"Aghast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poverty, ignorance, and apathy. Unfortunately the new rule, while more economical than the old, was not less arbitrary—military despotism being as little fitted for the development of a people as the rule of a corporation. Men looked aghast as the papacy and papal influence crumbled together, while the seat of real ecclesiastical power was removed from the banks of the Tiber to those of the Seine. Time seemed to be taking its revenge. Seven ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... by the playful manner with which she disposed of friend and foe, was aghast at this outbreak. He saw another Yetta. Her face was ugly and revengeful. She sawed the air with her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... are composed of nouns or verbs and the letter a, used instead of at, an, &c.; as, Aside, athirst, afoot, asleep, aboard, ashore, abed, aground, afloat, adrift, aghast, ago, askance, away, asunder, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... story of the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world. The Pope shook upon his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that the whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, a thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelation of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ran through Europe. The fury of party leaves little room for generous emotion, and no pity was felt for these men by the English Protestants. The Protestants knew well that if these same sufferers could ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Olympian power. Nothing daunted him. The grandeur of his enterprises dazzled the public mind. His calm antagonism to the great houses of London filled them with surprise. A new power had seized a high place in the commercial world, and the old gods—the Rothschilds, the Barings, and others—looked aghast. At first they tried to despise this interloper; at length they found him at least as strong as themselves, and began to fancy that be might be stronger. A few experiments soon taught them that there ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Aghast, they turned in the darkness, peering toward the lighted space beyond. Leroy Mortimer, his face shockingly congested, stood unsteadily balancing there, confronting his wife, who sat staring at him in horror. At the same instant Plank rose and ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the idea of the banner most attractive, but when it came to the making they were aghast at the expense. A committee examined the prices at places in New York where such decorations were ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... of dawn stole across the green. The red eye of the morning peered aghast over the shoulder of the Pike. And from the sleeping dale there arose the yodling of a man driving ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... still dreaming; it—it all seemed so unreal, so—so beyond all belief and possibility and—" I stopped, aghast at my crass folly, for, with a cry, she sprang to her feet, and hid her face in her hands, while I stood dumbfounded, like the fool I was. When she looked up, her ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... he had uttered two sentences the woman lifted her hand with an alarmed air, crying "Hush! he understands." The fellow was turning me to ridicule. I flung my head back, closed my eyes, opened my mouth and laughed aloud. The fellow stood aghast; his hand trembled, and he spilt the greater part of the whiskey upon the ground. At the end of about half a minute I got up, asked what I had to pay, and on being told twopence, I put down the money. Then going up to the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... once again with what ardent devotion they thought of the river which passed by their native city; while Naaman the Syrian, told that his sickness would be cured would he but lave his leprous limbs in the Jordan, exclaimed aghast against a prescription which appeared to him nothing short of sacrilegious and insulting, and declared that there were better and nobler streams in his own land. Even the deadly complaint with which he was smitten could not shake his fidelity to ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... he stood aghast, and despairing of ever getting rid of his hated rival, he returned the hell-hound to the hero, who restored him to Aides, and with this last task the subjection of Heracles to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... woman! was then on duty. She had come home quietly, stolen up-stairs on tip-toe; she was in her chamber. If she had not sneezed, she would have heard all, and so should I; but that unlucky sternutation routed Dr. John. While he stood aghast, she came forward alert, composed, in the best yet most tranquil spirits: no novice to her habits but would have thought she had just come in, and scouted the idea of her ear having been glued to the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... battered, hung awry from their broken hinges. Not a shell had struck her: all this damage had been done by flying fragments of the guns and of the dock itself; and Seaton and Crane, who had developed the new explosive, stood aghast at its ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... if my right foot or my left will step into the lane first. If it's my right I'll have it to mean that I shall be saved...." Here he paused for a moment, aghast; it was such a tremendous risk to take, such a staking of his soul. He went forward, measuring the distance with his eye, and trying to calculate which foot would take that fateful step from the cobbles on to the lane. He was there, and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... her whole existence was a tragedy, every actor was an executioner, the curtain rose amidst shrieks and fell upon corpses, and the only shifting of the scenes was from blood to blood. The whole world stood aghast, as under sentence of death, awaiting execution, and all nations and tongues were driven, with her own citizens, as sheep to the slaughter. Of her seven kings, her hundreds of consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, and dictators, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Joanna's venture was increased by the high price she would have to pay for railway transport as well as in fees. However, once she had set her heart on anything, she would let nothing stand in her way. Socknersh was inclined to be aghast at all the money the affair would cost, but Joanna soon talked him into ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... who were aghast at the proclamation, which threatened to destroy their hopes of dividing among themselves and their friends all the lands of the Catholics of Ireland, did their best to prevent its acceptance, by spreading ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... recognized in Thompson a lively susceptibility to certain disagreeable things which they accepted as a matter of course. They saw that he was rather less capable of coping with such a situation than a ten-year-old native boy, that a dirty cabin in a lonely clearing made him stand aghast. And so—although their bargain with him was closed when they deposited him and his goods on the bank of Lone Moose—they set to work with energy ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... claims to have been the first collector who, stealing the money, yet left the case. The new method was incomparably more subtle than the old: it afforded an opportunity of a hitherto unimagined delicacy; the wielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which put their own clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation would have seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that even when the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Follow Desire within his arrowy wild? She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find. Serene her pensive body lies at last Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned, Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast, With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers, Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace, Blue distance, and the stricken foresters, And all the dreaming, healing, woodland place Are patterned into tender melodies ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... stood aghast at the prodigy; and hiding their faces with their hands, every one departed in silence and confusion, and HAMET and OMAR were left alone. OMAR was taken by some of the soldiers who had adhered to ALMORAN, but HAMET ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... that the hat was being jammed, that it was getting flat and flatter every second, that the meek man was howling in French; and she was just thinking of her husband and children when she started to her feet, and the nightmare was over. The meek man, having howled out his French sentence, sat aghast, stroking his poor hat, while his wife opposite was in convulsions, and we all agog. The gentleman then asked H. if she proposed sitting where she was, saying, very significantly, "If you do, I'll put my hat there;" suiting ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... don't want that!" cried the little milliner, aghast. "That's only common doin's, anyhow; and it's been in that box three years. Them shapes ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... hospitable harangue, uttered in a loud voice and an excited manner, "produced a decided sensation." The whole company "were aghast." Queen Adelaide, who was amiable and well-bred, "looked in deep distress"; the young Princess burst into tears at the insult offered to her mother; but that mother sat calm and silent, very pale, but proud and erect—Duchess ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... with—cyanide and prussic acid are soothing-syrup compared to it. Of course it's for those filthy Boches. Five hundred and eighty tons of it! There won't be a bullet or a zeppelin or a shell or a bayonet or a dart or a strand of barbed-wire that won't be reeking with the stuff." I was aghast. "Shall I go and see the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... dreamily over the screen which she held in her hand. Some of the ladies gathered in little groups, others turned to the books and albums, one or two yawned almost openly. A kind of blight seemed falling upon them. Nell, who was unused to the phenomena of dinner parties, looked round, aghast. Were they all going to sleep? Suddenly she realized that it was at just such a moment as this that she was supposed to come in. She went up to Lady Wolfer ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... consider steadfastly the depth and the intensity of that devotion which, for so many years, has tended me, and has endured the society of that person whom I peculiarly know to be the most tedious and irritating of companions, I stand aghast, before a miracle. And I cry, Oh, certainly a goddess! and I can think of no queen who is fairly mentionable in the same breath. Hah, all we poets write a deal about love: but none of us may grasp the word's full meaning until he reflects that this is a passion mighty enough to induce ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... had dropped the cup of clouded blue, which had passed unscathed through so many changing years, and now at last lay shattered on the stone of the well curb. At any other time we should all have been aghast over such a catastrophe, but it passed unnoticed now. What mattered it that all the cups in the world be broken to-day if the crack ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... on another waist, I do think," said Polly, hanging up the towel, aghast to find herself growing angry at all this delay, and with half a mind to run and ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... man held firm, in the midst of his coughing, and he cried to Salome to leave him alone. As she insisted, he grew angry, swore, and choked himself with his oaths. Never had she known him to be angry and to stand out against her. She was aghast and surrendered her prize. But she did not mince her words with him. She told him he was an old fool and said that hitherto she had thought she had to do with a gentleman, but that now she saw her mistake; that he said things which would make a plowman blush, that his eyes were ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the principal actor, not having the author's words by heart, and being of a dull and heavy turn, and deaf withal, substituteth nothing, but standeth aghast, yearning for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... The old negro looked aghast. It was long since direct allusion had been made to his unfortunate master or the events of that period. Questioned in such a spot, and at such an hour, he could not repress the feeling of terror conjured up by the allusion. Scarcely daring to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... deliberate wickedness In its birth even! some fierce leprous spot Will mar the brow's dissimulating! I Shall murmur no smooth speeches got by heart, But, frenzied, pour forth all our woeful story, The love, the shame, and the despair—with them Round me aghast as round some cursed fount That should spirt water, and spouts blood. I'll not ...Henry, you do not wish that I should draw This vengeance down? I'll not affect a grace That's gone from me—gone once, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... up, startled, almost aghast. Involuntarily he started to rise to his feet, his eyes still fixed on hers, vehement denial on his parted lips, only to sink back into the chair again, convicted. There was no use attempting to deceive this cold, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Suddenly his nephew rode up to him, and while one of the conspirators seized the bridle of his horse, exclaimed, 'Will you now restore my inheritance?' and wounded him in the neck. The attendant fled; Der Wart, who had never thought murder was to be a part of the scheme, stood aghast, but the other two fell on the unhappy Albrecht, and each gave him a mortal wound, and then all five fled in different directions. The whole horrible affair took place full in view of Leopold and the army on the other side of the river, and when it became possible ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat you with such respect ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... I'll grow a proper Singing cricket or grass-hopper Making prodigious jumps in air While shaken crowds about me stare Aghast, and I sing, growing bolder To fly up on my master's shoulder Rustling the thick strands of ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Was prompt the ritual to prepare, With deep and deathful meaning fraught; For such Antiquity had taught 50 Was preface meet, ere yet abroad The Cross of Fire should take its road. The shrinking band stood oft aghast At the impatient glance he cast— Such glance the mountain eagle threw, 55 As, from the cliffs of Benvenue, She spread her dark sails on the wind, And, high in middle heaven reclined, With her broad shadow on the lake, Silenced the warblers of the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of that. Though it was only Fancying made me see it, it was enough: I've seen the folk of the world yelling aghast, Scurrying to hide themselves. I want nought else ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and as if unconscious. And still he had no idea of what had happened. He thought perhaps something had broken down. He could ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... replied Diana crisply, and then stopped, aghast at her own temerity. She glanced anxiously at Baroni to see if he had resented her remark, only to find him surveying her with a radiant smile and looking exactly like ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn, and knew with a flash of horror ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... I think I wronged you; I should have said, aghast; you exhibited every symptom of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... running from anything the charcoal burner might say, do, but from a terrifying spectacle of himself; from the vision of a body shot through the breast, huddled in the sere underbrush. He was aghast at the unsuspected possibility revealed, as it were, out of a profound dark by the searing flash of his anger, cold at the thought of such absolute self-betrayal. Howat saw in fancy the bald triumph of a society to which his ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the woman, Crimson with rage at being thus exposed, Exclaimed, "Unnatural daughter—" But before Her wrath could vent itself, she, with a groan, Fell in convulsions. Medical assistance Was had at once. Then Denison came in, Aghast at what had happened; for he knew His wife's estate was all in lands and houses, And would, if she should die, be Harriet's, Since the old lady superstitiously Had still put off the making of a will. All help was vain, and drugs were powerless. Paralysis had struck the ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... appearing and disappearing by turns, now flying from our gaze and now desiring to be seen,[88] while later still you neither saw nor heard her save for a far-off plaintive note like the sigh of a dying girl. And we remained aghast, throbbing with admiration and fear, longing for the moment when her veil, fluttering with the dance-movement, should be lighted up by the torches, when her voice should warn us of her return, with a joyful cry, to which we answered involuntarily, because ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Charlie's mother stood aghast at this unexpected declaration; and the result of a long conference, held by the two, was that Charlie should be taken home, Mrs. Ellis being unable to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... The bull, rather aghast at this reception, which did not appear to be at all to his taste, seemed to hesitate a moment whether to charge his adversary or not; then, with a low growl of baffled fury, he slowly turned away, and ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... cut down into the pumpkin with a ferocity quite startling, and split the two halves apart with a jerk that made the horn-comb reel among her fiery tresses, and sent uncle Nat quite aghast ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... music, sadder yet Than every whimper of regret That sobbing utterance could form, And patched with scraps of sound that seemed Torn out of tunes that demons dreamed, And pitched to such a piercing key, It stabbed the ear with agony; And when at last it lulled and died, I stood aghast and terrified. I shuddered and I shut my eyes, And still could see, and feel aware Some mystic presence waited there; And staring, with a dazed surprise, I saw a creature so divine That never subtle thought of mine May reproduce ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Genevieve, certainly, most disconcerting. Miss Hart gave one look into Genevieve's eyes, then dropped her face into her hands and burst into tears. At Genevieve's aghast exclamation, however, she raised her head determinedly and began to wipe ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... well. One day Bishop Selwyn had occasion to rebuke him for his stubborn and refractory behaviour. The boy instantly flew into a passion and struck the Bishop a cruel blow in the face. It was an unheard-of incident, and all who saw it stood aghast. The Bishop said nothing, but turned and walked quietly away. The conduct of the lad continued to be most recalcitrant, and he was at last returned to his own island as incorrigible. There he soon relapsed into all the debasements of a savage and cannibal people. Many years afterwards ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... movement was undertaken chiefly by Sidney Webb, who played such bewildering conjuring tricks with the Liberal thimbles and the Fabian peas that to this day both the Liberals and the sectarian Socialists stand aghast at him."[1154] Fabians rely for their success chiefly on their artfulness. "Always remember that, even if you cannot convert a man to Socialism, you may get his vote all ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... my back, when I had placed myself, unwilling to observe myself; and setting me before my face, that I might see how foul I was, how crooked and defiled, bespotted and ulcerous. And I beheld and stood aghast; and whither to flee from myself I found not. And if I sought to turn mine eye from off myself, he went on with his relation, and thou didst again set me over against myself, and thrusted me before my eyes, that I might find out mine iniquity and hate it. I had known ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... short-lived triumph," declared His Imperial Highness, when he received me in his quarters at the Bellevue, "and the American people will pay dearly for it. The world stands aghast at the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... this plague-stricken spot! The hot, foul air Is rank with pestilence—the crowded marts And public ways, once populous with life, Are still and noisome as a churchyard vault; Aghast and shuddering, Nature holds her breath In abject fear, and feels at her strong heart The ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good that can be ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... his master was getting the worst of it, Bobby rushed into the fray, an animated little muff of pluck and fury, and nipped the caretaker's shins. There was a howl of pain, and a "maist michty" word that made the ancient tombs stand aghast. Master and dog were hustled outside the gate and into a rabble of jeering ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... stammered, then bent her head over her plate, her Spanish dignity aghast at the threatening tears. Her hand hung clinched at her side. Diego took it in spite of resistance, and, opening the rigid fingers, bent his head beneath ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... monastery that the wrath of Nobunaga was most strongly aroused. Marching against it in 1571, he bade his generals set it on fire. The officers stood aghast at the order, which seemed to them likely to call down the vengeance of Heaven upon their heads. With earnest protests they begged him not to do so unholy ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... he said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a week. "It is a wide field," he went on. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... was coming, not an inkling of what was about to happen, she blurted out her shocking remarks without herself knowing what she was going to say and was overwhelmed with confusion when her own ears heard the totally unexpected words which she had uttered; she contemplated aghast the havoc she had wrought. Generally she made a pretty fair attempt at demeaning herself as a Vestal should; but, every once in a while, without warning, something of her old wild self surged up in her and the speech was spoken or the action completed before she realized she was about ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... love with a thoughtless butterfly, his womenfolk may be pardoned if they stand aghast a moment before they regain their self-command. In a way it is like a guest who is given the freedom of the house, and who, when her visit is over, tells her friends that the parlour carpet was turned, and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... He was aghast, having always regarded the very terms I used to describe his plan with righteous horror. And that was the last I ever heard of his pro rata ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... home for Christ came to him in an open-air meeting held in his village two years ago. Then there was bitterest shame to endure. His father and mother, aghast and distressed, did all they could to prevent the disgrace incurred by his open confession of Christ. He was an only son, heir to considerable property, so the matter was most serious. The father loved him dearly; but he nerved himself to flog the boy, and twice ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... was visibly excited. "Ye ain't going on a step tonight. I can fix a shake-down for ye. Thing like this don't happen to a lone old woman twice in a lifetime. Bring in your saddle-bags—but Lord!" she stopped aghast. "I ain't got a bit of pork in the house, nor there ain't a chicken on the place. All I got is corn-meal ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... of fate constrained a laugh for its antics. The words recalled the past to Eugenia; it rose visibly before her. She had had scant leisure to reflect that her life might have been ordered differently. In her widening eyes were new depths, a vague terror, a wild speculation, all struck aghast by its own temerity. ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sums to the Company, but enormous amounts to the principal persons on the English side. So enormous, indeed, were these demands, that even Meer Jaffier, anxious as he was to conclude the alliance, was aghast. The squadron was to have two million and a half rupees, and the same amount was to be paid for the army. Presents amounting to six millions of rupees were to be distributed between Clive, Major Kilpatrick, the governor, and the members of the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... were aghast, could scarcely, indeed, believe their ears; and one of them, as soon as he had recovered from the shock, was seen scribbling like mad on a menu card. Presently Burton felt the card tucked into his hand under the table. On glancing at it he read "Please do not ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the wide staircase leading to the dormitories she was aghast. It was very, very wide, and the steps were low and easy to mount, but there were so many of them before one reached the first floor. For a few seconds mamma hesitated and stood there gazing at them, her ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... turned night into day with its lurid and ghastly light, so that the very waves of the sea seemed molten in its beams, while the beasts of the field howled as if they scented the coming banquet of flesh afar off. Well might they stand aghast who gazed upon this awful portent, which had seemed to set the southern ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Dutoitspan. All along the diggings the dismal tidings spread with a rapidity which was astonishing. At eleven o'clock there was consternation at Klipdrift. At quarter-past one Hebron was up and aghast at the news. At three in the morning a mounted messenger galloped into Bluejacket, and before daybreak a digger committee was sitting at Delporte's Hope discussing the situation. So during that eventful night down the whole ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... assist her, she proceeds to prepare it for its purpose. Ledgers might be volumes of poetry, bills of lading mere street ballads, for all the respect that is shown to them. The older clerks stand staring aghast, feeling that the end of all things is surely at hand, and that the universe is rushing down into space, until, their idleness being detected, they are themselves promptly impressed for the sacrilegious work, and made to assist in the demolition ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... had not come," said Florence. She looked so pale and frightened that Kitty glanced at her aghast. ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... this ladye fair. And her yetts all lockit fast, He fell into a rage of wrath, And his heart was all aghast. ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... were of no avail. The whole party, except Rachel, were aghast. The attorney's small eye glanced over the ground and hearthstone, where the bits were ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... She remained aghast with horror, while inquiries were instituted and attempts made to trace ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... "Cora," he cried, aghast, "what's the matter with you? You're too many for me sometimes. I thought I understood a few kinds of women! Now listen: I've offered to take ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... aghast at this temerity, but Fleming, jumping to his feet, at once set out to meet his mysterious visitor. This was no easy matter, as the ingenious Faulkner was laboriously leading his charge up the steep gulch road, with great politeness, but many audible misgivings ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... The children were aghast at the wickedness of this deed. They would not believe it. It would have been tyrannical and cruel to have obliged the settlers, who were not interested in a quarrel between the king of England and his people, to enlist, and be shot down in ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... stood aghast and stared. He drew a long, deep breath; he whistled softly; he pushed his big, spiked helmet back. He staggered. "Seems there's a mistake," he stammered stupidly, "a kind of mistake somewhere, as it were. I—" He stuck fast. He wiped his lips ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... young man of good family, after losing all his fortune at the Chevalier s bank, sent a bullet through his brain in the gambling- house, and in the very same room even in which the bank was established, so that the players were sprinkled by the blood and scattered brains, and started up aghast. The Chevalier alone preserved his indifference; and, as all were preparing to leave the apartment, he asked whether it was in accordance with their rules and custom to leave the bank before the appointed hour on account of a fool who had had ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... exquisite beauty of its situation, and were so imprudent as to express, in the presence of the landlady, our wish to live and die there. 'Well, indeed, sir,' she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but I hope you are not going to stay very long.' 'My dear madam,' I remonstrated, aghast at this remark, 'are we, then, such very objectionable-looking persons?' 'Bless your heart, no, sir, it isn't that; but the fact is, we have only room for three, and if parties come and come, and always find us full (through your being here, you ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... The women, aghast, allowed the precious relic to fall. For their simple souls the mystery that hung about the stranger grew inexplicable; as for the priest, from that day forth he did not even ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... drew out his revolver and dashed through the house, keyed up at once to new adventure, the eager Brierly at his heels. They went up the stairs and to the door of McGuire's own room, where they stood for a moment aghast at the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... curtsying yet more profoundly in return for another bow. "How do you do, sir? Oh, he is beautiful, isn't he?" half-aside to Willingham, who was swallowing as much as he could of the butt of his whip. Poor Mr Plympton looked aghast at the compliment. Branling fairly turned his back, and burst from the room, nearly upsetting Hanmer and myself; who, having waited below some time for our party to join us, had made our way upstairs to ascertain the cause of the unusual noises ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... earn a living," one of the elders murmured when the singing master that year shared with them his meager earnings. But when Philomel ventured to suggest it might liven the gathering somewhat if he brought along his dulcimer and strummed the tune while scholars sang, both elders and trustees stood aghast. Couldn't believe their ears. "Brother Whiffet!" gasped one of the elders, "so long as we're in our right mind no music box of any nature shall be brought into Bethel church house. We don't intend to contrary the good Lord in ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... bold, a dramatic thing: it resigned in a body, leaving the King free to choose ministers who could obtain the support of the Giolitti following in Parliament. It was inevitable, it was simple, it was sincere, and it was masterly politics. The public was aghast. At the eleventh hour the state was left thus leaderless because its real desires were to be thwarted by a politician who took his ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... had come an order from Ames to apprehend the girl as a disturber of the peace. The hush of death lay over Avon, and even the soldiers now stood aghast at their own bloody work of the day before. Carmen had avoided the main thoroughfares, and had made her way unrecognized. At a distance she saw the town jail, heavily guarded. Its capacity had been sorely taxed, and many of the prisoners had been crowded into cold, cheerless store ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the question of its truth. The most modern literature, which is interpenetrated with the spirit of the age, has a way of asking dangerous questions—questions before which the reader, when he perceives their full scope, stands aghast. Our old idyllic faith in the goodness and wisdom of all mundane arrangements has undoubtedly received a shock. Our attitude toward the universe is changing with the change of its attitude toward us. What the thinking part of humanity is now largely engaged in doing is readjusting ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... up and stared aghast, for the action of the running stream had loosened the thin remnants of the rope with which they had moored their boat. These had parted, and the craft was gliding rapidly away, a quarter of a mile down ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... to his friend of the effect on Sabre of Mabel's action against him: "He's crashed. The roof's fallen in on him." And that had been Sabre's own belief. But it was not so. There are degrees of calamity. Dumfounded, stunned, aghast, Sabre would not have believed that conspiracy against him of all the powers of darkness could conceivably worsen his plight. They had shot their bolt. He was stricken amain. He was in the crucible of disaster and in its heart where the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... to the story aghast. "But I'm not so dreadfully surprised," she said. "It explains so many things. She started to take Caroline's class-pin one day in our room. I supposed she had picked it up without thinking, so when she went away I asked her for it and she acted ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... before them. The light of their combined torches lingered a little in their rear; the sound of their voices, as they halloed to one another or to the missing man, was heard for several minutes. But darkness and silence swallowed them up also, and the watchers gazed on one another aghast. ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... astonishments that I might well be excused for thinking myself well hardened against any further surprise. Yet at the sight of these two letters, engraved on this spot three hundred years ago, I stood aghast in dumb amazement. Not only were the initials of the learned alchemist visible upon the living rock, but there lay the iron point with which the letters had been engraved. I could no longer doubt of the existence of that wonderful ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the world stood aghast. The first account of this human butchery was too much for credence: after a while the truth began to dawn upon the country; and at last the people admitted that in a Christian land like America a deed so foul—blacker than hell itself!—had actually been perpetrated. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... open, and Herne, in his wild garb, with his antlered helm upon his brow, and the rusty chain depending from his left arm, stood before them. His appearance was so terrific and unearthly that they all shrank aghast, and Mat Bee fell with his face on ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... may be, and often is, a joyous adventure: little by little we grow aghast at the amount of suffering which life really stands for—our own sufferings and those of others, of which, owing to our own pains, we gradually take more and more note. Why all this suffering? It appals, ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... spot, however, she stood aghast, for Norman, instead of working in his own part of the ground, was digging away in hers, and had already uprooted nearly all ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on account of their inheritance. These are things at which not vice, not crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity, beneficence, stand aghast. By these examples our reason and our moral sense are not enlightened, but confounded; and there is no refuge for astonished and affrighted virtue, but being annihilated in humility and submission, sinking into a silent adoration of the inscrutable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast, their interests ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... final stupefaction and swinish unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly drunk. And I, who had saved and scraped, traded like a Shylock and made junkmen weep; I, who had stood aghast when French Frank, at a single stroke, spent eighty cents for whisky for eight men, I turned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for money than any ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... gone, until we wove a history about them, equal to any fairy story ever told, winding up with one from Felix, who, after giving various touching descriptions as to their numerous qualities and perfections, declared that they died one by one. "How?" said the little girls, looking aghast at such an abrupt conclusion. "They disappeared," said Felix, "one every night." "But that's no story, how did they disappear?" "Oh, you must guess, my story is a riddle." So they guessed and guessed, but, becoming no wiser, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... could have answered the question of her whereabouts at the exact moment of Van Lew's asking. She was left behind, standing aghast in the midst of tumults, on the platform of the Crow's Nest. Terrified, like the others, at the sudden outburst of violence, she had ventured from the car to look for Lidgerwood's messenger, and in the moment ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... truth gazed in dumb amazement, his hair thrilled up, and the accents faltered on his tongue. He burns to flee away and leave the pleasant land, aghast at the high warning and divine ordinance. Alas, what shall he do? how venture to smooth the tale to the frenzied queen? what prologue shall he find? and this way and that he rapidly throws his mind, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought. In his perplexity this seemed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... that was pierced, which has been to you so tender and warm, and in its clasp so expressive of this wondrous friendship—that hand now leads you where you had not thought of going. And you go,—aghast almost at first at the radical change in your carefully worked out plans, losing your breath for a moment as you wonder what "they" will think (though "they" never will understand, unless—ah, yes, unless they see Him). That hand reaches in where your life touches others, in the ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... nightly fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!" Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, 10 As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance: "To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... the west are astonied at him, And those of the east stand aghast: Such are the dwellings of the wicked, And this his place who knoweth ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... stood aghast at the calmness of this audacious recital. As for John, he looked on surveying his brother's philosophical demeanour at first with speechless wrath, and then with an inscrutable mixture of expressions, in which, however, any one accustomed to his weather-beaten ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will, upon rising to depart, commit the strangest blunders. Such, for instance, as opening the first door that comes handy, and finding himself stealing up-stairs by the back passage. Shutting that, he will proceed to another, and be aghast at the cellar yawning at his feet. Trying a third, he surprises the housemaid at her work. In the end, no more relying on his own unaided efforts, he procures a trusty guide in some passing person, and in good time successfully emerges. Perhaps as curious ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville |
