"Mirthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not know that. It was only after an unusual interval in the powerful wind-blast that Dan looked upward and suddenly held up his hand. He looked at the vague form of the girl and bared his teeth in a quick, mirthless smile. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... boomed from him in a slogan of triumph and as if in echoing mockery there came from the open door the chuckling, mirthless laugh of Obadiah Price. ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... power short of deliberately blowing my brains out—a suicide's widow—I couldn't brand her like that. When men were dying around me like flies death passed me by—I wasn't fit even for that, I suppose." He gave a ghastly little mirthless laugh that made Peters wince and came back slowly into the room, heedless of the window he had left open, and walked to the fireplace dropping his head on his arm on the mantel. "You asked me just now what I meant to do to her—it is not a question of me at all but what Gillian elects ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... him with something that was not a smile, rather the faint, mirthless echo of a smile, in ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was a short, mirthless laugh that made him glance at her curiously. "They know I'm perfectly safe. It's the other way round: a man of your standing takes chances by being alone with a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... remained standing for some time as motionless as though she were a marble statue and not a living woman. Suddenly she seemed to take some desperate resolve: she threw back her head with a bitter, mirthless laugh, and going to the bell she rang it. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... too fast and too far," answered the other with his mirthless laugh. "Now, there's Mr. John ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... same kind has happened to me," he said with a hard, mirthless laugh, "for out of the most perfect beauty I have only ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... what I say, Tom. I'm only a plain man, and my tongue will say what comes uppermost! But it ain't from the soul, Tom, it ain't from the soul," said Peter, punning feebly, and letting a mirthless smile play over his sallow features. "You know Mr. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... in fact, at the Ghats or terraces at the river side, where many thousands were congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... told his piteous tale with tears and passion, protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds. But the girl gave a brief and mirthless laugh. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... him, all right." The deputy gave vent to a short, mirthless laugh. "Oh, I rapped him with the butt; had ter do it. He'd got hold ov a club somwhar, an' wus goin' ter give yer another. It will be a while, I reckon, 'fore he takes much interest. What'll I do ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... hoarse approval; the children, not understanding, laughed in mirthless glee; the men, with loud curses, showed their appreciation of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said with a mirthless grin, "You're a prisoner. And you're goin' to stay here until the cops let Dimitri Mirov go. It's up to you how fast ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... then? I shall be dead then," says she, with a rather mirthless laugh this time. "Do you know that you and Aunt Jane are the only two people in all London ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... five guineas from her pocket and flung them on the table. A couple would have rolled on to the floor, but Rofflash grabbed them in time. Sally burst into one of her hard, mirthless laughs. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... doctors have been mistaken, there will be no heir to the Dukedom. Her Highness suffers from dropsy. Great heavens! what ails you?' he cried, for the Graevenitz had flung herself back into her chair, convulsed in a horrible paroxysm of mirthless laughter. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... episode in one. It so happened that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present, for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment from recreation to violence. Indeed, the mere fact of their own passing ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... useless," he replied with quiet conviction. "He wouldn't pay. He said he wouldn't, last time. And he meant it.... You'd better have let me blow out my brains while I was about it, Ann"—with, a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... glorious day, a day when the sap ran in the maples, and the sun soared upwards in a sky of the palest blue. All this we saw through the tracery of the leafless branches,—a mirthless, shivering crowd, crept through a hell of weather into the Hair Buyer's very lair. Had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were shooting you up, they knew my arsenal would get into action. They figured on killing me the first shot. But they didn't," added the captain with a mirthless grin. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... returned Raikes with a mirthless grin. "I am to accept the brief custody of this gem as a recognition of my personal integrity. I see, I see. Well, I would appreciate the courtesy more if I could indorse its incaution. However," he added abruptly, ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... remembered now. She had broken down his prejudice; she had partially won him over; she had been the "hit" of the evening; further conquests were in sight and within easy reach if she played her cards right. And Essie Tisdale—her long upper lip stretched in its mirthless smile—she would not have her feelings this morning for ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. "My Gawd! it 'ud take something. No fear; that little game's off. And I could a' done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead of a blarsted freak. There won't never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the missus. Doctor said it'd be ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short, single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!" he uttered, laying the book down. And, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... a soft, mirthless gurgle that caused Truxton to wonder why he had made the effort at all. "I imagine His Serene Highness has little to fear from any American," he said quietly. "He has been taught to love and respect the men of his father's ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a low-pitched, mirthless laughter. Where was the filmy-eyed girl he had known? The laughter broke off ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... of her mind. 'You would say, "Senor Rey, you have drunk too much wine!" and he would answer with a laugh, too, "It is true, no doubt, as you say. I am an old and a very foolish man, my dear Senorita Mallory!" and you would smile and think of it no more.' The Glow-worm laughed in a lost, mirthless way, and held me tightly as she finished, 'But that very night, just the same, you would find yourself with him! And he would laugh at you then and say, coming closer, "Forgive an old ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... of this last word—the same little mirthless laugh that she had uttered before—Jacqueline went away, followed by the admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... failed her, and her eyes dilated with horror, for the door behind Norbert opened, and the Duke de Champdoce entered the room, uttering a string of meaningless words, and laughing with that mirthless laugh which is so sure a sign ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him. "You yourself never loved. You never love!" On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours of some piratical schoolboy's ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... he called. "I fired five shots, but I saved one for myself. Ha, ha, ha!" And his mirthless cackle broke out ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... of Jimmie Dale, the alarm had come before he had taken off the girdle, and, without thought of it again at the time, he had still been wearing it when he had made his escape. He looked at it now for a moment grimly—and smiled in a mirthless way. He had not used it since that night, and that night he had never meant or thought to use ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... he had been fighting the desert; and in the serene calm of his eyes was the identical indomitability that had been in them when he had set forth. As he peered westward the strong lines around his mouth relaxed, his lips opened a trifle, and a mirthless smile wreathed them. He patted the shoulder of the black horse, and the dead dust ballooned from the animal's coat and floated ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew's face. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... to be said, Baltimore," says she, after a slight pause. "This must never occur again. I like you, you know that. I——" she breaks off abruptly, and suddenly gives way to a sort of mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives, one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of the dark ages, I should probably have ended my days as the prioress ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... can rope some more of these cayuses. I'd like to have them all tied up here for a while. I've got a few things to say to them. They'd have to listen whether they wanted to or not if they were all in the same fix that fellow is," he added with a short, mirthless laugh. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... write so platitudinous a book as this one. And in the same way he views it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to yield up his liberty, his property and his soul to the first woman who, in despair of finding better game, turns her appraising eye upon him. But if you want to hear a mirthless laugh, just present this masculine theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly after alcohol and crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon her. That is to say, just hint to her that the bride harboured no notion of marriage until ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... suspended piece of rancid pork which, with a little flour and a few potatoes, had during the last few months provided him with sustenance. It was of course a trifle, but it tipped the beam, as trifles often do, and the man who was tired of all it symbolized straightened himself with a little mirthless laugh. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... are to do his place. Then there are the new parks in Richmond Borough, and this enormous commission down here among the snakes and jungles. Well—God bless you. You're twenty-five and busy. I'm forty-five and"—he looked drearily into the younger man's eyes—"burnt out," he said with his mirthless laugh—"and still drenching the embers with the same stuff that set 'em ablaze.... Good-bye, Garry. Your boat's alongside. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... he leveled the revolver, grinning with the mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table. The guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz. He caught at his throat and staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall. When he pitched forward on his face he was dead ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... moment there was only the noise of the katydids, backgrounded and enfolded by the deep silence of the great mountains. Then someone broke out into what was evidently a forced laugh, a long-drawn, girding, mirthless haw-haw, the laboured insult of which stung Creed into a certain resentment ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... lying on his back, looking straight up at the sky as he alternately moaned and talked at random, with now and then a mirthless ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... Dartmoor," Stane laughed again his cold, mirthless laugh. "There is no need to mince matters, Ainley. All the world knows I went there, and you need not go to any trouble to spare my feelings. When a man has been through hell ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... chuckling laugh, mirthless and almost cruel, as she surveyed Editha's cloaked figure and then the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... blow for freedom, took it with a virtuous shudder from the hands of their daughters. I was pronounced unwholesome and depraved; even my personal character was torn into shreds. How odd it all seems!" she added, with a light, mirthless laugh. "It was you who put into their hands the weapon with which to scourge me. Their trim, self-satisfied little sentences of condemnation are emasculated versions of your judgment. It is you whom I have to ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... they? Hain't got 'nough o' fightin' yit, I reckon," and the speaker strode forward, with a rough, mirthless laugh. "Wal, damn 'em, they will yere 'fore I 'm done. We 're a goin' ter rush thet thar house 'fore long, an' hang 'bout a dozen Yanks, an' these yere lads will come in right handy ter go in first. If you uns like fightin' so durn well we'll give ye your bellies full. Who's ther ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... at us for being worried," suggested Bart, with an attempt at a laugh that was rather mirthless. "Maybe he's ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... work off the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me," I said, "because it won't do. You're a blackguard, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... my breast, For mirthless laughter, and I laughed; In mine the phantom's cold hand pressed A cup, and in self's spite I quaffed. It clung like slime; 'twas black like ink: Death is less ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... said Tommy shortly. His mind leaped ahead and his lips parted in a mirthless smile. "Get your gas mask ready, Evelyn. The explosion of that thermit-thrower made them curious in the City. They ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... fell from the judge's lips—words that branded De Ganache with unutterable infamy—the miserable man looked around him like an animal at bay; and then, a madness coming upon him, he broke out into peal after peal of harsh, mirthless laughter—laughter that seemed to come from the grave and beyond; and, laughing thus, they led him away. When he was gone De Mouchy pointed to Ferrieres as he said ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... neighboring wood attracted the attention of some herdsmen. Tracing this, they found the decaying corpse of the old Spaniard hanging from the branch of a balete tree. [51] In life he had inspired fear by his deep, hollow voice, his sunken eyes, and his mirthless laugh, but now, dead by his own act, he disturbed the sleep of the women. Some threw the jewels into the river and burned the clothes, and from the time that the corpse was buried at the foot of the balete itself, no one willingly ventured near the spot. A ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... any move toward shaking hands, although it was obvious that they were acquainted, at least. The great detective's tone when he greeted his visitor was as distinctly ironical as the latter's was uneasy, although he replied with a mirthless chuckle, which was intended ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... place and at the providential meeting. He had cause to wonder how Venning had borne the horrors of the underground as well as he had, for towards the morning it seemed as if those ghouls of darkness vied with each other in producing the most appalling shrieks, howls, and bursts of mirthless laughter. They played ventriloquial tricks in the passages and caverns, making the sounds come from different points after varying intervals of silence; and all the time, as could be gathered from occasional words in the incoherent gabble, uttering ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... in the face, you beloved old rag doll," Tommy gave a mirthless chuckle, "but the Princess doesn't go back with you—and that's a cinch. She's going home with me, to visit my sister. Don't you try to follow her, either, for I'm giving it to you straight that you'd last about seventeen seconds in Kentucky. Yes, Professor, I'd say that in Jefferson ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... a smile—mirthless enough, God knows—but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... alcoholic dream, or moving through some Scotch mist of whiskey and water. Others clung unsteadily but as silently together, with no trace of convivial fellowship or hilarity in their dull fixed features and mechanically moving limbs. There was something weird in this mirthless companionship, and the appalling loneliness of those fixed or abstracted eyes. Suddenly he was aware of two men who were reeling toward him under the influence of this drug-like intoxication, and he was startled by a likeness which one of them bore to some ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here.' Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames' laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. 'What a period!' he uttered, laying the book down. And ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... all well," said the doctor, facing Rainey, his face away from the girl. As he spoke he left his mouth open for a moment, his tongue showing between his white teeth, in a grin that was as mocking as that of a wolf, mirthless, ruthless, triumphant. And for a fleeting second ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... might do worse.... Yet he was not Harleston; there never was but one equal to Harleston, and that one was lost to her. She shut her lips tightly and a far-away look came into her eyes. And now Harleston, too, was lost to her; and—she lifted her hands resignedly, and laughed a mirthless laugh. As she came back to reality, she met Marston's curiously courteous glance with ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... upward in the direction of the committee tent. Only when the black mass had packed itself in solid phalanges about that ring, inside which, just a year ago, he had stood in very different circumstances, and was at length still, a wintry smile played for a moment about his lips. He laughed a mirthless laugh. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... startled Rose by giving a short, mirthless laugh, and, turning away, he began to speak in an undertone, as though unconscious of the presence of the other two, for, despite his previous calm, the thought of what was in prospect had keyed up his nerves to a pitch where they quivered ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... can do that, I'll keep my mouth shut," chuckled Hank in his mirthless way; "but if I don't get some money pretty quick, I'm going to make trouble fer somebody, I ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... the older men, leaped down from the steps of the rostrum, and striking the frail captive a powerful blow across the face, which felled her to the floor, placed his foot upon her prostrate form and turning toward the assembled council broke into peals of horrid, mirthless laughter. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... widow next me bit her lip and clenched her fist, but she gave no other sign of emotion. Another film was thrown on the screen, humorous, I believe. Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She did not stop laughing. It was a long, mirthless, dry, uncanny sort of cackle. People stared. She laughed still louder. An usher came down the aisle, and stood there, uncertain what to do. Hysterics had given way to weeping: the tears were now streaming down ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... why I have sent for you?" he said at length, with a mirthless laugh. "I think it must be that I may convince Bickley, the sceptic, that there are powers which he does not understand, but that I have the strength to move. Also, perhaps, that your lives may be spared for my own purposes ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... crazy—I don't know what I want," said Helena petulantly. Her chin went into her hands, and she stared wide-eyed at the breaking surf. "I wonder what it all means?" she murmured, with a mirthless little laugh. ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Lysia! ..." he shouted noisily,—then, receiving no answer, he flung himself down on the vacant couch of roses, and gathering up a handful of the crumpled flowers, kissed them passionately,—"The witch has flown!" he said, laughing again that mirthless, stupid laugh as he spoke—"She doth love to tantalize me thus! ... Tell me! what dost thou think of her? Is she not a peerless moon of womanhood? ... doth she not eclipse all known or imaginable beauty? ... Aye! ... and I will tell thee a secret,—she is mine!—mine from ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... miss my train, the midnight," he began. "I really tried to catch it. But, when I found it was gone, I couldn't sleep. I was worried and frightened. This bank business was on my mind. I wanted to think." He forced a mirthless smile at that. "I couldn't think very straight, but I tried to. I couldn't do anything but see myself in jail, in the penitentiary, because ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... not been properly developed and that she needed to study. She thanked me for my counsel and said she would rewrite it. I wish it might be printed just as it was, however, for it is indeed a sodden and mirthless world in which we live ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... as she had laughed—that same peculiar mirthless little laugh—when he drove past her and splashed her with mud on the road. "It never seems to occur to you that I may have some little wants of my own, Dan," she said; "you are a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... oarsmen pull a slower stroke, and then, as they watch the great, savage creatures which swim alongside, they laugh in the mirthless manner peculiar to most young native-born Australians, for suddenly, with a last sharp spurt of vapour, the killers dive and disappear into the dark blue beneath; for they have heard the whales, and, as is their custom, have gone ahead of the boat, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... him very much. All the while I was exultantly conscious that a new duty and a new delight had come to me: some great thing, given of God—a work to do, a happiness to cherish. And that night he came and went in my dreams—but glorified: his smile not mirthless, his grave, gray eyes not overcast, his face not flabby and flushed, his voice not slow and sad, but vibrant with fine, live purpose. My waking thought was the wish that the man of the hills might ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... His laugh was as mirthless as the cackle of a guinea hen. "But I 'm going to die hard, believe me! And if I go down, if they think they can throw me on that, I 'm going to take a few of my friends ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... were tranquil in every line and tint; his step was the light, yet deliberate stride of an athlete without passion or bravado. Conscious power, inexorable will, and thorough self-command were stamped upon him from crown to foot, and his salutation to the small family party accompanied a smile as mirthless and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the clock could only speak as well as goggle its eyes!" he said, with a mirthless smile. "We should learn something then. What's the idea of it all—the rolling eyes, the moon, the stars, and a verse as lugubrious as a Presbyterian sermon on infant damnation. The ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... suppose, that you considered me a trifle tipsy, eh?" he said, the corner of his mouth going up in mirthless ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... mirthless humor] I was saving another man's knees at the time. E was kneelin on my ed, so ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... boy flushed at the disagreeable ring of it. The sound was not loud but flat and mirthless, the syllables distinct and evenly spaced. His white even teeth remained tight-closed and showed in flashing contrast to his swarthy face and black mustache. Morrow's face wore none of the active malignancy that stamps the features of those uncontrolled desperadoes ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... blackmail us, of course," replied Cotherstone, with a mirthless laugh. "What else should he do? What could he do? Why, he could tell all Highmarket who we ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... was plucky and energetic. He lofted the bird out of the dish on to the tablecloth twice in the first minute. Stifling a mad inclination to call out 'Fore!' or something to that effect, he laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh, and replaced the errant fowl. When a third attack ended in the same way, Miss Beezley asked permission to try what she could do. She tried, and in two minutes the chicken was neatly dismembered. The Babe re-seated himself in ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... said she'd send me over to know if you'd accept a jar of her fresh pickle-lily, and mebbe I could find out about your clothes. The pickle-lily's on the kitchen table. I left it when I came through. It's good, but there ain't any love in it." And Miranda laughed a hard mirthless laugh, and then settled down to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade. I'm real sorry he ain't here—and then again I'm not. I'll—I'll leave my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty, mirthless chuckle that sent chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say, what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... it was, quite cold, quite mirthless, apparently quite meaningless. Carraby turned back to the letter, tore open the envelope and spread it out before them. He read it out aloud in ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whole affair appalled her more than she could have suspected. When several of the guests of the evening soberly announced that Mohammed was a dangerous man and even an object of worry to the government she felt a strange catch in her throat and her now mirthless eyes turned instinctively to Brewster, who, it seemed, was the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... both. It is easy to be plausible. Would a mere statement from me, unsupported by proof, convince you where it failed to convince a court martial? Of course not. Then why make you uncomfortable by doubting my word?" Gray's smile was like the mirthless grin of a mummy. "I was found guilty, all in due military order, and—disgraced, branded! My uniform was taken from me, and I can't wear it again. I can never again serve my country. It was handled quietly, with admirable discretion, for ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... and his wench. Some of the obscenity of this part may be elaborated from passages in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The piece has a prologue for representation at court, but it is most unlikely that it ever had that honour. It is from beginning to end a graceless and mirthless composition. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and Aynesworth bent closer over his work, with a gathering frown upon his forehead. A mirthless laugh is never a ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Lanyard with a mirthless snarl. "You've slept like the dead man I took you for at first, my friend—a solid fourteen hours, my word for it! Feeling ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... experienced that uncanny sensation as of unseen eyes regarding her malevolently. Again she shuddered. She tried to force her unwilling feet onward toward the cave, when from its depths issued an uncanny sound that was neither brute nor human, a weird sound that was akin to mirthless laughter. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the high cracked voice rang from the bare walls and bare floors as he tossed the scalps from him, and sat down, laughing silently in painful, mirthless fashion, his toothless jaw quivering, and his shaking hands groping for ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... took my hand and examined it closely and curiously. Then she looked up, her lips twitched nervously, and she laughed a little hard mirthless laugh. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... three rooms you choose?" she asked, revealing her teeth in one of those rapid smiles which were mirthless as the eternal smile of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth for worms, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the maire were successfully completed and De Launay turned to her with a deep bow. The maire, puzzled at the utterly emotionless quality of this wedding, congratulated them formally, and Solange acknowledged it with stiff thanks and a smile as stiff and mirthless. But it was to De Launay that the official showed the deepest respect, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... in Europe; a man who had done murder and worse; a man only in name, a demon in nature. His long black eyes half-closed, his perfectly chiselled ivory face expressionless, and his blood-red lips parted in a mirthless smile, Antony Ferrara watched Cairn—Cairn whom he had sought to murder by means ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... sing who hath no song? He laugh who hath no mirth? Will cannot wake the sleeping song! Yea, Love itself in vain may long To sing with them that have a song, Or, mirthless, laugh with Mirth! He who would sing but hath no song Must speak the right, denounce the wrong, Must humbly front the indignant throng, Must yield his back to Satire's thong, Nor shield his face from liar's prong, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sort of laugh. "Looks like the Negroes are getting all the latest notions of progress, too. I must have put the idea ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... echoed contemptuously. "Brave?" Then a short laugh broke from her—a despairing, mocking, mirthless expression of anger. "By God, do you add effrontery to your other failings? Dare you bid me be calm and brave in such an hour? Have I been warning you fruitlessly these twelve months past, that, after disregarding me and deriding ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... its increasing weight. Out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... met hours of the clock he never guessed before— Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear, Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore, Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear, And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground, Rotting alive; in ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... silent, mirthless laugh. By this time Mr. Pike was beside himself with a rage that could find ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... grunts and waving arms and facial expressions of puzzlement, surprise, and understanding. At times a passion wrote itself on the face of the Indian, and a sympathy on the face of La Flitche. Again, by look and gesture, St. Vincent was referred to, and once a sober, mirthless laugh ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall, grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... once, how, when at school in the old country, he fought the schoolmaster and leathered him well. A pure lie, but an old favourite of Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh. He laughed now. And such a laugh!—a loud, mirthless, merciless noise. No one else joined in, though Miss Ribbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... or rather grinned, his fangs making the latter term fitter for the mirthless grimace ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... cold," said Almayer, looking round with a mirthless smile. "Sorry can do no better. And you can't hang him, either. As you observe, gentlemen," he added gravely, "there is no ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... he was weighing these possibilities, Conscience broke the silence. She even smiled in a mirthless fashion—and the man began ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... devoted slave, and the girl played upon his big, affectionate heart, with no object but to awaken in Done a sparkle of the recent fire. One night Aurora danced with him through a lively reel, and at its conclusion, in a spirit of mirthless mischief, put up her red mouth to be kissed. Not for all the powers of good and evil would Tim have foregone that delight. He kissed her, but this time Done offered no objection. Indeed, he gave no indication of having seen what was passing, although in reality he had been watching Aurora, impressed ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... himself, but in a strangely mirthless fashion, and, afraid to trust himself, went up on deck and brooded savagely apart. Nor did he come down to breakfast until the skipper and cook ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... She laughed—a mirthless, unpleasant little laugh. "Women friends! Good! You say that I have none. It is true. There have been no women who have offered me their friendship in this country. You call yourself my guardian. Why do you not find ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mirthless, mocking laugh. It is astonishing, sometimes, how deeply a man may be hurt through his vanity. Rosemary had turned away, and he called ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... ended; possibly Bertin in his hiding-place thought as I did and made the same mistake. I heard the news when I visited Algiers on my way to a post up-country at the edge of the desert. New powers had taken charge of our business; there was a new General, an austere, mirthless man, who knew of Bertin's existence, and resented it. He had been concerned here and there in more than one enterprise of an unpleasant flavor, and it was the General's intention to put a period to him. My friends in barracks told me of it, perfunctorily; ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... her hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched out her withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, my dear," was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can be said with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning to the end of their career, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... watching him with more than usual closeness, to give him something of a Mephistopheles aspect. His evening clothes hung with more than ordinary precision about his long slim body, his black tie and black pearl stud supplied the touch of sombreness so aptly in keeping with the mirthless, bitter smile which still ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her little treasures. Somehow it seemed to her as if she were hurrying to catch a night train, that was all. With her own strong young arms she dragged the two huge trunks from the closet. Half an hour later they were full and locked. Then she looked about with a dry, mirthless smile. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... This, he felt, was beginning to be a bit thick. He smiled a bitter, mirthless smile as he recalled the fact that less than half an hour had elapsed since he had expressed a regret that he did not belong to the ranks of those who do things. Fate since then had certainly supplied him ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... and now sit I, As Philomela (on a thorn, Turned out of nature's livery), Mirthless, alone, and all forlorn: Only she sings not, while my sorrows can Breathe forth such notes as fit ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... talkin' about." Sarah paused to laugh in mirthless discordance. "Watch for the babies to come. They come faster than wages ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the flickering logs. "I should think you would know," she answered wearily. Then, with a mirthless laugh, she spread both hands toward the blaze. "I'm looking ahead—I can see it all there in the fire." Her fingers convulsively clenched themselves until blue marks showed against the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... direction. His hands, in the pockets of his tattered coat, were clenched, and through the pallor of Smarlinghue's make-up a dull red burned his cheeks. Old Grenville—and the Rat! The smile that found lodgment on Smarlinghue's contorted lips was mirthless. The old man had taken it like the gentleman he was. He had not perhaps hidden the quiver of the lip—who would at seventy! It was not easy to begin life again at seventy! Old Grenville—and the Rat! Well, the game was not played out yet! There would ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... sallies became rarer; epigrams died, still-born, on his lips. He lost his sense of humour; grew mirthless, fretful, self-conscious. He suddenly realized the existence of a world beyond his college walls; it made him feel like a hot-house flower exposed to the blustering winds of March. Life was no longer a hurdle in a steeple-chase to be taken at a gallop; it was a tangle of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... with a mirthless laugh. She had been listless and pale for several days, and did not ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... ill in my life, so I have no idea how the role of invalid would suit me," she answered with a mirthless laugh, thinking how very pleasant a stroll in the woods would have been after her long, hard day of work ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... slightly, his body rigid, his chin thrusting, his face pale, his eyes burning with a sudden fierce fire. Once he opened his lips to speak, but instantly closed them again, and a smile wreathed them—a mirthless smile that had in it a certain cold caution and cunning. After a silence that lasted long his voice came again, drawling, well-controlled, revealing nothing of the emotion which ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Tee-ka-mee opened from the other side. For fully a minute after the door had closed, Fitzpatrick continued to lean forward, the snarl on his lips, the evil light in his eyes. Then he fell back heavily, with a harsh, mirthless cackle. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... into a mirthless smile. His eyes glowed with the fire that always blazed up in them when he thought too intensely of Horace Gower and the past, or of Gower's various shifts to defeat him in what he undertook. He had anticipated this move. He was angrily determined that Gower should not get ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Kirkwood, come!" its mirthless accents rallied him. "Have you no welcome for me?—you, who have been permitted to live the quarter of a century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it's high time we were learning something of one another, you and I!" "But I don't understand," ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... everything that suggested the ornateness of the old religion, but of beauty in every form. Under their influence, an influence extraordinarily pervasive and despotic, art and song were suppressed, and Scotland was left a very mirthless country, absorbed in theological and political discussion, and having little outlet for the instinct of sport ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... replied, gazing steadily at her without feeling or resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging phrase, "—but—what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh. "Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this time, at least, ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... again bent his brilliant eyes upon Alaire. "I see that you are concerned for his safety. You would not desire him to come to trouble, eh? He has done you favors; he is your friend, as I am. Well"—a mirthless smile exposed his splendid white teeth—"we must think of that. Now I ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... help you—I'm going to help you—because I've got an interest in you like you were mine." Again he betrayed that strange, mirthless amusement. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... hollow mirthless cackle. His fingers shook crazily when he untwisted them from their ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... fast and his attempt to laugh at his nervousness sounded hollow and mirthless. Something inside or outside the bubble had driven two men insane with its threat and now that he was irrevocably exiled in the bubble, himself, he could no longer dismiss their fear as products of their imagination. Both of them ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... the room and closed the door. The heavy six-shooter in his hand was at his hip, the long barrel horizontal, the big muzzle gaping forebodingly into Maison's face. There was a cold, mirthless grin on Sanderson's face, but it seemed to Maison that the grin was the wanton ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... slowly, leaning heavily against the broken balustrade. He laughed a little, wildly, with the mirthless chill that is of a maniac. His knees bent; he staggered.... And he ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, and ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... in her seat and laughed aloud, a mirthless, half-hysterical laugh. "That popgun!" she exclaimed. "What earthly good would it do other than to infuriate any beast of prey you might happen to ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... so stubborn, they said, that he even refused to let the sun brown his skin. Instead of being the coppery hue of his companions, the parchment-like stuff drawn tight over his high cheek-bones was a dirty yellow. His eyes were small, set close together, and squinted eternally in a sort of mirthless grin. His teeth, which had given him his name, were the most conspicuous of his odd features. The two front incisors of his upper jaw protruded outward so as to close when his mouth was shut—and generally it wasn't—over his lower lip. He was the smallest man on the range and by long odds ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... gathered and sought him. Three of them overtook him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it necessary for him even to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... impetuous, was the voice of Monsieur, the King's brother, Catherine de Medicis' favourite son. Tavannes, waiting respectfully two paces behind the King, could catch little that was said; but Charles, something more, it seemed, for on a sudden he laughed, a violent, mirthless laugh. And he clapped Rambouillet ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the scar laughed again, the same unpleasant, mirthless laugh, and thrusting his hand into his trouser pocket drew it out again full of silver coins, amongst which one or ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything offered—gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh, that came pouring like a sob from her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a harsh, mirthless laugh. "And for goodness' sake, what do they think of your set? You force me to say this, Dick. There is not a person in this city who has not heard of you and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... a soft peal of mirthless laughter as Heron salaamed and then began to poke the ground ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized by a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, till Avery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz! You will ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Forcing his usual dry, mirthless laugh, he greeted Dan with forced effusiveness, urging him to take a chair, declaring that he hardly knew him, that he thought he was at Gordon's Mills fishing. Then he entered at once into a glowing description of the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... stopped the action. There is something peculiar about a blow on the nose, a good blow. The Anglo-Saxon peoples alone possess the counterattack—a rush. To other peoples concentration of thought is impossible after the impact. Instinctively Quasimodo's hands flew to his face. He heard a laugh, mirthless and terrible. Before he could drop his hands from his face-blows, short and boring, from this side and from that, over and under. The squat man was brave enough; simply he did not know how to fight in this manner. He was accustomed to the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... through the corridor of the third floor on my return, when the last sound I expected in so still a region struck my ear—a laugh, distinct, formal, mirthless. At first it was very low, but it passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Tatsu's mirthless laugh rang out against the sound of dripping rain. The childish outburst had been of some relief. He looked defiantly toward the white rectangle he had just defaced. Defaced? The boy caught in his breath. He thrust his head forward, leaning on one hand to stare. That bold ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... a dry, mirthless laugh. For a long time they tramped in silence. Then Diana said, "We've been out half ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow |
