"Cheerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his dressing-bag, so they were not detained at the Customs. His valet was following with the rest of his luggage, and as soon as she had had a few hours' sleep, he would take her to different shops. She clung on to his arm. Paris seemed very cold and cheerless, and she did not like the tall, haggard houses, nor the slattern waiter arranging chairs in front of an early cafe, nor the humble servant clattering down the pavement in wooden shoes. She saw these things ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 's so keerless He draws Abe 'most eyeless and earless, But he's never yet pictured him cheerless Er with fun 'at he tries to conceal,— Whuther on to the fence er clean over A-rootin' up ragweed er clover, Skeert stiff at some "Rambler" er "Rover" Er ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... the storm shrieking about me, I was busy at work sketching out my plans. After a time I grew nervous. I did not smoke then, and so I had nothing to comfort me but my thoughts; and, in spite of my efforts to make them otherwise, they were cheerless enough. The forest grew to my door. In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the pine-trees over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning trees would reach down and sweep across my ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Cheerless and companionless did her husband feel as he let his eye fall upon her, buried in selfish enjoyment, while his own heart was wrung with the bitterest recollections and the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... paused on the threshold and took in the picture. He could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... masterpiece in this genre. It was suggested to her, she tells us, by Holbein's dismal engraving of death coming to the husbandman, an old, gaunt, ragged, over-worked representative of his tribe—grim ending to a life of cheerless ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... A cold, cheerless room, bare of carpet or pictures, with just the study-table, bed, and two chairs. At the study-table, his huge bulk sprawling on, and overflowing, a frail chair, they had found the massive John Thorwald laboriously ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... when Cherry and her mother were at church, and he had finished some work that he had brought from the bank, his former restlessness and sense of strangeness returned. The regular afternoon fog had thickened early, and, driving him back from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left him still more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he moved some of the furniture, and changed the disposition of several smaller ornaments. Growing bolder, he even attacked the sacred shelf devoted to Tappington's ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... apartment boasted a larger dining room. But there are three girls in my Sunday School class that can't possibly go home this year, and I've no doubt you boys could find somebody that won't be invited anywhere. Thanksgiving is such a cheerless place in a boarding house! If we ask a few young people in for a party in the evening, it will liven things up a bit for them, and I think it will be pretty good fun for ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... pace on David's account. Even David did not think of stopping. He had no desire to stop so long as their way was lighted ahead of them. It seemed to him that the world was becoming brighter and the forest gloom less cheerless as they dropped that evil valley of Tavish's farther and farther behind them. Then the moon began to fade, like a great lamp that had burned itself out of oil, and darkness swept over them like huge wings. It was two o'clock when they camped ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... their stay at Mount Oliphant were years of unending toil and of poverty bravely borne. The whole period was a long fight against adverse circumstances. Looking back on his life at this time, Burns speaks of it as 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave'; and we can well believe that this is no exaggerated statement. His brother Gilbert is even more emphatic. 'Mount Oliphant,' he says, 'is almost the poorest soil ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... evening we rode into Carlsruhe. We made our entry in a crazy hackney cab behind a lazy horse that had been dragging us for a long time with cheerless industry between a double file of trees, along a road without a bend in it; a long, lanky, Quaker road, heavily drab-coated with dust; a tight-rope of a road that comes from Manheim, and is hooked on to the capital of Baden. Out of that allee ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... However, its cheerless aspect was for the moment rendered less apparent than usual by reason of many people gathered about the storm-porch, and the number and variety of farmers' sleighs grouped about the two tying-posts which stood by the roadside ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... fastened his eyes on the compass card, took refuge, in spirit, inside the binnacle. He felt chilled more than he should have been by the chilly dusk falling on the muddy green sea of the soundings from a smoothly clouded sky. A fitful wind swept the cheerless waste, and the ship, hauled up so close as to check her way, seemed to progress by languid fits and starts against the short seas which swept along her sides with a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... lieutenant, who, by-the-by, did not clearly comprehend all his captain's remarks; "but I suppose as there are some animals, polar bears and arctic foxes, who delight in snow and frost, so there are human beings who are content to live on in this cheerless region." ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... itself, has become too timid to tolerate such bold irony; it is always careful lest the mantle of its gravity should be disturbed in any of its folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to folly beside itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the ridiculous; but, alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule.[28] It would be easy to make a collection of the excellent sallies and biting sarcasms which have been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well known that they frequently told such truths to princes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... And cheerless was that resting-place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider-down! Through darksome night till dawn of day, Absorbed in wakeful ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... with well dressed meat supplied by his brother Vatapi (transformed into a ram). Then all those royal sages, beholding the mighty Asura Vatapi, who had been transformed into a ram thus cooked for them, became sad and cheerless and were nearly deprived of themselves. But that best of Rishis—Agastya—addressing those royal sages, said, 'Yield ye not to grief, I will eat up the great Asura.' And the mighty Rishi then sat himself down on an excellent seat, and the prince of Asuras, Ilwala, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... second day of forced marching found them at the Three Crossings of the Sweetwater, deep in a cheerless alkaline desert, and on one of the most depressing reaches of the entire journey. That night such gloom fell on their council as had not ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... When the day's nearly done, Looks in on the cheerless floor; And falleth the rain Through the broken pane— Shrill whistles the wind at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... battle with untoward circumstances, ending in defeat. If the hardest toil and severe self-denial could have procured success, they would not have failed. It was this period of his life which Robert afterwards described, as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of galley-slave." The family did their best, but a niggard soil and bad seasons were too much for them. At length, on the death of his landlord, who had always dealt generously by him, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but must go on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had been taken off, he was set down on the floor near a warm chimney in rather a bare and cheerless attic, and left to himself ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... luxury wealth could purchase, worlds seemed all too cheap to give to have him with them. But this could not be. The soldier of three battles, he was not willing to admit that he was sick until his strength failed, and he was actually dying. He was carried to this cheerless room, a rude table the only furniture; no door, no window-shutters; the western sun threw its hot rays in upon him,—no cooling shade for his fevered brow: and so he lay unconscious of the monster's grasp, which ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... and cheerless, colorless save for the torn red shades above the high dormer windows, and the crudely painted mottoes over the platform and around the wall. "Berry Hill for God!" sprawled along one side, flanked by "Remember Your Mother's Prayers!" and in front the sinner's trembling gaze was met by the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... did not come for us until four o'clock. He was a small, nervous gentleman, and lamps were already lighted in the smoky city when we started to drive twelve miles through spring mud, on a cloudy, cheerless afternoon. We knew he had no confidence in his power to manage those horses, though we also knew he would do his best to save us from harm; but as darkness closed around us, I think we felt like babes in the woods, and shuddered with vague fear as much as with cold and damp. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... cheerless. He was wet and miserable, and could merely give a guess at the east, for the sun was quite invisible; but, about eight o'clock, he came on a track, running at right angles to the way he had been going, and marked with the hoofs of two horses, whose riders ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... something to be gained, by teaching him to think differently. It is better to leave him as he is than to teach him whining. It is better that he should go without the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and paralysing sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us, by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of sensation and sluggishness of mind which blurs and decolorises for poor natures the wonderful pageant of consciousness; ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and two benedictines,' cried Frank, and they relapsed into their chairs. But a half-hour passed and the grey cloud was thicker and the rain more heavy. The cheerless leaden river flowed slowly under drifting skies. Beyond an expanse of shining pavement the great black Abbey ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... table, you'll have to wait for me to dress and clean myself. Will we have time?" And Ralph's face told how much he appreciated a chance to spend an evening at the home of Frank Allen, his friend and chum; for his boarding house room did look a bit cheerless at night time. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... forth. It originally had a window, but the glass had long been broken and its place supplied by a large board, which failed to keep out the wind and rain, so that during the winter season the closet was a cold, cheerless place. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Jack. He observed with sickening distinctness that the night had begun to fall, the river's silver ribbon had become a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark and cheerless. "I guess I ought to be getting into my things," he said, moving toward his ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... odours; wells were completely choked, fountains were dried at their sources. The statues of monarchs which had adorned the Exchange, were smashed; that of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, alone remaining entire. The ruins of St. Paul's, with its walls standing black and cheerless, presented in itself a most melancholy spectacle. Its pillars were embedded in ashes, its cornices irretrievably destroyed, its great bell reduced to a shapeless mass of metal; whilst its general air of desolation was heightened by the fact that a few monuments, which had escaped destruction, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... length on the rug with his nose between his fore-paws, would wrinkle his brows and lift up his eyelids every now and then, to exchange a glance of mutual understanding with his master. But there was a chamber in Shepperton Vicarage which told a different story from that bare and cheerless dining-room—a chamber never entered by any one besides Mr. Gilfil and old Martha the housekeeper, who, with David her husband as groom and gardener, formed the Vicar's entire establishment. The blinds of this chamber were always down, except once a-quarter, when Martha entered ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the hills to Ain al Baidah in cold and cheerless guise. The villagers crowded round to stare at us in the familiar fashion. But there were grim looks and dark scowls among them, and, failing the truculent and determined bearing of Salam and the presence of the kaid we should have had ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... curiously-constructed houses which are only to be met with in old- fashioned neighbourhoods. It stood directly on the high road, a big grey building which could boast of no architectural beauty, and which indeed presented a somewhat cheerless aspect, with its wire blinds and tall, straight windows. A gaunt, town-like house—such was the impression made upon the casual passer—by; but appearances are apt to be deceptive, and that same stranger would have speedily altered his impression, if he had been ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... call which he heard when the others slept. Tonight he must share with his father the raw chores of the farm, and, when his studies were done, he must go to his bed, exhausted in body and mind, to be awakened at sunrise and retread the cheerless round of drudgery. Every other tomorrow while life fettered him here held a repetition of just ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and there: with a grandmother's corner by a sunny window, and a father's chair by the wide, cheerful chimney-piece, and a place for the children to play, with plenty of room to get about. Apples and nuts always taste so good in such a place! Instead, we have a stuffy little kitchen and a cheerless dining-room, that no one wants to sit in, and every member of the family goes to his or her room, and sociability is at an end. Then we must go to theatres, lectures, and concerts, just to catch a glimpse of the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... looking more cheerless than it had done of old, with its high-set windows and ghastly Crucifix, affected me in a singular manner. In this room I had known a sort of peace—the peace that is peculiarly childhood's own, whatever the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the naked room, The alien firelight died away, And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, I passed to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Dr. Richardson visited this place on May 10th the blade of wheat looked strong and healthy. There were only five acres in cultivation at the period of my visit. The prospect from the fort must be pretty in summer owing to the luxuriant verdure of this fertile soil; but in the uniform and cheerless garb of winter it has little to ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... dreary twilight. The windows broken, the rusty sashes rattling in their frames, the deserted house a dull barrier dividing the glaring lights and bustle of the street into two long lines, and standing in the midst, cold, dark, and empty—presented a cheerless spectacle which mingled harshly with the bright prospects the boy had been building up for its late inmates, and came like a disappointment or misfortune. Kit would have had a good fire roaring up the empty chimneys, lights sparkling and shining ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... unmarried, relieved the sombre severity of clerical life by teaching a few boys and girls. By that fond indirection he brightened with fresh air and natural music and sunshine the dry routine of his unmated days. For the cheerless solemnity of the life of the country clergy in those times it is hard to imagine. The missionaries to East London tell us that the peculiar characteristic of that vast region, swarming with human beings, is want of entertainment. The people there do not laugh. They have no diversion. There is ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... in a little cafe for a cup of chocolate. It was a raw, cheerless morning, with occasional snowflakes whipping by on the damp north wind, the streets were all but deserted, and in the room that used to be full of smoke and talk there were only empty tables, and you ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... if Hays' farmhouse, or "Hays," as it was familiarly called, looked any more bleak and cheerless that winter afternoon than it usually did in the strong summer sunshine. Painted a cold merciless white, with scant projections for shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... out into the garden; it was a small piece of ground that had once been a yard; it was inclosed within walls of great height, and to us would have seemed a cheerless place for horticulture, but to Robinson it appeared the garden of Eden. He gave a sigh of relief and pleasure, but the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... wear the colour of your heart, and be a Man. You grudge sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. Thereafter, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... cheerless. No other human creature was apparent, and the only sounds audible above the wind were those of the trickling streams which distributed the water over the meadow. A heron had been standing in one of these rivulets ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sat in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its ugly shabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there swept through her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it on a hot September evening. A blaze of light—delicious ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... night had to be passed on board by our weary shipwrecked visitors. Dark and dreary it proved. The wind came off cold and cheerless, in fitful gusts, from the shore, and moaned and howled through the rigging; the rain beat on our decks; and broken cross-seas tumbled and danced round us like imps of evil, eager to prevent our escaping from their malign influence. Thus ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the room. "I think the Kennedys were mad to build this confounded barrack. I've always disliked it, and old Quentin hadn't any use for it either. Cold, cheerless, raw monstrosity! It hasn't been a very giddy ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... step sweet Memory comes, And leads me gently through her twilight realms. What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung, Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed The enchanted, shadowy land where Memory dwells? It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear, Dark-shaded by the lonely cypress tree. And yet its sunlit mountain tops are bathed In heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs, Robed in the dreamy light of distant years, Are clustered joys serene of other days; Upon ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... when he saw it last. The walls, bare as his hand, stretched without relief from baseboard to ceiling, and the floor from door to window showed an unbroken expanse of unpainted boards, save for the narrow space between chair and table, where a small rug had been laid. A cheerless outlook for a tired man, but it seemed to please Hammersmith. There was paper and ink on the table, and the lamp which he took care to examine held oil enough to last till morning. With a tray of eatables, this ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... company aboard. But the snap-shot of the Tyro surreptitiously taken by Judge Enderby—he having borrowed Alderson's traveling-camera for the purpose—showed a face which might suitably have been used as a marginal illustration for that cheerless hymn, "This world is all ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have first a duty to perform. Mother, please prepare a little lunch, and put a glass of your old currant wine on the tray. Hobart must not come to a cold, cheerless home. I'll go and have his old servant up and ready to ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... a marriage with me had been a hope abandoned by her years since. No woman looks forward willingly to a life of cheerless celibacy. In thinking of her future, Mary naturally thought of herself in the character of a wife. Could she fairly expect in the time to come to receive any more attractive proposal than the proposal now addressed to her? Mr. Van Brandt had ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... and looked into the room; And lo! it was cheerless and bare; Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,— And the lady was not there; Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom, As ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... came to a small cluster of native huts. One of the inhabitants, on being boldly accosted, was good enough to point out the way, and so the re-united party—tired, wet, and with no prospect of dry clothing—took possession of the cheerless-looking dak bungalow. Things now began to improve. To our joy we found our ekkas with their contents drawn up in the yard. And while a fire was being encouraged into a blaze, and the lean fowl was being captured and slain on the back premises, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... because the woman herself was not intended by nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose temper was quick to leap into the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... farewell to the Swan's daughter: and Queen Helen vanished as a bright mist passes, not departing swiftly, as had departed Queen Guenevere and Queen Anaitis; and Jurgen was alone with the black gentleman. And to Jurgen the world seemed cheerless, and like a house that none has lived in ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... simply tied; the whole outward man, except for a pointed beard, tentatively clerical. There was a thinning on the top of Pitman's head, there were silver hairs at Pitman's temple. Poor gentleman, he was no longer young; and years, and poverty, and humble ambition thwarted, make a cheerless lot. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of parents by children in old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... sudden realization of the passing of the years. For the first time, he had allowed himself to face the fact that it was some time now since he had crossed the summit of the hill, and that under present conditions, his old age promised to be a lonely, cheerless affair. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... one another; to bear misery, need and death, without measure and without object, in the form, for instance, of millions of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who, in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in damp rooms or the cheerless halls of a factory. What a pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used to another ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his binoculars and climbed down the rocky pinnacle on which he had been perched, and went to eat a cheerless meal where Badshah grazed a ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sail hence for a brief sojourn to those distant western shores, whence thou, though thou sayest naught of them, must assuredly have come; I have often dreamed idly of a gray coast washed with dull rain and swathed in sweeping mists, where ever and anon the sun shines through,—a country cheerless, where a poet's fame like mine might ring the darkness of the skies with light, and stir the sleepy silence ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... emblazonings"—steeping the altar in rich suffusion, chequering the walls and pavement with variegated hues, and filling the whole sacred spot with a warm and congenial glow, these panes produce a cold, cheerless, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... solemn tick marked one hour of waiting, and still he did not come. She arose and added fuel to the fire, and then, taking a book, tried to read. It was of no use, she could not fix her mind upon anything, and she laid the book down and, crossing the room, looked out of the window. How cheerless the snowclad dooryard, and what a cold glitter the stars seemed to have! She sat down again and watched the fire. The tall clock just outside the parlor door seemed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... was coming on, it was raining, and we were told that there was a very bad road before us over mountains, and no other house for three leagues. We determined to stay at the hut, although the prospect of our night's entertainment was a most cheerless one. The hut was about twenty feet square, with a small attached shed for a kitchen. The floor was the natural earth, littered with corn husks and other refuse. There was not a bit of furniture, excepting some rough sleeping-places ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth and brightness are as evanescent as love's young dream. And your solid log has a certain irritating inertness. It is an absentee fuel, spending its fire up the chimney, and after its youthful clouds of glory turns but a cheerless side of black and white char towards the room. And, above all, the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with the poker, and you get but a sullen resonance, a flight of red sparks, a sense of an unconquerable toughness. It is worse than coke. The crisp ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... second examination before the magistrate on January 30. To avoid excitement, both on the part of the prisoner and the public, the court sat in one of the corridors of the Town Hall. The scene is described as dismal, dark and cheerless. The proceedings took place by candlelight, and Peace, who was seated in an armchair, complained frequently of the cold. At other times he moaned and groaned and protested against the injustice with which he was being treated. But ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Bangkok and established rice-mills, factories for the production of sugar and oil, and warehouses for the importation of European fabrics. They found a ready market for their wares, and an aspect of thrift and comfort began to enliven the once neglected and cheerless land. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... be a more cheerless spot in London than the Queen's Club on a foggy December afternoon, but when I arrived there and found that we had got to play in ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... ailments, but they were nothing compared to my mental trials. Grief, hatred, jealousy, and revenge had well-nigh bereft me of reason. I had lost a home of plenty, been reduced to almost abject poverty, and had become a cheerless woman,—could not smile without feeling ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... on things to come into any fatiguing sketch of reflection.—From your window, however, there was a tedious scope of black atmosphere, that I think won my mind into a sort of fellow-travellership, pacing me again through the cheerless waste of the past, and presenting hardly one little rarified cloud to give a dim ornament to the future;—not a star to be seen;—no permanent light to gild my horizon;—only the fading helps to transient gaiety in the lamps ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... later years when my income has been sufficient to warrant me in buying any thing I desire for personal comfort, I often think of the cheerless experiences of that winter. And I can truthfully say that my heart goes out to the homeless and destitute, and I am always willing to extend a helping hand to those who show a willingness ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... performance of a clear duty. Still, as he looked over the dreary Northern field in those chill days of early March, he must have had a marvelous sensitiveness in order to perceive the generative heat and force in the depths beneath the cheerless surface and awaiting only the fullness of the near spring season to burst forth in sudden universal vigor. Yet such was his knowledge and such his faith concerning the people that we may fancy, if we will, that he foresaw the great transformation. But there were still other ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... they had walked, when suddenly the walls fell away, and Donald found himself in a large, low room, bare-floored and cheerless, that occupied the other third. Smoky torches of wood standing out from crevices in the logs gave light, and around the wall he could see perhaps fifty men, standing or squatting. Directly before him at the opposite end was a sort of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... picture such as may be seen at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; if a musician, a cantata; if an architect, the plans for a public building. At the time when we are penning the words, this menagerie has already been removed from these cold and cheerless buildings, and taken to the elegant Palais des Beaux-Arts, which ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... always been his own. The ready-to-hand food gave him leisure. His days were all dreams. Weary of crouching over the fire before the opening of his humpy, he began to wander in the flesh as he was wont to wander in mind. He was seen a mile away from the cheerless camp, where his companions, with smoke-dried ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... beckoned her towards me, but my hands refused their office. I felt I know not what charm she possessed to calm my throbbing brain and burning heart; but as I turned from the gloom and darkness around to gaze upon her fair brow and unmoved features, I felt like the prisoner who turns from the cheerless desolation of his cell, and looks upon the fair world and the smiling valleys lying sunlit ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the diagram. On the whole, it is the best form of close-side tent I have found. It admits of a bright fire in front, without which a forest camp is just no camp at all to me. I have suffered enough in close, dark, cheerless, damp tents. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... The brilliant red of the Echo cliffs is wanting. The towers and walls of Castle Canon are yellowish-gray. But their forms are incomparably various and grotesque—in some instances sublime. The valley of Green River at this point is a cheerless sage-brush desert, as it is further north. To be sure, this uninviting stream, a couple of hundred miles further south, having united with the Grande, and formed the Rio Colorado, does indeed, by dint of burrowing deeper and deeper into the sunless chasms, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... window. The day was gloomy, with a bitterly cold blustering east wind, which made the loose window-sashes rattle in their frames, and blew the pungent smell of city smoke in at every crack. She sat up and looked round at the small cheerless apartment, with no fireplace, and for only furniture the bed she was lying on, one cane- chair over which her clothes were thrown, and a circular iron wash-stand, with yellow stone jug and ewer, and underneath a shelf for the ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the novices—there being, as you know, ten other 'unclothed' boys besides myself—had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong resemblance to a flock of lambs in some strange ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Memoranda" will cease permanently with this issue of the magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in the profits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in a cheerless time is drearier. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cheerless, and after an hour spent on the rampart most of the party were glad to return to the casemates. Fergus was one of the last to go back. To his disgust the two officers rose and saluted formally, as ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... this, when the miserable little outcasts return to their cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent which they have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed insufficient, the children are carefully searched ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... still empty, scarcely even held romance now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed worse than the most ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... his black alpaca coat hung on it like a sack, and his whole attitude spoke of sorrow. He might have been the presentment of an unwilling ghost, who stood with the Ferryman's farthing under his palm, waiting to be taken across the cheerless, dark waters to a limbo of drifting souls. He took his hands from before his face and clasped them over the book, looking out of the window to the evening shadows, as if he tried to find peace in the very ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... fleeting, wav'ring Sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne, Wilt thou, now, wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... three score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets, one leading from the harbor, and another striking out from it at right angles; and, at the corner of these two, a very dark and cheerless tavern, by ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... as you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning moon, When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim night's cheerless noon, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... out for her amusement quacked of school and duty; she could not play games all by herself and Grandma was too busy; dolls long since had lost their charm; it was too stormy for callers; and altogether world seemed a dull and cheerless place. Even when the girls returned from school the atmosphere did not clear. Peace was plainly out of sorts, and it was with a sigh of thanksgiving that the household saw the dismal day draw to ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... gone home; many of them for hours. The hall—brilliantly lighted up, and gaily attended, as was, and perhaps is still, the custom at the beginning the last evening of a session—had become cold, dark, and cheerless. Of the members who remained, to prevent the public business from dying for want of a quorum, most but himself were sinking from exhaustion, although they had probably taken their meals at the usual hours, in the course of the day. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Lady Anne's confidence for the moment had almost deserted her. The girl's face was invisible and the interior of the passage looked cheerless. Nevertheless, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day, which was Sunday, Francesco called me at five. There was no visible sunrise that cheerless damp October morning. Grey dawn stole somehow imperceptibly between the veil of clouds and leaden waters, as my friend and I, well sheltered by our felze, passed into the Giudecca, and took our station before the church of the Gesuati. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Margot felt a sweeter satisfaction in being so protected than in all her former independence. They climbed the hillside which led to the moor and set out radiantly to traverse the grey expanse; grey and cheerless to-day in very deed, with a thick, blanket-like dampness in the atmosphere of which dwellers in southern climes are ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... getting her off. He then turned to where the Admiral's ship lay aground, and found that, to all appearance, she was in even a worse plight, as the rocks to leeward of her were above the water, and she was much more exposed, should bad weather come on. Never, perhaps, was there a scene more cheerless and appalling: a dark wintry sky—a sky loaded with heavy clouds—the wind cold and piercing—the whole line of the coast one mass of barren rocks, without the slightest appearance of vegetation; the inland part of the country ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Major-General Butler, first of all the generals in the army of the Republic, and anticipating even Republican statesmen, had clearly pointed to the cause of the war. At Craney Island I met two accomplished women of the Society of Friends, who, on a most cheerless spot, and with every inconvenience, were teaching the children of the freedmen. Two good men, one at the fort and the other at Norfolk, were distributing the laborers on farms in the vicinity, and providing them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... glories of our line: Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls, The spinning Jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls. Sing not, sing not, my Angeline! in days so base and vile, 'Twere sinful to be happy, 'twere sacrilege to smile. I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob I'll muse on other days, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... water. This lake apparently increased in width as it stretched away to the northward, as far as the eye could reach, when viewed from the farthest point attained by me in 1839, named by Colonel Gawler, Mount Eyre. Dreary as had been the view I then obtained, and cheerless as was the prospect from that elevation, there was one feature in the landscape, which still gave me hope that something might be done in that direction, and had in fact been my principal inducement to select a line nearly ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... more sensible to the cold, perished by hundreds. As the Spaniards huddled round their wretched bivouacs, with such scanty fuel as they could glean, and almost without food, they waited in gloomy silence the approach of morning. Yet the morning light, which gleamed coldly on the cheerless waste, brought no joy to them. It only revealed more clearly the extent of their wretchedness. Still struggling on through the winding Puertos Nevados, or Snowy Passes, their track was dismally marked by fragments of dress, broken harness, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... villages, and the well-dressed population of the improved districts of the Upper Province, she had not formed the slightest conception. To her fancy, it was a vast region of cheerless forests, inhabited by unreclaimed savages, or rude settlers doomed to perpetual toil,—a climate of stern vicissitudes, alternating between intense heat and freezing cold, and which presented at all seasons a gloomy picture. No ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... want me any longer ma'am?" inquired Liddy, at a later hour the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large parlour beside the first fire of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and dress by candle, lamp, or gas-light. When they are ready to ride perhaps a long distance to covert, there is often only sufficient daylight to see with, rain drizzling down steadily and everything looking cheerless. A light meal, if it be only a cup of cocoatina and a slice of bread and butter, should be taken before starting, and if it is wet or threatening, a good rain coat should be worn. Towards the end of September and throughout ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And 'mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she press'd, The babe was sleeping ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... later a few of the miners played on. Some, whose well filled "pokes" permitted had gone to warm and comfortable beds, others to cold and cheerless bunks, as the case happened; but the Eskimo woman, with her sleeping boy on her lap, slept heavily. Sitting on the floor in a corner, with her head against a bench, she had for a time ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... stopped. Her hand went up to her mouth and her head was thrown back, and out upon the still air rang a cry so mournful that even the forest gloom was rendered more cheerless by its sound. High it rose, soaring upwards through the trees until the valley rang with its plaintive wail. As if recognizing the distressful howl of their kind, the cry came back to her from the deep-toned ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to a dusk corner of the cheerless attic-room, and returned with a little Brazilian monkey in her arms,—a poor, mild, drowsy thing, that looked as if it had cried itself to sleep. She sat down on her little stool, with Furbelow in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reinforcement was numerically small; but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians: and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan succours was calculated to create ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... left him alone in the world. There was none willing to assume the burden of bringing up the lonely little pilgrim, and he was sent to the poorhouse. It was a hard fate for the tender child to be removed from the endearments of a mother's love, and placed in the cheerless asylum which public charity provides for the poor ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... alone over a plain so desolate that, if you have never seen it, the mere word desolation could never convey to you the melancholy surroundings that mourned about this man on his lonely walk. Far off a vista of trees followed a cheerless road all dead as mourners suddenly stricken dead in some funereal procession. By this road he had come; but when he had reached a certain point he turned from the road at once, branching away to the left, led by a line of bushes that may once have been a lane. For some ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... for the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and pleasant. A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable. The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally. This might have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... brought into direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives, and breaking the chain of evil ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... used to take pleasure in showing compassion for the distressed, the helpless, the aged, the weak, the sick, and women, and enjoyed all their possessions by sharing these with them. They always used to assume and comfort the agitated, the cheerless, the anxious, the terrified, the diseased, the weak and emaciated, the robbed, and the afflicted. They followed the dictates of virtue and never injured one another. They were ready and well-disposed for action of every ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... approve of late marriages, observing that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... eyes of brown, This is but a cheerless town; You should beam 'neath warmer skies, Matchless, melting, dark ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... through the cheerless, mist-laden skies, the engine well throttled back and running as smoothly as any engine could. To make sure that all was in perfect working order, they circled for ten minutes over the town, trying the different controls, then ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... on, wet, dark, cheerless, in the shackling, half-built little village, and Johnnie saw for the first time what the distress of the poor in cities is. A temperature which would have been agreeable in a drier climate, bit to the bone in ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the Englishman when he could get rid of some portion of the toil that wears away his life, in exchange for the lighthearted pleasures and simple occupations of foreign existence. Nor is there any man who less prefers the dogged round of his cheerless exertions, or who is more genuinely susceptible of essential enjoyment. We even think that the cultivated Englishman has a finer relish for enjoyment than the man of any other country. The caperings of the Frenchman, or the grimaces ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... or happiness, or even melancholy pleasure among the inmates of Ferdia's camp that night: they were all cheerless, and sorrowful, and low in spirit; for they knew that whenever those two champions, those two slayers of hundreds met, one of the two must fall in that place, or that both of them should fall: and if one only was to fall they were sure that that one would ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... dearest friend will feel for you a hearty pang of sorrow, and go to his business as usual. I could divine, but would not care to describe, the life which my poor Clive was now leading; the vulgar misery, the sordid home, the cheerless toil, and lack of friendly companionship which darkened his kind soul. I was glad Clive's father was away. The Colonel wrote to us twice or thrice; could it be three months ago?—bless me, how time flies! He was happy, he wrote, with Miss Honeyman, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with water. The few sidewalks in the part that escaped the flood were inches thick with black, sticky mud, through which tramped a steady procession of poor women who are left utterly destitute. The tents where the people are housed who cannot find other shelter were cold and cheerless. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... pastor now can lend His whole attention to his latter end, Remarking with a martyr's prescient thrill The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill. The holy brethren, lifting pious palms, Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms, Chant De Profundis, meaning "out of debt," And dance like mad—or would if they ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego, whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... is thus described in a letter written by Stein during a journey in 1802:—"I found the aspect of the country as cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for colored children, No. 2 and 3, are in the rear of church, in 2d street, near 6th avenue; the rooms are dark and cheerless, and without the needful facilities of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... in a cheerless hall of the Gravenhof, Danvelt's defence was a denial upon oath that he had ever taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter made everything ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... one lives there. It, like the log hut of Nevil Steyne on the bank of the White River, stands alone, a relic of the dim past. But it serves a good purpose, for one can break the journey there, and sleep the night in its cheerless shelter. Furthermore, within the ruins of its old-time stockade is a well, a deep, wide-mouthed well full of cool spring water, which is ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... curling vines and twisted ivy bound; While Bacchus headlong sought the briny flood, And Thetis' arms received the trembling god. Nor fail'd the crime the immortals' wrath to move; (The immortals bless'd with endless ease above;) Deprived of sight by their avenging doom, Cheerless he breathed, and wander'd in the gloom, Then sunk unpitied to the dire abodes, A wretch accursed, and hated by the gods! I brave not heaven: but if the fruits of earth Sustain thy life, and human be thy birth, Bold as thou art, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... messenger; and the employment of the man himself, detains him at some distance from his home from morning till night. Sunday is the only day on which they could all meet together, and enjoy a homely meal in social comfort; and now they sit down to a cold and cheerless dinner: the pious guardians of the man's salvation having, in their regard for the welfare of his precious soul, shut up the bakers' shops. The fire blazes high in the kitchen chimney of these well-fed hypocrites, and the rich steams of the savoury dinner scent the air. What care they to ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... appeared above his door, but the paint had been soiled by time, and the letters for the most part reduced to shadows; so that, taken in conjunction with the gaunt staircase and bare walls, the place had a cheerless look. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... lies in wait, Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossoms storms the world. A week ago the Sparrow was divine; The Bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet came; But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... vessels that were to carry them back to the Fatherland, and British crews were put aboard the vessels. Then, their eyes sad and watching what had once been the pride of Germany, the German officers and sailors began their cheerless journey home. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... he entered the mill, he had felt that his burden was almost greater than he could bear. He was disgraced and thrown out of his position, and was about entering upon a cheerless life, where there was but little ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... sandy parishes of Worcestershire, but here in the Forest it is a splendid feature, growing to a great size and height. In winter its bright shining leaves reflecting the sunlight enliven the woods, so that we never get the bare and cheerless look of places where the elm and the whitethorn hedge dominate the landscape. In spring its small white blossoms are thickly distributed, and at Christmas its scarlet berries are ever welcome. Its prickles protect it from browsing cattle and Forest ponies, but it is interesting to notice ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... being broken. Nielsen found a poor, miserable, little fox in a trap, where it had been for days, and was nearly dead. Edd found a dead skunk in another. He had to call the hounds in. We returned to camp. That night was really the only cheerless one the men spent around the fire. They did not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a locality there could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched upon the countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... a handful of boughs upon the fire. The room was cold and cheerless, and the still, white figure in the chair seemed the quiet, chill heart of it all. And yet—how she had loved and laboured for the boy! Was she passionless or had her passion been ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... in total blackness. My song rose from the cheerless shade, and was the first to rise. It is when Night prevails that it's fine to believe in ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... came to my hands in Philadelphia. So long a time has elapsed since we have been separated by events, that it was like a letter from the dead, and recalled to my memory very dear recollections. My subsequent journey through life has offered nothing which, in comparison with those, is not cheerless and dreary. It is a rich comfort sometimes to look ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be coming down in sheets. Fortunately the lot chosen for pitching the tents was on a strip of ground higher than anything about it, so the footing remained fairly solid. But it was a cheerless outlook. The performers, with their rubber boots on, came splashing through a sea of mud and water on their way to the cook tent that morning, Phil and ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... small room, up two pair of stairs, in which I was to sit, and another still smaller above it, in which I was to sleep. I remember that I sat down, and looked disconsolate about me—everything seemed so cold and dingy. Yet how little is required to make a situation—however cheerless at first sight—cheerful and comfortable. The people of the house, who looked kindly upon me, lighted a fire in the dingy grate; and, then, what a change!—the dingy room seemed dingy no more! Oh, the luxury of a cheerful fire after ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... whose lands surround thee: on this side, Gaetulian cities, an unconquered race, Numidians, reinless as the steeds they ride, And cheerless Syrtis hold thee in embrace; There fierce Barcaeans and a sandy space Wasted by drought. Why tell of wars from Tyre, A brother's threats? Well know I Juno's grace And heaven's propitious auspices conspire To find for Trojans here ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the erection of Sage College was the establishment of Sage Chapel. From the first I had desired to have every working-day begun with a simple religious service at which attendance should be voluntary, and was glad to see that in the cheerless lecture-room where this service was held there usually assembled a goodly number of professors and students, in spite of the early hour and long walk from town. But for Sunday there was no provision; and one day, on my discussing the matter with Mr. Sage, he said that he would be glad ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... most absorbed him. Finally, skim the collection of his official messages, as Commissioner, as Governor, or as President, and you will discover that he had the gift of infusing life and color into the usually drab and cheerless wastes of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... alone with the sun and the wind and all the murmuring voices of Nature, God's life he had called it then. And now! The stress of battle was hard upon him. He was fighting in the front ranks, a somewhat cheerless battle, fighting for great causes with inefficient weapons. But he could not go back. Life had become a more strenuous, a more vital, a less beautiful thing! He felt himself ageing. All the inevitable sadness of the man in touch with the world's great problems was in his heart. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... greatest pleasures which a teacher's life affords, is, the interest of seeking out such an one, bowed down with burdens of depression and discouragement,—unaccustomed to sympathy and kindness, and expecting nothing for the future, but a weary continuation of the cheerless toils, which have imbittered the past;—and the pleasure of taking off the burden, of surprising the timid disheartened sufferer by kind words and cheering looks, and of seeing, in his countenance, the expression of ease and even of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott |
