"Gloom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all done with. Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's Song, had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The Confeds took to the woods, and so the Confederate camp was not as orderly or as systematically arranged, but the most picturesque of the two. The blazing fire lit up the forms and faces and trees around it with a ruddy glow, but only deepened the gloom of the surrounding woods; so that the soldier pitied the poor fellows away off on guard in the darkness, and, hugging himself, felt how good it was to be with the fellows around the fire. How companionable was the blaze ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... 3,000 rifles a week for the Allies on the 1st of December, 1915, and 5,000 a week March 1, 1916, was enjoying an era of "boom" prosperity, thanks to the eager market of nations whose own production was arrested while their workers were at war. From the gloom of London and Paris, where men and women had given up all luxuries, the transatlantic voyage brought you to New York, which was the only gay capital in the world, enjoying all the privileges of extravagance when money ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never—to paraphrase a recent poet—never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid guarantees for ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... he spent within doors or in the garden. But his thoughts brooded over his forlorn and desperate condition; and the gloom on his countenance betrayed the uneasiness of his mind. Fortunately in the afternoon he received by John Penderell a welcome message from Lord Wilmot, to meet him that night at the house of Mr. Whitgrave, a recusant, at Moseley. The king's feet were so swollen ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... cavalier to walk by her sedan, as her mother and she traversed the rough streets. He handed her out at the old Assembly door, but she flung away his hand, and followed her mother alone within the dignified precincts, leaving a gloom and a storm on a lowering brow, unshaded by the cocked hat, then carried under ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Christ and the Baptist, traditional figures, are drawn without much zest, in a weak, conventional way, but the artist's true interest comes out in the beauty of face and gesture of the group of women holding the garments, and above all in the sombre gloom of the distance, which replaces Cima's charming landscape, and which keys the whole picture to the significance of a portent. In the enthronement of the old hermit, S. Chrysostom himself, painted in 1513, Bellini keeps his love for the golden dome, but he lets us look through its arch, at ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... whose justice shut not out compassion, having now declared her purposed firmness, again attempted to sooth her, entreating her not to give way to such immoderate grief, since better prospects might arise from the very gloom now before her, and a short time spent in solitude and oeconomy, might enable her to return to her native ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to time the lightning darted into the gloom and lingered amongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the floors on which I stood were strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the fossilized relics of races destroyed by the Deluge. The rain continued for more than two hours with unabated violence; then ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could hear them from more beds than I cared to count. Sorrow sat heavily in the ward for my sake. It distressed me to think of the effect of all this depression upon the nervous systems of these poor people. I passed from case to case, and watched the ill-effects of the general gloom with a sense of professional disappointment which only physicians will understand as coming uppermost in a man's mind under circumstances ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... battle-flame; From the Wood and the Waste And the Dale did they haste: They saw the storm rise, And with untroubled eyes The war-storm they met; And the rain ruddy-wet. O'er the Dale then was litten the Candle of Day, Night-sorrow was smitten, and gloom fled away. How the grief-shackles sunder! How many to morn Shall awaken and wonder how gladness was born! O wont unto sorrow, how sweet unto you Shall be pondering to-morrow what ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... on the plain, each village on the hills, each lonely farmhouse at the skirt of forest or the edge of lake, smouldered like a red Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars. The flames waxed and waned, leapt into tongues, or disappeared. As they passed from gloom to brilliancy and died away again, they seemed almost to move. The twilight scene was like that of a vast city, filling the plain and climbing the heights in terraces. Is this custom, I thought, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... defects in those final pages of his book which had been written under such terrible conditions. Mrs. Froude had thoroughly understood all her husband's moods, and her quiet humour always cheered him in those hours of gloom from which a man of his sensitive nature could not escape. She could use a gentle mockery which was always effective, along with her common sense, in bringing out the true proportions of things. Conscious as she was of his social brilliancy and success, she would often tell the children ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... more they could do, however, and that was to make the dinner a failure. They barely replied to the efforts of the men to "make things go" and gloom settled over the table. Madame Zattiany continued to talk with placidity or animation to the men beside her, and Clavering started a running fire with Anne Goodrich, who, almost as angry as himself, loyally helped him, on censorship, the latest books and plays, even the situation in Washington; ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and happy, blithesome birds Are singing on the swaying boughs in bloom. My eyes look forth and see no sign of gloom, No loss casts shadow on the grazing herds; And yet I bear within a grief that words Can ne'er express, for in the silent tomb Is laid the body of my friend, the doom Of silence on that matchless voice. Now girds My spirit for the struggle ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... slam it with extraordinary violence; after which he walked up the street with gloom in his soul and a wretched feeling of apprehension that the baby would ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... admiration of some few half dozen casual yet attentive visitors—while the full sonorous chant, from the voices of upwards of one hundred and fifty priests and deacons, from the choir above, gave a peculiar sort of solemnity to the mysterious gloom below. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... uttered against me, would have no more altered my opinion of his disposition, nor disturbed my affection for him, than the momentary clouding over of a bright sky could leave an impression on the mind of gloom, after ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and Lawry were stunned by the heavy blow. The light of earthly joys seemed suddenly to have gone out, and left them in the gloom and woe of disgrace. There was nothing to be said at such a time, and they sobbed in silence, until the sound of the ferry-horn roused Lawry from his lethargy of grief. Some one wished to cross the lake, and had given the usual signal with the tin horn, ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... dark days come over this Republic, and there is nothing in the future but gloom and despondency, I will do as WASHINGTON once said he would do in similar circumstances: I will gather the last handful of faithful men, carry them to the mountains of Western Virginia, and there set up the flag of the Union. It shall be defended there against all assailants until ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... land them hicks?" It was Gray's driver speaking. Through the gloom of early evening he was guiding his car back toward Ranger. The road was the same they had come, but darkness had invested it with unfamiliar perils, or so it seemed, for the headlights threw every rock and ridge into bold relief and left the holes ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... There was incongruity deeper than their bizarre externals; a half-melancholy, half-crazy absurdity in their action, the substitution of a grim spasmodic frenzy for levity, that rightly or wrongly impressed me. When the increasing gloom of the evening made their figures undistinguishable, I turned into the first cross-street. As I lifted my hat to my persistent young friend with the Pritsche, I fancied she looked as relieved as myself. If, however, I was mistaken; ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Ashley to see if he had perhaps gone there to spend the night with his aunt. The line was busy of course, and Mrs. Bayweather was still trying to get them on the wire when I had to come away. If she had no special favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light, Amid th' Encircling Gloom' is always ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... dismal Jeremiahs wail Of Bolshevists within our gates, And, though the Master of The M**l In sad seclusion vegetates, The rising tide of gloom recoils Once the inspiring news is known That mines are good in spots, and oils ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... peers out into the dark, And childish faces—frightened at the gloom— Grow awed and vacant as they turn to mark The father's as he passes through the room: The gate latch clatters, and wee baby Bess Whispers, "The doctor's ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... disaster, which brought unutterable gloom and sorrow upon the home, was unquestionably the work of the god. With bated breath people talked of the tragic end of this beautiful girl, who had won her way into the hearts of all who knew her; but they recognized that her death ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... which the scene has excited, and with a grateful heart you would thank God that he had permitted you to gaze unharmed upon this majestic display of his handiwork. But as it is, the spirit of man sympathizes with the deep gloom of the scene, and the brain reels as you gaze into this profound ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... into the sun. On the hillsides it would be light for more than an hour yet, but below, where the waters tossed themselves along in a chorus of tiny cascades, the light was already thickening into a cathedral gloom. Down there the "furriner" would have seen only the rough course of the creek between moss-velveted and shaded bowlders of titanic proportions. The native would have recognized the country road in these tortuous twistings. Now there were no travelers, foreign or ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... word. It is midnight and past, he is still speaking. Meantime Gamelin in the Council Hall, his bent brow pressed against a window, looks out with a haggard eye and sees the lamps flare and smoke in the gloom. Hanriot's cannon are parked before the Hotel de Ville. In the black Place de Greve surges an anxious crowd, in uncertainty and suspense. At half past twelve torches are seen turning the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, escorting a delegate of the Convention, clad ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... gloom upon the people. Oloof put the question, "If one man die so hard, how hard will die the three ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... run cold to hear this unseen creature weeping in the gloom. Moving cautiously in the direction of the sound, he stumbled against a man with his folded arms resting on the railings, and his face bent down on his arms. He made no attempt to turn when Lucian touched him, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... one light; and the absence of this now caused Collins heartily to wish himself in the boat, and safely moored under cover of the fort. Not that the soldier was influenced by the apprehension of personal danger, but because the deep gloom, the solitude and silence of the scene, coupled with his newly-awakened interest in the almost corpse that lay in close contact with his person, impressed him with a sort of superstitious feeling, not at all lessened ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... especially bitter, and to recover from such a shock and sense of irreparable loss seems almost impossible. The mind, unsatisfied with details of the sad event, is left in shadow which deepens into heavy gloom. Mr. Martyn was all alone and felt it keenly and inexpressibly. Some of his most intimate and sympathetic friends at this time, realizing how it was not good for him to be alone, encouraged him to renew his matrimonial offer to his ever beloved L. After her refusal he ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... themselves enable us to trace the life and progress of human history; we see in Ireland a land full of a singular fascination and beauty, where even the hills and rivers speak not of themselves but of the spirit which builds the worlds; a beauty, whether in brightness or gloom, finding its exact likeness in no other land; we see all this, but we see much more: not a memory of the past, but a promise of the future; no offering of earthly wealth, but rather a gift to the soul of man; not for Ireland only, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... full of fire, The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.... O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way— All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day, And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom, And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom. And yet when I am extra good ... [here I omit the transfusion of Riley] My bottle spreads a rainbow mist, and from the vapor fine Ten thousand troops from fairyland come ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... at eleven last night, fell from five till eight this morning, not in drops, but in streams, and in the middle of it a heavy pall of blackness (said to be a total eclipse) enfolded all things in a lurid gloom. Any detention is exasperating within one day of my journey's end, and I hear without equanimity that there are great difficulties ahead, and that our getting through in three or even four days is doubtful. I hope you will not be tired of the monotony of my letters. Such as they are, they represent ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... glancing quickly through each. He was a young man of twenty-two or three, with quick, observant manners, a keen eye, and a not handsome face, and as he stood there the face was bent on Cotherstone with a surmising look. Stoner had noticed his employer's thoughtful attitude, the gloom in which Cotherstone sat, the decanter on the table, the glass in Cotherstone's hand, and he knew that Cotherstone was telling a fib when he said he had been asleep. He noticed, too, the six sovereigns ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... gloom fell over the meeting, and as no one else seemed to care to speak, people began adjourning on all sides of Emma. After every one else had gone she adjourned. There was no further attempt to hold a caucus that year, and even now when any school faction desires to get together and discuss things, ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... very dark; the parson drew in his head, and thanked Heaven that the country was so fine and open, that he could even in the gathering gloom see far behind and before, and could perceive no ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... France, such is the tone of society and the only mode of pleasing the ladies, the sovereigns of society and the arbiters of good taste. Add to this the absence of the causes which produce modern dreariness, and which convert the sky above our heads into one of leaden gloom. There was no laborious, forced work in those days, no furious competition, no uncertain careers, no infinite perspectives. Ranks were clearly defined, ambitions limited, there was less envy. Man was not habitually dissatisfied, soured and preoccupied as he is nowadays. Few ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... return to Mexico. They had brought pallor to her cheeks and melancholy into her heart. So much, that not all the honours to which her father had been restored—not all the compliments paid to herself, nor the Court gaieties in which she was expected to take part—could win her from a gloom that seemed likely to become settled ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... me from whom comes the bolt through the gloom, with its awful and terrible flashes; And wherever it turns, some it singes and burns, and some it reduces to ashes: For this 'tis quite plain, let who will send the rain, that Zeus against ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... suddenly take stronger hues of life. It was as if his faded figure had been colored over anew, or at least, as he and Pansie moved along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, instead of the gray gloom of an instant before. His chilled sensibilities had probably been touched and quickened by the warm contiguity of his little companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or some inflection of ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have even a moment's respite from the grief and gloom which must follow the sad intelligence of the loss of Captain Kendall, led the way to ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... o'clock in the morning the Governor arises to pull on his boots. The moon is now obscured, and a drizzly rain is falling. The camp fires are still burning, but beyond the lines of sleeping men, all is darkness and gloom. The sentinels out there in the night are listening to strange sounds. Through the tall grass of the swamp lands terrible forms are creeping, like snakes on their bellies, towards the camp. The painted and feather-bedecked warriors of the Prophet ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... hostile restraint, whether one be German or British. "Even if ideal conditions prevailed, one could not remove the unavoidable feeling of restraint and the sorrow of separation of men from their wives and families. There is in all the camps a feeling of gloom which one visitor said 'haunted him for days.' It is scarcely surprising that feelings of resentment should arise. Many of the men have lived in this country for twenty or thirty years; some have come over here as young children, some are even unable ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... I could pity some one other than myself helped to raise my spirits. At any rate I managed to shake off a little of my gloom and tramped on up the Lane, feeling more like a human being and less like a yellow dog. Less as I should imagine a yellow dog ought to feel, I mean, for, as a matter of fact, most yellow dogs of my acquaintance ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... core of psychological romance, and a rich surface finish of description. His style, at its best, has a subdued splendor of coloring which is only less wonderful than the spiritual perceptions with which this magician was endowed. The gloom which haunts many of his pages, as I have said elsewhere, is the long shadow cast by our mortal destiny upon a sensitive soul. The mystery is our mystery, perceived, and not created, by that finely endowed mind and heart. The shadow is our ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... it, to disentangle yourself from it as soon as you can. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of the gamester; a life of constant anxiety; constant desire to over-reach; constant apprehension; general gloom, enlivened, now and then, by a gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to further adventures; and, at last, a thousand to one, that your fate is that of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... evening!—Madame Chebe sat by the table mending; M. Chebe before the fire drying his clothes, which were wet through by his having walked a long distance in the rain. Oh! that miserable room, overflowing with gloom and ennui! The lamp gave a dim light. The supper, hastily prepared, had left in the room the odor of the poor man's kitchen. And Risler, intoxicated with joy, talking with increasing ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... upon injuries, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies." There is no misery worse than that of a mind which broods continually over its own wrongs, be they real or only fancied. There is no gloom so deep and dark as that which settles on a hard and unrelenting soul. And, on the other hand, there is no joy so pure, there is none so rewarding, as that of one who, from his heart, has learned to say, "I forgive." He has tasted the very joy of God, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter by such a symbol. How easy it would have been for a great designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. But here you have nothing to interest you, except the common Greek perfections of a straight nose and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... pillars and other dark masses of rock sprang up and up till her eye lost them in the darkness; and if there was a roof, she could not see it. A drip from above made a plash about once in a minute in the pool; and the murmur from without was so subdued—appeared to be so swallowed up in vastness and gloom—that the minute drop was loud in comparison. Lady Carse lay down on the soft sand, to rest, and listen, and think—to ponder plans of hiding and escape. All her meditations brought her round to the same point: that three things ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... fell upon me. She kept up a desultory conversation as we went along Piccadilly in the dreary gloom of that dull January afternoon, but I only replied in monosyllables, until at ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... gloom of the prison, they took the electric car to Scheveningen, the famous sea-side resort. The season was hardly begun yet, so there were but few visitors. However, the sands dotted with their peculiar wicker shelters and the beautiful blue North Sea were there. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... awoke in the nobles and towns of South France; without great battles, merely by the revolt of vassals tired of his rule, Edward III again lost all the territories conquered with such great glory, except a few coast towns. Then a gloom settled down around the aged conqueror. He saw his eldest son, who, though obliged to quit France, in England enjoyed the fullest confidence and had every prospect of a great future, sicken away and die. And he too experienced, what befalls so many others, that misfortune abroad raised him up ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Runkle, that splendid lad was absorbed, almost to the point of gloom, in watching at every station for a sign of a spy ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... across a narrow bridge, over a strip of sward at the other side of the river, and into a grove of fir which presently deepened and thickened as it spread up a gently shelving hillside. The lights of the town behind them disappeared; the gloom increased; presently they were alternately crossing patches of moonlight and plunging into expanses of blackness. And Betty, after stumbling over one or two of the half-exposed roots which lay across the rough path, slipped a ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... earliest day, And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeming themselves predestin'd to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.[1] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... loved it. She feared to be alone in it—it was so still and holy, and then it made such deep shadows where it did not shine! Yes! Helen would have been happy in a world of sunshine—but we are born for the shadow as well as the sunbeam, and they who cannot walk unfearing through the gloom, as well as the brightness, are ill-fitted for the pilgrimage ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... wealth. I would not want to bring in on lifted fingers the meats which another eats. Nor would I choose to be a locksmith, which is a kind of squint-eyed business, up two dismal stairs and at the rear. A gas lamp flares at the turn. A dingy staircase mounts into a thicker gloom. The locksmith consorts with pawnbrokers, with cheap sign-makers and with disreputable doctors; yet he is not of them. For there adheres to him a sort of romance. He is a creature of another time, set in our midst by the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... rarefy an intellect already too ethereal for this work-a-day world, and to plunge its owner into fits of depression which were rendered dreadful by sudden forebodings of evil that would leap to life in the recesses of her mind, and for a moment cast a lurid glare upon its gloom, such as at night the lightning gives to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Dandy, stand by de moorings, or stop?" demanded Cyd, whose ivories were now distinctly visible in the gloom of the night. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... path and see, but now lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.' That is what I repeat over and over to myself. 'Lead, kindly light, amidst th' encircling gloom.' The encircling gloom! Oh, dear!" She suddenly broke off, "I wish morning would come." It did finally, and with it, when the approaching sun began to pinken the eastern sky, sleep for my ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... flits through the drawings of a certain famous cartoonist. Mr. Blue's mission is to take the joy out of life and Charlotte Whipp was his blood kin. The tip of her long nose was as chilly as his and her gloom was similarly chronic. Miss Upton was determined that she would not be the first to break ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... separated, not to meet again for days; for Dan Anderson shut himself up in his cabin and denied himself to all. Gloom and uncertainty reigned among his friends. That a crisis of some sort was imminent now became generally understood. At ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... only struck me as enchantingly peaceful and shady, gradually filled with strangely terrifying shadows; the hue of the broad swards deepened into a darkness I did not dare interpret, whilst in the house, in its every passage, nook, and corner, a gloom arose that, seeming to come from the very bowels of the earth, brought with it every possible ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... who breakfasted at the grisly hour of a quarter-to-six, takes command, and the dolorous procession disappears into the gloom. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... this Procopius, is an instance of the gloomy libeller, whose very gloom makes affidavit of his foul spirit from the first. There is also another form, less odious, of the hostile libeller: it occurs frequently in cases where the writer is not chargeable with secret malice, but is in a monstrous passion. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... at him. A keen, practical, continent face, with small mercy for whims and shallow reasons. Whatever feeling or gloom lay beneath, a blunt man, a truth-speaker, bewildered by feints or shams. She must give a reason for what she did. The word she spoke would be written in his memory, ineffaceable. He waited. She could not speak; she looked at the small vigilant figure: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was no more than a flash that deepened the gloom with which he recalled the disaster to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... that Gray died without a suspicion of the high rank he was thereafter to hold in the annals of British genius? What did poor Collins think when he submitted his sublime odes to the flames? He must have had fits of confidence, even then, in himself; but intermixed with gloom and despair, and curses of the wretched doom of his birth! Is it sufficient that a man should wrap himself up in himself, and be content if the poetry creates itself and expires in his own heart? We strike the lyre to excite sympathy, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... had the courage to collect," replied Shirley, and Jane then felt the obligation of quickly shifting the subject, for just a hint of gloom crossed the country girl's face ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... have taken to walking about as if they were guests at their own funerals. It is hardly in their line to play the justum et tenacem of Horace. Always acting, they are now acting the part of Spartans. It is somewhat amusing to see the stern gloom on the face of patriots one meets, who were singing and shouting a few days ago—more particularly as it is by no means difficult to distinguish beneath this outward gloom a certain keen relish, founded upon the feeling that the part ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... been captured threw quite a gloom over us, Sir Gervaise," the countess said. "We at first consoled ourselves with the thought that you would speedily be ransomed; but when months passed by, and we heard that all the efforts of the grand master ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the tenants of the tomb! With envy I their lot survey! For Sayid shares the solemn gloom, And ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... by the waning moon, When skies proclaim night's cheerless gloom, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round; And should a footstep haply stray Where caution marks the guarded way, Who goes there? Stranger, quickly tell, A friend. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... were we As we guarded the Manse long ago; Moving soft through each room In the twilight's gray gloom While the fire on ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... cat arched his back, gave a spring, and seized it. A moment later he softly trotted out of the orchard with the poor bird in his mouth and doubtless made a dainty dinner in the barn off our unfortunate comrade. This incident cast a deep gloom over us, and our songs for many days ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... above) is above or superior to the recognized powers of nature; the preternatural (preter, beyond) is aside from or beyond the recognized results or operations of natural law, often in the sense of inauspicious; as, a preternatural gloom. Miraculous is more emphatic and specific than supernatural, as referring to the direct personal intervention of divine power. Some hold that a miracle, as the raising of the dead, is a direct suspension and even violation of natural ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Henry Smith, at that time a resident of Cincinnati. "It was on the 13th of February that Mr. Lincoln reached the Queen City. The day was mild for mid-winter, but the sky was overcast with clouds, emblematic of the gloom that filled the hearts of the unnumbered thousands who thronged the streets and covered the house-tops. Lincoln rode in an open carriage, standing erect with uncovered head, and steadying himself by holding on to a board fastened to the front part of the vehicle. A more uncomfortable ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... fancy that our lost happiness might be regained by mere change of scene, and I confess I was persuaded somewhat to this opinion by reflecting how much we owe to circumstances for our varying moods, how dull, sunless days will cast a gloom upon our spirits, and how a bright, breezy day will lift them up, etc. But I presently perceived that the stream of her thoughts was divided; for though she nodded or shook her head, as occasion required, the strained, earnest expression in her tightened lips and ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... made the girls get ready early and go a little way down the sandy lane to meet the two coming from Seacove. Bridget was gloomy, but Alie was particularly cheerful, and after a while the younger sister's gloom gave way before the sunshine and the fresh air ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... again; When passion, vice, and fancy quit their sway, When lawless pleasure trembling shrinks away, While black conviction's rushing whirlwinds quench Her smoky torch, and leave a sickening stench; And thro' the soul's chill gloom, fierce conscience pours His fiery arrows in resistless showers. But, as accumulated guilt oppress'd With stronger obstacles his hardening breast, Faint and more faint the dread awakenings grew, And their subsiding terrors soon ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... life. His "Sepulchres" breathes the sweetest and most pathetic tenderness, and the brightest hopes of immorality. The poems of Foscolo have the grace and elegance of the Greek poets; but in his "Sepulchres" the gloom of his melancholy imagination throws a funereal light over the nothingness of all things, and the silence of death is unbroken by any voice of hope in a future life. Torti (1774-1852), a pupil of Parini, rivaled his master in the simplicity of style and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the brightness of early afternoon, in which all things were actively visible, could sufficiently adjust themselves to distinguish objects in the shadowy gloom, they were thrust into a room, the door of which was bolted after them, and they were left ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... poignant short bark and leaped heavily to one side. His bared teeth traced a line of whiteness through the gloom. The next instant he dashed past his master's legs, almost upsetting his balance, and shot out into the room, where he went blundering wildly against walls and furniture. But that bark was significant; the doctor had heard it before and knew what it meant: for it was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... charge which Westby had flung at him so furiously, Irving looked in amazement to the other boys for an explanation. They were all Corinthians, and he saw gloom and resentment in ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... speeding with the current down the centre of Indian creek. Peering from their concealment, Kendrick and the detective could discern the blacker outlines of the craft and its occupants as it sped forth from the gloom of the forest into the starlit area of the tiny lake. The great canoe was low in the water; for heaped in the centre of it was what was evidently a pile of freight, with two men in front and two behind. The steersman swung the prow around and on they went up the Wolverine without ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... gaze into this glass at night, But all your race will gibber at your back! Look—in the gloom—that shade is Mad Johanna, And yonder Thing, that moves so deathly slow, Is the pale sovereign in his ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... heavy clouds, driven by the winds, obscured the sky; hardly one star could be seen through the increasing gloom. The house, with its irregular gables, was completely buried in darkness, except the two windows of the ground-floor, from which streamed a red light, reflected like long trains of fire on the troubled waters near the landing-place, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... her, got up and opened the door. He stood there for a time, looking out into the gloom of early nightfall. He seemed to be listening, Lorraine thought. When he came back to her his voice was ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and Hart minor entered the dining-room they at once perceived that an atmosphere of gloom and menacing storm was overhanging the school. Their spirits had hitherto been unflagging; they sat next to each other at the tea-table, but no sooner had they sat down than they were seized by that ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... but I became intensely aware of your presence. Of course I knew it could not be you, in the flesh, but you it seemed to be, nevertheless. I moved as though led by an invisible hand, and presently I found a bit of shattered wall. In the gloom I could just discern the form of a man lying in the shelter of the wall—if you could call it shelter—it rose scarce ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the tender gloaming Was sinking in evening's gloom, And only the glow of the firelight Brightened the dark'ning room, I laughed with the gay heart-gladness That only to mothers is known, For the beautiful brown-eyed baby Took ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... land lament In which a lifetime spent Is as a hurried breath? Where splendor turns to gloom, and honors show A faded wreath, Where health and healing soon must sink beneath The ...
— Hebrew Literature
... quietly slipped away from the party, and he noticed with intense gloom that his departure did not seem to make as much difference as it should. For a whole afternoon he was silent, and many corrugations formed temporarily in his brow, indicating resolved thought. Nor were appearances wrong, because the "King" ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... steeled ourselves to dread; To see at night his empty bed; To feel the silence and the gloom That hovers o'er his vacant room, And though we wept the day he went, And many a lonely hour we've spent, We've come to think as he, somehow, And we are more contented now; We're proud that we can stand and say We have a boy who's gone away. And we are glad to know that ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... her happiness, for Mabel was happy then—she turned away from the mad-house, touched with momentary gloom and, taking James Harrington's arm moved to the other side of the boat, and leaning upon him watched the sun go down. Thus, with the rich twilight falling softly around them, these two noble beings drifted into ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... I am getting into my dotage, I look on the dark side of everything. I am invited to a wedding and see naught but gloom; and, witnessing the coronation of Leopold II, at Prague, I say to myself, 'Nolo coronari'. Cursed old age, thou art only worthy of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... evening meal. From time to time the ranger thrust a stick into the fire, and so kept the flames alive. But it was a dim little blaze at best. Yet it was mighty cheering and comforting as the darkness wrapped the forest, and the gloom beneath the rhododendron thicket became ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... shadowy forms silently emerged,—the savages come to visit them! They glided out of the black forest into the ring of firelight and squatted upon the ground until fully five hundred dusky faces looked out at the travelers from the gloom. It was rather an unpleasant situation, there in the depths of the forest, but Mackay turned it to good account. First he and Captain Bax made presents to the headmen and they were as pleased as children to receive the gay ornaments and bright ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... vigorous, chaste, and full of harmony, Deep in the soil of our humanity It taketh root, until the goodly tree Of Poesy puts forth green branch and bough, With bud and blossom sweet. Through the rich gloom Of one embowered haunt I see thee now, Where 'neath thy hand the "Flower and Leaflet" bloom. That hand to dust hath mouldered long ago, Yet its creations ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... that it keeps the attention chained. The description indeed of poor Mary's grief and despair are hardly to be outdone. The plot contains a delicate situation, most delicately worked out. Not a word or suspicion of a word jars upon the reader. It is not however all gloom. There is in it a second pair of lovers who help to lift the clouds, and bring a smile to the ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... gave my consent, on condition that I should be free at once. We were wedded in the gloom—ere sunrise—a thunderstorm coming up, which so darkened the church that if she had been a peerless beauty, fair as Cressid herself, I could not have seen her, and even had she been beauty itself, nought can to me be such as my Eleanor. So ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not want Ilbert's commendation; he hated that Mary should quote his opinions. He lay back in the hansom, staring before him, and his expression was one of unmixed gloom. Even her neighbourhood had no power to cheer him, although at first he had had a sensation of delight in her nearness to him, the perfume as of flowers that hung about her, the soft folds of her dress which he ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... this Jew, bound by the prejudices of past generations, weighed down by the bigotry of human creeds, educated in the schools of an effete philosophy, struggling through the darkness and gloom which surrounded him, when as a persecutor he sought to annihilate the disciples of a new faith, there came this vision into his life; there dawned the electric light of a great truth, which found beneath ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... could be ruthlessly taken from its mother and given away; that a family could be scattered by sale, to meet no more; that to teach a slave to read was punishable with death to the teacher. But why rehearse this dead past—this terrible night of suffering and gloom? Why not let its remembrance be effaced and forgotten in the glorious light of a ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... of gloom for England but pointing a fresh star for the career of Lloyd George. Although the first wave of Kitchener's new army had dashed against the German lines in France and established another tradition for British valour, the air of England became charged ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... man, too fat for his years, which may have been some twenty-eight. He played the best hand of all of them, and, as my aunt declared, that was quite enough; for the rest she could keep any man in order. I held back in the gloom of the hall, looking at their busy gaiety, and wondering what they would ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... a gloom pervaded the atmosphere; only the excitement of preparations for the evening could have proved an ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... last, after a long and weary night to many within and without the abbey. Every thing betokened a dismal day. The atmosphere was damp, and oppressive to the spirits, while the raw cold sensibly affected the frame. All astir were filled with gloom and despondency, and secretly breathed a wish that, the tragical business of the day were ended. The vast range of Pendle was obscured by clouds, and ere long the vapours descended into the valleys, and rain began to fall; at first slightly, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... suffering under the double discomfort of cholera and the Reform Bill. A letter from Irving to his brother shows that even in the midst of his successes the popular author was subject to moods of mental gloom, and even to business difficulties: "The restlessness and uncertainty in which I have been kept have disordered my mind and feelings too much for imaginative writing, and I now doubt whether I could get the Alhambra ready ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... had never bested him yet, and a sort of petty vanity refused to allow him to acknowledge her triumph now. They might come to an opening, he told himself, a stretch of open country. The mare might tire of the forest gloom and turn prairieward. These things suggested themselves merely as an excuse for his foolhardiness in remaining in the saddle, not that he had any ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of reformers, his sword had broken in his hand, and there now rested upon him the sense of failure as a superadded torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation would disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world was beginning to recognize his existence, and in a way his merits. In this same year he received an offer from Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he refused because he did not see any prospect of being paid for his services. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... here.[91] I want it done to the sound of the Waterfall. I want the sound of the Waterfall louder and softer as the wind rises and falls, to be spoken through—like the music. I want the Waterfall listened to when spoken of, and not looked out at. The mystery and gloom of the scene would be greatly helped by this, and it would be new and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... lofty spires That cheered the holy light! Farewell, domestic fires That broke the gloom of night! Too soon those spires are lost, Too fast we leave the bay, Too soon by ocean tost From hearth and home away, Far away, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the gloom, and rain, and my chief recollections are of the magnificent yew-trees beneath whose shelter—the work of ages—I took refuge from the pelting shower. The expectations cherished from childhood about the Cartoons were all baffled; there was no light by which they could be seen. But I must ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... family to yield, and @ she must content herself with her chateau of Tondertentronk as well as she can. She has another such ample prison in Suffolk, and may be glad to reside where she is. Strawberry, with all its painted glass and gloom, looked as gay when I came home as Mrs. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to watch her mount and ride out of the courtyard with her little troop of attendants. Finding that he might not—the window being placed too high—gratify his wishes in that connection, he dropped into his chair, and sat in the fast-deepening gloom, reviewing, fondly here, hurriedly there, the interview ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Father, guard of all, Of heaven and earth, raised up the firmament, The Almighty Lord set firm by His strong power This roomy land; grass greened not yet the plain, Ocean far spread hid the wan ways in gloom. Then was the Spirit gloriously bright Of Heaven's Keeper borne over the deep Swiftly. The Life-giver, the Angel's Lord, Over the ample ground bade come forth Light. Quickly the High King's bidding was obeyed, Over the waste there shone light's holy ray. Then ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... was almost too pleasant, to Matilda's fancy. A cool matting was on the floor; the light softened by green hanging blinds; the soft gloom of books, as usual, all about; Mr. Richmond's table, and work materials, and empty chair telling of his habitual occupation; and on his table a jar of beautiful flowers, which some parishioner's careful hand had brought ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... clearly, but he saw her bright, soft eyes in the gloom, the shimmer of her loosened hair, the little white-clad figure in the seat's wide curve, and the crossed slim ankles. He put his arm about her, and she rested her head on ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... an accident. My father was born in Maine on the Canada line. But my mother was French. I'm her daughter. I love sunlight and flowers, music and foolishness—and dream of troubadours who sing under my window. I hate long faces and gloom. But my father has ambition. I love him, and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... travelers passed through the rest of the forest in safety, and when they came out from its gloom saw before them a steep hill, covered from top to bottom with great pieces ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... gaily fringed towels, and cheerful white sheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender. Tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery he sensed at one astonished, grateful glance how the change of a partition, the re-adjustment of a proportion, had purged like a draft of fresh air the stale gloom of an ill-favored memory. Yet so inevitable did it suddenly seem for a linen closet to be built right there,—so inevitable did it suddenly seem for the child's meager play-room to be enlarged just there, that to save his soul he could not estimate ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Destructive and Turbulent region, but a little more external than Insanity, are the regions of Roguery and Pessimism, which appear immediately at the ear and on the lower angle of the jaw, which is marked as Melancholy on account of its sullen gloom, which looks always on the unfavorable side. The organ manifested behind the jaw through the inner ear or meatus auditorius is one of sensual selfishness which, when predominant, produces Baseness or disregard of all duties for our own indolent and profligate indulgence, antagonizing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... travel a thousand miles without money, without suitable clothing, pursued by blood-hounds and hell-hounds, hiding in the daytime in swamps, morasses, and forests, walking by night in darkness and gloom, until passed by friendly hands through "underground railroads" until they reached Canada, is a mystery. But these efforts to escape from their hard and cruel masters further intensified the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... and danger lend to every human enterprise its chief interest and charm. Every man who fought in the Army of the Tennessee at Shiloh knows that the gloom and despondency in which the first day's battle closed, gave an added glory to the victory of the second day; that the victory is always most highly prized which, after a long and desperate struggle, is snatched at last from the very ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... which tufted a few lonely hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented by this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied the prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance, by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... of two of them at least were fully in sympathy with the exhilaration of the pace and the air. Perhaps, in the third, a certain presentiment that the present adventure would end less merrily than it had begun, conspired, with other causes of gloom, to check that exaltation of the blood which generally ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which is beginning to yield to our research, for one, where the irradiating beams of the sun of science have yet to be announced by the bright star of hope? Why should we leave a land illuminated with the blaze of gospel light, for one enshrouded in pagan gloom? Why should we, who are in tolerable circumstances in America, who enjoy many of the comforts of life, and are evidently on the advanced march of mind, cast away these certain, real, and growing advantages, for those which are precarious and chimerical? ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... thus plunged into total darkness is that of unreality, and, just as the light of day dispels the gloom of night, so the sufferer clings to the hope that any minute he may open his eyes, and find things as they were before the darkness settled down, with all its weird shadows, to fill his soul with dread. The continued darkness causes a feeling of depression and repression, very hard to combat, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... (Feb. 10). It did not relieve the gloom of Mr. Gladstone's impressions. He found it more 'acephalous' than ever; 'less order; less unity of purpose.' The question of the Roebuck committee was raised, on which he said he thought the House would give it up, if government would promise an investigation ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hover the cloak of night, for the sun had already imparted its dying kiss on the mountain craters, and below, the gloom ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... or hang about her neck. A most significant but not a beautiful face, because of its want of harmony. The dark eyes, among their fair surroundings, disturbed the sight as a discord in music jars upon the ear; even when the lips smiled the sombre shadow of black lashes seemed to fill them with a gloom that was never wholly lost. The voice, too, which should have been a girlish treble, was full and low as a matured woman's, with now and then a silvery ring to it, as if another and a blither ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... obey, for, though there was faint moonlight, he had already cut one knee cruelly. It was bitterly cold beneath the boulder where he crouched in the snow, and when the black object, which worked its way along the bending cable, had disappeared in the gloom of overhanging rocks on the opposite shore, there was nothing to see but the tossing spray of the river. The stream was still a formidable torrent, though now that the feeding snows were frozen fast, it was shrunken far below its summer ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... been mad until now. I have drunk loneliness and death. Here I breathe, grateful, glad as a flower! My breast swells and falls as a bird's throat with happy song! O, aunt, help me to accept this fair new life—the only real life! Do not drive me back to gloom and the devils! ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... grandfather's death he had been staying at the gloomy old Brewster house in Fifth Avenue, paying but two or three hurried visits to the rooms at Mrs. Gray's, where he had made his home. The gloom of death still darkened the Fifth Avenue place, and there was a stillness, a gentle stealthiness about the house that made him long for more cheerful companionship. He wondered dimly if a fortune always ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... pitchy gloom hard by I heard that which brought me to my feet—an evil scuffling, a close and desperate struggling—a man's hoarse laugh and a woman's pitiful pleading and sobbing. I had lost my staff, but I yet grasped my knife, and with this held point upwards and my left ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... calls the Loafer's narratives "thrilling," but I, as editor of the Diaries, would prefer another adjective. The Loafer was a man who only cared for gloom and squalor after he had given up the world of gaiety and refinement. Men of his stamp, when they receive a crushing mental blow, always shrink away like wounded animals and forsake their companions. A very distinguished ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... comes on, twinkles a star across the melancholy deep,—seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... on March 23 returned to the fleet, then anchored in the Cattegat, he brought an alarming tale of Danish preparations, and an air of gloom pervaded the flagship when Nelson came aboard for a council of war. Copenhagen, it will be recalled, is situated on the eastern coast of Zealand, on the waterway called the Sound leading southward from the Cattegat to the Baltic. Directly ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... "The Spirit of Christianity," in which he rebuked the Churches for their dissensions. A parental figure floats upon a cloud while four children nestle at her feet. The earth below is shrouded in darkness and gloom, despite the steeple tower raising its head above a distant village. The rebuke was immediately stimulated by the refusal of a certain church to employ Watts when the officials found he was not of their faith. ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... singular, the extraordinary. Further, when we remember his fine imaginative powers, his inimitable humour, his vanity, his poetic cast of mind, his bitterness against the public for not appreciating his musical talents, and his consequent fits of fierce defiance and satiric gloom, there is still less cause for wonder when we find this propensity for seeking the uncommon and the marvellous deepening and developing in time into an unconquerable penchant for what was grotesque and eccentric, for what was fantastic, unnatural, ghostly, and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... desperation that had brought him there, struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was the first time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on that one subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the first time that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he had enwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then they smiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspoken confidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... then. I'm glad. That is, of course, if I could have fixed it for you—His sentence remained unfinished. A profound gloom ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... andiron, which it was all she could do to lift, let alone brain anybody with. I listened, and, hearing nothing, opened the door a little and peered into the hall. It was a black void, full of terrible suggestion, and my candle only emphasized the gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me back again, and as the door slammed, the mirror I had put on the transom came down and hit her on the head. That completed our demoralization. It was some time before I could persuade her she had not been attacked from behind by a burglar, and when she found ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nevertheless plain to be read in the grim, savage faces closing about us, that we were being driven forth to no scene of pleasure. Harshly did their gripping hands hustle us forward. The heavy mat shading the entrance was flung aside, and like the unexpected flight of an arrow, into the black gloom of the lodge, weirdly lighting up the wild faces, streamed the clear, white light of the dawn. Far off upon the highest summit of the yellow cliff there already rested the first rosy reflection of the rising ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... troops which had fled were saved. Washington, who had passed over from New York during the battle, in the midst of his extreme anguish at the fate of so many of his troops and the critical situation of the remainder, suddenly saw a gleam of hope bursting through the surrounding gloom. On that night the British army encamped in front of the American lines, and on the following morning the British general commenced his regular approaches; breaking ground about six hundred yards from one of the redoubts. But while the troops ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to rout and confusion the lords of the drama who had rejected it. Five thousand dollars had been spent and the play had failed dismally. Nor was this the first of Hastings's misadventures of the same sort. Phil analyzed her uncle's gloom and decided that it was sincere, and she was sorry for him as was her way in the presence of affliction. Hastings was an absurd person, intent upon shining in a sphere to which the gods had summoned him only in mockery. Phil lingered to mitigate his ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson |
