"Unavailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before one of the children danced across ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Prince Alexis, and the protection of the sacred amulet, were alike unavailing. The babe sickened, wasted away, and died in less than two months after its birth. There was great and genuine sorrow among the serfs of Kinesma. Each had received a shining ruble of silver at the christening; and, moreover, they were now beginning to appreciate the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... magnanimity, astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. BOSWELL. In The Spectator, No. 436, Hockley in the Hole is described as 'a place of no small renown for the gallantry of the lower order of Britons.' Fielding mentions it in Jonathan Wild, bk. i. ch. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... in my zeal to serve you, I hazard your displeasure. Think of your wretched state. Already want surrounds you. Is it in patience to bear That? To see your helpless little one robbed of his birth-right? A sister too, with unavailing tears, lamenting her lost fortune? No comfort left you, but ineffectual pity from the Few, out-weighed ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... known to sportsmen. In years to come, when the lines of communication are better and tourist hotels are established on its banks, the river may then begin to conform to the qualifications of a conventional fishing stream, and then Ben's crude tackle will be unavailing. But at present the salmon were not so particular. As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman's ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... that a trap had been laid for me, and the vexation of knowing that I had fallen into it, fortunately restrained me from making my position still worse by an unavailing struggle with two men, one of whom would, in all probability, have been more than a match for me single-handed. I repressed the first natural movement by which I had attempted to shake them off, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble, telling of the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... with lightning swiftness through the neighbourhood and to Warsaw. Nobody doubted that there was some connexion between the crime and the singular occurrence at the ball, although it was impossible to say what that connexion was. Every attempt to discover and apprehend the murderer proved unavailing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... degradation, a share in the dominion which manhood has in Christ attained, for though we see not yet all things put under Him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. It prophesies, too, His final victory over all that sets itself in unavailing antagonism to His love. It points us backward to an historical fact as the basis of all our hopes for ourselves and for our fellows, giving us the assurance that the world's deliverance will come from the slow operation of the forces already lodged in its history by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of delegates, priests, and augurs having proved unavailing, that of women was next sought. A noble lady, Valeria by name, who with other suppliants had sought the Temple of Jupiter, was inspired by a sudden thought, which seemed sent by the god himself. Rising, and bidding the other noble ladies to accompany her, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... soul out of her body with its despairing quavers. Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was departing ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... friendship—the desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion—anything but love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of his life to her. She is sure of that—but always it would be a life filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... chase, an unavailing one, he believed, only because the game used quite unfair tactics of concealment, he remembered the shell. A longing for possession seized him. It was more than that. The thing was already his; had always been his. Yet he foresaw complications. His ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... knowledge admitted, with the exclusion of other truths equally indispensable to be known, may not only be unavailing, but may in effect lend force to destructive error, is dreadfully illustrated in the final catastrophe of that favored guilty nation. They were in possession of the one important point of knowledge, that a Messiah was to come. They held this assurance not ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... those should know no kisses, that eyes like those should never swim in love! What robbery! What crime! And this man, thief of this woman's life, felt his heart pinch again in the old, sharp anguish of remorse, bitterest because unavailing. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... unbidden, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet that veiled face, I know Is lit with pitying eyes, Like those faint stars, the first to glow Through cloudy winter skies. That they may never tire, Angels, by God's decree, Bear wings of snow and fire, — Passion and purity; Save one, all unavailing, (The Prophet saith), His wings are gray and trailing, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet the souls that Azrael brings Across the dark and cold, Look up beneath those folded wings, And find them ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... recommended as a routine procedure. There are reasons, however, which may be urged against its continuance. High amputation is unnecessary in the more benign sarcomas, and in the more malignant forms is usually unavailing to prevent a fatal issue either from local recurrence or from metastases in the lungs or elsewhere. Following the lead of Mikulicz, a considerable number of permanent cures have been obtained by resecting ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... knew it to be an old-fashioned ailment known as heart-break—the result of disappointment, want of affection, and over-work. The old bitterness gripped the organ of life then; it brought me to my knees. I tried to call out, but it was unavailing. Sharp, fiendish pain, and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... which boasts of its popular education, that the Sequoia, a race 10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the United States, with individual trees older than the entire history and civilization of Greece, that an appeal to the American people was unavailing, that the finest grove was cut up for lumber, fencing, shingles, and boxes! It must not be recorded that races of animals representing stocks 3,000,000 years of age, mostly developed on the American continent, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... be calm. It is my situation, it is confinement, the bars I see and the bolts I hear that inspire these gloomy thoughts. They are unfounded, and certainly unavailing—He may have escaped! He may at this instant be in search of me! Hurrying, enquiring, despairing, and distracted; in much deeper distress than I am: for were I but sure of his safety, I could almost defy misfortune! Let not the world lose him! Oh! If any ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... chamber; many others of the King's servants fell victims to their fidelity. I mention these two persons in particular because, with their hats pulled over their brows and their swords in their hands, they exclaimed, as they defended themselves with unavailing courage, "We will not survive!—this is our post; our duty is to die at it." M. Diet behaved in the same manner at the door of the Queen's bedchamber; he experienced the same fate. The Princesse de Tarente had fortunately opened the door of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... then mounted, and marched off with much mirth and laughter among themselves, leaving the Milnwood family in great confusion. The old Laird himself, overpowered by the loss of his nephew, and the unavailing outlay of twenty pounds sterling, did nothing the whole evening but rock himself backwards and forwards in his great leathern easy-chair, repeating the same lamentation, of "Ruined on a' sides, ruined on a' sides—harried and undone—harried and undone—body and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... first residence in London are meagre, but not unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him by his father. For Paley's, or ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Sigismund himself who had bestowed on him the powerful duchy of Lithuania,) was still unappeased, and he insisted upon including the son in the guilt and punishment of his parent. The representations of the minister were here unavailing; he would listen to nothing but the dictates of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Archibald rough," she said to Miss Polly, after a fortnight of unavailing opposition to the new influence in Archibald's life. "Until we came here," she added despondently, "Archibald loved me better than anything in the world, and now he seems to think ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... sent for by the Emperor, in order that he might state his case. His journey to Worms was one long triumph, especially at Erfurt, where he was received with enthusiasm by the Humanists as the enemy of the Papacy. But his presence in the Reichstag was unavailing, and the proceedings resulted in his being placed under the ban of the empire. The safe-conduct of the Emperor was, however, in his case respected; and in spite of the fears of his friends that a like fate might befall him as had ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and practical, and more frequently than we would like to think possible, resemble our own in many ways. For the possibility of this we are largely indebted originally to the scholars of the Renaissance. Without their work that of our investigators would have been quite unavailing. It is to be hoped, however, that our recovery of this period will not be followed by any further eclipse, though that seems to be almost the rule of human history, but that we shall continue to broaden ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... she should keep still, and allow the husband she worshipped to walk unconsciously to his death, or that she should, by trying to give him a word of warning, which perhaps might even be unavailing, actually give the signal for her own brother's death, and that of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... fleet. The Niagara sailed from Ireland; the sister ship proceeded to Newfoundland, and was to meet her in mid-ocean. When the Niagara had run out 335 miles of her cable it snapped under a sudden increase of strain at the paying-out machinery; all attempts at recovery were unavailing, and the work for that year was abandoned. The next year it was resumed, a liberal supply of new cable having been manufactured to replace the lost section, and to meet any fresh emergency that might arise. A new plan of voyages was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... whirligig of time brings round his turn of triumph, takes, in French revolutions and such other fits of madness, his own period of wild revenge. The service of truth is made to appear as one thing, the service of God as another; and in that fatal separation religion dishonours itself with unavailing enmity to what nevertheless it is compelled at last to accept in humiliation; and science, welcoming the character which its adversary flings upon it, turns away with answering hostility from doctrines without which its own highest achievements ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... way, I addressed the servants in the most tranquil tone. I promised, with the most solemn vows, to make at some future day their fortunes, if they would but consent to my escape. I entreated them; I tried caresses, and lastly threats; but all were unavailing. I gave myself up to despair. I resolved to die; and threw myself upon the bed, with a firm determination to quit it only with my life. In this situation I passed the night and the following day. I refused the nourishment that was brought to me ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... Finding all remonstrances unavailing, Sam pulled his hat firmly on, threw his father's coat over his arm, and taking the old man round the waist, forcibly dragged him down the ladder, and into the street; never releasing his hold, or permitting him ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and for this purpose criminally thwarted the purposes of nature. Then comes death and snatches away their solitary consolation: and they spend their old age childless and loveless, in mutual upbraidings and unavailing regrets. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... all precautions may, in the end, be unavailing. 'On extraordinary occasions,' says Ricardo, 'a general panic may seize the country, when every one becomes desirous of possessing himself of the precious metals as the most convenient mode of realising or concealing his property, against such panic banks have no security on ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... shall kill myself. Could I twine, to gratify my friends, a laurel with the cypress I would not repine; but to sacrifice the little inward peace which the wreck of passion has left behind, and relinquish every hope of future excellence and future usefulness in one wild and unavailing pursuit, were indeed a madman's act, and worthy of a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... they recognised the claims of the classical models. The more the dramatic fervour failed, the more the professed critics counselled observance of the rules. In 1702 Farquhar had pleaded for the freedom of the English stage in his Discourse upon Comedy, but his arguments were unavailing. The duller men found it easier to support the rigid doctrines, which had been fully expounded by the French critics. The seventh or supplementary volume of Rowe's edition of Shakespeare was introduced by Charles Gildon's Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the floor that are continually used as sleeping places, and in the hammocks. Occasionally an effort is made to scrape them out, but they are so cunning in concealing themselves and breed with such rapidity that efforts to get rid of them are unavailing. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... may not have done their duty as regards the Repeal; it is too certain that they have not, because they have done nothing at all. But it is also certain that their very uttermost would have been unavailing for one principal object concerned. Other great objects, however, might have been attained. Foreign nations might have been disabused of their silly delusions on the Irish relations to England, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... our unavailing exertions to accomplish a cordial good understanding on this interest will not have an unpropitious effect upon the other great topics of discussion between the two Governments. Our northeastern and northwestern boundaries are still unadjusted. The commissioners under the seventh article of the ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... years. In the United States adultery is everywhere ground of divorce, and there is commonly no prohibition against marrying the paramour or other re-marriage by the guilty party. Even if there be such a prohibition, it would be unavailing out of the state.in which the divorce was granted; marriage being a contract which, if valid where executed, is generally treated as valid everywhere. Adultery gives a cause of action for damages to the wronged husband. It is in some states a criminal offence on the part of each party to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshipping the sepulchre whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... subsistence for the future. It had none of the usual features of a prison; neither the hardened profligacy which scoffs down its own sense of guilt, nor the hollow-eyed sorrow which wastes away in a living death of unavailing expiation: there was neither the clank of chains, nor the yell of execration; but a hardworking body of men were seen, who, though separated by justice from society, were not supposed to have lost the distinctive attribute of human nature: they were treated ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... thought to keep it secret, perhaps, until Bassus should send to take me away from here; for you imagined that I might attempt escape. But you do not know me yet. Am I a child, to kick and scream, and waste my strength in unavailing strife against a fate that, in my heart, I feel must sooner or later be submitted to? Not long ago—it matters not how or when—I could have avoided it all, but would not. Now that I have sacrificed that chance, I will go to my doom with a smile upon my lips, whatever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and humor of this sportful proposal appealed to them at once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their guns when he would have interfered to stay the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... tinge of sadness in his tone, as he pronounced the last four words; but Dick's temperament was sanguine, and he never gave way to unavailing sadness. Accordingly he began to whistle as he turned away, only adding, ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... escaped with his life, and Pompey himself was threatened. "If you will be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall die" (one form of the legend of Rome's first king represented him as having been torn to pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was unavailing. The new command was created, and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The price of corn, which had risen to a famine height in Rome, fell immediately the appointment was made. The result, indeed, amply justified the choice. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... in her situation; while faction was exerting itself, and gathering new strength every day. He exerted the utmost of his skill to unite the ministers, and to cement the apertures of the state: but he found his pains fruitless, his arguments unavailing, and his endeavours, like the stone of Sisyphus, rolling back upon himself. He retired to a friend's house in Berkshire, where he remained 'till the Queen died. So fatal an event terminated all his views in England, and made him return as fast as possible to his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... that rule. They resolutely declined to legislate by entering upon a consideration of the soundness or reasonableness of the policy which underlay the action of the legislature. In the one case as in the other the effort was unavailing, as Jefferson prophesied that it would be. I have told of Marshall's overthrow in the Charles River Bridge Case, and in 1887, after controversies of this category had begun to come before the Supreme Court of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, Mr. Justice ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... distance from their habitations, to gather flowers with which to adorn their rustic fire-places. They were suddenly surrounded by half a dozen Indians. Their shrieks and efforts to flee were alike unavailing. They were dragged rapidly beyond the power of making themselves heard. As soon as they were deemed to be beyond the danger of rescue, they were treated with ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... were hysterical and the efforts of her mother, her aunt and the nurse to quiet her were alike unavailing. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... drifts to the glad shore of a glittering isle; the overjoyed savage bounds on the prize, and proceeds to announce his good fortune to his bosom friend. Then the pleased cronies decide that they will have a good, wholesome, thorough shave, and they will turn all rivals green with unavailing envy. Solemnly those children of nature go to a quiet place, and savage number one lies down while his friend sits on his head; then with a shred of the broken bottle the operator proceeds to rasp ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done—of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... upon her fate — Death, with its formidable band, Fever and pain and pale consumptive care, Determin'd took their stand: 55 Nor did the cruel ravagers design To finish all their efforts at a blow; But, mischievously slow, They robb'd the relic and defac'd the shrine. With unavailing grief, 60 Despairing of relief, Her weeping children round Beheld each hour Death's growing power, And trembled ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... bestowing on him and his heirs "the most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of giving the same thing ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... "E'er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, "E'er vanity had led my way to guilt, "But, soon arriv'd at my celestial goal, "Full glories rush on my expanding soul." Joyful he spoke: exulting cherubs round Clapt their glad wings, the heav'nly vaults resound. Say, parents, why this unavailing moan? Why heave your pensive bosoms with the groan? To Charles, the happy subject of my song, A brighter world, and nobler strains belong. Say would you tear him from the realms above By thoughtless wishes, and prepost'rous love? Doth his felicity ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... night-dew and the mountain breeze had cooled my burning brow, and my thoughts had resumed their usual course, I realized that to pursue my perished happiness would be unavailing and unreasonable. What more did I want?—To see her?—Why? Was not all over between us? A single, bitter, farewell kiss would not have enriched my recollections, and, after it, parting would only have been more ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... would seek to refute the concrete decisions of such persons by tracing them to abstract premises, such as that 'all actresses must marry,' 'all clergymen must be laymen,' 'all politicians should resign their posts'? Yet this type of refutation, absolutely unavailing though it be for purposes of conversion, is spread by Mr. McTaggart through many pages of his book. For the aboundingness of our real reasons he substitutes one narrow point. For men's real probabilities he gives ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... regrets were bitter and unavailing. 2. The anger of the righteous is weighty. 3. The air seemed deep and dark. 4. She had grown tall and queenly. 5. The peacemakers are blessed. 6. I came into the world helpless. 7. The untrodden snow lay bloodless. 8. The fall of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... which is kept by conforming Jews as a day of mourning and humiliation. The valour exhibited by our ancestors on this sad occasion is no doubt well known to you, Sir Sidney, and to the other gentlemen present, and I feel sure that you will understand our grief that it was unavailing to save the Holy City and the Temple. But we treasure the memory of it as a bright example to ourselves and to all following generations, how to fight and to sacrifice our lives for the land in which we were born and which ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... No passionate regrets, no unavailing self-pity; nothing to tell her what it cost him to resign her; no word to comfort her for the hopelessness of his desertion; ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... lips of Flora, and flinging herself past Varney, who stepped aside, she clung to her brother, who made an unavailing pass with his sword at the vampyre. It was a critical moment; and had the presence of mind of Varney deserted him in the least, unarmed as he was, he must have fallen beneath the weapon of Henry. To spring, however, up the seat which Flora had vacated, and to dash out some of the flimsy and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... give to Italian beggars. One of these pieces satisfies a beggar when it drops into his hat; and then it detains him long enough in the examination of it, so that your carriage has time to get so far away that his renewed pursuit is usually unavailing. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and pine-trees of Nova Scotia. The foundation of the enterprise was a monopoly of the fur-trade, and in its favor all past grants were unceremoniously annulled. St. Malo, Rouen, Dieppe, and Rochelle greeted the announcement with unavailing outcries. Patents granted and revoked, monopolies decreed and extinguished, had involved the unhappy traders in ceaseless embarrassment. De Monts, however, preserved De Chastes's old company, and enlarged it, thus making the chief malcontents sharers in his exclusive rights, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at all accord with my notions of consistency, after their having suffered the preceding half hour's bombardment, I requested to be shewn to the chamber of the invalid, saying that I was a medico, and might be of service to her. When she found remonstrance unavailing, she at length shewed me into a room up-stairs, where there was a very genteel-looking young girl, the very picture of Portuguese health, lying with her eyes shut, in full dress, on the top of the bed-clothes, where she had hurriedly ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... cannot have forgotten. I do not blame you for your refusal; it was founded, I am convinced, on principle, and not on indifference to your sister's fate. For me, judge of me as a man frantic; I knew not what hand to turn to, and all my efforts were unavailing. In this condition, and close beset on all sides, I thought of what might be done by means of my family, and their influence. I fled from Scotland—I reached this place—my miserably wasted and unhappy appearance procured me from my father that pardon, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... brink, and, hurrying towards them, began to relate, with expressions of grief and consternation, the sad fate which he believed to have befallen the young stranger, and the exertions that he had made to save his life, but which had, unhappily, proved unavailing to avert the calamity. The sorrow of the Nausett Indian seemed excessive; and Tisquantum probably considered it so, for he listened with perfect calmness to his recital, and then merely replied, 'Happily, the youth is safe. Mahneto has ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... means solaced in his misery. In those days he was very miserable. It was only now that he knew how thoroughly he loved this woman—now that she was so utterly beyond his reach. Weak and wavering as he was in many things, he was not weak enough to abandon himself altogether to unavailing sorrow. He knew that work alone could preserve him from sinking—hard, constant, unflinching work, that one great cure for all our sorrow, that only means of adapting ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... family was swept from his side. His brother disappeared for a moment under the water, but came to the surface and was hauled upon the roof. The brothers then strove frantically to tear a hole in the roof of the house with their bare hands, but their efforts were, of course, unavailing, and they were soon struggling for their own lives in the wreck at the viaduct. Both finally reached the shore. The body of Mrs. Gilmore, when taken from the ruins this morning, was but little mutilated, although her body was bloated by the water. Two of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Stood beside the mast; From his yew-bow, tipped with silver, Flew the arrows fast; Aimed at Eric unavailing, As he sat concealed, Half behind the quarter-railing, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... foundation for the important work to come. Without these exercises, all of which are set to inspiring music, muscles employed in dancing would remain taut or soft and not respond properly, the pupil would quickly tire, and the attempt to dance become an unavailing effort. With the limbering and stretching course, time is saved in preparing the student for the lessons to come, and the time necessary for the training and development of a dancer is much shortened from the long apprenticeship that ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... horn at Faversham, Kent, but of Scotch parents; received a university training at Glasgow and Goettingen, and in 1822 went to Greece, where he met Byron and fought in the War of Independence; henceforth Greece became his home, and there, after an unavailing effort to promote agriculture, he betook himself to a studious life and to writing the history of his adopted country; his valuable history, published in various parts, traces the national life of Greece from 146 B.C. to A.D. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... can't swim neither. Let me go, ye black villain. Thunder an' turf! will ye see the poor lad drownded forenint yer two eyes?" cried the poor Irishman, as he made violent but unavailing struggles to get free. But Massan knew that to allow him to escape would only add to the number requiring to be saved, and as he himself could not swim, he saw at once that the only service he could render under the circumstances would be to hold the Irishman down. Clasping him, therefore, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... move the constellations, Lessening nor increasing since the birth of nations: Sun and moon unfailing keep their times and seasons,— But man, unavailing, pleads to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... grief the sympathy of friends, and the words of consolation bring no relief. How much more harshly do such words grate on the ear when the soul is bowed down by remorse and unavailing regret! Then the wounded spirit finds peace nowhere ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... monarch, who, unconscious of the extent of her ambition, believed her to be simply anxious to secure herself against future disappointment and the anger of her family; and thus finding that his entreaties were unavailing, he resolved to employ another argument of which he had already frequently tested the efficacy, and on his return to Fontainebleau he despatched the Comte de Lude to the lady with what were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... in a national council, to which the most learned of the new sect should be offered safe access. As to punishments, while the seditious, who took up arms under color of religion, ought to be repressed, experience had taught how unavailing was the persecution of those who embraced their views from conscientious motives, and history showed that three hundred and eighteen bishops at the Council of Nice, one hundred and fifty at Constantinople, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... now plain that you knew me to be within. Further resistance was unavailing and useless. The door opened, and I shrunk backward. Seldom have I felt deeper mortification, and more painful perplexity. I did not consider that the truth would be less injurious than any lie which I could hastily frame. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... am now given to understand that General Hull's insidious proclamation, herewith enclosed, has already been productive of considerable effect on the minds of the people. In fact, a general sentiment prevails, that with the present force resistance is unavailing. I shall continue to exert myself to the utmost to overcome every difficulty. Should, however, the communication between Kingston and Montreal be cut off, the fate of the troops in this part of the province will be decided. I now express my apprehensions ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... but cannot think of making you my son:—I would recompence what you have done for me with any thing but my daughter, and as a proof of my concern for your happiness, I exclude you from all society with her, in order to prevent so unavailing a passion from taking too ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... he, "we fly from the city to the country, what do we there behold? Fields abandoned; the hospitable mansions of our fathers deserted; agriculture drooping; our slaves, like their masters, working harder, and faring worse; the planter striving with unavailing efforts to avert the ruin which is before him." He drew a sad picture of the once thriving planter, reduced to despair, gathering up the small remnants of his broken fortune, and, with his wife and little ones, tearing himself from the scenes ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... eyes out of their loathsome, featherless, naked heads, drawing nearer—nearer—nearer. He could do no more. His voice was gone. His strength was gone. He closed his eyes, but the sight was still before him. His bleeding, foamy lips mumbled one unavailing word: ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... sleepless night or two the thought flamed red on his darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining impulse was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose his victim... So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose the truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he tried to pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity. But every issue seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued together to cheat one man ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... even the children could hardly extract a smile from her. She seemed to have made a determination to do all that Lucy or herself had ever done, and more too, and listened to no entreaties to spare herself. Commands were met with sullen resignation, entreaties were unavailing, and both in the sickroom and the parish, she insisted on working beyond her powers. It was a nightly battle to send her to bed, and Albinia suspected that she did not sleep. Meantime Lucy had sailed, and was presently ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... superhuman struggles for freedom and his ear-splitting yells were simply dreadful beyond all description to see and hear. The fetish-man and his assistants, confident of the reliable character of their work, stood back and looked on quietly at the miserable wretch's unavailing struggles; they seemed to be regarded as quite a part of the entertainment, and the unhappy creature was allowed to continue them unmolested until they ceased from exhaustion. Then, when he lay quite still, panting and breathless, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... at my promise that at least if other measures proved unavailing, we should adopt that course, and her brightening flattered me, for it bore witness to the supreme confidence ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... politics he represented, Smith encouraged moderate policies, urged frank recognition of the just claims of the minority, and sought to prevent the stalwart managers from too widely breaching the proprieties that should govern political organisations. If his efforts proved unavailing, it seemed that he had at least mastered the art of being regular without being bigoted, and of living on good terms with a machine whose methods he could not wholly approve. Nevertheless, there came a time when his associations, as in the career of Raymond, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... how futile was his attempt to sunder his bonds and how unavailing to contend against the Almighty, he returned to his throne and resumed his speech, in words somewhat more calm, but twice as malignant: "Though none but the Omnipotent Thunderer could overcome my power and my guile, to Him I am unwillingly constrained to submit; but ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... and told him of the unavailing attempts that had been made to find him. There were a great many detectives out, constantly ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... it was Mr. Potter to whom he was referring Mr. Emberg added at the bottom of the story, and under a separate single-line head, a note to the effect that all efforts were unavailing to get an interview with Hamden Potter, the financier, who that day had returned from Europe with his family, as Mr. Potter would see no reporters. It was added that Mr. Potter's connection with the subway interests might ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... and brother George—and things went smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... every house where his calling led him. He was not always as fortunate as in the instances we have mentioned. Sometimes all his arguments were unavailing, and after he had spent half an hour of valuable time in setting forth the merits of "The Wayfarer," he was compelled to retire without having effected a sale. Sometimes, too, he was rudely repulsed; hard epithets were applied to him; old ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... forsaken and fell into the extremes of poverty in any tolerably well-ordered city or government. Wherefore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to such cases in the following terms: Let there be no beggars in our state; and if anybody begs, seeking to pick up a livelihood by unavailing prayers, let the wardens of the agora turn him out of the agora, and the wardens of the city out of the city, and the wardens of the country send him out of any other parts of the land across the border, in order that the land may be cleared of this ...
— Laws • Plato
... foreign nations at the port of Canton is so well known, that it would be superfluous for me to dwell on that subject. The complaints of all nations against the extortions practised there have been loudly and frequently heard in Europe, but the steps that have hitherto been taken have proved unavailing. The common answer is, "Why do you come here? We take in exchange your articles of produce and manufacture, which we really have no occasion for, and give you in return our precious tea, which nature has denied ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the grave which Uncle Joshua had thought belonged to his daughter. No tidings of her had been heard, although one gentleman thought that he once had met with a girl answering to her description in the stage coach between Lexington and Cincinnati. All search in that quarter was unavailing, and over her fate a dark mystery lay, until Julia suddenly appeared and threw light on the matter. The afflicted father (for she had no mother) was sent for, and when told where his child was laid, asked permission to have her disinterred and taken ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... the boots, is in the best comic style. In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. "The infamy of the plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his testimony on such a charge as this wholly unavailing." "M. Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the attorney, in a fright, "you are for the plaintiff!" "This, my lords, is what the defendant WILL SAY. This is the line of defence which the opposite party intend to pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh with an enlightened jury, or injure the spotless ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fading flowers upon their tomb. But sweet is the consolation to the dying man, who, conscious of imperfection, believes that even after his own time of merit is expired, there are others to make intercession on his behalf; soothing to the afflicted survivors the thought, that instead of unavailing tears they possess more powerful means of actively relieving their friend, and testifying their affectionate regret, by prayer and supplication. In the first moments of grief, this sentiment will often overpower religious prejudice, cast down the unbeliever on his knees beside the remains of his ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... way. Again and again, they were grilled, and, again and again they began to drag their miserable existence in this wonderful world. And their desires were unfulfilled, the objects unaccomplished, and their knowledge became unavailing. And their senses were paralysed and they became apprehensive of everything and the cause of other people's sufferings. And they were generally marked by wicked deeds, and born in low families; they became wicked and afflicted with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... WAS an answer to this, but, being wise, also felt that it would be unavailing. He smiled politely and said nothing, at which the first ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was making a victim of him as he had done of many before, and as soon as he had used him would fling him off with scorn? He would not listen: and so, as Dobbin, upon those days when he visited the Osborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting his old friend, much painful and unavailing talk between them was spared. Our friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only,' continued Miss Anne, 'but our Saviour's also; all His griefs and sorrows may prove unavailing, as far as my uncle is concerned. Perhaps He will say of him, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent My strength for nought, and in vain." O my Saviour! because I love Thee, I would have every immortal soul ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... he would venture too near the edge; a sudden gust of wind came, he was carried off his equilibrium and fell into the lake. His companion did all he could to save him, but as there was a storm raging at the time, his efforts were unavailing. He said Ginsling's bloated face appeared for a moment in the hollow of the waves, and with an agonizing tone he cried to God to save him; then a huge wave, more mighty than its fellows, engulfed him, and he sank in life ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... enquiries. Honduras, an establishment on the American coast, was occupied by adventurers from Jamaica. At first interlopers, their presence was for a time unnoticed by the Spanish crown. A hundred years were passed in unavailing protests and opposition, when the court of Spain reluctantly recognised the location of the cutters of logwood within ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... carried through the heart of that quarter, teeming with historic "Hotels" of the old aristocracy, where beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn down to make way for the new avenue. The cajoleries which Eugenie first tried and the blows that followed were alike unavailing. Even her worship of Marie Antoinette, between whom and herself she found imaginary resemblances, failed to warm the stony hearts of the proud old ladies, to whom it was as gall and wormwood to see a nobody crowned in the palace of their kings. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... perhaps the third time when Tharald had thus protested his blamelessness, that his guest, feeling that reasoning was unavailing, let drop some rather commonplace remark about the culpability ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hear, excepting that the last word was die. She had often heard the wicked wish that his life might not be prolonged; but how to lead him from the constant contemplation of his deformity so as to make him resigned, if not cheerful, had, as yet, been an unavailing study. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... draw from the girl any clear idea of the symptoms were unavailing. All she could tell me was that the cellar boiler wouldn't work. Beyond that her answers were mere confusion. I gathered enough, however, to feel sure that her main feed was still working, and that her top story check valve was probably in ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... correct use of the breathing apparatus determines the question of success or failure; for without mastery of the motive power all else is unavailing. For a voice user, therefore, the first requisite is a well-developed chest, the ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... the bubling cry of their agony, as they sank to their chins in the water, there to remain for ever, beholding and regretting the rewards enjoyed by the good, and doomed to struggle, till the stars shall cease to shine, in unavailing endeavours to reach the blissful island. They beheld the lake thick and black with the heads of the unhappy swimmers, as the surface of the Great Bear Lake is dotted in summer with the wild fowl that seek subsistence in ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... massy prison's mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children play, 485 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, There rust amid the accumulated ruins 490 Now mingling slowly with their native earth: There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Company of their stores. The miscreant was only too successful. Not content with plunder only, he set fire to the buildings and reduced them to ashes. He gave further proof of the possession of a cruel and barbarous disposition, by enjoying the unavailing efforts of a poor horse to extricate itself from a burning building to which it had been inhumanly attached, to be burnt to death, after having been employed the greater part of the day in carrying off the plunder from the stores. This wretch, accompanied by nine ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... when on mine ears There fell chaotic sounds of earthly life, Shrill cries of triumph, and hoarse shouts of strife; A medley of despairs, and hopes and fears. Then silence came, and unavailing tears. The stillness stabbed me, like a two edged-knife; Until I found the Universe was rife With subtle music of the neighbouring spheres. Such harmonies, such congruous sweet chords, Wherein each note conveys a healing balm. And now no more I miss men's spoken words; ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... would you not do as I wanted you to?" he murmured bitterly to himself. A second groan answered him. Smith called for water, and from a canteen drenched the pallid forehead, talking softly meanwhile; but his efforts to restore consciousness were unavailing. He turned to where two of the cowboys had dragged Karg to the ground and three others had their old companion Seagrue in hand. While two held huge revolvers within six inches of his head, the third was adjusting a ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... in the subject, and a Boston physician of high standing within a few months confided to the writer that he had made use of hypnotic methods, with gratifying success, in the case of a patient where ordinary remedies had proven unavailing, but he did not venture to make the results public, since his fellow doctors might be inclined to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... treasure, they form a rich hoard, laid up where neither moth nor rust corrupt; but if we let them escape unheeded, or sit and idly watch their flow, and even shake the glass to hasten it, they will gather into a millstone weight to sink us in endless, unavailing regret. Though she is dead, Mrs. Judson's works still live; and generation after generation of Burmans will associate her name with that of her honored husband, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... service of the confederation. Another question was that concerning the western posts. As has been already pointed out, Washington's keen eye had at once detected that this was the perilous point in the treaty, and he made a prompt but unavailing effort to secure these posts in the first flush of good feeling when peace had just been made. After he had retired he observed with regret the feebleness of Congress in this matter, and he continued to write about it. He wrote ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of Indians passing through the skirt of the marsh turned their left flank, which was composed of militia, and poured a heavy and most destructive fire on their rear. The word "retreat" was pronounced by some person and the efforts of the officers to check it were unavailing. The fate of the day was decided, and a flight commenced on the left which was soon followed by the right. As soon as the line was broken the Indians, throwing down their rifles and rushing upon them with the tomahawk, completed the confusion. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... predecessors. But science had been at work here, as at Panama, and wire gauze and the kerosene spray had captured the first trenches of yellow fever and malaria, and against these weapons of the medico all counter-attacks have been unavailing. Some strong hand was ruling in this town, for the streets were spotless and the dogs lean. And, oh, how the nigger does hate cleanliness! Evidently this town was free in a real sense because well disciplined. We were told that all the white ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... they possessed by secessionist Indians,[563] who would not, however, permit them to go in search of relief northward.[564] When all efforts to induce them to throw in their lot with the Confederacy proved unavailing, the strict watch over them was somewhat relaxed and they eventually managed to make their escape. They, too, fled into Kansas. And so did about one hundred Delawares, who had been making their homes in the Cherokee ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the regret, the struggle and the failing! Oh the days desolate and useless years! Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing! Stings of my shame and passion ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... indulgence. Unable to educate her sons, or impress them with respect; for it is not a play on words to assert, that people are never respected, though filling an important station, who are not respectable; she pines under the anguish of unavailing impotent regret. The serpent's tooth enters into her very soul, and the vices of licentious youth bring her with sorrow, if not with poverty also, to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... by the Ojibways themselves. Even the strong national prejudice of the narrator, which has evidently colored his statement, leaves the evidence of the magnanimity and prudence of the Iroquois elders clearly apparent.] These efforts, however, to preserve the ancient amity proved unavailing. Through whose fault it was that the final outbreak occurred is a question which the annalists of the two parties differ. But the events just recounted, and, indeed, all the circumstances, speak strongly in favor of the Iroquois. They had shown their anxiety to maintain ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... unavailing; I could not call the kisses back again, and how was I to know I was going to meet Dolores and of course fall straightway ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary. For Barrow's efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing. Always the first question asked was, "What Union do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who had rendered himself so illustrious. General Bonaparte, offended at this behaviour, refused to receive him again, and expressed himself to me with much warmth on the occasion of this visit. All my efforts to remove his displeasure were unavailing this impression always continued, and he never did for M. de Cominges what his means and the old ties of boyhood ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more stage of the history of English laws in that immense process of the secularisation of the state, against which, in his book of 1888, Mr. Gladstone had drawn up, with so much weight of reading and thought, a case so wholly unavailing. The legal doctrine of marriage had been established against the theological doctrine by Lord Hardwicke's famous act of 1753, for that measure made the observance of certain requirements then set up by law essential to a good marriage. A further fundamental change had begun ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... simply imagined myself to have recognised the words lengthening and losing themselves in a blur before my eyes. Carmel was no fool even if she had wild and demoniacal moments. This could not be my note to her,—that fatal note which would make all denial of our mutual passion unavailing. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... one of the Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, by whom he was left under the impression that the words of warning he had been instructed to speak to the Austro-Hungarian Government had not been unavailing, and that the note which was being drawn up would be found to contain nothing with which a self-respecting State need hesitate to comply. At the second of these interviews he was not even informed that the note was at that very ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... the Chinese sovereign (still more over his agents) at present. The other thing which occurs to say is this: that, if we do not interfere, some morning we shall probably all be convulsed with unavailing wrath at a repetition of Mr Stead's tragic end, on a larger scale, and exemplified in ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fall on them with his single division. The spirit of the soldiers fully justified the gallant resolution of their commander. Having been formed as speedily as the ruggedness of the ground would admit of, they proceeded to the assault. The Republicans made a stubborn resistance, but it was an unavailing one, as they were finally driven from the Morne with considerable loss. Nevertheless, as the second column did not arrive till the combat was over, the fugitives succeeded in making good their retreat. On the following day the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... of moneyless vagabonds. What added to the consternation of all who heard of it, was the sickening conviction that the extreme measures which they had resorted to in order to free the city from the ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done, had been utterly unavailing, successful as they had proved in every other known case of the kind. For, urged as well by various horrid signs about his grave, which not even its close proximity to the altar could render a place of repose, they had opened it, had found in the body ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... alarmed her family, and search was made far and near—but in vain. On the fourth day, they at length discovered her lying dead at the foot of a tree. The pages of her book were covered with sentences, pricked in with a pin, expressive of her sufferings and of her unavailing efforts to retrace her steps. She was only three miles from her father's house when she sank down to die of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion; and probably during the whole time of her wanderings had never exceeded ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... for limiting expense in dress, entertainments, funerals (Sulla, c. 35), amount of debt to be incurred, and so forth, all of which were unavailing. The notion of regulating private expenditure was not peculiar to the Romans among the states of antiquity; and our own legislation, which in its absurd as well as its best parts has generally some parallel in that of the Romans, contains many instances of sumptuary laws, which prescribed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Queen; and above all, poor Queen's Husband, who means well, had he any fixed meaning! Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand. Few months ago these Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which might have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the very mention of it slighted; Majesty's express orders set ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... by your unsleeping watchfulness and admirable pertinacity. And now here is a volume that goes into the world and lacks your imprimatur; a strange thing in our joint lives; and the reason of it stranger still! I have watched with interest, with pain, and at length with amusement, your unavailing attempts to peruse The Black Arrow; I think I should lack humor indeed if I let the occasion slip and did not place your name in the fly-leaf of the only book of mine that you have never read—and never ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... who, being distinguished by an experimental and inventive tendency, was generally believed to have poisoned himself with an infallible panacea of his own distillation),— since that final bereavement, Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing business had lamentably declined. After a few months of unavailing struggle, he found it expedient to take down the Brazen Serpent from the position to which Dr. Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of his shop in the main street, and to retire to his private dwelling, situated ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed—I, who had lived with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... nuptial joy. Her private orchards, wall'd on every side, To lawless sylvans all access denied. 20 How oft the satyrs and the wanton fauns, Who haunt the forests or frequent the lawns, The god whose ensign scares the birds of prey, And old Silenus, youthful in decay, Employ'd their wiles and unavailing care To pass the fences, and surprise the fair! Like these, Vertumnus own'd his faithful flame, Like these, rejected by the scornful dame. To gain her sight a thousand forms he wears; And first a reaper from the field appears: 30 Sweating he walks, while loads of golden grain ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... a taciturn man naturally, and had not been rendered loquacious by his calling. He hardly spoke to his PEONS. They understood their duties perfectly. If one of the mules stopped, they urged it on with a guttural cry, and if that proved unavailing, a good-sized pebble, thrown with unerring aim, soon cured the animal's obstinacy. If a strap got loose, or a rein fell, a PEON came forward instantly, and throwing off his poncho, flung it over his beast's head till the accident was repaired ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... woke up afterward, an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop. Lois, divested of her rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up-stairs, to find ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various |
