"Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... paltry barrier—one plank and no more; but outside a dusty dry road, nothing to be seen but other high brick walls, with here and there an apple-tree or a lilac, or the half-developed flower-turrets of a chestnut looking over—nothing to be seen but a mean little costermonger's cart, with a hapless donkey, and, down in the direction of St Roque's, the long road winding, still drier and dustier. Ah me! was it paradise inside? or was it only a merely mortal lawn dropped over with apple-blossoms, blue ribbons, and other vanities? Who could tell? The perpetual ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... do it or die in the attempt; and if he had ever heard of the Flying Dutchman, would undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that he was just then following his track on dry land. But, unlike the hapless Vanderdecken, Sir Norman came to a halt at last, and that so suddenly that his horse stood on his beam ends, and flourished his two fore limbs in the atmosphere. It was before La Masque's door; and Sir Norman was out of the saddle in a flash, and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 8. The latter form of the story seems more usual. See Gredt, pp. 28, 29, where we are plainly told that the hapless mortals are fetched away by ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... follows such victims of society. The girl's weak, pretty face, and soft, white hands were but too true an index to her infirm will and character, and, although fluttering and reluctant, she again fell helpless into the talons of the harpy. Hapless girl! you will probably stand at this bar again, and full sentence will then be given against you. The judge frowned heavily as he saw the result of his clemency, and then, as if it were an old story, he turned to the next culprit. Mildred had been much encouraged as ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was unable to explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that concerned him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he shared the feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures excite among the dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has placed them. This sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious superstition in families to which cretins belong; but does it not ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... through the gloomy streets of the lower city to his solitary prison in the Tower. The streets were filled, after he had passed, with groups of men of all ranks and stations, discussing the strange and mournful vicissitudes in the life of this hapless monarch, now for the second time cut off from all his friends, and immured hopelessly in a ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... jack-boot? 20 Pismire crawling in a rut? Or a spigot in a butt? Thus I humm'd and ha'd awhile, When Madam Memory with a smile Thus twitch'd my ear—'Why sure, I ween, 25 In London streets thou oft hast seen The very image of this pair: A little Ape with huge She-Bear Link'd by hapless chain together: An unlick'd mass the one—the other 30 An antic small with nimble crupper——' But stop, my Muse! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are unsurpassed in him, and rarely equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in Kenilworth (Jan. 1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed interested us very much personally in Amy Robsart, but as a hapless heroine she is altogether the superior of Lucy Ashton. The book is, among his, the 'novel without a hero,' and, considering his defects in that direction, this was hardly a drawback. It cannot be indeed ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Scotland, England arises a new nation. This declares itself in the altered course of her policy alike in France, Ireland, and Scotland. In Ireland, for instance, an incomplete yet serious and high-purposed effort is made to bring, if not justice, at least law to the hapless populations beyond the Pale. Henry VIII again, like Edward I, is a masterful king. In politics, in constructive genius, he even surpasses Edward I. He abandons the folly of an empire in France, and though against Scotland he achieves a triumph signal ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Meanwhile the sentry, whose lantern had been extinguished and from the folds of whose garments its flint and tinderbox had been taken, had now been completely trussed up, and lay helpless and perforce silent against the wall of the shed. From the time when the hapless man first felt the grip of the Gujarati upon his throat scarcely five minutes ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the gas to escape, will soon bring itself to rest. On the other hand, if the balloon proper is a silk one, with sound net and in good condition, it is probable that something else will give way first, and that something may prove to be the hapless passenger or passengers. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... flamed up, was it not a natural supposition that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst of light on the ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... are set, the plot is laid, Ruin awaits thee,—hapless maid! Seduction sly assails thine ear, And gloating, foul desire is near; Baneful and blighting are their smiles, Destruction waits upon their wiles; Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, Vice clasps her hands, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the Earl of Rags was bestowed upon him, and the miserable companions of his wretched plight were never tired of tempting him to recount his adventures, for the sake of entertaining themselves by teasing that which they supposed to be his hapless mania. ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... instance the people may cling to the rocks, but the undertow from the beach sweeps them out as often as they struggle towards it, till their strength fails, and they sink beneath the waves. With a glass King had brought, we could see the people on the deck of the hapless craft. King handed it to me. "What do you see now?" ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... first fierce heat of the year the abundant hyacinths fade from the fields. Blue flowers, [229] you remember, are the rarest, to many eyes the loveliest; and the Lacedaemonians with their guests were met together to celebrate the death of the hapless lad who had lent his name to them, Hyacinthus, son of Apollo, or son of an ancient mortal king who had reigned in this very place; in either case, greatly beloved of the god, who had slain him by sad accident as they played at quoits together delightfully, to his immense sorrow. That ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... ephemerae rose by hundreds from the depths, and, dropping their shells, floated away, each a tiny Venus Anadyomene, down the glassy ripples of the reaches. Every moment a heavy splash beneath some overhanging tuft of milfoil or water hemlock proclaimed the death- doom of a hapless beetle who had dropped into the stream beneath; yet still we fished and fished, and caught nothing, and seemed utterly careless about catching anything; till the old keeper who followed us, sighing and shrugging his shoulders, broke forth into ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... Suddenly the hapless youth became aware of the breathless group in his rear. He promptly pulled his trigger, and just nicked the outside edge of the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... that it was believed by torture to have been drawn from him. What matters how it was obtained, or whether ever obtained; it could not be true: and as Henry could put together no more plausible account, coommiseration will shed a tear over a hapless youth, sacrificed to the fury and jealousy of an usurper, and in all probability the victim of a tyrant, who has made the world believe that the duke of York, executed by his own orders, had been previously murdered by ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... came a feeling of quick pity for the hapless situation of the great brute rendered futile and helpless by the wiles of the Gomangani. Enemy though the beast was, he was less an enemy to the ape-man than those blacks who had trapped him, for though Tarzan of the Apes ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fast Sir Ranild cast Over his Lord both straw and hay, But points with his hand to the in-rushing band The spot where the hapless Monarch lay. ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... that he could to inflame both judges and populace against the young Cavaliers, especially against the young Laird of Dalcastle, whom he represented as an incendiary, set on by an unnatural parent to slander his mother, and make away with a hapless and only brother; and, in truth, that declaimer against all human merit had that sort of powerful, homely, and bitter eloquence which seldom missed affecting his hearers: the consequence at that time was that he made the unfortunate ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... different parts of the Union; it would not augment the number of slaves, but merely authorize the removal to Indiana of such as are held in bondage in the United States. If Slavery is an evil, means ought to be devised to render it least dangerous to the community, and by which the hapless situation of the slaves would be most ameliorated; and to accomplish these objects, no measure would be so effectual as the one proposed. The Committee, therefore, respectfully submit to the House the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... 2 Hapless men, whose footsteps stray From the temple of the Lord! Teach them Zion's heavenly way; To their feet thy light afford. Let the world unite to ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... in this communication to his old friend are distinctly pathetic. In parts he is comically peevish and decidedly restrained. He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts. His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical sensitiveness of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... hardly to the purpose. You forget I have seen the hapless swine of Phobetor, and I know how he ameliorates the natural ferocity of his boar-pigs. No, I am Jurgen. So I remain. I will face the Philistines and whatever they may possibly do to me, rather than suffer that which Phobetor will quite ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... gentleman, ought to have known; knowing these things, he never could have plunged into the raging surge of an Irish popular insurrection. He meant honestly, failed signally, and suffered himself to be involved in a hapless enterprise, because he had not sufficiently studied the people among whom he lived, nor the religious influences to which they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... well before the story is ended. It may be true that John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence. Stow tells us that poor Alianora ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... who in old times were cast Lorn outcasts forth to labour at the last! Mould the stout sole, sew with the woven thread, Make the good fit, and win their daily bread. This was their strait and doing—this their doom; They sought our shelter, and they found a home! Helpless and hapless, wandering to and fro, Weary they came and hid them from the foe; Two high-born youths, to holy things impell'd, Hunted from place to place, though still they held Their sacred faith, and died for it, and threw The glory of that death on all who ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... topmost parcel, succeeded in peeping through the aperture, but could perceive nothing except the broad sea stretching away in the distance until it was bounded by the horizon. As he was about to descend, one of the packages rolled from under the rest, and the hapless preacher came to the ground amidst a multitude of bales of cloth, logs of ebony, cramps, and spoiled martin-skins, and found himself half in and half out of a box of mildewed oranges, into which he had plumped, and which repaid the intrusion by splashing ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... published "Atala," an episode of his epic poem "Les Natchez," treating of the suicide of an Indian virgin, who sought death rather than violate a solemn vow of chastity given to her mother. In 1802 appeared the second episode, "Rene," a subjective story treating of the hapless love of a sister for her brother, full of a French form of maladie du monde akin to Goethe's Weltschmerz in the "Sorrows of Werther." During the same year, Chateaubriand brought out his famous "Genius of Christianity, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... be an exceedingly hapless young man!" she commented with serious disapproval. "I imagine your life must be a monotonous round ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Luigi took Ginevra's pictures, her portrait, and the few articles of furniture which they could still exist without, and sold them for a miserable sum, which prolonged the agony of the hapless household for a time. During these days of wretchedness Ginevra showed the sublimity of her nature and the ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... the dragons. And yet—may not this wily beast have misled you as to his real character, in order that your good report of him may serve as a cloak for his evil deeds? Nay, may there not be, at this very moment, some hapless Princess ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the well-known pitcher plant, or fly-trap, as they are sometimes called. In tropical countries they grow to a large size, but nothing like these. They are filled, in the cup, with a sort of sticky, sweet mixture, and this attracts insects. When one enters the cup the top flap folds over, and the hapless insect is caught there. The plant actually devours it, nature providing a sort of vegetable digestive apparatus. These giant plants are the same, and they seem large enough to take in a man, to say ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... made careful and scientific preparation. He attacked. The Indians did run off, with the happy, shouting militia in full hue and cry after. The regulars followed slowly. When a gap of two miles had opened, as if from the very earth out sprang Little Turtle's whole remaining force, a thousand, and the hapless regulars were in ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line:— No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honour's hapless wreck With ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... shall it dry the widow's tear, The hapless orphan's want supply, Guide to a blessed asylum here, And point to happier realms ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... right, their methods all were wrong. Pity and censure both to them belong. Their woes were many, but their crimes were more. The soulless Satan holds not in his store Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath Keeps for the hapless victim in his path. And if the last lone remnants of that race Were by the white man swept from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... knew that while they were assailed by physical infirmities, their hapless chieftain was sick both in body and mind. He shared all their hardships, and watched them with most unremitting solicitude. He erected camp hospitals, and furnished the sick with wine and delicacies which he ordered from Vienna ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... by the happiness which it diffuses, whose claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for those hapless Artificers who perform the most abject offices of any authorised calling in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vain glory but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... room is filling with something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard crying—"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive! Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chambermaid, and boots—each in a different key—from manly bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a madman—for, gentle reader, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... virtue and vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad mothers, and hapless children, who shiver at the hearthstone, where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bright and smiling, sharp and shining for a thrust; Use does not seem to blunt her point, nor does she gather rust. Oh! I wish some hapless specimen of mankind would begin To tidy up the world for me, by picking ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... walked among the first ranks, leaving his carriage to old Lord Pitsligo, now rode dejected and heart-broken. The retreat was rapid and able. At Clifton, Murray turned on the pursuing dragoons, headed a claymore charge, and drove them back. A hapless garrison of Lancashire volunteers was left to the tender mercies of Cumberland in Carlisle, and Charles went by way of Whiggish Dumfries (the house where he lodged is now an inn) to Glasgow. To all intents and purposes the end had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Constitutional Society, the Norwich Revolution Society, the Society for Constitutional Information in London, and the London Constitutional Whigs, these all joined in addresses of congratulation on the victory which the French people had gained over their hapless and ill-fated monarch. All these addresses received a warm response from those to whom they were addressed. For once in the annals of history the French hailed Englishmen as brethren; and a hope was expressed that the day ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... dinner inadvertently let slip the word: "Ziska there? Deny it, slave!" cried Wenzel, frantic. Slave durst not deny. Wenzel drew his sword to run at him, but fell down dead: that was the last pot broken by Wenzel. The hapless royal ex-imperial phantasm self-broken in this manner. Poor soul, he came to the kaisership too early; was a thin violent creature, sensible to the charms and horrors of created objects; and had terrible rhinoceros ziskas and unruly horned cattle to drive. He ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... last, if love, indeed, Fire thee my hapless lot to heed; Then such delights my mind shall move To live with thee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... lo! sad partner of the general care, Weary and faint I drive my goats afar! While scarcely this my leading hand sustains, Tired with the way, and recent from her pains; For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past, On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast, The hopes and promise of my ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... was prompt to raise To that blest pupil, who had shar'd his praise A similar record of tender truth; The genuine portraiture of studious youth— Task of such pleasing pain, as pierc'd the heart Of Daedalus, the sire of antient art! When, in fond zeal, his busy hand begun To mould the story of his hapless son, But falter'd, while, o'erwhelm'd in mournful thought, He work'd, and wept upon the work, he wrought. Ah peerless youth! whose highly-gifted hand Could all varieties of skill command, Ere illness undermin'd thy powers to use ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward, angel now, and melt with ruth: And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... (Though indeed I hear that the Physicians at Rome do nowadays apply for patients—in my time they were applied to.) I apply to you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what deserves your attention most in the last thing to gain it; that you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher affect you thus, speaker ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... full of harmony and rhythm,[4] seemed to present a perfect picture of the place, and though Homer was not born there—nor, perhaps, anywhere—they gave me a better idea of the beautiful (and now so hapless) isle of Greece than I could have derived from a ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... contend with—this hapless and amiable queen—but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to woman—the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... he to her his charge of quick return Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd To be returned by noon amid the bow'r, And all things in best order to invite Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose. Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve! Of thy presumed return, event perverse! Thou never from that hour in Paradise Found'st either sweet repast, or ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... hands glued to the pommel of his saddle, his hair on end, his sabre flying and striking his horse at every jump as the animal tore down the trail toward camp, while the Indian, rapidly gaining, in a few minutes had the scalp of the hapless rider dangling at his belt, and another of the "boys in blue" had ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... order of the Prince, Gonzales, again sailing, re-discovered the island of Madeira, at which the Englishman, Lionel Machin, with the hapless Arabella Darcy, two centuries before, had landed and died. The Portuguese gave to it the name of Madeira, which means Wood, in consequence of finding it overgrown with trees. To clear a part for settlement they set the wood ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune.[40] He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to the fair could ill endure the readiness with which the gentlemen, attendants at ottoman or sofa, lent their aid to mock and to embarrass every passing party of the city tribe, mothers and their hapless daughter-train. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... O Guide of the Perplexed?" he cried, stonily surveying his hapless manuscript. "O Moses, son of Maimon, thou by whom I have sworn so oft, canst thou help me now? See, my pockets are as empty as ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a full head of steam, apparently; his naturally sanguine complexion was several shades darker than the normal, and he was seething with repressed emotion—excitement, anticipated triumph, jealousy, envy and hatred: all centring upon the hapless head of Nat Duncan. Plunging along with his head down, his thoughts wholly preoccupied with his grievance and its remedy, he bumped into Willing and cannoned off, recognising him with an angry growl. The result ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... world did think In every drop a torturing spirit flew, It pierc'd so deeply, and it burn'd so blue. Betwixt all this and Hero, Hero held Leander's picture, as a Persian shield; And she was free from fear of worst success: The more ill threats us, we suspect the less: As we grow hapless, violence subtle grows, Dumb, deaf, and blind, and comes when ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... apparently, not popular in France, and in the face of American opposition the French government sought a means of dropping the project. Accordingly the invading forces were withdrawn early in 1867, leaving the hapless Maximilian to the Mexicans, by whom he ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... soon the poor despise, and new-made laws display, Oppress their neighbors and become the wise men of their day; Unsparing of the least offence, when they can have their will, The hapless country all around with discontent ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... adventurous Frenchmen went down French River, and at last reached the waters of the great Fresh Water Sea, the Mer Douce of Champlain's maps, and now named Lake Huron in memory of the hapless race that once made their home in that wild region. Passing by the western shore of the picturesque district of Muskoka, the party landed at the foot of the bay and found themselves before long among the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... had not maimed my grandson for life, though I agree that his stentorian yell had relieved my solicitude a trifle. Certainly, it was a moment of cruel torture, which should have precluded every other consideration from my brain than concern for the hapless infant and harsh self-reproach. And yet, as Winona finished speaking, I made the imp of a reflection that she was sending for a doctor in spite of Christian Science, and that the scales of hallucination had fallen from her eyes at the wail of her own flesh ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... often hangs over the Alpine passes so that a loud word will bring it whirling down upon the hapless traveller. The avalanche of ruin, impending over Mr. Allen, was so delicately poised that a whisper could precipitate its crushing weight, and that whisper had ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Adieu, Maria!—adieu, poor hapless damsel!—some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips—but I was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular steps ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... hapless minstrel fare, By hill and hollow violing; He flings a ditty on the air, He wonders if you hear ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... themselves to our needs. Mr. Page is right theoretically when he says that the treatment of a servant or of a subordinate is an infallible criterion of manners, and when he rebukes the "arrogance" of wealthy women to "their hapless sisters of toil." But the truth is that our hapless sisters of toil have things pretty much their own way in a country which is still broadly prosperous and democratic, and our treatment of them is tempered by a selfish consideration for our own comfort and convenience. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... impossible though it was—it was true—the head was moving slowly to the fallen body. It placed itself upon the shoulders, the body rose, and the creature, seemingly as good as new, ran quickly to where its fellows were dragging the hapless captive to ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the small fortune annexed from Mr. Marvel, was all gone. What he had not lost over the cards had been stolen while he lay fuddled. Thus he had been ready enough for another job from his patron. The hapless Marvel, by the way, had been left secure in a dungeon-like cellar, with enough bread and water to keep body and soul together for a couple of days. Bullard had not had time to decide what to do ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... account of Wolmar's active, peaceful, frugal, sunny household. The influence of this was immense.[55] It may be that the overstrained scene where Saint Preux waits for Julie in her room, suggested the far lovelier passage of Faust in the chamber of the hapless Margaret. But we may, at least, be sure that Werther (1774) would not have found Charlotte cutting bread and butter, if Saint Preux had not gone to see Julie take cream and cakes with her children and her female servants. And ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... altar, Was your hapless victim laid; Mercy, truth and justice shuddered, But your hands would give ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... numbers of the enemy; but Horn and Birkenfeld quickly advanced to his support, and the Imperialists, after a brief triumph, were again expelled from Alsace. The severity of the autumn, in which this hapless retreat had to be conducted, proved fatal to most of the Italians; and their leader, the Duke of Feria, died of grief at ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for 800 years, and died out with the acceptance of Saul, by the Israelites, as "King of all the tribes of Israel." The incidents touched upon range from the proclamation of Saul as King, by Samuel (1095 B.C.), to the fall of the hapless Monarch at the battle of Gilboa, 40 ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... little daughter for a distant settlement. He never reached the settlement, and all Miss Merivale's efforts to trace him proved fruitless. She at last accepted the belief of the lawyers that he had lost his way, and, like so many other hapless wanderers, had perished in ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... calamities that ever could have befallen a human being had happened to beautiful, hapless Madcap Dorothy. Poor child! she ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... and above all thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix, did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady who in her girlhood, as a special ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... a danger to the hapless sick and wounded only less than their diseases and wounds, was wholly due to my small materia medica, to utter lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional success which moved me to seize aid from no matter ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... his time well between 1901 and 1905 and was now an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in which hapless ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... In any case, these hapless monks were engaged in a perilous mission in seeking to supplant the primitive faith of the Tusayan, for among the native priests they encountered prejudices even as violent as their own. With too great zeal they prohibited the sacred dances, the votive offerings to the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... this and the like sophistical reasonings, that he endeavored to palliate his ingratitude and cruelty towards the hapless victim of his lawless desires; for hardened as he was in his libertinism, and unjust as were his sentiments with regard to women, he could not avoid feeling a pang of conscious remorse at the recollection of Theodora. He ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... conceived. Caesar: Speak, Quezox, speak! and free thy surging mind. For well I know abuses rankle there. Our enemies politic, firm entrenched, Have borne with heavy hand upon thy race. Quezox: Ah noble sire, how well thy mind conceives The ills which bear my hapless people down. Much learning fits thee for the ruler's seat And keen discernment flashes from thine eye. There pigmies move within a circle charmed And fatten on rich spoils with cruel glee. They force their alien ways with tyrant hands Upon my people; and with cold disdain Refuse our council, ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... was sick. This was the law of the Kady. Met a remarkable Touarick in the streets. This is an old worn-out man, with one eye, and that much damaged. In his day he has been a famous bandit, has plundered many a caravan and murdered the hapless merchants. He is now, in his dreadful old age, sheltered in the very city whose wayfaring merchants he so often plundered and murdered. The judgment of heaven seems pressing hard upon him; for ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... showed me that it couldn't be any thing else. Unpleasant! I should think so. Was it not suggestive of sorrow and of despair? Had she not witnessed things which were never to be forgotten? Had she not seen her hapless driver go down beneath the icy waters? Had she not herself stood face to face with an awful doom? Had she not twice—yes, and thrice—tasted ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... out, and murder, rapine, and violence of all sorts raged for some hours, wholly without check. Officers who endeavoured to protect the hapless inhabitants were shot down, all commands were unheeded, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... thus it was with this our hapless crew; For on the third day there came on a calm, And though at first their strength it might renew, And lying on their weariness like balm, Lulled them like turtles sleeping on the blue Of Ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm, And fell all ravenously on their provision, Instead ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... belie its name, and even thirteen centuries and a half have failed to obliterate the memory of a savage and unnatural crime, which, its remoteness notwithstanding, fills the soul with loathing against its perpetrators and with deep pity for the hapless and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... peculiar mode of proceeding to the consideration of all butchers, cooks, and housewives. The hapless porker whose fate I have just rehearsed, was not the only one who suffered in that memorable day. Many a dismal grunt, many an imploring squeak, proclaimed what was going on throughout the whole extent of the valley; and I verily believe the first-born of every ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Sad is the fate of any bird which, blundering in its flight, happens to strike against any of the many traps which the tree in unconscious malignity hangs out on every side. In such event the seed clings to the feathers, the wings become fixed to the sides, the hapless bird falls to the ground, and as it struggles heedlessly gathers more of the seeds, to which leaves and twigs adhere, until by aggregation it is enclosed in a mass of vegetable debris as firmly as a mummy ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and apprehensive, yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure affection seeking aid and giving it that showed them to be man and wife with the sanction of a priest upon their ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it's rude because it's gratuitously incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would have been as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and it was the blackest sheep of the flock that won the prize. "That awful Savarese," said the principal in despair. I thought of Fighting Mary, and bade her take heart. I regret to say that within a week the hapless Savarese was black-listed for banking up the school door with snow, so that not even the janitor could get ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly; ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... my boys, figure it out!" Balbus gaily exclaimed, as he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless pupils, and ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the Burrow—it went by all of these names—was a hapless property that was trying to pay taxes on itself between the ebbing of one tide of prosperity and the hoped-for flood of another. Centres were shifting, values were see-sawing, and old Ezekiel Warren was waiting for the nature of the neighbourhood to declare ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... French internal affairs.[154] This little episode should open the eyes of detractors of Pitt to the extraordinary difficulty of his position. Of one thing we may be certain. The readiest way of assuring the doom of the hapless monarch was to take up some one of the silly or guileful schemes then mooted for pressing the British Government to take sides in the trial. Pitt's rigorous neutrality was the best means of helping the advocates of Louis in their uphill fight with ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... me Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea, A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore, And ask you, 'Maids, of all the bards you boast, Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most?' Oh! answer all, 'A blind old man, and poor, Sweetest he sings, and dwells ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was now wearing the Cardinal's red hat, which hapless young Garzia's hunting-knife had caused to fall from his brother Giovanni's head in the Maremma. Ambitious, jealous, but, perhaps, less depraved than his father, the Cardinal de' Medici made no secret of his dislike of his brother Francesco ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Cepheus, King of Iopa, and my mother is Cassiopoeia of the beautiful tresses, and they called me Andromeda, as long as life was mine. And I stand bound here, hapless that I am, for the sea monster's food, to atone for my mother's sin. For she boasted of me once that I was fairer than the Queen of the Fishes; so she in her wrath sent the sea floods, and her brother the Fire King sent the earthquakes, and wasted all the land, and after the floods a monster bred ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... My once-dear Love!—hapless, that I no more Must call thee so. . . . The rich affection's store That fed our hopes, lies now exhaust and spent, Like sums of treasure unto bankrupts lent:— We that did nothing study but the way To love ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... silence the sad procession moved from the prison's most private door, on the night fixed for the execution, the third after the hapless girl's arrival in Brussels. The persons employed were few; no sympathizing crowd attended to strain the victim's pride and courage, and make her for very shame's sake brave the terrific scene. Lone and desolate, she was led along by two brutal men, with taunt and execration; they, dressed in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... Around this hapless captive there moved the figures of three savages, their faces streaked with various hues of paint, their war-bonnets of eagles' feathers flaunting, and wonderful to behold. Each bore in his right hand a gleaming tomahawk, which now and then was raised menacingly ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... of Pompeian Isis, could he but behold the deception which had been practised upon him unsuspectedly! I have said, that but few skeletons have been found in Pompeii; all that have been met with are covered with ornaments, and appear as in the act of escaping from their hapless town, with what they could carry off of their most valuable possessions; from which death would not relinquish his hold. More wealth is supposed to have been buried in Herculaneum, from that which has already been found therein; but owing to the excessive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... at that," returned the Gospeler, much educated by her remark, "would it not be better for us all, to have this hapless misunderstanding manfully explained away, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... had woman never been forsaken and betrayed, we should never have heard of the fair, deserted Ariadne, or the beautiful and avenging Medea. Had man never been false to his vows, we should never have been told of the jealous anger of Juno, or the poisoned garment prepared by the hapless Dejarnira. Ah! ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than historic reasons for depression ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... and my pen halts as I write the words; for the memory of those tragic hours, far distant as they are now, over-masters me, and I see once again the faces of the dead, the mutilated forms, the disfigured features of the hapless victims of savage treachery. Were I writing romance merely, I might hide much of detail behind the veil of silence; but I am penning history, and, black as the record is, I can only give it with strict adherence to truth. I dread ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... somewhat striking manner. Offutt's boat had come to serious embarrassment on Rutledge's mill-dam, and the unwonted incident brought the entire population to the water's edge. They spent a good part of the day watching the hapless flat-boat, resting midships on the dam, the forward end in the air and the stern taking in the turbid Sangamon water. Nobody knew what to do with the disaster except "the bow-oar," who is described as a gigantic youth "with ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and miserable falsifications whereby the birds of prey thrive on the flesh and blood of hapless pigeons. Now the dovecotes were fluttered by a new destroyer—a gentlemanly vulture, whose suave accents and perfect manners were fatal to the unwary. Henceforth Horatio Cromie Nugent Paget flourished and fattened upon the folly of his fellow-men. As promoter of joint-stock companies that ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... vessel afloat. Yet to direct her course was impossible; the pirates having completely disabled her, by cutting away her rigging and sawing the masts all the way through. The eye of Providence, however, was not averted from the hapless people, for they fell in with a vessel next day that relieved them from their distressing situation, and brought ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... him as he sat beside her in the evening. She was one of those small, ill-shapen women whose infirmities are thrown into more conspicuous relief by dress and jewels and decolletage. Seated at the head of her table, she produced the impression of a Goddess of Discord at a feast of well-meaning, hapless mortals. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Such a hapless personage, who may have spent hours in trying to produce something of the same result by sadly different means, will measure the difference between the roundabout, faint descriptive tokens of respectable prose and the immediate projection ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... coast, And Murat's little fleet wore sailing there; No peering moon lit up the lonely sea, But all was sable as his wayward fate. A storm dispers'd them, and Sardinia's isle Receiv'd the bark that held the hapless king, And morn beheld it on the main again; But far apart his faithful followers. Calabria's beach was gain'd; where Murat stood Amidst the dastard throng that hemm'd him round, With heart of adamant, and eye of fire. There is a majesty in kingly hearts Which changing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... in both man and beast. Our good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its resemblance to the egg they ordinarily produce. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... vain On radiant wings drew near; The hapless moth in vain grew wroth - The fair rose leaned to hear The deep-voiced stranger's low refrain ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the romance that a desperate young lady was collecting a huge supply of used stamps for the purpose of papering a room of untold dimensions. This feat was the single stipulation on the part of a tyrannical parent, on compliance with which the hapless maiden would be allowed ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... spectacle of one of the wealthiest and most brilliant young favorites of society forsaking the light vanities of that butterfly existence to nobly and self-sacrificingly devote his talents and his riches to the cause of saving his hapless fellow creatures from shame and misery here and eternal regret hereafter. At the prayer meetings the Senator always brought Washington up the aisle on his arm and seated him prominently; in his prayers he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... buzzard. uncomfortable, uneasy; ill at ease; in a taking, in a way; disturbed; discontented &c. 832; out of humor &c. 901a; weary &c. 841. heavy laden, stricken, crushed, a prey to, victimized, ill-used. unfortunate &c. (hapless) 735; to be pitied, doomed, devoted, accursed, undone, lost, stranded; fey. unhappy, infelicitous, poor, wretched, miserable, woe-begone; cheerless &c. (dejected) 837; careworn. concerned, sorry; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... had only to hint to have; but that was not the case with the hapless Mrs. Cockayne. She was sure nobody could be more economical than she was, both for herself and the children, and that was her reward. She had to undergo the most humiliating process of asking point-blank; even when twenty or ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... image had bade him; and at last, one evening, he even lighted the lamp, and sat there looking at the glorious walls and roof his hapless ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to return to his unfinished breakfast, much to the vexation of Mrs. Medler, a faded lady with everything about her in the extremest stage of limpness, who washed the breakfast-things with her own fair hands, in consideration of the multitudinous duties to be performed by that hapless solitary damsel who in such modest households is ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... my friend, that I am not a woman. You do wrong to love me. What! am I to leave the ethereal regions of my pretended strength, make myself humbly small, cringe like the hapless female of all species, that you may lift me up? and then, when I, helpless and broken, ask you for help, when I need your arm, you will repulse me! No, we can never come ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... to the southward was soon the unwelcome cause of their separation. They parted; and it was during his absence that this hapless woman became alarmingly ill. From this illness she never recovered. She was from the first sensible of her danger, and she felt a strong presentiment that she would see her husband no more: and for those to whom her heart instinctively clung with the affection of a daughter, she could only address ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... bee it was—for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild bee's touch, How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be, The hapless heart that's ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... time one's torment, worm, fire, death, and hell. And what is this dark fight within us? What does the Bible call it? It is death and life, eternal death and eternal life, salvation and damnation, hell and heaven, fighting together within our hapless hearts, to see which shall be our masters. It is the battle of the evil spirit, who is the Devil, fighting with the good spirit, who is God. Nothing less than that, my friends. Yes, in those hateful and shameful moments of pride, or spite, or contempt, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... the day. The court room had been crowded to the verge of suffocation; when he entered it a sudden hush and a mighty craning of necks had been his welcome, and he had felt his cheeks redden and pale with a sense of shame at his hapless plight. Those many pairs of eyes that were fixed on him seemed to lay bare his inmost thoughts; he had known no ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... breathed from those hopeless and agonizing features! There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins upon her head. Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large burdock* against the wall, and from time to time the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... roam, Where'er you list, and nature call your home; Learn from a hopeless prisoner's words and fate, "Virtue is valour—to be patient, great!" When traced on prison walls, such words as these Arrest the eye—appall e'en while they please— "Ah! hapless he who cannot bear the weight, With patient heart of a too partial fate, For adverse times and fortunes do not kill, But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... across from New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair departed sorrowfully. If I had read the service over them, possibly their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... he felt almost happy—certainly far better than he had done since the hapless encounter with the bottled adder and his fall from grace. It was a positive, joy to have an enemy he could tackle, a real flesh-and-blood foe and tormentor that came upon him in broad daylight and in mere ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... between the two Many a hapless boy in blue Lay face upward to the skies; Many another, just as true, Filled the air ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... his last, fully conscious of his impending fate, and not less so of that of his beloved partner, who had nursed him during the first two days, but was afterwards too ill to leave her bed. When her husband was informed of this, he turned his face to the wall, and was heard to murmur: 'Hapless house! to lose father and mother at once!' Then, 'Pray to God, children; He alone can help us'—and his attendants saw that he himself was seeking comfort in prayer. Poor Mme Niebuhr survived him but nine days. She had her children with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... keep her image in my grateful heart, the few tedious months I have to live; and there seems indeed a sort of poetic justice in the fact that the bride you covet, has become the truest, tenderest friend of the hapless girl whom you are ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... have killed him; I shall take more." And while they were quarrelling with one another the king passed by there, and he listened attentively to their words, and when he learned of the matter, he said, "Dost thou see, they have by a trick made us kill that hapless vezir." And he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... are both in that part of the land of souls where the sun never sets, where oil is always fresh, and provisions always warm. The virgins sometimes throw a thimble and a needle into the bay, from which the hapless maid departed; and when a Greenlander would praise any couple for virtuous affection, he declares that they love ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... and tore Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw Into th' Euboic sea. Others, more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall By doom of battle, and complain that Fate Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance. Their song was partial; but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sorrow, a thorn remained in their hearts, fearing that the moving lamentations and the mortal groans came from the lips of some hapless Spaniard. This fatidical presentiment turned out unfortunately to be a fact. The victim sacrificed that melancholy night, still remembered with a shudder by the priests, was Lieutenant Salvador Piera. This brave soldier, who had made up ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... wings in slumber—a cloud had fallen for her over the fair face of nature—and, instead of retiring to her couch, she wandered about weeping, under the midnight stars, on the terrace on the house-top—wailing over the hapless fate, and calling on death to come and take her ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... raised, and the severest oeconomy unremittingly exercised in their distribution, if something further is not quickly obtained, all that has been done will prove of no avail, and they must soon end their hapless career, not by paying the debt of nature, ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... It was followed by rain that fell, not in drops, but in sheets. The wind, which had been blowing a heavy gale, rose suddenly into a tornado. With it rose the sea. The masses of water, hissing and smoking under the furious pelting of the rain, flung themselves upon the hapless Bluebird, laboring heavily in the trough of the waves, or staggering over their summits. A constant glare lit the heaving, tossing world of waters, and the air became one roar ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... that human skill, however closely addressed to the task, failed utterly to detect its whereabouts. Above the discord of the busy streets he heard again and again that cry in the night which had come from a hapless prisoner whom they were powerless to succor. He beat his cane upon the floor of the cab and swore savagely and loudly. The intimidated cabman, believing these demonstrations designed to urge him to a greater speed, performed ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... afflicted (the uncles in particular) and untimely gathered. Sharp to me the memory of a call, one dusky wintry Sunday afternoon, in Clinton Place, at the house of my uncle Robertson Walsh, then the head of my mother's family, where the hapless younger brother lay dying; whom I was taken to the top of the house to see and of the sinister twilight grimness of whose lot, stretched there, amid odours of tobacco and of drugs, or of some especial strong drug, in one of the chambers of what I remember as a ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... fiendish glee the buccaneers drove the hapless nuns and priests, who had been dragged along in the rear, to the front. The Spaniards were firing at them now, but with no effect so far. The distance was great and the moonlight made aim uncertain, and every time ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... as it was safe he emerged, though, and eagerly stood looking on as Dick and his father examined the curious creatures, which looked like soft bags, with so many sucker-covered arms hanging out all ready to seize upon the first hapless fish that came their way, and drag them ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... time been fought, and the King's cause was wholly ruined. Among other Cavaliers fortunate enough to escape from that deadly fray, and who were in hiding from the vengeance of the usurping government, was the Lord Francis V——s, younger son to that hapless Duke of B——m who was slain at Portsmouth by Captain F——n. It seems almost like a scene in a comedy to tell; and, indeed, I am told that Tom D'Urfey did turn the only merry portion of it into a play; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... aftertime behold My native bounds- see many a harvest hence With ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot Where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair, Some brutal soldier will possess these fields An alien master. Ah! to what a pass Has civil discord brought our hapless folk! For such as these, then, were our furrows sown! Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set Your vines in order! Go, once happy flock, My she-goats, go. Never again shall I, Stretched in green cave, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... the wily sailors crept To seize (while on the Deep it slept) The hapless creature which did dwell Erewhile within the dancing shell, They steal ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... learned jurist will be saying "Whom did you see?" By that time the "whom" will be as delightfully archaic as the Elizabethan "his" for "its."[132] No logical or historical argument will avail to save this hapless "whom." The demonstration "I: me he: him who: whom" will be convincing in theory and will go ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... mother. Owing to his wife's mental incapacity Philip in her name exercised all the powers of sovereignty, but his reign was very short, for he was suddenly taken ill and died at Burgos, September 25, 1506. His hapless wife, after the birth of a posthumous child, sank into a state of hopeless insanity and passed the rest of her long life in confinement. Charles, the heir to so vast an inheritance, was but six years old. The representatives ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... tell him that other human beings are in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, after he has set his traps and is returning to his camp, the wily Indian who has been watching follows, and a home-drawn arrow, shot within a few feet, never fails to bring the hapless victim to the ground. For one white scalp, however, that dangles in the smoke of an Indian's lodge, a dozen black ones surround the camp-fires of the trappers' rendezvous. Here, after the hunt, from all quarters the hardy trappers bring in ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... of torture for the hapless prisoners came laggingly to an end at last when, about half an hour after daybreak, the lashings which had confined their limbs all through the hours of darkness were loosed, and they were allowed to scramble to their feet and walk to and fro for ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... that they might animate the combatants and afford the last consolations of religion to the dying. They were conducted into Morgan's presence, who instantly pronounced sentence of death upon them. In vain did these hapless priests implore that pity which they might have expected from a less ferocious enemy. They were all killed by pistol-shots. Many Spaniards who were apprehensive lest they should be overtaken in their flight had concealed themselves ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... me, claimed me for his own, And called me with his voice so strong, so low, I followed unto bliss, thou hapless one, I did bethink me of my cruel vow, The vow I will obey, but oh, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... threatening vision had failed to materialise, and the fact gave him courage. If a time should come when it would definitely cease to haunt him! He could never forget, never cease to regret, but he would feel that in the Land of Understanding the hapless victim of his crime had forgiven the sin that had robbed her of her ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... and the catastrophe was complete. The colliding steamer lifted with the 'scend of the waves and crashed down yet again upon the hapless torpedo-boat, and young Frobisher found himself in the raging sea, clinging instinctively to something—he knew not what—that had come away in his hands as he flung them out wildly to prevent himself from sliding off the deck. As his head appeared above the brine after the plunge, he ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... and declared that, captive as he was, he had no power to bring his countrymen to submission. Nevertheless, he was put in irons and strongly guarded. Unfortunately for him, the young Toparca died just at this time, and suspicion at once fell on the hapless general, who, after the mockery of a trial, was burnt to death as soon as Pizarro reached Almagro's camp—his own followers piling up the faggots. Soon after this Pizarro was surprised by a friendly visit from the young brother of Huascar, Manco Capac, and seeing that this prince was likely ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... reverential attention was half sprawling, half lying over the heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it was the President—hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time. All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute adoration there is no telling. The restless, keen eyes looked ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... is reduced to four, who are all together, and gradually gaining on the pursued; with them is the favourite, but alas! his horse suddenly fails in his speed, and as she anxiously turns her head she perceives with dismay the hapless position of her lover; each of the more fortunate leaders, eager with anticipated triumph, bending his head on his horse's mane, shouts at the top of his voice, "I come, my Peri; I'm your lover." But she, making a sudden turn, and lashing her horse almost to fury, darts across their path, and ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... form'd a snowy circle on the grass, And plac'd in midst of all that lovely lass Who chosen is their queen,—with her fine head Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red: For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing, Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying: Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, A bunch of violets full blown, and double, Serenely sleep:—she from a casket takes A little book,—and then a joy awakes About each ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats |
