"Lugubrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buildings, the grandeur of the whole design, the greatness of Chicago. Then they drove to a vast new hotel in which Mr. Parker had taken a conservative interest, and they still talked of the marvellous growth of the city, its Ultimate Destiny,—terms which had a lugubrious sound in the New Englander's piping voice. As they turned northwards around the great oval of Washington Park, the sun was sinking into a golden haze of dust and smoke. The horses dropped to a peaceful walk, and Milly knew that it was coming and braced herself ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... receive consolation was quite as ready as her grief had at first been impetuous; the sobs which seemed to be breaking her heart ceased all at once; new thoughts, more gentle, less lugubrious, took possession of the young queen's mind; the trace of tears vanished, and a smile lit up her liquid eyes like the sun's ray following on rain. This change, anxiously awaited, was soon observed by Joan's chamberwoman: ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... has a stolid expression, redeemed slightly, perhaps, by its exchange often for a lugubrious one. I should feel disposed to predict for him the scoring of an immense success in the personation of such characters as those of the melancholy Dane; or of Antonio, in the Merchant of Venice, after the turn of the tide in his fortunes, when the vengeful figure of the remorseless ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... poor fellows were glad to take service as watchmen of infected houses, or even as bearers and buriers of the dead. At a time when trade was at a standstill, and men feared alike to buy or to sell, this perilous and lugubrious occupation was all that could be obtained, and so there were always men to be found for the task of watching the houses, though at other times it might have been ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... now and then he would say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him, speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to dispel a black silence which on the present occasion would have been specially lugubrious. Upon the whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought respecting him. He was not wanted there, and he ought not to have come. She had given him an ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... by a lucky chance he might discover the one who laughed; and just as he was about to turn back to the camp of his friends he did catch a sound that immediately fastened his attention, only instead of merriment, it was rather a lugubrious little song, sung half under the breath—a song that possibly had the power to bring before the mind of the singer the face of the dear mother who had taught her to sing it, a song that affected even Cuthbert as he stood ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... speaker observed, "the new junior does strike one as being downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"—with a lugubrious sigh—"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for the remainder of ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to flee from the Forest the first thing in the morning. Then he condoled with Mrs. Bernard on a mishap to her child that other people avoided speaking of, for the consequences were likely to be very serious, and she had not yet been made fully aware of them. There was a peculiar, low, lugubrious note in his voice which caused it to be audible through the room, and Bessie, who sat opposite to him, between Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Mr. Logger, devoted all her conversation to them to avoid that of the rector. But he had taken note of her at the moment ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... men-ah; fer the ox knoweth-ah his owner-ah, and the ass-ah, his master's crib-ah. Now, my respective hearers-ah" [the preacher's voice here grew mellow, and the succeeding sentences were in the most pathetic and lugubrious tones], "you all know-ah that your humble speaker-ah has got-ah jest the best yoke of steers-ah in this township-ah." [Here Betsey Short shook the floor with a suppressed titter.] "They a'n't no sech steers as them air ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late comte by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... now represents a room of ten feet square, the floor of which is sunk a yard or two below the level of the ground; the walls are covered with a dirty and crumbling plaster, on which appear a crowd of ill-favored and lugubrious faces done in charcoal, and the autographs and poetical attempts of a long succession of debtors and petty criminals. Other features of the apartment are a deep fireplace (superfluous in the sultriness of the summer's ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ceremony, like those prevalent among other Celtic peoples, is indeed a lugubrious affair, and somewhat recalls the Irish wake in its strange mixture of mourning and feasting; but curiously enough brightness reigns afterward, for the peasant is absolutely assured that at the moment his friend is placed in the tomb he commences a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... again. Somebody appeared at the doorway, a pull of cotton waste in his hand, and turned a negroid face, made lugubrious by white lines which sweat had channelled downwards through its coal dust. It looked at me, this spectre with eyes brilliant yet full of unutterable reproach, saw that I was awake, and winked slowly. It was the second engineer. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... bankroll. He remembered it as the kind of place where an order of scrambled eggs was liable to come in, flaming, on a golden sabre. But Luba wanted the Solar Room, and Malone was not at all sure she wouldn't use blackmail if he turned her down. "Fine," he said in a lugubrious tone. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... police-boat they had promised to have in readiness in case I needed rescue from the water-side. Otherwise the surroundings were as usual, and saving the gruff singing of some drunken sailor coming from a narrow side street near by, no sound disturbed the somewhat lugubrious silence of ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... The attic roof, which sloped sharply on both sides of the room, was full of chinks through which the wind penetrated. Nothing could be less stately, yet nothing was ever more solemn than this lugubrious ceremony. Silence so deep that some far-distant cry could have pierced it, lent a sombre majesty to the nocturnal scene. The grandeur of the occasion contrasted vividly with the poverty of its circumstances, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... temple of the Maha Phrasat, where it was mounted on a graduated platform about six feet high. During this part of the ceremony, and while the trumpeters and the blowers of conch-shells performed their lugubrious parts, his Majesty sat apart, his face buried in his hands, confessing a keener anguish than had ever before cut ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... short-sighted you all are to be discussing education and plans for the future, when this unhappy child is so plainly marked for the tomb," sighed Aunt Myra, with a lugubrious sniff and a solemn wag of the funereal bonnet, which she refused to remove, being afflicted with ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... morning," said Mrs. Tarbell; and she turned to the office-boy, with whom she began to converse in an undertone. Mrs. Stiles came walking across the floor, slow and lugubrious. She bade Mrs. Tarbell good-day. Mrs. Tarbell bowed her out as quickly as possible, and then waited for a couple of minutes to give her time to get ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... letters he ought to have written that afternoon. Angelica beguiled him successfully on the way out, however, so that he did not notice the distance, but on the way back her manner changed. So far she had been all brightness and animation; now she became lugubrious, and took a morbid view of things. She talked of all the men of middle age who had died lately, and of what they had died of, showing that most of them were taken off suddenly when in perfect health apparently, and usually without any premonitory symptoms of disease. It was all the result ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... means this foolery? Bid your band silence that dead march—or, by my word, they shall have sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains! Silence it, sirrah!" ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... did she learn. But her studies had again been interrupted, and Miss Grover, her teacher, riding over one day to find out why her prize scholar had deserted, met in the road an empty "jolt-wagon," followed by a ragged cortege of mounted men and women, whose faces were still lugubrious with the effort of recent mourning. Her questions elicited the information that they were returning from the "buryin'" of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... enough," would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a most lugubrious countenance—"it is enough, Morgiana, that I should suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin. But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know you are now repentant; and I never could ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a lot of fun for the rest of you," said Billy, in a lugubrious tone, as he rubbed the leg that had been bound to that of his partner, "but it is not so funny ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... curiosities; and as to the tea, the grounds, apparently the peat of the valley, filled up nearly an eighth of the cup, causing Lucilla in lugubrious mirth to talk of 'That lake whose gloomy tea, ne'er saw Hyson nor Bohea,' when Rashe fretfully retorted, 'It is very unkind in you to grumble at everything, when you ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too much, has been written concerning Roumanian funerals. That they are showy, almost to irreverence, and that the exposure of the face of the corpse in its glazed coffin is repulsive, there can be no doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' in black and feathers which are still to be seen in England; and there, as here, it is to be hoped that with improving national taste these exhibitions ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... establishment since Mary's departure; but in her might be easily recognised the Tia, the individual who in Limenian households holds a position between companion and housekeeper. She introduced herself by the lugubrious appellation of Senora Dolores, and, receiving Mary with obsequious courtesy, explained that the Senor and Senora were at a tertulia, or evening party. She lighted Mary and Mr. Ward into the quadra; and there Mr. Ward, shaking ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ordinary eyes can hardly see with a magnifying-glass. So it happens that a camp of six thousand sick and wounded, which seems at a distance a concentration of human misery that you cannot bear to behold, when near does not look half so lugubrious as you expected; and you are tempted to accuse the sick men of having entered into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... so considered. He had been a man who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life merry and delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish this dedication of his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion. Outside, when the services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J. T. Trowbridge, came up to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said: "Trowbridge, are you still alive? You must be a thousand years ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proved, unhappily, very infectious. It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of croakers in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The severe losses sustained by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those European ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... habitation. Sedaine made a true capture of a little province of nature. When Mercier (1740-1814) tried to write in the same vein, his "nature" was that of declamatory sentiment imposed upon trivial incidents. Beaumarchais, in his earlier pieces, was tearful and romantic; happily he repented him of his lugubrious sentiment, and restored to France its old gaiety in the Barbier de Seville and the inimitable Mariage de Figaro; but amid the mirth of Figaro can be heard the detonation ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself, you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness for me if the peace which I ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... somewhat lugubrious when the door opened and Miss Mildmay senior came in. It was not very often that their aunt paid the girls a visit in their own little sitting-room, and they both looked ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... garret, that had opened, she had inserted the neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to be that ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on the point of dropping asleep, when I was twice disturbed. Once, by an owl, hooting in the ivy outside—no unaccustomed sound, but harsh and melancholy; once, by a long and mournful howling set up by the mastiff, chained in the yard beyond the wing I occupied. A long-drawn, lugubrious howling was this latter, and much such a note as the vulgar declare to herald a death in the family. This was a fancy I had never shared; but yet I could not help feeling that the dog's mournful moans were sad, and expressive of terror, not at all like his fierce, honest bark of anger, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... movements, and is remarkable for its frequent unconnected changes of key. Melancholy ideas were evidently uppermost in Schubert's mind at this time in connection with music, for the 'Hagar' was followed by another piece of even more lugubrious character, called 'Leichenfantasie' (Corpse-fantasia), a musical setting of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... destiny was not to be thrust aside by a woman's love. For out of the silence there burst a sound which to her quivering nerves was fraught with word of death; that sound which in countless human hearts presages a death before the dawn—the long, lugubrious howling of a dog. It seemed to her to burst out of the nothingness of the sky, to arise in the void of an unseen ghostly world where spirit voices foretold ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... my own had flitted by, and the gondoliers had warned each other at every turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries; the lines of balconied palaces had never ended;—here and there at their doors larger craft were moored, with dim figures of men moving uncertainly about on them. At last we had passed abruptly out of the Grand Canal into one of the smaller channels, and from comparative ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... have been thinking—thinking. Sit down there, and let me look at you again." Newman seated himself, folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for some time. "Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I'm a dying man and it's indecent to deceive me. Something ...
— The American • Henry James
... little pause of breathless silence between them. Then as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed with lugubrious reverberation through the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... would beg to be allowed to enliven the occasion by the instant introduction of a brief double-shuffle. Barry Cornwall told me that when he and Charles Lamb were once making up a dinner-party together, Charles asked him not to invite a certain lugubrious friend of theirs. "Because," said Lamb, "he would cast a damper even over a funeral." I have often contrasted the habitual qualities of that gloomy friend of theirs with the astounding spirits of both Thackeray and Dickens. They always seemed to me to be standing in the sunshine, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... was industriously polishing the bar and singing the while one of the more lugubrious and monotonous hymns, looked up ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a most lugubrious judge, and was always complaining of something or other, but chiefly about the state of his health, so that Curran remarked that it was strange the old judge was plaintive in ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... anything but memories of the past, and were all connected with that upper world which I never should have left. I saw it all now, the beautiful house in the Konigstrasse, my poor Gretchen, the good Martha; they all passed before my mind like visions of the past. Every time any of the lugubrious groanings which were to be distinguished in the hollows around fell upon my ears, I fancied I heard the distant murmur of the great ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... last appearance and farewell journey; such I think may have been the case when our distinguished neighbors, the Scammels and Pennimans passed away. When the minister has concluded his remarks and his prayer, generally in the most lugubrious words and scriptural phrases he can muster, the man in charge of the funeral, (for country people knew no such professional name as undertaker), comes briskly forward, and, with much ceremony, lifts the lid of the coffin, rearranges some portion of the dress about ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... little as a mile," Shorty retorted, shaking his head with lugubrious resignation. "Come on for trouble. Get up, you poor sore-foots, you—get up! ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... think my lord would be content to wait longer; for so long as he is happy and sees others cheerful he is not one to hurry or worry. But Sir Harry is the impatient one: and has begun to talk of his decease. He doesn't believe in it a bit, and at times when he composes his features and attempts to be lugubrious I have to take up a book and hide my smiles. But he is clever enough to ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... answered, with a lugubrious smile. "However, I'll be as good as I can. And I'll not write. But—when I return from that month of exile, do not be surprised if I appear to claim you for good or for evil, for better or ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... you do. Why, you're only a baby...." Mrs. Minto shook her head several times, with lugubrious effect. But her last words had been full of a smothered affection, more truly precious than a hundred of Gaga's kisses or a ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... life—and the cat's—and now leading you all over town to keep those nice white slippers clean! By rights, you oughtn't to dance with anybody else. But I ain't looking for real gratitude. Four or five waltzes is all I'll insist on, but—" His tone was lugubrious in the extreme. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... with a shroud of coarse canvas and a red linen winding-sheet, sewn together at the back, and kept in place by transverse bands disposed at intervals from head to foot. The son of the deceased and a "man of the roll" were present at this lugubrious toilet, and recited at the application of each piece a prayer, in which its object was defined and its duration secured. Every Egyptian was supposed to be acquainted with the formulas, from having learned them during his lifetime, by which he was to have restored to him the use of his limbs, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with a hand-cart as decrepit as himself, but not nearly so cheerful; for though he spoke up briskly with a spirit uttered from far within the wrinkles and the stubble, the cart had preceded him with a very lugubrious creak. It groaned, in fact, under a load of tin cans, and I was to learn from the old man that there was, and had been, in his person, for thirteen years, such a thing in the world as a peddler of buttermilk, and that these cans were now filled with that pleasant drink. They did not invite ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... we reached a well, with a farm or ranch close to it. Here we halted for the night. A cotton train was encamped close to us, and a lugubrious half-naked teamster informed us that three of his oxen had been stolen ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... mourning father began to tell the story, his wife set up such a weeping and lamentation, and the old nurse followed her example after such a lugubrious fashion, that their lordships could not hear a word. Whereupon his Grace Duke Philip was obliged earnestly to request that the women should keep silence whilst Prechln of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker, the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest, the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had "betched" there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had laughed at him, swore at him, lied ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the noise of thunder; after last night, they had better be as quiet as possible. To take his mind off the disappointment, Coristine asked Ben if he could sing and paddle too. He guessed he could, as paddling wasn't taking his breath away any. So Ben was pressed to sing, and at once assumed a lugubrious air, that reminded the lawyer of The Crew. The song was about a dying youth, who is asked what he will give in legacy to his mother, his sister, and various other relatives. He is liberal to all, till his lady-love's name is ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Higglesby-Browne, with whom he had been so lately and so tenderly reconciled, with a sidelong, calculating glance. After the pirates had eaten, the prisoners on the log were covered with a rifle and their hands untied, while Cookie, in a lugubrious silence made eloquent by his rolling eyes, passed around among us the remnants of the food. No one can be said to have eaten with appetite except Mr. Tubbs, who received his portion with wordy gratitude and devoured ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... diversified the vicinity of the sister fort. Here and there, along the imperfect clearing, and amid the dark and thickly studded stumps of the felled trees, which in themselves were sufficient to give the most lugubrious character to the scene, rose the rude log cabin of the settler; but, beyond this, cultivation appeared to have lost her power in proportion with the difficulties she had to encounter. Even the two Indian villages, L'Arbre-Croche ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... woman, and washed up the pavement and prepared her vegetables for sale in the most realistic manner. The second scene, when Potsdam wakes up in the morning, reminded me of the opening of the second act of "Lohengrin." The last act was very sad, and rather lugubrious, representing Frederick the Great seated in the garden in front of Sans-Souci. There was no singing in this act at all, only pantomime. The respectful manner and the sad faces of the lackeys as they helped the poor old King to his chair and ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... with headlines apparently written by an illiterate maniac, headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; Critic Boulnois says He Jumps the Shocks"—or "Keep Catastrophic, says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr Calhoun Kidd, of the Western Sun, was bidden to take his butterfly tie and lugubrious visage down to the little house outside Oxford where Thinker Boulnois lived in happy ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... new operation was small, but obstinate and warm, and the majority so absorbed in bringing them to reason, that nobody went to the window until the vote had passed, and the Gosshawk was a Life and Fire Insurance. Then some of the gentlemen rose and stretched their legs, and detected the lugubrious enormity. "Hallo!" cried Mr. Carden, and rang a bell. Edwards, an old clerk, appeared, and, in reply to Mr. Carden, told him it was one of their losses ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... life. As for failing, or not failing, that depended on the hopes which a man might form for himself. He trusted that his would henceforth be so moderate in their nature as to admit of a probability of their being realized." Having uttered these very lugubrious words, and almost succeeded in throwing a wet blanket over the party, he ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious unrest, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... is called, by courtesy, the bows, and not a few of them had the open mouth of a dragon, with ugly teeth, painted under it, near the water-line, the corners being drawn down, and the eye (from their desire that it should see 'all ways at once') having a horrid squint. This gave to the boat a lugubrious expression—if such a term may be allowed—ludicrous in the extreme; and with fifty or a hundred junks drawn up in squadrons, squinting and making faces at each other, nothing more thoroughly Chinese ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the Consolidated, whose crew was following the trench-diggers, accosted Farr, after several inspections of his lugubrious countenance. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... esteemed; they delight in hiding themselves behind a cunning interrogatory smile of imperceptible mockery. Having on every occasion a taste for the pleasure of mystification, from the most witty and droll to the most bitter and lugubrious kinds, one would say that they see in this mocking deceit a form of disdain for the superiority which they inwardly adjudge to themselves, but which they veil with the care and cunning ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... She laughed at his lugubrious countenance, then stood up, and reached out a hand to him, letting him hold it for just a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... his hand, but placed it directly after on the other side, when Shanter squeaked again more loudly; and at every touch, back or front, there was a loud cry, the black looking from one to the other in the most lugubrious way. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Ambassadorship had compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... of his civilian independence into the lieutenant's military ribs, the scout walked away, his long, lugubrious frockcoat (worn in honor of the mess) occasionally flapping open in the breeze, and giving a view of a belt richly fluted with cartridges, and the ivory handle of a pistol looking out of its holster. He got on his horse, crossed the flat, and struck out for the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... up 'nd died—long past his ninetieth year— The strangest and the most lugubrious funeral he had, For women came in multitudes to weep upon his bier— The men all wond'ring why on earth the women had gone mad! And this wonderment increased Till the sympathetic priest Inquired of those same ladies: "Why this fuss about deceased?" Whereupon were they appalled, For, as ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... followed as a matter of course. On the whole, therefore, a spirit of devotion to the master gradually pervaded the orchestra; the violas alone bore him a grudge for a while, and for this reason. In the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompaniment. Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral tone, 'Are the violas dying?' The ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... bushy hair, but their owner spoke never a word, though the other stared back with compound interest. There they sat, beaming upon each other—one fiercely, the other curiously, until the re-appearance of the landlord with a very lugubrious and woebegone countenance. It struck Sir Norman that it was about time to start for the ruin; and, with an eye to business, he turned to cross-examine mine ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... or should have been — although fatal to Adams. The name of Hamilton Fish, as Secretary of State, suggested extreme conservatism and probable deference to Sumner. The name of George S. Boutwell, as Secretary of the Treasury, suggested only a somewhat lugubrious joke; Mr. Boutwell could be described only as the opposite of Mr. McCulloch, and meant inertia; or, in plain words, total extinction for any one resembling Henry Adams. On the other hand, the name of Jacob D. Cox, as Secretary of the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was a festival in honour of Portumnus, who was supposed to preside over ports and havens, celebrated on the 17th of August, in a very solemn and lugubrious manner, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... down again to the dining-room. The drawn blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of the table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the tea with ceremony. Philip could not help feeling that neither of them should have been able to eat anything, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... scenery. On the 6th and 7th the feu d'enfer went on, the Russians replying but feebly; on the night of the 7th a line-of-battle ship was set on fire by a mortar, and burned nearly all night; it contained a large supply of spirits, the blue flames from which cast a lugubrious light on the ramparts from the harbor to the Malakoff, producing, says Todleben, "a painful impression on the souls of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... streets, along which divers tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to herself, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... handsomely furnished—being, in fact, the chamber of Mrs. Wilcox, the mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle of the bed, just the length of Robby, aged ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... weather, but always amid the same sights and sounds. There were moments when I thought to go mad, wrenching at my cords till my wrists bled, yet with no hope to escape. But in time, by good luck, my wits grew deaden'd to it all, and I march'd on with the rest to a kind of lugubrious singsong that my brain supplied. For hours I went thus, counting my steps, missing my reckoning, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... side to Villiers' temperament. It was piercing and acute in an altogether different sense—a side of forbidding pleasantry and fierce raillery. No longer was it the paradoxical mystifications of Poe, but a scoffing that had in it the lugubrious and savage comedy which Swift possessed. A series of sketches, les Demoiselles de Bienfilatre, l'Affichage celeste, la Machine a gloire, and le Plus beau diner du monde, betrayed a singularly inventive and keenly bantering mind. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... lugubrious effort to grin, "Thor's announcement shocked the squad so much that I was not forced to explain my ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... special permission to reprint from the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley (copyright, 1913) the following Poems: "Little Orphant Annie," "The Lugubrious Whing-Whang," "The Man in the Moon," "The Old Man and Jim," "Prior to Miss Belle's Appearance," "Spirk Throll-Derisive," "When the Frost ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... all the way to the mail box out by the main road, and nearly all the way back again. But then his ears were assailed with lugubrious singing: ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... sort of lugubrious chuckle, and, in low tones, I began to upbraid him with his apathy. Even with his one arm he should have obeyed my call to the oar. It was incomprehensible to me that we had not been fired at. Castro enlightened ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Mr Cupples, whose lugubrious expression seemed appropriate to the occasion, Will leaped into the boat and was soon rowing over the bay to the spot where the Roving Bess lay with her anchor tripped and her sails loose. On approaching, he saw that Mr Westwood and his wife were pacing the quarterdeck, but ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the name. He had a cracked voice, that when he spoke a word of two syllables, commenced with a lugubrious crow, and ended in what one might have taken for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Irene going to join her boy out in British Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it for my!' No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with too many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to some peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the first, the shell of the feud; and with the woman gone, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... part I always try to appear as happy as possible while I am lecturing. I take this to be part of the trade of anybody labelled a humourist and paid as such. I have no sympathy whatever with the idea that a humourist ought to be a lugubrious person with a face stamped with melancholy. This is a cheap and elementary effect belonging to the level of a circus clown. The image of "laughter shaking both his sides" is the truer picture of comedy. Therefore, I say, I always try to appear cheerful at my lectures and even to laugh at ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... very beginning, have been something unreal and uncanny in the girl's situation. The huge old palace, crammed with properties of dead Stuarts and Sobieskis, with its royal throne and dais in the ante-room, its servants in the royal liveries of England, must have been full of rather lugubrious memories. Here James III. of England and VIII. of Scotland had moped away his bitter old age; here, years and years ago, Charles Edward's mother, the beautiful and brilliant grand-daughter of John Sobieski, had pined away, bullied and cajoled ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... not wanting in cunning,[1186] if we may believe his successor in office—had proved himself unequal to the duties of his present position, by giving way to extreme despondency. In the gay capital of France he led a wretched life, in constant dread of future disaster, and ceaselessly uttering lugubrious prognostications. To the Pope he announced that religious matters in France were desperate; everything was rushing to ruin with ever-increasing velocity. The queen mother was unsound in the faith, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... late for these lugubrious thoughts; and, bracing herself, she began to frame the new reply to Bishop Helmsdale—the plain, unvarnished tale that was to supplant the undivulging answer first written. She was engaged on this difficult problem till daylight faded in the west, and the broad-faced moon edged upwards, like a plate ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... other circumstances, the plumber's compliments on her taste and his lugubrious assumption of character of the Destroying Angel would have sorely tried, if not completely upset, Ella's gravity; as it was, she was too wretched to have more than a passing and quite unappreciative sense of his absurdity. George, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... poor dear papa died;" and she then passed on mournfully homewards, with Bessie and Seraphine in her wake. Their cheerful faces, as they nodded back and smiled at Horner and myself, contrasted strongly with their mother's lugubrious visage. I wonder if anybody ever saw her laugh? I've got my ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... very sad and lugubrious, is it not? and I daresay you think me a croaker; but there is a melancholy satisfaction in trying to see things as they are, and I believe what I have told you is nearer the truth than what you get from the papers. I only hope I may turn ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... representing the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of wealth; and Sikou replies by a long crystal trumpet, by means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions, which seem the work of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... could already see human forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity. As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... turn his body nor put out an arm to lift himself into a sitting posture; and again, when he tried to move his legs, to his horror they were compressed as if between bandages. In his ear there sounded, not six inches away, a low lugubrious moaning. It could not come from a bed-fellow, for he had no bed-fellow. . . . No, it could be ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trial of Bumpus, entered his cell along with him, slept with him during the night, accompanied him to the gallows in the morning, and sat under him when they were adjusting the noose, looking up with feelings of unutterable dismay, as clearly indicated by the lugubrious and woebegone cast of his ragged countenance. But we ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... women burst into lugubrious sobs and rocked themselves back and forth in unison. "'Twar Dad!" ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... affirmed, when the rhythmed vagaries of his mind touched the secret chords of Batard's being and brought forth the long lugubrious howl. "Ah pool eet out wid bot' my han's, so, an' so. Ha! ha! Eet is fonee! Eet is ver' fonee! De priest chant, de womans pray, de mans swear, de leetle bird go peep-peep, Batard, heem go yow-yow—an' eet is all de ver' ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... I begged the proprietor's pardon for the patronizing attitude I found myself assuming toward him. The heavy, solid furniture, the grave and decorously mediocre pictures, and the very tint of the walls wore an air of substantial, though somewhat lugubrious comfort. His niece, too, although her form was by no means lacking in grace, seemed somehow to partake of this all-pervading air of Teutonic solidity and homelike comfort. She was one of those women who seemed born to make some wretched man undeservedly happy. (I ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... heaped his fireplace, began by degrees to send forth a thick unctuous vapour, which at length leaped to light, and blazing up the aperture, gave a degree of liveliness to the gloomy scene. The blazonry of the huge escutcheon met and returned the rays with as brilliant a reflection as that lugubrious object was capable of, and the whole apartment looked with a fantastic gaiety, strangely mingled with the gloomy ideas which its ornaments were calculated to impress ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his usual, he'll be thinkin' o' ye every twinty meenutes,' remarked the girl, and drawing on her gloves, she came round to the door in order to close an interview which threatened to become lugubrious for all parties. ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... suppose, in a fretful mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this woeful performance?—a party of absurd dressed-up people, who have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious performance! And this is the best that Schubert can do! This is the real Schubert! Here have I been all my life pouring pints of subjective emotion into this dreary writer of songs, believing that I was stirred and moved, when it ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it will be the faces of the dead and wounded that will live most clearly in the memory, but at present the pictures of the Belgian soldier which stand out sharpest are less lugubrious ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... most difficult to form an idea of. The jargon partook of every accent and intonation the empire boasts of; and from the sharp precision of the North Tweeder to the broad doric of Kerry, every portion, almost every county, of Great Britain had its representative. Here was a Scotch paymaster, in a lugubrious tone, detailing to his friend the apparently not over-welcome news that Mistress M'Elwain had just been safely delivered of twins, which, with their mother, were doing as well as possible. Here an eager Irishman, turning ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the distance brought a sudden stop to his lugubrious reflections. Five, a dozen—a score of shots were heard. The blood turned cold in the veins of every one in the garden; faces blanched suddenly and all voices were hushed; a form of paralysis seized and held them ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... a full breath and drove it forth, a lugubrious note. With scowling brows and set face he darted the instrument back and forth across his puckered lips. It wailed and shrieked, and out of the noise and discord emerged, at a galloping trot, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... friend and helper in the house then was, not Kenrick, but Bliss. Poor Bliss quite belied his name, for his school work, in which he never could by any effort succeed, kept him in a state of lugubrious disappointment. Bliss lived a dim kind of life, seeing all sorts of young boys get above him and beat him in the race, and vaguely groping in thick mental darkness. Do what he could the stream of knowledge ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... to-morrow's bread and whether the tent is safe against a hurricane in the night. He is struck too by the fact that they are much more vocal than the French troops, and that they seem to have a passion for bad lugubrious songs. There he smiles and shrugs his shoulders, and indeed what else can any of us do in the presence of that mystery? At any rate the legend of the "phlegmatic" Englishman has been scattered to the four winds of heaven by the guns of the western front. The men are cool in action, it is true; ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... clothes were now old-fashioned, so that their rather expensive smartness was detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so much bad luck, and there were bilious lines ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... poet, in lugubrious tones. "I have a heavy cold, thank you, owing to my having passed the early hours of Christmas Day on a bench, in default of a bed. It is superfluous to inquire as to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... holocaust at the end that he sat it out. Even the varying "expressions" assumed by Sardanapalus failed to arouse his enthusiasm. He reproached himself for this, for poor Buskin rolled his eyes and twisted his mouth and pulled such lugubrious faces that Austin felt how pathetic it all was, and how hard the man was trying to work upon the feelings of the audience. But the flare-up at the end was really very creditable. Blue fire, red fire, and clouds of smoke filled the entire stage, and when Myrrha clambered up the burning pile to share ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... slightly lugubrious; otherwise it is well adapted for the cure or alleviation of the diseases it professes to treat. The springs for drinking are arranged in the vestibule just within the entrance. In the right-hand corner is the Source de la Madeleine or Bertrand, temperature 113 Fahr. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... native talent was still entirely confined to writing for little people lugubrious sermons or discourses delivered on Sunday and "Catechize days," and afterwards printed for larger circulation. The reprints from English publications were such exotics as, "A Poesie out of Mr. Dod's Garden," an alluring title, which did not in the least deceive the small ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant's literary ambition, he showed himself kindly disposed towards her and her young ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... so lugubrious that Henry was compelled to laugh under his breath. It did look like an injustice of fate, when hunters so keen as they, were compelled to lie quiet, while wild turkeys in hundreds flew over their heads, and although the shiftless one may ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or a doctor's sitting-room in every Schoenstrom as it does in certain lugubrious stone hulks recognized by a state legislature as magically empowered to paste on sacred labels lettered "Bachelor ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... discoursed. Where Livy's pictured narrative had been, you found only a dull wearisome legend. Where the thunder of Homer's lyre or the sweet notes of Virgil's muse had resounded, you heard now a dismal croak or a lugubrious chant. Such was the strange metamorphosis which the ancients were compelled to endure at the hands of the' monks; and such was the way in which they strove to earn the gratitude of succeeding ages by the benefits they conferred ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... could scarcely restrain their laughter at this question. Monsieur Moliere had a most lugubrious countenance—a thing not always inconsistent with a merry humour: but Monsieur Moliere's heart was believed never to have laughed, any more than his face. He answered, as if announcing a misfortune, that he claimed no connection with the dramatist, though he believed some of his ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... from the old-fashioned specter (he's very fond of taking pot-shots at him) to the latest psychic manifestations. He laughs at ghosts that aren't experts in efficiency haunting, and he has a lot of fun out of mortals for being scared of specters. He loves to shake the lugubrious terrors of the past before you, exposing their hollow futility, and he contrives to create new fears for you magically while you are laughing ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... man-of-war. I do not know how it came into my possession, but I remember it was adorned by an extremely dim and ill-executed wood-cut of a lake surrounded by mountains, with tombstones in the foreground. This lugubrious frontispiece positively fascinated me, and lent a further gloomy charm to the ballad itself. It was in this copy of mediocre verses that the sense of romance first appealed to me, the kind of nature-romance which is connected with hills, and lakes, and the picturesque costumes of old times. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... fall of rain set in during the night, and made the morning of departure gray. Blurred clouds rested helplessly on the backs of the hills, and wept themselves into the wet valley without seeming to grow less lugubrious for the indulgence. There was no wind; trees and plants stood up and were soaked in passive resignation. The weather-beaten boards of the barn were drenched black, except a small place right under the eaves, which looked as if it ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne |
