"Lugubrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... closing in, and we were going through our performances by the slight illumination of the stars, without any positive certainty as to where the Captain kept his tinder box and candle, that we might furnish some sort of light upon the lugubrious ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the gang find that they are surrounded by troops led by Don Sebastian, a friend of Don Henrique. The coiners, in company with the latter, however, make their escape in the disguise of monks on their way to the neighboring monastery, singing a lugubrious chorus ("Unto the Hermit of the Chapel"), while Catarina and Rebolledo elude the soldiers by taking a subterranean passage, carrying with them a casket ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... night the Colonel seized the fiddle and strode gloomily to the end of the stable. Presently there came forth upon the night air such melancholy and dismal notes as made every stable-boy, from little Pete to big Mose, shiver. As the lugubrious sounds continued, the boys fled to their loft, leaving Elias, who had watched over the Colonel from his infancy, to keep vigil, with a troubled look on his withered face. Many nights thereafter was this singular proceeding repeated, to the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... wind, but that little from the north, so that the termination of our voyage appears as far off now as it did eight days ago. The faces of all on board are calmly lugubrious. Little said. A few Spanish shrugs interchanged ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... but dull and lugubrious to the remainder of the party. The girls seemed to feel that there was something solemn about the coming competition between two such dear friends, which prevented and should prevent them all from being merry. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... speaker observed, "the new junior does strike one as being downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"—with a lugubrious sigh—"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... white, who applauded loudly when the Pahi Minstrels emerged from a little boarded room in one corner, and took up their positions on the platform at the end of the hall. Then, for two mortal hours, there was a dismal and lugubrious travesty of the performances of that world-famous troupe which never performs out ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... He dreams, even without wishing it, of those men of the forests who lived here in the ages, in the uncalculated and dark ages, because, suddenly, from a point distant from the shore, a long Basque cry rises from the darkness in a lugubrious falsetto, an "irrintzina," the only thing in this country with which he never could become entirely familiar. But a great mocking noise occurs in the distance, the crash of iron, whistles: a train from Paris to Madrid, which is passing over there, behind them, in the black of the French shore. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... and thoughtful, but no longer lugubrious. She seemed desirous to atone to her father for having disturbed his cheerfulness. She smiled affectionately on him, and often sat on a stool at his knee, and glided ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... all been getting solemn and lugubrious. I must be going, my dear. Won't you show me your drawing-room? (Mrs. Denham rises.) You wanted my advice about ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... for a forehead. This facial peculiarity had won for him the nickname of Cejas (Eyebrows), by which he was known to his intimates. He spent most of his time strumming on a wretched old cracked guitar, and singing amorous ballads in a lugubrious, whining falsetto, which reminded me not a little of that hungry, complaining gull I had met at the estancia in Durazno. For, though poor Epifanio had an absorbing passion for music, Nature had unkindly ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... have been a surprise to find asquat under a carriage, humbly assisting the footmen to pack the dirty plates. But before she had time to decide which of the unlively men, loitering round the carriages or helping stout old dowagers up slim iron ladders, was sufficiently lugubrious to be identified as the martyr of the ballot-box, she was absorbed by a tall, masterful figure, whose face had the radiance of easeful success, and whose hands were clapping at some nuance of style which had escaped the palms ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... cease your wail, lugubrious saint! You fret high Heaven with your plaint. Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint? Is this the Christian's boasted bliss? Avails your faith ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why, Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... 'the accomplished.' Clinton and I shall honor that lugubrious ceremony with our presence; but as respecting the clodhopper himself, meaning thereby Bryan of Ahadarra, he is provided for. What an unlucky thought to enter into the old fellow's noddle! However, non constat, as Finigan would say, time ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... matter of course. On the whole, therefore, a spirit of devotion to the master gradually pervaded the orchestra; the violas alone bore him a grudge for a while, and for this reason. In the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompaniment. Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral tone, 'Are the violas dying?' The two pale and incurably melancholy ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... lectern, and the moment he opened his mouth I knew that my time had come, and that there was a very fair chance of victory before me. Whether this clergyman had a toothache, or a headache, or a heavy load on his mind, I cannot say, but his reading was more lugubrious than the wind in an equinoctial gale. I have since observed that he was only a degree worse than many other clerical readers, and that a strange and delightfully mistaken notion seems prevalent that the Bible must be read in a dreary and unnatural tone of voice, ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... children, according to custom, would be exposure and death to him as well as themselves; while to assist by his passive presence at the horrible sacrifice of his countrymen was too much for even his weak selfishness. Scarcely knowing what he did as the lugubrious procession passed before him, he hurriedly hid his face in his blanket and turned his back upon the scene. There was a dead silence. The warriors were evidently unprepared for this extraordinary conduct of their chief. What might ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells were tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond the Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. The bells sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other sound ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... stars of the crisp October night, Nelsen was approached at once by a shadow. "I was waiting for you, Frank. I got a problem." The voice was hoarse sorrow—almost lugubrious comedy. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity. As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might soon ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... double honour of speaking before the smallest audience and making the best Budget speech for many years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has two manners. He can be as boisterous, exuberant, and gay, as any speaker in the House, and he can also be as lugubrious as though his life had been spent in the service of an undertaker. He was in the undertaker mood this evening. Slowly, solemnly, sadly, he unfolded his story of the finances of the country. He had taken the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a most lugubrious countenance—"it is enough, Morgiana, that I should suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin. But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know you are now repentant; and I never could bear ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sweet, shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation was borne in upon him with something of the sting ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Convention. There is no obvious reason why he should not have done so. The members of the Convention had re-assembled after their dinner, towards seven o'clock. The hall which had resounded with the shrieks and yells of the furious gladiators of the factions all day, now lent a lugubrious echo to gloomy reports which one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune. Towards nine o'clock the members of the two dread Committees came in panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... to hold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was here in this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was health and liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle piffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Here one slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, and breathed the desert air and lived. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... We had put into the stream but a short distance, when I encountered a boat-full of roysterers; for old father Thames was thickly studded on this occasion with boats of all classes; when one turned to another in the boat and cried out in the most lugubrious accents, which did not fail to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... little as a mile," Shorty retorted, shaking his head with lugubrious resignation. "Come on for trouble. Get up, you poor sore-foots, you—get up! Haw! You ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... genius that can adapt itself to an environment so lugubrious. It is only genius that can unhorse suspicion itself, leaving even the would-be detractor to admit that Mr. Harpwood is a kind ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... terrified horses and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque, entitled the Dance of Death, is ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... any moment the house were to tumble down about our ears and bury the whole lot of us in its ruins. It was, however, all of no use. He could not succeed in frightening us; and the four of us continued to play whist, and now and then threw out at him a few chaffing remains on his lugubrious and unhappy state. But later on we had a tremendous shock, and for the moment it seemed as if part of his prognostications were to come only too true. It appeared that the iron bar across one of the windows in my bedroom to the west, looking on to the river, leading oft the sitting ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... year than usual, to the great detriment of the innkeepers. Every now and then he would say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him, speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to dispel a black silence which on the present occasion would have been specially lugubrious. Upon the whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought respecting him. He was not wanted there, and he ought not to have come. She had given him an answer, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... Blundell had a most pernicious effect upon the uprightness of the greater part of the company. Having the sanction of authority, several others, the minor spirits it is true, settled down under their chairs without a struggle. The survivors made some lugubrious efforts at a triumph over their less stubborn companions, but the laborious and husky laugh was but a poor apology for the proper performance of this feat. Munro, who to his other qualities added those of a sturdy bon-vivant, together with Forrester, and a few who ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... watching in the sky. One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... people fail of their aim, and are neither well amused nor well occupied, nor well anything else. For if "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," what does the reverse do for him? This passion for cakes and sugar-candy in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... it was with a sensation of surprise that Sidney first became aware of light-heartedness in the young girl who was a silent hearer of so many lugubrious discussions. Ridiculous as it may sound—as Sidney felt it to be—he almost resented this evidence of happiness; to him, only just recovering from a shock which would leave its mark upon his life to the end, his youth wronged ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... a little too much! This old tree is getting to be a very lugubrious spot. I don't want to hear any more such messages. I almost wish I had never touched the wire. Strange! one reads such an announcement in a newspaper very coolly;—why is it that I can't take it coolly in a telegraphic despatch? We can read a thing with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... features of the country. The oriental character of the landscape, which marks more or less distinctly the whole of the Neapolitan coast-line, will at once be noticed in the domed farm buildings, not unlike Mahommedan koubbas, washed a glistening white, that stand out sharply against the lugubrious tints of the lava beds. Above us, crowning a bosky hillock that juts forth from the mountain flank, stands one of the many convents of the monks of Camaldoli, whose houses are scattered throughout the breadth of Southern Italy. The position of their ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... said. That was my hour of impotence. Madame, I have seen battles and slaughter and found no meaning in them. But that isolated tragedy boxed up in the little house between the squalid town and the lugubrious desert—it sucked the strength from my bones. She continued to speak; the cultivated sweetness of her voice came and went in my ears like a maddening distraction from some grave matter in hand. I think I was on the point of breaking in, violently, hysterically, when I cast a look at ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... related by McLean (I., 254-55): A carrier Indian having been killed, his widow threw herself on the body, shrieking and tearing her hair. The other females "evinced all the external symptoms of extreme grief, chanting the death-song in a most lugubrious tone, the tears streaming down their cheeks, and beating their breasts;" yet as soon as the rites were ended, these women "were seen as gay and cheerful as if they had returned from a wedding." The widow alone remained, being "obliged by custom" to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... four days after d'Ache's death, his widow wrote me a note begging me to call on her. I found her in company with de Pyene. She told me in a lugubrious voice that her husband had left many debts unsettled, and that his creditors had seized everything she possessed; and—that she was thus unable to pay the expenses of a journey, though she wanted to take her daughter with her to Colmar, and there to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... he had seen in this remarkable cave, I could not rest satisfied till I had dived down to see it: which I did, but found it so dark, as Jack had said, that I could scarcely see anything. When I returned, we had a long conversation about it, during which I observed that Peterkin had a most lugubrious expression on his countenance. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the way to the mail box out by the main road, and nearly all the way back again. But then his ears were assailed with lugubrious singing: ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... handsomely furnished—being, in fact, the chamber of Mrs. Wilcox, the mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle of the bed, just the length of Robby, aged ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... gravely as the two stood on the long bridge leading to Yahagi across the river. "The luck of one, the misfortune of another—'twas the life of the Go Shukke Sama and of this Jimbei against the lives and fortunes of those wretched people. And is there aught to outweigh life?" The priest nodded a lugubrious and pleased assent to this plain doctrine. "It is just as well the host of Masuya lost life as well as goods. He might have made plaint, and had too long a tongue.... Jimbei could not foresee such weakness in so huge a body." He looked Dentatsu over with a little kindly contempt. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the coast so as to mask the fortifications at the top, drawing forth from the shadows the gray masses of the cruisers anchored in the harbor and the black bulk of the cannon that formed the shore batteries, filtering into the lugubrious embrasures pierced through the cliff, cavernous mouths revealing the mysterious defences that had been wrought with mole-like industry in the heart ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this woeful performance?—a party of absurd dressed-up people, who have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious performance! And this is the best that Schubert can do! This is the real Schubert! Here have I been all my life pouring pints of subjective emotion into this dreary writer of songs, believing that I was stirred and moved, when it was my own hopes and aspirations all along, which I was stuffing into ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... time without excusing himself. He got back while Janet was still engaged upon the article. When she looked up he was standing beside the fire looking down at her. There was something new in his face, a look half lugubrious, semi-humorous, apologetic. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... boys, with somewhat lugubrious faces, returned to their hard diet of pork and hominy, heaving now and then a sigh of fond remembrance, as they thought ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... most lugubrious ideas to the mind of the unhappy Plenipotentiary; and shut up in a hackney-coach, with a man on each side of him with a most gloomy conceptions of overwhelming fetters, black bread, and green water. He arrived at the principal gaol in Hubbabub. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... we did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the forest. If we did not prevent him at times, holding firmly to his coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a feverish, clamorous, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... leave the island, even though it be only to cross to the mainland. The gift of such sight is sometimes hereditary in a family for generations, but this is not an invariable rule, for it often appears sporadically in one member of a family otherwise free from its lugubrious influence. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... caused by Mr. Screw's insinuations, had long since passed away, and he was as calm as ever, meditating a graphic description of his day's excursion to Greenwood Cemetery for Margaret's benefit. It was a lugubrious subject, but he well knew how to make his talk interesting. It is the individual, not the topic, that makes the conversation; if a man can talk well, graveyards are as good a subject as the last novel, and he will make tombstones more ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... "adders" in the family circle, and on the seditiousness of dark and mysterious councils in which a gray-haired father was left out. It was true that a word or look from Flip generally brought these monologues to an inglorious and abrupt termination, but they were none the less lugubrious as long as they lasted. In time they were succeeded by an affectation of contrite apology and self-depreciation. "Don't go out o' the way to ask the old man," he would say, referring to the quantity of bacon to be ordered; "it's nat'ral a young gal should ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the resplendent, the palpitating day. One of Gordon's nephews—a shock of tow hair rising rebellious against an application of soap, stubby, scarred hands, shoes obviously come by in their descent from more mature extremities—who had been audibly snuffling for the past ten minutes, burst into a lugubrious, frightened wail. Through the solemn, appointed periods of the minister cut the sibilant, maternal ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... whirr which resounded throughout the vicinity of the mill. The sound rose and fell in a sort of rhythmic cadence, which, heard from where we sat, was not unpleasing, and not loud enough to prevent conversation. When the saw started on its second journey through the log, Julius observed, in a lugubrious tone, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... all day in one of his periodical fits of desperate industry. The smoke and sparks had been seen flying out of his shop-chimney in a frantic manner; and the blows of his hammer had resounded with a sort of feverish persistence, intermingled with a doleful wailing of psalm-tunes of the most lugubrious description. ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lugubrious picture!" laughed Pendleton. Then, with his gaze admiringly regarding the girl's animated face and expressive eyes, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... variations, ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... firing was terrible on all sides and thousands were killed on this lugubrious field; the French resisted on both banks of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... about it as Emma Campbell was. Emma's terror of "dat gal" had grown with the years. Neither of them ventured to question Peter, but Emma Campbell began to have frequent spells of "wrastlin' wid de sperit," and her long, lugubrious "speretuals" were dismal enough to set one's teeth on edge. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the lugubrious feast is done I hasten from my chair To open all the windows wide, and let in lots of air; And then I sit around an hour and chew a wad of gum Until the fullness disappears ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... so lugubrious that Henry was compelled to laugh under his breath. It did look like an injustice of fate, when hunters so keen as they, were compelled to lie quiet, while wild turkeys in hundreds flew over their heads, and although the shiftless one may have exaggerated ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... landlady as I hastened downstairs. "That?" said she, with a look of amusement; "that's frogs." "It may be," I thought, but I followed the sounds till they led me in the darkness to the edge of a swamp. No doubt the creatures were frogs, but of some kind new to me, with voices more lugubrious and homesick than I should have supposed could possibly belong to any batrachian. A week or two later, in the New Smyrna flat-woods, I heard in the distance a sound which I took for the grunting of pigs. I made a note of it, mentally, as a cheerful token, indicative of a probable ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... between. The latter rattled away, a nun's face uncertainly seen—faded cheeks, immense eyes, white dress, behind the black double bars; the key restored to the Ruota, and engulfed after directions from the mysterious voice; another door, sound of keys and bolts. In all this a predominant and lugubrious impression of keys and bolts. The little portress, Donna Maria Geltude (for these nuns are Benedictines, and have the handle to their names), a wizen, very ugly little woman, in incredibly shabby but spotless dress, white wool washed threadbare to an appearance of linen, voluminous ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... laboratory yard, and had a movable roof in the central part. This roof could be raised or lowered at will. The building was covered with black roofing paper, and was also painted black inside. There was no scenery to render gay this lugubrious environment, but the black interior served as the common background for the performers, throwing all their actions into high relief. The whole structure was set on a pivot so that it could be swung ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... courtesy, the bows, and not a few of them had the open mouth of a dragon, with ugly teeth, painted under it, near the water-line, the corners being drawn down, and the eye (from their desire that it should see 'all ways at once') having a horrid squint. This gave to the boat a lugubrious expression—if such a term may be allowed—ludicrous in the extreme; and with fifty or a hundred junks drawn up in squadrons, squinting and making faces at each other, nothing more thoroughly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was 'turning round' under the refreshing shower with great enjoyment; he was getting rid of the dust and fatigue of his wearisome afternoon, as well as of the lugubrious sonorities of Astier-Rehu's Academic regret 'His hour sounded upon the bell'... 'the hand of Loisillon was cold'... 'he had drained the cup of happiness'... &c, &c. Oh Master! Master! oh, respected papa! It took a good deal of water, showers, streams, floods of it, to wash off ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled the sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... out of hiding and sounded plaintively over the waste of waters. Scraps of almost mediaeval life showed out in thumb-nail sketches between the sooty shadow world and the red flare of the bonfires. Voices were lifted into weird minors and lugubrious tunes, recitative, of sad love themes—and these were, of course, addressed to Alexander. She joined no group, but sat with her hands clasped about her updrawn knees and her gaze ranging off into distance. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... very good, now do you, Miss Kingston?" asked Clara Ellis, a rather lugubrious individual, who had been put on the committee because she was a "prod" in "English lit.," and not because she had the least ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... "In fact, a lugubrious and solemn voice, imposing silence on the funereal equipage of the Bucentaur, cried, 'Who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... was to look upon himself for a grave and thoughtful statesman, and be condemned by fate to a chronic state of fun and to hard labor at pun-making for life. Imagine Junius damned to lead Touchstone's life! He became sourness itself. His puns were lugubrious. His fun grew heavy, and his gayety was funereal. The pretensions of this checked gravity which settled upon his factitious hilarity were enough to melt the hearts even of his enemies, if such a fellow could pretend to have enemies. Once this galley-slave of fun tried to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the presence of a great disaster, the sort of disaster that gets into the papers, and is even illustrated by blurred photographs of the crumbling ruins. In the presence of that sort of disaster all honourable men are lugubrious and sententious. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... for, of course, you can have no doubt that it is of her we are speaking—she perpetrated her last lugubrious joke on the day that she was to have made her vows, for when asked what patron saint she would select by taking that saint's name in religion, she answered—St. Theresa, because St. Theresa would understand her case ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a sad, a miserable sound grated on the ear of night. A lugubrious quail doled forth a grating, dismal note at long but measured intervals, offending the ear and depressing the heart. This was the only sound Nature afforded for hours. The neighboring bush, though crammed ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... what Mr. Rogers will do, now that he's got his leisure, with a fortune and—me!' And at the same moment Rogers, in his deep arm-chair before the fire, was saying to himself, 'I'm glad Minks has come to me; he's just the man I want for my big Scheme!' And then—'Pity he's such a lugubrious looking fellow, and wears those dreadful fancy waistcoats. But he's very open to suggestion. We can change all that. I must look after Minks a bit. He's rather sacrificed his career for me, I fancy. He's got high ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... "Well, sir," answered that lugubrious worthy, as he awkwardly took a seat, "the question is what isn't it? These be rum times, they be, they fare to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... or not failing, that depended on the hopes which a man might form for himself. He trusted that his would henceforth be so moderate in their nature as to admit of a probability of their being realized." Having uttered these very lugubrious words, and almost succeeded in throwing a wet blanket over the party, he ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Paul, full of lugubrious visions and suspicions, one day disgraced General Swetchine by removing him from office. But this official dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of social caste. The general and his exemplary wife continued to live amidst their numerous friends as happily as before. The ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the sounds surged to meet him through the heat and silence. He might smile, if he knew San Juan, as he caught the jubilant message tapped swiftly out of the bronze bell which had come, men said, with Coronado; he might sigh at the lugubrious, slow-swelling voice of the big bell which had come hitherward long ago with the retinue of Marco de Niza, wondering what old friend or enemy, perchance, had at last closed his ears to all of Ignacio Chavez's music. Or, at a sudden fury of clanging, the man far ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... farewell journey; such I think may have been the case when our distinguished neighbors, the Scammels and Pennimans passed away. When the minister has concluded his remarks and his prayer, generally in the most lugubrious words and scriptural phrases he can muster, the man in charge of the funeral, (for country people knew no such professional name as undertaker), comes briskly forward, and, with much ceremony, lifts the lid of the coffin, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Chicago. Then they drove to a vast new hotel in which Mr. Parker had taken a conservative interest, and they still talked of the marvellous growth of the city, its Ultimate Destiny,—terms which had a lugubrious sound in the New Englander's piping voice. As they turned northwards around the great oval of Washington Park, the sun was sinking into a golden haze of dust and smoke. The horses dropped to a peaceful walk, and Milly knew that ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... mental state to which the office of representative on mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others, less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the inevitable effect of their work and their mandate. Beyond every grave they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There is nothing left for the gravedigger but to dig ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... visited some houses; then in a sudden wild despair tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension or she clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she found impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic—cheery in that lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be "bright" with the afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they would warmly cry, "Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss Humfray ... after all you have been through.... You ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the inventory afforded me a little relief; moreover, public opinion was so unanimously unfavorable to the colonel that little by little the place lost the lugubrious aspect that had at first struck me. At last I entered into possession of the legacy, which I ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... this open space furthest from the town has been appropriately fixed upon as the site of various cemeteries. The lugubrious forest is enough to give a man the blue devils, and the ditches and drains into which the sewers, &c., of the town are pumped, dragging their sluggish and all but stagnant course under a broiling summer gun, are sufficient ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... churches are crowded and there are banquets and dances going on everywhere. In the cities the small boys amuse themselves by setting off fireworks. During the Christmas week dances are frequent, and in the country they continue sometimes for days to the lugubrious accompaniment of accordions and large drums. December the twenty-eighth, Holy Innocents' day, is All Fools' day, instead of April the first, it being argued that just as the innocents of Herod's day were made to suffer, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... to contemplating the dull, blurred windows of the Archpriest's house on the other side of the square, and to watching how black shadows kept flitting to and fro behind their panes as the faint, lugubrious notes of a guitar made themselves heard. And a high-pitched, irritable voice kept repeating at intervals: "Allow me. Pray, permit me to speak," and being answered by a voice which intermittently shot into the silence, as into a bottomless ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... bit—she had the same configuration of the lungs as her Uncle Hurlbird. And, in his company, she must have heard a great deal of heart talk from specialists. Anyhow, she and they tied me pretty well down—and Jimmy, of course, that dreary boy—what in the world did she see in him? He was lugubrious, silent, morose. He had no talent as a painter. He was very sallow and dark, and he never shaved sufficiently. He met us at Havre, and he proceeded to make himself useful for the next two years, during which he lived in our ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... distorted legs are his stock in trade waits for the return-tide to enact his shrewd and pantomimic morality-play by a hurried shuffle up and down the pavement. The news-dealers—even the enterprising female who summons mercy to the aid of commerce by her absurdly lugubrious visage—have the paper and the change all ready to thrust into their customer's hand. The scene at the crossing of the street baffles description. Talk of the day of miracles being past! One who can watch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... have been taught to open doors." I managed a sly, lugubrious smile. "I shall not try ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... that extremely droll, lugubrious look on her long, mask-like face which makes the faces of insects so funny and uncanny, like pantomime masks, sat down as if nothing had happened, apparently to scheme out the best way to possess herself of a kingdom and become a queen in fact as well as ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... now at his wits' end, but wishing to finish this lugubrious performance with a flourish, proposed (unhappy thought) that I should address a few words to the now miserable, broken-hearted crowd. I will give you a thousand guesses, dear aunty, and still you will never guess the idiotic ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... six to ten lame feet. Doctor Grim inspected these things curiously, and to say the truth most scornfully, before he took them to light his pipe withal; but they told him little as regarded this boy's internal state, being mere echoes, and very lugubrious ones, of poetic strains that were floating about in the atmosphere of that day, long before any now remembered bard had begun to sing. But there were the rudiments of a poetic and imaginative mind within the boy, if its subsequent culture ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think that the stories whispered by the slender reeds, with their little soft voices, must be more sinister than the lugubrious tragedies told by the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... several races, eh?" But the white horse seemed to shake its head. "No! Oh, well, no matter, old codger!" And he stroked the long lugubrious muzzle.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of his lips; he turned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an abnormal angle) and bowed his arms. Brought up in the school which teaches that to make others laugh one must never smile one's self, he wore a grotesquely lugubrious and changeless countenance. Such was Newgag in his every impersonation. When he thought he was funniest, he appeared to be in most pain and was ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. Now, the railway fare alone was three shillings; ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... spectacle, for in promiscuous and gay confusion were seen the splendid apparel of the noble, and the modest garb of the peasant; the shining armour and waving plumes of the Christian warrior, and the gaudy fantastic habiliments of the Moslem. With them appeared the solemn and lugubrious vestments of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the coarse habit and shaven crown of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... reached this lugubrious pass when an event occurred which materially affected the condition of the prisoners, and considerably altered ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... religion; and if a careful and deliberate examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself, you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness for me if the peace which I enjoy should put it in my power to break ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... that still," Jim said. "But it will be useful, all the same, Murty." He laughed at the stockman's lugubrious face. "Oh, I know it's giving you the sort of pain you had when dad ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... incessantly heard. The leaders declared that the landed gentry and farmers were rapidly proceeding to ruin in consequence of free-trade, and their vaticinations of frightful calamities to the nation were singular displays of extraordinary hypocrisy, or delusions. Amongst the most doleful prophets and lugubrious friends of agriculture was Benjamin Disraeli. He was also the most acrimonious of advocates, while defending claims ignored by the nation as unjust, denounced by political economists as injurious; and, obviously in the exclusive and selfish interests of a class, he denounced the advocates of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron broke off ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... ejaculated the widow, who was a rather lugubrious woman living in what she believed to be the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... of which Mike the Angel was becoming heartily sick, seemed like a tomb which echoed and re-echoed the lugubrious voice ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... silence, a blessed quiet, save for the hoarse pant of my own breathing. Stumbling to the doorway, I leaned there, vaguely glad the horrid business was over, since I found myself faint and sick. Afar off I heard lugubrious voices that called one to another, a snapping of twigs growing ever fainter, and a rustle of leaves that marked ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... though not severely artistic in execution. Passing from the turbulent precincts of Portland and Causeway Streets, he had entered upon the solitudes of Green Street, along which he now dragged himself dreamily enough, ever extracting consolations from lugubrious cadences mournfully intoned. Very silent was the neighborhood. Very dismal the night. Very dreary and damp was Mr. Smithers; for a vile fog wrapped itself around him, filling his body with moist misery, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... red, sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair |
