"Luckless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of laughter drowned the words of the luckless second speaker, and some one yelled vociferously, "Neddie the fortune-teller! Don't tell me he's ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... loungers had disposed of themselves, some on the long piazza of the hotel, and others in front of the principal store, where, with elevated heels and busy jackknives, they whittled out shapeless things, or made remarks concerning any luckless female who chanced to pass. While thus engaged they were startled by a loud, sharp ring from the belfry of the Methodist church succeeded by a merry peal, which seemed to proclaim some joyful event. It was a musical, rollicking ring, consisting ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... seemed scarcely more startling to the luckless big frog than to the watcher in the canoe. It was all so brutal, so deliberately planned! The smaller frog, knowing that he was no match for the other in strength, had waited cunningly till he was all absorbed ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... one picture in the audience chamber. It is a portrait of the luckless but noble Dom Pedro, Emperor of the Brazils. Given to Felix Babylon by Dom Pedro himself, it hangs there solitary and sublime as a reminder to Kings and Princes that Empires may pass away and greatness fall. A certain Prince who was occupying the ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... do we luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune, ever weep for grief? They have just shown me as much affection as I could feel for them if they were indeed my own relations. I'm to be a notary; I shall be rich. Ha! ha! the poor Butscha may become the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... modern days, a similar avidity was shewn to obtain a relic of the luckless Masaniello, the fisherman of Naples. After he had been raised by mob favour to a height of power more despotic than monarch ever wielded, he was shot by the same populace in the streets, as if he had been a mad dog. His headless trunk was dragged through the mire ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... marry Chiquita. A grim smile flitted across her countenance as the knowledge of this fact flashed through her mind, the only ray of light in the chaos into which she had been plunged by that misguided, luckless decision on her part—her refusal to follow the Captain ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones; at least, we found them impressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which he was part proprietor. And I always associate this my only recollection of his venerable white hair and beautiful face, full of an expression of most benign dignity, with the earliest mention I remember of that luckless property, which weighed like an incubus upon my father all his life, and the ruinous burden of which both I and my sister successively endeavored in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of routine slave-labor was very often broken by some scene of cruelty to one or another of the poor blacks, either by the master or his overseer; and woe unto the luckless one if the master should happen to be in a good mood to break bones. Although slaves were worth money in the South at that time, yet the ungovernable passions of some if not most masters found free vent in cruelty to their own property—that is, their slaves. This was the case with Wilson, ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... assembled in the afternoon, and turned out those skilfully and often artistically made rugs, so comfortable to lie under during the cold winter nights. There was often a great deal of sport at the close of one of these social industrial gatherings. When the men came in from the field to supper, some luckless wight was sure to be caught, and tossed up and down in the quilt amid the laughter and shouts of the company. But of all the bees, the apple-bee was the chief. In these old and young joined. The boys ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Franches (which date in French literature back to Villon and no doubt earlier) follows. With this, as such, we need not trouble ourselves. But Olivier, the friend, takes upon him the duty of providing the wine, and does so by persuading a luckless vintner that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... untied, and forthwith sprung towards that unfortunate person, to set him an imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could forgive. Why did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine? The odor of the cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious; and one luckless morning, when I was standing before my "oak," and chanced to puff a great bouffee of Varinas into his face, he forgot his respect for my family altogether (I was the second son, and my brother a sickly creature THEN,—he is now sixteen stone in weight, and has ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to act as Fraeulein's champion, Gipsy tried her utmost to sway popular opinion in favour of the luckless singing mistress. It was a far harder task, though, than she had anticipated, and put her powers of leadership to a severe test. It had been easy enough to induce the Juniors to stand up for their own rights, but it ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... country,"—a pathetic expression, which represents Burke's perpetual mood, as long as he lived, of affectionate pity for his native land. Of the eminent Irishmen whose names adorn the annals of Trinity College in the eighteenth century, Burke was only contemporary at the University with one, the luckless sizar who in the fulness of time wrote the Vicar of Wakefield. There is no evidence that at this time he and Goldsmith were acquainted with one another. Flood had gone to Oxford some time before. The one or two companions whom Burke mentions in his letters are only shadows ...
— Burke • John Morley
... take the worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in the ban, which was posted ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... man whose doom in the world is disappointment,—who excels in it,—and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favour as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men. As I sat with ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ceremony was about to take place, a wild-looking lad, or, as some said, an unclean spirit, started up from no one knew where, and spoke such impertinent words to Grettir that he felled him with a blow of his fist. After this the king would not allow the ceremony to go on: 'Thou art far too luckless a man to abide with us, and if ever man has been cursed, of all men must thou have been,' said he; and advised him to go back to Iceland in the summer. Meanwhile Asmund the Greyhaired died, and was buried ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... Thornton Hastings one of those strong, peculiar friendships which sometimes exist between two men, but rarely between two women, of so widely different temperaments. They had roomed together four years in college, and countless were the difficulties from which the sober Arthur had extricated the luckless Thorne, while many a time the rather slender means of Arthur had been increased in a way so delicate that ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... whole of the French fleet; and, even latterly, no bad prospect of securing six sail of the line. Instead of which, they had only taken a single ship, the Alcide; and that, such was the fortune of this luckless day, took fire about half an hour after it had struck, and before being taken into possession—said to be occasioned by a box of combustibles in the fore-top—and the whole ship was soon in a blaze. Several boats, from our fleet, were instantly dispatched to rescue as many as possible of the unhappy ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the banker's bureau during the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... bitter end of the high-spirited captain of this luckless expedition; an almost solitary death on the wide western plain, after enduring weeks of hunger and starvation. What must have been King's feelings at finding himself thus left without a companion to cheer his last hours when his turn, as he then ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the travel of its meditations is daily and customary; insomuch that the very thought of all others which one was born to utter he may forget to mention, as presuming it to be no news. Indeed, if a man of fertile soul be misled into the luckless search after peculiar and surprising thoughts, there are many chances that be will be betrayed into this oversight of his proper errand. As Sir Martin Frobisher, according to Fuller, brought home ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... I loitered in ambush about the precincts of the dressing-room, hoping for the pleasure of conducting you down-stairs; but 'the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft aglee', and I became the luckless prey of similar tactics. That marauding Tomyris, Mrs. Halsey, sallied out at the head of her column of daughters, espied me lurking behind the portiere, and proclaiming her embarras de richesse, 'paid me the compliment' of consigning one fair campaigner, Miss Eloise Hermione, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... same cheerful ship lying in mid-channel as helpless as an infant. However, the accident (something, I fancy, had gone wrong with the engines) appeared to be treated as more amusing than important. Still, perhaps, it would be better were the name of this luckless boat changed to Le Farceur; then travellers would know what to expect. But I must confess that my experiences were perfectly pleasant. The steamer in which I journeyed crossed the Channel in the advertised time, and if I wished ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... original, and continued as follows: The enraged jeweller is on the point of tearing down his unfortunate signboard when a curious apparition leads him to pause in the act. He sees a bear- leader in the street making his clumsy beast dance, in whom the luckless lover recognises at a glance his own father, from whom he has been parted ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious as that mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that was to fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which I am for ever conscious. But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... him first months since when he had entered the headquarters of the German high command in East Africa and carried off the luckless Major Schneider, of whose fate no hint had ever reached the German officers; and she had seen him again upon that occasion when he had rescued her from the clutches of the lion and, after explaining to her that he had recognized her in the British camp, had made her prisoner. It was then that ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... These luckless adventurers at length saw themselves surrounded by all the horrors of famine. Many of them were reduced to devour the leaves of trees; the majority were altogether destitute of sustenance. In this state of severe privations, and with very light clothing, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... about the great English rebellion. 'Pride's Purge,' the 'elective kingship without a veto of the 'New Model,' and the merciless mystification of Bradshaw, tell their own story. Steering to avoid the Scylla of Strafford, the luckless Parliamentarians ran the ship of State full into the Charybdis ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... lucubration was the unfortunate Stephen's examination paper, with the answers thereto embellished, and in many cases bodily supplied, by the fertile Anthony. The luckless Stephen, who was wedged up in the front row of readers, could have sunk into the earth on meeting once more that hateful paper face to face, and feeling himself an object of ridicule to the whole school. For the wonderful answers which now appeared were ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... mud and blacker ice, a yellow halo surrounds the gas lamps, even the Bude lights look quenched and uncomfortable; cabmen, peevish at the paucity of fares, curse with triple intensity the wood pavement and the luckless garrons that slide and stumble over it; the blue and benumbed fingers of Italian grinders can scarcely turn the organ handles; tattered children and half-starved women, pale, shivering, and tearful, pester the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... covers them all—those who donated guineas and those who donated "gifts," the rogues and the hypocrites, and the wedding-drolls, the observant and the lax, the purse-proud and the lowly, the coarse and the genteel, the wonderful chapmen and the luckless Schlemihls, Rabbi and Dayan and Shochet, the scribes who wrote the sacred scroll and the cantors who trolled it off mellifluous tongues, and the betting-men who never listened to it; the grimy Russians of the capotes and the earlocks, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... be or wise? Yet, though lonely seem the wood, Therein may lurk the beast of blood; Often bashful looks conceal Tongue of fire and heart of steel; And deem not thou in forest gray, Every dappled skin thy prey, Lest thou rouse, with luckless spear, The tiger for the fallow-deer! ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... befell the luckless Jack. For a long time he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer is virtually the executive functionary in the company. It is his place to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for the captain. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... swaying subaltern in fatigue uniform; the calm, deliberate man in riding dress. A faint color, as of annoyance, quickly spread over Loring's face, but for a moment he spoke not a word. Angrily the post, commander came hurrying forth, bent on the prompt annihilation of his luckless subaltern, and was about to speak, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... excruciating entreaty, he consented to explore the surface of the water with a clothes-prop, but reported that the luckless trousers had disappeared in the depths, Herman having forgotten to remove some "fishin' sinkers" from his pockets before making the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... hold, but in vain. The maternal instinct had awakened all its fierceness, and as the blood commenced to flow in streams from the deep scratches and bites inflicted by its teeth and claws, its ferocious appetency redoubled. It tore and bit as if nothing would appease it but the luckless victim's death. Mrs. Page would doubtless have fallen a prey to its savage rage, but for a happy thought which flashed across her mind in ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the charge of a servant, he ushered me into a saloon adjoining his study, and introduced me to his family, consisting of two grown-up sons, three daughters, and their mother, to whom I had to tell my luckless adventures over again. That, however, was not the worst of it. As the hour of dinner drew near, the house began to fill with visitors: it was plain that my arrival, and the circumstances connected with it, had been regularly advertised through the town, and all the world ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... The luckless cause of these unnatural divisions now announced his presence in the halt by a loud crack ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... sound buffet from Little John. But right cunning was the shooting, for the men had spent a certain time in daily practice, and many were the shafts which sped daintily through the circle. Nathless now and again some luckless fellow would shoot awry and would be sent winding from a long arm blow from the tall lieutenant while the glade roared with laughter. And none more hearty a guffaw was given than came from the Sheriff's own throat, for the spirit of the greenwood ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common, but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge, and after such orders it would not be healthful for him ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... the whole Colony is its fisheries—the ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, salmon, herring, halibut, and lobster in summer, and the seal fishery in the month of March. It is increasingly difficult to overestimate the importance, not merely to the British Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable food-supply procured by ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Gothic chief slain, and again a shout of triumph. Then the signal to shoot was given to the soldiers, and hundreds of bolts from Wild Ass and Balista were hurtling through the air, aimed not at Gothic soldiers, but at the luckless oxen that drew the ponderous towers. The beasts being slain, it was impossible for the Goths who were immediately under the walls and exposed to a deadly discharge of arrows from the battlements, to move their towers either backward or forward, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Alice, 't was all for thy locks so bright, And 't was all for thine eyes so blue, That on the night of our luckless flight ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... speed straight toward the gully. At the bushes she spoke a low word in his backlaid ears, raised him quickly with the bit, leaning forward as he rose in air. Like a bird that animal took the bushes and the gully beyond, while close behind him crashed the two luckless troopers. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thus the dear glance of my lady slay, On her sweet sprightly speech if dangers wait, If o'er me Love usurp a power so great, Oft as she speaks, or when her sun-smiles play; Alas! what were it if she put away, Or for my fault, or by my luckless fate, Her eyes from pity, and to death's full hate, Which now she keeps aloof, should then betray. Thus if at heart with terror I am cold, When o'er her fair face doubtful shadows spring, The feeling has its source in sufferings old. Woman by nature is a fickle thing, And female hearts—time ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... notes resound, And the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking every wight can tell; And sure, no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Red as her lips, and taper as her waist, She walks the round, and culls one favored beau, Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sport, as are the wits and brains Of well-pleased lasses and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... inmates and capture the fortress, is the saddest and most tragic of all. We saw high up in the wall, frowning over the river, the window of the chamber from which she had thrown herself after slaying her recreant lover in her rage and despair. A weird story it is, but if the luckless maiden still haunts the scene of her blighted love, an observant sojourner who fitly writes of Ludlow in poetic phrase never saw her. "Nearly every midnight for a month," he says, "it fell to me to traverse the quarter of a mile of dark, lonely lane that leads beneath the walls of the castle ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... in an awful tone, pointing to where the luckless Terence is crawling home in the fond belief that he is defying all detection; whereupon Kit, with much presence of mind, looks scrutinizingly in just the opposite direction. "It is somebody carrying a gun. Good gracious! it ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... talk about British gold, And opinions that are bought and sold, But facts, no matter how hard to face, Are facts, and the horrors taking place In that little land, pledged to honor's creed, Make your cause a luckless one to plead. There are two sides? True. But when both are heard, Our sad hearts echo a ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the House of Preventive Detention a system of communication between the luckless prisoners carried on by means of tapping on the wall. Sigismund, being a clever fellow, had become a great adept at this telegraphic system, and had struck up a friendship with a young student in the next cell; this poor fellow had been imprisoned three ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... I was walking along a narrow old road which leads from Le Crotay, a fishing-village in Picardy, to the town of St. Valery-sur-Somme. It was in the month of February, and one of those luckless days on which cold, wind and rain all seem banded in league against the comfort of mankind: the sky, dull and lowering, presented to the eye nothing but a bleak, cheerless desert of gray, relieved only by troops of dark, inky clouds, which would at moments, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective—though you assure him that to you the landscape shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present!—The last is always his best hit—his "Cynthia of the minute."—Alas! how many a mild Madonna ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... says Kit, expanding into the wildest affection. She kisses Monica fondly, and (though you would inevitably have suffered death at her hands had you even hinted at it) is beginning to enjoy herself intensely. Once again this luckless couple look to her for help. She is to be the one to raise them from their "Slough of Despond,"—difficult but congenial task! "Then you have been existing on lemon tart and one glass of sherry since breakfast time?" she says, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second time on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches, but lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged first on one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart. But the six whips were attacking her in all directions, and the shaft was raised again and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... then bend, slowly, and once it was wrenched out of the horizontal, the motion was more and more rapid. Until, when the giant was done with his labor, the ends of the iron over-lapped around the necks of the two luckless brothers. Mac Strann stepped back and surveyed his work; the rest of the room was in silence, saving that the red-headed man was coming back to consciousness and now writhed and groaned feebly. He could not rise; that was manifest, for the thick ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... As I am outlaw'd from my fame and state, Be this day outlawed from the name of days. Day luckless, outlaw luckless, both accurs'd! [Flings away his napkin and hat, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... sport adjourned. Presages are not vain; when she departed, Nape by stumbling on the threshold, started. Going out again, pass forth the door more wisely, And somewhat higher bear thy foot precisely. Hence luckless tables! funeral wood, be flying! And thou, the wax, stuffed full with notes denying! Which I think gathered from cold hemlock's flower, Wherein bad honey Corsic bees did pour: 10 Yet as if mixed with red lead thou ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Then the luckless knight's very virtues (as, no doubt, my respected readers know,) made him enemies amongst the men—nor was Ivanhoe liked by the women frequenting the camp of the gay King Richard. His young Queen, and a brilliant court of ladies, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prayers!" commanded Rupe, and continued to twist the luckless finger until Penrod writhed ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... translated spirit of his lady. Romance has touched the book here with her magic, as she has touched the lines where we read how Consuelo came by moonlight to the Canon's garden and the white flowers. The pleasure here is the keener for contrast with the luckless hind whom Aucassin encountered in the forest: the man who had lost his master's ox, the ungainly man who wept, because his mother's bed had been taken from under her to pay his debt. This man was in that estate which Achilles, in Hades, preferred above the kingship of the dead outworn. He ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened. I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. I could ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... crossed, her cheeks livid, her lips trembling. It was a terrible interview. This time it was she who threatened, the man who entreated pardon. Marie was deaf to his prayers, and the head of the luckless man fell bleeding at her feet, and her men threw the body into the sea. But God never allows a murder to go unpunished: James preferred the queen to her sister, and the widow of Charles of Durazzo gained nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she loved, and a bitter remorse which ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... aged man who lived alone not far from the old church and visited the graveyard almost daily to pray over the resting place of some relative was foully murdered for the store of gold he was supposed to have hidden about his hermit abode. The robbers and murderers escaped justice, and the luckless graybeard was buried in the graveyard where he spent so much time. Just as French and his wife drew within sight of the white headstones in the churchyard the horses reared back on their haunches and snorted in terror. French was alarmed, and suspecting highwaymen had been scented by ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... The luckless Toinon hid her face in her hands, and sobbed in an almost unintelligible voice: "Ah, I did not wish my little one to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Swallowfield Park is an old English country home, a fastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, record great times and striking figures. The manor was a part of the dowry of Henry the VIII.'s luckless queens. The modern house was built by Clarendon, and the old church among the elms dates from 1200, with carved signs and symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and names of strange sound and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... and we saw him no more. We regret to say that the popular indignation was so precipitate in its results; otherwise the special artist who sketched Hum, the son of Buz, intended to have made a sketch of the old villain, as he sat with his luckless victim's hind legs projecting from his solemn mouth. With all his moral faults, he was a good sitter, and would probably have sat immovable any length of time that ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... James to make himself absolute, and to restore Romanism in England, caused leading Englishmen to enter on a conspiracy—kept secret with extraordinary success—with William of Orange. The luckless monarch was abandoned on every hand, and fled from his kingdom to France, an object of universal mockery. Yet Louis resolved to aid him. A French force accompanied him to Ireland, and Tourville defeated the united fleets of England and Holland. At last France ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... in tuning his instrument, the teacher proceeded with his lucid explanations:—"Now, boys, start fair; give a grand chord. What sort of a noise do you call that? (giving a luckless boy a thump over the head with his fiddle-stick). You bray through your nose like a jackass. I tell you to quit; I don't want discord." The boy slunk out of the class, and stood blubbering behind ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the luckless captive was led away by his enemies to their neighboring village, which was situated at Messessaga Point, near the fortress. The warriors sadly bore, on a litter of branches, the body of their slain chieftain, leading beside it their pinioned captive. As they approached ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... an old and miserly cousin whose testamentary dispositions had formed, since her earliest childhood, the subject of pleasantry and conjecture in her own improvident family. Old Hezron Mears had never given any sign of life to the luckless Wests; had perhaps hardly been conscious of including them in the carefully drawn will which, following the old American convention, scrupulously divided his hoarded millions among his kin. It was by a mere genealogical accident that ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... scramble on to the ladies' knees, or trample out the gathers of their dresses, and fidget with their ornaments, startling some luckless lady by the announcement, "I've got your bracelet undone at last!" who would find one of the divisions broken open by force, Amelia not understanding the working of ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... murderer aroused their passion to the utmost; Konrad's escort was overpowered and thrust aside. "Awa' wi' him to the Papist's pillar!" cried a voice. Down they went with him to the North Loch, and tied him there to an oaken stake about five feet deep in the water—a spot where many a luckless Catholic had perished. The mob retired, and Konrad was left alone, helpless, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... his throat, and there was an end of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice; fortunate, if they had continued to do so a little longer; but they ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the dark, incident after incident of her luckless evening coming back upon her, her heart grew hungry for David. Nay, her craving for him mounted to jealousy and passion. After all, though he did get on so much better in grand houses than she did, though they were all kind ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... visitation. Malcourt's marriage to an heiress was the perfectly obvious incentive of the visit. And when they wrote that they were coming to New York, it amused Malcourt exceedingly to invite them to Luckless Lake. But he said nothing about it to Portlaw or ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... "Yes—unpleasant, luckless, little persons. I quite understand. They never appeared before. They will not appear again. Thank you, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The luckless hour I curse, in very deed, When I, alas! said yea, Vesture to change,—so fair in that dusk wede I was and glad, whereas in this more gay A weary life I lead, Far less than erst held honest, welaway! Ah, dolorous bridal day, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... from English, or rather Irish, history is supplied by Macaulay and belongs to the year 1689. It is one of the incidents in James the Second's brief and luckless government of Ireland: ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... the river!" shrieked the smaller boys, with an impetuosity that made Mr. Grimshaw smile in spite of himself. One luckless urchin said, "Chucked it," for which happy expression he was kept in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... old lady took them, but began again at once in a tearful voice complaining of the dog, of Gavrila, and of her fate, declaring that she was a poor old woman, and that every one had forsaken her, no one pitied her, every one wished her dead. Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim tried in vain to call her away from the fence. 'There ... there ... again,' groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of her eyes. The doctor whispered to a maid, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... prophetess[5] of the fairy-folk, came [6]in the form of a bird,[6] and she perched on the standing-stone in Temair of Cualnge giving the Brown Bull of Cualnge warning [7]and lamentations[7] before the men of Erin. Then she began to address him and what she said was this: "Good, now, O luckless one, thou Brown Bull of Cualnge," so spake the Morrigan; "take heed; for the men of Erin. [8]are on thy track and seeking thee[8] and they will come upon thee, and [9]if thou art taken[9] they will carry thee away to their camp ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... heard her sparkling story. You consider yourself happy because you are sitting by her and helping her to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. But I was her theme for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian. She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to music, in telling it. Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to have called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not think so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes, my ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... Aegon, thy very kine will go to Hades, while thou too art in love with a luckless victory, and thy pipe is flecked with mildew, the pipe that once thou ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... rejects me also!' responds the luckless youth, the tears flowing from his eagle eyes onto ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... half-way to the Natal border I encountered heavy rain. One-tenth of the thunderstorms that broke over my luckless head would, had they but visited the mountain saddle a couple of weeks previously, have made an independent man of me. This was quite typical of ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Corinth. He should have known better with whom he had to deal. The enchantress, indignant at such treatment, determined on revenge. Pretending to be reconciled to the coming marriage, she prepared a poisoned robe, which she sent as a wedding-present to the hapless Glauce. No sooner had the luckless bride put on this perilous gift than the robe burst into flames, and she was consumed; while her father, who sought to tear from her the fatal garment, met with the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... appearance of my crew, who had all, excepting the two Kanakas, aged perceptibly during that night of torment. But we lost no time in getting back to the ship, where I fully expected a severe wigging for the scrape my luckless curiosity had led me into. The captain, however, was very kind, expressing his pleasure at seeing us all safe back again, although he warned me solemnly against similar investigations in future. A hearty meal and a good rest ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... well bedight With ruffles blue, and I, oh, luckless wight, Must send to her—she said, exchange is fair— My college pin in gold. Her cushion's where With half-closed eyes I lie. Is't not aright I dream ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... This luckless adventure not only nipped in the bud a little scheme he had been revolving, for materially befriending Ethan Allen and his comrades, but resulted in making his further stay at Falmouth perilous ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the luckless European who, tempted by the beauty of their wares, has dealings with the wily Persian merchant. There is a proverb in Tiflis that "It takes two Jews to rob an Armenian, two Armenians to rob a Persian," and the "accursed Faringi" is ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... themselves to their sight, or to their mind: that "they would send forward that band with prosperity and success, and soon send them back safe into their country to their parents." In vain were these prayers sent up. Having set out on their luckless road by the right-hand postern of the Carmental gate, they arrive at the river Cremera: this appeared a favourable situation for fortifying a post. L. AEmilius and C. Servilius were then created consuls. And as long as ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... was distinctly visible, although they themselves were so far hidden by the German sandbags; but as Dennis looked back over his shoulder, he saw the luckless Tiddler lying prone and helpless in the open, and the white face of Hawke telling out ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... beauteous youth, But, luckless, in the wave his face beholding, Himself he fascinates, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... The luckless Cynthia, instantly conscious that her act had been misconstrued, retired with less grace than she had come forward, and spent most of the lecture in surreptitiously mopping her eyes. As she walked dejectedly down ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... bequilted my jacket, that in a rain-storm I became a universal absorber; swabbing bone-dry the very bulwarks I leaned against. Of a damp day, my heartless shipmates even used to stand up against me, so powerful was the capillary attraction between this luckless jacket of mine and all drops of moisture. I dripped like a turkey a roasting; and long after the rain storms were over, and the sun showed his face, I still stalked a Scotch mist; and when it was fair weather with others, alas! it was foul weather ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... stripped from his fore arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long practice has made him immensely strong, and quick as a flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog, however large, that ventures in the excitement of the hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke will generally put the poor brute out of the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... understanding what a fate was in store for me, I passed the time in childish amusement with the other lads in the steerage, for we were never allowed to go on deck while the vessel stayed in the harbor, which it did till they had imprisoned as many luckless boys ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... entangled in thy clue, By magic seeks to dissipate the strife, Thy furtive fingers snatch his faulchion too; The luckless wizard ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Pricked by the first hook it touches, the sturgeon gives a startled leap and comes into contact with half a dozen more hooks. Then it threshes about wildly, until it receives hook after hook in its soft flesh; and the hooks, straining from many different angles, hold the luckless fish fast until it is drowned. Because no sturgeon can pass through a Chinese line, the device is called a trap in the fish laws; and because it bids fair to exterminate the sturgeon, it is branded by the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... prince who ruled the coasts between the Dovey and the Ystwith, came down on a May-day morning to his father's fishing- weir. All that was taken that morning was to be Elphin's, had Gwyddno said. Not a fish was taken that day; and Elphin, who was ever a luckless youth, would have gone home empty-handed, but that one of his men found, entangled in the poles of the weir, a coracle, and a fair child in it. This was none other than he who was to be the father ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... that almost continually sweep over that part of Siberia. They never seem to cease, and there are treacherous air currents and 'pockets' that engulfed more than one luckless aviator. Oh, you may be sure the Russian government spared no means of finding the lost platinum mine, but they could not locate it, or even get near the place where they supposed it ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... strife, our futile praying, Our luckless Present and our bloodstained Past. Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing, But know that death must win ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... fellow composed into the steady affectionate husband, and the fond careful parent. For me, I am just the same will-o'-wisp being I used to be. About the first and fourth quarters of the moon, I generally set in for the trade wind of wisdom; but about the full and change, I am the luckless victim of mad tornadoes, which blow me into chaos. Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom; and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow,[57]who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... speech, kept his own counsel as to the events of the afternoon, and bided the time when he might turn them to his own ends. Eudemius also was more silent than his position as host seemed to warrant. That he was in bad humor was to be seen from the threatening glances he cast at the luckless slave when a dish was delayed or a wine too warm. He was an old man, this latter, white-haired and bent and very skilful, with a sunken face as pale as parchment. Marius, as keen to observe as he was silent, saw that always the old ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away in the distance, and saw the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... associates it with The Pickwick Papers, we remember that Mrs. Bardell and her friends, Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. and Mrs. Raddle, Mrs. Rogers and Master Tommy Bardell, bent on having a day out, had taken the Hampstead Stage to the "Spaniards" Tea Gardens, "where the luckless Mr. Raddle's very first act nearly occasioned his good lady a relapse, it being neither more or less than to order tea for seven; whereas (as the ladies one and all remarked) what could have been easier than for Tommy to have drank out of any lady's cup, or ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... eagerness with which it danced into full view left but little for meddlers to covet. A crash was inevitable; it was the clash that Grover & Dickhut were trying to avert. Old Wharton, worn to a slimmer frazzle than he had ever been before his luckless marriage, was determined to divorce his insolent younger half. It was to be done with as little noise as possible, more for his own sake than for hers. Wharton was proud in, not ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... playing at?" laughed the luckless officer, feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was entering his ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung |
