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Dismally   Listen
adverb
Dismally  adv.  In a dismal manner; gloomily; sorrowfully; uncomfortably.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dismally" Quotes from Famous Books



... aside his proffered hand (rather good that, Jerry. Let's have it again. I say I brushed aside his proffered hand), and strode back dismally to what had once been my home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... I tell you?" groaned Peggy dismally. "Who looks better now, you or I? I look 'beautiful,' don't I, perfectly beautiful! It's so becoming to have no collar band, and one's arms sticking out like flails! I sha'n't be able to eat a bite. It's as much as I can do to sit still, much less move about. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... the frying pan, and the disappointed children gathered about the table, trying to look cheerful, but failing dismally. ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... still the white plain about them mounted slowly and surely towards the skies. Then the passengers became yet more weary and unhappy. Old Woollen, the unfortunate, detailed his woes to more and more appreciative audiences. Even the Funny Man—with a fresh flask of whiskey—sighed almost dismally between frequent uneasy "cat-naps." And Samson Newell, first seeing his wife comfortably settled, and his little ones safely disposed about her, strode up and down, from car to car, with a gloom of disappointment on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... down—a night which with snow and starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making the interval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it was possible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howled dismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches, lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was still again, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of the ice, when a crack rent its path across the surface and far below ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... exception of Luffree (who could not be found), had been chained up along the sunny side of the house to keep them from following her. And as they saw her disappearing across the reservation road, they jumped back and forth, pulling at their collars and howling dismally. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... Berwick, we had to go round through the hills by Kelso, as there was a block on the main line. I knew nothing of this, and you may imagine my bewilderment when I came to myself, the train standing and whistling dismally in the black morning, before a little vacant half-lit station, with a name up that I had never heard before. My fellow-traveller woke up and wanted to know what was wrong. "O, it's nothing," I said, "nothing at all, it's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it!" thought Tom, dismally. "I suppose he'll wake up every morning, and predict that before night the world will come to an end, or he'll prophesy that the airship will blow up, and vanish, when about seven miles above the clouds. Well, there's no way out of it, so ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar. Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... windows and casements shuddered spasmodically, and the festive horn and cherubs creaked dismally on the rusted hinges. The early watch passed by, banging their staffs on the cobbles and doubtless cursing their unfortunate calling. Two of them carried lanterns which swung in harmony to the tread of feet, causing long, weird, shadowy legs to race ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... were placed in flat bottomed boats, which silently dropped down the current. It was intended to land three miles above Cape Diamond, and then ascend to the high grounds above. The current, however, carried the boats down to within a mile and a half of the city. The night was dismally dark, the bank seemed more than ordinarily steep and lofty, and the French were on the qui vive. A sentinel bawled out, "Que vive," who goes there? "La France," was the quick reply. Captain Macdonald, of the 78th Highlanders, had served in Holland, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... fain to laugh, so dismally did the broad-shouldered Mercian blame himself. But the bishop said that if I went, needs must that he came also. But he did not dissuade ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... have been impossible for us to have kept our feet; we crouched down under the shelter of a heap of stones, and, as we informed each other, looked most dismally pale. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... classical complexion: in C minor, op. 4, and it was composed as early as 1828. Not published until July, 1851, it demonstrates without a possibility of doubt that the composer had no sympathy with the form. He tried so hard and failed so dismally that it is a relief when the second and third sonatas are reached, for in them there are only traces of formal beauty and organic unity. But then there is much Chopin, while little of his precious essence is to be tasted in the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... dismally out of the spaceboat and down to the floor of the huge hold. Eyes front, chests out, throats dry, they marched to the larger but still small vessel that shared this hold compartment. They marched into that ship. Thal barked, "Halt!" ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... her large dark eyes, and then, all at once, she remembered Dandy, her husband's terrier, who, after his master's tragic death, had refused all food, and had howled so long and so dismally that, in a fit of temper, she had herself ordered him ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... me! how he began to show his great rows of teeth, and growl at Gipsey! Nelly gave a little scream, and tried to hide behind me; Jimmy valiantly flew at the big dog with my walking stick; and poor little Gipsey nearly stood on the end of his tail with fright, and squealed dismally. What a fuss we were all in, to be sure! So at last, to quiet the disputants, I caught Gipsey up, and put him in my coat pocket, where he sat, looking out at the top, ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... water. This was repeated several times, but no arguments would induce her to allow her wet clothes to be removed, so it would not be surprising if this gentleman had succeeded in 'stopping her tongue' beyond his expectations. The only other lady was young and rather pretty, but dismally sentimental. She doated on roses, was enamoured of camelias, and loved the moon and the stars, and in fact everything in this world or out of it. In vain I tried to persuade her that her cough betrayed pulmonary ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... house; Johnson sat on one side of me, and Burke on the other; and in the company there was a young female (Mrs. Piozzi named her), to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive, to the neglect of me and others; especially of myself, then near my confinement, and dismally low-spirited; notwithstanding which, Mr. T. very unceremoniously begged of me to change place with Sophy ——, who was threatened with a sore throat, and might be injured by sitting near the door. I had scarcely ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... India. If the Cabool Troops have perished, England has not received such a blow from an enemy, nor anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with all its losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four officers with Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... one florin richer. A third game was in progress, but Todd managed to tip over the board when he was "going to mate in five moves." Cotton thereupon said he had had enough, but Gus avariciously tried to reconstruct the positions. He failed dismally, and Cotton laughed sweetly. Now Cotton's laugh would almost make his chum's hair curl, so he retorted pretty sweetly himself, "I say, Jim. I can't get out of my head that awful hammering you fellows got this afternoon. Think ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... which divested of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... hue. All this time there was not a breath of wind save what was created by the schooner as she rolled heavily on the gathering swell; not a sound save those which arose within her as the bulkheads and timbers creaked and groaned dismally, the cabin-doors rattled, the rudder kicked as the water swirled and gurgled about it and under her counter with the heave of her, and the jerk of the spars aloft, or the slatting of the braces as she swayed, pendulum-like, from side ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... now. "But what's the use. She is a Princess. Why, I thought her at first a barmaid—a barmaid! Then I thought her to be in some way a lawbreaker, a socialist conspirator. It would be droll if it were not sad. The Princess Hildegarde!" I laughed dismally. "Dan, old man, let's dig out at once, and close the page. We'll talk it ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... of a tall tree the ape-man clawed his awkward way and after him came Numa, the lion, moaning dismally. At last Tarzan stood balanced upon the very utmost pinnacle of a swaying branch, high above the forest. He could go no farther. Below him the lion came steadily upward, and Tarzan of the Apes realized that at last the end had come. He could not do ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fail in the exact performance of any of his promises, to enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a year's delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid. That he signed under compulsion; that he was on board a ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... figure affected Trenchard very dismally and drove all his English common sense away. We were moving now slowly through clouds of dust, and peasants who watched us from their doorways with a cold indifference that was worse ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... It was too dark to see much. A multitude of steamboats and mahailas lined the shore. The river was in flood and looked black and forbidding, and it was impossible to see across to the other side. The only light was supplied by a few electric lamps at intervals along the road. It still rained dismally and we made for a canteen close at hand. Here we felt quite at home, for there were several other arrivals as muddy as we were and even worse. Considering this was only a restaurant attached to a rest camp, we fared very ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture: these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How incredible it would seem ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... wings of the intruding, out-of-season wind came a train of ills. Young Tucker Poteet waked at daylight and howled dismally with a pain that seemed to be all over and then in spots. When he went to take down the store shutters Mr. Crabtree smashed one of his large, generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a cinder state while she tied it up in camphor for ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... poor Esther. She felt that she must get away at once or she would burst into heartsick tears under those steely, bland blue eyes. When she got home she shut herself up in her room and cried. There was nothing for her to do but resign, she thought dismally. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... hundred fires were blazing. Around them figures were moving like Indians, whose faces the flames lit up with ghastly distinctness. The neighboring wood was made visible and gloomy at once by the fires under the trees, the foliage reflecting the light dismally. Elsewhere all was in darkness, and we lay down to sleep wondering what the morrow would bring forth. Frederick City and home were forgotten, and the thoughts that now possessed us were of marching and counter-marching, of lines of battle, of reserves, of battery ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... had countenanced, if not approved, the trial and deposition of the king, had resolutely held himself aloof from the proceedings which, beginning on Saturday the 20th of January 1649, terminated so dismally on Tuesday the 30th. The strange part played by Lady Fairfax on the first day of the so-called trial (though it was no greater a travesty of justice than many a real trial both before and after) is one of the best-known stories in English history. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... with which some working is supplied, 3 are wrong. C. H. begins with the rash assertion that under the given conditions "the sum is impossible. For," he or she adds (these initialed correspondents are dismally vague beings to deal with: perhaps "it" would be a better pronoun), "10 is the least possible number of pictures" (granted): "therefore we must either give 2 x's to 6, or 2 o's to 5." Why "must," oh alphabetical phantom? It is nowhere ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll

... as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in the basement—a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... seeing that her nurse still rocked dismally and looked irresolute. "I can bide my time, and fight my battles alone, if need be," she continued, coldly. "I won't trouble you again, nurse," ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Of Billy Gray of late they had seen rather too much. On one pretext after another he was now forever coming to the house, and Witchie was beginning to wish that Canker had had his way; but Canker had failed dismally. The witnesses he counted on proved dumb or departed, and it had pleased the General-in-Chief to send him with a regiment of infantry and a brace of guns to garrison an important point on an adjacent island, and to tell him that in view of the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... Hamburgh, leaving his brother Anthony to the loneliness of their gloomy house in St. Mary Axe. Week after week passed away, and Mr. Peter was still detained at Hamburgh. Who would have supposed that his society could have been missed? that the parlour could have seemed more dismally dull by the absence of one of those from whom it chiefly derived its character of dulness? Mr. Anthony took up his largest meerchaum, and enveloped himself in its smoke by the hour; but the volumes of smoke cleared away, and no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... of sight, all seemed gone. The dismally-lighted city wore a look of Judgement terrible to see. Her brain was slave to her senses: she fancied she had dropped into an underground kingdom, among a mysterious people. The anguish through which action had just hurried her, now fell with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... for you!" And Arbroath shook his bullet head dismally. "You are one of the unregenerate, and if you do not amend your ways will be ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... see something anon, Dick," rejoined Nicholas, with a hollow laugh, and in a dismally deep tone. "You will see Isole herself. I was foolhardy enough to invite her to dance the brawl with me. She smiled her assent, and winked at me thus—very significantly, I protest to you—and she will be as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... greys, a patch of green here and there, and all more or less dingy, and "quite out of fashion." There is a rather forlorn tone over it all, especially when we have a glimpse of Ordnance Terrace, at Chatham, that abandoned, dilapidated row where the boy Dickens was brought up dismally enough. At that moment the images of the Pickwickians recur as of persons who had lived and had come down there on this pleasant adventure. And how well we know every stone and corner of the place, and the tone of the place! ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth—a hall that sank under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light — two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and Frances—that's my sister—were waiting, and they sent me running to call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... you, Thomas," said Miss Davis; and Thomas seized Scamp in spite of Hetty's struggles, and carried him off, howling dismally. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... got underway about half-past eleven; and when the little cruiser left the shelter of the cove, and once more breasted the rising and falling waves, Bumpus shook his head dismally, and loudly hoped he would not once more have to spend all his time feeding the fishes. But his fears proved groundless, for they had apparently become used to the motion of the waves, and not one of them became seasick ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... dismally, and blew through an empty pipe, staring lackadaisically out of the window at the wall of Sidney Sussex for two or three minutes before lighting up. Cambridge seemed an extraordinary flat and stupid place now that Frank was no longer within it. Really there was nothing particular to do. It ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... before the post was reached, Bab, blinded by tears, tripped over the root of a tree, and, rolling down the bank, landed in a bed of wet nettles. Ben had her out in a jiffy, and vainly tried to comfort her; but she was past any consolation he could offer, and roared dismally as she wrung her tingling hands, with great drops running over her cheeks almost as fast as the muddy little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in which they had been wrapped ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... mouth of the creek, while my pursuer, who by this time had sufficiently recovered to stagger to his feet, waded dismally back to the shore. Here he was joined by his two companions, who had evidently been following the chase with ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges

... when he was born his mother died, and a little later his father died also. Being thus left lonely in the world, he fell into the keeping of his uncle, Padre Juan, a grim priest who, having lost all happiness in life himself, saw little reason why he should seek to make the lives of others glad. Dismally the boy grew up in this narrow, cheerless home. The Padre fain would have made of him a priest also; but against this fate Pedro rebelled, and accepted, while yet a boy, the alternative means of livelihood that his uncle offered him in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... shoulders, bent forward his head, and croaked as dismally as ever his congeners croaked over a field of the slain in days gone by; and Yaspard nodded to him, then gave entire attention to the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... emptiness—the whole world one hollow cavern of vanity—lifeless and lightless, where the ghosts of the sorrows of men moan dismally, and the shadows of men's griefs scream out their wild agony upon the ghastly darkness! Night, through which no dawn shall ever gleam, fleet and fair, to touch with rosy fingers the eyes of a dead world and give them sight! Winter, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... the hillside an owl hooted dismally, and an instant later, faint and far away, came an answer so low as ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... result we have chronicled, there would have been but one fate for Hadley, death; for even if the ruffians had left life in him, ere the lapse of three hours he would have been devoured by wild beasts, a pack of which, howling dismally, and thirsting for blood, crossed the road where he had lain, and licked up the few drops that had run ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... loungers on Montmartre and the ramparts descended into the streets—most windows in which were open, as they had been all night, with anxious female faces peering palely down-they saw the conveyances of the ambulances coming dismally along, and many an eye turned wistfully towards the litter on which lay the idol of the pleasure-loving Paris, with the dark, bareheaded figure walking beside it,—onwards, onwards, till it reached the Hotel de Vandemar, and a woman's cry was heard at the entrance—the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quivering heat and whose towering chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The steel workers and their families live as a rule in two and three family houses, built of wood, generally unpainted, and always dismally utilitarian as ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... the ranch of a sudden lonely and quiet, Tommy poked his head anxiously out through a slit in the canvas bottom of the screen door and began to cry—his poor cracked voice, all broken from calling for help from the coyotes, quavering dismally. In his most raucous tones he continued this lament for his master until at last Hardy gathered him up and held him to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... white altar, which looked to me like a big tombstone with night-fog floating over it. Through the fog I saw two rows of wooden seats, with high backs; and in them sat men, all in black and white clothes, singing dismally. No—it wasn't singing, and it wasn't reading; but a long, rolling drawl, in which a few tones of music seemed buried and were pleading to get out. With this dreary sound, came the sobs and mournful shivers of the cold wind outside, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... you," she exclaimed, shaking her head dismally. "If you could only see the poor old creature now, so crippled up with the misery in her bones that she can't leave her chair, and nothing for her to do all day but sit and eat her heart out with longing for little Terence. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... that," replied Vance, dismally; "if I must be cooked whether I like it or not, I rather think I would like to ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... dismally and pointed ashore, and Mr. Chalk, following the direction of his finger, gazed spellbound at a figure which was signalling wildly from the highest point. Tredgold and Stobell, approaching the side, ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... tired me, and I sat rather dismally in the moonlight looking out at the closed white lilies and the swaying branches of the limes, until a text suddenly flashed into my mind, "As thy day, so shall thy strength be." I lit my candle and opened my Bible, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... said Julia, when she had brought him back to the library fire again, and they were seated before it. "Don't you want to smoke?" He shook his head dismally, having no heart for what she proposed. "Well, then," she said briskly, but a little ruefully, "let's get to the bottom of things. Just what did you mean you had 'in black ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... edge of the alley. Not that he had moved there, oh, no! He could not have endured life if all of it that he could call his own had to be spent in that atmosphere. He still kept his little fourth floor back in the dismally respectable street. He had not gone to the place recommended by Endicott, because he found that the difference he would have to pay would make it possible for him to rent this sad little room ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled the windows ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... gals," she persisted, "that thar hain't been a death in the house sence we took him in? An' I missed my reg'lar spell o' bronchitis last winter an' this one tew—so fur," she added dismally, and began to cough and lay her hands against her chest. "That was allus the way when I was a young 'un," she continued after a while; "I never had a pet dog or cat or even a tame chicken that it didn't up an' run erway sooner or later. This here loss, gals, 'll be the death o' me! ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... he was long getting to it—the sage brush grew dishearteningly thick. Happy began to be afraid of snakes. He went slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to himself. His only hope lay ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... continued at Tafelkop, and our limbs became stiffened with the cold, some of us went to an outhouse belonging to a neighbouring farm to seek shelter. During the day we sat there in our wet clothes staring dismally out into the rain. At night we tried to warm our naked bodies by covering ourselves with the dirty wool that happened to be lying there. All the outhouses in the neighbourhood were crowded with armed burghers in tatters. On the eighth day, when the welcome sun made its appearance once more, ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... won't know where to look for us. They'll hunt in every place except the right one. No one would ever dream we were on the roof," said May dismally. ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... going to get out at six?" asked the one-eyed girl, while I glanced dismally at the never-ending train of trucks that kept rolling out upon the washers' platform, faster now than at any other time of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... dungeons to the door which would restore to her eyes the being with whose life her existence seemed blended. The bolts had yielded to her hands. The iron latch now gave way; and the ponderous oak, grating dismally on its hinges, she looked forward, and beheld the object of all her solicitude leaning along a couch; a stone table was before him, at which he seemed writing. He raised his head at the sound. The peace of virtue was in his eyes, and a smile on ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Above the shadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset. Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken masses of metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound of trumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... man so excitedly, that he stopped short for an instant, in the middle of the dismally lashing rain, and looked at her with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes. "I thought so, I saw it at the first glance. You have a sister among the lady probationers at ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... large-tailed sheep and black goats, and blew into his flageolet, drawing from it, not music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked, leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both wore shepherd's garb—tunics fitting tight to the waist, large plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes were weak and red, and he blinked them so ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... was more pleasant than ever, and when darkness fully settled down it was even thrilling. We talked about bears. Then Hal told of mountain-lions and the habit they have of creeping stealthily after hunters. There was a hoot-owl crying dismally up in the woods, and down by the edge of the river bright-green eyes peered at us from the darkness. When the wind came up and moaned through the trees it was not hard to imagine we were out in the wilderness. This had been a favorite game for Hal and me; only tonight there seemed ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... dark and massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of caring for her. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... upper apartment of a cottage standing alone by the roadside on the outskirts of Boston, Miranda, pale and dejected, sat gazing vacantly at the light of the solitary lamp that lit the room. The clock was striking midnight, and the driving rain beat dismally against the window-blinds. But one month had passed since her elopement with Philip Searle, yet her wan cheeks and altered aspect revealed how much of suffering can be crowded into that little space of time. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... this and in the whole aspect of the place which astonished me greatly. If this sombre dwelling with its rich but dismally dark halls and mysterious recesses could be said to ever wear an air of cheer, the attempt certainly had been made to effect this to-day. From the hand of the bronze figure that capped the newel-post hung wreaths of smilax and a basket full of the most exquisite flowers; while from a half-open ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... afterward needed more would be issued. All in vain. The official tables of depreciation show that the assignats continued to fall. A forced loan, calling in a billion of these, checked this fall, but only for a moment. The "interconvertibility scheme" between currency and bonds failed as dismally as the "interconvertibility scheme" between currency and land had ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How nice it would be—the thought flashed through his mind—if all winds, like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they had such a ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... six days—Mac lost count—the transports rolled and creaked and swayed up the grey, lumpy swell, lurched over the crests and plunged away down into the troughs. The spray lifted over the bows and swept along the decks, the wind howled dismally through the rigging, and the ship was wet and comfortless. All was grey—the ships, the sky, the sea and the long trails of smoke fleeing away to leeward. Mac had found a good job on board, together with Joe of the Canterbury Squadron and Jock of his own squadron, in ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... dismally; "there is no best to it. I only wish I knew what they were going to do with us. Only fancy, after us taking all that ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... vulgarity of Musset's perfect little work. How could quality of talent consort with so dire an absence of quality in the material offered it? where could such lapses lead but to dust and desolation and what happy instinct not be smothered in an air so dismally non-conducting? Is it a foolish fallacy that these matters may have been on occasion, at that time, worth speaking of? is it only presumable that everything was perfectly cheap and common and everyone perfectly bad and barbarous and that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... dismally. "There was not much chance of fun on that long march; on board ship there was a storm all the way; then we were kept on board the transport at Cork nearly three months. Everyone was out of temper, and a mouse would not have dared ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... underbred man, Miguel tried to appear unconcerned, but failed dismally. Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly induced the application for Victor's aid. He, however, dissembled ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... sat at the window all afternoon, dismally trying to devise way of escape from the dilemma. He did not succeed. He had gone too far now to make a confession sound reasonably convincing; and he could not desert the girl to Dale. That was not to be thought of. And he was certain that if he admitted the deception, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... disappointed over this marriage himself. He admired Forrester intensely, and had looked to him to carry through successfully a thing which he was sure must have failed dismally in the ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... toward that end of the room devoted to the users of the musical instruments. In response came a deep, resonant note from Roberta's 'cello, over which the silent bow had been for some time suspended. There followed a minor scale, descending well into the depths and vibrating dismally as it went. Louis, a mocking light in his eye, strolled down the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... in a sloppy pile on the kitchen floor; and the vegetable rinds were left carelessly to rot in the bucket beside the sink. The old neatness and order had departed before the garments my mother had washed were returned again to the tub, and day after day I saw my father shake his head dismally over the soggy bread and the underdone beef. Whether or not he ever realised that it was my mother's hand that had kept him above the surface of life, I shall never know; but when that strong grasp was relaxed, he went hopelessly, irretrievably, and unresistingly under. In the beginning there ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... friend how delighted he was to have been asked. But just then the Cook caught sight of him, and, in his annoyance at seeing a strange Dog in the kitchen, caught him up by the hind legs and threw him out of the window. He had a nasty fall, and limped away as quickly as he could, howling dismally. Presently some other dogs met him, and said, "Well, what sort of a dinner did you get?" To which he replied, "I had a splendid time: the wine was so good, and I drank so much of it, that I really don't remember how I got out ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... along the path, and saw a forlorn woman tightly wrapped in a brown shawl, carrying a basket on her arm, and looking sadly down at her own calf-skin shoes, which squeaked dismally ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May

... dangerous innovation upon time-honored customs, which under the ante bellum regime, had kept Southern women as ignorant of practical business routine, as of the origin of the Weddas of Ceylon, Miss Patty bitterly opposed and lamented her brother's decision; dismally predicting that the result must inevitably be the transformation of their refined, delicate, clinging "Southern lady", into that abhorred monster—"a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... behave," predicted Harry dismally. "After all our trouble we shall still have to remain on guard ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... that I should myself prefer to live elsewhere, framing our household on very simple lines—and to let the power of writing come back if it would, not to try and force it. It would be a dreadful prospect to me to live thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dismally for money; but I suppose it would be possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly; on the one hand the very associations, which I dread most, were evidently to her a source of sad delight; and the thought of strangers living in rooms so hallowed by grief was ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... rain has ceased falling, but the sky is still gray and threatening. The wind howls dismally among the old trees that surround John Burrill's shallow grave, and its weird wail, combined with the rattle and creak of the branches, and the drip, drip of water, dropping from the many crevices into the old cellar, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels, and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... had weighed me down when with the United Woollen. This was no waiting game. Neither your pioneer nor your true emigrant sits down and waits. Here was something which depended solely upon my own efforts for its success or failure. And I knew that it wasn't possible to fail so dismally but what the joy of the struggle ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... made from driftwood, they reached once more the outer world, having learned the lesson the Colorado is sure to teach those who regard it lightly. We made a portage at the place and enjoyed a good laugh when we looked at the vertical rocks and pictured the prospectors dismally crawling out of the roaring waters with nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Our opinion was, they were served just right: first, because they had stolen our property, and, second, because they had so little sense. The walls had rapidly grown in altitude, and near the river ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... groaned the lion dismally. Just then the darkness lifted as suddenly as it had fallen, and Dorothy saw him leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. There was a big bump on his head. With a little cry of sympathy, Dorothy hurried toward him, ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... and Polly really did. Now, baby was heavy, and cross with its teeth; and Polly didn't feel like tending it one bit. Mamma hurried away to the kitchen; and Polly walked up and down the room with poor baby hanging over her arm, crying dismally, with a pin in its back, a wet bib under its chin, and nothing cold and hard to bite with its hot, aching gums, where the little teeth ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... looked at each other dismally when they had ascertained the cause of the Sky-Bird's sluggish flying. Paul and Tom even gave the craft a tentative push, and found that the loss of her helium had made her so much heavier to move over the ground that the difference was manifest ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... apart, may yet freely communicate with each other by means of subterranean river courses. I have myself followed one river course into the bowels of the earth for three miles and more, in the great Adelsberg Grotto, in Styria. I have rowed across the lake in the dismally dark cavern at Han, in the Ardennes. And even in our own Derbyshire, I have seen, half-a-mile from the entrance of the Speedwell Mine, a river, a water-fall, and a lake, all of which tell that such natural phenomena exist within the bowels of the earth as well as upon its ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... "Yes," said Cashel, dismally, "I suppose I am. I—By Jingo," he cried, with sudden animation, "perhaps you can give me a lift here. I never thought of that. I say, mamma; I am in great trouble at present, and I think you can help ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... see him safely bestowed—in the lock-up aft, and bring the key to my cabin." So at Godby's word, in came two armed fellows and marched out Resolution Day, his head still bowed and his fetters jangling dismally. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Oswald, dismally repentant, handed Castel Forte a letter to Corinne in which he begged permission to see her. In answer she declined the permission, but asked to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... had attended Maggie's advent into society. It was the high-flying brent who, knowing how the sensitive girl, made keenly conscious at every turn of her defective training and ingenuous ignorance, had often watched their evening flight with longing gaze, now "honked" dismally at the recollection. It was at this hour and season that the usual vague lamentings of Dedlow Marsh seemed to find at last a preordained expression. And it was at such a time, when light and water were ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... among the snow, where a keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude: round which the wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, and four horses ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... house was finished he used it at its full value. Summer was gone and autumn was coming, a great rain poured and the wind blew cold. Dead leaves fell in showers from the trees, and the boughs swaying before the gale creaked dismally against each other. But it all gave to Henry a supreme sense of physical comfort. He lay in his snug hut, and, pulling a little to one side the heavy buffalo robe that hung over the doorway, watched the storm rage through the wilderness. He had ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a black bandage,—as if that instrument could possibly communicate any comfort to anybody,—were posted at the front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... after him with bulging eyes. Gray Stoddard married to Johnnie! He tried to adjust his dull wits to the new position of affairs; tried to cipher the problem with this amazing new element introduced. Last night's scene of violence when the injured child was brought home went dismally before his eyes. Laurella had said she would leave him so soon as she could put foot to the floor. He had expected to coax her with gifts and money, with concessions in regard to the children if it ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... grief; for in sorrow, as in joy, every Indian shares with all the others. The old women stood still, wherever they might be, and wailed dismally, at intervals chanting the praises of the departed warriors. The wives went a little way from their teepees and there audibly mourned; but the young maidens wandered further away from the camp, where no one could witness their grief. The old men joined ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... he stood watching for the one which took him nearest to his door, that he made the slight reflection with which this story opens. "Could I make a horse-car the hero of my story?" he asked himself, with a petulant tone, as he thought how dismally dull he was. The jingling car came up, and he jumped upon the rear platform, wedged his way through the men and boys who crowded the steps and platform, and so pushed into the interior. He found half a dozen men in various attitudes of neglect, but all hanging abjectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... arisen, I began to fear that they had been driven back before it, but hoped to find them at the camp of the previous night. Pulling off the heavy boots in which I had been walking all day, I almost ran the ten miles, only to find the fishermen's hut we had occupied dismally dark and silent. Another ten miles was made in all haste, and still no signs of the party. Here, being very thirsty, I felt my way in the darkness to a spring, from which we had previously obtained good fresh water. Dipping my cup, I swallowed a hearty draught of salt water, which had ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... said Leander, dismally. "Me and Johnnie don't ask for nothin' better than to bask in each other's company; but our wives insists on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance the whole ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... warn him of impending evil. The traditions of the house told that the Barons of Duncan had again and again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some of them had yielded and withdrawn from the venture they had undertaken, and it had failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, and had hardened their hearts, and had gone on reckless of defeat and to death. In no case had a Lord Duncan been exposed to peril ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... rocked joyously on the water; the sound of wood creaking dismally was heard, the rain fell softly on the deck, the waves beat against the sides. Everything resounded sadly like the lullaby of a mother who has lost all hope for the happiness ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... and grasping his skirts went hastily below. The mate was half lying, half sitting, in his bunk, groaning dismally. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... was still a tense feeling of dread expectation hanging like a cloud over the land. During the whole of that long night the author was an observer from an overcrowded train which left Nuremberg at 9 p.m. and rumbled dismally into Cologne the next morning at ten o'clock. Every station, great and small, was crowded with anxious, expectant crowds; the smaller stations full of spectators and relatives bidding farewell to departing soldiers, and the greater ones crowded with ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... nature of emigration. Day by day throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all the States, and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Dismally" :   dreadfully



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