"Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... improvident maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the procession should close: "Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." Alas, this was now the only alternative! Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... great comfort from it. While Orde was away at the office, she whispered through its mellow strings her great happiness, the dreams for her young motherhood which would come in the summer, the vague and lingering pain over the hapless but beloved ones she had left behind her in her other life. Then she arose refreshed, and went about the simple duties of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was with this our hapless crew; For on the third day there came on a calm, And though at first their strength it might renew, And lying on their weariness like balm, Lull'd them like turtles sleeping on the blue Of ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... limitation in her splendid genius, arose primarily from her want of humor. Her severities of judgment—and who more severe than she?—were due to the same melancholy cause; for humor is the kindliest thing alive. Compare the harshness with which she handles her hapless curates and the comparative crudity of her treatment, with the surprising lightness of Miss Austen's touch as she rounds and completes her immortal clerical portraits. Miss Bronte tells us, in one of her letters, that she regarded all ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Tom sitting there in their leafy concealment, waiting for any other hapless German emissaries who might come, bent on the murderous defilement of that crystal brook, and eating of the rations which Roscoe never failed to have ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... surprise, her uncle sitting beside her couch. It was midnight; and this was the hour he had usually chosen when making his visits to his family. In these stolen moments, his attendance was chiefly given to that hapless orphan, whose present sufferings he well knew were in great ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and, desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day there came an order from the agent ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... him the two inquisitors paused under the light of the lamp—doubtless owing to some accident due to the course of their argument. One, while listening to his companion, gazed at the rabbi! And, beneath the look—whose absence of expression the hapless man did not at first notice—he fancied he again felt the burning pincers scorch his flesh, he was to be once more a living wound. Fainting, breathless, with fluttering eyelids, he shivered at the touch of the monk's floating robe. But—strange yet natural fact—the inquisitor's gaze ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the Green Box, not to mention the small fortune annexed from Mr. Marvel, was all gone. What he had not lost over the cards had been stolen while he lay fuddled. Thus he had been ready enough for another job from his patron. The hapless Marvel, by the way, had been left secure in a dungeon-like cellar, with enough bread and water to keep body and soul together for a couple of days. Bullard had not had time to decide what ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... spheres, all the conjunctions of the planets, the nature of the galaxy, and the prognostic generations of comets, and all that exists in the heavens or in the ether! Who would not shudder at such a hapless holocaust, where ink is offered up instead of blood, where the glowing ashes of crackling parchment were encarnadined with blood, where the devouring flames consumed so many thousands of innocents in whose mouth was no guile, where the unsparing ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... often found in natures of nobler quality, in the world's catalogue of nobility. If, among the thousand doors which death holds open for mortal man to pass through, ere he puts on immortality, there be one, the rarest of them all, for broken hearts, this hapless creature found it. A self accusing spirit bowed her to the earth, with the sharpest of all griefs—a mother's anguish for an only child—lost to her, as gamesters lose fortunes—thrown away by her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... the description of the mad king of Lutha warned him from intercourse with the men of Lutha until he might know which were friends and which enemies of the hapless monarch. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that," returned the Gospeler, much educated by her remark, "would it not be better for us all, to have this hapless misunderstanding manfully explained away, and a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... the fifth Was in the mouth of every sucking babe; That Henry born at Monmouth should win all And Henry born at Windsor lose all: Which is so plain, that Exeter doth wish His days may finish ere that hapless time. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... lascivious brows Upon a hapless wife's adulterous spouse, Is this thy faith, to waste another's wealth. The guilty fruit of perfidy and stealth! She durst not be my foe in open light. But in my ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... to give way to despair. His worst apprehensions were fulfilled. The savage blacks must have set the house on fire, and too probably its hapless inmates were destroyed. Many others on board thought ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... friends in trouble are but few and rare. What, said I few? Aye! few or none at all, For cruel death made havoc of them all. Thrice happy they whose fortune was so good, To end their lives, and with their lives their woes! Thrice hapless I, whom fortune so withstood, That cruelly she gave me to my foes! Oh, soldiers, is there any misery, To ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims of misdirected vengeance. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sad procession moved from the prison's most private door, on the night fixed for the execution, the third after the hapless girl's arrival in Brussels. The persons employed were few; no sympathizing crowd attended to strain the victim's pride and courage, and make her for very shame's sake brave the terrific scene. Lone and desolate, she was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... spent his time well between 1901 and 1905 and was now an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in which hapless ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... ceased; still the fire in the forepart of the ship was raging on, when the bows and bowsprit rose in the air surrounded by flames which, tapering up into a vast cone of fire, suddenly disappeared as, the stern sinking first, the water swept over the remainder of this hapless ship, and all was instantly dark, except here and there where the smouldering ends of spars and planks floated above the calm surface of the harbour. Ralph with a sad heart pulled on board the Falcon, feeling himself reduced from the position of captain of a fine ship ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... conjures up mental punishment in the shape of a scolding, for to be "lectured" is to be verbally flogged, and the wrathful words that smite the youthful ear carry with them just as sharp a sting as the knots of the lash that fall on the hapless ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... events of the day. The court room had been crowded to the verge of suffocation; when he entered it a sudden hush and a mighty craning of necks had been his welcome, and he had felt his cheeks redden and pale with a sense of shame at his hapless plight. Those many pairs of eyes that were fixed on him seemed to lay bare his inmost thoughts; he had known no refuge from their ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... with all manner of delicacies, and of these she invited Sir Percivale to partake, "I pray you, fair lady," said Sir Percivale, "who are ye that show me such kindness?" "Truly," said the lady, "I am but a hapless damsel, driven forth from my inheritance by a great lord whom I have chanced to displease. I implore you, sir knight, by your vows of knighthood, to give me your aid." Sir Percivale promised her all the aid he could give, and then ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... adjoining that which the hapless queen had occupied that Madame Roland was cast. Here the proud daughter of the emperors of Austria and the humble child of the artisan, each, after a career of unexampled vicissitudes, found their paths to meet ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the lot of the hapless tutoress to select such a moment as this in which to sweetly chide the girl for some lapse of form. Allie exploded. She reduced the elder woman to tears, then, ashamed of herself, she flung blindly out of the room, crashing the door to behind her. She ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the space between the two Many a hapless boy in blue Lay face upward to the skies; Many another, just as true, Filled the ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... of giantism where husbands Like mushrooms grow, whilst hapless we are forced To be content, nay, happy ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... ascent, the gap was closed upon them, and they were surrounded on every side. The rear-guard were left behind with the wagons and fled in a tumult, with a throng of Indians in close pursuit. From the sheltering trees a deadly fusillade swept the hapless files of those who were hemmed about on the rising ground. Darting from their cover, the Indians sprang upon such as lay wounded and dispatched them with knife ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... been the chief spokeswoman, and each member of the committee served in some degree as an inquisitor, or exhorter, not to repentance, but to disclosures. Baited and badgered, warned and threatened, the hapless prisoner protested she was innocent, denied the charges made against her, told one of the committee to "take heed the devile have not you," and also said, "I must not render evil for evil.... I have sins enough allready, and I will not add this [accusing another] to ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... heavy sighs I often hear You mourn my hapless woe; But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... then I am in earnest,—hold, mistaken Stranger—I am of noble Birth; and shou'd I in one hapless loving Minute destroy the Honour of my House, ruin my Youth and Beauty, and all that virtuous Education ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... record the hapless delusion of this matchless specimen of humanity? What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery? We are not formed for enjoyment; and, however we may be attuned to the reception of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... wives' hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened to be aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breaking heart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three hapless young husbands, one after the other, to their ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... there—not a mast was standing—not a boat remained—as if the destroying sword of the Archangel had swept over them. The decks were swept clear of everything; while the green foam-topped seas, in mountain masses, rose above them, threatening every instant to overwhelm my hapless vessel. A glance showed me all this. Looking forward, I saw another head rising from the fore-hatchway; it was that of old ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... would never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had made him so wretched. Sir Henry, perhaps somewhat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... severed races became really united, as Englishmen alike. Then the greatest of the Plantagenets, Edward the First, the pupil of the man he slew at Evesham, was proud to call himself an Englishman—the first truly English king since the days of the hapless Harold; and one of whom, in spite of the misrepresentations of Scottish historians and novelists, English boys may be justly proud: his noble legislation was the foundation of that modern English jurisprudence, in which all are alike in ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... arm, covered with mouths, like the ones the boys had seen absorb the rats, shot out of the sea. Another and another followed it, and hapless Sanborn, screaming in terror, was dragged from the structure of the aeroplane, to which he clung with a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... his unquenchable heart, then he might have been inconsolable, then might he have cast the gorge at life, then have cowered in the darkening chamber of his being, tapestried with mouldering hopes, and hearkened to the winds that swept across the illimitable wastes of death. But no such hapless lot was Shelley's as that of his own contemporaries—Keats, half chewed in the jaws of London and spit dying on to Italy; de Quincey, who, if he escaped, escaped rent and maimed from those cruel ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... about to give to their companions. When they arrived on the shore, not a vestige of the ship was to be seen; no track through the waters marked her path; all was still and silent, desolate and bleak: no familiar face was seen; not one of their comrades was left to tell the hapless tale! They stood aghast, looking in mute despair upon the sea. The ice by which the vessel had been hemmed in had totally disappeared. The violent storm of the night before, they concluded, might have been the cause of this fatal disaster; the ice might ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... meekly on the perch, but they were eyed askance by the properly behaved ones, and held up to the unfledged nestlings as sorrowful examples of the pernicious habit of thinking for one's self. Never was bird less satisfied to be shut up in a cage than the hapless prisoner in that manor house, whom the peasants of the neighbourhood knew as the White Lady. Now and then they caught a glimpse of her at the window of her chamber, which she insisted on having open, and at which she would stand sometimes by the hour together, looking sorrowfully out on the ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hapless woman! what can be expected from thee, when the beings on whom thou art said naturally to depend for reason and support, have all an interest in deceiving thee! This is the root of the evil that ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... have had conversation with him, in the which I have been struck by his versatility and quickness of apprehension. Therefore (having in this matter certain powers from my lord cardinal in dealing with these hapless young men) I am most anxious so to work upon his spirit that he show himself not obstinate and recalcitrant. Almost all his comrades have proved their wisdom and the sincerity of their professed devotion to Holy Church ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rescue!" ordered Tom, who had also, through a window in the floor of the pilot house, seen the hapless motor boat. The men in it were frantically waving their hands to those on the airship. "I'm going down as close as I dare," went on Tom. "You watch, and when it's time, have Koku drop from the stern a long, knotted rope. That will be a sort of ladder, and they can make it fast to their ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... of York, and he shall die!" exclaimed Lord Clifford, plunging his dagger into the heart of the hapless boy, who fell dead at ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... plague-stricken man, together with Dorcas, who hurriedly told her tale as they moved, ran down the dark staircase and out into the street. There, a little way off, was the tall spectre-like figure, still hugging in bearlike embrace the hapless Frederick, and dancing the while a most weird and fantastic dance, chanting some awful words which none could rightly catch, but the burden of which was, "The dance of death! the dance of death! None who dances here with me will ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... touching scene; and for a moment, our hero hesitated. His heart beat wildly, his throat was parched with anguish, he tried to speak and could not get out a sound: besides, he did not wish to show weakness in the presence of his hapless companions! ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... Athenians hard in the race for maritime supremacy. They were now attacked by an overwhelming Athenian force, and after a stubborn resistance were totally defeated, and compelled to enroll themselves among the subjects of Athens. A still harder fate was reserved for the hapless Dorian ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... in this cage confined! No, now is the worth of my youth revealed! Three years of life I on him have spent— My husband—but were I longer content This hapless, hopeless weird to dree, Meek as a dove I needs must be. I am wearied to death of petty brawls; The stirring life of the great world calls. I will follow Gudmund with shield and bow, I will share his joys, ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... a full head of steam, apparently; his naturally sanguine complexion was several shades darker than the normal, and he was seething with repressed emotion—excitement, anticipated triumph, jealousy, envy and hatred: all centring upon the hapless head of Nat Duncan. Plunging along with his head down, his thoughts wholly preoccupied with his grievance and its remedy, he bumped into Willing and cannoned off, recognising him with an angry growl. The result of this was to stay Pete's departure; he ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... story of his loved Amata, whilst the tender Mignon consoled his friend's inward sorrows, and supplied him with necessaries, notwithstanding the venture he run of the cruel tyrant's heavy displeasure. The giant ceased not every day to view the hapless Fidus, to see if the cruelty of his intentions had in any degree wrought its desired effect; but perceiving in him no alteration, he now began to be suspicious that the little Mignon had not punctually obeyed his savage command. In order therefore to satisfy his wicked curiosity, he resolved ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... the skies with acclamation, Stun the woods and waters round— Till the echoes of our gathering Turn the world's admiring gaze To this act of duteous homage Scotland to her poet pays. Fill the banks and braes with music, Be it loud and low by turns— This we owe the deathless glory, That the hapless fate of Burns. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... enemy's privateers.... Even the merchant-ships in the home-coming convoys, protected though they were by men-of-war, were not safe from capture, while the hostile luggers would often approach the English coast in broad daylight and harry the hapless fishing craft within a mile or two of the shore." Yet there does not appear to have been a panic, nor was anyone's blood demanded. Autres temps autres moeurs. In "The Gun-Runners" the author describes a shady enterprise undertaken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... nation is enslaved by domestic despotism or foreign dominion; when her substance is wasted, her spirit broke, and the laws and constitution of England are no more; then those colonies, sent off by our fathers, may receive and entertain their sons as hapless exiles and ruined refugees. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Mazeroux who "caught it," in the hapless sergeant's own words. Don Luis took him by the shoulders, shook him, loaded him with insults and abuse and, finally, pushing him against the roadside bank and holding him there, said, in a broken voice ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... his fame as an author rests securely on his euphuistic prose romance "Arcadia," his critical treatise "The Defence of Poesy," and above all on his exquisite sonnet-series "Astrophel and Stella," in which he sings the story of his hapless love for Penelope Devereux, who married Lord Rich; was the friend of Edmund Spenser, and the centre of an influential literary ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... inauguration of a system such as this. It became almost a religion to every Spanish official and trader to batten upon the unfortunate colonial, quite regardless of the fact that the pioneer settler was being strangled during the process. Since the hapless dweller in South America was not allowed to bargain or haggle, and was forced to take whatever was graciously sent out to him at a rate condescendingly fixed, it frequently happened that this latter was five or ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... she had thrown to dogs what she should have given to the poor. A usurer painted without eyes, for usurers could not weep, sits among flames; devils drive pitchforks into his head, moneybags hang round his neck, he counts and swallows red hot coins. Other hapless souls, condemned to walk a bridge of spikes, carry burdens over a thin plank like a saw set on edge. Above is a nimbus of clouds, and above the nimbus, the weighing of souls. The archangel Michael ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of a drugged sleep the night previous, the hapless girl had been borne away from her mother's side in the arms of the person who had so successfully enacted the part of the monk's ghost, and placed on a couch, where she slept on heavily till the day was far ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... unwholesome food, want of fresh air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... there was but one crop; and when the rain did not come in answer to the prayer of hypocrites a famine came and people fell upon their knees. At that time they were full of superstition. They were frightened all the time for fear that some god would be enraged at his poor, hapless, feeble and starving children. But now, instead of depending upon one crop they have several, and if there is not rain enough for one there may be enough for another. And if the frosts kill all, we have railroads and steamship—enough to bring what we need from some other part of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... racing, the number of pursuers is reduced to four, who are all together, and gradually gaining on the pursued; with them is the favourite, but alas! his horse suddenly fails in his speed, and as she anxiously turns her head she perceives with dismay the hapless position of her lover; each of the more fortunate leaders, eager with anticipated triumph, bending his head on his horse's mane, shouts at the top of his voice, "I come, my Peri; I'm your lover." But she, making a sudden turn, and lashing her horse almost to fury, darts across ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... find that the elephant was made of felt and not too large to keep Rosemary from wielding it skilfully in an assault upon the hapless Jinko. She had it firmly gripped by the proboscis, and she was shrieking with delight. Jinko was barking in vain-glorious defence. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum for his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain at the master's table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume talked of dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could never think of spending a night away from the house without having given, long before, a plausible reason for such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... the impulse to mother this kindred and hapless young being, averred to be the beggar's daughter. She placed a golden louis on the ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals in other quarters. John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his respects to, you will recollect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie"; while at the birthplace of freedom—in the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... for which, in fitting man for his new abode, he had had no occasion. Pandora was seized with an eager curiosity to know what this jar contained; and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man,—such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for his mind,—and scattered themselves far and wide. Pandora hastened to replace the lid! but, alas! the whole contents of the jar had escaped, one ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the back fence, joined the pursuit with sound and fury. A boy will nearly always run after anything that is running, and his first impulse is to throw a stone at it. This is a survival of primeval man, who must take every chance to get his dinner. So, when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the alley, they were really responding to an impulse thousands and thousands of years old—an impulse founded upon the primordial observation that whatever runs is likely to prove edible. Penrod and Sam were not "bad"; they were never that. They were something ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... In vain the hapless youth denies it; A barroom loafer testifies it. "Fine him," the court-house rabble shout (This is the latest jury out). So when his pocketbook is eased Most righteous ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... some half-dozen who in one way or other managed to escape, the whole of the white population inside the walls of Delhi were murdered under circumstances of the most horrible and revolting cruelty. Had the news of the outbreak of Meerut been sent by a swift mounted messenger, the whole of these hapless people would have had time to leave the town before the arrival of the mutineers. Those in the cantonments outside the city fared somewhat better. Some were killed, but the greater part made their escape; and although many were murdered on the way, either by ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... escaped to scare me with his news. Stationed near the gate in this disguise, I ventured to enter the courtyard, and saw—saw—the TORMENTOR! the torturer, the hideous, masked minister of agony, led towards the chambers in which our hapless messenger is examined by the ruthless tyrants. Gloucester, the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I have to watch myself Each hour. Oh, hapless plight! For if I should be great, of course, Those lines ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... from the library of Hengurt, belonging to the Vaughan family; the other dating from the fourteenth century, known under the name of the Red Book of Hergest, and now in Jesus College, Oxford. No doubt it was some such collection that charmed the weary hours of the hapless Leolin in the Tower of London, and was burned after his condemnation, with the other Welsh books which had been the companions of his captivity. Lady Charlotte Guest has based her edition on the Oxford manuscript; it cannot be sufficiently regretted that paltry considerations have caused her to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... you write religion, and we like your books, and we've come across from New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair departed sorrowfully. If I had read the service over them, possibly their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. Moreover, there's no penalty from one State to another: ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... later, when he crossed the road from Salisbury again like a hunted animal in his vain endeavour to reach the shelter of the New Forest; and still less, perhaps, could his father have foreseen that Antony Etricke, whom he had made Recorder of Poole, would be the man before whom his hapless son was taken to be identified before being sent to London, and ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... Morro Castle. Some of the men swam ashore, others were taken off by the boats of the "Gloucester," which came up just in time to help in saving life. Commander Wainwright had to land a party to drive off a mob of Cuban guerillas, who came down to the shore, and were murdering the hapless Spaniards as they swam to the land. One of the "Gloucester's" boats took out of the water Admiral Cervera and his son, Lieutenant Cervera. They were brought on board the yacht, where Wainwright chivalrously greeted the unfortunate admiral with the words: "I ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of remuneration, there would be without a doubt works greater and much better than were ever wrought by the ancients. But the fact that they have to grapple more with famine than with fame, keeps our hapless intellects submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of those who could raise them up but give no thought to it, prevents them from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... These hapless wights are confined in a big casemate of the fort. Their condemnation has crushed them and turned them towards God. In the casemate are five camp beds and five rush-bottomed chairs; to this lugubrious furniture of the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... continued the doctor. "Come in here. You see that man? Someone has murdered him. Who sent him down here through this storm? How long had he been ill? Have you a doctor up there? Are there any more sick? Why don't you speak up? What's your name?" In an angry flood the questions poured forth upon the hapless Tommy, who stood speechless. "Why don't you ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... which seems the expression of the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its resemblance to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... rock-ribbed prison; while the hoarse dash of the approaching waves, and the shrill screams of the sea-birds that filled the cavern, formed a concert of terrible dissonance, well suited for the requiem, of the hapless wretch who had been enclosed in that living grave! But the love of life, which makes us cling to it in the most hopeless extremity, was strong in Frank Costello's breast; his firmness and presence of mind gradually returned, and he resolved not to perish without a struggle. He remembered ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... form was forbidden. Men were slaughtered, and their wives unveiled and baptised, and in some cases violated as well. I was prayed to ask the King of England, who has many Moslem subjects, to save these hapless Moslems ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... look back for a moment to the triumphs of the pagan emperors, well may we bless God for the change which the religion of Christ has wrought in this city. After they had let loose war, and famine, and pestilence, to prey upon hapless nations, they ascended the Capitol to offer incense with polluted hands to their profane gods; and meantime the groans of the dying and unpitied princes, whom they had reserved to decorate their triumph, ascended from the scala Gemonia to call down the vengeance of heaven ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Around this hapless captive there moved the figures of three savages, their faces streaked with various hues of paint, their war-bonnets of eagles' feathers flaunting, and wonderful to behold. Each bore in his right hand a gleaming tomahawk, which now and then was raised menacingly ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... portent from the Gods is here? My mind is mazed with doubt and fear. How can I gainsay what I see? I know the girl Antigone, O hapless child of hapless sire! Didst thou, then, recklessly aspire To brave kings' laws, and now art brought In ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... was a boon to be grateful for. There were times during these hours of dreary loneliness when Adam's whole nature seemed submerged by the billows of love—cruel waves, which would toss him hither and thither, making sport of his hapless condition, to strand him at length on the quicksands of fear, where a thousand terrible alarms would seize him and fill him with dread as to how these disasters might end. What would become of him? how would it fare with Eve and himself? where could they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... victory!" Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: Penitent ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... saw the crazy man who belongs in every boy's town. In this one he was a hapless, harmless creature, whom the boys knew as Solomon Whistler, perhaps because his name was Whistler, perhaps because he whistled; though when my boy met him midway of the bridge, he marched swiftly and silently by, with his head ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... goes down to the park and rummages through Violet's wardrobe in a state of hapless bewilderment, calling finally upon Gertrude to make a proper selection. Denise attires her young mistress, who looks really pale after this enforced seclusion. Mr. Grandon carries her down-stairs; and if it is not a conventional ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to be a moment after torn, as by a whirlwind, away—borne along on the stream of desperate rage—the plaything of the storms engendered by pride. I was imprisoned, and, at the instance of Torella, set free. Again I returned to carry off both him and his child to France; which hapless country, then preyed on by freebooters and gangs of lawless soldiery, offered a grateful refuge to a criminal like me. Our plots were discovered. I was sentenced to banishment; and as my debts were already enormous, my remaining property was put in the hands of commissioners ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hapless boy shall snatch From a cold wat'ry grave?— Poor Ellen flies, with breathless speed, ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... "Far other flames and bonds kind lovers prove, But thus our fortune casts the hapless die, Death hath exchanged again his shafts with love, And Cupid thus lets borrowed arrows fly. O Hymen, say, what fury doth thee move To lend thy lamps to light a tragedy? Yet this contents me that I die for thee, Thy flames, not mine, my death ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... loathing them, and had conceived a fierce passion for captive maids whom they themselves brought across the sea from their forays in Thrace; for the terrible wrath of Cypris came upon them, because for a long time they had grudged her the honours due. O hapless women, and insatiate in jealousy to their own ruin! Not their husbands alone with the captives did they slay on account of the marriage-bed, but all the males at the same time, that they might thereafter pay no retribution for the grim murder. And of all the women, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... instantly re-saddled and brought to the door; and having mounted him I was in High-street, the scene of action, in a few minutes. There I found the people assembled, in immense numbers. Having broken in the windows and window frames of the house in which the hapless member, Mr. Bathurst, had concealed himself, they only waited for a cessation of throwing brick-bats and stones to rush into the house; which, if they had once done, his forfeited life would have been the inevitable price of the temerity ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... all provisions, from which some have made great profits. Salazar—who has with good reason been styled "the Las Casas of the Philippines"—enumerates a melancholy list of injuries and opressions inflicted upon the hapless natives by their conquerors, and urges in most forcible and eloquent language that they be protected from injustice and treated as human beings. He cites from the royal decrees the clauses which make such provisions in behalf ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... suddenly flamed up, was it not a natural supposition that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst of light on ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... with play, And form'd a snowy circle on the grass, And plac'd in midst of all that lovely lass Who chosen is their queen,—with her fine head Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red: For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing, Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying: Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, A bunch of violets full blown, and double, Serenely sleep:—she from a casket takes A little book,—and then a joy awakes About each youthful heart,—with stifled cries, And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes: For she's to ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... Turold—for many of the actors in this embroidered story are labeled in delicate stitches—and tells us that his was the hand that set the copy for all the happy and beloved maids of the Queen, and the hapless and perhaps equally beloved Saxon maids. We wonder, again, how these skillful and noble Saxons like to find themselves thus writing their own infelicities and humiliations for all the world to see, and then—for so does the human mind ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... catastrophe was complete. The colliding steamer lifted with the 'scend of the waves and crashed down yet again upon the hapless torpedo-boat, and young Frobisher found himself in the raging sea, clinging instinctively to something—he knew not what—that had come away in his hands as he flung them out wildly to prevent himself from sliding off the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... endeavour to prevail upon the honest and simple clansmen to renounce their allegiance to their chief, and to become his vassals.[81] Every species of indignity and of plunder was inflicted upon these hapless, but faithful Highlanders in vain; a "monster," as he is termed, "bearing the stamp of human appearance, named Sir Neill Campbell," in vain chased the poor inhabitants to the hills, and there exhibited acts of cruelty too shocking ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... too well before the story is ended. It may be true that John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence. Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... love beguiles the simple fool And binds with magic thongs the hapless wight; That like a moth lured by the candle-light, He hovers, helpless, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of permanence. The delicate old tests fail to adjust themselves to our needs. Mr. Page is right theoretically when he says that the treatment of a servant or of a subordinate is an infallible criterion of manners, and when he rebukes the "arrogance" of wealthy women to "their hapless sisters of toil." But the truth is that our hapless sisters of toil have things pretty much their own way in a country which is still broadly prosperous and democratic, and our treatment of them is ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... O, here the woful'st husband comes alive, No husband now; the wight, that did uphold That name of husband, is now quite o'erthrown, And I am left a hapless widower. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... council is well meant. They but forget we Indians owned the land From ocean unto ocean; that they stand Upon a soil that centuries agone Was our sole kingdom and our right alone. They never think how they would feel to-day, If some great nation came from far away, Wresting their country from their hapless braves, Giving what they gave us—but wars and graves. Then go and strike for liberty and life, And bring back honour to your Indian wife. Your wife? Ah, what of that, who cares for me? Who pities my poor love and agony? What white-robed priest prays for your safety here, As prayer is ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the lioness And the young lions at the pass: "then forth Stretch'd he his merciless talons, grasping one, One helpless innocent, Learchus nam'd, Whom swinging down he dash'd upon a rock, And with her other burden self-destroy'd The hapless mother plung'd: and when the pride Of all-presuming Troy fell from its height, By fortune overwhelm'd, and the old king With his realm perish'd, then did Hecuba, A wretch forlorn and captive, when she saw Polyxena first slaughter'd, and her son, Her Polydorus, on the wild sea-beach Next ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the great rebellion should call for new constructions and clear definitions. Thenceforth for twenty years the fiery lines of war receded fitfully northward, till stayed at the Battle of the Thames, quenched in the life-blood of the heroic, the high-minded, the hapless Tecumseh. ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... unattainable. In one brief moment she saw that she had deliberately led him on, that she had encouraged him, that she actually had proffered him the cup from which he had begun to sip the bitterness. Pride and love were waging a conflict in this hapless southern girl's heart. But she was silent. She could not ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to a fence-post with a scrambling knot of the reins that would have brought down Blue Bonnet's wrath upon her hapless head, Kitty hastened across the close-cropped meadow. It seemed to her they trudged miles, taking turns carrying the lamb, before they reached the little shack. A stupid young fellow, half-asleep, ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... blasts How wildly blown; Around my hapless head Loose tiles are thrown, Slates, chimney-pots, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... So must your hapless minstrel fare, By hill and hollow violing; He flings a ditty on the air, He wonders if you ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... acceptance, on some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the 'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of intruders. There is a dead silence as an active ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... crossed the desert and entered the hill country of Palestine. Even then he still hung upon their rear, harassing them and cutting off their stragglers; finally, when they made a stand at Sharuhen in Southern Palestine, he laid siege to the town, took it, and made a great slaughter of the hapless defenders. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson |
