"Dour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where they would be in kilts. Like many another Scot, the first time he ever saw a kilt was on a Sassenach; indeed kilts were perhaps invented, like golf, to draw the English north. John is doing nothing, which again is not a Scotch accomplishment, and he looks rather miserable and dour. The Comtesse is already at her Patience cards, and occasionally she smiles on him as if not displeased with his long silence. At last ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... anxiety, and my anxiety rendered me nervous to a womanly degree. But I did not lose my composure and when I had taken her into my arms, I thought it would be only a prudent precaution to turn the key in the outer dour, and leave it somewhere along the highway. This I did, absolutely forgetting, that, in thus securing myself against any sudden pursuit, I had also locked up my friend, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... several successive days he had been noticed in their company, or laying a straight course for the little booth wherein the girl plied her mean trade; and then, all at once, to the stupefied astonishment of Chepstow,—where the captain was reckoned, with reason, a particularly hard, sour, dour sort of body, anything but friendly or hospitable,—the pair of them were discovered comfortably installed beneath the Pendarves' roof, as snug as if they had lived there all their lives and never meant to go away! The thing was a mystery; it ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper place for her, but then her father was so dour ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... unexpected illness brought no relief to the bishop, at all events to outward seeming, for he was paler and more haggard than ever in looks, and as dour as a bear in manner. With Mrs Pendle he strove to be his usual cheerful self, but with small success, as occasionally he would steal an anxious look at her, and heave deep sighs expressive of much inward trouble. All this was noted by Cargrim, who carefully strove, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Carnegie," was returned with a shrillness in the measured tones; "you would not; and ye'll learn yer own task, and say Yes to sour, dour Staneholme." ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... devoted his life to his trade; and, despite his travels in France and Spain, he enjoyed few intervals of merriment. Even the humour, which proved his redemption, was as dour and grim as Scotland can furnish at her grimmes: and dourest. Here is a specimen will serve as well as another: three of Gilderoy's gang had been hanged according to the sentence of a certain Lord of Session, and the Chieftain, for his own vengeance and the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to see, A fecht baith fell an' dour, sirs, For ere the tuilzie weel began The glen was fu' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... glamour of his own indomitable spirit, which makes life look good even to the man who feels the pinch of poverty and whose outlook is dreary. You can't keep down the boy who makes Carlyle his daily companion; he will rise by very force of fighting spirit of this dour old Scotchman. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... cannot account for. Salarino tells him that the mental attitude is everything; that mirth is as easy as gloom; that nature in her freakishness makes some men laugh at trifles until their eyes become mere slits, yet leaves others dour and unsmiling before jests that would convulse even the venerable Nestor. Gratiano maintains that Antonio is too absorbed in worldly affairs, and that he must not let his ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took his eyes ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other. His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies. He managed to continue work till nine o'clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to ask what was the matter with him, and then ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... she was restless and miserable, wandering from window to window to scan the dour, unsmiling sky. Carl White, dropping in to pay a call, was alarmed when he heard that Chester had gone with Joe, and had not tact enough to conceal ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... spoke his mother: "Davie, my son, you'll no listen to ony sich temptation. My brither is my brither, and there are few folk o' the Gordon line a'thegither wrang, but Alexander Gordon is a dour man, and I trow weel you'll serve hard for ony share in his money bags. You'll just gang your ways back to college and tak' up your Greek and Hebrew and serve in the Lord's temple instead of Alexander Gordon's Soho Bank; and, Davie, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of the most dour sort, and they distrusted their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of Scotland's Parliament which had made ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... dour and deliberate Scot—declined to be positive, but "doubted" it might be perityphlitis. "Appendicitis is a more fashionable term," he added. The child had rallied, but was very ill, and nothing more could be done at present except keep her warm and afford relief ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... just like him. He was devoted to her mother—and for his friends he'll do anything. But I don't want to make a saint of him. He can be a dour man when he likes—and he and I fight about a good many things. I don't think he has much faith in the new England we're all talking about—though he tries to go with it. Have you?" ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... here; for they were soon disregarded by all the Balkan States. Seeking to steal a march upon their rivals, the Bulgar forces (it is said on the instigation of their King and his unofficial advisers) made a sudden and treacherous attack. Now, the dour, pushing Bulgars are the most unpopular race in the Peninsula. Therefore not only Serbs and Greeks, but also Roumanians and Turks turned savagely upon them[542]. Overwhelmed on all sides, Bulgaria sued for peace; and again the Great Powers ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... life, school themselves much more than they are schooled. Active, inquisitive, resolute, and possessing a fair share of the national perfervidum ingenium, not without some tincture of those elements of the Scottish character known as the "canny" and the "dour," our worker early developed that robust vigour of mind and body which has so long stood the wear and tear of ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... larger than what are employed in Loch Leven. A teal wing and red body, a grouse hackle, and the prismatic Heckham Peckham are among the favourites; but it is said that flies no bigger than Tweed flies are occasionally successful. In my own brief experience I have found the trout "dour," occasionally they would rise freely for an hour at noon, or in the evening; but often one passed hours with scarcely a rising fish. This may have been due to the bitterness of the weather, or to my own lack of skill. Not that lochs generally require much artifice in the angler. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... a stirring behind him. Then Aletha climbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour muttering from the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slipped out of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman was accustomed. Now she was clad as Anglo-Saxon girls dressed for beaches on the ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... by tact, boredom, or even a sense of humour. If, for instance, the process were to be reversed, and my tobacconist were to ask me what I thought of the strike, I should grunt and go out of his shop; but he would be wrong to attribute "a dour grimness" ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... keen desire to return forthwith to Virginia. Seth, in short, was seldom able to express himself adequately, emotion scarcely ever sounded in his voice, and the expression of his face was a fixed and unchangeable one, somewhat dour and ill-tempered in aspect and reflecting nothing of the ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... mean citizen of any state, hard to be driven, temperate, humorous and dour. He held for the old ways, and each day presided at meals, his bonnet of blue on his head, broad as a barrow-wheel, and brought all the way from Kilmarnock. All the rest of the table sat bareheaded—the sons and daughters whom God had given him, as well ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower class have received through centuries from their own nobility, makes attempts at fraternisation on ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of life; but he makes a very shallow incision, if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of can-dour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not perceive the deepest of sins—the sin of vanity—vanity which is ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... for my friend, Private McPhee, stalking majestically up and down as if on sentry go, wearing a "fit of the blues" several sizes too large for him and an expression which would, I believe, be described by kailyard novelists as "dour." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... swift stream of aliment Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts. There earth would furnish to the children food; Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed Abounding in soft down. Earth's newness then Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold, Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers— For all things grow and gather strength through time In like proportions; and then earth ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... neglecting its own duty in the premises: the Englisher was not to be let off while memories of Bruce and Bannockburn lived in Scottish hearts. Which way he turned that day and in the months that followed he met dour faces. Excepting Cap'en Donald McKay, a retired mariner, whose native granite had been somewhat disintegrated by exposure to other climates, no man gave him a word;—this, of course, without counting ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... tenderness with which he caressed her. No one would have thought that dour man capable of ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... despite of all subsequent changes and conquests, the appellations with which they were originally baptised by the aboriginal possessors of the soil; as, for example, in three or four of the rivers which enter the Forth nearest to us here—viz., the Avon, the Amond, and the Esk on this side; and the Dour, at Aberdour, on the opposite side of the Firth. For these are all old Aryan names, to be found as river appellations in many other spots of the world, and in some of its oldest dialects. The Amond or Avon is ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... dinna. It was just as you see it, lang afore your honour was born, an' aiblins, as the by-word says, may be sae after ye're hanged. But that's neither here nor there. The Cummins o' Buchan were a dour and surly race; and, for a fearfu' time, nane near han' nor far awa could ding them, an' yet mony a ane tried it. The fouk on their ain lan' likit them weel enough; but the Crawfords, an' the Grahames, an' the Mars, an' the Lovats, were aye trying to comb them against the hair, an' mony a weary ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... have sailed with ye three cruises," replied the captain. "In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I'm a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now—fie, fie!—it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of us Scots who were meant to be dour were always dour," Sir. S argued, "since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly climate—partly persecution. Both agreed with our constitutions. But look, here's the little house where one of the greatest geniuses who ever saw the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... good-looking young lady whom the said master was serving with exemplary diligence to fear dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl. The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a dour person where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an unfortunate ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the enemy, who ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... dog—that is the beginning of dancing: the end of it is the beginning of a world. A young dog is a piece of early morning disguised in an earthly fell, and the man who can resist his contagion is a sour, dour, miserable mistake, without bravery, without virtue, without music, with a cranky body and a shrivelled soul, and with eyes ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the town in a dour mood of unrest, spite of the promise of wealth he carried in his pocket. He mailed the package and the letter, and went to a saloon and had a highball. He was not a drinking man—at least, he never had been one, beyond a convivial glass or two with his fellows—but ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... and collars and flowing hair beseen. 'What is thy name?' I asked her, and she replied, 'I'm she Who roasts the hearts of lovers on coals of love and teen. I am the pure white silver, ay, and the gold wherewith The bondsmen from strait prison and dour released been.' Quoth I, 'I'm all with rigours consumed;' but 'On a rock,' Said she, 'such as my heart is, thy plaints are wasted clean.' 'Even if thy heart,' I answered, 'be rock in very deed, Yet hath God caused fair water well from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... now I'm ganging awa', for ye'll be wearied o' my cracks, and I am wearied wi' cracking without an answer—and I'se bring ye a bit o' bride's-cake ane o' thae days, and maybe bring Grace to see you. Ye wad like to see Grace, man, for as dour as ye are—Eh, Lord I I wish he may be weel, that was a sair grane! or, maybe, he thought I was speaking of heavenly grace, and no of Grace Armstrong. Poor man, I am very doubtfu' o' his condition; but I am sure he is ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... her head at him and glanced at Farrington, but that dour man had drawn a chair to the edge of the box, and was staring moodily down into ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... drily. She also had noticed that reflection in the mirror, and it had not helped to soothe her spirits. She felt an unreasoning anger against Claire for appearing more attractive than herself, but it did not occur to her that she was heightening the contrast by her own dour, ungracious manner. Altogether that tea-party was a difficult occasion, and as it proceeded, Claire's spirits sank ever lower and lower. She had spent more than she had any right to afford on those two expensive tickets, hoping thereby ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... back discouraged. What ailed the girl? She simply would not take life seriously. She would not lift her hand to help. When they were so poor and the future so dour, how could she keep from earning a little money? Was she condemned to be altogether useless, shiftless, unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could shift her to the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and women under all their difficulties. The faces are all sad and rather what the Scotch call 'dour,' not mechant at all, but harsh, like their voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the 'breasts like pomegranates' of their poetry. A tall Bedaween ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... explain this startling paradox? How is it, and why is it, that the artistic and exuberant, genial and sentimental German submits to the hard rule of the commonplace, uninteresting, and dour Prussian? ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... any road out of London?" But his crowning story, which he never missed as he cracked his four bays along on the first stage west out of Reading, was that of the Berkshire Lady, which, alas! my gifted countrywoman has now laid covetous hands on and claimed for that dour Lady Mary Hay, hereditary lord high constable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... dour Prime Minister of the greatest empire in the world, the Minister in charge of the Empire's defense measures, the editor of England's most powerful newspaper, the Right Honorable Speaker of the House of Commons, the sister-in-law of England's leading fascist and several others started ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... word is a euphemism) his scout songs in his strong young voice. Curious smells emanated from the depth of the garden where William performed mysterious culinary operations. One old lady whose cat had disappeared looked at William with dour suspicion in her eye whenever he passed. Even the return of her cat a few weeks later did not remove the hostility from her gaze whenever it happened ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... and shine before me. Not places to shrink back from—oh no! no! One could be sure, then—SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary triumph in his look—even Feargus, who had been rather dour. ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mud-caked and dour. A very smart figure is this Private Dowey, and he winks engagingly at the visitors, like one who knows that for jolly company you cannot easily beat charwomen. The pleasantries that he and they have exchanged this week! ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... dour Scottish comments upon the boy's school report for a more seemly occasion than the first day of his holidays; but Kerry had made no attempt to conceal his jubilation—almost immoral, his wife had declared it to be—respecting the lad's athletic record. His work on ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... been complete, and that after conviction of her sin had come to her her conduct had been sweet and seemly. They were of their day and age, those people, accustomed almost daily to beheadings, stranglings, burnings, hangings, and dismemberings. With that dour, bitter, fire-and- brimstone religious conception which they had through Knox from Calvin, they were probably quite sincere in their belief that the public repentance Jean Livingstone was due to make from the scaffold would be for the "comfort of God's people.'' It was not so often ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... an my leddy sat doon to brak their fast—no freely i' the same humour, the twa o' them, as ye may weel believe. Whan they war aboot half throu', wha sud come stridin' in, some dour an' ill pleased like, but the prence himsel'! Baith yerl an' leddy startit up: 'at they sud hae sitten doon till a meal ohn even adverteest their veesitor that sic was their purpose! They made muckle adu wi' apologies an' explanations, but the prence aye booed an' booed, an' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... It was a happiness to float on such celestial waters and cast the hopeful fly. The trout were there; they were large; I saw them; they also saw me; but, alas! I could not raise them. Misurina is, in fact, what the Scotch call "a dour loch," one of those places which are outwardly beautiful, but inwardly so demoralised that ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... gey dour-like—he's as bucksturdie as a mule when he tak's't in's heid—"but we're no' deid yet, an' we'll mibby manish to garr some fowk winder yet, when a's dune. What's been dune afore can be dune again; the speerit o' Bannockburn's no' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... served to keep them both occupied—Hazel as much as he, for she went out with him on all but the hardest trips. So that their isolation in the hushed, white world where the frost ruled with an iron hand had not so far become oppressive. They were too busy to develop that dour affliction of the spirit which loneliness and idleness breed through the long winters ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... jousting? Let no sluggard come out to me nor weakling; for I am Al-Damigh, the King, brother of Kundamir the King." Then there rushed forth a horseman of the Kafirs, as he were a flame of fire, and crave at Al-Damigh, without word said; but the King received him with a lance thrust in the breast so dour that the point issued from between his shoulders and Allah hurried his soul to the fire, the abiding-place dire. Then came forth a second he slew, and a third he slew likewise, and they ceased not to come out to him and he to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... atween them and all the rest of the world. They never go away anywheres, except to church—they never miss that—and nobody goes there. There's just old Thomas, and his sister Janet, and a niece of theirs, and this here Neil we've been talking about. They're a queer, dour, cranky lot, and I WILL say it, Mother. There, give your old man a cup of tea and never mind the way his tongue runs on. Speaking of tea, do you know Mrs. Adam Palmer and Mrs. Jim Martin took tea together at Foster Reid's ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... point of beauty in him, we might have been more lenient; only we found it not, and, I admit, took little pains to search. I shall never forget the look of dour forgiveness with which he heard our excuses for missing Morning Prayers that Sunday morning of our single visit to The Towers. My sister learned that a change was made soon afterwards, prayers being "conducted" ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... the seat, and bowed my chest right down to my knees; I was almost distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall—God knows how I got there—and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me by; otherwise ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... on the way down; and I'm sure it's fu' o' creeping things and beasts. And then when I was near the foot, I put my hand on something leevin', and it flew up and hit me; and in a meenit the whole place was alive. Man, what a noise it was! And then down came the rope, and I fell; and I got sich a dour on the head!' ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Bruce, for example, Professor of Engineering, was a soldier in a few weeks and a fine one. In time of peace, a quiet, humorous, dour and religious-minded man, he was now a stern disciplinarian and a cunning foe who fought to kill, rejoicing in the carnage that taught a lesson and made for earlier peace. The mind that had dreamed of universal brotherhood and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... and Annis agreed that it was as good as a ballad, and ought to be sung in one, only Jean would have to figure as the 'dour lassie.' For she continued to aver, by turns, that Geordie need never have meddled, and that of course it was his bounden duty to stand by his King's sister, and that she owed him no thanks. If he were hanged for it he had run ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a dour-looking individual at a counter at the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said rather inanely, "Hello!"—but what does one say ...
— Lost in the Future • John Victor Peterson
... kill The Master before nightfall. It was not quite practicable. Bell and Jamison started out well before dawn with a favorable wind and tide, in the small launch the wizened Welshman placed at their disposal. His air was one of dour piety, but he accepted Bell's offer of money with an obvious relief, and criticized his Paraguayan currency with an acid frankness until Jamison produced Argentine pesos sufficient to pay for the boat three ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... bet on me against Black McTee?" queried the engineer, deeply moved. "Well, lad, McTee's a dour man, but dour or not he shall not run the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... said at another time, "twa or three even dared to question the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to the kirk-officer. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... McPherson one night after a session meeting, but fortunately J. P. Thornton prevented his impetuous friend making the mistake of approaching the elder on that difficult subject. Jock was still feeling a little dour over the temperance question and the wise Englishman knew that whichever side of the cause was presented first that was the side to which the McPherson ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... feeling; his black eyes glittered wickedly, and it was plain that he sounded the note of revolt which was rising from the law-abiding Italian element. His appearance bore out his reputation for leadership, for he was big and black and dour, and he gave the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... are carefully described in the Durham Rites. At Durham "in the north syde of the cloister, from the corner over against the church dour to the corner over againste the Dortor dour, was all fynely glased, from the highs to the sole within a litle of the grownd into the cloister garth. And in every wyndowe iij pewes or carrells, where every one of the old ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... and effectually brought back to a dour sense of reality by Evelyn Forbes's next words. She, by chance, looked at Theydon just as she had looked at ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... he came into the room where Robert sat, and began once more to question him. But Robert was still obdurate, and stolidly kept silent. Mr. Clapper recognized at once that this was a clear case of a dour nature in the wrong. It needed correction, and that of a severe kind. That spirit he felt must be broken, or there would be trouble ahead in after years for Robert Sinclair. Mr. Clapper was determined to do his duty, and he believed that Robert in later life would probably ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... flee from him. They would be coming into his house to wish him well, to reestablish old relations with him. Why, it would be almost like holding a reception. He would be to those of his own age as a friend of their youth, returning after a long absence to his people, with the dour stranger who had lived in his house while he was away now driven out and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic—the dour preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults, light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout imaginations" is often mingled with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that. I didn't git home much afore darruk, and me owld horse wasn't more nor in the shtable an' I 'atin' me supper, quiet like, afore Belcher druv up to me house wid his purty man on the seat wid 'im. An' says he: 'Mike Conlin! Mike Conlin! Come to the dour wid ye!' So I wint to the dour, an' he says, says he: 'Hev ye seen a crazy old feller wid a b'y?' An' says I: 'There's no crazy owld feller wid a b'y been by me house in the daytime. If they wint ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... belyve the morn rose unco mirk an' dreary, wi' bullers (rollers) frae the west like muckle sowthers (soldiers) wi' white plumes. I tauld the captain 'twas a' the faut o' Maxwell. I ne'er cad bide the blellum. Dour an' din he was, wi' ae girn like th' auld hornie. But the captain wadna hark to my rede when I tauld him naught but dool wad ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were protesting too well and too much. Marie Louise hated herself for even the disloyalty of such a criticism of them, but she was repelled somehow by such rhetoric, and she liked far better the dour silence of old Mr. Verrinder. He looked a bishop who had got into a layman's evening dress by mistake. He was something very impressive and influential in the government, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... was atrocious; so was the next morning; but about noon we were cheered by the sight of the glorious mountain-walls of well-remembered Midian, which stood out of the clear blue sky in passing grandeur of outline, in exceeding splendid dour of colouring, and in marvellous sharpness of detail. Once more the "power of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... smile. The Rector was conscious of her vivid face, framed in a fringe of black hair, of a mischievousness in her beauty, some careless abandon in the swing of her limbs. But something in the level dark brows of the Rector, something that was dour, forbade her smile. It died in a little flush of confusion. The peasants passed and the Rector gave them time to make some headway before he resumed ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Irishman with no regard for the Sabbath," returned Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour old Scotchman might tell upon him. It would not pay ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... remember the plaint of the wind on the moor, Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day, And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour, And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... and dour. He had held socialistic views in his fiery youth, but had changed his mind like the rest of us when he found himself rising in the world. In these days he received a percentage on the Works profits, and cursed the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Jr., was not greatly abashed as he faced the dour tribunal of the faculty. The younger members, among whom were several he knew to be mighty good fellows at heart, sat at the lower end of the long table, and with owlish gravity attempted to emulate the appearance ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta's fingers, and Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... lodging in the meanwhile in the smoky spence which he mentions in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop. In the progress of the building he not only took a lively interest, but actually worked with his own hands as a labourer, and gloried in his strength: 'he beat all for a dour lift.' But it was some time before he could settle down to the necessarily monotonous work of farming. 'My late scenes of idleness and dissipation,' he confessed to Dunbar, 'have enervated my mind to a considerable degree.' He was restless and rebellious at times, and we are ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Kames went for the first time on the Circuit as Advocate-depute, Armstrong of Sorbie inquired of Lord Minto in a whisper "What long black, dour-looking Chiel" that was that ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... where Naundorff found his last partisans. That is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotiere you can have a person bewitched for a louis. Add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... brought him word that William Roper had come. Mr. Manley bade him bring him to him at a quarter-past. He felt that suspense would make William Roper malleable, and he intended to hammer him. At thirteen minutes past nine he composed his face into a dour truculence, an expression to which the heavy conformation of the lower part ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... however, whether the whole society was composed of "natural Quakers," who, like Holcroft and Godwin, preached non-resistance before Tolstoy. The dour commonsense of Hardy maintained the theory—he vowed that it was only theory—that every citizen should possess arms and know their use. As the Revolution went forward in France, the agitation in England became increasingly reckless. When the society held its anniversary dinner after ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the lonely post a little settlement had gathered—a band of sturdy Scots. Those dour and doughty pioneers of peoples had planted on the Red River their homes upon their little "strip" farms—a rampart of civilization against the wide, wild prairie, the home of the buffalo, and camp ground of ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the gayest ever known at Boobyalla; never had Mrs. Donald Macdougal been so prodigal, never had such lavish hospitality been dispensed under Macdougal's roof-tree, and the squatter wore a dour and anxious look as he saw the liquor flowing, and heard the music, and the laughter, and the clatter of dishes, and found himself in collision with his wife's guests in all the passages and windings of his large, wandering homestead. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... squatting on the stoep, just in front of the hall-door, and altogether declining to do anything; so he is superseded by an equally ugly little red- headed Englishman. The Irish housemaid has married the German baker (a fine match for her!), and a dour little Scotch Presbyterian has come up from Capetown in her place. Such are the vicissitudes of colonial house-keeping! The only 'permanency' is the old soldier of Captain D-'s regiment, who is barman in ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the little white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the little fingers where his foolish ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... prosecution was Sir Herbert Templewood, K.C., M.P., a political barrister, with a Society wife, a polished manner, and a deadly gift of cross-examination. With him was Mr. Grover Braecroft, a dour Scotch lawyer of fifty-five, who was currently believed to know the law from A to Z, and really had an intimate acquaintance with those five letters which made up the magic word Costs. Apart from this valuable knowledge, he was a cunning ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Avenue he paused, startled fairly out of his dour mood by the loud echo of a name already become too hatefully familiar to his ears, and by the sight of what, at first glance, he took to be the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... looked up and saw the subject of them approaching. He lifted his helmet, but met my eyes unsmilingly, with a sort of sober scrutiny. He had the tanned skin of a sailor, and brown hair cropped close and showing a trace of gray. This and a certain dour grim look he had made me at first consider him quite middle-aged, though I knew later that he was not yet thirty-five. As to the grimness, perhaps, I unwillingly conceded, part of it was due to the scar which seamed the right temple to the eyebrow, in a straight ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, irascible child and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... may be richt, Mirran," replied her spouse. "It's no sic a cheery subjec' 'at we sud hae muckle to say to ane anither anent it! He's a man noo, and weel luikit upo'; but it maks unco little differ to his parents! He's jist as dour as ever, and as far as man could weel be frae them he cam o'!—never a word to the ane or the ither o' 's! Gien we war twa dowgs, he couldna hae less to say til's, and micht weel hae mair! I s' warran' Frostie says mair in ae half-hoor to his tyke, ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... and the Maharajah of Dour, both about 15 or 16, have been sent together to an English Boarding School. Glyn's father has been for many years a Colonel in the Maharajah's father's army, but now the old Maharajah is dead, and his son, known at school as "Singh", has inherited the title. The Colonel ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... of humor, had he ever possessed one, had long since been ruined in his battles with Father Dominic's automobile, raised a dour face. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... have been, save for her? And upon that thought he got to his feet, uttering an exclamation of bitter self-reproach, asking himself angrily what he was doing. He knew how much she gave him, what full measure of her affection! Was not that enough?—Out upon you, Louden! Are you to sulk in your tent, dour in the gloom, or to play a man's part, and if she be happy, turn a ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... eyne did the glamour of Faerie pass And the Rymour lay on Eildon grass. He lay in the heather on Eildon Hill; He gazed on the dour Scots sky his fill. His staff beside him was brash with rot; The weed grew rank in his unthatch'd cot: "Syne gloaming yestreen, my shepherd kind, What hath happ'd this cot we ruin'd find?" "Syne gloaming yestreen, and years twice three, Hath wind and rain therein made free; Ye sure will a stranger ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... "there canna weel be twa i' this warl' 'at ken ane anither better nor you an' me. We hae been bairns thegither; we hae been to the schuil thegither; we hae had the same maister; we hae come throu dour times thegither—I doobt we hae been hungry thegither, though ye saidna a word; we hae warstlet wi' poverty, an' maybe wi' unbelief; we loe the same fowk best; an' abune a' we set the wull o' God. It wad be sair upo' baith o' 's to pairt—an' to me a vex forby ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... knighted at Lonon court, wi' the king's ain sword; and being a redhot prelatist, he came down here, rampauging like a lion, with commissions of lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken) to put down a' the Whigs and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of it; for the Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was which should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was ay for the strong hand; and his name is kend as wide in the country as Claverhouse's or Tam Dalyell's. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the puir hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... manifest. And the sea is a jewel that she bears upon her bosom,—a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... other people. In all that time the agent felt that he was getting no nearer the root of Aleck's trouble, though he came back after each dismissal and doggedly took whatever was offered. Finally, the agent's patience wore thin, and when Aleck had been more than usually dour and aggravating it went entirely to pieces. Aleck listened to his outburst apparently unmoved; then said, "Very well, if you want to know what would make me stop drinking, I'll tell you. If I could see any ray of hope that I was on the way to getting my home and family back, I'd ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... got near done with the world, and you are a slashing young chap, and the girls look after you. But still, though I am parting with the world, and you have got a long time to stay in it, I am better off than you. The sight of these flowers makes me joyful, but it only seems to make you dour. Now, shall I tell you how it is that I am ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... There's a tradition that a Scotsman is a dour body without any sentiment. Well—I must ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... received with laughter by Mrs. Amber, Marie and Desmond; Julia only smiled and Rokeby thought, "What a dour young female! What a cold douche! What a ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Pee-Wee safe and sound asleep in the swing-box that dour old Whinstane Sandy had manufactured out of a packing-case, with Francois' robe of plaited rabbit-skin to keep their tootsies warm. I'd finished my ironing and bathed little Dinkie and buttoned him up in his sleepers and made him hold his little hands together while I said his ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... made a powerful demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the first and the second divisions while the first division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration The Second Corps retired on the line of Dour, Quarouble and Frameries. The third division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... ago. The two friends, scorning delights, living laborious days, had seen but little of one another. Light-hearted Annie had borne to her dour partner two children who had died. Nathaniel George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on, and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, Kensington. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It was scarred and impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heather was not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people were dour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and knitted their brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered by the gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, closely reminiscent ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... her," said Teressa. "She was neither to bind nor to stay. An' the tongue of her. Callin' us a lock a' papishes an' fenians! Sure, she was sittin' on Father Ryan's dour-step till past twelve o'clock wavin' an or'nge scarf, an' singin' ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... bonnily the while, an' when the tea was weel maskit, she smoored her wrath an' stappit her mooth wi' a bit o' oaten cake. We aye keep that i' the hoose, for th' auld servant-body is geyan bad at the cookin', an' she's sae dour an' dowie that to speak but till her ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be angry, but are you quite sure you really care, and is it wise to care? We are so very different. You are so very English, and I, in spite of a pink and fluffy exterior, am at heart as bitter and dour and prejudiced as any Covenanter that ever whined a psalm. My mind could never have anything but a Scots accent. You are reserved, and rather cold; I am expansive to a fault. You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Saunders cam tae me a haflin, and hes been on Drumsheugh for twenty years, an' though he be a dour chiel, he's a faithfu' servant as ever lived. It's waesome tae see him lyin' there moanin' like some dumb animal frae mornin' tae nicht, an' no able tae answer his ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... and forth between the two, wondering wildly what they would say if he turned the whole thing down. His eyes lit on the dour, heavy Number One, and inwardly he shook his head. No. There was no question about that. You didn't turn down Zoran Jankez. He looked at Aleksander Kardelj, and in spite of the other's smiling face, he decided you didn't turn ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a day has since rollit ower me, and I am now but a dour carle, whose auld pow the roll o' time hath blanched; my bonnie Janet is gone to her last hame, lang syne, my bairns hae a' fa'en kemping for their king and country, and I ainly am left like a withered auld trunk, waiting ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... watched its approach for weeks. And he knew that sooner or later it must be faced. He was even inclined to force it now, for such was his way. Trouble was in her eyes, and he felt certain of its nature. Nita was not made of the stuff that could withstand the grind of the dour life of the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and demanded the "Frau Graefin." By Carter's advice I had removed my moustache, and my clean-shaven countenance, together with my black felt hat and dark overcoat, gave me, I think, that appearance of rather dour respectability which one looks ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... REDMOND. Enough of this foolery. Enough of the deliberate falsehood of Ministers. I go to Ireland at once, where half a million resolute, dour, determined men are ready to defy this Government ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... deep-set, keen eyes and brown, thin faces; Evans, who was supposed to be over-seer, and important enough to arrive late; younger fellows, like Fred Anderson and David Boone (the latter's hair suspiciously smooth and shiny); Hogg, the dour old man who ruled the flower garden and every one but Norah; and a sprinkling of odd rouseabouts and boys, very sleek and well brushed, in garments of varying make, low collars, and the tie the bushman loves "for best"—pale blue satin, with what Wally termed "jiggly patterns" on it. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... his awakening strength, (Morning and spring in the air, The strong clean scents of earth, The call of the golden shaft, Ringing across the hills) He takes up his heartening book, Opens the volume and reads, A page of old rugged Carlyle, The dour philosopher Who looked askance upon life, Lurid, ironical, grim, Yet sound at the core. But weariness returns; He lays the book aside With his glasses upon the bed, And gladly sleeps. Sleep, Blessed abundant sleep, Is all that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dour the climb with slip and slime, King Ted he doesn't care, Till, cracking peanuts on a rock, Behold, a Grizzly Bear! King Theodore he shows his teeth, But ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... looked so worried, so unlike himself! Then the brothers were interrogated, but proved less easy to "draw." Archie flew into a rage at the notion of sinister intentions on Brian's part. Donald looked "dour," and flatly ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... unshaken. But if I did so, and came presently to DOUN, which is the classical Scots spelling of the English DOWN, I should begin to feel uneasy; and if I went on a little farther, and came to a classical Scots word, like STOUR or DOUR or CLOUR, I should know precisely where I was - that is to say, that I was out of sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a lad o' laigh degree, Her purse-proud daddy 's dour an' saucy; An' sair the carle wad scowl on me, For speakin' to his dawtit lassie: But were I laird o' Leven's glen, An' she a humble shepherd's daughter, I 'd kneel, an' court her for my ain, The bonny lass ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... march was to Dour, in Belgium, and for us a bad day's march it was. My job was to keep touch with the 14th Brigade, which was advancing along a parallel road to the west.[5] That meant riding four or five miles across ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... read a paper propped up against their cups, and did not speak much, and you would have thought they were quite indifferent; but from where I sat I could see their right and left hands clasped under the table! Another pair with a dour Scotch look ate an enormous meal in solemn silence, and then they went off and played tennis! Their wedding took place three days ago!! The third had been there a fortnight, and seemed very jaded and bored, while ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... her closest woman friend giving her complete countenance. If a separation, who to blame? The husband, doubtless. In fact, there was already springing up in her Eastern circle, I was to find, the tradition of a dour, stiff man, years too old, with whom it ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... curiosity of the younger had led them to and fro. Out there the line between mistress and servant had inevitably been supplanted by the bond of companionship; but when they returned to the more humdrum civilization of the western world, it was Janet whose dour Scotch rectitude had re-established the distinction. She took her meals with old Bates at a little table in the butlery, found her chief relaxation in the one motion-picture house that Hambleton boasted, and for the rest, "kept herself ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... sitting by the living-room window and came to a stop. Mr. Darner was a dour, heavy-set man with a coarse, bristling gray beard. He glared at Whiteface ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... that of the Times remains to be mentioned. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a dour Scot with a lot of gumption in his head, was chairman of one on Imperial versus local taxation. My easy task was to show the excess of the latter in Kerry, which is the highest taxed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... particulier of that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame Helene Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban. A survival of the Revolution, a vast, dour pile that had known few changes since the days of its construction, it occupied a large, unkempt park, irregularly triangular in shape, bounded by two streets and an avenue, and rendered private by high walls crowned with broken glass. Carriage gates opened on the avenue, guarded ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... mystical jargon could Martin extract from the dour Scot. MacLean would shake his head and mumble that feydom brooded over the brig and hint ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... in anything but the mood for joking, yet a certain dour humour in the jest caught his fancy and persuaded him against his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... much distressed to have harm happen to him, and he was very much concerned and alarmed to see him so candidly discouraged and sick at heart. Perhaps too quick to draw an inference, Robbins mistrusted his intentions; his dour habit boded ill in the servant's understanding: men in such moods were apt to act unwisely. But if only he might contrive to delay Duncan until Kellogg's return, he thought the former might yet be saved from the consequences of folly of some insensate ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... but Alec micht hae committed a waur sin than thrashin' the dominie. He's a dour crater, that Murdoch Malison, wi' his fair face and his picket words. I doot the bairns hae the warst o' 't in general. And for Alec I hae great houpes. He comes o' a guid stock. His father, honest man, was ane o' the Lord's ain, although he didna ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... mercy I was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever have been contented to be anything else. The little dour deevil, set in her own ways, and getting them, too, level-headed and shrewd, with an eye to the main chance always and yet so lovingly weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so easily touched to fine issues, so leal, so true. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... this is the life of the farm, where Jenny is brought up by an uncle who hates her; where she tends his bedridden wife; where her cousin Beatrice goes wrong; where Beatrice's betrayer is killed in an accident, and her baby falls into the fire; and where finally the dour uncle himself, after shooting the young squire who has offered dishonourable addresses to Jenny, allows her to pay the penalty of his crime. There is undeniable strength about the book and it holds the attention; but I dispute the right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... laddie,' said the major; 'but what next?' And as Arthur hesitated, 'I misdoubt greatly whether Burnside would give you a helping hand if you came fresh from colloguing with French Jacobites, though my father and all the rest of us at the Lynn aye told him that he might thank himself and his dour old dominie for your prank—you were but a schoolboy then—you are a man now; and though your poor mother would be blithe to set eyes on you, she would be sairly perplexed what gate you had best turn thereafter. Now, see here! There's ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a quiver in his voice, "there you touch it. She ought to go away. There is no one for her to marry here, where we haven't seen a white man for years, and she's a lady right enough, like her mother. But who is she to go to, being a Roman Catholic whom my own dour Presbyterian folk in Scotland, if any of them are left, would turn their backs on? Moreover, she loves me in her own fashion, as I love her, and she wouldn't leave me because she thinks it her duty to stay and knows that if she did, I should go to the devil ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... took her to her first theater—it was Sanger's Circus—and the clown pretended to fall from the tightrope, and the drum went bang! she said: "Take me away! take me away! you ought never to have brought me here!" No wonder she was considered a dour child! ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... figure gave promise of exceptional physical strength, while his great cranium and deep-set, lustrous eyes spoke no less clearly of the keen intelligence which twinkled out from behind his bushy eyebrows. He was a silent, precise man with a dour nature and a ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... home to the House of Stones All the way, all the way, To his grave in the sound of the winter sea: The sky was dour, the sky was gray. They played him home with the chieftain's dirge, Till the wail was wed to the rolling surge, They played him home with a sorrowful will To his grave at the foot of the Holy Hill And the pipes went mourning ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... audience, its character emphasized by the appearance of priests clad in the distinctive garments of their orders. It was his duty to oppose a great mass of legislation intended to strengthen that Church and to add to its privileges. His spirit rose and he grew more dour and resolute as he realized the strength of the forces opposed ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... sure this was a deliberate untruth. He bit his lip. "Well, I looked to find myself in an enemy's country at this Tergou; but maybe if ye knew all ye would not be so dour." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... way it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at this young man's arm. Get water and ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... 'm wand'ring wide this wintry night, I 'm wand'ring wide and late, And ridgy wreaths afore me rise, As if to bar my gate; Around me swirls the sleety drift, The frost bites dour an' keen; But breathings warm, frae lovin' lips, Come ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Richard Monckton Milnes, Laurence Oliphant, Sydney Dobell, among others, who took a kindly interest in my dying comrade. But afterwards, when I was left to fight the battle alone, the place was solitary. Ever reserved and independent, not to say "dour" and opinionated, I made no friends, and cared for none. I had found a little work on the newspapers and magazines, just enough to keep body and soul alive, and while occupied with this I was busy on the literary Twins to which I referred at the opening of this paper. What did my isolation ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... that; you do not know the dour temper of the Scots, though you have dealt with them so often. I have a right to know them, my ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... was reported to Pretoria almost simultaneously with the news that Cronje was hemmed in at Paardeberg. But owing it may be to the distance which intervened between Kruger and the scene of action, the dour old voortrekker of Colesberg would not hear of any voluntary retirement before the enemy who had driven him out of the Cape Colony sixty years before. He sent an appeal to the Boers of the Tugela which, in an intense human ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... and winsome though she was, it was not long before Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman, John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and Secretary Lethington that a modus vivendi might be found by persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... a heavy-set, dour of countenance man seated at a desk. He looked into Joe Prantera's ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Dour-like he gaed, wi' doon-hingin heid, Quhill he cam, by the licht o' the mune, Quhaur michty stanes lay scattert like sheep, An' ance ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... or so, we, traveling rapidly, passed the column, which was made up of cavalry, artillery and baggage trains. I suppose the infantry was going by another road. The dragoons sang German marching songs as they rode by, but the artillerymen were dour and silent lot for the most part. Repeatedly I noticed that the men who worked the big German guns were rarely so cheerful as the men who belonged to the other wings of the service; certainly it was ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... nae food had they, but twa ounce a day o' meal was the maist they'd get. And men fight but tame on an empty wame, so they sent a flag o' truce, And blithe were the Privy Council then, when the Whigs had heard that news. Twa Lords they sent wi' a strang intent to be dour on each Cavalier, But wi' French cakes fine, and his last drap o' wine, did Middleton make them cheer, On the muzzles o' guns he put coats and caps, and he set them aboot the wa's, And the Whigs thocht then he had food and men to stand for the Rightfu' ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang |
