"Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your light head, make between a sad and a smiling face, pity some, rail at all, and commend yourself: 'tis your only safe and unsuspected course. Come, you shall look back upon the court again to-day, and be restored to your colours: I do now partly aim at the cause of your repulse—which was ominous indeed—for as you enter at the door, there is opposed to you the frame of a wolf in the hangings, which, surprising your eye suddenly, gave a false alarm to the heart; and that was it called your blood out of your face, and so routed ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... first time he had been the victim of this Theodore Hookish joke. I called the funeral furnisher in. Unobserved by the green-tied guests and the cross-eyed waiters, he walked through the banqueting hall, and as soon as he arrived at the chair, black-gloved, hat in hand, with the ominous foot rule projecting from the pocket of his funereal overcoat, I stood up and introduced him to the company, read the telegram, and invited him to go round the tables and take the orders. Whether it was that ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... spell is broken ... I awake; How swift the rush of memory's turning tide, Whose ruthless waves the will's frail barriers break, And flood the cells where consciousness would hide! Alas, how mad and fierce the world appears! How dark and ominous the future seems! I rise to face them ... yet recall through tears The ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Thy ominous Looks presage an ill Success; Thy Eyes no joyful News of Murders tell: I thought I shou'd have seen thee drest in Blood— Speak! Speak thy News— Say that he lives, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... usual on hearing his approach; he had stepped full upon it. He hastened from the spot, and rejoined Oliver in a somewhat shaken state of mind. Common as such an incident was in the woods, where sandy soil warned the hunter to be careful, it seemed ominous that particular morning, and, joined with the discovery of Bushman traces, quite destroyed his sense of the beauty ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... became aware of a solid black mass looming in front of the bull's-eye window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... lights burnt blue, as they're wont to do When Spirits are in the wind. Ho! ho! thought I, that's an ominous hue, And a glance on either side I threw, But I fear'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... by her coming, and filled with a quiet joy; the matrons of Elysium crowding to her marriage toilet, with the bridal veil of yellow in their hands; the Manes, crowned with ghostly flowers yet warmed a little, at the marriage feast; the ominous dreams of the mother; the desolation of the home, like an empty bird's-nest or an empty fold, when she returns and finds Proserpine gone, and the spider at work over her unfinished embroidery; the strangely-figured raiment, the flowers in the grass, which were once blooming youths, having ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Lavington, as if to surprise in him a corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile was screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a white-washed wall. Then the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that its wearer was afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr. Lavington was unutterably tired too, and the discovery sent a colder current through Faxon's veins. Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting twinkle of the champagne glass; but the sight of ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Em. I don't need you to tell me what she is. I can see for myself." Alf rocked a little with an ominous obstinacy. His eyes were fixed upon her with an unwinking stare. It was as though, having delivered a blow with the full weight of party bias, he were desiring her to take a common-sense view ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... VALUED FRIEND,—Your letter from Penryth [sic] without date, but bearing the ominous post-mark, 'April 1st,' has completely made a fool of me, in that sense which implies that nothing else can excuse a grey head and a seared heart for thinking and feeling that there are such things in the world as affection and sincerity. Being fond of flying in the face of reason, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the start. It was bad enough though, for there was certain to be something of a swell—and other things; and now that he was in the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen. But his strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his first big act of self-sacrifice. The song the Salvation woman sang ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... you're treading!" the Master exclaimed. His voice had deepened, grown ominous. "You understood perfectly well the conditions of the undertaking—unquestioning obedience to my orders, with life-and-death powers in ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... over him inch by inch; he reminded Winn of nothing so much as of an excited terrier hunting up and down a bank for a rat-hole. Eventually Dr. Gurnet found his rat. He went back to his chair, sat down heavily, and looked at Winn. For rather an ominous moment he was silent; then he ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... broke out just as they turned to go, and peered curiously through the boughs, till it found out and lighted on the angular ominous heap, shrouded with a cloak, that, ten minutes ago, was a strong, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... have, and have escaped with their lives, say that the ship is buffeted as if by mighty billows which smack down upon her from all directions. Sometimes there is seen a space of blue sky, and there is a great calm, but this to the commander is the most ominous sign of all, for he knows he must be in the centre funnel of the storm, so to speak, and that it will be worse ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... is a doleful region! One cannot tell where it ends and where the jungle begins, and dark, heavy, ominous-looking clouds generally concealed the forest-covered hills which are not far off. I almost felt the redundancy of vegetation to be oppressive, and the redundancy of insect and reptile life certainly was so; swarms of living creatures leaped in and out of the water, bigger ones ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... brief period, and I have no other object of earthly ambition than to leave my country in a peaceful and prosperous condition and to live in the affections and respect of my countrymen. The dark and ominous clouds which now appear to be impending over the Union I conscientiously believe may be dissipated with honor to every portion of it by the admission of Kansas during the present session of Congress, whereas if she should be rejected I greatly fear ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... tightly together so that an ominous rent appeared in one of her pretty gloves. "I'll sing," she kept saying to herself all the way out to the platform, "oh, I'll sing—I'll sing." And later on, while looking down into the eyes of the girls waiting to applaud, "I'll sing—I'll sing," she had to declare to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... irresponsible power. Men of the most eminent intellect and character had suffered within its precincts for the crime of teaching new truth or exposing old superstitions. Voltaire himself had twice tasted imprisonment there. What wonder, then, that the people fixed their gaze upon it on that ominous fourteenth of July, and attacked it as the very citadel of tyranny? The Bastille fell, and the sound re-echoed through Europe. It was the signal of a new era and a new hope. The Revolution had begun—that ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... weighted like himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here subtly suggested between man and beast. The rich landscape, with a gleam of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day; but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous light of sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. The Emperor is alone—alone as he must be in life and in death—a man, yet lifted so high above other men that the world stretches far below at his feet, while above him this ruler knows no power but that of God. It is not even the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... exclusive club, which he had left but half an hour ago! The smile faded, and he passed his hand a little wearily across his eyes. The strain seemed to grow heavier every day—the underworld more prone to suspicion; the police more vigilant; that ominous slogan, in which Crime and the Law for once were one, "Death to the Gray Seal!" to ring more constantly in his ears. It was becoming more fraught with peril, danger and difficulty than ever before, this dual life he led. And he had thought ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... primeval brooded the abyss; Alone as men were never in the world. They saw the icy foundlings of the sea, White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day, Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night In monstrous hush; or sometimes in the dark The waves broke ominous with paly gleams Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire. 130 Then came green stripes of sea that promised land But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day Low in the west were wooded shores like cloud. They shouted as men shout with sudden hope; But Bioern ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... as to see the person. Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak out in this way. There is no need of Mrs. Felix Lorraine's reflection in the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our backs. We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that some mischief or other is going-on. A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed, and not merely brushing over it with their pencils of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... heron had stood at a little distance away, uttering now and then an ominous croak. I could easily have shot it from where I stood, but thought the family had suffered enough ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... There was an ominous pause here, in which I ventured to say something like, "Yes, very trying," and then asked at what hour the church service was to be. "Eleven o'clock," Mr. Bowman said with a heavy sigh. "Ah, you won't have no such discourse from poor Mr. Lucas as what you would have done from our late Rector. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... clicked, and sent a shudder through Carey, who started at the ominous sound and looked wildly round for the guns, in the mad idea that he might be able to catch one up, load it, and fire in defence of the man towards whom he felt as if he were an elder brother. But the guns were all in the hands of the blacks, and others had possession ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... had hoped for an outburst of rapture on the part of the little gun man he was disappointed, for Willie shifted his holster, smiled evilly through his glasses, and inquired, with ominous restraint: ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... on the beach here, like that pretty little reef that runs right out before your windows, but three miles from the shore there is a fatal stretch of sand where wrecks are frequent, and all along which ominous white clouds are springing up from the inky surface of the wintry sea, like warning ghosts. It is very dreary and dismal looking; but, nevertheless, as I have no rehearsal, I am going out to walk. Kiss Dorothy for me. I am ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to herself. I lay in my bunk and listened to the wind in the humming rigging, while the moonlight, shining through the porthole, filled the cabin with dim shadows. Toward midnight, mingled with the noises of the ship, another and more ominous sound became audible—the grinding of the ice in the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Beneath the wide cap of frozen snow ran a torrent roaring. I remembered Colorado, and how I had crossed the Arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the uneasy dawn. The woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped from above that very April and been killed. Then, most ominous and disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his head and said it would be snowing higher up. We went on, and it grew lighter. Before it was really day (or else the weather confused and darkened the sky), we crossed a good bridge, built long ago, and we halted at ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... ominous mutter came from a point toward the north, and glancing that way, although he knew his eyes would meet a blank wall, he saw that it was only Jacques, snoring, not an ordinary common snore, but the loud resounding trumpet call that can only come from a mighty chest and a powerful throat ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the open. An ominous stillness seemed to grip the very air—the awful silence of the polar wastes which lay ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... efface himself, but there were no sheltering corners or curtains, and there was not time to get into the bedroom and under the bed. Near the window was a large-sized medicine chest, and in despair Bunty crushed himself into it, his legs huddled up, his head between his knees, and an ominous rattle of displaced bottles in his ears. The next minute his father ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... Autumn night of sobbing rain. Then it would run like a steady stream Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam, Or lap the air like the lapping tide Where a marble staircase lifts its wide Green-spotted steps to a garden gate, And a waning moon is sinking straight Down to a black and ominous sea, While a nightingale ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Union, can save America from as many standing armies as it may be split into States or Confederacies, and from such a progressive augmentation, of these establishments in each, as will render them as burdensome to the properties and ominous to the liberties of the people, as any establishment that can become necessary, under a united and efficient government, must be tolerable to the former and safe to ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow grewsome and ominous. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... of curious people. For as cupping-glasses take away the worst blood, so the ears of curious people attract only the worst reports; or rather, as cities have certain ominous and gloomy gates, through which they conduct only condemned criminals, or convey filth and night soil, for nothing pure or holy has either ingress into or egress from them, so into the ears of curious people goes nothing good or elegant, but tales of murders travel and lodge there, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... down the empty streets paraded these worthies, pausing here and there at the door of some citizen that presented a tempting surface. One of their number would paint upon it the ominous red cross, whilst another who had skill enough (for writing was not the accomplishment of every citizen even then) would add in staring white letters the legend, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired at ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... dying words glanced through my memory as he spoke:—"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough." And John would have said the same, could he have seen the ominous black holes between his shoulders, he never had; and, seeing the ghastly sights about him, could not believe his own wound more fatal than these, for all ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... that she is out of breath, that she must have breathing time if she is to go on. At the general rehearsal this vaudeville act found no favour and the singer was without doubt vocally distressed. An ominous noise from the direction of the conductor's desk (Strauss himself) caused her some embarrassment. She eventually got under way, leaving the audience in doubt as to the success of the experiment—the score shows that it is all in deadly earnest. But the foot-stamping of Strauss and his remarks reminded ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that is out of joint, much to justify doleful prophecies, in the social and religious conditions of the present age, but the signs of the times are not all ominous. At all events, nothing would be gained by a return to the monkish ideals of the past. The hope of the world lies in the further development and completer realization of those great principles of human freedom that distinguish this century from the past. The history of monasticism clearly ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the afternoon our field-glasses picked up the Confederate head-of-column emerging from the range of hills previously mentioned, where it is cut by the Columbia road. But—ominous circumstance!—it did not come on. It turned to its left, at a right angle, moving along the base of the hills, parallel to our line. Other heads-of-column came through other gaps and over the crests farther along, impudently deploying on the level ground with a spectacular ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... thickening. The one way out of it, so far, was the way traced faintly through that strange story of the unfinished letter which the doctor had repeated to him in Mrs. Armadale's words. The nearer he approached his unknown responsibility, the more ominous it seemed of something serious to come. Should he risk another question before he pledged himself irrevocably? As the doubt crossed his mind, he felt Mrs. Armadale's silk dress touch him on the side furthest from ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the place and swept it from end to end! But what of his mother and Jess! Were they alive? or were their charred bodies now lying exposed to the pelting rain? He called again and again at the top of his voice, but received no reply. The silence was ominous, for from where he was standing anyone, even in the middle of the small island, should be ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... propounded, is at once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. He rushed with ravenous eagerness at every bait which was offered to his cupidity. But any ominous shadow, any threatening murmur, sufficed to stop him in his full career, and to make him change his course or bury himself in a hiding place. He ought to have thought himself fortunate indeed, when, after all the crimes which he had committed, he found ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... whose Sable Armes[11] Blacke as his purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the Ominous[12] Horse, Hath now this dread and blacke Complexion smear'd With Heraldry more dismall: Head to foote Now is he to take Geulles,[13] horridly Trick'd [Sidenote: is he totall Gules [18]] With blood of Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... indecision had been removed, and I found myself entrusting Carter with a telegram to Davies, P.O., Flensburg. 'Thanks; expect me 9.34 p.m. 26th'; which produced, three hours later, a reply: 'Delighted; please bring a No. 3 Rippingille stove'—a perplexing and ominous direction, which somehow chilled me in spite ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... short post with straps attached to an arm nailed across it, and leaning upon this post in an attitude of one who possesses a most distinguished office was a young man with a three thonged whip in his hand. An ominous silence pervaded the circle, with the exception of the hushed whispering of a number of women who had forced themselves into the line of spectators, bent upon witnessing the sight of blood as well as hearing the sound of lashes. Nathaniel noticed that most of the women hung ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Man had hitherto been but a tradition among them, a vague but alarming tradition. And now his appearance, yesterday and to-day, filled them with terror. That vision of the Boy, standing tall and ominous on the dam, and afterwards going forward and backward over it, pulling at it, apparently seeking to destroy it, seemed to portend mysterious disasters. After he was gone, and well gone, almost every beaver in the pond, not only from the main house but also from the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Taine, the son had nothing to do with it. Don't you think we might let the dead man stay safely buried?" There was an ominous glint in Conrad ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and the Americas, the three were always spoken of together as the Three J's—Jaggers, the Jockey, and the Jew. Wherever horses raced their fame was great, and amongst the English at least it was evil and ominous. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... for vantage in the fight. Noon came. The fire of pickets died away. All eyes were turned to Seminary Ridge, For lo our sullen foemen—park on park— Had massed their grim artillery on our corps. Hoarse voices sunk to whispers or were hushed; The rugged hills stood listening in awe; So dread the ominous silence that I heard The hearts of soldiers throbbing along ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... we talked of Viola. Writing to her had been, of course, impossible for him, and he had only had two short notes from her, so meaningless that I thought she wrote them fearing to disturb him while he was ill; but he muttered an ominous line from Locksley Hall, vituperated Piggy, and confessed that his ground for doing so was that his mother reported Viola as pleased with foreign life, and happy with her cousins. I said it was his mother's way, and he replied, "Exactly so; and a girl ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes. He stood a full minute without speaking—and you know how long a minute's silence ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... off shakin' his head ominous. But then, Piddie has been waitin' for the word to fire Brink Hollis ever since this cheerful eyed young hick was wished on the Corrugated through a director's pull nearly a year ago, when he was fresh from ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... doorway that yawned along their path seemed ominous with memories of life that had perished there, of death that ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the light of this setting sun ominous, but everything about me seemed ominous—the landscape, my father's face, the fret of the babe in my mother's arms that she could not still, the six horses my father drove that had continually to be urged and that were without any sign of colour, so heavily ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... could not shake off the fright that had startled him. It was as if an unseen thing of gloom had passed him by, casting upon him the intangible shadow of its presence. He was aware of a feeling of foreboding. Something ominous was about to happen. Calamity hovered in the air. He gazed fixedly across the table at the other man. He could not understand. Was it that he had blundered and poisoned himself? No, Matt had the nicked cup, and he had certainly put the poison in the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... scene of the Witch's Kitchen; in that lurid moment of sunset over the quaint gables and haunted spires of Nuremburg, when the sinister presence of the arch-fiend deepened the red glare of the setting sun and seemed to bathe this world in the ominous splendour of hell; and, above all, if you perceived the soul that shone through his eyes in that supremely awful moment of his predominance over the hellish revel upon the Brocken, when all the hideous malignities of nature and all those ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... western sea-rim, and there was still no sign of the captain's boat. On the shore an ominous silence prevailed, though now and then it would be broken by the weird, resonant boom of a conch-shell. The night was passed in the greatest anxiety by all on board, every man, musket in hand, keeping a ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... down into the ominous silence of the town with a lighter heart. The sublime faith of the child moved before him like a beacon. To the sick he spoke words of comfort, with the vision of Carmen always before him. At the altar ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... same point to take up their reconnaissance. But now, where clear sky had made a blue back-drop for rugged peaks, was a line of black. And the line, while Danny watched in disbelief, moved like a smoky serpent: its head stretched out and out while from behind it there came the ominous line ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... word, O Women, Friend, makes that sharp terror start Out at thy lips? What ominous cry half-heard Hath leapt ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... from boiled sowans, is ready. It is then poured into as many bickers as there are individuals to partake of it, and presently served to the whole, both old and young. As soon as each despatches his bicker, he jumps out of bed—the elder branches to examine the ominous signs of the day, and the younger to ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... ouer and ouer as my poore selfe in loue: marrie I cannot shew it rime, I haue tried, I can finde out no rime to Ladie but babie, an innocent rime: for scorne, horne, a hard rime: for schoole foole, a babling rime: verie ominous endings, no, I was not borne vnder a riming Plannet, for I cannot wooe in ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... still as though anchored, so that the body was seen to descend slowly alongside until it reached the calcareous, sandy bottom, where it assumed an upright and strangely lifelike position, as though standing upon its feet. An ominous silence reigned among the watching crew, and it was a decided relief to all hands when a northerly wind sprang up, filling the canvas and giving the vessel ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... had quieted down a little in Alexandria, George of Cappadocia resolved to return and see if he could not make a little more money. He was received in an ominous silence, for he was held in abhorrence almost as much by the pagans as by the Christians. A few days later the news reached the city that Constantius was dead and that his nephew Julian had ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... were made to fasten the hold of the pro-slavery party permanently upon the State, and as desperately were these efforts repelled. A certain John Brown, who requited assassination of free-state men by the assassination of slave-state men,—a very ominous appearance,—began to be heard of; men like Professor Silliman, who, during my stay at Yale had spoken at Union meetings in favor of the new compromise measures, even including the fugitive slave law, now spoke publicly in favor of sending rifles to the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the most comfortable one in the settlement, and occupied a prominent site on the hillside about one hundred yards from the fort. It was constructed of heavy timber and presented rather a forbidding appearance with its square corners, its ominous looking portholes, and strongly barred doors and windows. There were three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a magazine room for military supplies, and a large room for general use. The several sleeping rooms were on the second floor, which was ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... drawing a long breath as he eyed these ominous proceedings, "that we had a few of Colt's revolvers, to keep these fellows at a respectable distance: I confess I don't like the notion of coming to such close quarters with them as they ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Wynne and N.C. Marriott, both of whom were sent to "B" Company, where they joined Capt. Griffiths at dinner. They were half way through their meal when, without the slightest warning, the ground heaved, pieces of the roof fell on the table, and they heard the ominous whirr of falling clods, which betokens a mine at ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... we must, alas! submit to our fate. The habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... more enlightening were I to spend hours in telling of wrecked lives, of wrecked homes, of prisons filled with their victims, of the immense loss to states and nations from the loss to sufferers and the loss they inflict. Alcoholism has no sense for frowning, ominous statistics, for it is a disease to be rationally treated, a ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... of conditions mentioned in that ominous card. I was unacquainted with the Bohemian "song and dance" parlance in such extremities, and wondered would letting my secret come out let a dinner come in. Possibly, I may have often been deceived when appealed to, but that experience has often been fruitful ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... home and the family just about to take breakfast. Gray Michael had returned somewhat unexpectedly, with a fine catch, and did not intend sailing again before the evening tide. A somewhat ominous silence greeted the girl, a silence which her father was ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... held their breaths. From the Irish benches not a sound escaped. In most Parliamentary frays—especially when the storm rages—there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed keen and almost ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Justinian (531 A.D.). A remarkable comet was observed in 1106, and in 1456, the year in which the Turks obtained possession of Constantinople and threatened to overrun Europe, a great comet appeared, which was regarded by Christendom with ominous forebodings. The celebrated astronomer Halley was the first to predict the return of a comet. Having become acquainted with Newton's investigations, which showed that the forms of the orbits of comets were either parabolae or extremely ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... The populace were evidently more than ready to second any such attempt; the Sanhedrim and Jewish authorities must have trembled for the result. The hosannas, borne on the breeze from the slope of Olivet, could not fail to sound ominous of coming disaster. So incontrovertible indeed had been the proof of Lazarus' resurrection, that only the most blinded bigotry could refuse to own in that marvellous act the divinity of Jesus. In addition, too, to this last crowning demonstration of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... cried and laughed. "Oh, la la! But no! Still, we must go from here. The police will be here any minute, and if they find you——" She left it unsaid, and the gap was ominous. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable, nameless flutter of falling snow—a sensation rather than a sound, a vague, ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It was the echelons who were to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... See 'Paradise Lost', book XI., where Adam points out to Eve the ominous sign of the Eagle chasing "two Birds of gayest plume," and the gentle Hart and Hind pursued by ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... it seems to me that I can hear, at times like this, when one is alone, the sound of what one of your writers called footsteps amongst the hills, footsteps falling upon wool, muffled yet somehow ominous. There is trouble coming. I know it. I ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would be let fly among the crowd assembled in the square before the palace. The seeming prince accepted the invitation, and with the disguised ladies was conducted to a gorgeous pavilion, open on all sides, to view the ceremony. The ominous bird being loosened from his chain, soared into the air to a great height, then gradually descending, flew round and round the square repeatedly, even with the faces of the spectators. At length it darted into the pavilion, where the lady and her companions were seated, fluttered around her head, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... ominous silence regarding the festival succeeded in Santa Ana. The local paper gave the fullest particulars of the opening of the hotel, but contented itself with saying: "The entertainment concluded with a dance." Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... I am, and it's twenty-three for mine." (Tom paused in suspense at this ominous phrase.) "My registration card is numbered twenty-three, so I'm the only original skiddoo soldier—take it ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... by his mace. It was the Duke of Athens, Constable of France, but none had time to note it, and the fight rolled on over his body. Looser still were the French ranks. Many were turning their horses, for that ominous roar from the rear had shaken their resolution. The little English wedge poured onward, the Prince, Chandos, Audley and Nigel ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... VI. died at Greenwich, but his death was kept a secret until Northumberland's plans could be matured. Four days later Lady Jane Grey arrived in London, and the proclamation of her accession to the throne was received with ominous silence in the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... blow with the staff of his spear; but it was not at the imaginary patriarch of the home herd, but at his own head, which was saved from harm by his helmet, the stroke causing a sharp sound sufficiently loud to make Lupe utter an ominous growl, and the horses where they were ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... nowhere very deep about them. If the points of the horse-shoe had been turned toward the east instead of the west they would not have been habitable and the place would have been known to navigators as the Devil's Reef, the Devil's Horse-shoe or by some other term ominous of shipwrecks. The group of islands now form a cosy though not very safe harbor where every evening in the mackerel season a small fleet of fishing-vessels sail in there ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... vigil was getting on her nerves, and the sight of that threatening figure had set her pulses to throbbing. The rider was on his guard, that was plain; he was armed, too, and probably desperate. The ominous possibilities of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... was no time for that. Another explosion took place inside the building, which Charlie knew must have driven in the sides of more casks and let loose fresh fuel. A terrible roar, followed by ominous cracking of the roof, warned him that there was no time to lose. He looked steadily at the cart for a moment and leaped. His friends held their breath as the pair descended. The hay would not have sufficed to break the fall sufficiently, but happily the cart was an old one. When they came down on ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... kinsman, the orphaned and administered fils de famille, whose father, Alexander Wyckoff, son of our great-aunt and one of the two brothers of cousin Helen, just discernibly flushes for me through the ominous haze that preceded the worst visitation of cholera New York was to know. Alexander, whom, early widowed and a victim of that visitation, I evoke as with something of a premature baldness, of a blackness of short whisker, of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... see how it works." Then Zoega pushed it all over, and it went slapping and dashing down into the steaming shaft. For a little while it whirled about, and surged, and boiled, and tumbled over and over in the depths of the churn with a hollow, swashing noise terribly ominous of what was to come. I peeped over the edge to try if I could detect the first symptoms of the approaching eruption. Zoega walked quietly away about twenty steps, saying he preferred not to be too close. There was a sudden ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Shadrack. He turned his round face upward and gazed at the sky so solemnly that the others laughed. But there was no disputing the fact: the drizzle had commenced. To the south, in the direction of Chattanooga, the clouds had formed a dark, ominous wall, as though nature were raising ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... the second day of June, dawned over the battle-scarred earth—an ominous day for the armies of the Republic—for the sun rose on a new figure in command of the men in grey. Robert E. Lee had taken the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the voice of Sylvia: "You must beware of Douglas, Papa; he is an inveterate flatterer." She laughed as she said it; and of those present it was Aunt Varina alone who caught the ominous note, and saw the bitter curl of her lips as she spoke. Aunt Varina and her niece were the only persons there who knew Douglas van Tuiver well enough to appreciate the irony of the term ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... inopportune an appearance was Laurence Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have "anticipated the labours" of the biographer—"my birthday was ominous to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of sugar from British vessels? In the former case, indeed, the ships were ordered to be released; in the latter case, of which the complaint was made twenty-four hours later, the reply to inquiries was the ominous statement that 'no ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... stopped at Father Letheby's new house, and a vast crowd surged around it. The girls kept at a respectful distance, whilst the men unyoked their horses; but the boys stood near, in the attitude of runners at a tournament, ready to make off the moment the first ominous growl was heard. The adults were less excited, though quite as curious, and I could hear the questionings over the silence of expectation that had fallen ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... have told you I am an Apostle of the great Mormon Church; and that man would be cunning indeed who could shun the vengeance of our Destroying Angels. Now, Hickman Holt, which is it to be? yes or no?" The pause was ominous for ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... America has, however, been brought into undue prominence. It had such an ominous significance in Christian art, and one which chimed so well with the favorite proverb of the early missionaries—"the gods of the heathens are devils"—that wherever they saw a carving or picture of a serpent they ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... beyond that limit where the powers of restraint cease to operate with effect. At the period which our narrative has now reached, and for a considerable time before it, those low rumblings which stunned and frightened the ear of civilized society, like the ominous sounds that precede an earthquake, were now followed by those tremblings and undulations which accompany the shock itself. But before we describe that social condition to which we refer, it is necessary that we should previously ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... glanced at her for an instant, and his face darkened. The girl's ominous words filled him with vague apprehension. Was it possible that the blind man had any suspicion of what was intended? He held his breath, and made another vicious cast far ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... afraid of the little girl. But she ran from the old gobbler, and the big gander who believed he had pre-empted the farm from the Indians. She generally climbed over the fence when she saw old Red, who had an ominous fashion of brandishing her long horns. But she didn't mind ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... wasn't a-tellin' me." Mr. Gibney's tones were ominous; he glared at his friend suspiciously as from the Maggie's cabin issued forth Scraggsy's voice raised ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... that their onset might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came in gusts, swift, spiteful, and icy cold. In the dining-room Mrs. Royall awoke from a light doze and piled fresh logs on the fire. Anne and Laura, whom she had kept ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... and Spud sped over the uneven ground in the direction of the cap. Then both made a plunge forward in true football style. In a heap they landed on the rotted boards, each catching hold of the coveted headwear. Then came an ominous crash, and both boys disappeared ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... listening silence, a faint and very distant sound, barely audible as yet, but of unmistakable character. It was far away in the upper reaches of the building, overhead, remote, a little stealthy. Like the ominous murmur of a muffled drum, it had approach in it. It was coming nearer and nearer. It was significant ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... in the moonlight. They were showing an uncommon daring. Lone hunters had been killed and eaten in the winter by starving wolves, but it was seldom that two men in the spring were followed in such a manner. It became weird, uncanny and ominous. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a part of the world where our ensigns and gauds ought to be spread abroad to the wind, Mabel Dunham!" he said, with an ominous shake of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... next year?" He put the question seemingly to the glowing log, and, as if in ominous foreshadow, it flared brightly and crumbled away ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... silence was ominous; even the gunboats had ceased firing, and their guard had made ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... passed quickly through it. He met no one, and no one molested him; but as he went he had glimpses of pale faces that from behind the casements watched him come and turned to watch him go; and so heavy on his nerves was the pressure of this silent ominous attention, that he blundered at the end of the street. He should have taken the southerly turning; instead he held on, found himself in the Rue Ferronerie, and a moment later was all but in the arms of a band of city guards, who were ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... mysterious or ominous in this plan. It has nothing to do with the pools and conspiracies of Wall Street. No one will be squeezed out except the promoters of paper companies. The simple fact is that Vail is organizing a complete Bell System for the same reason that he built one big comfortable ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... escort had followed the line of battle for nearly a mile to the right of Ransome's battery, and there learned that the division commander had gone in search of the corps commander. It seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior—an ominous circumstance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron rode on for another half-mile, where by good luck he met General Masterson, the division ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the Raven spoke, Perched on his crooked tree As hoarse as hoarse could be. Shun him and fear him, Lest the Bridegroom hear him; Scout him and rout him With his ominous eye about him. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... three birds and got them boiling in the camp kettle, and while they were cooking talked over the outlook which was so flattering that our tongues got loose and we rattled away in strange contrast to the ominous silence of a week ago. While eating our stew of crow and hawk, we could see willows alders and big sage brush around and we had noticed what seemed to be cottonwoods farther down the canon, and green trees on the slope of the mountain. We were sure we were ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... turned his back in so pointed and ominous a manner that Horace judged it better to withdraw without insisting further. "I'm afraid," he said to Mrs. Futvoye, after they had rejoined Sylvia in the drawing-room—"I'm afraid your husband is still a little sore with me ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... with an ominous scream, and Hitty hurried into the house to give him to the servant's charge, while she returned to the sitting-room, where the old man had seated himself in the rocking-chair, and was taking a mental inventory of the goods and chattels with a momentary keenness in his look that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... no time in reporting the incident to the Zara. The Earth men were hustled to the throne room of the palace where the leopard woman sat in conference with her advisers. An ominous silence greeted their entrance. Ugly faces leered at them ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... my question struck me as ominous. To the Milan, of course, where Louis was all the time predominant! The girl might be innocent enough of all wrong-doing or knowledge of wrong-doing, but could one think the same of her uncle? I glanced at him ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blood on her arm and dress, and ran through another door further along, leaving behind her a great whiff of coarse perfume. It was but for an instant that we saw her; yet, even in that instant, a sort of horror came on me again as if she were something monstrous and ominous, though—poor woman!—I have never heard anything against her more than was said at that time against all women that were actresses—all, that is, except Mrs. Betterton. She appeared more dreadful even than in the play, or than when she had ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... number of whom were armed, stood in front of Pegloe's tavern. Glancing in the direction of the court-house, he observed that the square before it held other groups. But what impressed him more was the ominous silence that was everywhere. At his elbow the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... completed and the second will be so, before we even leave the east coast of S. America. And then our voyage may be said really to have commenced. I know not how I shall be able to endure it. The frequency with which I think of all the happy hours I have spent at Shrewsbury and Cambridge is rather ominous—I trust everything to time and fate and will feel my way as I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... There was something ominous and gravely impressive in this interminable line of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a movement, there under the night and under the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... and over the brook on the high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... to a sudden stop, and for a moment there was silence. Then came the sound of a whispered council, and like ghosts the phantom riders dispersed in all directions. Again the desert lay still about him, yet it was an ominous ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mules broke loose and threw their packs down the hill. Poor Isaaco had to collect them all, physick the dying and distressed, and number the living and the lost. At nightfall he slept like a log "under a monkey-bread tree." The following day was darkened by an ominous message from the King of Bambarra. There was evidently trouble brewing ahead. To gain some friendship in the capital, Isaaco decided to bribe. To Sabila, the Chief of the King's slaves, he sent a pair of scissors, a snuff-box, and a looking-glass, and desired to be his friend. And to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... ominous in these facts. Whether the secular press (not all papers are thus unfair) are influenced by partisan hatred of the truth or simply by a reckless regard for whatever is most popular, the facts are equally portentous. And if it be true that such publications are what the people ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... home again happy and light of heart; he dreamed of glory. He gave not another thought to the ominous words which fell on his ear as he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon's shop; he beheld himself the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred francs! It meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... opened his eyes and regained his wits, amidst an ominous silence. The band watched his return to life with evil smiles: they quietly watched his pallid face turn a livid ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... fore-top-mast; and then he remarked the absence of the boat which was carried amidships, and the few men moving about her deck. Ay! he took it all in with that one comprehensive glance, and when he had done, he raised his fore finger quivering with anger, and slowly and unconsciously passed it with an ominous gesture ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... cut off the sharp angle which the Atbara forms at Umdabia, and, avoiding the thick bush, soon approached the Dervish camp. Not a sign of the enemy was seen during the march. The bush by the Atbara appeared deserted. The camp gave no sign of life; an ominous silence prevailed. The squadrons moved forward at a walk, keeping about 1,200 yards away from the enemy's zeriba and almost parallel to it. Presently, as they did so, a large force of cavalry became visible in front. It was difficult to estimate their strength, but they ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... which shone like haloes above our faces. The girls wore pink gowns, which they pulled to their waists as we forded the streams. Mahine had a mouth-organ on which she played. We sang and danced, and the tossing torches stirred the shadows of the black wold, and brought out in shifting glimpses the ominous shapes of the monstrous trees. With all our gaiety, I had only to utter a loud "Aue!" and the natives rushed together for protection against the unseen; not of the physical, but of the dark abode of Po. In this lonely wilderness they thought that tupapaus, the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... last month of that fateful year was further darkened by the most dangerous and ominous event recorded in the United Kingdom since the war began. Over 200,000 coal miners of South Wales deliberately, obstinately and criminally withheld their labour from their own nation, whose existence at that moment was dependent on its bestowal. The coal pits of South Wales remained idle for over ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... men in front made at them at once, while Sher Singh and the others conferred in the background. Neither Gerrard nor Charteris had time to do more than notice this ominous confabulation, for their adversaries gave them plenty of work. They were as agile as cats, and the chance was small indeed of getting in a telling blow. One man went down with a bullet from Gerrard's revolver in his brain, but his place was ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... of yours pained me much because I seemed to have given you the painful trouble in it of describing your state, your weakness. Ah, I knew what that state was, and it was therefore that the slip of paper which came with 'Atherton' seemed to me so ominous! By the way, I shall see 'Atherton' before long, I dare say. The 'German Library' in our street is to have a 'box of new books' almost directly, and in it surely must be 'Atherton,' and you shall hear my thoughts of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... we had nearly traversed the entire patch of reeds that the lion was found. It evidently lay silently ahead of us until we were almost upon it. Then, almost beneath my feet, came the angry and ominous growl, and my Somali gunbearer leaped in terror, falling as he did so. I expected to see a long, lean flash of yellow body and to experience the sensation of being mauled by a lion. All was breathlessly ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... all night, but ceased on the following evening without having committed further damage, and from that time till the morning of the tenth we had tolerably fine weather. It then fell a stark calm, but there was an ominous cold-grey silky look in the sky which I did not like. The captain was constantly on deck, anxiously scanning the horizon, and Jonathan Flood, our old master, kept his weather-eye open, as ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... on all fours, eating painted grass, with a huge gold crown on his head, which he bobs for a bite every other bar. In the right-hand corner is a sort of cavern, the abode of some supernatural and mysterious being of the fiend or vampire school, who gives an occasional fitful start, and turns an ominous-looking green glass-eye out upon the spectators. All these are in the background. In the front of the stage stands Napoleon, wearing a long sword and cocked hat, and the conventional gray smalls—his hand ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... Mortimer's Tower bore on its front the scutcheon of the Earl of March, whose daring ambition overthrew the throne of Edward II., and aspired to share his power with the "She-wolf of France," to whom the unhappy monarch was wedded. The gate, which opened under this ominous memorial, was guarded by many warders in rich liveries; but they offered no opposition to the entrance of the Countess and her guide, who, having passed by license of the principal porter at the Gallery-tower, were not, it may be supposed, liable ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... an authority in his bearing that gained him unopposed entrance. In the hall, nauseating with the ominous odor of antiseptics, he was met by one of ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... army,—such is the inheritance transmitted to Hooker, by the cursed Administration procrastinations. In all military history there is seldom, if ever, a record of a commander receiving an army under such ominous circumstances. If Hooker succeeds, then his genius will astonish even his ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... dreary black mountain, in a rambling old inn which looks like a ci-devant hospital or dismantled barracks, in a bed-room which resembles one of the wards of a poor-house, one little corner lighted by my lamp, and the other three parts all lost in black ominous darkness; while a tempest rages without as if it would break in the rattling casements, and burst the roof over our heads; and yet, insensible that I am! I can calmly take up my pen to amuse myself by scribbling, since sleep is impossible. I can look round my ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... to say, sir," said Bones, "that during the period I have had the honour to serve under your command I have settled possibly more palavers of a distressingly ominous character than the average Commissioner is called upon to settle in the course of ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... went on: for should the wick of one of the Christmas candles fall before the supper is ended, the person toward whom it points in falling will pass from earth before the Christmas feast is set again. But Mise Fougueiroun, to guard against this ominous catastrophe, had played a trick on Fate by providing wax candles with wicks so fine that they wasted away imperceptibly in ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier |
