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More "Dismally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... memory. Priestley's Biographical Chart, is an extremely ingenious contrivance for this purpose; it should hang up in the room where children read, or rather where they live, for we hope no room will ever be dismally consecrated to their studies. Whenever they hear any celebrated name mentioned, or when they meet with any in books, they will run to search for these names in the biographical chart; and those who are used to children, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before. It was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath—not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation. She had a strange dislike to walking ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... turn. He recognized with pain the fulfilment of his fears. He saw dismally how during the coming fight he would sink daily in the estimation of this small critic, while his opponent would as conspicuously rise. The prospect did not soothe him, and he turned to Bertha Afflint, who was watching the scene with ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... carelessly to rot in the bucket beside the sink. The old neatness and order had departed before the garments my mother had washed were returned again to the tub, and day after day I saw my father shake his head dismally over the soggy bread and the underdone beef. Whether or not he ever realised that it was my mother's hand that had kept him above the surface of life, I shall never know; but when that strong grasp was relaxed, he went hopelessly, irretrievably, and unresistingly ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... cause, to keep his heart from fluttering with fear as they stepped along beneath the gloom of the trees, which even when not in leaf cast dense shadows around them. It was in truth a weird spot: owls hooted dismally about them, bats flitted here and there in their erratic flight, and sometimes almost brushed the faces of the boys with their clammy wings. The strange noises always to be heard in a wood at night assailed their ears, and mingled with the quick beating ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gone to his cabin and his mother had joined him there. He remained there till we reached Liverpool—I never saw him. His mother, after a little, at his request, left him alone. All the world went above to look at the land and chatter about our tragedy, but the poor lady spent the day, dismally enough, in her room. It seemed to me intolerably long; I was thinking so of vague Porterfield and of my prospect of having to face him on the morrow. Now of course I knew why she had asked me if I should recognise him; she had delegated to me mentally a certain pleasant office. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to be the audience," replied Jerry dismally, seeing that, as the audience, he would have nothing to do with ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... by the sight of this wonderful plenty that I fell upon my knees in an outburst of gratitude and gave hearty thanks to God for His mercy. There was no further need for me to dismally wonder whether I was to starve or no; supposing the provisions sweet, here was food enough to last me three or four years. I was so overjoyed and withal curious that I forgot all about the time, and flourishing the chopper made the round of the lazarette, sampling its ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... translated. "But for all the good I get of her, she might as well live on the top of the Cornobastone," he added dismally. "Yes, now you may bring me my coffee—only, let it be tea. When your coffee is coffee it ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... not wicked, in the conduct of the people out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations, and wear their everyday attire. It is quite a novelty to have the blinds up, and the shutters open; and they make themselves dismally comfortable over bottles of wine, which are freely broached as on a festival. They are much inclined to moralise. Mr Towlinson proposes with a sigh, 'Amendment to us all!' for which, as Cook says with another sigh, 'There's room ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... bad that young man preached about damnation, for 'tis the only sermon she ever heared, an' she isn't seemin' t' get over it." After that I tried to persuade Mary that she would not go to hell, but quite dismally failed—and not only failed, but was soon thinking that I, too, was bound that way. When I expressed this fear, Mary took a great fancy to me, and set me to getting from Skipper Tommy a description ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... elder Henry dropped its mantle over them. And as for Polly, there could not be a wiser, sweeter wife. Then Aunt Lois was so tranquilly happy, and Faith growing brighter, yes, prettier, and buying grays with a peachy or lavender tint instead of that snuffy yellow, or dismally cold stone color, and coaxing Andrew, sometimes, to go to Christ Church to hear the singing or the tender prayers where the people ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... have gotten here," said Jane, dismally. "It's not the getting here—I see that—it's the getting back again. Perhaps no one will ever know that we have been here, and the robins will cover us ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... he dismally prophesied, "in our all being murdered in our beds some night. Oh, dear! I wish I had never come to sea." Brook and one or two more, though they said little, went about the ship for some few days afterwards in evident perturbation of mind, though, to do them justice, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... American romance-writer was in the room, and an enthusiastic English lady, a genuine admirer and intelligent reader of his books, ran for her album and attacked him for "a few words and his name at the end." He looked dismally perplexed, and turning to me said imploringly in a whisper, "For pity's sake, what shall I write? I can't think of a word to add to my name. Help me to something." Thinking him partly in fun, I said, "Write an ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... will have to take them after Gail's lecture," Peace sighed dismally, "but I'll never ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... fal-de-ral—tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says 'Gen'l'men, we will attempt a glee, if you please.' This announcement calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits express the unqualified approbation it affords ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar. Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some trouble hideously like ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... hideous uproar and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock travelled with the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. The church-bells never sounded more dismally over Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made a brave harvest; and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof destroyed many a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable: here it was plastered, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own pipe now. "But what's the use. She is a Princess. Why, I thought her at first a barmaid—a barmaid! Then I thought her to be in some way a lawbreaker, a socialist conspirator. It would be droll if it were not sad. The Princess Hildegarde!" I laughed dismally. "Dan, old man, let's dig out at once, and close the page. We'll talk it ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... head dismally, and leaned his hot forehead against the pane. Neither of them spoke again until they reached Manhattan Transfer, where they changed for ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... you must think it of me," she said dismally. "We are made differently, you and I. If I cared for a man, nothing in all this world could stand between me and him. My love would fortify me against the enemy we are prone to call conscience. It would justify me in slaying the thing we call conscience. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... head at the challenge. "Then you should," he said. "Dog that he is. He's insulting you. He had better have died than do as he does. Damn him, he shall pay for it." She shook her head, smiling rather dismally. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. "The man I told you about also," he said to his formidable patron; "whom I went to Brussels to talk ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... in many ways. If the party wanted a car to themselves, Granny was ordered to lie down and groan dismally, which caused other travellers to shun the poor invalid. If rooms did not suit, suffering Madame must have sun or perish. Late lunches, easy carriages, extra blankets, every sort of comfort was for her, whether she wanted ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... breed, and we are quite content to be freed from him and his kindred, the vampire and the ghoul. Yet who knows! We may be a little too hasty in concluding that he is extinct. He may still prowl in Abyssinian forests, range still over Asiatic steppes, and be found howling dismally in some padded room of ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the family were in profoundest sleep, David cautiously rose, and taking his little bundle, crept out doors. To his disappointment he found that it was snowing fast, eight inches having already fallen; and the wintry gale moaned dismally through the treetops. It was a dark, moonless night. The cabin was in the fields, half a mile from the road along which the wagons had passed. This boy of twelve years, alone in the darkness, was to breast the gale and wade through the snow, amid forest glooms, a distance of seven miles, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... at the platforms outside the successive stories. The weather was growing very cold, a storm was coming up, and the wind soughed and whined dismally around the eaves. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... around her was silent, save when the rude blast Howl'd dismally round the old pile; Over weed-cover'd fragments still fearless she past, And arriv'd in the innermost ruin at last, Where the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... President Roosevelt proceeded to groom Mr. Knox for the nomination. Mr. Knox at the President's suggestion, prepared and delivered several speeches in the hope that he would awaken popular enthusiasm. The attempt failed dismally. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... on the water; the sound of wood creaking dismally was heard, the rain fell softly on the deck, the waves beat against the sides. Everything resounded sadly like the lullaby of a mother who has lost all hope for the happiness ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... the viaticum to any late penitent in his agony. In the tall towers by the wayside the bells hung mute; no hands to ring them or none to answer to their call Meanwhile, across the lonely fields, toiling dismally, and ofttimes missing the track— for who should guide them or show the path?—parson and monk and trembling nun made the best of their way to Norwich; their errand to seek admission to the vacant ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... some water we might bring him to," observed Paul, when the man on the floor groaned again, more dismally ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... each other, carriage after carriage departed; and Ethel and her companions went to Dora's parlor to rest awhile and discuss the event of the day. But Dora's parlor was in a state of confusion. It had, too, an air of loss, and felt like a gilded cage from which the bird had flown. They looked dismally at its discomfort and went downstairs. Men were removing the faded flowers or sitting at the abandoned table eating and drinking. Everywhere there was disorder and waste, and from the servants' quarter came a noisy ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... the best Bessemer steel. His legs were, unfortunately, rather short, and since the lower part of his body was of a fine protuberant rotundity which the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his chest failed dismally to equal, he displayed an uncommonly exact resemblance of a perambulating pear. He had a rich expanse of fat cheek and a small, but dimpled, chin. He was saved by his fierce moustache, which, upturned in the imperial fashion, gave him the ferocious air required ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... in force, while that commanded by Felicia's affection for her brother soon rushed down in spate. Perhaps, as she told herself, it was partly owing to the light—which, if pensive upstairs in the white-walled schoolroom, might, without exaggeration, be called quite dismally gloomy in the low-ceilinged dining-room looking out on the black mass of the ilex trees over a havoc of storm-beaten flower-beds—but Sir Charles struck her as so worn, so aged, so singularly and pathetically sad. He was still so evidently oppressed by anxiety ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... heart thou hast poured it gushing: And now thy brooklet's dry again. Methinks, thy woodland throne resigning, 'Twould better suit so great a lord The poor young monkey to reward For all the love with which she's pining. She finds the time dismally long; Stands at the window, sees the clouds on high Over the old town-wall go by. "Were I a little bird!"[26] so runneth her song All the day, half the night long. At times she'll be laughing, seldom smile, At times wept-out she'll seem, Then ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the trail to Utah often ran parallel with the track, and bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the remains of those "whose carcasses fell in the wilderness" on the long and drouthy journey. The daybreak of to-day (Sunday) found us shivering at Fort Laramie, a frontier post dismally situated at a height of 7,000 feet. Another 1,000 feet over gravelly levels brought us to Sherman, the highest level reached by this railroad. From this point eastward the streams fall into the Atlantic. The ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... those of the cells, the chapel, and the refectory. In the refectory, a vast hall where the tables still stood in their places, Roland noticed five or six bats circling around; a frightened owl flew through a broken casement, and perched upon a tree close by, hooting dismally. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... mixed pickles, but in captivity it is found that so rich a diet has a tendency to make him stout, and he is now fed exclusively on old corks and back numbers of some daily paper. His voice, which you may perhaps have an opportunity of hearing (here the 'What-do-you-think?' howls dismally), is in the key of B fiat, and is greatly admired. People come here before breakfast to hear it, and when they have heard it, they assure us that they never heard anything like it before. Some have even gone so far as to say that they never wish to hear ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... and I was then to put six shots into the animal's body. He positively assured me that the dog would be uninjured. I half-promised to come and, when night began to fall, looked vaguely about for a dog. At last I found one, but it howled so dismally when I asked Ibrahim Ayyad to take possession of it for experimental purposes, that I weakly gave up the project, and left the magician clamoring for his hundred and ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... rash invader hurried from the chamber of the talisman, his courtiers flying with wild haste to the open air. The brazen gates were closed with a clang which rang dismally through the empty rooms, and the lock of the king was fixed upon them. But it was too late. The voice of destiny had spoken and the fate of the kingdom been revealed, and all the people looked upon Don Roderic as ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... largest in the house—I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, "during hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with the animals round the ranch. The most thoroughly independent and self-possessed of them is a large white pig which we have christened Maude. She goes everywhere at her own will; she picks up scraps from the dogs, who bay dismally at her, but know they have no right to kill her; and then she eats the green alfalfa hay from the two milch cows who live in the big corral with the horses. One of the dogs has just had a litter ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... hooted dismally. Klara gave a slight shiver of fear and looked furtively round her to see if any of the drunkards were awake. Then she recollected that her father was in the next room, and presently, from afar, came shouts of laughter and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for you," he said dismally. "I thought you had added to the general merriment by falling ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his better comfort, he was, despite the impression of sadness and disaster which hung upon his mind as darkly as the clouds were hanging in heaven, doing his best to rouse both himself and his companion to greater cheerfulness. The wind, shaking the lattice, and now and then screaming dismally under the door, did not inspire him to gaiety, but his thoughts were principally for Ronsard, who was inclined to yield ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... imagined demanded wider streets. If he could have lived into our times he would surely have sent us very positive directions in his bluff British way to break up the original rectangular, narrow plan which was becoming dismally monotonous when applied to a widely spread-out modern city. He was a theologian, but he had a very keen eye for appearances and ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... fresh hay floating swiftly down, and, closer at hand, something white rolling over and over, and he shuddered; but it was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after, lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone alone showing above ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the vagabond, for he is a humorous rascal, and though I know that I ought to be severe with him, I fail dismally when I try to exhort him. "Now, look here, old man," he will say, "stop preaching; what are you going to do to help a fellow; do you think I live this life for fun" and his eyes twinkle! When I tell him that I ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... on the brushwood resting, they heard the wind outside increasing in violence, and saw the cedars bend to and fro, and listened to them creak dismally. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... mills,—enormous drab structures, whose every crevice leaks quivering heat and whose towering chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The steel workers and their families live as a rule in two and three family houses, built of wood, generally unpainted, and always dismally utilitarian ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... the snow, where a keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude: round which the wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sat at the window all afternoon, dismally trying to devise way of escape from the dilemma. He did not succeed. He had gone too far now to make a confession sound reasonably convincing; and he could not desert the girl to Dale. That was not to be thought of. And he was certain ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... howled dismally somewhere at the back. The men had told me that no sound could be heard beyond those walls, yet had I not heard Sylvia's shrieks? If I had heard them, then ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... They wrangled dismally and unconvincingly together, but no one put into speech the fear that rode them hard. Fast as Jack drove, they kept urging him to "Step on 'er!" A bottle that had been circulating intermittently among the crowd was drained and thrown out on the boulevard, there to menace the tires ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... "Why, auntie," said Harry, dismally, "Kate is so unreasonable. She won't take even me. You see she's so tremendously impressed with herself, and all ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... of the Forest," a deserted abbey in the depth of the woods; in "The Italian," the cloister of the Black Penitents. The moldering battlements, the worm-eaten tapestries, the turret staircases, secret chambers, underground passages, long, dark corridors where the wind howls dismally, and distant doors which slam at midnight all derive from "Otranto." So do the supernatural fears which haunt these abodes of desolation; the strains of mysterious music, the apparitions which glide through the shadowy apartments, the hollow voices that warn the tyrant to beware. But her ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... don't know," Harry answered rather dismally. "Sometimes I hope so, and sometimes I've a cold fear that she won't. But now that I've told you, I'll ask her this very evening. You'll wish me Godspeed, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... hardly lighted by the one gas-light flaring at its entrance, 'Toinette stopped, and, looking dismally about her, began at last to cry. At the sound, a crooked old woman, with a great bag on her back, who had been resting upon the step of a door close by, although the little girl had not noticed her, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... been exceedingly pleasant, and on many a night when the driving rain was beating upon roof and window, and the wind was howling dismally around our solitary cabin, all has seemed bright and cheerful within, as Max and Morton carried on a spirited debate, or Browne declaimed Wolsey's soliloquy, or "To be, or not to ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Berchem—all razed to the ground. In Malines a good part of the town is standing and I suppose that the Cathedral can be restored, but the other towns are done for. There were practically no civilians in any of them—a few poor peasants poking dismally about in the ruins, trying to find some odds and ends that they could save from the general wreck. There were some children sitting on the steps of deserted houses and a few hungry dogs prowling around, but ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... along the open bank of the river. Two armed men could defend the spot against odds. And below, a hundred yards away, perhaps—it was hard to judge through that smother—the bare limbs of several stunted cottonwoods waved dismally against the gray sky. Hesitating, his eyes searching the barrenness above to where the stream bent northward and disappeared, he turned at last and tramped downward along the edge of the stream. Across stretched the level, white prairie, beaten and ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... shook his head dismally and pointed ashore, and Mr. Chalk, following the direction of his finger, gazed spellbound at a figure which was signalling wildly from the highest point. Tredgold and Stobell, approaching the side, waved ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... regions. The vast cloud which, to the eye of the shepherd in the valley below, seems only a fleecy cap, resting serenely upon the summit, or slowly floating along the sides, is really a driving mist, or cold and stormy rain, howling dismally over interminable fields of broken rocks, as if angry that it can make nothing grow upon them, with all its watering. Thus there are seldom distant views to be obtained, and every thing near presents a scene of simple ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look so blue, so dismally blue! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from room to room. There are not many—only five of them. In each he remains a few moments, gazing dismally around. But in one—that which was the widow's sleeping chamber—he tarries a longer time; regarding a particular spot—the place formerly occupied by a bed. Then a sigh, louder than any that has preceded it, succeeded by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... commonwealths, that were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator, and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, that were neither less wild nor less cruel than the beasts themselves. But as they went farther, a new scene opened, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Presidents of the two Chambers (that is, Grevy, Gambetta, and Leon Say). Brassey asked me to go with him in the Sunbeam. Although I should like to have gone, I was under engagements in London; and I spent the Sunday dismally ... instead of at Cherbourg ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... therefore, he is not infinitely good; and as I cannot be sure that I have fulfilled the conditions on which salvation is granted, I am afraid I may be one of those who shall be damned.' (looking dismally.) DR. ADAMS. 'What do you mean by damned?' JOHNSON. (passionately and loudly) 'Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly[921].' DR. ADAMS. 'I don't believe that doctrine.' JOHNSON. 'Hold, Sir, do you believe that some will be punished ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the night oppression left him. How interminable the hours had been! Suspense, doubt, anxiety, fear no longer burdened him. The night was dark, with only a few stars, and the air was cool. A soft wind blew across his heated face. A neighbor's dog, baying dismally, startled Bostil. He halted to listen, then stole on under the cottonwoods, through the sage, down the trail, into the jet-black canyon. Yet he found his way as if it had been light. In the darkness of his room he had been a slave to his indecision; ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... very bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled the windows in ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... of yourself?' said Pancks, whose face was as damp as if his steam were turning into water as fast as he dismally blew it off. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer'd unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the os illium,—both which bones were dismally crush'd, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho' it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... When, lo! an object frightful to behold; A grisly SPECTRE, cloth'd in silver-gray, Around whose feet the waving shadows play, Stands in his path!... He stops, and not a breath Heaves from his heart, that sinks almost to death. Loud the owl halloos o'er his head unseen; All else is silent, dismally serene: Some prompt ejaculation, whisper'd low, Yet bears him up against the threat'ning foe; And thus poor Giles, though half inclin'd to fly, Mutters his doubts, and strains his stedfast eye. ''Tis not my crimes thou com'st here to reprove; ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... with Doctor Wilhelm to the ladies' parlour, from there to the smoking-room. Soon after, he went on deck, where it was dark and gloomy and the wind was again whining dismally through the rigging of the four masts. It was bitter cold, and snowflakes, it seemed to him, swept his cheeks. Finally, there was nothing for him to do ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Making out any check is always the great adventure with him. He writes it with his heart's blood, and not being the greatest scholar in the world he has to count the letters in his name after it's written—he knows there ought to be nine together—and then he has to wipe the ink off his hands and sigh dismally and say if this thing keeps up he'll be spending his old age at the poor farm, and so forth. It all went according to schedule, except that he seemed strangely eager and under a severe ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... would have the benefit of seeing him. As the cab rolled towards the city Becky's carriage rattled off to the park. She gave no thought to either of them when the father and son entered at the old gates of the school, where Rawdon left the child, then walked home very dismally, and dined alone with Briggs, to whom he was grateful for her love and watchfulness over the boy. They talked about little Rawdon a long time, and Mr. Crawley went off to drink tea with Lady Jane, who was very fond of Rawdon, as was her little girl, who cried bitterly when the time for her cousin's ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... whose marginal fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of moldy ancestors, who look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about 'em. These are carefully set at the further corner: for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Italian about the blue sky or Venice, or very meanly said her husband had been there, hoping to direct the torrent of Italian eloquence to him. But she knew that, as an Italian conversationalist, neither she nor Peppino had a rag of reputation left them, and she dismally regretted that they had not chosen French, of which they both knew about as much, instead of Italian, for the vehicle ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales, Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice, [W] Powers of my native region! Ye that seize The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds, 220 That howl so dismally for him who treads Companionless your awful solitudes! There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long To wait upon the storms: of their approach Sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives 225 His flock, and thither from the homestead bears ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... where each had her own drawer and her own tools. An order had been received for mourning jewels, and haste was essential. Sidonie, whom the forewoman instructed in her task in a tone of infinite superiority, began dismally to sort a multitude of black pearls, bits of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that afternoon the amorous poet rode slowly up to the corral. As he sat limply upon his sorrel horse, smiling dismally at Ajax, we could see that the curl was out of his moustache, and out of the brim of his sombrero; upon his ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... underbred man, Miguel tried to appear unconcerned, but failed dismally. Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly induced the application for Victor's aid. He, however, dissembled so far ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... in my dream, as far as this Valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch, that, to wit, dismally known to some as the Last Ditch, whereinto the blind have oftentimes urged the blind, even threatening therein to plunge and perish, rather than acknowledge certain things which subsequently they nevertheless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... Chazelle [dismally]. "Disgusting business! I don't see why we should be treated like slaves because the government gives us four francs ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... such nights, while the trees of the surrounding forest here and there begin to be so penetrated with the fierce cold that they crack like rifle-shots, the ice-bound lake sets up an unearthly groaning, and the cavernous sound of its bellowing echoes dismally over the sleeping village, like the trumpetings of some huge leviathan ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... minutes the tent would become completely filled with smoke, so that I was driven into the open air for breath. Then I would seat myself on one end of the huge log, as near the fire as possible, for it was dismally cold, but the wind seemed actuated by a kind of caprice, for in whatever direction I took my seat, just that way came the smoke and hot ashes, puffing in my face until I was nearly blinded. Neither veil ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... an owl hooted dismally, and an instant later, faint and far away, came an answer so low ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... precipitous sides of the giant liner which, under a full head of steam, vibrated with suppressed energy, straining at mighty cables as if impatient to start on her long and hazardous voyage across the tumbling seas. A raw, piercing northeaster, howling dismally above the monotonous creaking and puffing of the donkey-engine, swept through the cheerless, draughty dock, chilling the spectators to the marrow. The sun, vainly trying to break through the banks of leaden-colored clouds, cast ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... haven't touched my Latin or French!" sighed Fil dismally. "I wish I could go to a school where there isn't any homework, and that somebody would invent a typewriter that would just spell the words ready-made when you ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... groaned Peggy dismally. "Who looks better now, you or I? I look 'beautiful,' don't I, perfectly beautiful! It's so becoming to have no collar band, and one's arms sticking out like flails! I sha'n't be able to eat a bite. It's as much as I can do to sit still, much less move about. I'll put ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... queer affair of straw, that hat, with a round crown and a rim that flopped dismally. With a single movement she had turned it up at one side and fitted it to her head. Grotesque by itself, when she wore it it was a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in sight, either," added Monkey Stallings, dismally, as he swept his eyes around in a nervous way. "As for a fire company, there isn't one closer than Danbury, which is all of ten miles away. Whew! I'm beginning to wish the whole business was over with, boys, and the troupe jogging along back to the ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... backbitings that had attended Maggie's advent into society. It was the high-flying brent who, knowing how the sensitive girl, made keenly conscious at every turn of her defective training and ingenuous ignorance, had often watched their evening flight with longing gaze, now "honked" dismally at the recollection. It was at this hour and season that the usual vague lamentings of Dedlow Marsh seemed to find at last a preordained expression. And it was at such a time, when light and water were both fading, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... over, and grasping his skirts went hastily below. The mate was half lying, half sitting, in his bunk, groaning dismally. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... her, as he clambered into the carriage after her bags. Up shot the fire in the twilight sky, from the great furnace behind the station. She felt the red flame go across her face. She had come back, she had come back for good. And her spirit groaned dismally. She doubted if she could ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat. Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the subject: What have I done to-day? Moped dismally till evening, and then muffled myself in furs; sat down among cushions and buffalo robes in the omnibus-sleigh, beside ——, shall I write it? yes! beside Rufus Malcome, and dashed away over the snow-clad earth ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... embers of a wood fire they two lingered one December night, wrapped in no pleasant thoughts, and idly listening to the shrill piping of a wind that dismally foretold the coming of snow. The father was a man well advanced in life, on whose good-looking, weak face dissipation had set its seal; the daughter, a woman of six or seven and twenty, who preserved more than all her father's good looks, but—as is so often ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... risks incident to the long wait in this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia was forced into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to her husband, shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time, as she fancied, and calling out dismally, ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... France can't expect much from me. But you, mademoiselle, you will do things for her!" It was a spontaneous tribute, just that, without thought of prying into the secret of her mission, "While I," he ended dismally, "can ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... means of subterranean river courses. I have myself followed one river course into the bowels of the earth for three miles and more, in the great Adelsberg Grotto, in Styria. I have rowed across the lake in the dismally dark cavern at Han, in the Ardennes. And even in our own Derbyshire, I have seen, half-a-mile from the entrance of the Speedwell Mine, a river, a water-fall, and a lake, all of which tell that such natural phenomena exist within the bowels of the earth as well as upon its surface. Moreover, ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... convulsed with grief; for in sorrow, as in joy, every Indian shares with all the others. The old women stood still, wherever they might be, and wailed dismally, at intervals chanting the praises of the departed warriors. The wives went a little way from their teepees and there audibly mourned; but the young maidens wandered further away from the camp, where no one could witness ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... better than this!" he panted dismally, fanning himself with a large fern leaf. "History was ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... We were dismally sea-sick. And I cared for nothing but arriving. Oh! dear, I think I would even have given up Paris, at least I thought so. But, oh! how could I think so! Just fancy a place where not only your own maid speaks French, but where everybody, the porters, the coachmen, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... flageolet, drawing from it, not music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked, leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both wore shepherd's garb—tunics fitting tight to the waist, large plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes were weak and red, and he blinked them so constantly that Owen ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... after all," he thought dismally, but continued to move around the cove. To reach one point he had to push through some more bushes, and in the midst of these he fairly tumbled over a third boat, piled high with various camping things. He gave a close look and almost uttered a cry ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... wearisome is the conversation of the clique of inferior women who worship Mr. Tryan! how dismally twaddling is that respectable old congregationalist, Mr. Jerome, with his tidy little garden and his "littel chacenut hoss"! We feel for Mr. Tryan when in the society of such people, although to him it was mitigated by the belief that he was doing good by associating with them, and that by love ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought I—in a year. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... cried he at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into unsightly perpendicularities (an invariable sign of distracted emotion) and his hands appealingly outstretched—"what the hell am ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and would have thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the king's crown and initials, only that they pitied the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck and ruin of the system to which ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... It rained dismally, and I sat in the stuffy cabin, either peering at the country through the window or talking with a young Dutchman, the only other traveller. At one village a boy was engaged in house-cleaning by immersing the furniture, piece ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... had escaped from the dining-room to the porch, Lad was the first to voice his sentiments upon the subject of our drooping spirits. "I didn't know her being here made such a lot of difference—till she got away," he said dismally. "There's nobody to laugh, now, when ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... either been captured or drowned," he mused dismally. "And the Peacock is gone, too. What shall ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... Duncan of Duncan, and warn him of impending evil. The traditions of the house told that the Barons of Duncan had again and again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some of them had yielded and withdrawn from the venture they had undertaken, and it had failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, and had hardened their hearts, and had gone on reckless of defeat and to death. In no case had a Lord Duncan been exposed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... on, as people naturally would who were about to be overwhelmed in a calamity that threatened their annihilation, while an indefinable sensation of sleepiness and inertia seized the whole of the party. Vultures and other birds of prey screamed dismally, as they hovered round our heads in the greatest excitement, arising either from terror or the anticipation of a rich repast, we could not tell which. These voracious creatures, with great audacity, often descended to within a few feet ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... were chirping amid the weeds, and frogs were croaking dismally among the waving reeds ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... mutual protection, in two rows, with a narrow street between. But the storms of winter were already upon them. Monday night it again commenced raining. All that night and all of Tuesday the rain fell in floods, while the tempest swept the ocean and wailed dismally through the forest. Thus they toiled along in the endurance of inconceivable discomfort for the rest of the week. All were suffering from colds, and many were seriously sick. Friday and Saturday it was again stormy and very cold. To add to their anxiety, they ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... delivered you into our hands at last!' they said. 'Huitzilopochtli has long cried for his victims. The stone of sacrifice is ready—the knives are sharpened. The wild beasts in the palace are roaring for their feast.' These taunts, which sounded dismally in the ears of the besieged, were mingled with piteous lamentations for Montezuma, whom they entreated the Spaniards to deliver up to them. Cortes was suffering much from a severe wound and from his many anxieties, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the well was no deeper, for had my head been under water, instead of above it—hoo, hoo, hoo, keek, eek!—under instead of over, you know—why, then I wouldn't be talking to you now! Ha, hoo, hee!" And the well dismally echoed: "Ha, hoo, hee!" which you must imagine was a laugh half ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... one morning when I had been lying awake some time in my bed, as if somebody had asked me the question, What was I a whore for now? It occurred naturally upon this inquiry, that at first I yielded to the importunity of my circumstances, the misery of which the devil dismally aggravated, to draw me to comply; for I confess I had strong natural aversions to the crime at first, partly owing to a virtuous education, and partly to a sense of religion; but the devil, and that greater devil of poverty, prevailed; and the person who laid siege to me did it in such ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... author respecting the black man is curious and, of course, dismally prophetic. As the reader may perhaps recollect, it is to the effect that granting political power to the Negroes as a body, equal in scope "to that claimed by Us" (i.e., Mr. Froude and his friends), would certainly result in the use of these powers by the Negroes ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... do you think people are fools?—Can they not see how dismally you endeavour to sigh yourself down within-doors?—How you hang down your sweet face [those were the words she was pleased to use] upon your bosom?—How you totter, as it were, and hold by this chair, and by that door post, when you know that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... we were on the road to Washington, and rumor had it that we were to be shipped at once for Petersburgh. We reached the bank of the Shenandoah, where we expected to cross to the gap; the corps was massed by the river side, and the men looked dismally into the cold, dark waters, and shivered at the thought of wading through the stream whose waters would reach nearly to their necks. But while we waited to get ready for crossing, a courier came to General Wright with a message from Sheridan to return to his army in haste. ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... ardor as are the American people of to-day. The year 1762 was, indeed, a far more warlike time than was 1862. "Great war" is now confined to the territory of the United States, and exists neither in Asia, Africa, nor Europe. Garibaldi's laudable attempt to get it up in Italy failed dismally. There was a flash of spirit, and there were a few flashes of gunpowder, and all was over. "The rest is silence." There are numerous questions unsettled in the Old World, but the disputants are inclined ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... a clock ticked dismally. Through two small open windows puffed superheated gusts of air. The muffled clamor of many voices in strange tongues sifted through the windows and walls, but served only to increase the awful stillness in the room. Despite his efforts to the contrary, ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... house had changed. It was not only that winter had stripped the elm, and blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had a debased and deserted air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and one or two shutters swung dismally on loosened hinges. ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... answered dismally without turning around, "you can have a bushel of them for less ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... highly imaginative and totally unregulated mind, must have been much worse than putting me to sleep in the haunted room, for in that I had my counter-spell—and long use had almost endeared me to it and its grotesque carvings—but this dismally large school-room, generally so instinct with life, so superabounding in animation, was painfully fearful, even from the contrast. Twenty times in the evening, when the cold blast came creeping along the floor and wound round my ankles, did I imagine it was the chill hand of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... found Somerled and Mrs. James gone. Barrie was alone with her newly found—sister, and a more forlorn little figure than our young goddess it would be hard to imagine. Andromeda chained to her rock could not have looked more dismally deserted by her friends. A room had been taken for her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... work-day, and the thought of it put a damper on the men's spirits. Most of them, moreover, had spent their money. Some were already rolling dismally home, to sleep in preparation for the morrow. Mrs. Morel, listening to their mournful singing, went indoors. Nine o'clock passed, and ten, and still "the pair" had not returned. On a doorstep somewhere ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the sullen soil yielded, and she staggered back against the wheel with a small metal box in her hands. No time now to examine the prize, be it what it might. Into the apron bag it went, and on top of it went the puppy, yelping dismally. Then slowly, carefully, clinging with hands and feet for life and limb, Hilda reascended the wall. Oh, but it was hard work! Her hands were already very sore, and the heavy bundle hung back from her neck and half choked her. Moreover the ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... all pegged dismally homeward, the half-dozen thought that Mr. Mitchell had also just about cured six Volunteers. And when the half-dozen took off their red flannel shirts that day, they no longer looked upon them as red badges of courage, but rather as ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... and in the whole aspect of the place which astonished me greatly. If this sombre dwelling with its rich but dismally dark halls and mysterious recesses could be said to ever wear an air of cheer, the attempt certainly had been made to effect this to-day. From the hand of the bronze figure that capped the newel-post hung wreaths of smilax ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... round his neck half throttle ME, The hot love-tears burn deep like spots of lead, Yea, and the years pass quick: right dismally Will Launcelot at one time hang ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... in the world that the unfortunate man could have said, any would have been preferable to this. Of course Mrs. Bardell burst into tears, and requested to be led from the table instantly; upon which the affectionate child began to cry too, most dismally. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of the intruding, out-of-season wind came a train of ills. Young Tucker Poteet waked at daylight and howled dismally with a pain that seemed to be all over and then in spots. When he went to take down the store shutters Mr. Crabtree smashed one of his large, generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a cinder state while she tied it up in camphor ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... anon, Dick," rejoined Nicholas, with a hollow laugh, and in a dismally deep tone. "You will see Isole herself. I was foolhardy enough to invite her to dance the brawl with me. She smiled her assent, and winked at me thus—very significantly, I protest to you—and she will be as good as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the rain was falling dismally, she received him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual heightened colour no longer gave youth to her cheek; an anxious frown knitted her candid brows; and there was no laughter in her eyes. He looked at her questioningly. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground passage of civilization, and thrust their corpses there. For the eye of the thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their winding-sheet for an apron, dismally sponging out their work. Louis XI. is there with Tristan, Francois I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother, Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is there, Hebert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... indeed that followed,—miles and miles beside roaring brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An owl hooted dismally, whoo-hooo! and though he knew the sound well in his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped and whirred away out of their ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... and June the French made terrific attacks under Foch in Artois (Vol. III, 121-125), and won some ground north of Arras. (Vol. III, 155.) But the attacks had to be abandoned because they were too costly in men, while a British attempt to support the French failed dismally. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... that doesn't matter," Eustace said dismally. "She says they have a deadly hatred ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... isle, to and fro went heralds, dismally arrayed, beating shark-skin drums; and, at intervals, crying—"A man is dead; let no fires be kindled; have mercy, oh Oro!—Let no canoes put to sea till the burial. This night, oh Oro!—Let no food ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fairy-book fashion. Commonly referred to as the Chateau de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original chateau of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed pavilion of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... played there with his brother and Grenard Pike in their childhood. The plastered walls of the tenement in many places had given way, and the broken windows were filled with pieces of board, which, if they kept out the wind and rain, dismally diminished the small portion of light which found its way through ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... The wind howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... with pathetic gravity, "the wind howls most dismally this evening! I took it for ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... was a fool not to take one of the cars. Then we should have had none of this worry. I've always said the Paris cabs weren't safe. What d'ye think we had better do? We can't start out and make a round of all the hospitals—the idea's absurd!" Waiting a moment, he added dismally, "It's clear I can't take that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... is a sunless place as a rule; this morning we had bright sunshine for a few hours, but later the sky clouded over from the north again, and now it is snowing dismally. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Edna," he interjected quickly. "I may never be famous. I may be obscure, and we may be poor, relatively speaking, all our lives," and he sighed dismally. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the steer fall. He went down heavily, the impetus of his charge proving his undoing; he struck heavily on head and shoulder, grunting dismally, his hind quarters rising in the air, balancing there for an infinitesimal space and then ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Berwick, we had to go round through the hills by Kelso, as there was a block on the main line. I knew nothing of this, and you may imagine my bewilderment when I came to myself, the train standing and whistling dismally in the black morning, before a little vacant half-lit station, with a name up that I had never heard before. My fellow-traveller woke up and wanted to know what was wrong. "O, it's nothing," I said, "nothing at all, it's an evil dream." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rallied again, but did not come quite so near the strangers as before, keeping at the distance of about ten yards, as if they supposed that were sufficient to ensure their safety from the muskets. Their consternation was however very great, and they howled and lamented dismally. After all, as if to employ every possible means to mollify their invaders, the men, women, and children presented themselves in the most humble postures, carrying branches of palm in token of peace and submission, bringing plenty of provisions of all kinds, and even pointing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... and thenceforward across all the States, and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... silent. He wanted to get up and rush at Dan, despite the levelled pistol, but the wounded knee held him back. Had he been a full-blooded Indian he would have suffered in silence, but, being only a half-breed, and of poor Indian and white blood at that, he groaned dismally. ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... telling Miss Russell what bad marks I got this morning," said Effie Hargreaves dismally. "She threatened last week to report me if I had another cross for history, and I missed five times, and four times in literature, and all my problems were ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... his head dismally and pointed ashore, and Mr. Chalk, following the direction of his finger, gazed spellbound at a figure which was signalling wildly from the highest point. Tredgold and Stobell, approaching the side, waved their handkerchiefs ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. "So you determined not to shoot her, after all," ...
— The American • Henry James
... up a shrill call. Two white sheets fluttered dismally. But the great steamer, on her way to Baltimore, neither heard the sound nor saw the white signals of distress. It was ten times more dismal when the friendly smoke had dissolved in ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... always chiming together, or taking up each other's melodies at every pause, my wife the key-clapper of all. A very sweet ringing, and pealing, and chiming, I confess; but then, the most silvery of bells may, sometimes, dismally toll, as well as merrily play. And as touching the subject in question, it became so now. Perceiving a strange relapse of opposition in me, wife and daughters began a soft and ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... and condoned perversion to vulgarity of Musset's perfect little work. How could quality of talent consort with so dire an absence of quality in the material offered it? where could such lapses lead but to dust and desolation and what happy instinct not be smothered in an air so dismally non-conducting? Is it a foolish fallacy that these matters may have been on occasion, at that time, worth speaking of? is it only presumable that everything was perfectly cheap and common and everyone perfectly bad and barbarous and that even the least corruptible ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of the cells, the chapel, and the refectory. In the refectory, a vast hall where the tables still stood in their places, Roland noticed five or six bats circling around; a frightened owl flew through a broken casement, and perched upon a tree close by, hooting dismally. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... disappointed anguish escaping her lips. The candle had burned out in the grease cup, the wind was rocking the shanty and making the rafters creak dismally. Tess shivered as she tossed her clothes upon the floor, and crept exhausted into Daddy's bed. The last thing she heard was the splashing of her ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... wind soughing dismally among the rafters responded to her call, uttered with her loudest voice, and a fresh shiver of fear crept over her. Then she rallied, growing angry, which, under the circumstances, was the best thing that could have happened. Her indignation made her half-forget her terror ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... but five or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the class-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in and out, generating others as they went, and then came ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... business, and laughers without occasion; as you tender the welfare of your country, I entreat you not to forget or delay so public-spirited a work. Now or never is the time. Many other calamities may cease with the war; but I dismally dread the multiplication of these mortals under the ease and luxuriousness of a settled peace, half the blessing of which may be destroyed by them. Their mistake lies certainly here, in a wretched belief, that their mimicry passes for real business, or true wit. Dear sir, convince ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey or the beef,—and the Wassail is out of the question—but in every endeavour that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was never asleep; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled, the effigy of Master Richard Watts ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... creature, who is at the same time in love with Lady Mary Coke, and following the Duchess of Grafton and Loo all over the kingdom. In short, my lord, I have got the gout-yes, the gout in earnest. I was seized on Monday morning, suffered dismally all night, am now wrapped in flannels like the picture of a Morocco ambassador, and am carried to bed by two servants. You see virtue and leanness are no preservatives. I write this now to your lordship, because I think it totally impossible that I should be able to set out the day after to-morrow, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... He sat at the window all afternoon, dismally trying to devise way of escape from the dilemma. He did not succeed. He had gone too far now to make a confession sound reasonably convincing; and he could not desert the girl to Dale. That was not to be thought of. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... but one, dearie. And a feather bed!" All this as she bustled to and fro, and very quietly despite her size, while I sat gazing into the fire and hearkening to the patter of rain on the windows and the wind that howled dismally without and rumbled in the wide chimney so that I must needs wonder how it fared with the travellers and if I should ever see either of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... morning there was rain, and the air freshened, but the leaden sea lay level as before. The sun shone in the afternoon; with the sunset the fog came thick and white; the ship lowed dismally through the night; from the dense folds of the mist answering noises called back to her. Just before dark two men in a dory shouted up to her close under her bows, and then melted out of sight; when the dark fell the lights ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he once more pelted forward, Matcham trailing in the rear. To say truth, they made but poor speed of it by now, labouring dismally as they ran, and catching for their breath like fish. Matcham had a cruel stitch, and his head swam; and as for Dick, his knees were like lead. But they kept up the form of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the blast through the loose windows, flapped dismally, and the people drew their wraps about them, for the fireless room was cold. Steadily, insistently, the hive-like drone of conversation ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... kitchen door and tapped lightly. There was no answer, but somewhere within the house a dog howled dismally. The door handle yielded to his touch when he tried ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... below zero. On such nights, while the trees of the surrounding forest here and there begin to be so penetrated with the fierce cold that they crack like rifle-shots, the ice-bound lake sets up an unearthly groaning, and the cavernous sound of its bellowing echoes dismally over the sleeping village, like the trumpetings of some huge ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... floating ice under the sky of July. The scanty grass around it forms a thick, low turf, which is studded with bodiless blue gentians, primroses, and other Alpine flowers. Overhanging the lake are the frost-bitten crags of the Mountain of Death; and the other mountains about, though less dismally named, are not more cheerful to the traveler. Along the lake margin winds the narrow bridle-path, which follows rushing rivulets in zigzags down steep flower-carpeted slopes to the pine woods of Saint Remy, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... bidding accomplished, turned to meet Hilarius and the Friar who were now coming slowly across the windswept common. March mists gathered and draped the sluggish river; the dry reeds rattled dismally in the ooze and sedge. Hilarius shivered, and the Friar started nervously when ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... has been put to the door I can watch it out of the loophole where, with its fellows, it raves and threatens in dumb show. Years ago when that thought was young, it was dearer to me than all others, and I would speak with it always when I had an hour alone. These rags that so dismally trick forth its madness were once the splendid livery my favour wrought for it on my bed at night. Can you see the device on the badge? I dare not read it there myself, yet have a guess—'bad ware nicht'—is not ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... itself, and brought up nowhere. The treasuries of local speech were all too poor to clothe so wild a venture. It was agreed that there's no fool like an old fool, and that folks who ride to market may come home afoot. Everybody forgot that Amelia had had no previous romance, and dismally pictured her as going through the woods, and getting a crooked stick at last. Even the milder among her judges were not content with prophesying the betrayal of her trust alone. They argued from the tramp nature to inevitable results, and declared it would be a mercy if she were not murdered ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... the table, and the precious silver forks, and the old bronze image, keeping its solitary stand upon the mantelpiece. Then, methought, the wretched Vigwiggie came, and jumped upon the window-sill, and clung there with her fore paws, mewing dismally for admittance, which I could not grant her, being there myself only in the spirit. And then came the ghost of the old Doctor, stalking through the gallery, and down the staircase, and peeping into the parlor; and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boxful of wax matches. I resumed the bellows. I lunged with the poker. I held a newspaper over the whole grate. I did all that inspiration could suggest, or skill accomplish. Vainly. The fire went out—darkly, dismally, gradually, quite out. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... still some gray light left, but the little lady who sat dismally on her husband's right, occasionally peering through the window, could make nothing of the landscape, because of the driving scuds of rain which drenched the carriage windows, as though in their mad charges from the trailing clouds in front, they disputed every inch of the miry way with the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remembering the advice, and unconscious of the danger, stood her ground as a great hawk came circling nearer and nearer, till, with a sudden dart he pounced on the poor chicken, and bore it away chirping dismally, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... running over the table-cloth and mosquitoes biting her ankles, she could have them, but they would have the ranch. To Druro's surprise and relief, she laughed and gave in quite pleasantly. Being a man, he could not know that, at that very moment, she was dismally deciding that, considering all that had passed, she could not ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... March dismally. "I don't b'lieve it can make me worse, an' perhaps it'll make me better. I wonder what in the world pain was ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... have I done to-day? Moped dismally till evening, and then muffled myself in furs; sat down among cushions and buffalo robes in the omnibus-sleigh, beside ——, shall I write it? yes! beside Rufus Malcome, and dashed away over the snow-clad earth to the music of merry bells ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Not that he had moved there, oh, no! He could not have endured life if all of it that he could call his own had to be spent in that atmosphere. He still kept his little fourth floor back in the dismally respectable street. He had not gone to the place recommended by Endicott, because he found that the difference he would have to pay would make it possible for him to rent this sad little room near the alley; and for his purposes this seemed to him ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a black bandage,—as if that instrument could possibly communicate any comfort to anybody,—were posted at the front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged from the Boar ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... in, and kissed him thrice; and after he had kissed him kept fast hold of his hand until they came together through the hall into the great room where Cicely was sitting quite dismally ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... gone to see the last resting-place destined for him in the little village churchyard. It was a dreary patch of ground which looked as if the suns ray's never penetrated through its high walls on the graves below. Crumbling grey-lichened headstones peeped dismally from among the long dank grass, and the little paths were overgrown with weeds. Everywhere there were traces of unloving carelessness of the dead. And though Grace knew full well that the silent sleepers below little heeded this selfish forgetfulness, these surroundings sent a ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... throws into the black-balling of some evil tongue—some too harsh and too powerful critic of the moment. 'Scamped and empty work,' in which 'ideas not worth stating' find an expression 'not worth criticism.' Mannerisms grown to absurdity; faults of early training writ dismally large; vulgarity of conception and carelessness of execution—no stone that could hurt or sting was left unflung, and the note of meditative pity in which the article came to an end, marked the climax of a very neat revenge. After reading it, Fenwick felt himself artistically ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the rope, the further end of which was rove through the ring of a small grapnel anchor half buried in the spongy earth. "Gone!" he echoed dismally. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... in its jaws, and the little body, with its stuck-out webbed feet, flapped and flopped dismally from side to side, as the animal cantered along with a somewhat shuffling, undulating gait. And then the polecat became transfixed. He had recognized the new-comer. He knew the breed, and would have given a lot not to have molested that redshank's ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... said Rachel, dismally. "Anybody might know by the noise who it is. He always comes stamping along as if he was paid for makin' a noise. Anybody ought to have a cast-iron head that lives anywhere within ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... who know what they want, and used words he had never met with before out of a newspaper. He felt himself no match for her, and ended the discussion by saying: "That's all moonshine—you shan't go! D'ye hear me?" but he felt dismally sure that she would go, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... The mother was beautiful as a woman, the daughter beautiful as a child; not even love could say so much now. Their hair is long, unkempt, and strangely white; they make us shrink and shudder with an indefinable repulsion, though the effect may be from an illusory glozing of the light glimmering dismally through the unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of hunger and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant, the convict, was taken ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Colonel so that he waved a feeble hand above his head, then groaned most dismally, and ground his teeth ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... on a lonely branch, croaked dismally, till Andy fancied he could hear words of reproach in the sounds, while a little tomtit chattered and twittered on a neighbouring bough, as if he enjoyed and approved of all the severe things the raven uttered. The little tomtit ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... did." He touched a button and a music-box in the dragon's head began to play a tune. At once the little charioteer pulled over a lever and the dragon began to move—very slowly and groaning dismally as it drew the clumsy chariot after it. Toto trotted between the wheels. The Sawhorse, the Mule, the Lion and the Woozy followed after and had no trouble in keeping up with the machine; indeed, they had to go slow to keep from running into it. When the wheels turned ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... warm arms round his neck half throttle ME, The hot love-tears burn deep like spots of lead, Yea, and the years pass quick: right dismally Will Launcelot at ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... fain to laugh, so dismally did the broad-shouldered Mercian blame himself. But the bishop said that if I went, needs must that he came also. But he did not dissuade me ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... a remarkably cheerful voice, but the appalling magnitude of three years could not be diminished, and the three little sisters who were to stay behind with Aunt Raby were still disposed to view things dismally. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... it best as it wur afore." As he spoke the head disappeared, and they heard him go clumping down the ladder again. The words fell heavily on Lilac's ears. "Best as it wur afore." Perhaps everyone would think so too. She looked dismally first at the locks of hair on the ground and then at Agnetta's ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... so dismally recalled Leonidas's late feelings that his face clouded, and he involuntarily sighed. The stranger instantly shifted his head and gazed curiously at him. Then he took the boy's sunburnt hand in his own, and held it a moment. "Well, go ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... visible from where I am; it rises behind and beyond the wall. I stay taking compass bearings and look for an easy way up for to-morrow. My men, by now, have missed their "ma" and are yelling for her dismally, and the night comes down with great rapidity for we are in the shadow of the great mountain mass, so I go back into camp. Alas! how vain are often our most energetic efforts to remove our fellow creatures ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... streak of lightning. The one we killed was a male and had a good coat—a rather unusual thing for a dingo, as the skin is often covered with sores. From that time, till we broke up camp, we were not often troubled by their howling near us—a gun shot would quickly silence their dismally infernal howls. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... trying to get something for Meg, who is very tired, and someone shook me, and here I am in a nice state," answered Jo, glancing dismally from the stained ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How nice it would be—the thought flashed through his mind—if all winds, like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they had such ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to think is really a pretty important matter, if you find some night that you have to watch with a sick friend. You must not read, write, or talk there. But you must keep awake. Unless you mean to have the time pass dismally slow, you must have your regular topics to think ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... afternoon—a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... uncommon wealth of golden blossoms. "The lanes looked for all the world as they did the year that poor child was found," said Thomasina, wiping her eyes. Annie the lass sobbed hysterically, and the cowherd found himself so low in spirits that after gazing dismally at the cowstalls, which had not been cleaned for days past, he betook himself to the ale-house to refresh his energies for this ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... netted them another yard in the same place. Then Paul was given the pigskin for a try outside of right tackle and reeled off four yards more before he was downed. It was quick starting and fast running, and for the moment Robinson was taken off her feet; but the next try ended dismally, for in an attempt to get through the left of the line between guard and tackle Mason was caught and thrown back for a two-yard loss. Another try outside of tackle on that side of the line netted but a bare three feet, and Foster dropped back for a kick. His effort ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Gray Stoddard married to Johnnie! He tried to adjust his dull wits to the new position of affairs; tried to cipher the problem with this amazing new element introduced. Last night's scene of violence when the injured child was brought home went dismally before his eyes. Laurella had said she would leave him so soon as she could put foot to the floor. He had expected to coax her with gifts and money, with concessions in regard to the children if it must be; but with a rich man for a son-in-law, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... day that Ena began to sneeze so dismally that the only place for her was bed. And when she could leave its seclusion the next only place was Palm Beach. She said she would die unless she could go to Palm Beach, so mother took her, and Peter took them both, not ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... forward suddenly with his cane and pushed the button in the grass so that the picture below went out instantly, and there remained only that great dark mouth covered dismally with the black teeth of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... upon the room. Only the breathing of the dog upon the mat came through the deep stillness, like the pulse of time marking the minutes; and the steady drip, drip of the fog outside upon the window-ledges dismally testified to the inclemency of the night beyond. And the soft crashings of the coals as the fire settled down into the grate became less and less audible as the fire sank and the flames resigned ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An owl hooted dismally, whoo-hooo! and though he knew the sound well in his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped and ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... passed over St. Ange in the late afternoon, had changed the sultry heat to ominous chill. The wind among the pines sobbed dismally as if it were a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... middle of a field which had been ploughed up all over by the heavy wheels of cannons. The rest of the ground had been trampled by horses' feet and the cold had hardened the little ridges of earth, leaving icicles here and there, which glittered dismally in ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... put in a fresh pair o' sleeves or set on a button that's missin'. Sure, ye didn't think Cleena was one would be leavin' her childer bring in all the wage. Only—" and the good creature's fine face clouded dismally. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... picked up the children and threw them upon the bank, and then strode out, and tried to shake myself, as I have seen a Newfoundland dog do. The shake was not a success—it caused my trouser's legs to flap dismally about my ankles, and sent the streams of treacherous ooze trickling down into my shoes. My hat, of drab felt, had fallen off by the brookside, and been plentifully spattered as I ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... person. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, Hazlitt had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. "He has painted Wordsworth," writes Southey, "but so dismally, though Wordsworth's face is his idea of physiognomical perfection, that one of his friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, 'At the gallows—deeply affected by his deserved fate—yet determined to die like a man;' and if you saw the picture, you would ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... he panted dismally, fanning himself with a large fern leaf. "History was better—anything ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... his drum. Goldsmith (D. V. 44) calls the bird "the hollow-sounding bittern;" and in his Animated Nature, he says that of all the notes of waterfowl "there is none so dismally hollow as the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... directly," he said at last, sitting up and looking dismally about him; "and it's nearly five o'clock. She said she would be here at four. Ugh! how cold it is! If she doesn't come in five minutes I shall go to the Spotted Dog. There's always a fire there, thank goodness, and they'll stand me a glass of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... any one to tell me that now was my time; but it was with limbs that almost refused their office from sheer fright, that I crept past the sleeping man, and reached the edge of the wharf. There was the vessel moving very slightly, and groaning dismally as she moved, and there was the hole, and it was temptingly dark. But—the gangway that had been laid across from the wharf was gone! I could have jumped the chasm easily with a run, but I dared not take a run. If I did it at all ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Church or adventurous free-companion who might not, indeed, command—for there were none who could do that—but hope for the lady's kindness. Although I assured myself lustily that a poet was as good as a prince, in my heart, and in the presence of all this luxury, I knew very dismally that it was not so, and that Monna Vittoria would never be persuaded to think so. As I have already said, I had no great yearning for these magnificent mercenaries of the hosts of Love, for these bejewelled amazons that seemed made merely ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... time of the morning there are comparatively few people out in that part of the town. The broad interminable perspective of the East India Dock Road, the great perspective of drab brick walls, of grey pavement, of muddy roadway rumbling dismally with loaded carts and vans lost itself in the distance, imposing and shabby in its spacious meanness of aspect, in its immeasurable poverty of forms, of colouring, of life—under a harsh, unconcerned sky dried by the wind to a clear blue. It had been raining during the night. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... some amusement Rachel's utter absence of small dexterities, and of even the effort to avoid the humiliation of a confession of her error. Miss Grey and a boy partner had wandered into the conservatory, and were rather dismally trying to seem occupied with the camellias when Rachel made her way to them, and though he could not actually hear the words, he knew pretty well what they were. "Emily, you were right after all, and I was mistaken," and then as ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... love, the neighbours far and near, Follow'd with wistful looks the damsel's bier; Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore, While dismally the parson walk'd before. Upon her grave the rosemary ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... of his age seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three months' service in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair, the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded. He might well skulk behind the settle, on beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house, instead of a rough-headed counterpart of himself, as he expected. 'Is Heathcliff not here?' she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... something anon, Dick," rejoined Nicholas, with a hollow laugh, and in a dismally deep tone. "You will see Isole herself. I was foolhardy enough to invite her to dance the brawl with me. She smiled her assent, and winked at me thus—very significantly, I protest to you—and she will be ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... break all the morning. The two teams, after hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with stump-cricket in the changing-rooms, lunched in the pavilion at one o'clock. After which the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair, moved that this merry meeting be considered off and himself and his men permitted to catch the next train ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... as all his confidence in the righteousness of his cause, to keep his heart from fluttering with fear as they stepped along beneath the gloom of the trees, which even when not in leaf cast dense shadows around them. It was in truth a weird spot: owls hooted dismally about them, bats flitted here and there in their erratic flight, and sometimes almost brushed the faces of the boys with their clammy wings. The strange noises always to be heard in a wood at night assailed their ears, and mingled with the quick ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... brick chimney, the wind fought for entrance from above, rain beat dismally upon the high windows. The fire died down again, seeming to retire into the mound of grey ashes which it had created; and the ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... hours in reading aloud to her small guests, exhibited a tendency to tears and self-pity. Mr Hallett, disappointed of a hoped-for holiday with his friend as companion, shrugged his shoulders, and inquired dismally: "What can you expect? Things always go wrong in ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... who embellishes it, and passes it along as a fact. He goes into details, tells harrowing stories concerning hair-raising escapes from shot and shell. He splashes the surrounding rocks with gouts of blood, and then shudders dismally at the sight his fancy has conjured up. When the thrilled listener has refreshed the tale-teller from his whisky flask, the romancist takes up the thread of his narrative once more, and tells how the Lancers thundered over the shivering veldts in pursuit of flying ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... it is," she said, "I'm not one bit superstitious, but Bruno howled so dismally under my window all night, and when he ceased, a horrid owl set up a screech. I told Maria, and she said, in her country the cry of an owl was a sign that the grave was about to give up its dead, and she looked so mysterious that she frightened me ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... daidokoro, a party of storm-bound students, horses, fowls, and dogs. My room is a wretched loft, reached by a ladder, with such a quagmire at its foot that I have to descend into it in Wellington boots. It was dismally grotesque at first. The torrent on the unceiled roof prevented Ito from hearing what I said, the bed was soaked, and the water, having got into my box, had dissolved the remains of the condensed milk, and had reduced clothes, books, and paper into a condition of universal ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... brilliantly in salons and conversazioni, and spent their time in masking and throwing confetti in carnival, and going to balls and opera. I didn't know what American tourists were, then, and how dismally they moped about in hotels and galleries and churches. And I didn't know how stupid Europe was socially,—how perfectly dead and buried it was, especially for young people. It would be fun if things ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... went the pair, down a narrow road lined on either side with palms and plantains and sweet-smelling shrubs. From the hollows the frogs croaked dismally, and here and there a night bird uttered its lonely cry, but otherwise all ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... her worst spasm. We hung grimly on to the chute, dismally confident that something would have to give way soon. Suddenly there was a rending sound; the seam of the canvas ripped open and a gaping slit appeared, through which Cook's freed arm flapped wildly. Then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... and dashed out of the hall, as he proposed to dash out of her life, with terrible, sinking thoughts in his brain, and his heart pounding dismally against his ribs. He recovered his coat ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... time in hand, suffer'd unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the os illium,—both which bones were dismally crush'd, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho' it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle Toby's groin, was more owing to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... her childhood in New England. She could barely remember the old white farmhouse with its faded green shutters that rattled so dismally in the piercing winds that seemed to single out the Knight house as it swept down between the hills. She recalled vividly the discussion carried on between her parents in regard to their mode of moving ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... wheel-marks of the trail to Utah often ran parallel with the track, and bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the remains of those "whose carcasses fell in the wilderness" on the long and drouthy journey. The daybreak of to-day (Sunday) found us shivering at Fort Laramie, a frontier post dismally situated at a height of 7,000 feet. Another 1,000 feet over gravelly levels brought us to Sherman, the highest level reached by this railroad. From this point eastward the streams fall into the Atlantic. The ascent of these ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... never forgive us," said Ismay, dismally. "I had a presentiment of trouble the moment that ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was thus dismally shrouded, the prospect was not obscured. Down in the valley of the Rhone behind them, the stream could be traced through all its many windings, oppressively sombre and solemn in its one leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far and high above them, glaciers ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... send your boy for a carriage," said the doctor, who was engaged in removing Mrs. Stiles's shoe. "Nothing else, thank you, unless you happen to have some lead-water about you." He gave a professional smile, and Mrs. Stiles groaned dismally. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross—at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from any book she desired; an offer involving no small degree of self-denial, for Sophia's books were very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister. But she lifted the nearest two, Barret's "Maga," and "The Veiled Prophet," and rather dismally asked which it was ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... there, and departed. The truth at length came out—that these two smart Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... sitting down on the opposite side of the hearth, while the fire, on which Hemstead had thrown some damp green wood, smoked dismally between them, "I do think ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... a great Expedition set on foot to go and find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force, if needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at all, but said, an unspeakable number of times, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... seemed literally stunned and wholly incapable of action, while the negroes howled dismally for Mas'r Hugh, who, Chloe said, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... floating swiftly down, and, closer at hand, something white rolling over and over, and he shuddered; but it was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after, lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... gentle swine, To ease her itch against the stump, And dismally was heard to whine, All as she scrubb'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a prejudice against the hydropathic treatment of wounds, holding that water poisons them: and, as the native produce usually contains salt, soda and magnesia, they are justified by many cases. I once tried water-bandages in Arabia and failed dismally. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while the remaining three should go the Sullivan county miles to a farmhouse for supplies. They gazed at him dismally. "There's only one of you—the devil make a twin," they said in parting malediction, and disappeared down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... vetturino agreed to take us to Florence that night for five francs a piece, provided one person would sit on the outside with the driver. I accordingly mounted on front, protected by a blouse and umbrella, for it was beginning to rain dismally. The miserable, bare-boned horses were fastened with rope-traces, and the vetturino having taken the rope-lines in his hand, gave a flourish with his whip; one old horse tumbled nearly to the ground, but he jerked him up ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... at him with her large dark eyes, and then, all at once, she remembered Dandy, her husband's terrier, who, after his master's tragic death, had refused all food, and had howled so long and so dismally that, in a fit of temper, she had herself ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... said Julia, when she had brought him back to the library fire again, and they were seated before it. "Don't you want to smoke?" He shook his head dismally, having no heart for what she proposed. "Well, then," she said briskly, but a little ruefully, "let's get to the bottom of things. Just what did you mean you had 'in black and white' in ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... fat boy sat there, apparently lost in bitter reflections. Now and then he would give a start, and look around him hastily, after which he would heave a great sigh, or else groan dismally. From this it might be assumed that Bumpus was allowing himself to dwell upon many a glorious supper he had devoured in the company of his Boy Scout chums; and just then he was enjoying things the best he knew how, he would remember the desolation ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... guard and see him safely bestowed—in the lock-up aft, and bring the key to my cabin." So at Godby's word, in came two armed fellows and marched out Resolution Day, his head still bowed and his fetters jangling dismally. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... cry rent the still evening air, and shrieked dismally back from the distant hills and the gray, ghostly mountain- -and the child fell on her face at ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet. From this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... surprising intellectual strength the average cabby displays when you promise him a tip.... Great Heavens!" he cried, reading the girl's dismayed expression. "A tip! I never thought—!" His face lengthened dismally, his eyebrows working awry. "Now we are ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was, indeed, a far more warlike time than was 1862. "Great war" is now confined to the territory of the United States, and exists neither in Asia, Africa, nor Europe. Garibaldi's laudable attempt to get it up in Italy failed dismally. There was a flash of spirit, and there were a few flashes of gunpowder, and all was over. "The rest is silence." There are numerous questions unsettled in the Old World, but the disputants are inclined to wait for settlement, it would seem, until our affairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... It was not that it had come back empty to her side that made her sad. If occasionally she was moved by a little bitterness about her brief existence, it was rather because the kind of things with which her outstretched hand had been filled were so dismally unsatisfying. She counted the men she had been compelled to refuse. They numbered only two, but there were at least three others whom she had never allowed to get as far ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... not only that winter had stripped the elm, and blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had a debased and deserted air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and one or two shutters swung dismally on ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... against the black, precipitous sides of the giant liner which, under a full head of steam, vibrated with suppressed energy, straining at mighty cables as if impatient to start on her long and hazardous voyage across the tumbling seas. A raw, piercing northeaster, howling dismally above the monotonous creaking and puffing of the donkey-engine, swept through the cheerless, draughty dock, chilling the spectators to the marrow. The sun, vainly trying to break through the banks of leaden-colored clouds, cast a grayish pall over land and sky. A day it was of sinister portent, that ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... replied dismally. "There isn't much sense in wandering over the whole confounded mountain, Miss Cameron, and not getting anywhere. I am inclined to suspect that we are above Green Fancy, but a long way off to the right of it. My bump of direction tells me that we have been going ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Prue's turn to groan now, and she did so dismally. But Sylvia had never asked a favor in vain, and this was not the moment to refuse to her anything, so worldly pride yielded to sisterly affection, and Prue said with resignation, as she fell to work more vigorously than ever, because she had ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
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