"Ghastly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It was a ghastly revel. Like sheaves in a harvest field, dead wolves lay around every open water. Some barely turned from the creek and fell, others struggled for a moment, while a few blindly wandered away for short distances. The poison had worked to a nicety; when the victims were collected, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... fear was shown by the convulsive trembling which agitated his wretched body, by his ghastly pallor, by the cold drops of sweat rolling down his forehead.... He was no longer a man: it was a lamentable bit of human wreckage the hooligans had before them!... And the more lamentable this wreck showed itself to be, the less worthy of their ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... labors of agriculture; the mournful dashing of waves along the firths and lakes: the portentous noises which every change of the wind is apt to raise in a lonely region, full of echoes, and rocks, and caverns; the grotesque and ghastly appearance of such a landscape by the light of the moon: objects like these diffuse a gloom over the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... That I know. I will never forget that. He weighed only 195 pounds, but I am sure he had another couple of hundred tucked away somewhere. When I had finished counting a great variety and number of stars, it occurred to me that I had been in a ghastly railroad wreck, and that the engine and cars following had picked out my right knee as a nice soft place to pile up on. There was a feeling of great relief when I looked around and saw that the engineer of that ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... it there were ugly iron spikes; and sometimes the heads of those who had been executed were stuck on these spikes, and stayed there until they rotted away. All the people passing along the street could look up and see the heads, and sometimes, when the wind was high, a ghastly head came tumbling down into the street. We cannot think of such things without horror; but in those days people were accustomed to them, and did not mind them very much. When Mary came to Temple Bar she asked for ink and paper, and wrote there ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... occasionally he coughed, and the others seemed content to let him enjoy himself in his own way. His eyes had a singular brightness, and when he laughed his white teeth and rather drawn mouth gave him almost a ghastly appearance. He seemed as much of an odd number as Tom himself, but not in the same way, for Tom was matter-of-fact and stolid, and this little gnome of a scout seemed all ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... turning of the path, just where Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man's hand. Being thus made aware of the proximity of the corpse, he started back a little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,—cautiously ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you I won't take my affidavit—I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir—I may have been sleep- walking: perhaps am as I write now—I may have been under the influence of that astounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen— but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of their astonishment, their indignation and their sympathy afforded the poor fellow the most visible satisfaction, harassed as he was becoming by one dread which entirely swallowed up the thought and fear of death. This ghastly terror was the then usual consignment of a body after death to the surgeons for dissection; and the uncontrollable trepidation which would take possession of him each time this hideous recollection forced itself upon him, although unaccountable to Reuben, was most painful for him to witness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... without strife? Recall the tales of primeval chaos, when, as sang the Ascraean singer, love first darted into the midst; imagine the heave and throe of joining elements; conjure up the first living shapes, born of the fluctuating slime and vapour. Surely they were things incomplete, deformed ghastly fragments of being, as are the dreams of a maniac. Had creative Love stopped there, and then, standing on the height of some fair completed world, had viewed the warring portents, wouldst thou not have said—But these are the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... almost desolate. At one of their ruined villages Livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon stakes stuck in the ground. In the old times the chiefs used to vie with each other as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest number of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable present from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. The Batoka have an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw. The lower ones, relieved from the attrition and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... layman savored of the occult; at birth, God had been very good to him, in that He had ordained that during all his life the Desert Rat should be engaged in learning how to die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher, and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did not desert him. He sat down on the skull of one of the burros ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... ghastly cold in the ruined church. It had been warm enough there during the day, but the fire that had gutted it had died like the young acolyte, like the aged sacristan, the venerable mother, the sweet ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... could "get properly going" with the brumbies, two travellers rode into the homestead, supporting between them a third rider, a man picked up off the track delirious with fever, and foodless; and at the sight of his ghastly face our hearts stood still with fear. But the man was one of the Scots another Mac of the race that loves a good fight, and his plucky heart stood by him so well that within twenty-four hours he was Iying contentedly in the shade of the Quarters, looking on, while the homestead shared the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... audacity, and strength. I had met my equal, and he came to it fresh and I jaded. I clenched my teeth and prayed with all my heart; I set her face before me, and thought if I should fail her to what ghastly fate she might come, and I fought as I had never fought before. The sound of the surf became a roar in my ears, the sunshine an intolerable blaze of light; the blue above and around seemed suddenly beneath my feet as well. We were fighting ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood the moon; The night-sprite sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... from her life; and it was his honest hope that she would marry in her own world and forget him. In fact he was the prey of a kind of moral terror that here also, as in the case of his father, he might make some ghastly mistake, pursuing his own will under the guise of love, as he had once pursued it under the guise of retribution—to Elizabeth's ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Breckinridge another Presidential ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had associated with him Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency. On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... arranged, before starting, to meet at a certain tall tree, which stood up against the sky in the dim starlight. Green had gone only a few rods when he came upon three men. Their smoky lantern threw a ghastly light upon their work, and they were so busily engaged in digging that they did not notice him. He quickly withdrew and hurried after me. It was some time after he overtook me before we could find Knox, but ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning that seemed intelligent of Nature's devices, and pulled it out, as any ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... head, as if to be sure of his hold on himself. He was ghastly white about his smooth-shaven, thick lips. Both hands were thrust deep ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... secure; That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil; That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won spoil; That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and greed In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed; And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked sod. Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay For gold-lust and craft ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the men upstairs were at work on their ghastly duty, before the coming of the doctor and the lawyer, she went down to him, to tell him something of the programme for the day. Hitherto he had simply been informed that on that morning the body would be buried under the walls of the old parish church, and that after the funeral the will would ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Settlement, in the ancient Russian city of Nizhni-Novgorod, which sheltered a small Jewish colony of some twenty families. While comparatively circumscribed as far as the material loss is concerned, the Nizhni-Novgorod pogrom stands out in ghastly relief by the number of its human victims. A report, based upon official data, which endeavors to tone down the colors, gives the following description of the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which a pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind. Leibnitz was a rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in facts than most rationalist minds can show. Yet if you wish for superficiality ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... replied, turning to face her. Katherine thought how ghastly pale and pinched he looked. "I see the sort of creature she is—a doll that would sell her sawdust soul for finery and glitter; ay, and the lives of all who belong to her for ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... revolt. Already criminal attacks upon white women are not uncommon, and a virtual reign of terror exists in some portions of the South, where it is said that white women are never left unprotected; and the negro, if he attacks a white woman, is almost invariably burned alive, with the horrible ghastly features that attend an Indian scalping. The crowd carry off bits of skin, hair, finger-nails, and rope as trophies. In fact, these "burnings" are the most extraordinary features in this "enlightened" country. The ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... in battle-time, When my beautiful heroes perished; The earth of the Lord shall bloom sublime By the blood of his martyrs nourished. "Amen!" I have said, when limbs were hewn And our wounds were blue and ghastly The flesh of a man may fail and swoon But God shall ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... 'Beating—his—wife! How ghastly!' said the Bride. 'Fancy YOUR beating ME!' She slipped an arm round her husband's waist, and, leaning her head against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley in deep ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that ghastly hand. ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it—would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea—tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it—against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid—caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the very last. Hope there seemed none whatever—yet, strangely enough we were neither of us utterly hopeless, and even when the evil that we dreaded was upon us, and that which we greatly feared had come, we sat in the car of the balloon with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled with a ghastly hopefulness ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... been awed and overwhelmed by the accounts of the terrific cannonade and the murderous hand-to-hand struggles. At night she would start up from vivid dreams wherein she saw the field with thousands of ghastly faces turned towards the white moonlight. In her belief Merwyn was incapable of looking upon such scenes. Therefore why should she think of him with scorn and bitterness? She herself had never before realized how terrible they were. Now that the dread emergency, with ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... departure. Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her. Then Aaron, who had stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down the passage and into the living room. His face was very pale, ghastly-looking. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal. But his heart did not relax, nevertheless. So he hurried into the night, down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the field ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... smoking their Alsacian pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little biniou man from the Cote-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating at every step. War! war! war! The burden of the ghastly monotone was in her brain, her tired heart kept beating out the cadence that her little slippered feet ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... through my memory as he spoke:—"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough." And John would have said the same, could he have seen the ominous black holes between his shoulders, he never had; and, seeing the ghastly sights about him, could not believe his own wound more fatal than these, for all the suffering it ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... this ghastly forest, Dante is led to the third division of this circle, a region of burning sands, where hosts of naked souls lie on the ground, blistered and scathed by the rain of fire and vainly trying to lessen their pain by thrashing themselves with their hands. One figure, the mightiest among them, alone ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... song-birds singing at her heart, but there A thousand gnashing furies made their lair, And urged her on; her nearest pathway lay Over a little hill, and on its brow A group of trees, whereof each blackened bough Bore up to heaven as if in protest mute Its clustering load of ghastly charnel fruit,[12] The swaddled forms of all the village dead— Maid, lusty warrior, and toothless hag, The infant and the conjurer with his bag, Peacefully rotting in their airy bed. As on a battle plain she saw them lie, Fouling the fairness of the moonlit sky; And ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... "It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do—for Millings." He turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he did ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness,—half-hidden—yet full-confessed. The place remains (1870) nearly unchanged in its larger features; but with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma—not by Campagna tomb,—not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of the English scene: nor ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... fuil!" cried the rabble on the stairs, and it seemed ghastly like an answer to the young laird's question; but Nicol Beg demanded peace, and assured MacLachlan he was only sought ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there was a round black hole made by the bullet from his—Napoleonder's—pistol. And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again, "Why did ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... mutilated than those of his comrades; the nose having been slit, and subsequently sewed together again, but so clumsily that the severed parts had only imperfectly united, communicating a strange, distorted, and forbidding look to the physiognomy. Clement Lanyere, the owner of this gashed and ghastly face, who was also reft of his ears, and branded on the cheek, had suffered infamy and degradation, owing to the licence he had given his tongue in respect to the Star-Chamber. Prosecuted in that court by Sir Giles Mompesson, as a notorious libeller ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... few moments, to find his mother clinging to his father, ghastly with the horrible dread which had ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... street that led past the banker's house. It was the most pretentious house in the town, of brick, trimmed with stone. In the yard, which was large, the great man had indulged his taste for art, stucco statuary—a deer, a lion, a dog, two Greek wrestlers, a mother with a child in her arms, and a ghastly semblance ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include both sides of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling evil, with its bitter pain, and with its ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... with both arms rigid at his side and his head bent forward. The dawn had just broken, and the two men saw each other in the ghastly gray light of the morning. "If any man," cried Stuart thickly, "dares to say that that blackguardly lie is true I'll kill him. You or any one else. Is that what you mean, damn you? If it is, say so, and I'll break every ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid—except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... reached home she went directly to her room and had a cup of tea sent to her there, and the children and I had rather a solemn time at the table together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes or thin sliced things for the warm abundance of the week-day dinner; with the gloom of Mrs. March's absence added, this was a very ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... forecastle, someone hurled a shoe at him. A blow so savagely well-aimed, that when he came running aft, howling with pain (for, for all his obstinacy, he seemed to lack courage)—to complain of the outrage, to Schantze—his eye popped out so far that it seemed as if leaping out of its socket! It was ghastly and bloody like a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... suddenly ebbed, she grew ghastly in her colourlessness, and her bloodless lips writhed, as she called after the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... promised Mrs. Errol that she would take a long rest, but there was no rest for her. She knew that she would hear from Lucas the moment he had anything definite to report; but a new and ghastly fear now assailed her. What if Nap had not returned to Baronmead? What if he had gone direct to the asylum, there to snatch his opportunity while his ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... success to the large public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the essayist. It did not seem likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs—who could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... must—let His will overpower your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will go through with it, and find your strength in Him. ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... but none of the rest seemed to heed it. Their attention was chained by what now happened before their eyes. The group of servants parted and a woman staggered on to the bridge. Antoinette de Mauban was in a loose white robe, her dark hair streamed over her shoulders, her face was ghastly pale, and her eyes gleamed wildly in the light of the torches. In her shaking hand she held a revolver, and, as she tottered forward, she fired it at Rupert Hentzau. The ball missed him, and struck the woodwork ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Pontefract. The soldiers bearing Sir John de Bury had reached there some time before, and he lay on the couch in his own room. There was no material change in his condition, though under the candle-light there was less of the ghastly pallor of death in the face; and about the ears were evidences that the blood was beginning to circulate more strongly. The King's own physician, Antonio Carcea—an Italian—sat beside him with his hand on ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... down his head on the block, and spread forth his hands. The headsman instantly performed his office. The usual words, "This is the head of a traitor!" were heard as the executioner displayed the streaming and ghastly sight ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... while others, who knew he had aided them in the fight, stepped up and grasped him by the hand. One old warrior taking Carlos' arm in his, led him forward to the ring, and silently pointed to the now ghastly features, as though he was imparting to the cibolero the news that their chief ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Monpavon was familiar with all these mysteries, gave a name to each of them: "That's from Madame Moor"—"Ah! Madame d'Athis." A confused mass of coronets and initials, passing whims and old habits, sullied at that moment by being thrown together promiscuously, all swallowed up in that ghastly place, by lamplight, with a noise as of an intermittent deluge, going to oblivion by a shameful road. Suddenly Jenkins paused in his work of destruction. Two letters on pearl-gray satin ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... horse and rode down to the House of Lords. There was a debate of some public interest, and a considerable crowd was collected round the Peers' entrance. The moment Lord Cadurcis was recognised, the multitude began hooting. He was agitated, and grinned a ghastly smile at the rabble. But he dismounted, without further annoyance, and took his seat. Not a single peer of his own party spoke to him. The leader of the Opposition, indeed, bowed to him, and, in the course of the evening, he received, from one or two more of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up, clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings, turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load, but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... middle-aged man used to ships but now for some reason tired of them. My merchants had only eyes for the safety of their persons and their bales, plunged the third day into mountainous wild country echoing and ghastly with long-lasting war. Their servants and muleteers walked and rode, lamented or were gay, raised faction, swore, laughed, traveled grimly or in a dull melancholy or mirthfully; quarreled and made peace, turn by turn, day by day, much alike. One ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of these occasions I abandoned a post no longer tenable, and went into the small saloon close by, to seek a dry spot whereon to finish the night, I found it occupied by a ghastly man, with long, wild gray hair, and a white face—striding staggeringly up and down—moaning to himself in a harsh, hollow voice, "No rest; I can't rest." He never spoke any other words, and never ceased ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... distinguished himself in war, and his coronation did not take place until a successful campaign had provided enough captives to grace his triumphal entry into the capital, and enough victims for the ghastly sacrifices which formed an important part of all their religious ceremonies. Communication was held with the remotest parts of the country by means of couriers, who, trained to it from childhood, travelled with amazing swiftness. Post-houses were established on the great ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Ah! how different from the girl described in the opening of this tale. Her cheek was pale and wan, and the flesh had gone, and the yellow skin fell in from her cheekbone to her mouth, giving her almost a ghastly appearance; her eyes appeared larger than ever, but they were quenched with weeping, and dull with grief; her hair was drawn back carelessly behind her ears, and her lips were thin and bloodless. Two or three times during the day Mrs. McKeon had given her half a glass of wine, which she had ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... firm as a rock, his lips compressed, his brow rigid, and his face livid in its ghastly pallor. Turning from his stern parent to the old man, he said, with an air ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself, now: "I'm lost, no matter what turn things take! This man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sale; he said he had a letter from a passenger on the GRAND MOGUL saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... river, many lamps twinkling—with two or three huge chimneys, a couple of miles up, belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all around—and sometimes an electric or calcium, its Dante-Inferno gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly-powerful. Of later May nights, crossing, I like to watch the fishermen's little buoy-lights—so pretty, so dreamy—like corpse candles—undulating delicate and lonesome on the surface of the shadowy waters, floating with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the United States and the Indian confederates was measurably widened. The end was Tippecanoe, and the eternal enmity of the hunters and riflemen of southern Indiana and Kentucky who followed General Harrison on that day. One of the ghastly sights of that sanguinary struggle, was the scalping by the white men of the Indian slain, and the division of their scalps among the soldiers after they had been cut into strips. These bloody trophies were carried back to the settlements along the Ohio and Wabash to satisfy ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... whom the reader has seen already, accompanied him, and also the youth named Hippolyte Terentieff. The latter was only seventeen or eighteen. He had an intelligent face, though it was usually irritated and fretful in expression. His skeleton-like figure, his ghastly complexion, the brightness of his eyes, and the red spots of colour on his cheeks, betrayed the victim of consumption to the most casual glance. He coughed persistently, and panted for breath; it looked ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sat by the side of the body of her dead husband cutting out his tongue; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and eaten. The daughter was seen eating the father; and the mother, that [viz. body] of her children; children, that of father and mother. The emaciated, wild, and ghastly appearance of the survivors added to the horror of it. Language can not describe the awful change that a few weeks of dire suffering had wrought in the minds of the wretched and pitiable beings. Those who one month before would ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as Juliet saw "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... could be. To burn powder hour after hour and day after day and week after week at a foe who never sees you and whom you never see; to go at this dreary, heavy trade of war with the sober, uninspired earnestness of convicts building a prison wall about themselves—the ghastly unreality of the proposition left me ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open—and went forth Into a gallery, of a sombre hue, Long, furnish'd with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth. But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ghastly, desolate, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... they have been imported into this peaceful and common home, the camel of the Thebais, as he ruminates in his grassy parterre, surveys with composed surprise the wild dog of the Tierra del Fuego and the sharp-eyed dingo of Australia. Around the ghastly sloth-bear, disentombed from his burrows in the gloomiest woods of Mysore or Canara—and his more lively congener of Russia—the armadillo of Brazil and the pine marten of Norway display a vivacity of action and a cheerfulness of gesture which captivity seems powerless to repress. The elephant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... any of you!" And almost as if it were a real mother's heart, Christian felt hers yearn over the poor pale face, growing every minute more ghastly. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... question." He looked about upon his companions. Three of them shook their heads gravely; but the fourth, in his over-zeal, attempted to, say "No," and burst into a laugh; whereupon they all broadly smiled, while Camille looked ghastly. The speaker resumed. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... roar, across whose base sharp bolts broke and burst perpetually; and with the outer world wrapped in quivering curtains of blue flame, now and then a shaft of fire lanced its straight spear down the dense darkness of the woods behind in ghastly illumination, and a responsive spire shot up in some burning bush that blackened almost as instantly. Flor fancied that the lightning was searching for her, a runaway herself, and the burning bush answered, like a sentinel, that here she was. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... lost no time in securing this acquisition; but on Diggory's arrival, Mr Glowry was horror-struck by the sight of a round ruddy face, and a pair of laughing eyes. Deathshead was always grinning,—not a ghastly smile, but the grin of a comic mask; and disturbed the echoes of the hall with so much unhallowed laughter, that Mr Glowry gave him his discharge. Diggory, however, had staid long enough to make conquests of all the old gentleman's ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... blot of ink he sits across the way, Upon the smiling terrace of the Cafe de la Paix; That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned, I know his automatic's ready waiting to his hand. I know a tragedy is near. I dread, I have no peace . . . Oh, don't you think I ought to go and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... none but the Buttons of this world can appreciate, Paul was forbidden, under pain of ghastly tortures, to go near the Sunday school again, and, lest he should defy authority, he was told off on Sunday afternoons to mind the baby, either in the street or the scullery, according to the weather, while the other little Buttons were not allowed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of, when you think about being a Vestal. I've missed a lot of fine privileges, mighty valuable to any girl that would care for that sort of thing; but I've escaped a lot of things that would go with those privileges. I love bright colors, I always did and I look ghastly in white—I look like a ghost. And I'd have had to wear white and nothing else, even white flowers, like a corpse. And a Vestal has to keep her eyes on the ground and walk slow and stately and stand straight and dignified, and talk soft and low. I'd suffer, even if ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed: Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his rotes, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... restaurant. The full horror of what had happened to Dr. Marks was just having its effect. He found himself shivering as though with a severe chill. Marks was the victim of something ghastly. He seemed to be trying to make sense, as though there was still a glimmer of intelligence behind the blank stare. But his ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... it was notorious in Littlebath that she had never played well, and that she had long since forgotten all she had ever known. The poor old woman had already had some kind of a fit; she was very shaky and infirm, and ghastly to look at, in spite of her paint and ribbons. She was long in arranging her cards, long in playing them; very long in settling her points, when the points went against her, as they generally did. And yet, in spite of all this, Mrs. King Garded ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... done it all. Now for the killed and wounded! Ghastly the spectacle! And happy those Whom Death had taken swiftly! Linda's mother Was one of these—a smile upon her lips, But her breast marred—peacefully she had passed. Percival's wound was mortal, but he strove, Amid the jar of sense, to fix his mind On one absorbing thought—a ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... of Mount Sneffels! It was in an awful mood of mind, that despite my fatigue, before I descended into the crater which was to shelter us for the night, I paused to behold the sun rise at midnight on the very day of its lowest declension, and enjoyed the spectacle of its ghastly pale rays cast upon the isle which lay sleeping at ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... not play well," said Risque at length, when the other, ghastly white, sat speechless upon the parapet; "if you were the student of chance, that I have been, you would know that at murder the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... struck the first blow up there, not of importance to the strategical position, but ghastly to two battalions of the 1st Division, cut off on a spit of land at Lombartzyde and almost annihilated ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... "keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly fragrance, as of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever—an infidel—one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of heartfelt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting in the pauper's grave! The children wild in the streets, the mother a destitute widow; both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband and father's name, and impelled by sheer necessity, down the precipice that had led him to a lingering death, possibly of many years' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... be, we have nothing to do with Him nor He with us; that our prayers cannot get to His ears, if He have ears, nor His hand be stretched out to help us, if He have a hand. I do not know how this cultivated generation is to he brought back again to faith in God and delivered from that ghastly doubt which empties heaven and saddens earth to its victims, but by giving heed to the word which Christ spoke to the whole race while He addressed Nathanael, 'Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Sixth in Carson's study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears. "Well," said the head-prefect acidly. "You've made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... pain-racked, ghastly face, Dru sat in silent meditation, and thought of the shame of it, the pity of it all. Somewhere amongst that human wreckage he knew Gloria was doing what she could to comfort the wounded and those that were in ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... Her face was ghastly pale, and perhaps rendered still more so by the Blueish light of the fire. It possessed beauty, but its beauty was saddened by care and anxiety. There was the look of one accustomed to trouble, but of one whom trouble ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... created between himself and his audiences, as they have watched in his impersonations the shifting tariff—the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ever has either dramatist or management wilfully biassed the effect of stage representation in favor ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... others, placed him in his own berth that he might the better attend to him. We then went to assist my uncle in looking after the other wounded men. Two were unfit for duty, but the rest managed to get about with bandaged arms and heads, and a somewhat ghastly crew they looked. The second mate and boatswain were slightly hurt, and Blyth had received two wounds, but neither were of much consequence; while the captain, though three bullets had gone through his clothes, was uninjured, as were the first mate and I. On going to the mast-head, ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... "hair raising" effect may be produced by painting the entire body of one of the male guests with phosphorus. As this glowing nude stalks uncannily through the darkened rooms you may easily imagine the ghastly ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... copper-colored, and tints everything with a ghastly hue. The cattle and other animals seem to know that danger is near, and rush about ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful distance, more skeletons—evidently those of slaves—whose fractured skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what was the sense of giving him ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... she had seen nothing while hearing much, lying through many sleepless nights with nerves strung to a pitch of torture far more terrible than any bodily exhaustion, and vivid imagination ever at work upon pictures more ghastly than even the ghastly reality which she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... these sounds of evil omen died away, when, on a sudden, there started up before them a tall shape, with long arms outstretched, and all of a ghastly whiteness. The black giant stopped short, fixedly staring before him—all in an instant weak as a limber-jack, the whites of his eyes showing through the dark like half-moons. The thing, there dimly seen in the dusk of the overhanging trees, was, as superstitious fancy pictured it to the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the movement: none but a fool could have supposed that it would. Nevertheless, it had one ghastly effect on contemporary painting. When I returned to Paris in the autumn of 1919 I found the painters whom I had known before the war developing, more or less normally, and producing work which fell ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... of this they give to be, his always going alone when he travels. The old villain then catches what he can. Myself, I hardly believe he continues his brigandage. He appears wholly worn out. I gave his little son 20 paras to buy camel's flesh. The old freebooter grinned a ghastly smile. Walking in Ben Weleed quarters, I heard a great to-do, and went to see what it was, when I saw the old chief, Haj Ben Mousa Ettanee, standing over his young truant son, whilst with a thick stick the servant of the schoolmaster was belabouring the feet ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver, nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... purposes, the resolves, never grew into more than beginnings. God's angels bend down and see a great wilderness of unfinished fabrics, splendid possibilities unfulfilled, noble might-have-beens abandoned, ghastly ruins now, sad ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... standing by One replied, and in replying tears he shed abundantly: “O, poor youth,” ’twas thus he answered, “little, little dost thou know That in coming here thou comest not to joy, but bitter woe. Tears, and pains, and wounds most ghastly, wounds for which there is no cure, Every kind of evil treatment such as no ...
— Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... rapid strides, and he was at the spot whence Pow-wow's joyful barks had continued to resound. What found he there? The body, indeed, of his child; but whether as a waif unto life, or as a prize unto death—it were hard to tell. Stretched out on the ground, all ghastly it lay; the head toward him, and just beyond the naked feet—adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy self-assurance, the Manitou moccasins. As the father approached, the elfish little horrors, fetching a summerset aloft, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... Where are the localities in these Territories where the strain upon popular government must come? The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this movement, appalled the country some months since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the Southern States. He proposes that $77,000,000 of the people's money be taken in order to strike down the great foe to republican government, illiteracy. How was that illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the suffrage to unprepared voters. It is not ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... for the Day, you lied for the Day, And woke the Day's red spleen, Monster, who asked God's aid Divine, Then strewed His seas with the ghastly mine; Not all the waters of all the Rhine Can wash thy foul ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... stupor. On the morning of the fourth day, he almost unconsciously partook of the wretched provision which his gaolers brought him. Their torches, round which the bats whirled and flapped their wings, and twinkled their small eyes, threw a ghastly glare over the nearer walls of the dungeon, the extremity of which defied the vision of the prisoner; and, when the gaolers retired, Alroy ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... of October, about eight thousand Moslems were murdered, the last two thousand, chiefly women and children, being taken into a neighbouring ravine, there to be slaughtered at leisure. Two years afterwards a ghastly heap of bones ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... star-shell looped across the spongy sky, casting a lurid illumination over the ghastly field. When the three travellers caught the soft swish of its ascent, they "froze"—motionless as a shamming 'possum—mimicking death among ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... recalls that of the tamer reliefs set up by the first Sapor, but is less pleasing. Some of the prisoners appear to be well drawn; but the central figure, that of the monarch, is grotesque; the human heads are ghastly; and the soldiers and attendants have little merit. The animal forms are better—that of the elephant especially, though as compared with the men it is ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... earnest and eloquent in his condemnation of Mr. Sumner for proposing to give the ballot to the negroes and disfranchise the white Rebels, but his moral vision failed to discern anything amiss in his own ghastly policy of arming the white Rebels with the ballot and denying ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... his letters, of the three leading notions on which he founded the story. In his water-side wanderings during his last book, the many handbills he saw posted up, with dreary description of persons drowned in the river, suggested the 'long shore men and their ghastly calling whom he sketched in Hexam and Riderhood, "I think," he had written, "a man, young and perhaps eccentric, feigning to be dead, and being dead to all intents and purposes external to himself, and for years retaining the singular view of life and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... inspiration. Even the poem in question cannot be pronounced entirely original, though its intrinsic beauty is unquestionable. It undoubtedly owes its origin to Burger's poem "Leonora," which has found so many English translators. Not content with a single development of Burger's ghastly production the Russian poet has directly paraphrased "Leonora" under its own title, and also written a poem "Liudmila" in imitation of it. The principal outlines of these three poems are as follows: A maiden loses her lover in the wars; ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... she's been here, but then she was reading a ghastly stupid novel, and wasn't company; and she went off to the big boarding-house down the road half a mile, to dine with a friend. I wouldn't go to the blasted place, and really think she didn't want me to. But where in thunder were you all ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... I trudged off next day to see my luckless acquaintances. I secretly hoped—such is human weakness—that I should not find them at home, and again I was mistaken. Both were at home. The change that had taken place in them during the last three days must have struck any one. Punin looked ghastly white and flabby. His talkativeness had completely vanished. He spoke listlessly, feebly, still in the same husky voice, and looked somehow lost and bewildered. Baburin, on the contrary, seemed shrunk into himself, and blacker than ever; taciturn at the best ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... direction indicated by Pottle, when I caught a momentary glimpse of a tiny spark-like flash—which the ejaculations of my comrades told me they also had observed—and in another instant a glare of ghastly blue-white radiance streamed out over the sea and revealed to us two vessels alongside each other, the canvas of the one—a large lumbering full-rigged ship, gleaming spectrally in the light of the port-fire, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Quay made itself heard through the double windows. There was a clang of many tones, and the horses pulled up with a jerk. The color left Catrina's face quite suddenly, as if wiped away, leaving her ghastly. She was going to see Paul ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... amusement. He considered Viola in corals as too rude a jest to share with her. Had poor Viola once grasped Harold Lind's estimation of her she would have as soon gazed upon herself in her coffin. Harold's comprehension of the essentials was beyond Jane Carew's. It was fairly ghastly, partaking of the nature of X-rays, but it never disturbed Harold Lind. He went along his dance-track undisturbed, his blue eyes never losing their high lights of glee, his lips never losing their inscrutable ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head: As awaked from the dead, And amazed he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise! See the snakes that they rear How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew! Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the Persian abodes And glittering ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... would, however, this thriving tradesman could not act his part well. In the midst of his prosperity his smiles were ghastly and his laughter was sardonic. Even when commenting on the prosperity of trade his sighs were frequent and deep. One of his friends thought and said that prosperity was turning the poor man's brain. Others thought that he was becoming ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... part of his mouth having been shot away in a fight with Indians near Walla Walla some years before, in which a Methodist missionary had been killed; but his revolting personal appearance was now worse than ever, and the sacrilegious use of Father Pandoza's vestments, coupled with the ghastly scalp that hung from his bridle, so turned opinion against him that he was soon captured, dismounted, and his parade brought to an abrupt close, and I doubt whether he ever after quite reinstated himself in the good graces ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... never want a skull to grin ghastly lessons of morality at me, while I have you," replied Helen, with ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... beast—I strode away towards Westminster, cured of half my indignation at the death of Charles the First. Many people hurried past me, chiefly of the more tender sort, revolting at the butchery. In their ghastly faces, as they turned them back, lest the sight should be coming after them, great sorrow was to be seen, and horror, and pity, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of the terrific bombardment. An aid-post is hastily placed in a huge shell-hole close by, and the wounded straggle back; those who are but slightly hit and can walk help each other along, while the others are carried on stretchers. Here, a man, ghastly wounded, minus one leg and with the other almost severed, lies on a stretcher, calmly puffing at a cigarette given him by the bearers, and attempts to raise himself on his elbow that he may gaze at the curious scenes ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... the door, seized the stout occupant savagely by the ear, and dragged him bellowing on to the highway. Then, very deliberately, he struck him twice across the face with his open hand. The blows rang out like pistol-shots in the silence of the night. The fat traveller turned a ghastly colour and fell back half senseless against the side of the limousine. The robber dragged open his coat, wrenched away the heavy gold watch-chain with all that it held, plucked out the great diamond pin that sparkled in the black ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whisky—not much as yet, but enough to give him a greater command of words than he ordinarily possessed. When he saw Trenholme among the band who were inquiring for him, he manifested distinct signs of terror, but not at his visitors; his ghastly glances were at door and window, and he drew nearer to the company for protection. It was plainly what they had to tell, not what they had to demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of silence ensued. Huckaback was deep in the ghastly but instructive details of a trial for murder; and Titmouse, after having glanced listlessly over the entertaining first sheet of advertisements, was on the point of laying down his half of the paper, when he suddenly started in his chair, turned ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... was shown into the room which Fillet had prepared for his reception. While he sat musing on this untoward adventure, so big with disgrace and disappointment, young Oakley, according to the instructions he had received, appeared all at once before him, pointing to a ghastly wound, which the doctor had painted on his forehead. The apparition no sooner presented itself to the eyes of Gobble, than, taking it for granted it was the spirit of the young farmer whose death he had occasioned, he roared aloud, "Lord ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... eternal home, Child of its narrow house!—how late the bloom, The facile smile, the soft eye's crystal light, Each grace of Youth's gay morn, that charms our sight, Play'd o'er that Form!—now sunk in Death's cold gloom, Insensate! ghastly!—for the yawning tomb, Alas! fit Inmate.—Thus we mourn the blight Of Virgin-Beauty, and endowments rare In their glad hours of promise.—O! when Age Drops, like the o'er-blown, faded rose, tho' dear Its long known worth, no stormy sorrows rage; But ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... by the King, applied a patent mixture to stop the progress of its decay, but, last autumn, when seen by the describer, its naked gigantic trunk and arms, retaining not the least symptom of animation, presented a ghastly spectacle of the ravages of time, as contrasted with the rich verdure of ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... the fields, unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place where it had been held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the banquet pierced through the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... second-hand clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here and there, a strip of paper announcing ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he could find her—find her in this warm, human world, away from that ghastly border-land where they two met. For in that hour he knew he loved—what? A woman or a ghost? A creature of this world or a fantasy of the night? Wherever she was, whatever she was, he loved her and he wanted her. And in that hour of ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... it would not stand up and face the emphatic present. At the end of a few months, would there be anything left of her connexion with the place where she had passed six—seven years of her life? and such years! They had put scars on her soul, as deep and ghastly as ever red-hot irons had marked on tortured flesh. Perhaps it was because of this rabid agony undergone, that now she seemed to have scarcely any clinging to her home,—for the present at any rate. And she knew that she left only sorrow ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... a little more patience, a little more anguish; and he stood once again, a ghastly and crippled figure, before the outer cavity ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... face looking ghastly in the red light, "this is perfectly dreadful for poor Mrs. Blodgett and the good deacon. Oh, if we could only help them!" She looked off at the clouds of smoke now obscuring the red glare, and her hands usually so quiet were wringing ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... sent for one of his grooms, who is hump-backed, big-bellied, crook legged, and as ugly as a hobgoblin; and after having commanded the vizier to marry his daughter to this ghastly slave, he caused the contract to be made and signed by witnesses in his own presence. The preparations for this fantastical wedding are all ready, and this very moment all the slaves belonging to the lords of the court of Egypt ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous |
