"Tragedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day came a pause in the drama (Adele declared that it was really a tragedy caused by one life trying to bend another to its will) until the day when the new issue of the Monthly arrived in the noon mail. As Robbie Belle was still in the infirmary of course, the rest of the ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... with the others—a thin, sallow child, heavy-eyed and silent. He had recovered somewhat from the shock of the tragedy he had witnessed, and strove to do what was asked of him, but when spoken to, seemed confused and slow of comprehension; and the tears were ever starting or smeared over his freckled face ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... who wrote a Tragedy for Mrs. Siddons (which she declined), proposed to her that she should read—'But screw your Courage to the sticking place,' with the appropriate action of using the Dagger. I think Mrs. Siddons good-naturedly admits there may be ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the better part of his life he lived in Cambridge, where he was surrounded by a rare circle of friends, and whither increasing numbers came from near or far to pay the tribute of gratitude to one who had made life more beautiful by his singing. Once only the serenity was broken by a tragedy, the death of the poet's wife, who was fatally burned before his eyes,—a tragedy which occasioned his translation of Dante's Divina Commedia (by which work he strove to keep his sorrow from overwhelming him) ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... ignorant of the principles of his art. Garrick, Madam; was no declaimer; there was not one of his own scene-shifters who could not have spoken To be, or not to be, better than he did; yet he was the only actor I ever saw, whom I could call a master both in tragedy and comedy; though I liked him best in comedy. A true conception of character, and natural expression of it, were his distinguished excellencies." Having expatiated, with his usual force and eloquence, on Mr. Garrick's extraordinary eminence as an ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... sat around after supper and exchanged confidences the boys learned of the tragedy that had taken place in the life of Aaron Dennison. It fully explained the mystery hovering over his ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... continued all through orthodox materia medica. Each drug breeds new disease symptoms which are in their turn cured (?) by other poisons, until the insane asylum or merciful death rings down the curtain on the tragedy ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up Jill with the first faint "crow's feet" showing—when WE tumble down the hill, and OUR pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has happened. Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of nature. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill—what they were doing on the hill we will not inquire—have slipped over a stone, placed there surely by the evil powers of the universe. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... indeed, without waiting until the drumming heels were still; the men callously put their shovels under the body, slid it over the lip of the dump and left it to be covered by the tumbling cataract of earth pouring from the tip-carts whose orderly procession had scarcely been interrupted by the tragedy. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... twenty democratic bayonets cut into shreds his quivering body. Oh, Grabguy! thou wilt one day be made to atone for this thy guilt. Justice to thy slave had saved the city its foreboding of horror, and us the recital of a bloody tragedy we would spare the feelings of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the order of time must be preserved. In Shakespeare's days, or even in Scott's, it might have been possible to bring Henry III. and his mignons to due punishment within the limits of a tale beginning with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; but in 1868 the broad outlines of tragedy must be given up to keep within the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the countless great ones of the world who had lived and died in Venice, and loved it well; of Byron, who slept in Marino Faliero's dreadful cell before he wrote his tragedy; of Browning, whose funeral had passed in solemn state of gondolas down the Grand Canal; of Wagner, who found inspiration in this sea and sky, and died looking upon them from his window in the Palazzo Vendramin. But through ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with Burbage the headline of the list of actors in Ben Jonson's tragedy Sejanus. That he thoroughly understood the technique of his art and was interested in it, is evident from Hamlet's advice to the players. Throughout his life in London, Shakespeare was a member of the company usually known as the Lord ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the music, the tragedy or comedy, the sadness or gayety of it each time I perform it, but not, as a rule, to the extent of being entirely worn out with emotion. It depends, however, on the occasion. If you are singing in a foreign language, which the audience does not understand, you make every effort to 'put it ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... DELIRIUM TREMENS. Becke and the three native sailors ran the vessel into a little uninhabited atoll, and for a week had to keep the captain tied up to prevent his killing himself. They got him right at last, and stood to the westward. On their voyage they were witnesses of a tragedy (in this instance fortunately not complete), on which the pitiless sun of the Pacific has looked down very often. They fell in with a big Marshall Island sailing canoe that had been blown out of sight of land, and had drifted six ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Archbishop, however, clasped his hands, and, with the blood streaming down his face, fervently exclaimed, "To God, to St. Mary, to the holy patrons of this Church, and to St. Denis I commend my soul and the Church's cause." He was then struck down by a second blow, and the third completed the tragedy; whereupon one of the murderers, putting his foot on the dead prelate's neck, cried, "Thus dies a traitor!" In 1173 the Archbishop was canonised, and his festival was appointed for the day of his martyrdom; and for three centuries after his death the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... driven somehow, by some one or something, not only to marry, but want to marry, Anglesea to save herself from some evil! Oh! I feel it even in my bones! And if she is driven quite into the marriage, I tell you there will be some awful tragedy like that of the Bride of Lammermoor! Anglesea will be found in the morning with his wizen slit—I mean with his throat cut—and Odalite will be sitting in the ashes gibbering and mopping and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... of one individual I have endeavored to suggest what the bombardment of a modern city was like—what you might expect if an invading army came to-morrow to New York or Chicago or San Francisco. I have only coasted along the edges of Belgium's tragedy, and the rest of the story, of which we were a part for the next two days—the flight of those hundreds of thousands of homeless people—is something that can scarcely be told—you must follow it out in imagination into its countless ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The generosity of his friends gave the poet ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... fortunate. Murtha had had no family. There had been plenty of scandal about him, but as far as I knew there was no one except his old cronies in the organization to be shocked by his loss, no living tragedy left in the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... way to where three men were fishing, a mile from the scene of the tragedy, and as he came up to them began to whine and cry, and endeavored, by bounding into the woods and returning again and again, to induce them ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this legacy to the hangman, [Gives him his gown.] and do it instantly. I confess, his majesty hath been ever good to me; and my offence to his highness makes me of a state pleader a stage player (though I am old, and have a bad voice), to act this last scene of my tragedy. I'll send him (for my trespass) a reverend head, somewhat bald; for it is not requisite any head should stand covered to so high majesty: if that content him not, because I think my body will then do me small pleasure, let him but ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... sleeve an ant and threw it towards them. A dart, a gurgle, a gulp—the leader had leaped half his length from the water, and the ant was forever gone. The ripples receded and finally disappeared, and the last scene in this tragedy of ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... this, Horace, when grouping the poets according to their styles and departments,[4] places Vergil in a class apart. He mentions first a turgid epic poet for whom he has no regard. Then there are Varius and Pollio, in epic and tragedy respectively, of whose forceful directness he does approve. In comedy, his friend, Fundanius, represents a homely plainness which he commends, while Vergil stands for gentleness ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... The Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, and the Teuton have filled these three words with a certain vague philosophy of themselves, a hazy composite photograph of themselves. No one writer or painter, no one incident, no one tragedy, no one day or year of history has done this. To us, love is the coldest, cleanest, as it is perhaps the most loyal of the three. L'amour sounds to us seductive, enticing, often indeed little more than lust embroidered to make ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of meeting with such an actress as Mrs. West in such a place. Her voice is as sweet as Mrs. Merry's (the actress, not the other Mrs. Merry), her manners superior. In comedy she is unequalled. They say she excites equally in tragedy. I have no doubt but she is good at every thing. I could make you laugh at a ridiculous embarrassment, but I won't; nay, I dare not, for who knows but you may first see this in the newspaper. Madam, this is Colonel B., V.P.U.S., all out loud. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... supreme interest to Schliemann still survives, however, though in a wider and more important form than that in which he conceived of it. It is no longer a question of whether the graves which he found were actually those of Agamemnon and his fellow-victims in the dark tragedy of Mycenae, but of whether the people and the civilization whose remains have been brought to light are, or are not, the people and the civilization from which the Homeric bards drew the whole setting of their poems. Were the Mycenaeans the Greeks ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... water with meritorious speed. With him he was bringing the papers that might settle the Cypriani's mission, but Varney, for the moment, hardly gave him a thought. His own affairs were blotted from his mind just then by the tragedy of the little waif before him, luckless victim of another's sin, small flotsam which barely weathered the winters when odd-jobbing was scarce, and only ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... pronounce that the Tragedy of Othello, Plato's records of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's Life of George Herbert, were in his opinion the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... The first tragedy in my life was the death of a pet pigeon. I grieved for days over its disappearance; but one Sunday morning the secret slipped out. Around that neighbourhood there was a custom among the very poor of exchanging samples of their Sunday broth. Three or four samples came to our cottage every Sunday ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... hurry in preparation. If this theory be true—and Mr. Brinsley Nicholson, his modern commentator, has adduced excellent reasons for accepting it[2]—there can be but one explanation, the St. Oses affair. That tragedy, occurring within a short distance of his own home, had no doubt so outraged his sense of justice, that the work which he had perhaps long been contemplating he now set himself to complete as soon as possible.[3] Even he who runs may read in Scot's strong sentences that he was ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... consequences, could have been taken among the inhabitants, an overwhelming majority would have voted for reunion with France. But having once been the battleground of the two nations and living in permanent dread of a repetition of the tragedy, the leaders of political thought in Alsace and Lorraine favoured a less drastic solution. They knew that Germany would not relinquish her hold nor France renounce her aspirations without another armed struggle; but they believed that the grant ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... in a way, the introduction to this story. It is to the drama that follows that the premise is to a syllogism, what the prologue is to a classical tragedy. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... animosity with which they regarded us when we awoke this evening and helped ourselves to our share of the provisions? There has been no hint of violence thus far; but, mark my words, Bowen, unless we are rescued within the next forty-eight hours this boat will become the scene of a ghastly tragedy. Ah! ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... policeman is silent and awed by what he feels to be a scene from the human tragedy, though he may not be able to describe it to himself by any more suitable phrase than 'a ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... have bought armour would have attracted attention, so they made it with their own hands. Old moth-eaten surcoats, bits of helmets, three flutes, a writing-box that must have been any age at the time of the tragedy, and is now tumbling to pieces; tattered trousers of what once was rich silk brocade, now all unravelled and befringed; scraps of leather, part of an old gauntlet, crests and badges, bits of sword handles, spear-heads and dirks, the latter all red with rust, but with certain patches ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... but a very pretty lady with a well-developed form, endowed with little mind, but much coquetry, and who, so far from being a saint, has a very human heart, and has had many an adventure. If M. Lange is willing to write in this strain, I will pardon him.[20] Tragedy must be sometimes transformed into a farce, that the stupid people may laugh at what they were originally inclined to weep for. Ah, that Queen of Prussia was bent upon waging war against me! She shall have it. We will wage war against each other; let ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the picture in the Cathedral, until superseded by Rubens' masterpiece on the same subject. Still Quintin Matsys version remains, and is in some respects an unsurpassed picture. There is a traditional grouping of this Divine tragedy, and Quintin Matsys has followed the tradition. The body of the Lord is supported by two venerable old men—Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus—while the holy women anoint the wounds of the Saviour; the Virgin ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Then the tragedy was repeated, and six hundred more were added to the death toll, as the great tower ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... trembling lips and arms filled with linen; ambulances passing the corner at a walk, surrounded by men who had staggered after them because there was no room left inside; and following always the same curious, pallid throng, fresh upon the scent of some new tragedy. Presently the ambulances gave out, and yet the wounded came—some walking, and moaning as they walked, some borne on litters by devoted servants, some drawn in market wagons pressed into use. The great warehouses and the churches were thrown open to give them shelter, but still they came ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Providence had otherwise determined. He had determined that an appalling tragedy should be enacted that night, within plain sight of the President's house and the capitol of the Union, which should be an evidence wherever it should be known, of the unconquerable love of liberty the heart may inherit; ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... little backwards and forwards in the darkness. He felt the hot stream on his hands, then the animal fell without a sound, her horns striking against the wall. He stood over her for a moment and was conscious that his hands were wet. Then he remembered with a shudder that the whole tragedy of the night had been one of rains and pools and water and clinging damp things, of puddles and sweats and blood. Even now the knife he held in his fingers was dripping. He let it fall. It fell with a queer thud, sounding of flesh, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... about yourself so much, my dear, and let us get to the point. Now this afternoon I dropped in to see Mrs Weston and as she was telling me about the tragedy, she said by accident (just as I called you Georgie just now by accident) 'And I don't know what Jacob will do without Atkinson.' Now is or is not Colonel Boucher's name Jacob? There you are then! That's one side of the question. She called him Jacob by accident and so she'll call him Jacob ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... stood gaunt and grim against the smiling morning. Its shuttered windows giving an expression of blindness or the repellant mask of death. A dead house, that was what it was. Its doors and windows closed on the tragedy that had been enacted within its massive stone walls. It seemed more like a fortress than a house where warm human faces had once looked forth, and where laughter and pleasant words had once sounded out. To pass it had always stirred a sense of mystery and weirdness. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... doggerel, of course, but it has a certain cleverness as a satire on the music-hall song of the day, and the Gordons carried it gaily with them to their battlefields, blending it in that odd mixture of humor and tragedy that makes up the soldier's life. The bravest, it is truly said, are always the happiest, and of the happy warriors who have fallen in this campaign one must be remembered here in this little book of British heroism. ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... packed up his few belongings mechanically, his thoughts far away. He was still bewildered by the introduction of tragedy into his cheerful commonplace existence. What fun they had had together, he and Tuppence! And now—oh, he couldn't believe it—it couldn't be true! TUPPENCE—DEAD! Little Tuppence, brimming over with life! It was a dream, a horrible ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the Pheraean who enjoyed the government of Thessaly only ten months, that he had been a tragedy-king, but the Caesars' house in Rome, the Palatium, received in a shorter space of time no less than four emperors, passing, as it were, across the stage, and one making ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... because I've said that there's war between the Aetoliains and the Eleans. There (pointing), at a distance, beyond the scenes, the battles will be fought. For this were almost impossible for a Comic establishment[13], that we should at a moment attempt to be acting Tragedy. If, therefore, any one is looking for a battle, let him commence the quarrel; if he shall find an adversary more powerful, I'll cause him to be the spectator of a battle that isn't pleasant to him, so that hereafter he shall hate to be a spectator of them all. I now ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... the War has modified our estimate of the value of life; but it is a bad thing for the legitimate drama. And in the case of Fedora the bloody regime of LENIN has so paled our memory of the terrors of Nihilism that SARDOU'S play seems almost further away from us than the tragedy of Agamemnon. In our callous incapacity to be thrilled by the ancient horrors of forty years ago we fall back on the satisfaction to be got out of the author's dexterity in the mechanics of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... the modest shoulders of General George Gordon Meade fell the heavy responsibility of saving the riches of the Middle States and the cause of the Union, for all felt that a Confederate victory in the heart of the North would bring the tragedy to a close. Lee was so bold and confident that he was hardly more cautious in the disposition of his troops than he had been when fighting on his own soil. Meade secured a strong position on the hills about the since famous ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... sat forward on the edge of his chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable excitement. This was drama, and very good drama, too, and he suspected that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... dying, she takes away the pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she bursts out: "Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... I have suffered to some extent from the world. If people have pitied they have had the grace at least not to let me see. The tragedy has been that you should have been sacrificed to it, your youth shadowed. But what could I do? I felt that you must know, must see, and I felt, too, that the salvation of the father might be accomplished ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... got home from the inquest that I found old Isaac's basket waiting. I am not a crying woman, but I could hardly see my mother's picture for tears.—Well, after all, that is not the Brice story. I am not writing the sordid tragedy of ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... replied Don Quixote, "if you will not be a spectator of what you think will prove a tragedy, spur your flea-bitten, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... short of doing justice to the patriotic services of that superb organization. The narrative contained in the following pages is a story of the personal recollections of one of the troopers who rode with Custer, and played a part—small it is true, but still a part—in the tragedy of the civil war. As such it is modestly put forth, with the hope that it may prove to be "an interesting story" to those who read it. The author also trusts that it may contribute something, albeit but a little, toward giving ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... accusation in your own words. Hippolytus says in one passage in your tragedy of that name: 'O Zeus, why, in the name of heaven, didst thou place in the light of the sun that specious evil to men—women? For if thou didst will to propagate the race of mortals, there was no necessity ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... though less of a nincompoop than Waverley, is not very much; Lucy is a less lively ange de candeur than Rose, and nothing else; and Julia's genteel-comedy missishness does not do much more than pair off with Flora's tragedy-queen air. 'Mannering, Guy, a Colonel returned from the Indies,' is, perhaps, also too fair a description of the player of the title-part.[23] But we trouble ourselves very little about these persons. As for characters, the author opens fire on us almost at the very ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of all. The conviction of one man is intensified in proportion as he finds others sharing his belief—and feeling. Antony does not stop with telling the Roman populace that Caesar fell—he makes the tragedy universal: ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... tragedy, the story of a boy in the south of France who lets love become his whole life, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... of a fortnight the frightful crime committed in the Widow Chupin's drinking-den, the triple murder which had made all Paris shudder, which had furnished the material for so many newspaper articles, and the topic for such indignant comments, was completely forgotten. Indeed, had the tragedy at the Poivriere occurred in the times of Charlemagne, it could not have passed more thoroughly out of people's minds. It was remembered only in three places, at the Depot, at the Prefecture de Police, and at the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... understand that we cannot fight such a beastly enemy in any other way than by killing him? Do you so thoroughly object to fighting that you would see a free world ground under the heel of the despotic Kaiser sooner than help kill his soldiers and thus prevent such a world-wide tragedy? Are you men, or are you dish-rags? Are your consciences so important that you would put the world in cruel bondage rather than violate your own little personal ideas of what is moral? Are you men so sure you're right that you'd dodge a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... purse,— That is to say, lodged nothing there,— By self-suspension in the air Concluded his accounts to square, Since, should he not, he understood, From various tokens, famine would— A death for which no mortal wight Had ever any appetite. A ruin, crown'd with ivy green, Was of his tragedy the scene. His hangman's noose he duly tied, And then to drive a nail he tried;— But by his blows the wall gave way, Now tremulous and old, Disclosing to the light of day A sum of hidden gold. He clutch'd it up, and left Despair ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... and red. The other men dropped off from time to time as we came to the several roads that led to their homes and at last I was riding alone. I was dead tired and after I was left by my companions sat loungingly on my horse. My mind ran on the last canvass and the strange tragedy that had ended it, with its train of consequences. I was not aware when my horse turned off from the main road into the by-lane that led through the Halloway place to my own home. My horse was the same I had ridden that night. I awaked ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... indiscretion, which indiscretion so worried her that she dared not even look at Helm that evening when he came for his mail. She was a grave, gentle little thing—a child still whose childhood had been a tragedy and whose womanhood promised only that shadow of happiness called contentment which comes from a blameless life and a nature which accepts sorrow ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... conversation. Mother could not help thinking he was influenced by Temperance's fortune. She was worth two thousand dollars, at least. The care of her wood-lot, the cutting, selling, or burning the wood on it, would be a supreme happiness to Abram, who loved property next to the kingdom of heaven. The tragedy of the old man's life was the loss of his only son, who had been killed by a whale a year since. The Adamant, the ship he sailed in, had not returned, and it was a consoling hope with Abram that his ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... mine went through the other day and no one knew; he lived on brown bread and water for ever so long, but stuck to his evening clothes, and now he sits in the seats of the mighty. What "a Variorem" it all is—tragedy and comedy written in the lines of faces and the cut of clothes. But I confess; what interests me in London more than types or individuals, are the street scenes and figures seen collectively. What pictures ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... never written it, that the magazine had faked it very clumsily, or that Martin Eden was emulating the elder Dumas and at the height of success was hiring his writing done for him. But when he explained that the tragedy was an early effort of his literary childhood, and that the magazine had refused to be happy unless it got it, a great laugh went up at the magazine's expense and a change in the editorship followed. The tragedy was never brought out in book-form, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... disagreeable, the reader may suppose that T—was really very sorry, and behaved generously to the family of the old man. What he must not suppose is that T—was ever able to imagine why the old man had smiled the smile which led to the outrage and the tragedy. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... fini ses jours en Greve. She holds out her children, which are called les enfans de la Reine exclusivement, as beggars in the streets do theirs, to move compassion. Behold, how low they have reduced a Queen! But as yet she is not ripe for tragedy, so John St. John may employ his muse upon other subjects for a time. To speak the truth, all these representations of the miseries of the French nation do not seem to me (very decent) proper subjects for our evening spectacles, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... to me save as she was the wife of my friend, during whose enforced absence I was bound to look after her, to some extent. It was not my fault that poor Mrs. Murray was a fool. But such are the trumpery seeds from which tragedies grow. Not that ours was a tragedy, exactly: Ethel married her English admirer, and I became a somewhat distinguished artist, that is all. I wonder whether she has been happy! Likely enough; she was born to be wealthy; Englishmen make good husbands sometimes, and her London life ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... at opposite sides of the table to study. After a few minutes, Clint whose thoughts still dwelt on Penny's tragedy, asked: "What made you think it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the human brain, began in the sixth century B.C. It was born of the dithyramb. The dithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From this chorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and to which the ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... upwards into a field on a much lower level. Anyone unfamiliar with bullock-cart accidents would expect much more disastrous results from such a mishap than was probably actually the case; but I saw the tragedy when we were already far ahead, and our driver of course never saw it at all. Consternation was excited in the traffic ahead of us by the hoot of the car. Drivers, who had already experienced the effect of a motor-car on ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... which I insisted that the wretched man be minutely circumstantial. Our talk touching upon this point was much too painful for me to reproduce here in its entirety; but after I had almost literally dragged from him every minute detail of the actual tragedy, I felt justified in ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... once written of the tragedy of these people, his poet's imagination tracing the descent of the finer specimens from ancient kings whose dust was mixed with the sands of the desert; and his had been one of the most impassioned voices lifted in the cause of emancipation. For these ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... made, although in a few cases a single expedition accounted for two, and in one or two instances for three landings. The experiences run through the entire gamut of human emotions, from absurdity to tragedy. The former is illustrated by the case of the Dauntless when she was held up by a vessel of the United States navy, and boarded by one of the officers of the ship. He examined the tug from stem to stern, sat on boxes of ammunition which seemed to him to be boxes of ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... have been called, but for the fact that the title has been used already, A Comedy of Age. For this is what it is—only perhaps less a comedy than a tragedy. Agnes Tempest was called the Safety Candle, for the ingenious reason that, though attractive, she burnt nobody's wings. Returning as a middle-aging widow, after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons, Captain Brangwyn, a young man, and a girl-mother ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... mistress's favorite argued the question with an earnestness that attracted my attention. Though past sixty years of age, she was straight as an arrow, and her walk resembled that of a tragedy queen. In her whole features she was unlike those around her, except in her complexion, which was black as ink. There was a clear, silvery tone to her voice, such as I have rarely observed in persons of her race. In pressing her claim, she grew wonderfully eloquent, and would have elicited ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... evening a commissioned officer of the police, who had made the journey from headquarters at Regina and spent an hour or two examining the scene of the supposititious tragedy, sat with Curtis in a very hot private room of the hotel at Sebastian. Its raw board walls gave out a resinous smell; the opening in the window was filled with mosquito-netting, so that little air crept in. On the table lay a carefully made diagram; a boot, and ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... founding of some annual mass for my soul, not at your expense, but that you may make the arrangements, as you will be required when you learn my wishes through my poor and faithful servants, who are about to witness my last tragedy. God prosper you, your wife, children, brothers and cousins, and above all our chief, my good brother and cousin, and all his. The blessing of God and that which I shall give to my children be on yours, whom I do not commend less to God than my own son, unfortunate and ill-treated ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... flung them out eagerly, almost triumphantly. Even Mr. Bolitho felt a shiver pass through his body as Paul spoke. His speech seemed to contain a kind of prophecy. There was something ominous about it. It seemed to tell of dark days to come, of tragedy—why, he could not understand, but ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Teddie! I believe it's the tragedy of her life that she can't live altogether in the open air. She adores ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... hysterically and turned again to his machine. His whole attention was now fastened upon it, and with the true inventor's ecstasy he forgot Bauer, forgot his mother, forgot that he was at the center of a great moral tragedy for his own soul, forgot there was a God, and a judgment day and any such things as conscience ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... his great strength enabled him to ascend the stairway notwithstanding the mortal character of the wound, and he did not fall till he reached the corridor on the second floor. He died about half an hour later. The tragedy cast a deep gloom over all who knew the men, for they both had many warm personal friends; and affairs at Louisville had hardly recovered as yet from the confused and discouraging condition which preceded the arrival of General Buell's army. General Buell reported ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... first individual tragedy was enacted before every eye. With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The nigger was at his heels—he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing shriek, the madman was overboard at a ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... guard, ready to massacre the gentlemen of the King of Navarre's suite, and he was therefore unmolested by any claimant of the plunders of the apparent corpse he bore on his shoulders. The citizens of Paris who had been engaged in their share of the murders for more than an hour before the tragedy began in the Louvre, frequently beset him on his way to the quay, and but for the timely aid of his English comrades, he would hardly have ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and finger-joints, they dragged him about at the end of a rope hitched to a team of stout horses, they sprinkled him from head to foot with acids and seething oil, but Damiens never uttered a sound till his dying groan announced the conclusion of the tragedy." ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Comedy and tragedy were alike interesting to him. Just as he lost no detail of the old man's conduct when his boy disappeared, so he listened and laughed when Martin Banks recalled to a group how Old Man Newton had fallen under the suspicion of bootlegging and how the town had seethed with the downfall ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... verses, from a sonnet to the beautiful ears of a pretty cousin to the commencement of the tragedy of Panthea and Abradatus, were written at that time; but I owe The Poem of the World special gratitude, for it kept me from many a folly, and often held me for weeks at my desk during the evening hours which many of my comrades spent in the tavern. Besides, it attracted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to see Miss Joanna Baillie at Hampstead, and found her "a little, quiet woman, a deeply-seated earnestness about her that bespoke the higher impulses within; no one would have thought her little person contained the elements of a tragedy." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... watching their proceedings from the loft, witnessed the fiendish tragedy, and uttered an involuntary shriek of horror, which disclosed her hiding-place to the barbarians, and they instantly vaulted up the ladder, overpowered and tied her; then dragging her rudely down, they placed her, with the two elder children, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... "Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable, without ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... only brushed away the tears that rolled slowly down the pinched cheeks. Sometimes the slight body shook with sobs that the boy tried manfully to suppress; but when one is chilled, and tired and hungry, and in the shadow of a Great Tragedy, the emotions ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... itself. They were assisted in this enterprise by a revival of the patriotic impulse throughout the country and a consequent stimulus to the revolt. To discover the cause it is necessary to look to the Eastern Soudan, where the next tragedy, after the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... hour, the Faubourg was still shuddering at the tragedy which had just stained the Aire Saint-Mittre with blood. The return of the troops, after the carnage on the Nores plain, had been marked by the most cruel reprisals. Men were beaten to death behind bits of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Souls Tryals and Triumph: a Dramatick Poem. With Divers Meditations intermixt upon several Subjects. Set forth to help and encourage those that are seeking a Heavenly Country. By the Author of Youth's Tragedy. ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... town, quietly asleep in its plain, should be shattered and ruined; that so many hopes and ambitions can be blasted in so few hours; that young bodies can be crushed, in a fraction of a second, to masses of lifeless, bleeding pulp! The glorious tragedy of Ypres will never be written, for so many who could have spoken are dead, and so many who live will never speak—you can but guess their stories from the dull pain in their eyes, and from the lips that they close tightly to ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... were unable to get out of the ruins or to make themselves heard. The village of A—— gained a romantic reputation after that, and it was curious to realize that we had been living there for days while this silent tragedy ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... remember how her soul was fired with a righteous indignation when upwards of thirty innocent persons, most of them colored people, were thrown into prison at Philadelphia, upon a charge of treason, for their alleged participation in the tragedy at Christiana. Day after day did she visit the prisoners in their cells, to minister to their wants, and cheer them in their sorrow; and during the progress of Hanway's trial, her constant presence in the court-room, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a broken column in the cemetery at Montmartre states that Madame de Sommervieux died at the age of twenty-seven. In the simple words of this epitaph one of the timid creature's friends can read the last scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November, the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this youthful monument without wondering whether it does not need a stronger woman than Augustine to endure the violent embrace ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... literature to what may be called the inversion of the natural attitudes of the city child. His attention, his responses, even his images become fixed by the stimuli of the city streets.[134] To those interested in child welfare and human values this is the supreme tragedy of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... could call Mother, of some man—his father—of whom he had striven to be worthy, had dissolved into a specter with a shriveled face and shaggy hair, into a woman whom he had left in the cemetery to die. Although he was secure in the thought that he would not be connected with the tragedy, he shuddered every time he thought of her and of the coming spring, when the body would be discovered. He did not repent the crime he had committed; but the fear that the secret of his birth would be brought to life tortured him ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... for public office. All the sympathies of the Democratic party had been his antipathies, all their hates his loves, and many of their leaders spoke of him publicly with contempt. Indeed, his campaign would have been a farce had not his untimely death made it a tragedy. Ridicule killed him politically, and his political failure was the immediate cause ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have: appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... out warnings, and kept a close eye on the different lodges of the Algonquins. But nothing happened till weeks later, when the tragedy on the Rapidan fell on us ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... strange and squalid tragedy. Noxious weeds grew in the shadow of the Oriental despotism of the Russian Court, and for years the Government had been at the mercy of a religious impostor and libertine called Rasputin. The trouble, remarked a Russian General, was not that Rasputin was a wizard, but that the Court laboured ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... little interludes, and farces that were acted at the Italian Comedy; but the son commenced at the age of sixteen by a serious work of time,—a tragedy. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned, I know his automatic's ready waiting to his hand. I know a tragedy is near. I dread, I have no peace . . . Oh, don't you think I ought to go and call upon the police? Look there . . . he's rising up . . . my God! He leaps from out his place . . . Yon millionaire from Argentine . . . the two are face to face . . . A shot! A ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... well-remembered epoch, it seemed to me that I ought not to imitate those foreigners who in their pictures barely show in the horizon the men who dominate their history. I placed ours in the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy, wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... that is, I thought I knew your high feelings of public duty—I knew the opinions in which you had been bred up; and I said, I will not, even for this, cast him off—he opposes his King because he is loyal to his country. You endeavoured to avert the great and concluding tragedy of the 30th of January; and it confirmed me in my opinion, that Markham Everard might be misled, but could not ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... comedies, those on the tragedies, and those on the history plays—is arbitrary and mostly a matter of convenience. Some division was necessary, and it seemed advantageous to present introductions which could use Johnson's reaction to comedy, tragedy, and history plays—and Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories—as a point of departure. Were the notes reprinted in the order of appearance of the plays one would find Macbeth, coming after The Winter's Tale (the last of the comedies), introducing the history ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... of urban dust trucks bangs and clatters behind it, en route to that sequestered dumping ground where rubbish is burnt to some industrial end. But that is a lapse into the merely just possible, and at most a local tragedy. Almost certainly the existing lines of railway will develop and differentiate, some in one direction and some in another, according to the nature of the pressure upon them. Almost all will probably be still in existence and in divers ways busy, spite of the swarming new highways I have ventured ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... little they teach in schools, especially drawing, and that is useful in scientific pursuits, I was allowed to choose my own books, and attend lectures. One blessed day I sat and listened to Agassiz—ah! No tragedy well played, nor opera sung, ever moved a heart so deeply as he moved mine, that great and earnest man, whose enthusiasm for nature was as fresh as my own, and his knowledge a thousand times larger. Talk of heaven opening to the Christian pilgrim as he passes Jordan! ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... The fable soars far beyond the utmost flights of our poor conjectures, of our limited comprehension. We know that at the end there are—one case of poisoning, one ditto of stabbing with intent, &c., and one ditto of sudden death. Hence we conclude that the play is a tragedy; but one which "cannot be intended for an acting play" (preliminary preface, p.1,)—of course as a tragedy; yet so universal is the author's genius, that an adaptation of the Hungarian Daughter, as a broad comedy, has been produced at the "Dramatic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... to get news of this to the paper," Larry asked himself. He was beginning to feel quite worried, for he realized a great tragedy might happen at any moment, and he knew the Leader must have an account of it early the next morning, for it was an afternoon paper. The managing editor would probably order ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... e'en in tragedy, Who lives that never knew The honey of the Attic Bee Was gather'd from thy dew? He of the tragic muse, Whose praises bards rehearse: What power but thine could e'er diffuse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... Its history resembles the history of other Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of value on account of its temples and statues, but on account of its men and women. And though the "Main street" of Metropolisville ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... blood. It had penetrated to every part of his body. A few minutes ago, as he walked along the dark street, he had before him a future of unnumbered years. And now he lies in the gutter. Can you imagine a greater tragedy?" ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... of despairing rage Suffering Creek was unable to even surmise at the identity of the authors of the outrage. Then Wild Bill, the gambler, demanded an accounting for every man of the camp on the day of the tragedy. In a very short time this was done, and the process turned attention upon Lord James. Where was he? The question remained unanswered. Suspicions grew into swift conviction. Men asked each other who he was, and whence he came. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... so far from perceiving the usefulness or necessity of books, that if I had not dropped all pretensions to learning, I should have lost Mr. Trip, whom I once frighted into another box, by retailing some of Dryden's remarks upon a tragedy; for Mr. Trip declares, that he hates nothing like hard words, and I am sure, there is not a better partner to be found; his very walk is a dance. I have talked once or twice among ladies about principles and ideas, but they put their fans before their faces, and told me I was ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... passed in reading the works of the old English dramatists, and in witnessing the performances of favorite actors. He once had hopes of being a successful dramatist himself, and to that end devoted many of his spare hours and odd moments to the composition of a tragedy. ("John Woodvil,") which John Kemble, "the stately manager of Drury Lane," refused to bring out. But not wholly discouraged by the ill success of his tragedy, he tried his hand at a farce, and produced "Mr. H.," which, to the author's exceeding great delight, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire. We were curious to know if that conventional symbol of a forgotten literature, of a vanished society, Tragedy, is definitely dead; if, in a country where castes no longer exist and aristocracy has no legal status, the miseries of the lowly and the poor would appeal to public interest, emotion, compassion, as forcibly as the miseries ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... by whom he had been injured, seized him with his trunk, and lifting his wretched victim high in the air, dashed him with dreadful force to the ground. His companions, struck with horror, fled precipitately from the fatal scene, unable to look back upon the rest of the dreadful tragedy; but on the following day, they repaired to the spot, where they collected the few bones that could be found, and buried them. The enraged animal had not only literally trampled Krieger's body to pieces, but did not feel its vengeance satisfied ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Connected Account of the Terrible Tragedy that Befell the People of Our Golden City—The Metropolis of the Golden Gate, and the Death and Ruin Dealt Many Adjacent Cities and Surrounding Country. Destroying Earthquake Comes Without Warning, in the Early Hours of the Morning; Immense Structures Topple ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... by himself. By that time he was too feeble to be able to write, and of course it was only a few months before his death. This letter was written in response to one from Anna Swanwick. To me, I must frankly own, it breathes of the past tragedy, of those doubts and fears by which Newman's religious life had been beset. Even now, notwithstanding his statements to his two lifelong friends, Martineau and Anna Swanwick, that he wished it to be known that he died in the Christian faith, the uncertainty by which, according to the following letter, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Champfort called it, the voice of love. He found it his interest to court, and she her pleasure to be courted. On these "coquettes of the second table," on these underplots in the drama, much of the comedy, and some of the tragedy, of life depend. Under the unsuspected mask of stupidity this worthy mistress of our intriguing valet-de-chambre concealed the quick ears of a listener, and the demure eyes of a spy. Long, however, did she listen, and long did she spy in vain, till at last Mr. Champfort gave her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... passages in the book, not only because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art—but because experience has taught me (what the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in the texture of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... tragedy had taken all the grandeur out of the storm. It was no longer a majestic phase of nature's power, but an implacable demon, bellowing for a sacrifice. And that poor woman, with her two children, hopefully scanning the shipping lists for news ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Barclay's mother. For often she paused at her work, looking up from her wash-tub toward the highway, when a prairie schooner sailed by, and lifting her face skyward for an instant, as her lips moved in silence. As a man the boy knew she was thinking of her long journey, of the tragedy that came of it, and praying for those who passed into the West. Then she would bend to her work again; and the washerwoman's child who took the clothes she washed in his little wagon with the cottonwood log wheels, across the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... only yesterday." There was a world of tragedy and pathos in Alf Pond's tone. Something like a groan ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... connection with me. I was isolated and despairing. But very gradually, like the dispersing of a cloud, it came back. I began again to feel myself a performer in the drama, not a gloomy spectator of it—there must be the sufferer, the condemned, to make the tragedy complete, and they may be enacted well—till the sense of God's Fatherhood came back to me. So that I can be and feel myself a part of the vast economy, diseased and inefficient though I am—feel that I ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... virtue or goodness, but loftily on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect, that is thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic model. The heroines of fable are admired; and the soul is tortured with that intensity of passion which gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian tragedy. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... that he forgot he was playing a part, and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the king with ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's Tribune and the Rochester Democrat. The news was discouraging—the tragedy of Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union armies. General Fremont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only to have Lincoln cancel the order to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... profusion of waters. These stately fountains and bronze statues, the extraordinary size and loftiness of the buildings, the towers rising in perspective, and the Doric portal of the town-house, answered in some measure the idea Montfaucon gives us of the scene of an ancient tragedy. Whenever a pompous Flemish painter attempts a representation of Troy, and displays in his background those streets of palaces described in the Iliad, Augsburg, or some such city, may easily be traced. Sometimes a corner of Antwerp discovers itself; and generally, above a Corinthian portico, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... death, and miracles were wrought with his relics. A chapel arose on the little hill dedicated to his worship, and a loud cry arose for his canonisation. The abuse made by his enemies of their victory only strengthened his reputation among the people. The tragedy of his fall appealed to the rude sympathies of the north-countrymen, and the merit of the cause atoned in their minds for ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... with the picturesqueness of the comparison, made there and then an elaborate prose note of it in one of the diminutive pocket-books that he was in the habit of carrying in the capacious pocket of his waistcoat. Years afterwards—shortly before his death, in fact—when he came to write ‘The King’s Tragedy,’ remembering this note, he thought he could find an excellent place for it in the scene where the king meets the Spae wife on the seashore and listens to her prophecies of doom. But he was at once confronted by this obstacle: so elaborately had the image of the moon ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... The greatest tragedy of this campaign became known, on the 8th of September, through a letter from a native clerk who was with the Akim levies, which were commanded by Captains Willcox and Benson. These levies had worked up on our right flank, as we advanced ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... weeks after the tragedy of the Alamo, Santa Anna's army massacred a force of five hundred Texans at Goliad. The outlook for the Texan cause was now dark enough. But Sam Houston, who commanded something like seven hundred Texans, would not ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... He felt that he'd hated the Chief when he thought the Chief was going to tell the tale on him as a joke. He'd told it on himself as a penance, in the place of the blow he'd given the Chief and which the Chief wouldn't return. To Mike it was still tragedy. It was still an outrage to his dignity. But Sally was laughing. She rocked back and forth next to Joe, ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... I do not feel at liberty to picture Oriskany from the pens of abler men, I must be content to describe only what I myself witnessed of that sad and unnecessary tragedy. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. It might have been, on the one hand, the music with which Orpheus tamed the beasts; and on the other, that which AEschylus arranged to accompany the last act of his tragedy of "Prometheus Bound." There was, however, no clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. But as the music continued, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... "Shakspeare's Historical Tragedy of Richard III., adapted to Representation by Colley Cibber," (I quote the full title for its matchless impudence,) makes a pamphlet of fifty-nine small pages. Of these, Cibber was good enough to write twenty-six out of his own head. Then, modestly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... acquaintance of a printer's workman; and through him he was engaged as corrector of the press in the establishment of Mr. Samuel Richardson. Being so near to literature, he caught the infection; and naturally began with a tragedy. This tragedy was shown to the author of Clarissa Harlowe; but it only went the way of many similar first inspiritings of the Muse. Then Goldsmith drifted to Peckham, where we find him (1757) installed as usher at Dr. Milner's ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... mainmast with a loaded pistol, whilst the terrified hands, fearing for their lives, fled for refuge to the coalhole, the roundtops and the shore. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1498—Complaint of the Master and Company of H. M. Hired Tender Speedwell, 21 Dec. 1778.] To-morrow it was tragedy. Some "little dirty privateer" swooped down upon him, as in the case of the Admiral Spry tender from Waterford to Plymouth, [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1500—Dickson, Surveyor of Customs at the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... writers of our own period, that it is not easy to reckon him with the older group. His song rings like that of Charles Kingsley, poet, novelist, preacher, and "Christian socialist," who did not publish his "Saint's Tragedy" till three years after ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... awful sigh of a nation's saecular soul. It took majesty and loveliness from the walls around it, and rendered them again tenfold. It left nothing common, neither the motives nor the littleness of men. In Priam's mind it gave dignity to Lady Sophia Entwistle, and profound tragedy to the death of Leek; it transformed even the gestures of the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Death and of Birth were busy for the royal family in the closing scenes of the King's tragedy. There had been very little happiness for George the Third in his long reign and his longer life. His childhood had been darkened by the shadow of a family feud that seemed traditional in his line. His marriage, indeed, fortunate if unromantic, the sequel of more than one unfortunate ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... happened had Skipper Simms completed the threatening maneuver he had undertaken can never be known, for at this moment Theriere pushed his way through the circle of men who were interested spectators of the impending tragedy. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... practical person and he was a dreamer. The pastry he dared not touch—being a genius—but he was charmed at the gaiety with which Winifred crammed cake after cake into her rosebud of a mouth. What an enchanting creature! How bravely she covered up her life's tragedy! ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill |
