"Comfortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who made your face so fair, And gave your woman's heart its tenderness, So shield the blessing He implanted there, That it may never turn to your distress, And never cost you trouble or despair, Nor granted leave the granted comfortless, But like a river blest where'er it flows, Be still ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in the journey or the voyage. There were the usual incidents of winter travelling—the hot, stifling car—the snowy country stretching out mile after mile from morning till night—the hotels, which seemed strangely comfortless for an invalid—and then the great city with its noise and bustle, and the steamer where they had nothing to ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... a tolerable inn, but was ushered into a most comfortless one; and, because it was about five o'clock, three or four hours after their dining hour, I could not prevail on them to give me anything ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of which reached the slave's ears in various ways, his utter helplessness upon the best farms and under the most humane masters and overseers, in Maryland and other Northern Slave States, together with the impression that the journey was of great extent, and comfortless even to a slave, all combined to make a voyage down the river or down South an era in the life of the poor slave to which he looked forward with the most intense and bitter apprehension ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... believe; thy power I own, Thy word I would obey; I wander comfortless, and lone, When from ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... them, and they saw but mirrors of their own sad lineaments—some laughed in mockery of their sorrows, as though they thought that mirth would come for asking; others, grown brutal by being caged, made up in noise what they lacked in peace. How comfortless they seemed! The only solace that the eye could trace ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... a poor, desolate-looking village, at the end of whose street stands an old church, beneath which is the burial-place of the Byrons. The building is ancient and gray, but dreary rather than venerable. Standing in its comfortless interior, we remembered that Byron once asked to be buried under the green, grassy floor of the roofless church at Newstead Abbey, with his faithful dog at his feet. The poet, whose rapid glance seized every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... pleased,'" she said; "'the old lady and gentleman will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy; ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... We started at six in the morning, having no need to be called twice, so heartily was I weary of my comfortless couch. Breakfasted at Abbeville; then pushed on to Boulogne, expecting to find the packet ready to start next morning, and so to have had the advantage of the easterly tide. But, lo ye! the packet was not to sail till next day. So after shrugging our shoulders—being the solace a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and comfortless the room, so was Miss Sophie's lonely life. She rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman, whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham,—multitudinous. The flickering life in the pale little body she ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... filled with straw; a machine for threshing or winnowing was in the parlor; and the room where he died was now converted into a stable, a horse standing where his bed had been. The position was naked and comfortless, being on the summit of a hill, perpetually swept by the trade-winds, which suffered no living thing to stand, except a few straggling, bare, shadeless trees, which contributed to the disconsolate character of the landscape. The grave was in a quiet little valley. It was covered by three plain slabs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... To-morrow the Borysthenes May see our coursers graze at ease Upon his Turkish bank,—and never Had I such welcome for a river As I shall yield when safely there.[275] Comrades, good night!"—The Hetman threw 860 His length beneath the oak-tree shade, With leafy couch already made— A bed nor comfortless nor new To him, who took his rest whene'er The hour arrived, no matter where: His eyes the hastening slumbers steep. And if ye marvel Charles forgot To thank his tale, he wondered not,— The King ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... miserable life in those days, and the Poes were no exception. They died comfortless in Richmond; their three children were separated; and Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. It was in the luxurious Allan home that the boy began the drinking habits which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... returned to our former post, first burying our dead companion in one of the subterraneous houses, which was filled up and levelled, that his body might not be discovered by the enemy. We passed the ensuing night in a most comfortless situation, not being able to procure even oil and salt, and exposed to excessive cold ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... of the digger is desolate enough; a box on a block of wood forms a table, and this is the only furniture; many dispense with that. The bedding, which is laid on the ground, serves to sit upon. Diogenes in his tub would not have looked more comfortless than any one else. Tin plates and pannicans, the same as are used for camping up, compose the breakfast, dinner, and tea service, which meals usually consist of the same ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... of any proposal of a change from the cold and comfortless room where he had thought uneasy, remorseful thoughts. He fancied that a change of place would banish the train of reflection that was troubling him; but the change he anticipated was to a well-warmed, cheerful ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the dark comfortless room, the light from without flickering upon his blanched face, Philip was alone with himself, with memory, and with death. As he lay gasping, a voice seemed to ring through the silent room, repeating the same words again and again—and the voice was his own voice. It was himself—some other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is possible for those who have once tasted this, the sweetest of all human delights, how it is possible for any rational mind afterwards to submit to be whirled round in the vortex of dissipation, to tolerate, to endure, the empty, vain, comfortless, nothingness of fashionable amusements, now appears to me to be almost inexplicable. The real felicity imparted and received in a happy domestic circle, in one evening, far, very far surpasses all the pleasures derived from the gaze and throng of crowded routs and fashionable parties ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... domestic implements of his one, two, or three wives, as the brave was of greater or lesser renown, were carelessly thrown at its side, and here and there the round, full, patient countenance of an infant might be found peeping from its comfortless wrappers of bark, as, suspended by a deer-skin thong from the same post, it rocked in the passing air. Children of a larger growth were tumbling over each other in piles, the males, even at that ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into surroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that she exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married experience—treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and godless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a farm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... disturbance of the house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best—or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago—the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil—everything they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they begin to know you. I am drawing at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... revealed to him this wonderful secret. But the agony of those last few hours, and the gloomy words of the priest who leant over his bedside, had found their way in between the joints of the dying man's armour of secrecy. Word by word, the story had been wrested from him. In the cold and comfortless hour of death, the strong, worldly man felt his physical weakness loosen the iron bands of his will, and he became for a time almost like a child in the hands of the keen, swiftly-questioning priest. He had not found much comfort in the mumbled prayers and absolution, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... writing in an American country hotel, his tune would probably have been more after this fashion: "A wonderful day has come to a dreary end in the most sepulchral of hotels, a mouldy, barn-like place, ill-lit, mildewed and unspeakably dismal. A comfortless room with two beds and two low-power electric lights, two stiff chairs, an uncompanionable sofa, and some ghastly pictures of simpering naked women. We have bought some candles, and made a candlestick out of a soap-dish. Colin is making the best of it with 'The Beloved Vagabond,' ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... the street opposite to that on which Eve's lodgings were situated. Nearly over against that particular house was a window with a card. Carelessly he approached the door, and carelessly asked to see the rooms that were to let. They were comfortless, but would suit his purpose for a time. He engaged a sitting-room on the ground-floor, and a bed-room above, and went to fetch ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking down the long hospital room, with its endless rows of beds and its hot sun shining blindingly ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... afford provision for such a party as ours for about six or eight months if well administered. In case of necessity this would undoubtedly be a very useful reserve to fall back upon. These stores are somewhat scattered, and the hut has a dilapidated, comfortless appearance due to its tenantless condition; but even so it seemed to me much less inviting than our old Discovery ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the man-of-all-work, who attended faithfully to everything, groaning often and praying oftener over the careless habits of "the boys," as he called the two young men, his employers, had sought his comfortless bachelor attic, where he slept always with one ear open, listening for any burglarious sound which might come from the store below, and which had it come to him listening thus would have frightened him half to death. George Douglas, too, the senior partner of the firm, had retired to his ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... General's preparations being made, the trunks encumbering the passages of the dear old Dean Street lodging, which I shall love as long as I shall remember at all—one day, almost the last of his stay, when the good man (his Excellency we called him now) came home to his dinner—a comfortless meal enough it was in the present condition of the family—he looked round the table at the place where I had used to sit in happy old days, and sighed out: "I wish, Molly, George ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... night; the mercury is away below zero, and with aching fingers you are to prepare a camp which is only an anticipation of many more such camps in the ensuing days. For a week it has rained, so that you, pushing through the dripping brush, are soaked and sodden and comfortless, and the bushes have become horrible to your shrinking goose-flesh. Or you are just plain tired out, not from a single day's fatigue, but from the gradual exhaustion of a long hike. Then in your secret soul you ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... what part of the house you please, while you are inclined to stay in it; but I flatter myself with the hope that you and I shall some time pass our days together. I am very solitary and comfortless, but will not invite you to come hither till I can have hope of making you live here so as not to dislike your situation. Pray, my dearest, write to me ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... bidding me sit on the wreck of a cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets, my wits sharpened by hunger and ill-usage, sat spell-bound on my comfortless perch, while he unfolded the tale of Gods and Goddesses, and unveiled Olympus ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he to us—this stranger, this haughty, all-requiring one? Think of the blessed days ere he had crossed our threshold. You have counted all, Helen? The anguish that will bring tears into your proud brother's eyes, your sister's comfortless sorrow?—did you think of her lonely and saddened youth? You counted the wild suffering of this bitter moment,—did you think of the weary years, the long sleepless nights of grief, the days of tears; did you count the ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... had left her! he was nowhere near her! She tried to call him, but the storm choked every sound in her very throat. He would never have left her to save himself! He who makes the dogs must be at least as faithful as they! So she was not left comfortless! ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... conveyance of her letters; so that, if we were to judge from the annals of romance, we should infallibly conclude there was no such thing as a post-office in England. On the sixth day of her abode at this comfortless cottage, the possibility of sending a letter to her friend by the post occurred to Angelina, and she actually discovered that there was a post-office at Cardiffe. Before she could receive an answer to this epistle, a circumstance ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... dangerous drunk, ruinin' their health and makin' 'em spilin' for fights and bloodshed. The rich man can stay all night at his club, or if he goes home the decorous butler or vally can tend to him and protect his family if need be; he won't stagger in at midnight to a comfortless room, where his wife and little ones are herded in cold and starvation and are alone and at his mercy, and the rich man's carouse at his club won't keep his wife and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... fire of fever bred; And what's a fever but a fit of madness? Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls: Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy,— Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,— And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life? In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest, To be disturb'd would mad or man or beast: The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and I went to the theater to rehearse "Romeo and Juliet." In the evening the house was very fair, considering how much the hot weather is against us; but of all the comfortless people to act to, commend me to an Edinburgh audience. Their undemonstrativeness, too, is something more than mere critical difficulty to be pleased; there is a want of kindliness in the cold, discourteous way ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... property and at every sale. The people were compelled to grind their corn at their landlord's mill, to press their grapes in his press, and bake their bread in his oven. In consequence of these feudal laws and customs, the people were very poor, their houses dark and comfortless, their dress ragged and miserable, their food coarse and scanty. Not half of the enormous taxes which they paid reached the royal treasury, or even the pockets of the great proprietors. Officers were indefinitely multiplied. The governing classes looked upon the people only to be ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... than if I carried the lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.—I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bids me ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and also what is become of that 'wandering creature,' Lafontaine, if you should happen to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... consolation was the faith that was in him, a "very present help," as he found, "in time of trouble." This bitter trial brought home to him all the more intensely the need of such comfort for those who were comfortless. His heart went out in burning sympathy for those sitting in darkness like himself, but who had no faith on which to lean, nothing to bring healing and hope to a broken heart. Her death was a loss to the community as well as to her family. Her writings in the "Somerville ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... cold bare earth should lie, The monarch's son, in counsel sage, Of old imperial lineage. That lion-lord whose noble bed With finest skins of deer was spread,— How can he now endure to press The bare earth, cold and comfortless! This sudden fall from bliss to grief Appears untrue, beyond belief: My senses are distraught: I seem To view the fancies of a dream. There is no deity so great, No power in heaven can master Fate, If Rama, Dasaratha's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... possible, before you go to bed. Except in very rigid weather, this keeps the handle from freezing. When there is reason to apprehend extreme cold, do not forget to throw a rug or horse-blanket over your pump; a frozen pump is a comfortless preparation for a winter's breakfast. Never allow ashes to be taken up in wood, or put into wood. Always have your tinder-box and lantern ready for use, in case of sudden alarm. Have important papers all together, where you can lay your ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... that fronted the farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room, and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it anywhere, and Miss Henderson's fancy imagined ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... —Who in that hour of dread could weigh the proofs? Our calmer judgment now returns to us, We see the maid as when she walked with us, Nor have we any fault to charge her with. We are perplexed—we fear that we have done A grievous wrong. The king is penitent, The duke remorseful, comfortless La Hire, And every heart doth ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... now desolate Burgundian castle. And Gernot and Giselher, her true and loving brothers, added their words of entreaty also. And so, though heart-sick, and with many misgivings, she agreed to abide for a season in this cheerless and comfortless place. Many days, even months, dragged by, and still she remained; for she found it still harder and harder to tear herself away from her mother, and all that her heart held dear. Yet never, for three years ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... got up out of his own comfortless couch, and groped for the electric flash-light which sometimes may be seen in places such as his to-day. He tiptoed along the path through the willows, across the yard, and knocked timidly at the door. He heard no answer. A sudden fear came to him. Had she in terror fled the place—was she wandering ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... least possible outlay Of salt and sanctity; in daily life Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... prepared, often its very materials must be sought in pool and thicket, before the wanderer can be at rest, and the cravings of appetite appeased. The hardly-won repast concluded, the ground offers a comfortless couch to his stiffened and jaded limbs, where to snatch such sleep as the necessity of strict guard, and the ominous and mysterious noises of a night in the desert, allow to descend upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... I was dead arose no doubt from the [20] combined efforts of some malignant students, expelled from my College for immorality, to kill me: of their mental design to do this I have proof, but no fear. My heavenly Father will never leave me comfortless, in the amplitude of His love; coming nearer in my need, more tenderly ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... me is that of sovereign grace and beauty. When I am near thee, nothing can harm me. Thou art an angel of light, shadowing me with thy softness. But when I let go thy hand, I stagger on a precipice: out of thy sight the world is dark to me and comfortless. There is no breathing out of this house: the air of Italy will stifle me. Go with me and lighten it. I can know no pleasure ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... years and nine months during which Shelley lived with Harriet must seem insane to a rational mind. Life was one comfortless picnic. When Shelley wanted food, he would dart into a shop and buy a loaf or a handful of raisins. Always accompanied by Eliza, they changed their dwelling-place more than twelve times. Edinburgh, York, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... cheered by a copper shower from some adjacent balcony, turned the handle of his instrument more vigorously, letting loose stirring valse-tune and march upon the sultry air. Such music was, of necessity, somewhat comfortless hearing to Richard, debarred alike from deeds of arms or joy of dancing. His impatience increased. It was a little inconsiderate of his mother surely to detain Constance for so long! But just then the sound of women's voices reached him through the half-open door. The two ladies were leisurely ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... stroke to my felicity. I cannot suspect, even in my most lawless flights, the most innocent and artless of her sex of inconstancy. But how many unexpected accidents may come between me and my happiness? How comfortless is the thought that I can at no time say, "Now the amiable Matilda is in health; now she dwells in peace and safety?" I receive an account of her health, a paquet reaches me from Cosenza. Alas, it is two tedious days from the date of the information. Into two tedious ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... the left; no smoke, curling its gray mist from behind the intersecting rocks, reminded him of the gladsome morning hour, or invited him to take a moment's rest from his grievous journey. All was lonely and comfortless; and sighing bitterly over the wide devastation, he concealed the fatal sword and the horn under his cloak, and with a staff which he broke from a withered tree, took his way down the winding craigs. Many a pointed flint pierced his aged feet, while exploring ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... mute inquiries and respond to them." It was this rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings. He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained outright that he was forced too much into society. His favourite ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... Her parents approved of my passion, and consigned her to my arms." "Has sickness then overtaken her, or has untimely death put a period to thy prospects, just as they began to bloom?" "Oh, no," said the disconsolate shepherd, "I have encountered a disaster more comfortless and wasteful than sickness. I had a thousand times rather have received her last sigh, and closed ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... many Italian hostelries, and nourished no unreasonable expectations. The Lion at Paola would have seemed to any untravelled Englishman a squalid and comfortless hole, incredible as a place of public entertainment; the Two Little Lions of Cosenza made a decidedly worse impression. Over sloppy stones, in an atmosphere heavy with indescribable stenches, I felt rather than saw my way to the foot of a ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... upon their feet again when morning came, for of all the hard things the wanderer in rain-swept bush or frozen wilderness must bear there is none that tests his powers more than the bracing himself for another day of effort in the early dawn. Comfortless as the night's lair has been, the jaded body craves for such faint warmth as it afforded, and further rest, the brain is dull and heavy, and the aching limbs appear incapable of supporting the weight on them. Difficulties loom appallingly large in the faint creeping light, courage ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a railway with trains ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Cubry, we soon reach Moussy, where the vineyards, spite of their long pedigree and southern aspect, also rank as a second cr. Still skirting the vine-clad slopes we come to Vinay, noted for an ancient grotto—the comfortless abode of some rheumatic anchorite—and a pretended miraculous spring to which fever-stricken pilgrims to-day credulously resort. The water may possibly merit its renown, but the wine here produced is very inferior, due no doubt to the class ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... ringing and of being repulsed. It was dismal standing still, however, and quite as comfortless sitting down. He was so cold! So, to keep his blood in motion, he keeps his limbs in motion,—till, lo! here he is again at the house where the happy children were! They have ceased their play. Two young girls are at the window, gazing out into ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... conjecture; but will only add, that if it be so, I think Giotto was perfectly right; and that a picture thus conceived might have been deeply impressive, had it been more successfully executed; and a calmer, more continuous, comfortless grief expressed in the countenances of the women. Far better thus, than with the horrible analysis of agony, and detail of despair, with which this same scene, one which ought never to have been made the subject ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... others still open as in summer. I meet a wood-sawyer, with his horse and saw on his shoulders, returning from work. As night draws on, you begin to see the gleaming of fires on the ceilings in the houses which you pass. The comfortless appearance of houses at bleak and bare spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... seldom have been regaled with meat. A more wretched and monotonous existence than theirs can hardly be conceived. Entirely devoid of mental culture, there was no range for thought. Their huts were miserable abodes, barely endurable in pleasant weather, but comfortless in the extreme when the wind filled them with smoke, or the rain dripped through the branches. Men, women, children, and dogs slept together at night in the one littered room, devoured by fleas. The native Indian was a degraded, joyless ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... his feet upon two of the stoutest sprouts. Seated thus, he could feel an unsteady quivering of the trunk, a trembling, wrenching motion, that told, but too plainly, of the powerful force of the flood, and of the uncertain tenure which he possessed on even this comfortless refuge. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the door he hesitated, bewildered. On his desk was heaped a pile of papers, in which letters, lecture notes, old pamphlets, were scattered in contemptuous disorder. Jane had just dropped an armful into the fire which blazed with that comfortless instability common to paper fires in the daytime. She had gathered another armful and was advancing toward the hearth, when she saw the apparition in the door-way and stopped. The professor was paler than usual, and his hands shook ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... as well as wet, it required our utmost efforts to prevent the fire from going out; so far indeed were we from being either cheered or warmed by the few sparks we were able to keep together, that the chill and comfortless aspect of its feeble rays, made us only shiver the more, as the rain fell coldly and heavily upon our already saturated garments. About noon the weather cleared up a little, and after getting up and watering the horses, we ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... chamber, the floor of which was carpeted, and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment; then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown, a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders, ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... did I count! Bless'd was I then all bliss above! Now, for this consecrated Fount Of murmuring, sparkling, living love, What have I? shall I dare to tell? A comfortless, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... were not lighted, and the room looked cold and comfortless. "Things seem all sixes and sevens in the house," remarked Mr. Carlyle. "I fancy the servants must have misunderstood my letter, and not have expected us until ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... little hope, and no enjoyment. A favorite child was lost from a goodly family, and ill feelings were agitated, and all hearts ran after him through thicket and field, over hill and valley, like shepherds after a lost lamb. Comfortless and faint, the family assembled at the morning altar, and one general sob of grief, and one leaping pulse of anxiety went round. They kneeled for prayer; and the venerable father bore their petitions before the Lord. He prayed for grace to sustain them in the trial. He ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... bridegroom; the elderly members of his family would also exert their influence upon him, because it was believed that if they died prior to its performance their disembodied spirits would continue a comfortless existence about the scene of their mortal habitation, but if afterwards that they would go straight to heaven. When the rite was to be held a feast was given, the villagers sitting round a lighted lamp placed on a water-pot in the centre ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... real state of affairs, and ascertaining in what quarter his own presence and money would be most available. During the six weeks that had elapsed since his arrival at Cephalonia, he had been living in the most comfortless manner, pent up with pigs and poultry, on board the vessel which brought him. Having now come, however, to the determination of prolonging his stay, he decided also upon fixing his abode on shore; and, for the sake of privacy, retired to a small village, called ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... said the Moon, "is an inn, and opposite to it is a great waggon-shed, whose straw roof was just being re-thatched. I looked down between the bare rafters and through the open loft into the comfortless space below. The turkey-cock slept on the beam, and the saddle rested in the empty crib. In the middle of the shed stood a travelling carriage; the proprietor was inside, fast asleep, while the horses were being watered. The coachman stretched himself, though I am very sure that he ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... partnership with the white in the more palpable pursuits of a practical, enlightened, and energetic age, or co-activity with him on a theatre of enlarged and more vigorous action. It is in some respects more comfortless than even was his experience under his primitive style of living, and is usually composed of one room, answering all the purposes of life—eating-room, bed-room, reception-room, principally, however, for the snow and mud, which have been persuaded here to relax their ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... day of last month: I only mention it to show you that I am- punctual to your desire. It is my only reason for writing to-day, for I have nothing new to tell you. The town is empty, dusty, and disagreeable; the country is cold and comfortless; consequently I daily run from one to t'other', as if both were so charming that I did not know which to prefer. I am at present employed in no very lively manner, in reading a treatise on commerce, which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in, Gerard called Schalken, who was about to take his departure to his own obscure and comfortless lodgings, and asked him to come home and sup with Rose and Vanderhausen. The invitation was, of course, accepted and Gerard Douw and his pupil soon found themselves in the handsome and, even then, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... have constantly treated as the dearest bond of human society. General conversation and society could not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass of her species, and she repined when she reflected that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... instability and discontent, leading to perpetual change. But in reference to this, let a mother or daughter conceive of their own circumstances as so changed, that the daughter must go out to service. Suppose a place is engaged, and it is then found that she must sleep in a comfortless garret; and that, when a new domestic comes, perhaps a coarse and dirty foreigner, she must share her bed with her. Another place is offered, where she can have a comfortable room, and an agreeable room-mate; in such a case, would not both mother and daughter ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... that has not tried, What hell it is, in suing long to bide: To lose good days, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; * * * * * To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... etiquettes which persons of gentlemanly habits regard as essentials. At half price the junior members of these unorganised or natural clubs retire to the theatres, while the elder brethren mend their potations till it is time to go home. This seems a very comfortless way of life, but I have no doubt it is the preferred result of a long experience of the world, and that the parties, upon the whole, find it superior, according to their early formed habits of dissipation and ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... try and forget what has passed. It cannot pay for you and me to quarrel. I shall not stay in England very long. I don't like it. It was necessary that the people about should know that I had a wife and son, and so I brought him and her to this comfortless country. I shall return before the winter, and for anything that I care you may all ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... plantation as payment for my debt. I found the place in a wretched condition, and, in order to oversee its management to any advantage, I resolved to transfer my business in the mission to an agent, and move on the place with my wife. Then came a fatal hour for me. Into my darkened soul, into the comfortless, emptiness of my life, entered the ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... unnecessary amount of Teutonic skill in her pronunciation. "Well, mamma, you have told me of that at least twenty times." Soon after that, the ladies took them to their own rooms, weary with the travelling of two days and a night, and Mr. Greene went fast asleep in the very comfortless chair ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... the bedside of her beloved doll family. They were lying serene and placid, exactly as she had placed and tucked them in at bedtime, with her own motherly hand, and the memory of Dick lying racked with pain on the comfortless bed where she had first seen him, almost decided her at once. But a doll that could walk and talk, ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... and examine the country to the right and left for an hour precisely, meeting at one of the villages in the road, if no advance of the enemy were discernible within that time. We parted, and I commenced as comfortless an expedition as it would be easy to imagine. The Flemish cross-roads, never very passable, were now deep in mire; the rivulets, of which they are generally the conduits, had been swelled by the storm of the night before; and I floundered on for nearly the appointed time, in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... kitchen, which, on ordinary occasions, is the family dining and sitting-room of the Scudder family. I know fastidious moderns think that the working-room, wherein are carried on the culinary operations of a large family, must necessarily be an untidy and comfortless sitting-place; but it is only because they are ignorant of the marvellous workings which pertain to the organ of "faculty," on which we have before insisted. The kitchen of a New England matron was her throne-room, her pride; it was the habit of her life to produce ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... To them that here for evil lie The place is comfortless, But not to me, because that I Lie here ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... conveyed him to his brigade, he would have made it hot for the defaulter. And now—with a third share in a porter he struggled through the Customs in the midst of the perspiring civilian crowd, and, emerging on to the platform, found a comfortless middle seat in an old German first-class carriage built for four. There were still many men in uniform, English, French and American, doing Heaven knows what about the busy station. But none took notice of him, and he lounged disconsolately ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... city, Mr. and Mrs. Judson took up their abode in a deserted mission-house just outside the wall, which had formerly been occupied by some Baptist missionaries from Serampore. The house was large and not unsuited to the climate, but unfinished and comfortless. However, it had a garden full of flowers and fruit-trees, and the scenery around it was rural and pleasant. Here they found one Christian female, the only person remaining of the former mission family, and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... tomb, she felt as though a cold hand laid a grip on her beating heart. In a swift flash of thought she saw her own home with its wealth and splendor, and then the ship-builder's house-simple, chillingly bare, with its comfortless rooms; she felt as though she must perish, nipped and withered, in such a home. Again she thought of him standing on his father's threshold, she fancied she could hear his bright boyish laugh and her heart glowed once more. She forgot for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... those occasions, to interest or amuse each other; but now we were helpless. Both were in sorrow, and neither could console his brother. And there we were, looking mournfully on each other in the face of death, speechless and comfortless. I am horrified when I think of the dreadful position in which I was placed on those solemn occasions. It seemed to me as if I had been enchanted all those dreary days by some malignant demon, and made the sport of his infernal cruelty. My ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... not numerous nor were they well qualified for their work. School houses were at a great distance from most of the homes. They were both comfortless and cheerless. The snows were deep in winter and the weather was inclement. In summer, even little hands were ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... spring day was raw and cold. As he went out through the office he saw the clerks at work with their street-coats and hats on; Miss Dewey had her jacket dragged up on her shoulders, and looked particularly comfortless as she operated her machine with her red fingers. "What's up?" asked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the blue looked down again,—a bigger eye than before,—a wisp of fog filmed it again, and again it gleamed out, ever larger and always more blue. The good wind living far to the south had heard that in a few days a little girl was to be alone and comfortless upon a foggy island, and, hearing, had filled his vast chest with warmth and sunshine, and puffed out his merry cheeks and blown. The great breath sent the blue waves thundering upon the coral beaches of Florida, tore across the forests of palm and set ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... imitation of those in the States. Russell's Hotel, at which I stayed for eight days, was a disagreeable contrast to the National Hotel at Detroit, and another of some pretensions, the North American, was said to be even more comfortless. The bedrooms at Russell's swarmed with mosquitoes; and the waiters, who were runaway slaves, were ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... tabernacle work of the stalls was converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in the larger towns; and the new proprietary ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... his meat was sauced with your upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your brawls; being debarred from the enjoyment of society and recreation, what could ensue but dull melancholy and comfortless despair? The consequence is then, that your jealous fits have made your ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast, With gibbets, bones, and carcasses defiled." THOMPSON'S ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sledge-hammer sun from their bevelled summits—close enough to be the channel, in summer, of every scorching blast diverted by them; in winter, every icy draught. Pestilential place, goal of whirlwinds and dust-devils, ankle-deep in desert drift—prototype of Berber in a sandstorm—as comfortless by night as day. But as in nature, so in the handiwork of men, even in the most repulsive shapes it is possible to find some saving feature. De Aar has one—one only. Its saving feature is where a slatternly Jew boy plays host behind the bar of a fly-ridden buffet. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... On behalf of the Inquisitors, Basil had offered to relieve him of their company, but the governor had said "No" to the proposal. The seven were confined in one room of fair size, and, except for the heat, were no more comfortless than they would have been in the average English jail. But the heat was fearful! The wretched men sat and stewed in it. Water was not too plentiful in the city, and the native water-carriers had grown lazy; thirst racked the prisoners ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... I can toast my back against, while standing with coat tails tucked up and my hands in my pockets, explaining things to people. I don't want a comfortless, staring, white thing, in a corner of the room, behind the sofa—a thing that looks and smells like a family tomb. It may be hygienic, and it may be hot, but it does not seem to do me any good. It has its advantages: it contains ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... friend had married himself into a very sombre family. But all this was pleasant pastime indeed compared with that which poor Hester endured in her mother's bedroom. 'So it has been done,' said Mrs. Bolton, sitting in a comfortless little chair, which she was accustomed to use when secluded, with her Bible, from all the household. She spoke in a voice that might have been fit had a son of hers been just ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... lonely inn, somewhere in the country; and a comfortless room at the inn, with a makeshift bed at one end of it, and a makeshift bed at the other—I give you my word of honor, that was how your aunt put it. She spoke of two men next; two men asleep (you understand) in the two beds. I think she called them 'gentlemen'; ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... Admiral's proficiency, this could not be accomplished without an interpreter; and the services of a very clever Malay boy, whom we had brought with us from the ship, were brought into requisition. The hall, in which we were first received, might have been about fifty feet square, bleak, unfurnished, and comfortless, with an uncovered mud floor. It was so feebly lighted by a few windows almost hid by Venetian blinds, that we could only discover that the roof had been left bare and unfinished. After sitting for about ten minutes, the sultan rose and led the way to another ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... was in the least personal to him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... as if they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear'd As they were fram'd of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach'd, where loud The mariner cried vehement: "Go forth! The' entrance is here!" Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, who of old from heaven ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... kind of vague, unsatisfied fashion, but he feels that machinery is being set in motion. While it is being set in motion, he sits down before the wall on one of the seats or pews where a large audience of other comfortless and lonely-looking people are. He feels the great, heartless building gathering itself together, going after John Milton for him, while he sits and waits. One after the other he hears human beings' names being called out in space, and one by one poor scared-looking people who ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... cold. During his long interview with Lady Florence, his servant had taken the precaution to go to Seamore Place, and make some hasty preparations for the owner's return. But the bedroom looked comfortless and bare, the curtains were taken down, the carpets were taken up (a single man's housekeeper is wonderfully provident in these matters; the moment his back is turned, she bustles, she displaces, she exults; "things ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between gratitude and love she had purposely ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... the rooms—the dirt, the bustle, and the heartless indifference one witnesses to the misfortunes of others—all come home forcibly to the feelings. After stumbling and striking my shins amongst piles of chairs, and furniture, and carpets, disposed in lots over the now comfortless apartments, I at last reached the study door where I had spent many a happy hour with N——. I entered; the room was stripped of part of its furniture, the books lying dispersed in heaps over the floor or on the massive table, at the side of which N—— was seated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... beds; mere wooden frames with canvas stretched on them, in which any miserable beggars who choose to submit to the rules may sleep for a night after eating a bit of bread and a basin of gruel— for all which they pay nothing. It is a very poor and comfortless place—at least you would think it so—and is meant to save poor people from sleeping, perhaps ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... disjointed, loose, and leaky covering of an old, dilapidated log-house, standing by the road-side, in one of the thousand little dales, which, with their corresponding hills, so beautifully diversify the face of the town we have been describing. But as comfortless as this miserable hut was, and as poor and insufficient a protection from the elements as it afforded, even for the healthy and robust, it was now the only shelter of a sick and destitute woman, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the 11th of August. "Thus did this worthy man, to protect the settlement, which with so much pecuniary expense and devotedness of time, he had planted, now expose himself to the hazards and toils of a comfortless expedition, that would have proved unsurmountable to one of a less enterprising spirit and steady resolutions." Oglethorpe, and his suite, were received with great cordiality; and, after the necessary introduction to individuals, and a little ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... great powers; and, if they remain true to each other, I would confidently back Terapia politics and manoeuvres against those of Buyukdere. The French palace is a spacious building, with beautiful and extensive gardens. That inhabited by the English ambassador, on the contrary, is small, comfortless, and with only a ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... ruins of small cells and cottages, thought to be the remains of those sequestered habitations to which hermits were wont to retire for the uses of penance and mortification; and it is remarked that, in the whole earth, a more comfortless and desert place could not have been selected for so pious a purpose. From these hills of desolation, however, there is obtained a magnificent prospect of the Plain of Jericho, the Dead Sea, and of the distant summits of Arabia; for which reason the highest of the group has been ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... herself on one end of an extremely comfortless lounge and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick stood at one of the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands clasped behind his back as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood dropped the traveling bag beneath ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the cold, comfortless autumn, and the despairing rustics, crowding round their empty barns, with folded arms and sorrowful countenances, pondering on their misery, instead of rejoicing, as usual, at the golden harvest. I remember the winter ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Let us visit the home of Mr. Warren and look at him among his children. No; we will not enter this pleasant house—he moved away long ago. Can this be the home of Mr. Warren! Yes. Small, poor, and comfortless as it is! Ah! ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... days carried him hither and thither, if not with patience, at any rate with perseverance. He went to spots which he was told had a world-wide celebrity, of the names of which he had but a bare distant remembrance, and which he found to be arid, comfortless, and uninteresting. Gibeon he did endure, and Shiloh, and Sichem; Gilgal, also, and Carmel. But there he broke down: he could not, he said, justify it to himself to be absent longer from his official duties. He found that he was near Beyrout: he could ride thither in two days, avoiding Damascus ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... at Batavia the comfortless "dos-a-dos," colloquially known as the sado, a vehicle resembling an elementary Irish car, and drawn by a rat-like Timor pony transports us to the fashionable suburb of Weltevreden, away from the steamy port and fever-haunted commercial capital. The march of modern improvement scarcely affects ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... or cocoa, and we hadn't enough to go round at a sip each. The cookers were tightly packed on a truck at the rear, and there was no hope from that quarter. And then once again, just as on other occasions where a chance of a hot mug of tea seemed hopeless, and where we were apparently doomed to a comfortless time, the Y.M. was at hand. There, as we glided into Calais station, we espied a long covered-in counter displaying the familiar sign of the red triangle. The order quickly came down, and was more quickly put into execution, that men could ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... tolerate, and by tolerating to collaborate in, the adultery of her husband and his mistress was better religion than to free herself from odious triplicity. She found that it was better religion to annul her womanhood and remain childless, husbandless, and comfortless than to claim the privileges, the freedoms, the renewing opportunities ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, And Shame that skulks behind; Or pining Love shall waste their youth, 65 Or Jealousy with rankling tooth, That inly gnaws the secret heart; And Envy wan, and faded Care, Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... itself in petty inconsistencies, fill us with pity and surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her brave struggle against the hard ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Nothing can be more comfortless than some of these shanties, reeking with smoke and dirt, the common receptacle for children, pigs, and fowls. But I have given you the dark side of the picture; I am happy to say all the shanties on the squatters' ground were not like ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Mrs. Nichols did not observe him, for she was bending tenderly over the white, wrinkled face, which lay upon the small, scanty pillow. John thought "how small and scanty they were," while he almost shuddered at the sound of his footsteps upon the uncarpeted floor. Everything was dreary and comfortless, and his conscience reproached him that his old father should die so poor, when he ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... my heart! dear Poet that feelest and thinkest! 15 Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister! Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. O! it is all too far to send you mockeries idle: Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved! 20 Feverish and wakeful I lie,—I am weary of feeling and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of; but as for the Captain not being his true son and the proper heir to the peerage, let any one see him walk twice, and then have a shadow of a doubt about it! This logic pleased but convinced me not, and I had to go to bed in a very unhappy, restless, and comfortless state of mind. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... themselves that there was a fiery quality in what they wrote. But how many poets have fed themselves in vain on the same hopes, have thought themselves unduly contemned and slighted! There is hardly a scribbler of verse who has not the same delusion, and who has not in chilly and comfortless moments to face the fact that he does not probably count for very much, after all, in the scheme of things. How hard it is in the case of Keats and Shelley to feel that they had not some inkling of all the desirous ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in omnibuses, because, forsooth, they are stout, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. One thinks of Falstaff's plaintive 'If to be fat is to be hated!' At displays of natural feelings of any sort this comfortless evil spirit ever curls the lip. Inhabiting modern young ladies, it is especially superior to the maternal instinct, and cringes from a baby in a railway carriage as from an adder. At the dropping of an 'h' it shrinks as though the weighty ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... service to his friends. The father of unprofitable sons— What does he else but for himself beget Trouble and exultation for his foes? Never, my Haemon, for a woman's love Let go thy better judgment. Thou must know That cold and comfortless is the embrace Of a bad partner in the marriage bed. What sore is worse than ill-requited love? Then cast away this maiden from thy heart, And let her nuptial bower in Hades be, Since I have openly convicted her Of breaking law, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... seen,—no, not at evening parties,—and I conceive that their life in lodgings, at the caffe and the restaurant, remote from the society of women and all the higher privileges of fellowship for which men herd together, is at once the most gross and insipid, the most selfish and comfortless life in the world. Our boarding- house life in America, dull, stupid, and flat as it often is, seems to me infinitely better than the restaurant life of young Italy. It is creditable to Latin Europe that, with all this homelessness and domestic ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us—was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire—begged us to come in and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open and no fire anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture—chairs, tables and bed—was covered with linen. She explained that it was her "lessive" (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... with her during the night. She dispatched a message to Mrs. Hoyt, cheerfully laid aside her bonnet, and took a seat near the sufferer, while the infirm mother retired to rest. The family were very poor, and almost entirely dependent on Kate's salary for a support. The house was small arid comfortless; the scanty furniture of the plainest kind. About dusk Beulah left her charge in a sound sleep, and, cautiously opening the blinds, seated herself on the window sill. The solitary candle on the table gave but a dim light, and she sat for a long ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Hamilton had done and said. He described the dreary and comfortless room in which Alice was confined, the miserable fare given her, and how she would be exposed to the leers and low remarks of the soldiers. She had already suffered these things, and now that she could no longer have any protection, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... as I silently followed my little guide, who with quick steps traversed the uneven pavement of the main street. After a walk of about five minutes she turned off into a narrow lane, of that obscure and comfortless class which are to be found in almost all small old fashioned towns, chill without ventilation, reeking with all manner of offensive effluviae, dingy, smoky, sickly and pent-up buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but in ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Scotswoman's unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's handicraft, none of those little ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... could take you right away with me, Joan, my little love; but a bachelor's house is a comfortless concern from a woman's point of view. You will hear from me in a day or two. You must call at the post-office in Penzance for letters, because I shall ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... glanced about the room, and suppressed a sigh. It was, indeed, a miserable dwelling, scarcely better than a hut. Very few of you who read this have ever seen a place so comfortless or so poor. The roof let in rain. Through the cracked, uneven floor the ground could be distinctly seen. A broken window-pane was stopped by an old hat thrust into the hole. For furniture was only a rusty stove, a table, three chairs, a few battered utensils for cooking, and a bed laid on the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... long, narrow house of wood, painted white, and more than half windows; and, when the observer stood at the western side of the building, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of the rising sun. It was, in truth, but a very comfortless open place, through which the daylight shone with natural facility. On its front were divers ornaments in wood, designed by Richard and executed by Hiram; but a window in the centre of the second story, immediately over the door or grand entrance, and the steeple were the pride of the building. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... dreary time for Hester, alone in the room where she had spent so many happy hours. She sat in a window, looking out upon the leafless trees and the cold gloomy old statue in the midst of them. Frost was upon every twig. A thin sad fog filled the comfortless air. There might be warm happy homes many, but such no more belonged to her world! The fire was burning cheerfully behind her, but her eyes were fixed on the dreary square. She was hardly thinking—only letting thoughts and feelings come and go. What a thing ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... collecting their winter store of roots. In winter they hunt the deer on snow-shoes over the plains, and toward spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of rafficking for buffalo-robe. The inconveniences of their comfortless life are increased by frequent encounters with their enemies from the west, who drive them over the mountains with the loss of their horses, and sometimes the lives of many of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... sent thither in search of sunshine! Sunshine is indeed a far more expensive luxury on the Riviera than we imagine, seeing that only rooms with a north aspect are cheap, and a sunless room is much more comfortless and unwholesome than a well-warmed one, no matter its aspect, in England. The only cheap commodity, one unfortunately we cannot live upon, is the bouquet. In October, that is to say, before the arrival of winter visitors, flowers ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... rude, and thoroughly comfortless town of Calais was now to be the place of residence, for nearly the rest of his life, to a man accustomed to the highest luxuries of London life, trained to the keenest sensibility of London enjoyment, and utterly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent renatre pour moi, ni ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... pecuniary losses, sad damage of character, and comfortless, the unhappy claimant and his witnesses were compelled to return to Maryland, wiser if not better men. The account of this interesting trial, we have condensed from a very careful and elaborate report of it published in the "Pennsylvania Freeman," ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... days When more propitious shone the sun than now, Thy tomb, dear child, was not left comfortless, But honored with the tears of all. Behold, around thy lovely corpse, the sons Of Romulus with holy wrath inflamed; Behold the tyrants locks with dust besmeared; In sluggish breasts once more The sacred name of Liberty revered; Behold o'er all ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... years of age, who, by his prayers and his attending conventicles, had rendered himself particularly obnoxious, was obliged to prolong a green old age by taking up his abode in the cave and under the cairn which has already been described. With him were associated, in his cold and comfortless retreat, the Rev. Robert Lawson, formerly minister of the parish of Closeburn; but who, rather than conform to the English prayer-book and formula, had taken to the mountain, to preach, to baptize, and even ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... groves, and arbors, upon which taste was exhausted, and which cost a fortune to realize. The villa of Blennerhasset was really a beacon-light in the wilderness, that seemed created to invite the approach of the stranger to enjoy that repose which the sluggish and comfortless mode of travelling of that day, rendered so gratifying. The only sounds now heard, are the sighing of the wind through the lofty cotton wood, or the puffing of steam, as some boat rushes rapidly past the prosperous settlement of Bellepre. There was a time when music of a less melancholy ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... appliances. We must employ other attractions. We must make our houses beat the public houses. We must sanctify new forces for this end. Pictures and cabinets, carpets and draperies, music and games are not the devil's any more than they are ours. Young men will have some retreat beside their comfortless boarding-houses; some society besides their landlord's family, and it is a match between the devil and the church which of us shall furnish these. Depend upon it, if the church do not give them amusement, regulated on a liberal Christian basis, the devil will give them abundance ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... interminable sewing, that now, for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and sheltered from the storm, shared the all-pervading despondency. The refectory looked dull and comfortless, and the logs on the hearth hissed and sputtered, and would not burn. Green wood had been brought instead of dry fuel by the drowsy henchman. The viands on the board provoked not the appetite, and the men emptied their cups of ale, yawned and stretched their arms, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... am with you alway." These are his very words. He is everywhere. He said, just before his death, by way of encouraging his disciples: "I go away, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you." He continued: "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come unto you." But he has promised yet more than his presence to go with all who love him: he declares in words we can understand that "if a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." Again he says: "He ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... report[207] they are said to be in "intellectual and moral midnight;" and in a Michigan report[208] to be "groping in thick darkness." In a Louisiana report[209] they are called "sorrow-stricken children of silence;" and in a Kentucky report[210] their lives are described as "dark, dreary and comfortless." The Southern Literary Messenger[211] of Richmond, Virginia, characterizes their existence as "intellectual night." The New York Commercial Advertiser[212] in the year the first school was opened affirms that "their intellectual faculties ... are ... locked in the darkness ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... years of wearisome and comfortless striving,—years of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation,—Wesley had steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win by prayers and fasts, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... red with stormy fire, In streaks diverging wide and mounting high; 20 That inn he long had passed; the distant spire, Which oft as he looked back had fixed his eye, Was lost, though still he looked, in the blank sky. Perplexed and comfortless he gazed around, And scarce could any trace of man descry, 25 Save cornfields stretched and stretching without bound; But where the sower dwelt was nowhere to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the servants in the ancient Abbey of Streonschall, there was a cowherd whose name was Caedmon. The habits of the people of that age were simple and rude; their houses were comfortless huts, their dress was made from the skins of their flocks, or from animals taken in the chase; they had no books, and their literature was limited to the Latin manuscripts of the Church, which few of the monks even were learned enough to read, and fewer ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith |
