiful only in head and mane, a weight-carrier, a horse strong and fierce like the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... eastward, although the remainder of the landscape consists of level and marshy tundra. In the reign of the Empress Catherine Nijni-Kolymsk contained over five hundred sturdy Cossacks and their families; it was peopled at the time of our visit by about fifty poor souls, whose gaunt and spectral appearance told of a constant struggle against cold, hunger and darkness. Nijni-Kolymsk had once apparently boasted of a main street, but the wooden huts had fallen bodily, one by one, till many now formed mere heaps of mud and timber; those still erect being ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the window, to see Mr Dillon, followed by five of his men, three blacks, and seven or eight dogs, among which were three gaunt, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... region and over several hills. At length it entered upon a settlement where the land was lean and rocks lifted their frowning heads above the surface. The few houses were poor, standing out grey and gaunt in the midst of this weird barrenness. But at every door Midnight was accustomed to stop. Well did she know the little voices which welcomed her, and the tiny hands which stroked her soft nose, or held up some dainty morsel of bread, potatoes or grass. But to-day there was none of ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... their neglect the dinner had suffered not at all. Cindy, a gaunt, black woman with a fire of service and devotion to Mother Mayberry in her eyes, and apparently nothing else to excuse existence, had accomplished the ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... corridor of our Pantheon, we, too, come at last to victory—but what a victory! Not the familiar, gracious goddess, wide-winged, crowned, bearing wreaths, but a naked, desperate creature, gaunt, dauntless, turning her iron ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Lo Ong, gaunt, curious, even hostile, retreated, squatting with his delicately thin hands folded over his abdomen. A look of recognition disturbed only for the instant the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... down, it won’t matter much now, There are none but the crows left to see, Perching gaunt in yon pine, as though longing to dine On a broken-down ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... a man of tall, gaunt figure, melancholy countenance and highly wrought nervous temperament. His successors have all profited by his development of the violin's resources, the result of combined genius and labor. He was practically a pioneer in the effective use of chords, arpeggio passages, octaves ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... us to Cattaro. The Gulf of Trieste is very beautiful, for the green hills, all dotted with villas, the busy harbour life, the Julian Alps rising up majestically far away on the starboard, and directly behind the town, gaunt and grey, the naked Karst, of which we were to see so much in Montenegro; all made a picture that it would be ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... a vision—dream within a dream—there was a view of the Via Appia, with gaunt grim gallows set along it in a row and on them a regiment's commander crucified along with ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her, and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... western widower of fifty; his quarters in Washington were in gaunt boarding-house rooms, furnished only with public documents and enlivened by western politicians and office-seekers. In the summer he retired to a solitary, white framehouse with green blinds, surrounded by a few feet ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... they were daily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... man imagined himself to have said. A croaking sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with womanish nails placed its ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... well be, for he had spent much time and fortune at the French court, when Marie Antoinette was in her prime and beauty. His visits were my jubilees—there was the kind, dignified old gentleman, who told me tales—there was his tall, gaunt dog, grey with age, and yet with me full of play; and there were two rough terriers, whom Bruno kept in admirable order. He managed the little one by simply placing his paw upon it when it was too frisky; but Vixen, the large one, like many ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... his father to the tomb. The good ship England (so sang a contemporary poet) was left without rudder or helm; and in a kingdom full of faction and discontent the future of the Plantagenet throne depended on a child. While the young king's ambitious uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (Chaucer's patron), was in nominal retirement, and his academical ally, Wyclif, was gaining popularity as the mouthpiece of the resistance to the papal demands, there were fermenting beneath the surface elements ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... A tall, gaunt Vermonter, whose uniform was a woolen bedcover draped to his knees, laughed loudly from the doorway of his log hut as he flung these ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... produced the Carte du tendre. Perhaps it was this, combined with the virilities, not to be questioned, of his aspect, the signs of hard physical endurance in the face burned by desert suns, and the suggestions of a frame too lean and gaunt for drawing-rooms, that gave him ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was really very sick and really very tired, he snuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheek to the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child with its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught. But the cup did not fill.—Yet scented deep in his curved, empty, balsam-scented fingers lurked—somehow—somewhere—the dregs of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... secured an ace of trumps, but Sir James Fenwick, who during the whole of that day had seemed to take little interest in the proceedings, here rose from his seat, and I knew at once that he had got a tit-bit in the way of a 'point' up his sleeve. Gaunt, and unusually tall, and with his beak-like nose, he always looks strangely impressive when he seriously tackles a witness. He did it this time with a vengeance, I can tell you. He was all over the pompous little ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... ears and numbed their well-cased limbs. More than one tiny, wailing babe was frozen at the breast that dull, drab afternoon, when the sun hung like a ghastly clot of human blood just above the horizon, and its weird, yellow light flitted through the snow-laden streets like gaunt spectres of death. More than one aged, toil-spent laborer, broken at the loom in the service of his insatiable master, fell prone in the drifts and lay there till his thin life-current froze and his tired heart stopped. More than one frenzied, despairing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and gaunt, with broad shoulders and a waist as small as a girl's, and although he must then have been about fifty years of age he stood as stiffly erect as though his spine had grown up into ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... statue's place In Time's Valhalla sure. Lo! from his Neva's banks the Scythian Czar Stretches to thee his hand Who, with the pencil of the Northern star, Wrote freedom on his land. And he whose grave is holy by our calm And prairied Sangamon, From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm To ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... son, whom I have awaited like a lover, Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free; White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting The monotonous weird of departure ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... west,—paused in his slow march through the dust, which even in the greenest of hill and woodland ways is bound to accumulate thickly after a fortnight's lack of rain,—and with a sigh of fatigue, sat down at the foot of a tree to rest. He was an old man, with a thin weary face which was rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the heinous crime of old age, and therefore ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... lived. In the morning, after breakfast, I saw him carefully preparing a tray and carrying it upstairs. There was a sick boy, still in his teens, up there. As I passed the door I had seen him lying there, gaunt and ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in these black and beetling abodes, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... to give up what they felt was their lawful prey. An important lawsuit occurred shortly after his death, and as the judge was about to give his decision against the unjustly accused defendant, to the horror of all in court, the gaunt figure of the dead Tregeagle stalked into the room. ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable months. As they saw these gaunt heroes the rescuers burst into tears; strangers clasped hands and wept together with the same overpowering emotion that mastered relievers and relieved when Havelock and Colin Campbell led the Highlanders into ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... hedgerows which make England like a garden; and she noticed that there were trees everywhere except about the dwellings; and that there were neither hollybush or sunflowers in the white village they rolled through—a gaunt white village which was not Barbizon. The driver mentioned the name, but Mildred did not heed him. She looked from the blank white walls to her prettily posed feet and heard him say that Barbizon ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... faced each other, after the weary years; each gaunt and wan and old, but in their eyes the light and the love of long ago. The hermit's eyes wandered an instant to his son's face, seeking in the stalwart man the little lad he knew. Then they came ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the tall, gaunt girl, in her rough, coarse dress, in the grotesque awkwardness of her movements, reminded Marion of Cousin Abijah; and while she had laughed with the others, and had refused to allow her feelings to be hurt, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarship, and the like; To me, all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their Bodies and Souls, So that often, to me, they appear gaunt and naked, And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one, the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots; And often, to me, those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... entered, and found four men alive in their berths, but too far gone to leave them. "I'll have you boys in the Marine Hospital to-night," he informed the poor creatures, and sought the master's cabin. Lying on his bed, fully dressed, he found the skipper of the Chesapeake. The man was gaunt ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... had he, nor harm, nor dread, But, the same couch beneath, Lay a gaunt wolf, all torn and dead, Tremendous still ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... late this year, but unruly. Sometimes throughout a whole season all the swarms would alight on the lowest attainable bough—such as part of a currant-bush or espalier apple-tree; next year they would, with just the same unanimity, make straight off to the uppermost member of some tall, gaunt costard, or quarrenden, and there defy all invaders who did not come armed with ladders and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice—the morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... excellent. Feldman himself sat in a baronial chair at the head of his library table, while to a seat on his right he had assigned Kent J. Goldstein. On his left he had placed Mr. Jones, the representative of the title company, a gaunt, sandy-haired man of thirty-five who, by the device of a pair of huge horn spectacles, had failed to distract public attention from an ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... not far from the railroad, and made our wants known to the occupants. We had selected for our spokesman the oldest one of our bunch, a soldier perhaps twenty-five years old, named Aleck Cope. He was something over six feet tall, and about as gaunt as a sand-hill crane. He was bare-footed, and his feet, in color and general appearance, looked a good deal like the flappers of an alligator. His entire garb, on this occasion, consisted of an ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... trying to bring order out of chaos, Mark," he said good-humouredly; and then turned sharply to look at a strange, gaunt sailor who came up ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real character—brule, as it is called, where the fires of the previous year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and rain-soaked ashes still hung ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... younger life he had often journeyed there. It was a little shopping emporium, almost a city. He recognized building after building. Now and then he thought he saw a face which he had once known, and he was thankful that there was hardly any possibility of any one recognizing him. He had grown gaunt and thin since those far-off days; he wore a beard, grizzled, as was his hair. In those days he had not been an umbrella man. Sometimes the humor of the situation struck him. What would he have said, he the spruce, plump, head-in-the-air young man, if anybody had told ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... spiritual or temporal, is left to the reader to imagine. The sufferings of the Dissenters were awfully severe at this time. Had it been a year later, we might have guessed it to have referred to the sufferings of that pious, excellent woman, Elizabeth Gaunt, who was burnt, October 23, 1685. She was a Baptist, and cruelly martyred. Penn, the Quaker, saw her die. 'She laid the straw about her for burning her speedily, and behaved herself in such a manner that all the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Old Iohn of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, Hast thou according to thy oath and band Brought hither Henry Herford thy bold son: Heere to make good y boistrous late appeale, Which then our leysure would not let vs heare, Against the Duke of Norfolke, Thomas Mowbray? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... although the engine was still throbbing wildly, and the dainty veil of blue smoke still streamed forward from the back of the car before a gentle breeze. The doctor got out almost precipitately, followed by a gaunt madman, mouthing vileness, who had only a minute or so before been a decent British citizen. He made some blind lunges at the tremulous but obdurate car, but rather as if he looked for offences and accusations than ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... disturbing the romantic atmosphere, infuse into it an element of strange, weird, and uncanny mirth, more unearthly than any solemnity; the day shooting its grim red leer across the plain, the old worn-out horse with its red, gaunt, and colloped neck a-strain; or, in Paracelsus, the "Cyclops-like" volcanoes "staring together with their eyes on flame," in whose "uncouth pride" God tastes a pleasure. Shelley had recoiled from the horrible idea of a host of these One-eyed monsters;[105] Browning ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the ditch was wet, and he crawled up the embankment with mud-soaked knees, and sat on the shoulder again. The gin bottle was still intact. He had himself a long fiery drink, and it warmed him deep down. He blinked around at the gaunt and treeless land. ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller
... word he quickened the pace of his cleric steeds, and the doctor was dropped parallel with the carriage window. There, catching sight of Mrs. Bevis, of whose possible presence he had not thought once, he paid his compliments, and made his apologies, then trotted his gaunt Ruber again beside the wheel, and resumed talk, but not the same talk, with the rector. For a few minutes it turned upon the state of this and that ailing parishioner; for, while the rector left all the duties of public ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted with an uncouth sun-bonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and saw the old man sitting up in his bed, as ghastly as a dead man dug up again: his bushy eyebrows were wrinkled over his bleared old eyes, the long white hair dangled forlorn from his gaunt head: yet was his face smiling and he looked as happy as the soul within him could make the half-dead body. He turned ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... snow that kept some of the frost out was piled to the windows, it was dank and chill. Only a little dim light crept in, and it was a moment or two before Grant saw the man who sat idle by the stove with a clotted bandage round his leg. He was gaunt, and clad in jean patched with flour-bags, and his face showed haggard under his bronze. Behind him on a rude birch-branch couch covered with prairie hay a woman lay apparently asleep ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... scraped a half week's accumulation of soft beard from his face. Sure, he was all spruced up now, ready to make a polite courtesy call at the big house. The grin did not fade, but was gone in a flash, leaving no hint of softness now about his gaunt features, no light in the intent, measuring depths ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... on the walls of the ruin, Now clamb'ring, like a runaway lunatic, Up to the summit of our highest mount. 130 I have watch'd him at it morning-tide and noon, Once in the moonlight. Then I stood so near, I heard him mutt'ring o'er the plant. A wizard! Some gaunt slave, prowling out ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that swift-flying Carries with it the white freshness Of the snows that from the mountains Ever in its waves are melted, Stands almost a skeleton; The sole difference it presenteth To the tree-trunks near it is, That it moves as well as trembles, Slow and gaunt, a living corse. Oh! thou venerable elder Who, a reason-gifted tree, Mid mere natural ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... baskets at the doors of their miserable habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and an abomination. Moosahms, Doosadhs, and other poor castes, such as Dangurs, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs. These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... not high, was exceedingly narrow; his eyes were brown, with a rat-like glare in them; the nose was rather long, and the mouth very wide; the cheekbones high, and the cheeks, as to hue and consistency, exhibiting very much the appearance of a withered red apple; there was a gaunt expression of hunger in the whole countenance. He had scarcely glanced at the horse, when, drawing in his cheeks, he thrust out his lips very much after the manner of a baboon when he sees a piece of sugar held out towards him. "Is this ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... their four associates had spent from sunrise to sunset in severe and at moments dangerous toil among the rocks and in the swift water, and the fresh meat was appreciated. The head, feet, tail, skin, and entrails were boiled for the gaunt and ravenous dogs. The flesh gave each of us a few mouthfuls; and how good those ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... told them that Mrs. Claridge was going to make him happy by coming to tend his motherless children; was going to be his wife. Francis, the eldest, stomped about the garden at Ware and swore he would go back to Rugby during the holidays; Elspeth, the gaunt girl of fourteen and Agnes, a dreamy and endearing child, cried themselves to sleep in each other's arms. Claribel, however, quite approved. And whether they liked it or not, in January, 1907, the marriage took place—at the Registrar's—and Beryl came to live ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... his knees, and stood warming himself at the fire, while he looked pensively round him. He was as tired as his wife, and quite as mistrustful of what might be before them; but he was not going to confess it. He was a lean and gaunt fellow, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, of a Cumbria type commonly held to be of Scandinavian origin. His eye was a little wandering and absent, and the ragged gray whiskers which surrounded his countenance emphasized ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... first period, he studied French models. He learned much from his partial translation of the popular French Romaunt of the Rose. The best poem of his French period is Dethe of Blanche the Duchesse, a tribute to the wife of John of Gaunt, the son of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trousers collections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a soft piece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, as incrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, the toes always ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... my alley. It was mine by right of long acquaintance. We were neighbors for twenty years. Yet I never knew why it was called Cat Alley. There was the usual number of cats, gaunt and voracious, which foraged in its ash-barrels; but beyond the family of three-legged cats, that presented its own problem of heredity,—the kittens took it from the mother, who had lost one leg under the wheels of a dray,—there was nothing specially remarkable ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... ravages of the yellow fever. While sitting one day in the large, bare, comfortless public room at the miserable hotel at which he put up, he observed two strangers, whom he at once perceived to be English. One of the strangers was a tall, gaunt man, shrunken and hollow-looking, shabbily dressed, and apparently poverty-stricken. On making inquiry, he found it was Trevithick, the builder of the first railroad locomotive! He was returning home from the gold-mines of Peru penniless. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... preaching the Word. At the close of the year, Mr. Trowbridge, having removed from Constantinople to Marash, made a visit to Zeitoon, and remained there laboring freely from Thursday till Monday. His guide homeward was a Zeitoon Protestant,—"a tall, gaunt man, past middle life, who has suffered much there for Christ's sake. At one time the people blackened his face with a coal, put him astride of a donkey with his face towards the tail, and thus paraded him through the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... graves are French graves made afterward. I walked through this ruined city where, aside from the soldiery, the only sign of life I saw was a gaunt, prowling cat. With me past these hundreds of graves walked half a dozen French officers. They did not pause to read inscriptions; they did not comment on the loot and pillage of the graveyard; they scarcely looked even at the graves, but they kept constantly raising ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Reformation a moral movement The evils of Papal institutions The evils of monastic life Quarrels and dissoluteness of monks Birth of Wyclif His scholastic attainments and honors His political influence The powers who have ruled the world Wyclif sent on a mission to Bruges Protection of John of Gaunt Wyclif summoned to an ecclesiastical council His defenders and foes Triumph of Wyclif He openly denounces the Pope His translation of the Bible Opposition to it by the higher clergy Hostility of Roman Catholicism to the right of private judgment Hostility to the Bible in vernacular ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... till the afternoon of the next day; they ran the fox all day and all night, the hounds baying at every jump, the cur-dog silent and tenacious. When the trio returned, they came dragging themselves along, stiff, footsore, gaunt, and hungry. For a day or two afterward they lay about the kennels, seeming to dread nothing so much as the having to move. The stolen hunt was their "spree," their "bender," and of course they must take time to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... into the waste-paper basket under the table; then filled a glass with sherry, drank it, and dropped his head wearily on his hand. Five leaden minutes crawled away, and a long, heavy sigh quivered through Gen'l Darrington's gaunt frame. Seizing the decanter, he poured the contents into two glasses, and as he raised one to his lips, held ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Hollow Back, who had once been a fine-paced and good jumping horse, but now only fit for packing; he was very well bred and very game. The next was Giant Despair, a perfect marvel. He was a chestnut, old, large-framed, gaunt, and bony, with screwed and lately staked feet. Life for him seemed but one unceasing round of toil, but he was made of iron; no distance and no weight was too much for him. He sauntered along after the leaders, looking not a whit the worse than when he left the last water, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... seen some cattle near the rider; he had passed them earlier in the morning—lean, gaunt range steers that would bother a fast pony in a ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Carlson had not improved in this feature since Mackenzie parted from him in violence a few weeks before. His red hair was shorter now, his drooping mustache longer, the points of it reaching two inches below his chin. He was gaunt of cheek, hollow of eyes, like a man who had gone hungry or suffered a sorrow that ate ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... they may be said to stay in England seven months—much longer than one would think without taking the dates. Up till April 20 the hedges seemed as bare as they were in January, a most dreary spectacle of barren branches, and the great elms gaunt against the sky. After that the hedges gradually filled with leaf, and were fully coloured when the turtle-dove began to sing, but still the elms were only just budding, and but ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies |
