"Dismally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours, and Olie calmly informed me it was only a few hours more. It got quite cool as the sun went down, and I had to undo my steamer-rug and get wrapped up in it. And still we went on. It seemed like being at sea, with a light now and then, miles and miles away. Something howled dismally in the distance, and gave me the creeps. Olie told me it was only a coyote. But we kept on, and my ribs ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a background of endless, silent woods. An air of blank discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... behave," predicted Harry dismally. "After all our trouble we shall still have to remain ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... could hear the drip, drip, drip of the rain outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon the river, and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as we listened, might be tearing the body ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the kitchen. 'Nance,' said he, 'I be all knotted up with the rheumatics; will you rub me a bit?' She came and rubbed him where and how he bade her. 'This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky,' said he. 'When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for why? ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... satisfying himself that his mission had not been too late, retired to the fireplace, where he leaned dismally, and watched through his eye-glass ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the pit, and finished the rude burial which was all that could in those days be given to the dead. Every now and then one of the men would aim a heavy stone at the poor dog, who sat on the edge of the pit howling dismally. The creature, however, was never hit, for he kept a ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not remain to join in the chorus of indignation in which the others indulged after morning school was over. He left them and strolled out dismally into the playground. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... firm produces these articles may be guessed at. They are probably easy to make, and require scarcely any skill. The contemplative man has a dim vision of a grimy shed in a back street, where a human being passes dismally through life the while he chips out an unending succession of these cheap urns and obelisks for his employers' retailing. But the question why numberless people will profane the memory of their departed by these public advertisements of Slap & Dash, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... voice hailed her, as she rode wearily up the drive, the water squelching in her shoes and her soaked skirt flapping dismally about her pedals. "Were you out in all ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... The rain has ceased falling, but the sky is still gray and threatening. The wind howls dismally among the old trees that surround John Burrill's shallow grave, and its weird wail, combined with the rattle and creak of the branches, and the drip, drip of water, dropping from the many crevices into the old cellar, unite to form a fitting requiem for ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... he sat "making pigs" for one after another of the group of children round him, a pig of especial humor having drawn a murmur of delight from the circle, this murmur was dismally echoed by a sob from a little maid on the outside of the group. It was Master Chuter's little daughter, a pretty child, with an oval, dainty- featured face, and a prim gentleness about her, like a good little ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... consummation, we may not certainly know. Secrets, these, and such "Secret things belong unto God." We would like to know these secrets, but must wait; for there, "roll those mighty worlds that gem the distant sky," as distantly and dismally as when Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers and astrologers viewed their movements three thousand years ago, rifled meanwhile of but few of their well kept secrets. He that pencils the lily and paints the rose and gives to every blade of grass its ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... I knew has been swept away," he said. "All I can say is, the cave is in that direction," and he pointed with his hand. "But it may be buried out o' sight now," he added, dismally. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 in ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... non-obedience of the elements, Kawa Kendi sprang to his feet, with the magic wand in his right hand, turned and stared apparently into the face of the idol. For a full two minutes he stood as if carven, while the doctors and the chiefs moaned dismally. Around him like a pall still hovered the smoke of the magic fire. From the village a cock's challenge was answered from point to point. Then shooting out his right hand, Kawa Kendi made gestures as if hooking something invisible and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... a wail which was dismally echoed by Rubens. Then, suddenly, in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement, and the boundless faith of childhood, I ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... poured down again. The men stood in front of the door with their hands in their pockets, dismally contemplating the scene. The women crouched together with their hands over their eyes. They were in such terror they could not talk; when the thunder was heard farther off they all plucked up their spirits and became impatient, but ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that her nurse still rocked dismally and looked irresolute. "I can bide my time, and fight my battles alone, if need be," she continued, coldly. "I won't trouble you again, nurse," ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... come in with his collar dismally turned up, and an old battered hat upon his head, and pretend that he hadn't had a meal—of kisses—for a whole week; and occasionally he would come blowing out his cheeks like a king's trumpeter, to announce that Mike Laflin might be at any moment expected. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... complexion: in C minor, op. 4, and it was composed as early as 1828. Not published until July, 1851, it demonstrates without a possibility of doubt that the composer had no sympathy with the form. He tried so hard and failed so dismally that it is a relief when the second and third sonatas are reached, for in them there are only traces of formal beauty and organic unity. But then there is much Chopin, while little of his precious essence is to be tasted ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... 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
... 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. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... silently dropped down the current. It was intended to land three miles above Cape Diamond, and then ascend to the high grounds above. The current, however, carried the boats down to within a mile and a half of the city. The night was dismally dark, the bank seemed more than ordinarily steep and lofty, and the French were on the qui vive. A sentinel bawled out, "Que vive," who goes there? "La France," was the quick reply. Captain Macdonald, of the 78th Highlanders, had served in Holland, and knew the proper reply to the challenge ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the handle for some time without success; but at length 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 puppy was uncomfortable, and yelped piteously, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... of an empty house greeted her discordantly. A rattling window was answered by a creaking stair, a rafter groaned dismally, and the scurrying feet of mice pattered across ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... dawned anything but encouragingly. The night before a blizzard had set in, and at one o'clock Saturday afternoon the temperature had dropped almost to zero. The wind howled and shrieked dismally, and to venture out meant to nurse frozen ears as a result of facing the blast. But neither wind nor weather frightened the enthusiastic basketball fans. With knitted and fur caps pulled down over their ears they gallantly braved the storm. Even the majority ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... and the loud sobs shook her small body. Humpty looked dismally at his surroundings, and continued ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran and opened ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... she had led the girls that wild escapade through the wood. Phyllis and Nora were both suffering from heavy colds in consequence, and Susan Drummond was looking more pasty about her complexion, and was more dismally sleepy than usual. Annie was going through her usual season of intense remorse after one of her wild pranks. No one repented with more apparent fervor than she did, and yet no one so easily succumbed to the next temptation. Had Annie been alone in the matter she would have gone ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... it up a bit by saying I was a friend of Lord Ivy's. And you happened to pass, and I happened to remember Mrs. Shaw saying you looked like a British peer, so I said: 'That is my friend Lord Ivy.' I said I was your secretary, and he seemed greatly interested, and—" Kinney added dismally, "I talked too much. I am so sorry," he begged. "It's going to be awful for you!" His eyes suddenly lit with hope. "Unless," ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... have worked like an avalanche—and down came a most amazing spate through the shrubbery and washed away Miss Spinks and her easel and the most promising water-colour sketch she had ever begun, or, at any rate, it washed away her easel and left her wet to the knees and dismally tucked up in flight to the house, and thence the waters rushed through the kitchen garden, and so by the green door into the lane and down into the riverbed again ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... though more humble method. But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-day use? It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus dismally breaking out again. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... dismally. "There was not much chance of fun on that long march; on board ship there was a storm all the way; then we were kept on board the transport at Cork nearly three months. Everyone was out of temper, and a mouse would not have dared squeak on board the ship. I ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... 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
... any attack except 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 obscured ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... slowly 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 ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... down—it was a cold night, and the wind howled dismally outside. The lamps grew dim and flared, casting weird shadows upon the wall. By and by I heard a smothered sob from the corner, then another. I looked in that direction. She had risen from her seat, and oh! the look of agony on the poor ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... from the table a forgotten newspaper and began to fan herself and her companion, to the accompaniment of giggling and chatter about the heat. They were very young. They ordered grenadine syrup and eau-de-seltz. Andrew Lackaday stared dismally beyond them, at the dancers. In the happy, perspiring girls in front of him he took no interest, for all their youth and comeliness and obviously frank approachability. He saw nothing but the fury-enflamed face of Coincon and heard nothing but the rasping voice telling him that it was cheaper to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... dismally throughout the labyrinth of passages, but there was no other reply. Tommy and Sandy gave the call of the Beaver Patrol repeatedly, but the call of the Wolf ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... green tangle of forest, rocks, ravines, cascades and valleys, over which heavy rain-clouds were gathering. Before me the greyish-blue mirror of Big Bay lay in the mist, and in the Jordan valley the rain fell heavily. The high reed-grass all around us rustled dismally, and the damp cold was depressing. I hurried home and arrived there in the night, wet as when I had ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... 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 to speak of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... deserted, practically; everyone had gone ashore. She went disconsolately towards the stairway. On the bottom step sat Jimmy sobbing dismally. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena Vista,"—of course,—which she thought pretty, though she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... afternoon was wet: one of those hopelessly wet days that are apt to happen in a land of lakes and hills. Banks of mist obscured the fells; the garden walks were turned to running rivers, the bushes dripped dismally, and cascades poured from the gutters. The school, which had been promised a country tramp, looked out of the windows with woeful disappointment. The seniors consoled themselves by holding a committee ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... is something unbecoming, if 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 enough, God knows.' In the evening, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... might never be called to account for any dark doings in Anjou. For there was not only the false arrest of Angelot; there were also certain dealings with the Prefect's secretary; there were tamperings with papers and seals, all to set forward that marriage affair that had failed so dismally, he hardly understood how. But he had hoped that the Prefect would die, and the news of his rapid recovery seemed strangely inopportune. It appeared to Simon that General Ratoneau's star was on the wane; ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the pains," she said dismally,—"the machine works badly, and the judges are neglectful. Only five cars to-day, and on every one only seven persons." "What!" cried Tison, "only thirty-five heads to-day ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... walked in their gray bathrobes. Inside were rows and rows of cots, and on every cot a wounded man. It appeared that a fresh batch had arrived from the front, and the doctors were just finishing with them. There was a foul smell of blood and sweat and anaesthetics, and the light came dismally through the dirty window-panes, showing dimly the rows and rows of pale, weary faces on the thin pillows. Sometimes the gray blankets came up to the chin, and the man looked dead already, he was so dreadfully ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... all the big bay pony ever needed to supplement his own common sense, of which Mr. Linton used to say he possessed more than most men. The new bullocks arrived, and had to be drafted and branded—during which latter operation Norah retired dismally to the house and the socks that had to be finished in time to be Jim's Christmas present. Then, after the branding, came a most cheerful time, putting the cattle into ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... bitterly against being disembodied again. (Can it be that embodiment eases in some way the torture of existence for these prodigal spirits!) And so far he fought well, and with success. The disciples had tried to cast him out. They were expected to. They expected to. They had before. They failed!—dismally—amid the sneering and jeering of the crowd and the increasing distress of the ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near! Wilt fall asleep? O let me sip that tear! 320 And whisper one sweet word that I may know This is this world—sweet dewy blossom!"—Woe! Woe! Woe to that Endymion! Where is he?— Even these words went echoing dismally Through the wide forest—a most fearful tone, Like one repenting in his latest moan; And while it died away a shade pass'd by, As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth Their timid necks and tremble; so these both 330 Leant ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... courtyard, in which ducks and geese waddled, quacking, turkey-cocks fought in quiet corners, barked at impotently by Kabyle puppies. Tall, lean hounds or sloughis, kept to chase the desert gazelles, wandered near the kitchens, in the hope of bones, and camels gobbled dismally as their tired drivers forced them to their knees, or thrust handfuls of date stones down their throats. There were sheep, too, and goats; and even a cow, the "perpetual mother" loved and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... damp, muggy January evening when I journeyed to this suburban retreat. It rained dismally, and the wind nearly blew the porter out of his lodge as he obeyed our summons at the Dantesque portal of the institution, in passing behind which so many had literally abandoned hope. I tried to fancy how it would feel if one were really being consigned ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... inhumanity of it. Here were these shreds and waifs, these "unnecessary litters" of Florentine households, herded together in the only asylum (short of the Arno) open to them, driven in like dead leaves in November, flitting dismally round and round for a span, and watching each other die without a mew or a lick! Saint Francis was not the wise man I ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... walked and talked with some stray damsel in the colony. She had no real jealousy of the young ladyhood that at times intruded. But this was different; here she was out- ranked in HER OWN CLASS. In that lay the sting. She reflected dismally that this was only Tuesday and that Jennie was to stay ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... clerk I would like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth—a hall that sank under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light — two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this sister, in a small, low, rather dismally-appointed room, half-heartedly lighted by two flickering gasjets. They sat somewhat apart, confronting a fireplace, where only the laid materials for a fire disclosed themselves in the cold grate. Above the mantel hung an enlarged photograph of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... went, over the waves or through them. Our fellow-passengers curled up beneath their tarpaulins, smiled stoically or groaned dismally, according to their dispositions—or digestions. A huge wave—the upper third of it, at least—swept across the deck and spilled a gallon or two of cold water upon us. A sturdy, red-faced Englishman, sitting next me, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... proud and meek and dismally happy. She squeezed his big hand again in both of hers and sighed, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... triumphant voluntaries. The monks, who had all crowded around me when I first began, in expectation of brisk jigs and lively overtures, soon took themselves away upon hearing a strain ten times more sorrowful than that to which they were accustomed. I did not lament their departure, but played dismally on till our horses came round to the gate. We mounted, spurred back through the grove of pines which protect Valombrosa from intrusion, descended the steeps, and, gaining the plains, galloped ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... began to let their backs relax a little, and were taking less notice of dust-flecks on their uniforms. In the suburbs, at Tsarskoe-Selo, for instance, there were now many villas whose eyes had closed for the night of winter—their recently open windows and doors being dismally boarded over; while their aristocratic owners were indulging in a last informal holiday at some one of the foreign Spas, before the serious business of winter sleighing and court balls should recommence. This year there was, however, less flitting than usual; for men in high places had been made ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... by the Communion, and a great fear laid hold of me. Tremblingly I looked around the church. All was silent save the night winds as they moaned in the tower at the western end. Then an owl hooted dismally, and soon after I heard three distinct raps at a window, as though a large bird had tried to break the glass and thus ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... 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 glass, and wisps ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... place was buried under layers of mystery. It was silent, it was dark with the blackness of darkness; it was like an unholy sepulchre that gave forth no sound, though we beat upon its sodden door with its rusted knocker until a dog howled dismally on the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... they came to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top hidden yonder and mingled with ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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 over ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... misty frost, the night, and stillness outside—the stillness that whispers of death. Wolves crept up to the plot of land, sat on their hind-legs and howled long and dismally at the sky. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... a mistake 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 ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... sailor (bad sailors often do this). She lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who detest nights in trains without wagons-lits, but save money by not having wagons-lits, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it. Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face. Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... 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
... "The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest". 'Of all those sounds,' says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl, 'there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.' ...'I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Bringing his bride back to his father at Bordeaux, Edward was received with a full display of luxury; all Henry's money, and more too, having been laid out on the banquetting, so that the King himself stood aghast, and dismally answered one of his English guests, "Say no more! What would they think ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 of fishing-schooners were seen, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one upon the left side of the court, over which the letter S was sprawled upon the coping stone. The bullseye had been darkened, and when the Buster plunged through the doorway he was lost to sight in the impenetrable darkness beyond. We heard him though, stumbling against stairs that creaked dismally, and the slide being drawn back, the friendly light made clear the way for him and us. There was an entry precisely like the one we had entered before, with a flight of narrow, almost perpendicular stairs, with so sharp a twist in them that we could see only half up. The banisters in sight ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Cabool Troops have perished, England has not received such a blow from an enemy, nor anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with all its losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four officers with Macnaghten was George ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... That dismally grim northern sky Says God in His vengeance once frowned, And opened His flood-gates on high, Till obstinate sinners were drowned: The lively bright south, and that bow, Say all this dread vengeance is o'er; These colours that smilingly glow Say ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... yards braced to port, was skimming along over the heaving seas at a ten-knot rate, and Murphy's occasional glimpses of that growing landfall showed him details of rock and wood and red sandy soil that bespoke a steep beach and a rocky bottom. The air was full of spume and the gale whistled dismally through the rigging with a sound very much like that of Murphy's big base-burner in his Front Street boarding-house, when the chill wintry winds whistled over the housetops. He wondered if he would ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... door open and close softly on the floor above; then slippered feet came pat-patting down the stairs. The wild rattle of the bell suddenly stopped; a muffled voice could be heard protesting dismally against the din. But suddenly the vague complaint gave way ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... thus employed, far from his ancient chateau, the portraits of his ancestors that hung upon its walls were frowning darkly at the degeneracy of this last scion of their noble race, and a sigh, almost a groan, that issued from their faded lips, echoed dismally through the deserted house. In the kitchen, Pierre, with Miraut and Beelzebub on either side of him—all three looking melancholy and forlorn—sat thinking of his absent lord, and said aloud, "Oh, where is my poor, dear master now?" a big tear ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was a council of war in Muldoon's tent, Muldoon holding Scrap between his knees. Scrap's scratched ear, which habitually stood cocked, flopped forlornly; his stump tail drooped dismally. The atmosphere of anxiety oppressed his sensitive spirit. He desired to play, and Muldoon only sat and rolled his argumentative tongue. From this conference those who had been present went about the business of the day with ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... fresh shape, and avoid it accordingly. All this took time, however, and when she had got her father packed into the sledge in readiness for a start it was almost dark, while the snow was coming down thicker than ever. The brown-and-white dog was howling dismally again, while the black one which had a cropped ear seemed disposed to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... 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 ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... we might bring him to," observed Paul, when the man on the floor groaned again, more dismally than before. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... here now, pacified and content again, and thought with something of pity of his brother dozing now no doubt before the parlour fire, cramped by his poor ideals and dismally happy in his limitations. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Esther. She felt that she must get away at once or she would burst into heartsick tears under those steely, bland blue eyes. When she got home she shut herself up in her room and cried. There was nothing for her to do but resign, she thought dismally. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... paused 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 ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... morning, and presently the two young people followed Mrs. Pratt into the street and turned into the Market-Place. The last of the evening revellers were just coming out of the closing taverns, and to a group of them, Tolson, the town-crier, was dismally calling forth his announcement that one hundred pounds reward would be paid to any person who first gave news of having seen Mr. John Horbury on the previous Saturday evening or since. The clanging of his bell, and the strident notes of ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... of a tall tree the ape-man clawed his awkward way and after him came Numa, the lion, moaning dismally. At last Tarzan stood balanced upon the very utmost pinnacle of a swaying branch, high above the forest. He could go no farther. Below him the lion came steadily upward, and Tarzan of the Apes realized that ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... aslant in the wind and drummed dismally upon the little window beside Sandy. It beat upon the door and trickled underneath in a thin rivulet to a shallow puddle, formed where the floor was sunken. A dank warmth and the smell of wet wood heating to the blazing point pervaded the room and mingled with ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... see the idea," replied Carthew, rather dismally, and the two incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a few minutes through the intervening dungeons to the door which would restore to her eyes the being with whose life her existence seemed blended. The bolts had yielded to her hands. The iron latch now gave way; and the ponderous oak, grating dismally on its hinges, she looked forward, and beheld the object of all her solicitude leaning along a couch; a stone table was before him, at which he seemed writing. He raised his head at the sound. The peace of virtue was in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... thing. I hastily picked up the children, and threw them upon the bank, and then wrathfully strode out myself, and tried to shake myself as I have seen a Newfoundland dog do. The shake was not a success—it caused my trouser-leg to flap dismally about my ankles, and sent the streams of loathsome ooze trickling down into my shoes. My hat, of drab felt, had fallen off by the brookside, and been plentifully spattered as I got out. I looked at my youngest ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... gentlemen were to walk across to Abbotstoke and dine at the Grange; and Tom, who, reasoning from analogy, had sent on his black tie and agate studs, was so dismally disconcerted on finding that Norman treated his own going as a matter of course, that Richard, whose chief use of his right of primogeniture was to set himself aside, discovered that he was wanted at home, and that Tom would be much better at the Grange, offering, at the same ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and corn for the chickens, and looked down the deep, deep well, with its curb lichened over, into the dark pupil of water, whose iris is never disturbed, unless by the bucket that hung in such gibbety repose on the lofty extreme of the great sweep, that creaked dismally, uttering a pitiful cry of complaint. If it hadn't been Sunday, I would have coaxed Aaron to pour some oil on its turbulence; but since Sunday it was, I was to be content to let it screech on. It was not a "sheep fallen into a pit," only a disturbed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... morning broke dismally with the floodgates of the heavens open and the rain coming down in torrents. I lay among my rugs and smoked one pipe after another in order to keep down my appetite, for there was little chance of making a fire to cook with. In fact, most of the day was passed in this way, for all the wood ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... for visitors. Peter was sitting upright in bed, his hand in a sling; this gave him a curiously crippled appearance. And on the boy's face affliction had already left those deep, ineradicable traces which so dismally distinguish the invalided worker. The terrible burden of the consequences of mutilation could already be read in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he said dismally. "I shan't hear you again, unless, perhaps, the echoes have kept your voice to ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... column, where a hundred fires were blazing. Around them figures were moving like Indians, whose faces the flames lit up with ghastly distinctness. The neighboring wood was made visible and gloomy at once by the fires under the trees, the foliage reflecting the light dismally. Elsewhere all was in darkness, and we lay down to sleep wondering what the morrow would bring forth. Frederick City and home were forgotten, and the thoughts that now possessed us were of marching and counter-marching, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... ante bellum regime, had kept Southern women as ignorant of practical business routine, as of the origin of the Weddas of Ceylon, Miss Patty bitterly opposed and lamented her brother's decision; dismally predicting that the result must inevitably be the transformation of their refined, delicate, clinging "Southern lady", into that abhorred ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... head just above the water. It's lucky 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 merry ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Three thousand feet below, through a hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow—a grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... is already up over my knees," confirmed Dave Darrin dismally, "and I believe it would be twice as deep before I'd been gone ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... to where Finn sat, alternately licking the one deep wound the old wolf had scored in his chest, and looking out dismally across the Tinnaburra. Warrigal sat down on her haunches about two yards from Finn, and, having pointed her muzzle at the moon, where it sailed serenely above them in a flawless dark blue sky, she began to pour out upon the night the sound of the long, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... 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 sound that was ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... government beacon shines brightly through the persistent storm, with the keeper's neat little house and garden a hundred yards away. In the tree-tops, up a heavily-forested hill beyond, the wind moans right dismally. In this sheltered nook, we shall be but lulled to sleep with the ceaseless pelting ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... gown, knitted her brows severely as she regarded the chubby little man opposite; then, suddenly remembering that the wrinkles might leave their dreadful mark on her carefully rolled and massaged features, she banished them with a pass of her ringed hand and sighed dismally. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... gave a little scream, and tried to hide behind me; Jimmy valiantly flew at the big dog with my walking stick; and poor little Gipsey nearly stood on the end of his tail with fright, and squealed dismally. What a fuss we were all in, to be sure! So at last, to quiet the disputants, I caught Gipsey up, and put him in my coat pocket, where he sat, looking out at the top, ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... that she had one fine evening seen him carrying Theresa's water-pail for her down the hill, an ordinary act of courtesy enough, but the sight of which suddenly darkened the world before her foolish old eyes more dismally than if the golden fleece of the summer sunset had been smothered under the blackest pall ever woven in cloud-looms. "Fine colloguin' they're havin' together," she said to herself as she watched them and their long shadows down the slope, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... excuse my manner," said the Professor dismally, "my position is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can't leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... wanted to come along, but as he could not very well be looked after on this trip he had to be left behind, much to his sorrow. He howled dismally as the auto ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... forward his head, and croaked as dismally as ever his congeners croaked over a field of the slain in days gone by; and Yaspard nodded to him, then gave entire attention to the management ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... laughed Polly, back again, pulling on the big cloth slipper, which Joel produced from the bedroom, the two boys joining uproariously, as the old black thing flapped dismally up and down, and showed strong symptoms of flying off. "We shall have to tie ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... morning, the whole structure ran together with a 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: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kitchen Vixen wandered to the out-houses, and found Argus howling dismally in a grass-grown court-yard, evidently believing himself abandoned by the world. His rapture at ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... time, and it was ticklish work for a nervous person; every one was committed to his own sweet guidance; and as I went blindly stumbling along, I came every now and then upon the old gentleman, also stumbling along, on his donkey. And whenever I was near enough to him, I could hear him dismally soliloquizing, 'Why am I here!'—in a tone of mingled disgust and self-reproach which was ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... scant comfort was it, however, to find, when the battle-field was gone over, that, besides the Grenadier whose crown I had cracked, another had been pistolled by Jowler, and and lay mortally wounded, and Groaning Dismally. Poor Jowler himself would never pistol Foe more. He was dead; for the Men of War, furious at our desperate Resistance, at the worsting of their fine-feathered officer (who was mumbling of his bruised hand as a down-trodden Hound would its paw, and cursing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... did so how many folk had done likewise in the far, far past, for the massive metal of that hook was worn quite thin with use. Then she let the roller run, and the sound of the travelling chain clanked dismally in that vaulted, empty place. At length the pail struck the water, and she began to wind up again, pausing at times to rest, for the distance was long and the chain heavy. The bucket appeared. Benita drew it to the side of the well, and lifted it ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... Oswald, dismally repentant, handed Castel Forte a letter to Corinne in which he begged permission to see her. In answer she declined the permission, but asked to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a year's delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid. That he signed under compulsion; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally. She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the Chicago opening of Come On In. Everybody had been there ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... reds, sombre greys, a patch of green here and there, and all more or less dingy, and "quite out of fashion." There is a rather forlorn tone over it all, especially when we have a glimpse of Ordnance Terrace, at Chatham, that abandoned, dilapidated row where the boy Dickens was brought up dismally enough. At that moment the images of the Pickwickians recur as of persons who had lived and had come down there on this pleasant adventure. And how well we know every stone and corner of the place, and the tone ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... 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
... sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulent member of ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... The night wind swished the grasses; dark storm clouds blotted out the northern stars; the prairie wolves mourned dismally. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... have been startling. Once just outside the door the waiting pony neighed warningly—and again. Upon the ledge beneath the window-pane a tiny mound of snowflakes began to take form; around the shanty the rising wind mourned dismally. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in their account they term voracious cannibals, dragging the bodies of Captain Hill and the seamen from the beach toward some large fires, which they supposed were prepared for the occasion, yelling and howling at the same time most dismally. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... looking forward to such an event. He wished to raise, purify, reform the Church in which Providence had placed him; utterly dissatisfied as he was with it, intellectually and morally, convinced more and more that it was wrong, dismally, fearfully wrong, it was his duty, he thought, to abide in it without looking to consequences; but it was also his duty to shake the faith of any one he could in its present claims and working, and to hold up an incomparably purer model of truth and holiness. That his purpose was what ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 Gaston ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... had 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 the arm disappeared ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... indeed. Of these German kings and princes in their small dominions it has been written: "And these magnates all aped Louis XIV as their model. They built huge palaces, as like Versailles as their means would permit, and generally beyond those limits, with fountains and avenues and dismally wide paths. Even in our own day a German monarch has left, fortunately unfinished, an accurate Versailles on a damp island in a Bavarian lake. In those grandiose structures they cherished a blighting ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... had heard. I was conscious of the sound of a scuffle somewhere forward. Below, at my side, Aunt Lucinda gave voice to a long shrill wail of terror. John, my Chinaman, his cue still held fast in the jammed edges of the door, chimed in dismally. Midships I heard a muffled knocking ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... decidedly; and, taking Billy's arm, away they went, leaving poor Bab and Sanch to watch them out of sight, one sobbing, the other whining dismally. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... that flooded the afternoon breakfast table, Curt George's handsome, manly face wore an expression of distress. He groaned dismally, and muttered, "What a head I've got, what a head. How do you expect me to face that gang of kids without a drink to pick ...
— The Hunters • William Morrison
... gloomy house in St. Mary Axe. Week after week passed away, and Mr. Peter was still detained at Hamburgh. Who would have supposed that his society could have been missed? that the parlour could have seemed more dismally dull by the absence of one of those from whom it chiefly derived its character of dulness? Mr. Anthony took up his largest meerchaum, and enveloped himself in its smoke by the hour; but the volumes of smoke cleared away, and no Peter Vanderclump appeared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... are about all we can count on," he announced dismally. "There are only a half a dozen potatoes here. You ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... and still the white plain about them mounted slowly and surely towards the skies. Then the passengers became yet more weary and unhappy. Old Woollen, the unfortunate, detailed his woes to more and more appreciative audiences. Even the Funny Man—with a fresh flask of whiskey—sighed almost dismally between frequent uneasy "cat-naps." And Samson Newell, first seeing his wife comfortably settled, and his little ones safely disposed about her, strode up and down, from car to car, with a gloom of disappointment on his face that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... or give him water, impressed us most painfully, effectually driving sleep from our eyes, which, under a kind of fascination, gazed intently on what they would fain not see. From time to time the dogs outside howled dismally, and this forced night-watch was made most hideous by the occasional hooting of an owl, or the prolonged baying of hungry wolves in the distance. We were very weary, and at last fell into a troubled slumber, but ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... and joyfulness of the morning, we certainly were in much higher spirits than was at all reasonable in the case of men who had had such close companionship with Death so short a time before, and who still stood a very fair chance of dying dismally of starvation. The knowledge that, by the falling of the chain, our retreat had been again cut off did not at all trouble us. Even could we have crossed the canon, and so have retraced our steps, we could have gone no farther than the valley of the lake; and we could as ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... gathered before the big fireplace in silent meditation, while outside the wind whipped sheeted snow against the walls and wailed dismally its endless journeying. They could not help but feel the something melancholy in the air. The little cabin, standing so far away from civilization and all the things they were accustomed to know seemed somehow to set them apart ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... prudent to provide against her slippery tricks as much as lay in his power; he therefore pricked his arms and breast with a needle, and then rubbed it with bay salt and gunpowder, which made it appear like the small-pox coming out; in the night-time he groaned very dismally, till at length the captain called to him to know the reason of his groaning so in his sleep. Alas! Sir, replied he, I have been dreaming my poor wife was dead, and that she died of the small-pox. Be of good cheer, man, says the captain, dreams are but fables; ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... time the 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... which bears the name of Pleasant Camp, though it has not the first claim to the name. It does not contain the ruins of even a cabin or shanty—nothing, in fact, but trees, through which the wintry winds sough and howl dismally. There the party halted, ate lunch, rested for an hour, and then set out with the determination to make the next ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis |
