"Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... King's foster-sister in sooth, for I was ten years the younger; and it was Robin, my brother, that claimed kin with him on that hand. But he was ever hendy [amiable, kindly, courteous] to me. God rest his hapless soul! ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... have one of mine," cried Peace, forgetting wisdom, discretion, everything, in her great pity for this hapless bit of humanity. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... eagerly. Suddenly one turned over; a cloud of feathers streamed off down the wind; and then, before the sound of the first shot had reached my ears, a second pitched a few yards upward, and, after a heavy flutter, followed its hapless comrade. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... image had bade him; and at last, one evening, he even lighted the lamp, and sat there looking at the glorious walls and roof his hapless love ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... is on the left side of the stage, over the door, in which the hapless queen has frequently displayed her beautiful person to ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... faces about him, he reluctantly dropped the subject. The conversation soon turned from war to a topic even nearer Jimmie's heart, for Rory had brought out his fiddle and now struck up gaily the song of the cruel Jinny and the hapless weaver. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Only he admitted to the Bishop of Arras that the radiant light which was shining into his window was disagreeable. It made too strong a contrast to his gloomy soul, and it even seemed as though the course of the sun, in its beaming, unattainably lofty path, mocked the hapless, painful obstruction ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... provisions, from which some have made great profits. Salazar—who has with good reason been styled "the Las Casas of the Philippines"—enumerates a melancholy list of injuries and opressions inflicted upon the hapless natives by their conquerors, and urges in most forcible and eloquent language that they be protected from injustice and treated as human beings. He cites from the royal decrees the clauses which make such provisions in behalf of the Indians, and claims that most of these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... supposing fifty or sixty members thus combined, their pet Bill would have fifty or sixty chances to one against the hapless private member with his solitary voice. The secret was long kept, and the Irish members carried everything before them at the ballot. Now the murder is out, and there are almost as many syndicates as there are private Bills. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... among the rest,—exhibits, in a grinning skull, its memorial of the Massacre at Eigg. We find, too, further marks of visitors in the single bones separated from the heaps and scattered over the area; but enough still remains to show, in the general disposition of the remains, that the hapless islanders died under the walls in families, each little group separated by a few feet from the others. Here and there the remains of a detached skeleton may be seen, as if some robust islander, restless in his agony, had stalked out into the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... followed by rain that fell, not in drops, but in sheets. The wind, which had been blowing a heavy gale, rose suddenly into a tornado. With it rose the sea. The masses of water, hissing and smoking under the furious pelting of the rain, flung themselves upon the hapless Bluebird, laboring heavily in the trough of the waves, or staggering over their summits. A constant glare lit the heaving, tossing world of waters, and the air became one roar of wind, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... terrible moments for the hapless grooms and guards. Human nature, in dire defeat, always demands a victim; and the grooms were glad to be locked up in the guard house, where at least they were out of the storm of the Colonel's wrath. As the light grew brighter a careful study laid bare the plan of robbery. The stables formed, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Around this hapless captive there moved the figures of three savages, their faces streaked with various hues of paint, their war-bonnets of eagles' feathers flaunting, and wonderful to behold. Each bore in his right hand a gleaming tomahawk, which now and then ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... to draw in equal portion still Of both our fortunes, either good or ill. And sith the lots of our unconstant fate Have turn'd our former bliss to wretched state, I am content to tread the woful dance, That sounds the measure of our hapless chance. I'll wait thy coming; long thou wilt not stay: High Jove defend and keep thee in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... fascinating one in whom we have already an interest like dreaming of him or of her. Many a calm suitor has been made passionate by a dream; many a passionate lover has been made wild and half beside himself by a dream; and now and then an infatuated but hapless lover, waking from a dream of bliss to a cold reality of wretchedness, has helped himself to eternity before he was summoned to ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... giving the note of tragedy to the British community, and losing the number of her mess (to use a nautical, and therefore appropriate expression) by reason of a big willow tree, beneath whose shady boughs she had moored her floating studio. This hapless tree, having all its sustenance swept from beneath by the greedy water, came down with a crash in the night upon the confiding house-boat, and all but ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and when he took down the receiver he heard Julia's voice. It was not unusual for her to call him about this time, but what she told him now caused a blank and hapless look to come over his face. She was not in her ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... and exclaimed, "Well-away and woe is me, O my lover, O Khudadad, do these eyes look upon thee in sudden and violent death? Are these thy brothers (the devils!) whom thy courage hath saved, the destroyers of thee? Nay 'tis I am thy murtheress; I who suffered thee to ally thy Fate with my hapless destiny, a lot that doometh to destruction all who befriend me." Then considering the body attentively she perceived that breath was slowly coming and going through his nostrils, and that his limbs were yet warm. So she made fast the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... They wore their magnificent gala costumes, with mantles of featherwork sprinkled with precious stones, and collars, bracelets, and ornaments of gold. Alvarado and his men, fully armed, attended as spectators, and when the hapless natives were engaged in one of their ceremonial dances, they fell upon them suddenly, sword in hand. Then followed a great and dreadful slaughter. Unarmed, and taken unawares, the Aztecs were hewn down without resistance. Those ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... accompanied by a 'Morning, Miss Grey,' or some such brief salutation, was usually vouchsafed. Frequently, indeed, his loud laugh reached me from afar; and oftener still I heard him swearing and blaspheming against the footmen, groom, coachman, or some other hapless dependant. ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Boy", Alas! death seems quite near; Her trust betrayed, This hapless maid Sobs out her grief ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from dwelling ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the progress of her husband's labor. The time had come, and the attorney was not the man to let the favorable moment pass unimproved. With a rapidity which seemed utterly incompatible with his rotund corporation, he flew to the door, and sprung the trap upon the hapless pair, in the midst of their vision of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... the settler who took a grant of land within a seigneury? On the whole they were neither numerous nor burdensome, and in no sense were they comparable with those laid upon the hapless peasantry in France during the days before the great Revolution. Every habitant had a written title-deed from his seigneur and the terms of this deed were explicit. The seigneur could exact nothing that was ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... by hundreds from the depths, and, dropping their shells, floated away, each a tiny Venus Anadyomene, down the glassy ripples of the reaches. Every moment a heavy splash beneath some overhanging tuft of milfoil or water hemlock proclaimed the death- doom of a hapless beetle who had dropped into the stream beneath; yet still we fished and fished, and caught nothing, and seemed utterly careless about catching anything; till the old keeper who followed us, sighing and shrugging his shoulders, broke forth ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... sharp spears each against the other, eager to do battle; when Antilochos came and stood hard by the shepherd of the host. But Aineias faced them not, keen warrior though he was, when he beheld two men abiding side by side; so these haled away the corpses to the Achaians' host, and laid the hapless twain in their comrades' arms, and themselves turned back and fought on amid ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than historic reasons for depression in ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the mizzen rigging; near them were gathered the few men who had come aft. Anxiously they looked to leeward, hoping against hope that they might still be at a distance from land. The stout ship was drifted on, the hapless people on board frequently being covered by the seas which broke over her. At last Voules uttered an ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... his leave of the portrait, for he would never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had made him so wretched. Sir Henry, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quietness, the resignation of despair. They had left off trying to better their condition, and taken refuge in a wise and patient hopelessness, bent to endure in silence the extremity of ill. The six insides, on the contrary, were still fighting against their fate, vainly struggling to ameliorate their hapless destiny. They were visibly grumbling at the weather, scolding at the dust, and heating themselves like a furnace, by striving against the heat. How well I remember the fat gentleman without his coat, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... with all manner of delicacies, and of these she invited Sir Percivale to partake, "I pray you, fair lady," said Sir Percivale, "who are ye that show me such kindness?" "Truly," said the lady, "I am but a hapless damsel, driven forth from my inheritance by a great lord whom I have chanced to displease. I implore you, sir knight, by your vows of knighthood, to give me your aid." Sir Percivale promised her all the aid he could ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... dying form, with her hands on her hips. A few tears stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was unable to explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that concerned him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he shared the feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures excite among the dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has placed them. This sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious superstition in families to which cretins belong; but does it not spring from the most beautiful of Christian virtues—from charity, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... convulsion would take place, he naturally became more anxious than before to escape from the rock. Any spot in the neighbourhood of an active volcano is no pleasant place to live in. Still more disagreeable did the officers and ship's company of the hapless Empress feel it to find themselves on the side of a mountain which might at any moment be overturned or sink into the ocean, without the possibility of making their escape. As, however, Adair saw no prospect of averting the evil, should it overtake them, he endeavoured to keep ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... lassie spurn a laddie Wi' her needless Nays, Thraves will pet the hapless plaidie Wi' their loving ways; So if Kirsty blaw him cauldly As a winter day, Bess and Belle will bless him bauldly ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... particularity, re-enacts his attempt to remove the damning black box and his encounter with my hapless companion. The mayor publicly embraces him. The chief of the gendarmes proves by actual demonstration that the German captain's uniform is a perfect fit for Zeno the Great. The mayor kisses him on both cheeks. The commanding officer of the military squad ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and the like sophistical reasonings, that he endeavored to palliate his ingratitude and cruelty towards the hapless victim of his lawless desires; for hardened as he was in his libertinism, and unjust as were his sentiments with regard to women, he could not avoid feeling a pang of conscious remorse at the recollection of Theodora. He had systematically won the confidence of an unsuspecting girl, and ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... those who affirm that the hapless Florinda lent a yielding ear to the solicitations of the monarch, and her name has been treated with opprobrium in several of the ancient chronicles and legendary ballads that have transmitted, from generation to generation, the story of the woes of Spain. In very ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... age, there were a due meed of remuneration, there would be without a doubt works greater and much better than were ever wrought by the ancients. But the fact that they have to grapple more with famine than with fame, keeps our hapless intellects submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of those who could raise them up but give no thought to it, prevents them from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... knees and lifted up their hearts in humble thanksgiving to that God who had saved them by an act of his providence from an awful death. When all hope was gone His hand was stretched forth, making his strength manifest in the weakness of those hapless women and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... fear, my lord, which strikes the heart? Has any Trojan hero slipped his chains? Their hate of Hector is not yet appeased: They dread his son! fit object of their dread! A hapless child, who is not yet aware His master's ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... shrieks in vain; for high The wild winds rising dull the cry; The Fiend exults; The Billows dash, And o'er their hapless Victim wash. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the impulse to mother this kindred and hapless young being, averred to be the beggar's daughter. She placed a golden louis on the palm of the ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... ye rigid rocks, To human sorrow's plaintive tones, While in your dark recesses Echo dwelt, No idle plaything of the winds, But spirit sad of hapless nymph, Whom unrequited love, and cruel fate, Of her soft limbs deprived. She o'er the grots, The naked rocks, and mansions desolate, Unto the depths of all-embracing air, Our sorrows, not to her unknown, Our broken, loud laments conveyed. ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... garden bench, had grown rigid in the posture described above—his mouth awry, his eyes gleaming. So this is what has happened! In a few weeks after the death of the hapless Cara he is active and triumphant; he hurls his lariat on the golden calf and captures new millions. A demi-god! A Titan! The king of markets! He sweeps forward in seven-league boots over roads, at the crossing-points of which are Americans with milliards, they are ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... appalling, and Harry shut his eyes for a moment, in horror, as he saw the entire front rank of the Northern force go down. Then the Southern sharpshooters in hundreds, who lined the water's edge, opened with the rifle, and a storm of lead crashed into the ranks of the hapless ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... divide his food with those whose appetites were more exacting. Among his companions were two men, tall, robust, red-haired, who belonged to a stock of Southern farmers, and who were possessed of the gigantic strength, the huge frame, and the sound digestion of Cork ploughmen. Every day these hapless creatures complained of hunger and of cold, and Mat and Charles Reilly, another member of the Irish People staff, sometimes found a sombre pleasure in finding and gathering snails for them. Whenever either of them brought a snail to Meehan or to Sheil the famished men would swallow ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to listen to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has not fallen in any respect out of estimation. Here is a book ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... my friend, that I am not a woman. You do wrong to love me. What! am I to leave the ethereal regions of my pretended strength, make myself humbly small, cringe like the hapless female of all species, that you may lift me up? and then, when I, helpless and broken, ask you for help, when I need your arm, you will repulse me! No, we ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... by sinking it, himself preserve. The mistress to her distant lover writes; And, as awake, with flames and darts indites: The good wife dreaming of her stallion's charms, Oft seeks the pleasure in her cuckold's arms. Dogs on full cry, in sleep, the hare pursue, And hapless wretches ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... banana in view of the priests, the public arose as one man and demanded punishment. The chief begged that he might be allowed to send her back to her father, but the high priest told him that the gods had been flouted beyond endurance, and would be satisfied only with her death. The beautiful and hapless woman was therefore torn from the arms of her afflicted husband, strangled, and thrown into the sea,—a warning to all the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Mary was taken ill, and her father, in despair, applied to old Chattox, who promised him help, and did her best, I make no doubt—for she would have willingly thwarted her rival, and robbed her of her prey; but the latter was too strong for her, and the hapless victim got daily worse and worse. Her blooming cheek grew white and hollow, her dark eyes glistened with unnatural lustre, and she was seen no more on the banks of Pendle water. Before this my aid had been called in by the afflicted father—and I did all ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with lascivious brows Upon a hapless wife's adulterous spouse, Is this thy faith, to waste another's wealth. The guilty fruit of perfidy and stealth! She durst not be my foe in open light. But in my foe's ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... down one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; come to grief; be all over, be up with; bring a wasp's nest about one's ears, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. Adj. unfortunate, unblest[obs3], unhappy, unlucky; improsperous[obs3], unprosperous; hoodooed [U.S.]; luckless, hapless; out of luck; in trouble, in a bad way, in an evil plight; under a cloud; clouded; ill off, badly off; in adverse circumstances; poor &c. 804; behindhand, down in the world, decayed, undone; on the road to ruin, on its last legs, on the wane; in one's utmost need. planet-struck, devoted; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... small fortune annexed from Mr. Marvel, was all gone. What he had not lost over the cards had been stolen while he lay fuddled. Thus he had been ready enough for another job from his patron. The hapless Marvel, by the way, had been left secure in a dungeon-like cellar, with enough bread and water to keep body and soul together for a couple of days. Bullard had not had time to decide what to do ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... did any untoward event or result matter? I was going to be a soldier, and, after the fashion of love-lorn Cherry-Cheeks, I said to myself, "I'll Jack him!" I was going to be near Margaret, and, so rejoicing, bethought me of the hapless Roman's "Infelix, properas ultima nosse mala." And what did that matter either? I rubbed myself the colour of a love-apple, humming the while old-time ditties long since driven out of my head by the Latin rubbish. Jack was right. Of course it was rubbish. "Latin be damned," ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... meat and clothing. Of fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways. ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... animal in his vain endeavour to reach the shelter of the New Forest; and still less, perhaps, could his father have foreseen that Antony Etricke, whom he had made Recorder of Poole, would be the man before whom his hapless son was taken to be identified before being sent to London, and ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... mocking misery, she likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room would be ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... end of the Revolutionary War, the Indians were as slow to lay down their arms as they had been after the French War. In each case they fought the victors, as far as they could get at them in the persons of the hapless backwoodsmen and their wives and children. These backwoodsmen did not change greatly, in their way of life, during that long Indian war of forty years. They were of the hardy English, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish stock which a generation or two in the wilderness had toughened ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... now an impulse, like despair, Makes me these inner foldings tear! With desperate effort bids me wrest The yearning secret from my breast! Far be the thought that any blame Can fix on thy beloved name! The hapless Minstrel may not feign; But thou, I know, canst all explain— Yet let me from this place depart, To nurse my fainting, sicken'd heart! Yet let me in a cloister dwell, The veiled inmate of a cell; To raise this cowering soul by prayer!— Reproach ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... punishment to wait for the outcast keepers of souls.[3] When he knew that it was ready, he enveloped it in eternal night and equipped it with torment, filling it with fire and fearful cold, with fume and red flame: then he commanded the terrors of suffering to increase throughout that hapless ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... property, which proved to be insignificant enough. Meanwhile the inquest was held, and all the countryside talked of Mr. Fouracres, whose story, of course, was published in full detail by the newspapers. Once more opinions were divided as to whether the hapless landlord really had or had not entertained His Royal Highness. Plainly, Mr. Fouracres' presence in the grounds of Woodbury Manor was due to the fact that the Prince happened to be staying there. In a state of irresponsibility, partly to be explained by intoxication, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... pavement, irritating their gouty toes. Leaning upon their gold-headed canes, they watched the scene with an aspect of composure. But, let us hope, they distributed some of their superfluous coin among these hapless exiles, to purchase ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open his mouth. In fact Courtrey had been known to stop and chat with such a one, smiling his evil smile and enjoying the helpless ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the merits of the dead revere, Who hold misfortune's sacred genius dear, Regard this tomb, where Collins, hapless name, Solicits kindness with a double claim. Though nature gave him, and though science taught The fire of fancy, and the reach of thought, Severely doom'd to penury's extreme, He pass'd in maddening ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... sheep becomes blind, it is rarely abandoned to itself in this hapless and helpless state. Some one of the flock attaches himself to it, and by bleating calls it back from the precipice, and the lake, and the pool, and every kind of danger to ...
— Minnie's Pet Lamb • Madeline Leslie
... up so suddenly at the thought that he had lost her would survive the knowledge of repossession? To him, all his life, a thing desired had upon possession become valueless. With the fulfilment of acquisition had come always disinterest. The pleasure of pursuit faded with ownership. Would this hapless girl who had poured out such a wealth of love at the feet of the man who had treated her brutally fare any better at his hands? Her chance was slight, if any. Ahmed in the full power of his strength again would be the man he had always been, implacable, cruel, merciless. Saint Hubert's own ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... minutes we were sweating at our work, and several units of the party took off their tunics. One hapless individual got into trouble immediately. His shirt was not regulation colour, it was spotlessly white and visible at a hundred yards. A whispered order from the officer on the left faltered along ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... of every wicked thing she ever did; my, but it was an awful panorama! A snorting steed is heard in pursuit, the knight errant spurs him on and seizes the bridle of the running horse, rescues the hapless maiden, who has discovered that she is so wicked she wants to live, and then, mirabile dictu! the knight errant is discovered to be no less a personage than one Rodney Allison. Excuse me, Auntie, if I express ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, trusting to the ease and prodigal wealth of the summer, and now the woods stand bare about ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spirit flew, It pierc'd so deeply, and it burn'd so blue. Betwixt all this and Hero, Hero held Leander's picture, as a Persian shield; And she was free from fear of worst success: The more ill threats us, we suspect the less: As we grow hapless, violence subtle grows, Dumb, deaf, and blind, and comes when no ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... we like your books, and we've come across from New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair departed sorrowfully. If I had read the service over them, possibly their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. Moreover, there's no penalty from one State to another: and even ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she had long patiently endured his follies and neglect, happy if she could obtain a transient hour of kindness from him. But his endless course of riot, and the straits to which it had reduced their hapless family, at length overcame her spirits: she grew melancholy, almost broken-hearted; and her father took her home to him, with her children, from the spendthrift who had been her ruin. Schubart's course ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in the cemetery where so many other hapless waifs were already at rest. In her anguish Mary could not conduct the service, but sat at the window and looked out while Miss Murray bravely took her place. The people, respectful and sad, gathered round the grave—the grave of a twin!—and one of the women, a leader in heathenism, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... manfarado. Handkerchief naztuko. Handle manpreni. Handle tenilo. Handmade manfarita. Handshake manpremo. Handsome bela. Handy lerta, oportuna (of things). Hang (intrans.) pendi. Hang up pendigi. Hanker deziregi. Hansom kabrioleto. Hap okazi. Hapless malfelicxa. Haply eble. Happen okazi. Happiness felicxo. Happy felicxa. Harangue parolado. Harass enuigi, lacigi. Harass (milit.) atakadi. Harbinger antauxulo. Harbour haveno. Hard malmola. Hard (difficult) malfacila. Hard (severe) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... infinite in its variety. But the local Venus's flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), gathered only from the low savannas in North Carolina to entertain the owners of hothouses as it promptly closes the crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct class of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle slaughtered in an abattoir. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... in this communication to his old friend are distinctly pathetic. In parts he is comically peevish and decidedly restrained. He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts. His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... was no ordinary leader. Such was the enthusiasm which he inspired in his troops that they surprised the revolters by attacking along the whole line of the Fleam Dyke at once, and that with such impetuosity that in a moment they were over it. The hapless Iceni were now caught in a death-trap. Behind them the Devil's Ditch barred all retreat save through its one narrow entrance, and those who failed to force their way through the mad crush there could ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... you who know all—what man among us Northerners can feel, as I do, what those hapless men may have deserved?—I who have day and night before me the brand of their cruelty, filling my heart with fire? I need all my strength, all my reason, at times to say to myself, as I say to others—'Are not these slaveholders ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... from view, Turned on itself and drenched the two— A hapless circumstance That lengthened out her "frizzes" new, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the procession should close: "Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." Alas, this was now the only alternative! Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless errand of buying oil for immediate ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... recovered, relates to this daughter of Marcus, executed by Caracalla. Her name, as appears from Fronto, as well as from Dion, was Cornificia. When commanded to choose the kind of death she was to suffer, she burst into womanish tears; but remembering her father Marcus, she thus spoke:—"O my hapless soul, (... animula,) now imprisoned in the body, burst forth! be free! show them, however reluctant to believe it, that thou art the daughter of Marcus." She then laid aside all her ornaments, and preparing herself for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay! Nor quit for me the trembling spray; A hapless lover courts thy lay, Thy ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the Patriarch now Bares the sharp and glittering knife; On that mournful pyre, oh hapless sire! Must he take his darling's life? Will fails not, though his eyes are dim, God gave his boy—he ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... their trifling weight Through all my frame a weary aching leaves; For long I struggled with my hapless fate, And staid and toiled till it was dark and late,— Yet these are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... is that the universe is blind and unconscious; that it knows not what it does. But, standing among the graves of those Wessex churchyards, or watching the twisted threads of perverse destiny that plague those hapless hearts under a thousand village roofs, it is impossible for him not to long to "strike back" at this damned System of Things that alone is responsible. And how can one "strike back" unless one converts unconscious machinery into a wanton Providence? Where Mr. Hardy is so incomparably ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line:— No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honour's hapless wreck With ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... attempt to present very complex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience. The last play cited, The Silver Box, may perhaps be thought an exception to this rule; but, though the experience of the hapless charwoman is pitiful enough, hers is a simple soul, so inured to suffering that a little more or less is no such great matter. The play is an admirable genre-picture rather ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... might be, what could one man do among so many? The Dyaks were hostile to him in race and creed, and assuredly infuriated against the foreign devil who had killed or wounded, in round numbers, one-fifth of their total force. Very likely, the hapless Mussulman would lose his life that night in attempting to bring water to the foot of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... thus it was with this our hapless crew; For on the third day there came on a calm, And though at first their strength it might renew, And lying on their weariness like balm, Lulled them like turtles sleeping on the blue Of Ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm, And fell ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the wildest confusion at the end of the day, after fighting with obstinacy and determination as long as a shadow of hope of victory remained—they looked forward to the joy of releasing from captivity the hapless women and children who were known to have been confined in the house called the Subada Khotee, since the massacre of their husbands and friends ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... lightly up the stairs after the Terror. In less than two minutes the deft hands of the Twins had dealt with the bed; and their intelligent eyes were eagerly scanning the hapless unprotected bedroom. Erebus sprang to the shaving-brush on the mantelpiece and thrust it under the mattress. The Terror locked Captain Baster's portmanteau; and as he placed the keys beside the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... oppress'd by toil, Compelled with slow reluctance to demand The niggard pity of a stranger's hand, And forced, in silent anguish, to abide The sneer of malice, the rebuke of pride: A wretch opprest by sorrow's galling weight, Deplored his ruined peace, his hapless fate. His was such anguish as the guilty know, For self-reproach was mingled with his wo. He dared not fortune's cruelty bemoan— The error, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... incident was closed. The courtier of Charles II. had rushed up; the elephant was pulled and hustled and kicked; for him swiftly the vision of power and glory and vengeance was over, and once again he was the tied and governed prisoner of modern civilisation. The top-hat lay, a battered and hapless remnant, beneath the feet of the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... long tack into the open sea. "Miller's seamanship has saved him once more!" said Matheson, the Cromarty skipper, as, quitting his place of outlook, he returned to his cabin; but the night fell tempestuous and wild, and no vestige of the hapless sloop was ever after seen. It was supposed that, heavy laden, and labouring in a mountainous sea, she must have started a plank and foundered. And thus perished,—to borrow from the simple eulogium of his seafaring friends, whom I heard long after condoling ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Stole to her side and softly told Glad tidings that her heart consoled, Revealing with sweet voice and smile The secret of the giant's guile. She, one of those who night and day Watching in turns by Sita lay, Though Rakshas born felt pity's touch, And loved the hapless ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... children are born, they keep them or slay them as they will, as they would with whelps or calves. To be short, year by year these vile wretches grow fiercer and more beastly, and their thralls more hapless and down-trodden; and now at last is come the time either to do or to die, as ye men of Burgdale shall speedily find out. But now must I go sleep if I am to be where I look to be at ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... farewell,—and oh! remember me Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea, A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore, And ask you, "Maids, of all the bards you boast, Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most?" Oh! answer all,—"A blind old man, and poor, Sweetest he sings, and dwells on ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... mouths, like the ones the boys had seen absorb the rats, shot out of the sea. Another and another followed it, and hapless Sanborn, screaming in terror, was dragged from the structure of the aeroplane, to which he clung ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... its name, and even thirteen centuries and a half have failed to obliterate the memory of a savage and unnatural crime, which, its remoteness notwithstanding, fills the soul with loathing against its perpetrators and with deep pity for the hapless ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly, in the very midst of the wailing crowd, on the market place. Pointing to a beggar, he directed the people to stone that particular unfortunate, and they obeyed so effectually, that the hapless creature was in a few moments completely buried under a huge heap of brickbats. The next morning, the philosopher commanded the throng to remove the pile of stones, and as they did so, a dog was discovered instead of the beggar. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... doth guide these hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?— The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... Elizabeth, her fate was sealed, and it was that of captivity, only to be ended by death. She was immediately cut off from all communication with her subjects, except such as it was deemed proper to allow; and was moved about from place to place, the better to ensure her safety. The hapless victim again and again implored Elizabeth to deal generously and justly with her. "I came," said she, in one of her letters, "of mine own accord; let me depart again with yours: and if God permit my cause to succeed, I shall be bound to you for it." But her rival was unrelenting, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... his ears like the ending of a chant, and he heard the music's close. Once only in his weary hapless life, once the world had passed away, and he had known her, the dear, dear Annie, the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... murderously, and said it was nothing. But Mamise saw her distress, rid herself of the hapless criminal and gave Polly her arm, as she limped through the barrage of hurtling couples. Polly asked Davidge to retrieve her husband from the sloe-eyed ambassadress who was hypnotizing him. She wailed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... clapped her hands together, and cried, "Sing louder, Orpheus, sing a bolder strain; wake up these hapless sluggards, or none of them will see ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... skilful and unscrupulous arts soon made her a power in the court. The queen was in her way; but no long time passed before, on the pretext of a spiritual relationship with her husband which rendered the marriage illegal, the hapless Andovere was repudiated ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... this hapless man of genius took place yesterday, and excited a deep and very general interest, in which there mingled the natural sorrow for high talent prematurely extinguished, with the feeling of painful regret, awakened ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... complaint of Pavia, to besiege and destroy the town of Tortona. As soon as he moved on to Rome, Milan plucked up courage to punish two or three neighbors who had too enthusiastically supported the emperor; it also lent a hand to Tortona's hapless citizens ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... for so many months than the tempest broke upon her in all its terrific fury. Bududreen was no mean sailor, but he was short handed, nor is it reasonable to suppose that even with a full crew he could have weathered the terrific gale which beat down upon the hapless vessel. Buffeted by great waves, and stripped of every shred of canvas by the force of the mighty wind that howled about her, the Ithaca drifted a hopeless wreck soon after the storm ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Hapless young creatures in her plight must always be touching, but her touchingness was indescribable—almost unendurable to the ripe aged woman of the world who watched and heard her. It was as if she knew nothing of the meaning of things—as if some ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... desirability of withdrawal. The occupation of Mexico was, apparently, not popular in France, and in the face of American opposition the French government sought a means of dropping the project. Accordingly the invading forces were withdrawn early in 1867, leaving the hapless Maximilian to the Mexicans, by whom he was ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and when the rain did not come in answer to the prayer of hypocrites a famine came and people fell upon their knees. At that time they were full of superstition. They were frightened all the time for fear that some god would be enraged at his poor, hapless, feeble and starving children. But now, instead of depending upon one crop they have several, and if there is not rain enough for one there may be enough for another. And if the frosts kill all, we have railroads ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to the man who went to seek one filthier than she was? How could he ever find one filthier?' inquired Rashid, reverting to Suleyman's unfinished story of the foolish woman and her husband and the hapless cow, when we lay down to sleep that evening in the village guest-room. I also asked to hear the rest of that instructive tale. Suleyman, sufficiently besought, raised himself upon an elbow and resumed the narrative. Rashid and I lay quiet in ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... shall it dry the widow's tear, The hapless orphan's want supply, Guide to a blessed asylum here, And point to happier realms ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... every limitation in her splendid genius, arose primarily from her want of humor. Her severities of judgment—and who more severe than she?—were due to the same melancholy cause; for humor is the kindliest thing alive. Compare the harshness with which she handles her hapless curates and the comparative crudity of her treatment, with the surprising lightness of Miss Austen's touch as she rounds and completes her immortal clerical portraits. Miss Bronte tells us, in one of her letters, that she regarded all curates as "highly uninteresting, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the power to refuse whom she will. I could not refuse. I must either die or accept the royal hand which was extended to me; and I would not die yet, I have still so many claims on life, and it has hitherto made good so few of them! Ah, my poor, hapless existence! what has it been, but an endless chain of renunciations and deprivations, of leafless flowers and dissolving views? It is true, I have never learned to know what is usually called misfortune. But is there a greater misfortune than not to be ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... delicate old tests fail to adjust themselves to our needs. Mr. Page is right theoretically when he says that the treatment of a servant or of a subordinate is an infallible criterion of manners, and when he rebukes the "arrogance" of wealthy women to "their hapless sisters of toil." But the truth is that our hapless sisters of toil have things pretty much their own way in a country which is still broadly prosperous and democratic, and our treatment of them is tempered by a selfish ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... in the course of the day, some hapless woman, without an atom of food in her room, and seeing her children pale with hunger, would come to borrow ten or twenty sous, she would say to the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... have seen, the hapless travellers never reached their bourne. And now even Mother was gone, and Maude was left alone in all the world. The nuns had not been particularly unkind to her; they had taught her many things, though they had not made ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling off in Kenilworth (Jan. 1821), where he again shifted his scene to England. He has not indeed interested us very much personally in Amy Robsart, but as a hapless heroine she is altogether the superior of Lucy Ashton. The book is, among his, the 'novel without a hero,' and, considering his defects in that direction, this was hardly a drawback. It cannot be indeed said to have any one minor character which is a success of the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... at the fire, and rode round it as closely as their steeds would allow them. But though they tarried till the flames had abated, and little was left of the noble grove but a collection of charred and smoking stumps, nothing was seen of the fiend or of the hapless girl he had carried off. It served to confirm the notion of the supernatural origin of the fire, in that it was confined within the mystic circle, and did not extend farther into ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... uncomfortable feeling came over me when I looked at the hats which they had on their heads, the fine black gloss was so exceedingly like that of the coat which I wore. I have since learnt that my conjecture was but too close to the fact— that numberless hapless rats are slaughtered in France on account of their fatal beauty; and that man not only manufactures their fur into hats, but uses their soft and delicate skins to make the thumbs of his best gloves. Alas, for the race ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... she could not refrain from laughter, he looked so hapless. She burst into an engaging trill. "Why don't you light your pipe?" she said. "You look as ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... better informed than we, points out the figure of a dwarf, nicely labeled as Turold—for many of the actors in this embroidered story are labeled in delicate stitches—and tells us that his was the hand that set the copy for all the happy and beloved maids of the Queen, and the hapless and perhaps equally beloved Saxon maids. We wonder, again, how these skillful and noble Saxons like to find themselves thus writing their own infelicities and humiliations for all the world to see, and then—for so does the human mind go groping into motives and ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... Assembly met. Parliament men—and now these were walking with head in the air—might regret the execution of the past January, and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall of the kingdom fell all powers and offices named and decreed by the hapless monarch. What was a passionate royalist government doing in Virginia now that England was a Commonwealth? The passionate government answered for itself in acts passed by this Assembly. With swelling words, with a tragic accent, it denounced the late happenings in England and all the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... on board seen her we could have rendered her hapless crew no assistance," I thought to myself, "so ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... desperation. There was but little firing—the defenders nursing their slender stock, the savages biding their time. When night shut down the latter became bolder, and taunted cruelly those destined to become so soon their hapless victims. Twice the maddened men fired recklessly at those dancing devils, and one pitched forward, emitting a howl of pain that caused his comrades to cower once again behind their covers. One and all these frontiersmen recognized the inevitable—before ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... of loveliness! alas, how soon The sad brief summer of thy joys hath fled: How sorrows Friendship for thy hapless doom, Thy beauty faded, and thy hopes all dead. Oh! 'twas that beauty's power which first destroy'd Thy mind's serenity; its charms but led The faithless friend, that thy pure love enjoy'd, To tear the beauteous blossom from its bed. How ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... me 'midst every toil and care, A hapless undergraduate still, To fag at mathematics dire, &c. Gradus ad Cantab., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... fire-arms, and the vengeful yell and whoops of savage foeman float down to the breathless listeners at the station on the Chug. The Sioux are here in full force, and a score of them have swept down on that brave, hapless, helpless fellow ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... in the great palace at Macellum, an ancient residence of Cappadocian princes. Here dwelt Julian and Gallus, the youthful cousins of the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the nephews of Constantine the Great. They were the last representatives of the hapless house of the Flavii. Their father, Julian Constantius, brother of Constantine, was murdered by the orders of Constantius on his accession to the throne, and the two orphans lived ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... that have linger'd o'er each form divine, Beneath the vault of Rome's unsullied sky, Or where Bologna's cloister'd walls enshrine Her martyr Saint—her mystic Rosary— Of Arragon the hapless daughter view! Scan, for ye may, that fine enamel near! Such Catherine was, thus Leonardo drew— Discern ye not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... himself, and very prettily censured for publishing only the first volume of a class- book, and making all purchasers pay for both. Sir John Leslie took up the matter angrily, visited Carfrae the publisher, and threatened him with an action, till he was forced to turn the hapless Lapsus out of doors. The maltreated periodical found shelter in the shop of Huie, Infirmary Street; and No. XVII. was duly issued from the new office. No. XVII. beheld Mr. Tatler's humiliation, in which, with fulsome ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fate of any bird which, blundering in its flight, happens to strike against any of the many traps which the tree in unconscious malignity hangs out on every side. In such event the seed clings to the feathers, the wings become fixed to the sides, the hapless bird falls to the ground, and as it struggles heedlessly gathers more of the seeds, to which leaves and twigs adhere, until by aggregation it is enclosed in a mass of vegetable debris as firmly as a mummy in its cloths. Small birds as well as lusty pigeons, spiders and all manner ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... generation so marvelously new. She inveigled him into playing whatever role she assigned in fantastic dramas of her own creation. He was Celia's father or her little boy as the whim took her, the wolf which devoured Red Riding Hood's grandmother, or the hapless old lady herself, attacked ruthlessly by Celia as wolf. Crawling on all fours he played elephant, or with the handle of a basket between his teeth, he submitted to be patted on the head and addressed as Towser. Persis looked on with a wonder that never lost its poignancy. That the self-centered Joel ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... been fought, and the King's cause was wholly ruined. Among other Cavaliers fortunate enough to escape from that deadly fray, and who were in hiding from the vengeance of the usurping government, was the Lord Francis V——s, younger son to that hapless Duke of B——m who was slain at Portsmouth by Captain F——n. It seems almost like a scene in a comedy to tell; and, indeed, I am told that Tom D'Urfey did turn the only merry portion of it into a play; but it appears that, among other shifts to keep his ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Tilly was greatly shocked at the sad recital. She inquired the name of the man of rank who had acted so treacherously to the hapless girl. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in Dan's voice pierced Mrs Jo to the heart; but there was no hope and she gave none. Yet she felt that he was right, and that his hapless affection might do more to uplift and purify him than any other he might know. Few women would care to marry Dan now, except such as would hinder, not help, him in the struggle which life would always be to him; and it was ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... person who had fled, and with a smile of compassion on the helpless infant, "I am glad I have found you—you give more joy to me than you have done to your hapless parents. Poor dear," continued he, while he took off his coat to wrap it in, "I will take care of you while I live—I will beg for you, rather than you shall want; but first, I will carry you to those who can, at present, do more ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... gone from me, and left me thus mourning, To quell the proud rebels—for valiant is he; And, ah! there's no hope of his speedy returning, To wander again on the banks of the Dee. He 's gone, hapless youth! o'er the rude roaring billows, The kindest and sweetest of all the gay fellows, And left me to wander 'mongst those once loved willows, The loneliest maid on the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... keeping, and grace, and expression, and all the varieties of artificial excellence.' Piozzi Letters, ii. III. She answered:—'When did I ever plague about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne when you teased ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... On a hapless day when I was perhaps five years old, I was, in my own estimation, intrusted with the family-dignity, when I was deposited for the day at the house of a lordly Pharisee of the parish, with solemnly repeated instructions in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... survives the strange vicissitudes which gave it birth; desires still remain extremely enlarged, when the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day. The taste for large fortunes subsists, though large fortunes are rare: and on every side we trace the ravages of inordinate and hapless ambition kindled in hearts which they consume in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... immorality, vice and pollution, where moral turpitude stalks with giant strides, and abominable barbarisms are practised under the glaring light of heaven. (Sensation.) The object of this meeting is to crush the oppressor's might, and raise his hapless victims to their proper position in society. I call upon the women of this assembly to rise from the depths of their degradation, rush boldly in the faces of their enslavers, and assert their rights; and, having asserted, maintain them, even at the point of the sword. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... bounty, Peter said, "Thank you, sir. God bless you. It'll be a great help." It meant for the hapless drinker whisky, and he was quick to note the way in which Grey became interested in the man who had ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... time will come with feeling fraught, For if I fall in battle fought, Thy hapless lover's dying thought Shall be a thought on thee, Mary. And if returned from conquered foes, 565 How blithely will the evening close, How sweet the linnet sing repose, To my ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... obscurely afflicted (the uncles in particular) and untimely gathered. Sharp to me the memory of a call, one dusky wintry Sunday afternoon, in Clinton Place, at the house of my uncle Robertson Walsh, then the head of my mother's family, where the hapless younger brother lay dying; whom I was taken to the top of the house to see and of the sinister twilight grimness of whose lot, stretched there, amid odours of tobacco and of drugs, or of some especial strong drug, in one of the chambers of what I remember as ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James |
