"Lugubrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was only one student unladylike and musical enough to whistle; and Miss Wilson was ashamed to find herself growing nervous at the prospect of an encounter with Agatha, who entered whistling sweetly, but with a lugubrious countenance. When she saw in whose presence she stood, she begged pardon politely, and was about to withdraw, when Miss Wilson, summoning all her Judgment and tact, and hoping that they would—contrary to their custom in emergencies—respond ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... casting a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious unrest, sallied out ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... fifteen paces from each other. Each quarter of an hour they called, "Sentinels, look out!" And the soldiers of the marine, placed in the topsails, replied to this by, "All's well," pronounced in a drawling, mournful tone. Nothing could be more monotonous or depressing than this continual murmur, this lugubrious mingling of voices all in the same tone, especially as those making these cries endeavored to make them as ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and lugubrious existence, this which we lead in Mauritius; I believe there is no other country in the world where one dies more easily than among us. The least indisposition becomes a mortal malady; a simple headache develops ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of scale. So, too, in the quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake is here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is in the design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and filth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspective reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. But if there ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... stories whispered by the slender reeds, with their little soft voices, must be more sinister than the lugubrious tragedies told by the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was standing at order arms at the side of a lane, waiting for the command to march, when suddenly the youth remembered the little packet enwrapped in a faded yellow envelope which the loud young soldier with lugubrious words had intrusted to him. It made him start. He uttered an exclamation and turned ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... emphatically as almost to convince us of his belief that in refusing to mourn in the most lugubrious degree for cousins the Versaillese acted with ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the usual salutations, and having prefaced his discourse with a great deal of professed regret for Nigel's situation, sat down beside him, and composing his grotesque features into the most lugubrious despondence, began his raven ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... new junior does strike one as being downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"—with a lugubrious sigh—"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... his feet and stalked to his corner. He settled himself with a lugubrious sigh, as though unwillingly relinquishing his responsibilities in ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and intonation the empire boasts of; and from the sharp precision of the North Tweeder to the broad doric of Kerry, every portion, almost every county, of Great Britain had its representative. Here was a Scotch paymaster, in a lugubrious tone, detailing to his friend the apparently not over-welcome news that Mistress M'Elwain had just been safely delivered of twins, which, with their mother, were doing as well as possible. Here an eager Irishman, turning over the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The name of Hamilton Fish, as Secretary of State, suggested extreme conservatism and probable deference to Sumner. The name of George S. Boutwell, as Secretary of the Treasury, suggested only a somewhat lugubrious joke; Mr. Boutwell could be described only as the opposite of Mr. McCulloch, and meant inertia; or, in plain words, total extinction for any one resembling Henry Adams. On the other hand, the name of Jacob D. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... waking was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. Now, the railway fare alone was three shillings; ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... no doubt at all that it was just songs. And best of all they liked the old love songs, and the old songs of Scotland—tender, crooning melodies, that would help to carry them back, in memory, to their hames and, if they had them, to the lassies of their dreams. It was no sad, lugubrious songs they wanted. But a note of wistful tenderness they liked. That was true of sick and wounded, and of the hale and hearty too—and it showed that, though they were soldiers, they were just humans like the rest of us, for all the great and super-human things ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... start comin' on agin," he explained craftily, still pointing at the ground ahead of him and still urging his horse to the draw. "Ef they suspicion 't we're shyin' off from the ridge, they'll draw a fine bead 'n' cut loose. I knowed it," he added with a lugubrious complacency. "I told ye all day that I could smell trouble a-comin'; I knowed dang well 't we'd stir up a mess uh fightin' over here. I never come onto this dang res'vation yit, that I didn't have t' kill off a mess uh Navvies before ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... as of yore, as not long since. But the necessity of speaking in low tones distinguishes our remarks and imposes on them a lugubrious tranquillity. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... were within a short distance of our hostelry we saw a crowd gathered around a young man who was standing on a box. He was speaking in a mournful, lugubrious voice and accompanied his words with violent gesticulations. Out of curiosity we stopped to listen, and learned that religion was ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... into the air, and accompanied the violin with such vocal powers as Nature had bestowed on him. Nor did the sentiment lose anything, in intensity at all events, by the vocalist. If David's strains were plaintive, Pepper's were lugubrious; and what may seem extraordinary, so long as David played softly the Cerberus of the stableyard whined musically, and tolerably in tune; but when he played loud or fast poor Pepper got excited, and in his wild endeavors to equal the violin vented ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a blank sheet of paper, with a pen in his hand. Father Sobriente paced the apartment, with his usual heavy but noiseless tread. To his surprise, the good priest, after an exhaustive pinch of snuff, blew his nose, and began, in his most lugubrious ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Frankenstein's monster has turned out to be the hardest-lived specimen of the 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' school of romantic tales. So much, no doubt, to the credit of Mary Shelley. But more creditable, surely, is the fact that she was not tempted, as 'Monk' Lewis had been, to persevere in those lugubrious themes. ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and distant country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron broke off ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the parlor'—just big enough for the bed and me. Over the head of my bed there is a picture of Robby Burns standing at Highland Mary's grave, shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree. Robby's face is so lugubrious that it is no wonder I have bad dreams. Why, the first night I was here I dreamed I ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... teeth, painted under it, near the water-line, the corners being drawn down, and the eye (from their desire that it should see 'all ways at once') having a horrid squint. This gave to the boat a lugubrious expression—if such a term may be allowed—ludicrous in the extreme; and with fifty or a hundred junks drawn up in squadrons, squinting and making faces at each other, nothing more thoroughly Chinese could well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disguise yourself in the bloody rags of the Committee of Public Safety, your are still yourself, you are still Felix Pyat, you are still Ranvier, you have never ceased to be Gerardin; you hope to make yourself obeyed more readily under this lugubrious costume, but you mistake. Command us to go and fight, and we will not budge; pursue us, and we will hardly run away; put us in prison, and we will only laugh. You are no more a Terror, than Gil-Perez the actor is Talma; the knocks you receive have pushed ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... almost violent serenity of the funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him. He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: "I did not think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the beauty of the buildings, the grandeur of the whole design, the greatness of Chicago. Then they drove to a vast new hotel in which Mr. Parker had taken a conservative interest, and they still talked of the marvellous growth of the city, its Ultimate Destiny,—terms which had a lugubrious sound in the New Englander's piping voice. As they turned northwards around the great oval of Washington Park, the sun was sinking into a golden haze of dust and smoke. The horses dropped to a peaceful walk, and Milly knew that it was coming ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... his real bankroll. He remembered it as the kind of place where an order of scrambled eggs was liable to come in, flaming, on a golden sabre. But Luba wanted the Solar Room, and Malone was not at all sure she wouldn't use blackmail if he turned her down. "Fine," he said in a lugubrious tone. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... only to cross to the mainland. The gift of such sight is sometimes hereditary in a family for generations, but this is not an invariable rule, for it often appears sporadically in one member of a family otherwise free from its lugubrious influence. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Sea pilot shook his head, dismally. "Fancy losing a ship in that silly fashion! Oh, dear! oh dear!" he groaned in lugubrious tones, spreading his damp handkerchief again like a curtain before the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... like a horse, saving your life—and the cat's—and now leading you all over town to keep those nice white slippers clean! By rights, you oughtn't to dance with anybody else. But I ain't looking for real gratitude. Four or five waltzes is all I'll insist on, but—" His tone was lugubrious in the extreme. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... aim, and are neither well amused nor well occupied, nor well anything else. For if "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," what does the reverse do for him? This passion for cakes and sugar-candy in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Ararat next morning, and the shivering, half-clad-wretches shuffle off toward the fields and pastures, - with blue noses and unwilling faces, humping their backs and shrinking within themselves and wearing most lugubrious countenances; one naturally falls to wondering what they do in the winter. The independent villagers of the surrounding country have a tough enough time of it, worrying through the cheerless winters of a treeless and mountainous country; but they at least ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hundred windows of the palace Placentia seemed to peer at him like eyes, curious, hostile, lugubrious or amazed. He tore violently at his collar and muttered: 'I stifle.' His great hand was swollen by its glove, sewn with pearls, to ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Jitendra maintained a lugubrious silence as our train covered the miles. Finally he bestirred himself; leaning over, he pinched me ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... take a brighter view of the situation," insists the sensitive woman, to whom these lugubrious words are as dagger thrusts. "You must fight as if there was not the shadow of a doubt but that you will be successful. I have a premonition (woman's intuition, if you prefer), that you will be the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... you! Oh, I say, that is good! Why, Moggy, don't you remember how I remonstrated straight through your packing. Never a bit would you listen to me, and here is the result," pulling out a baggage memorandum as he spoke, and reading aloud in a lugubrious tone, "Extra weight of ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... ruinous person was associated with a hand-cart as decrepit as himself, but not nearly so cheerful; for though he spoke up briskly with a spirit uttered from far within the wrinkles and the stubble, the cart had preceded him with a very lugubrious creak. It groaned, in fact, under a load of tin cans, and I was to learn from the old man that there was, and had been, in his person, for thirteen years, such a thing in the world as a peddler of buttermilk, and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... would probably be called upon to dare much, and if he did not begin to show some daring at once, how could he respect himself, or trust to himself for future daring? So he boldly asked for Mrs Mackenzie, and was at once shown into the parlour. There sat the widow, in her full lugubrious weeds, there sat Miss Colza, and there sat Mary Jane, and they were all busy hemming, darning, and clipping; turning old sheets into new ones; for now it was more than ever necessary that Mrs Mackenzie ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... rideth England with seven thousand spies; these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no bliss that fear hath not entered into—in very truth inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit.' His lugubrious tones grew higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England; no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he reached a pitch of high-voiced ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... compounders of magical powders and philtres, frightful rumours circulated, "pacts with the devil were talked of, sacrifices of new-born babies, incantations, sacrilegious Masses and other practices as disquieting as they were lugubrious."[259] Even the King's mistress, Madame de Montespan, is said to have had recourse to black Masses in order to retain the royal favour through the agency of the celebrated sorceress La Voisin, with whom she was later implicated ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... severely artistic in execution. Passing from the turbulent precincts of Portland and Causeway Streets, he had entered upon the solitudes of Green Street, along which he now dragged himself dreamily enough, ever extracting consolations from lugubrious cadences mournfully intoned. Very silent was the neighborhood. Very dismal the night. Very dreary and damp was Mr. Smithers; for a vile fog wrapped itself around him, filling his body with moist misery, and his mind with anticipated rheumatic horrors. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... he had seen in this remarkable cave, I could not rest satisfied till I had dived down to see it: which I did, but found it so dark, as Jack had said, that I could scarcely see anything. When I returned, we had a long conversation about it, during which I observed that Peterkin had a most lugubrious expression ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... of despondency proved, unhappily, very infectious. It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of croakers in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The severe losses sustained by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those European soldiers, who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... took her father by the arm and hastened downstairs. Barlasch was at his post within the kitchen door. His eyes shone suddenly as he saw her face. It was said of Papa Barlasch that he was a gay man in battle, laughing and making a hundred jests, but at other times lugubrious. Desiree saw him smile for the first time, in the dim light of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... was terrible on all sides and thousands were killed on this lugubrious field; the French resisted on both banks ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... general, "what means this foolery? Bid your band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!" ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the boys on the playground at recess. I stayed at my desk reading some lugubrious volume—usually The Mysteries of Udolpho, by the amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of The Sorrows of Werter fell into my hands at this period, and if I could have committed suicide without killing myself, I should certainly ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... these trenches lay was a vast and lugubrious expanse of mud, with here and there a charred and ragged building. On our right lay the River Douve, and, on our left, the trenches turned a corner back inwards again. In front lay the long line of the Messines ridge. The Boches had occupied this ridge, ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... in, and we were going through our performances by the slight illumination of the stars, without any positive certainty as to where the Captain kept his tinder box and candle, that we might furnish some sort of light upon the lugubrious ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... like those prevalent among other Celtic peoples, is indeed a lugubrious affair, and somewhat recalls the Irish wake in its strange mixture of mourning and feasting; but curiously enough brightness reigns afterward, for the peasant is absolutely assured that at the moment his friend ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,—the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things—melancholy antitheses—sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and lugubrious to the remainder of the party. The girls seemed to feel that there was something solemn about the coming competition between two such dear friends, which prevented and should prevent them all from being merry. Harry perfectly sympathized in the feeling; and even Alaric, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... river was running like a mill-race, bending the willows, lapping hungrily at the crumbling shore. The bank was black with groups of people, tearful wives and whimpering children, lugubrious neighbors, pessimistic citizens. Bruce called the men together and assigned each boat its place in line. Beyond explicit orders that no boatman should attempt to pass another and the barges must be kept a safe distance apart, he gave few instructions, for ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... towering before us! When shall we have done with them?" said the major, in a lugubrious tone. "How high is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... love. For out of the silence there burst a sound which to her quivering nerves was fraught with word of death; that sound which in countless human hearts presages a death before the dawn—the long, lugubrious howling of a dog. It seemed to her to burst out of the nothingness of the sky, to arise in the void of an unseen ghostly world where spirit voices foretold the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... a look at it," said Charlie, with kindly interest, though he felt half inclined to smile at the intensely lugubrious ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... each day—nipped their noses and ears viciously, and the feet became so painful that every step was anguish; but when they caught sight of the open stretch of country it appeared to them so appallingly lugubrious under its illimitable white covering that they turned back with one accord, their hearts constricted, their spirits below zero. The four ladies walked in front, the three ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the dark days of the war, I was lunching at the Admiralty with Lord Fisher, who had then been recalled to office. He appeared rather dismal, and to divert him I said, "I've got some good news for you—we are perfectly safe and Germany is beaten." He looked up from his plate and regarded me with lugubrious eyes. I then told him that Lord Kitchener had been down at Knole with the Sackvilles and had spent a whole day in taking blotting-paper impressions of the beautiful mouldings of the doors for his house at Broome. "Does ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... to you the last lugubrious sheet, I have not had time to write to you farther. When I say that I had not time, that, as usual, means that the three demons, indolence, business, and ennui, have so completely shared my hours among them, as ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... calculating how soon he could get a railroad over these plains. Even the doctor fell away in the "talk" line. Says Mr. Jump: "These 'ere plains ain't as social as they might be." Some one is responsible for the following brief effort to evolve in verse the lugubrious elements of a ride over alkali plains with failing provender, weary horses, desiccating heat and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... much, has been written concerning Roumanian funerals. That they are showy, almost to irreverence, and that the exposure of the face of the corpse in its glazed coffin is repulsive, there can be no doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' in black and feathers which are still to be seen in England; and there, as here, it is to be hoped that with improving national taste these exhibitions will ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... where, as no one would ever enter it except for a funeral or a wedding, he felt safe from intrusion. There he sank down upon the slippery horsehair lounge, and, staring helplessly at the severe portrait of Mrs. Peaslee, done by a lugubrious artist in crayon, wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... momentary excitement, caused by Mr. Screw's insinuations, had long since passed away, and he was as calm as ever, meditating a graphic description of his day's excursion to Greenwood Cemetery for Margaret's benefit. It was a lugubrious subject, but he well knew how to make his talk interesting. It is the individual, not the topic, that makes the conversation; if a man can talk well, graveyards are as good a subject as the last novel, and he will make tombstones more ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... man-of-war. I do not know how it came into my possession, but I remember it was adorned by an extremely dim and ill-executed wood-cut of a lake surrounded by mountains, with tombstones in the foreground. This lugubrious frontispiece positively fascinated me, and lent a further gloomy charm to the ballad itself. It was in this copy of mediocre verses that the sense of romance first appealed to me, the kind of nature-romance which is connected with hills, and lakes, and the picturesque ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... hearts that burn, Where every emulous scholar hears, In every breath that comes to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it Au odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the building's have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder. And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... every hearth in the country seems cold and deserted. Stranger and more fatal still, every steeple rings out a funeral knell. Whatever there is of activity, movement, or life, appears concentrated in that lugubrious and far-sounding vibration. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... lugubrious look of assent,—"what thee says is true: but how we are to fly these evil-minded creatures, with poor frightened ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... so there came from down the road the brisk tramp of feet and a cheerful whistling of "The Wearing of the Green." It is a lugubrious song as a rule, but, as rendered by Officer Keating returning home with theatre tickets, it had all the joyousness ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... his rambles about town, is occasionally struck with some singular demonstrations for which he is at a loss to account. Sometimes they assume a benevolent form, and sometimes they have a holiday-making aspect, yet with a touch of the lugubrious. In London, or in some one of the thriving towns lying within a score of miles of it, he strolls into a church, where he sees a number of loaves of bread piled up at the back of the communion-table, or ranged, as they are in a baker's shop, upon shelves against the wall. It ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the forest. If we did not prevent him at times, holding firmly to his coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a feverish, clamorous, obstreperous ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... out of his way while he strode onwards swinging his big head from one side to the other, and with his eyes fixed on some place a great distance away. Once or twice, in passing, she heard him singing to himself the most lugubrious song in the world. There was another—a long, thin, black man—who looked young and was always smiling secretly to himself; his lips were never still for a moment, and, passing Mary Makebelieve a few times, she heard him buzzing like a great bee. He did not stop ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... death-chamber lugubrious: the windows wide open, the night and the wind entering freely from the garden, making a strong draught; a human form on a table; the body, which had just been embalmed; the hollow skull filled with a sponge, the brain in a basin. The weight of this brain of a statesman was truly extraordinary. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... moment the lugubrious, round-faced man in the derby hat stepped aside from the row of steaming utensils ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... more than thirty, and they, either from sympathetic interest in a brother, or because they resented being waked thus unceremoniously in the midst of enjoyable naps, began echoing their sentiments in the most lugubrious manner. To all sorts of notes in the musical scale the voices of these dogs ranged, they seeming to spare no pains to give varied entertainment. How these creatures work so hard, eat and sleep so little, howl so much, and keep in good condition, is ever an unsolvable riddle; but they are usually ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... of lugubrious visions and suspicions, one day disgraced General Swetchine by removing him from office. But this official dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of social caste. The general and his ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... proper to write a line to the rectory, informing the family there that Lord Ongar was no more. This she did in a note to Mrs. Clavering; and when it was received, there came over the faces of them all that lugubrious look, which is, as a matter of course, assumed by decorous people when tidings come of the death of any one who has been known to them, even in the most distant way. With the exception of Harry, all the rectory Claverings had been introduced ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... dear sir! but bad luck has come to lodge here. There'll be a death in the house before ten days are out, you'll see," and she gave a lugubrious look round the dining-room. "Whose turn will ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... farewell journey; such I think may have been the case when our distinguished neighbors, the Scammels and Pennimans passed away. When the minister has concluded his remarks and his prayer, generally in the most lugubrious words and scriptural phrases he can muster, the man in charge of the funeral, (for country people knew no such professional name as undertaker), comes briskly forward, and, with much ceremony, lifts the lid of the coffin, rearranges some portion of the dress about the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the dining-room. The drawn blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of the table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the tea with ceremony. Philip could not help feeling that neither of them should have been able to eat ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... a wild night for boat service; and I felt some alarm mingle with my curiosity as I reflected on the danger of the landing. My old acquaintance, it was true, was the most eccentric of men; but the present eccentricity was both disquieting and lugubrious to consider. A variety of feelings thus led me toward the beach, where I lay flat on my face in a hollow within six feet of the track that led to the pavilion. Thence, I should have the satisfaction of recognizing the arrivals, and, if they should prove to be acquaintances, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped cotton. It was conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter—we, who were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble scars,—like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name of that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since then) the "Painted Hill." Well, now it was all painted a bright yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded us being ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a stolid expression, redeemed slightly, perhaps, by its exchange often for a lugubrious one. I should feel disposed to predict for him the scoring of an immense success in the personation of such characters as those of the melancholy Dane; or of Antonio, in the Merchant of Venice, after the turn of the tide in his fortunes, when the vengeful ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... permission to reprint from the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley (copyright, 1913) the following Poems: "Little Orphant Annie," "The Lugubrious Whing-Whang," "The Man in the Moon," "The Old Man and Jim," "Prior to Miss Belle's Appearance," "Spirk Throll-Derisive," "When the Frost ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... excellent idea of the effect produced by a real old piney-woods chill; he shook as with suppressed laughter. But when the tremendous preacher (tremendous because composed of gigantic Nothing) turned his lugubrious face towards Mrs. Morse, and addressed her as Mrs. Morgan under the impression that she had come down to see her daughter married, Miriam's risibles could no longer stand it, and she flew from the room in time to avoid a ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... confess I do feel excited. But it isn't you—it's my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down there, and let me look at you again." Newman seated himself, folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for some time. "Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I'm a dying man and it's indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It was ...
— The American • Henry James
... more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central figure in a lugubrious procession on the banks of the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... even to the sedulous housewife and the rural dean. There is always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in the world; nor is there one single source of human happiness against which they have not uttered the most lugubrious predictions. Turnpike roads, navigable canals, inoculation, hops, tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution—there are always a set of worthy and moderately-gifted men, who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... rainy season, with sodden clouds hanging low in the sky, with almond trees dripping down, and the great church starred with candles which do not illuminate but which dot the gloom, the occasion is lugubrious indeed. Fresh flowers are little used, but immortelles and set designs accompanied by long streamers of gilt-lettered ribbon attest ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... colt—broncho, loaned to the farm To be broken in time without fury or harm, Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm, Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing ... The butterflies there in the bush were romancing, The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance, So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces, O broncho that would not ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?—always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many theories about the psychology ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important representatives of ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... was very slight; it seems he has spoken of me, but I don't know what he says.' I translated for him, in a somewhat milder form, Byron's words, which happened to be fresh in my memory: 'They have been crucifying Othello into an opera; the music good but lugubrious, but, as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead, the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face—singing, dresses, and music very good.' The maestro regretted his ignorance of the English ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... scene, to observe one of these men producing an old stocking, or a long black leathern purse—or a calf-skin pocket-book with the hair on, and counting down, as if he gave out his heart's blood drop by drop, the specific sum, uttering, at the same time, a most lugubrious history of his own poverty, and assuring the poor wretch he is fleecing, that if he (the miser) gives way to his good nature, he must ultimately become the victim of his own benevolence. In no case, however, do they ever put more in the purse ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... obtain a first impression. I arrived at one in the afternoon and found a place for myself only at ten at night. The once luxurious Hotel Bristol was full to-day, no hope for to-morrow, no, nor for to-morrow week. At the Royal Hotel a lugubrious porter says "l'hotel n'existe plus." The Victoria, which was the first hotel I ever stayed at in Russia, knew me no more. At the Metropole a preoccupied clerk said "Nima" without looking up from the news from the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... because for thousands of them it was soldier's pay or no bread. Among the troops from the country death had begun to reap great harvests ere a gun was fired, and in all the camps lovers nightly sang their lugubrious "Lorena," feeling that "a hundred months had passed" before they had really dragged through one. March was so tedious, and lovers are such poor arithmeticians. Wherever Hilary Kincaid went, showing these ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... in at the door. He retired again, remarking to the cat in a sour lugubrious voice, as he always did when ruffled: 'There's no cats i' the Bible.' He began to sing ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a decisive defeat ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the bar and singing the while one of the more lugubrious and monotonous hymns, looked up with ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... scarcely restrain their laughter at this question. Monsieur Moliere had a most lugubrious countenance—a thing not always inconsistent with a merry humour: but Monsieur Moliere's heart was believed never to have laughed, any more than his face. He answered, as if announcing a misfortune, that he claimed no connection with the dramatist, though ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... girls made the punishment a disgrace to rankle and burn. Jacker, for pride and the credit of his boyhood made no sound under the first dozen cuts; but his younger brother Ted, from his place in the Lower Fifth, set up a lugubrious wail of sympathy almost immediately, and, as his feelings were more and more wrought upon by the painful sight, his wailing developed into shrill and tearful ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... me, we are paying these honours in a most lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and traditions belonging to his paternal ancestry. Go on, Mr. March, you're shamefully neglecting your ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... regret vanquished fatigue, and sadness drove away sleep, then Jack, who compared himself to Peter the Great, when a voluntary exile in the shipyards of Saardam, would endeavor to infuse a little mirth into the lugubrious party. If all his efforts to make them merry failed, all three would join together in a humble prayer to their Heavenly Father, who bestowed resignation upon ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... that lugubrious worthy, as he awkwardly took a seat, "the question is what isn't it? These be rum times, they be, they fare to puzzle ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Lugubrious Longface Loved Learning and Literary Lore, Which he always got out of the books he ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of illness from heat-exhaustion. That they are born in the tropics confers no immunity. Strange to say, on the march south from Assouan, of a thousand and odd only one animal succumbed to sunstroke, and that was a camel that had no sun-bonnet. If anything could have added to the naturally lugubrious expression of those lumbering freight carriers, it was the jaunty poke-bonnets with the attenuated "Oh, let us be joyful" visages grinning beneath. The transport department was managed by Colonel F. W. Kitchener, brother of the Sirdar. His care it was, when the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf above? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of Orders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and twenty men killed," says Mr. Massereene, in a few minutes, looking up from his Times, and adopting the lugubrious tone one always assumes on such occasions, whether ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD, how it ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... pleasures, the theatre, concerts, the cafe; to be looked upon by people, even by those who think themselves religious, as a strange being, a sort of intermediate, neither a man nor a woman; to wear petticoats and to be dressed like a lugubrious doll; and in exchange for all these sacrifices to earn less than a man who breaks stones on the road. We live idly, certain that we shall never fall from over-work, but our poverty is greater than that of many workmen; we cannot acknowledge it, nor put ourselves in the way of begging ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... are keeping Mr. Clive purposely in the background. His face is so woebegone that we do not care to bring it forward in the family picture. His case is so common that surely its lugubrious symptoms need not be described at length. He works away fiercely at his pictures, and in spite of himself improves in his art. He sent a "Combat of Cavalry," and a picture of "Sir Brian the Templar carrying ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... part of a peasant woman, and washed up the pavement and prepared her vegetables for sale in the most realistic manner. The second scene, when Potsdam wakes up in the morning, reminded me of the opening of the second act of "Lohengrin." The last act was very sad, and rather lugubrious, representing Frederick the Great seated in the garden in front of Sans-Souci. There was no singing in this act at all, only pantomime. The respectful manner and the sad faces of the lackeys as they helped the poor old King to his chair and covered his ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... of fun for the rest of you," said Billy, in a lugubrious tone, as he rubbed the leg that had been bound to that of his partner, "but it is not so ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... cease your wail, lugubrious saint! You fret high Heaven with your plaint. Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint? Is this the Christian's boasted bliss? Avails your faith ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... impertinent guests showed disposition to undue merriment, the chief shut them all in his wigwam, lest their gentile eyes should profane the mysteries. Here, immured in darkness, they listened to the howls, yelpings, and lugubrious songs that resounded from without. One of them, however, by some artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush, and saw the whole solemnity: the procession of the medicine-men and the bedaubed and befeathered warriors; the drumming, the dancing, the stamping; the wild lamentation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the penny came down in the waste-paper basket, but it came down heads, and with a little lugubrious grimace, Sangster dipped the pen in the ink again ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... moment one of the artists plunged into a comic song, and by the ecstatic look of the company I knew that a purgatorial time was before me. I resigned myself to my fate. Song followed song, until at last even my friend of the flints struck up the ballad of Little Billee, whose lugubrious refrain seemed to 'set the table in a roar'; but to me it will always ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... wishing it, of those men of the forests who lived here in the ages, in the uncalculated and dark ages, because, suddenly, from a point distant from the shore, a long Basque cry rises from the darkness in a lugubrious falsetto, an "irrintzina," the only thing in this country with which he never could become entirely familiar. But a great mocking noise occurs in the distance, the crash of iron, whistles: a train from Paris to Madrid, which is passing over there, behind them, in the black of the French ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... turning a long screw, "Jacobs, my boy, do you take the chair to-night?"—"Yes," said Jacobs who was a long lugubrious-looking man, "I do take the chair, if I live over this ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... that bundle,' began Lessingham, in the most lugubrious of tones, and with the most ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... on such occasions. The church in which the corpse was buried, was hung with black cloth; and even the innumerable wax tapers which burned upon the altar and around the coffin failed to diminish the lugubrious aspect ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was a most lugubrious judge, and was always complaining of something or other, but chiefly about the state of his health, so that Curran remarked that it was strange the old judge was plaintive in every case tried ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... of breathless silence between them. Then as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed with lugubrious reverberation through the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... know whether I had been sleeping or musing, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious. It ceased, but my heart beat anxiously; my inward tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then my chamber-door was touched as if fingers swept the panels groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I was chilled with fear. Then I ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... warden, now at his wits' end, but wishing to finish this lugubrious performance with a flourish, proposed (unhappy thought) that I should address a few words to the now miserable, broken-hearted crowd. I will give you a thousand guesses, dear aunty, and still you will never guess the idiotic words that issued from your niece's lips. I said, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... arose, and tearing himself violently from the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late comte by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of his master. Had not Athos always ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one only accentuated the first note properly, the rest followed as a matter of course. On the whole, therefore, a spirit of devotion to the master gradually pervaded the orchestra; the violas alone bore him a grudge for a while, and for this reason. In the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompaniment. Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral tone, 'Are the violas dying?' ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... life. It was a case of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious because I thought it so? Or had I a presentiment? I do not know. Perhaps, too, after what has happened, all previous events have taken on a lugubrious tint in my memory. ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... silent as the grave. I seized it with both hands, and, oblivious to the hopeful derision Gathering on the faces of those about me, I breathed into it all the despair and anguish of my expiring breath. It gave forth a hollow, soulless, and lugubrious squeak, utterly out of proportion to the vital force expended, yet I felt that I had triumphed, and detected a new expression of awe and admiration on the faces of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... didn't you send your card up, or have the desk call me? I hope you're not in the habit of expecting young ladies to meet you on the corner. I waited and waited, and then was just about to——" She stopped at sight of his lugubrious face, relented, and laughed. "Never mind! Don't take it to heart, and—are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in them, whilst he, usually so nimble of tongue and ready of word, was striving to overcome ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... which the doors of the boxes opened, and read the name written on the card underneath the number painted on the door of the box in which Eleanor was sitting. "The Viscountess Walbrook." The name puzzled him, and he turned to an attendant, a lugubrious man in a dingy frock-coat looking extraordinarily like a dejected image of Albert the Good, and asked for ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... reason why he should not have done so. The members of the Convention had re-assembled after their dinner, towards seven o'clock. The hall which had resounded with the shrieks and yells of the furious gladiators of the factions all day, now lent a lugubrious echo to gloomy reports which one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune. Towards nine o'clock the members of the two dread Committees came in panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, 'as dejected in their peril,' says an eyewitness, 'as ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... got his leisure, with a fortune and—me!' And at the same moment Rogers, in his deep arm-chair before the fire, was saying to himself, 'I'm glad Minks has come to me; he's just the man I want for my big Scheme!' And then—'Pity he's such a lugubrious looking fellow, and wears those dreadful fancy waistcoats. But he's very open to suggestion. We can change all that. I must look after Minks a bit. He's rather sacrificed his career for me, I fancy. He's got high aims. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... joy ceased at the word. His alertness vanished. A veritable statue of dejection he stood as though pondering the situation. Then he lifted his head and howled—the long, lugubrious howl of ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation was borne in upon him with something of the sting of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... seated at the tea-table, at the close of a chilly day, a bright fire blazing on the hearth, and the servants, as usual, being in attendance. On a sudden, a tremendous crash was heard in a distant part of the ancient mansion, followed by a succession of wails of the most lugubrious and unearthly character, which reverberated through the echoing passage-ways of the house. Whatever the cause of the sounds might be, there was no doubt they were of the most horrifying description. The family, consisting of the 'Squire, a maiden ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... But what means the lugubrious wail that too often bursts from the circle of his friends? The tears shed might be excused if he were going to Norfolk Island at the Government expense. But sometimes the missionary note is pitched on the same key. The white ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... The benches were filled with an eagerly expectant audience, brown and white, who applauded loudly when the Pahi Minstrels emerged from a little boarded room in one corner, and took up their positions on the platform at the end of the hall. Then, for two mortal hours, there was a dismal and lugubrious travesty of the performances of that world-famous troupe which never ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... all are to be discussing education and plans for the future, when this unhappy child is so plainly marked for the tomb," sighed Aunt Myra, with a lugubrious sniff and a solemn wag of the funereal bonnet, which she refused to remove, being afflicted with ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott |
