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More "Lamentable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more dead than alive, in which state I long remained. As soon as I became sufficiently strong to be moved, I took advantage of a whaler calling at the island, homeward bound, to beg a passage. The captain heard my lamentable story, took me on board as soon as he could, and shewed a seaman's sympathy for ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... change has made a great revolution in Scottish social life. The charm and the romance long attached in the minds of some of our countrymen to the whole system and concerns of hard drinking was indeed most lamentable and absurd. At tavern suppers, where, nine times out often, it was the express object of those who went to get drunk, such stuff as "regal purple stream," "rosy wine," "quaffing the goblet," "bright sparkling nectar," "chasing ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... naive the general public sometimes are. People will watch first-class tennis, sitting for hours together perhaps in great discomfort, and yet display a lamentable want of knowledge about the game. In fact, to many its object is a mystery! This seems hardly possible, but it is quite true. I once overheard a lady who was watching a match in the centre court at Wimbledon remark, "There, that's the very first time that ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... is—?' mentioning the disease whose unfamiliar name I had heard from my bed. Receiving no reply, I looked up to discover why my question was not answered, and I saw my parents gazing at each other with lamentable eyes. In some way, I know not how, I was conscious of the presence of an incommunicable mystery, and I kept silence, though tortured with curiosity, nor did I ever repeat ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... The Catholic Church, the law of the land, and modern philosophy, in agreement for once, combined to prescribe, persecute, and ridicule the mysteries of the Cabala as well as the adepts; the result is a lamentable interregnum of a century in occult philosophy. But the uneducated classes, and not a few cultivated people (women especially), continue to pay a tribute to the mysterious power of those who can raise the veil of the future; they go to buy hope, strength, and courage of the fortune-teller; ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "Why, it is nearly as bright as in Provence!" And then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that Provence where even the saddest stories are gay. Consider the lamentable history of Peire Vidal. Two years ago Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours, which is in the Black Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up an immense pinnacle and on the pinnacle ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... It was a lamentable event, the indiscriminate slaughter of three thousand men through the stupidity and incredible obstancy of General Braddock, who, like Dieskau at a subsequent time, despising the counsel of those familiar with Indian methods of warfare, ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... due to my very high impressionability, and to the straining after technical scenic effects. Thus, extreme vehemence in anger would excite me to the point of forgetting the fiction, and cause me to commit involuntarily lamentable outbursts. Hence I applied myself to overcome the tendency to singsong in my voice, the exuberance of my rendering of passion, the exclamatory quality of my phrasing, the precipitation of my pronunciation, and the swagger ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... affectionate, though absent and evidently absorbed. We had a little chat together about the Thrales. In mentioning our former intimacy with them, "Ah, those," she cried, "were happy times!" and her eyes glistened. poor thing! hers has been a lamentable story!—-Imprudence and vanity have rarely been mixed with so much sweetness, and good-humour, and candour, and followed with more reproach and ill success. We agreed to renew acquaintance next winter; at present she will be little more ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... sought a favorable place to board the "Waldeck" more easily, and for that purpose it drew away a few strokes. The dog evidently thought that its rescuers did not wish to go on board, for he seized Dick Sand by his jacket, and his lamentable barks commenced again ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... month of January, 1567, the Lord Deputy set out on a visitation of Munster and Connaught. In his official account he writes thus of Munster: "Like as I never was in a more pleasant country in all my life, so never saw I a more waste and desolate land. Such horrible and lamentable spectacles are there to behold—as the burning of villages, the ruin of churches, the wasting of such as have been good towns and castles; yea, the view of the bones and skulls of the dead subjects, who, partly by murder, partly by famine, have ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... It is lamentable that in his latest blank verse Swinburne should have made a trick and a manner of that most energetic device of his by which he leads the line at a rush from the first syllable to the tenth, and on to the first of the line succeeding, with a great recoil to follow, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... back his slaves. As a republic we called ourselves even then old and stable. Yet was ever any country riper for misrule than ours? Forgetting now what is buried, the old arguments all forgot, that most bloody and most lamentable war all forgot, could any mind, any imagination, depict a situation more rife with tumult, more ripe for war than this? And was it not perforce an issue, of compromise or war; of compromise, or a ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... being admired by no means filled the entire field of her consciousness. In fact, the corner occupied by the sensation was so small that occasional efforts on her part to escape to it from the less agreeable contents of her mind were lamentable failures. Aloud, in terms as felicitous as she could make them, she was commenting on the beauty of the glass-smooth river, with the sumptuously colored autumn trees casting down into it the imperial gold and crimson of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... grew almost into an institution in the New World, or became, at least, a leading idea with no inconsiderable portion of both the Canadian and American people. He knew that every civilized nation on the face of the earth, save England herself, sympathized with the lamentable condition of the country to which he himself was a traitor; and such being the case, he felt how easy it would be on the part of these sympathizers, to find a means of justifying almost any measure that might be adopted against the usurper, by the organization ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... had, in various ways, been connected with that war: they were familiar with its history, and their answers revealed much that had not before been known. The result of all this investigation is published in a folio volume of 607 pages, filled with facts and principles, the lamentable history of the past, painful descriptions of the present, and wise suggestions for the future management of the army; and the whole is worthy of the careful attention of all who, as projectors, leaders, or followers, have anything to do with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... only add a word or two of his death, Which was as sad as lamentable. He kept a discontented servant, who conceiving his deserts, not soon or well enough rewarded, wounded him mortally; and then (to save the Law a labour) killed himself. Verifying therein the observation, That there is none who never so much despiseth his own ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... subject for the present I wish to renew the expression of my conviction that the existence of African slavery in Cuba is a principal cause of the lamentable condition of the island. I do not doubt that Congress shares with me the hope that it will soon be made to disappear, and that peace and prosperity may ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... Theis wordes would goe well to a tune; pray letts heare you sing. I doe not thinke but you can make me a ioynture of fower nobles a yeare in Balletts, in lamentable balletts; for your wit I thinke lies tragicall. Did you make the Ladies Downefall[242]. You expresse a passion rarely, but pray leave Your couplets and say something in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Natives. Brought up to the King. They hoped to have their liberty, but were mistaken. A ridiculous action of these Men. They had a mind to Beef and how they got it. A passage of their Courage. Two of this Company taken into Court. The One out of favour. His End. The other out of Favour. And his lamentable Death. The King sends special Order concerning their good Usage. Mr. Vassal's prudence upon his Receit of Letters. The King bids him read his Letters. The King pleased to hear of Englands Victory over Holland. Private discourse between the King ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the sports of childhood. Mature minds can always make such diversions more entertaining to children, and can exert a healthful moral influence over their minds; and at the same time can gain exercise and amusement for themselves. How lamentable that so many fathers, who could be thus useful and happy with their children, throw away such opportunities, and wear out soul and body in the pursuit of gain ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... work are to be secured, recur in the circle of commercial endeavors. It seems, indeed, most desirable to devise psychological tests by which the ability to be a successful salesman or saleswoman may be determined at an early stage. The lamentable shifting of the employees in all commercial spheres, with its injurious social consequences, would then be unnecessary, and both employers and employees would profit. Moreover, like the selection of the men, the means of securing ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... aesthetic one. In aesthetics that saying is true — often so disingenuous in ethics — that evil is nothing but the absence of good: for even the tedium and vulgarity of an existence without beauty is not itself ugly so much as lamentable and degrading. The absence of aesthetic goods is a moral evil: the aesthetic evil is merely relative, and means less of aesthetic good than was expected at the place and time. No form in itself gives pain, although some forms give pain by causing a shock of surprise even when they are really ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... perceive so much as one lift up his eyes to look at me. This silence lasted a quarter of an hour, when at last one of them rose up, took off his hat, and, after making a variety of wry faces and groaning in a most lamentable manner, he, partly from his nose and partly from his mouth, threw out a strange, confused jumble of words (borrowed, as he imagined, from the Gospel) which neither himself nor any of his hearers understood. When this distorter ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world—not a work of the highest genius—but a performance so great, various, and admirable, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... held this command he was required to attend in his place in the House of Lords on the trial of the Queen, one of the most lamentable events in modern English history. He had received her then Royal Highness on board his flag-ship in the Mediterranean with all the attentions due to her exalted rank, and his principal officers were assembled to pay their respects to ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... same placid affection; always entering into the same minute narrative of the slow progress of "dear uncle's" return to health. He was forbidden to exert himself in any way. His nerves were in a state of lamentable irritability. "I dare not even mention your name to him, dear Amelius; it seems, I cannot think why, to make him—oh, so unreasonably angry. I can only submit, and pray that he may soon be himself ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... very saddle-bags was carried their commissariat—yerba, charqui, maize-bread, onions, and everything, and as over the cantle-peak hung their kettle, skillet, mates and bombillas, the loss is a lamentable one; in short, leaving them without a morsel to eat, or a vessel to cook with, had they ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... who was it seemed lamentable that he couldn't urge her; but to the Claude who might be there were higher things than the gratification of fastidious social tastes, and for the moment that Claude had some hope of the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... and so well mainteined, that finallie the citie was entred by force, and manie of the citizens slaine, but the slaughter had bene much greater, if king Richard had not commanded his men to spare the sword, mooued with the lamentable noise of poore people crieng to him for mercie and grace. The Englishmen hauing got possession of the citie pight vp the banners with the armes of the king of England round about the wals, wherewith the French king was sore ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... contrary with willing hearts led astray by them; and they exhaust their property and brave the prohibitions, by purchasing a commodity which inflicts injury upon their own vitals. Is not this supremely ridiculous! And that you part with your money to poison your own selves, is it not deeply lamentable! How is it that you allow men to befool you? Thus the fish covets the bait and forgets the hook; the miller-fly covets the candle-light, but forgets the fire. Ye bring misfortunes upon yourselves! Habits which are thus disastrous are unchangeable, being like the successive rolling of the waves ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... considered one of my humorous poems worthy of a place in his most excellent weekly paper, "The Flying Post." Shortly before I had, after a deal of trouble, got my poem of "The Dying Child" printed in a paper; none of the many publishers of journals, who otherwise accept of the most lamentable trash, had the courage to print a poem by a schoolboy. My best known poem they printed at that time, accompanied by an excuse for it. Heiberg saw it, and gave it in his paper an honorable place. Two humorous poems, signed H., were truly my d but ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... woful, woful, woful day! Most lamentable day; most woful day, That ever, ever, I did yet behold! O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this; O woful day! O woful ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... would prove his Waterloo. "Coach Severely Handicapped by Material and Facilities," one headline read, while another had it, "Sun Now Hardly Destined to Set on Triumph for John Brown," the articles going on to decry the lamentable conditions surrounding Elliott's effort to attain a higher athletic grade. The task was regarded as beyond that of even a miracle man and John Brown was credited with having accepted ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... wrote to this effect to Bedford, through the name of the boy-king. They also despatched a letter to Cauchon (probably inspired by Bedford), in which they rated him for not bringing the Maid at once to her trial. They told him he was showing a lamentable laxness in not immediately punishing the scandals which had been committed under his ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... popular taste and caters to it; who writes things he doesn't believe for the newspapers and spends the money in running after society,' he would have pronounced such a fellow a cad. Now he would say: 'Well, a man must live, you know; and the public will only pay for what it wants.' It's lamentable." ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... she croaked, "my love!" and up went both hands in elderly gestures. "But what a lamentable confession! The sphere of a true woman is Home, and it should be her first duty to master those arts which are necessary for its comfort. What hired hands can ever minister to our dear ones so deftly, so ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... distance of a hundred paces before them, gave him notice of their appearance, and advised him to make ready, and behave like a man. Pallet in vain endeavoured to conceal his panic, which discovered itself in a universal trepidation of body, and the lamentable tone in which he answered this exhortation of Pipes, saying, "I do behave like a man; but you would have me act the part of a brute. Are they coming this way?" When Tom told him that they had faced about, and admonished ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of American readers. If the author is dead—lamentable fact—his book ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Warm-hearted, open, and impulsive, she was ever on the watch for sympathy, and no sooner did she have a secret than she longed to share it with some one. She had divulged her secret to the Earl, with results that were lamentable. She had partially disclosed it to Mrs. Hart, with results equally lamentable. The sickness of the Earl and of Mrs. Hart was now added to her troubles; and the time would soon come when, from the necessities of her nature, she would be compelled to pour ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... here needs no relief: thy richer verse Creates all poets, that can but rehearse, And they, like tenants better'd by their land, Should pay thee rent for what they understand. Thou art not of that lamentable nation Who make a blessed alms of approbation, Whose fardel-notes are briefs in ev'rything, But, that they are not Licens'd by the king. Without such scrape-requests thou dost come forth Arm'd—though I speak it—with ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... a child is taught to ride, we should bear in mind that the exercise always entails a certain amount of fatigue, and should be taken in moderation. The many lamentable accidents which have occurred to young girls from being "dragged," show the vital necessity of supplying the small horsewoman with the most reliable safety appliances in saddlery and dress. The parent or guardian often overlooks this all-important point, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... treatment, but endeavoured with all her force to escape; but Tommy still keeping his hold, and continuing his discipline, she struggled with such violence as to drag him several yards, squeaking at the same time in the most lamentable manner, in which she was joined by the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... take my ring, won't you?" he said at last, still in the strange, lamentable voice. "You ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... father, not dreaming of what he was about, and astonished to find that his having shot one of the storks did not make the other fly away, discharged another shot at the remaining white figure. Lamentable to relate, he hit his second daughter as he had the first. She fell, pierced through the chest, and was laid on the same ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... all right. Well, now, of course we talked over the story—in good earnest, you know. Little by little I induced her to speak of herself—this, after she'd come two or three times—and she told me lamentable things. She was absolutely alone in London, and hadn't had sufficient food for weeks; had sold all she could of her clothing; and so on. Her home was in Birmingham; she had been driven away by the brutality of a stepmother; a friend lent her a few pounds, and she came ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... its way; the country never has had sufficient capital and what there is hides itself or is withdrawn from circulation; foreign capital has been frightened away; Puerto Rican landowners are looked upon with special disfavor and credit is denied them, unfortunately with good reason, seeing the lamentable condition of our agriculture. The production of sugar scarcely amounts to half of what it was in former years. From the year 1873 a great proportion of the existing sugar estates have fallen to ruin; in 8 districts their number has been reduced from 104 to 38, and of ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... brought them into connection with the camels had their fill of excitement, and one still recalls a picture of an infuriated camel chasing all and sundry round the camp, with a fantassy on one side of its pack and a company storeman, who had mounted to preserve the balance, uttering lamentable cries on the other. The arrival of the gippy driver and the complete fearlessness with which he seized the trailing rope and beat the furious beast into submission with a pole, gave a foretaste of the courage ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... else, so far as my note-book witnesses, to take up our thoughts in the short run to Great Grimsby, and for all I know now I may have drowsed by many chicken-yards marking the birthplace of our discoverers and founders. We got to Great Grimsby in time for a very lamentable lunch in a hostelry near the station, kept, I think, for such "poore people" as the Pilgrims were, with stomachs not easily turned by smeary marble table-tops with a smeary maid having to take their orders, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... had commenced in February, and the list of commitments had swelled to a lamentable bulk by June, when the new charter having arrived, commissioners of oyer and terminer were appointed for the trial of persons charged with witchcraft. By this court, a considerable number were condemned, of whom nineteen, protesting their innocence, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... regular preaching there of late, and the house had fallen into lamentable disrepair. The roof was getting leaky; the wind had blown off several of the clapboards; and a large patch of the plaster, directly over the pulpit, had ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... which equally failed to discern the irresistible force and divine sanction of the tidal wave of humane enthusiasm that was sweeping over the earth, and to see that it was destined to leave behind it a transformed and regenerated world. But the failure of these others, however lamentable, to discern the nature of the crisis, was not like the failure of the Christian clergy, for it was their express calling and business to preach and teach the application to human relations of the Golden Rule of equal treatment for ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say, the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since."—2 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... by the hundreds; and most important of all, a mysterious five-hundred dollar rose-colored cat. Then comes the lamentable accident to Lady Victoria's aristocratic tail; the operation; the over-dose of chloroform; the funeral. There is a laugh ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of the former, amid the few remaining yellow leaves, one perceived the white tablecloths, the dabs of black formed by men's coats, and the brilliant skirts of women. People passed to and fro, bareheaded, running, and laughing; and with the bawling noise of the crowd, was mingled the lamentable strains of the barrel organs. An odour of dust and frying food hung in ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... peasants have taken to the woods. Alliances are made and broken as if in a country dance; the English called in, now by this one, now by the other. Poor people sing in church, with white faces and lamentable music: "DOMINE JESU, PARCE POPULO TUO, DIRIGE IN VIAM PACIS PRINCIPES." And the end and upshot of the whole affair for Charles of Orleans is another peace with John the Fearless. France is once more tranquil, with the tranquillity ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as I think it would, be a mistake to confound the science, morality, with the affection, religion; so do I conceive it to be a most lamentable and mischievous error, that the science, theology, is so confounded in the minds of many—indeed, I might say, of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Zerkow had just come in from his daily rounds. His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a stranded wreck; the miserable horse, with its lamentable swollen joints, fed greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, to their want of exertion, and the deficiency of numbers, even, of the allies, much more of discipline and every other military quality, when compared with the enemy ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... and Dress Improvement Association presents his compliments to the Lady Professor of Girtham College, and begs to contradict emphatically her statements with regard to a subject upon which she is evidently in entire and lamentable ignorance, and to protest against her aspersions upon the artistic studies of this and kindred societies. He begs to state that true aesthetes are not eccentric (they leave that to lady professors and her Philistine followers); ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... which had proved far too heavy for her. She was only sixty at the time of her death, but was as bent and as worn out as a centenarian. Moineaud, two years older, bent like herself, his legs twisted by paralysis, a lamentable wreck after fifty years of unjust toil, had been obliged to quit the factory, and thus the home was empty, and its few poor sticks had been cast to the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... after this lamentable battle (Assingdun), in which so many nobles fell, King Edmund pursued Canute, who was now committing ravages in Gloucestershire. The said kings therefore came together to fight at a place called Deerhurst, Edmund with his men being ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One night in Paris, after a hard day's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dame withdrawing herself, in a lamentable state of distress and disapprobation of our misconduct, we instantly consulted as to what was to be done to deter her from complaining of us to Keate. To assist our councils, we summoned to our aid, "Fitty Willy," properly ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes of good, flinching ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still. Of all who went to the war as Crusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went, so, obviously, he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all his illusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities, about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations, stronger in his mind than ever. How could he get through life without being too sorely hurt and wounded, without being cut to the very quick by his inevitable discoveries? Old Naylor did not see how it was to be done, or even hoped for; ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... a marvellous skill in failing, each failure being more complete than the last. His comedy of 'The Politicians' is 'the most lamentable comedy;' and the reader exclaims, with Hippolyta, 'This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.' The 'Career of Puffer Hopkins' is an elaborately bad imitation of DICKENS; and must be ranked in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... had seen him at his uncle's, Sir Matthew Hale's, many years ago, and could vouch for him as a worthy man. After some pleasant and merry discoursing with us, he and my brother fell into converse upon the state of affairs in the Colony, the late lamentable war with the Narragansett and Pequod Indians, together with the growth of heresy and schism in the churches, which latter he did not scruple to charge upon the wicked policy of the home government in checking the wholesome severity of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in the Rue Lafayette that John Turner had his office, and when he emerged from it into that long street on the evening of the 25th of August, 1850, he ran against, or he was rather run against by, the newsboy who shrieked as he pattered along in lamentable boots and waved a sheet in the face of the passer: "The King is dead! The King ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... aware of; and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... was a connecting link between Bressant's and her own. He had set it going, and it should be her care that it never stopped; for at the hour in which it ran down—such was Cornelia's superstitious idea—some lamentable misfortune would surely ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... machinery, but no machinery to make it into cloth, was the cause of the high wages then given to weavers. Afterwards came the powerloom; and weavers can now only make perhaps 4s. 6d. per week, even while working for longer hours than is good for their health. The result is most lamentable; but it cannot be otherwise, for the public will only reward services in the ratio of the value of these services to itself. It will not encourage a human being, with his glorious apparatus of intelligence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... augury, this museum is a reminder of all the catastrophes known to have taken place on the Mont Blanc for the forty years that the old man had kept the inn, and as he took them from their show-case, he related the lamentable origin of each of them... This piece of cloth and those waistcoat buttons were the memorial of a Russian savant, hurled by a hurricane upon the Brenva glacier... These jaw teeth were all that remained of one of the guides of a famous caravan of eleven travellers ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... Owain, "that is lamentable. And which wilt thou do?" "Heaven knows," said the Earl, "it will be better that my sons should be slain against my will, than that I should voluntarily give up my daughter to him to ill-treat and destroy." Then they talked about other things, and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... degrees, they twist their tail (which, however, is not prehensile) round their neck, and intertwine their arms and legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us, that in the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these animals, whilst others sent forth lamentable cries, because they wished to enter amid the group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these groups, a great number of young monkeys are taken alive at once. The titi in falling remains clinging to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Titmouse had been about; but he wished to hear Titmouse's own account of the matter!—Titmouse, not daring to hesitate, complied—Gammon listening in an agony of suppressed laughter. He looked as little at Titmouse as he could, and was growing a trifle more sedate, when Titmouse, in a truly lamentable tone, inquired, "What's the good, Mr. Gammon, of ten thousand a-year with such a horrid head of hair as this?" On hearing which Gammon jumped off his chair, started to the window, and laughed for one or two minutes without ceasing. This was too much for Titmouse, who presently cried ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... rank, peccant, foul, fulsome; rotten, rotten at the core. vile, base, villainous; mean &c. (paltry) 643; injured &c. deteriorated &c. 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par &c. (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... General Buell was relieved, General W. S. Rosecrans succeeding him. The army as a whole did not manifest much regret at the change of commanders, for the campaign from Louisville on was looked upon generally as a lamentable failure, yet there were many who still had the utmost confidence in General Buell, and they repelled with some asperity the reflections cast upon him by his critics. These admirers held him blameless throughout for ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and several seasons of calamity had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government should encourage ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... do you pray to images?" "The English people do not pray to images," I rejoined. As he doubted my word, I was obliged to enter into explanations of the customs of Romanists and Protestants. It is amusing or lamentable to think, as we may sneer at or regret the matter, that these rude children of The Desert should have ground for charging upon the high-bred and transcendantally-polished nations of Europe, idolatry. But, if any one, determined ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... well as his people, was on the rack. Of all the seigniors, not one was placed in so painful a position as Egmont. His military reputation and his popularity made him too important a personage to be slighted, yet he was deeply mortified at the lamentable mistake which he had committed. He now averred that he would never take arms against the King, but that he would go where man should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which still exists among the humbler classes of the nation, is never so darkly apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people of similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England stands the lowest ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... I am sorry to see so much violence in England at this moment; I consider it as the most lamentable circumstance, as it renders matters so very difficult to settle. Besides, the poor Crown is more or less the loser in all this, as it generally ends with the abolition of something or other which might have proved useful for the carrying on of Government. A rule which you may thus early impress ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... The desire for excitement has turned our minds to vainer subjects. The struggles which our elders have made for money and position have deprived them of chances for regarding natural objects. However deplorable this may be, it is a still more lamentable fact, that you, dear girls, give so little heed to Nature,—you who have time and to spare. It lies with you to cultivate this love for the natural world, that future generations may ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... husband was gone on business to Kinsale: it was in the beginning of November 1650. [Footnote: These events happened in November 1649.] At midnight I heard the great guns go off, and thereupon I called up my family to rise, which I did as well as I could in that condition. Hearing lamentable shrieks of men, women, and children, I asked at a window the cause; they told me they were all Irish, stripped and wounded, and turned out of the town, and that Colonel Jeffries, with some others, had possessed themselves of the town for Cromwell, Upon this, I immediately ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... blood and dirt. He leaned on the shoulders of two slaves, and in that condition went straight to the palace in the sight of all the people, with the greater confusion, because no one pitied him. As soon as he reached the king's apartment, he began to cry out, and call for justice in a lamentable tone. The king ordered him to be admitted; and asked who it was that had abused and put him into that miserable plight. "Sire," cried Saouy, "it is the favour of your majesty, and being admitted into ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... sadness! Oh, if only he could rid the family of that miserable husband of his sister's in some lawful way! Of course it might be possible to put the police on his track; but then, if he were caught and brought to justice, what a lamentable and open disgrace it would be to them all, and might perhaps be the means of partially closing the opening door for his sister ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... materially, with the proper delivery of the morning milk and butter by sundry maidens with golden locks; and the purser's wholesale order for beef threatened to create a famine in the Orkneys. The cheapness of whiskey appeared likely to be the cause of our going to sea with a crew in a lamentable state of drunkenness, and rather prejudiced me against Stromness; but if it had no other redeeming quality, all its faults would be forgotten in the astounding fact that there may be found a landlady with moderate ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... husband. He, alas! had gone, she knew not whither, or perhaps had fled into the woods of Acadia, and had now returned to weep over the ashes of their dwelling. An aged widow was crying out, in a querulous, lamentable tone, for her son, whose affectionate toil had supported her for many a year. He was not in the crowd of exiles; and what could this aged widow do but sink down and die? Young men and maidens, whose hearts had been torn ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... land-pastures. Considering its various uses in agriculture, as an article of food, and as a preservative from putrefaction, salt may be pronounced one of the most generally useful and necessary of all the minerals; and it is truly lamentable, that in almost all ages and countries, particularly in those where despotism prevails, this should be one of those necessaries of life, on which the most heavy taxes are imposed. Bay salt is a kind of brownish impure salt, obtained in France, Italy, and other countries, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... so bold as to address your highness." She answered, "Speak; your life is secure." The eunuch said, "Your highness is by nature a judge of merit; for God's sake lift up the screen from between you, and recognise him, and take pity on his lamentable condition. Ingratitude is not proper. Now whatever compassion you may feel for his present condition is amiable and meritorious—to say more would be [to outstep] the bounds of respect; whatever your highness ordains, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... else do?" she cried at length, in desperation, her large eyes staring at him like those of a wild animal. This dressing her up so prettily by her mother had apparently been to lamentable purpose. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... vessel in which the pirates were arrived at Campeche, where many considerable merchants came to salute and welcome the captain. These knew the Portuguese pirate as one who had committed innumerable crimes upon these coasts, not only murders and robberies, but also lamentable burnings, which those of Campeche still preserved very fresh in ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... every department, not only will waste be prevented, but dishonesty. In cities many persons find it necessary to lock up nearly every thing; and it is a lamentable state of things that so few ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... two cases, it was thought that it might not be improbable that attacks of this kind, considered at the time merely as rheumatic affections, might lay the foundation of this lamentable disease, which might manifest itself at some distant period, when the circumstance in which it had originated, had, perhaps, almost escaped the memory. Indeed when it is considered that neither in the ordinary cases of Palsy of the lower extremities, proceeding from diseased spine, ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... humaines, Ne me consolez point, vous aigrissez mes peines; Et je ne vois en vous que l'effort impuissant D'un fier infortune qui feint d'etre content. Quel bonheur, O mortels, et faible et miserable. Vous criez: "Tout est bien" d'une voix lamentable; L'univers vous dement, et votre propre coeur Cent fois de votre esprit a refute l'erreur. Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre. DESASTRE ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... United a new and serious periodical of satisfying quality. In the "Introductory," Mr. George Schilling discusses in lively fashion the latest topics of the day, thereby atoning for our own tedious "Finale." "Ready Made," by Samuel J. Schilling, is a thoughtful presentation of a lamentable fact. The evil which he portrays is one that has rendered the masses of America almost wholly subservient to the vulgar press; to be led astray into every sort of radicalism through low tricks of sensationalism. Our own poetical attempt, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's baker's' house in Pudding-lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus's Church and most part of Fish-street already. So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... him, and knowledge came to her, born of a swift intuition raised by his obvious difficulties. In a flash she knew; but even while she knew, she didn't care; it was lamentable, how dead ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... drawing. I obtained some patterns, carrying him one at a time. He would copy them with great exactness, and had been called on occasionally to draw working patterns for machinery in the shop. How lamentable that a man of his ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... course, stoutly denied Mist's accusations, and published a touching account of the circumstances, describing his assailant as a lamentable instance of ingratitude. Here was a man whom he had saved from the gallows, and befriended at his own risk in the utmost distress, turning round upon him, "basely using, insulting, and provoking him, and ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... has been so much perverted, and so much mixed up with the opinions and doctrines of men that the saints never more have it declared unto them exactly as Jude understood and believed it. But I do not think exactly with that man. Church history does disclose lamentable departures from the true faith; and we witness the same, with their evil results, in our own times; still God has had, even in the darkest hours of the Christian era, "a people prepared for the Lord." I believe that what he said to Elijah he might have said at ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... loss; I know my sorrows grieve and weigh thee down, E'en as our common cause: for on one rock We both have wreck'd our bark; And in one instant was its sun obscured. What genius can with words Rightly describe my lamentable state? Ah, blind, ungrateful world! Thou hast indeed just cause with me to mourn; That beauty thou didst hold ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... come to an end and the McGregor's Christmas holidays were no exception to this immutable law. A day arrived when Carl, Mary and Tim were obliged to return to school, and following swift on the heels of this dire occasion came a yet more lamentable one when Uncle Frederick Dillingham was forced to go back to his ship and sail for China. The latter calamity entirely overshadowed the former and was a very real blow not only to Mulberry Court, where the captain had become an object of universal pride and affection, but ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... dancing-girls, they gave him the pledged faith of the Company that he should remain in that office as long as his conduct deserved their protection: it was a good and an honorable tenure. My Lords, soon afterwards there happened two lamentable deaths,—first of Colonel Monson, afterwards of General Clavering. Thus Mr. Hastings was set loose: there was an inspection and a watch upon his conduct, and no more. He was then just in the same situation in which he had stood in 1772. What does he do? Even just what he did in 1772. He deposes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one point their roads crossed, and they happened to meet while changing horses. They had the presence of mind to take no notice, and drove off their separate ways without a look or sign. The Princess de Lamballe travelled in the same way towards England, without impediment. It was lamentable folly in the king and queen to choose a way of journeying which must ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... represented the ton danced and flirted, attended routs and assemblies, complaining fretfully of the unwonted dullness of the town, or in their drawing-rooms discussed the topics of the hour—the acting of the wonder-child Roscius; the lamentable scandal relating to Lord Melville; or, ever and again—with a ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... may be, it is a lamentable situation that our high-salaried Board of Education, composed of the best trained intelligence of the country, should not be allowed to exercise its discretion efficiently. The people, no doubt, cannot be agreed as to the principles ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... are waste, the statuary broken and the terraces are washed into gullies by the rains. The palace itself is not less lamentable. The walls are crumbling. Everything movable from the interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows, and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... says Thucydides, commenting upon the lamentable results of the Peloponnesian War, "Never had so many cities been made desolate by victories;... never were there so many instances of banishment; never so many scenes of slaughter ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail, and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many of the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it to be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible perils, and was obliged to return. Had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... come. And on a sudden they were cut off from life, unfit, unseasoned for the passage. Like the elder Hamlet's brother, they were engaged upon an act that had no relish of salvation in it. You may remember the lamentable child somewhere in Dickens, who because of an abrupt and distressing accident, had a sandwich in its hand but no mouth to put it in. Or perhaps you recall the cook of the Nancy Bell and his grievous end. The poor fellow was stewed in his own stew-pot. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... enthusiastic adherent. In this way he missed acquiring the technical mastery over form, which proved a stumbling block to him through life. At times his drawing is possessed of a vigor and life which even Ingres never had; at others his work is almost lamentable in its lack of constructive form. In respect to color in its finest, most harmonic qualities, he is the greatest of French painters; and at all times he is master of an intense dramatic force. It was with ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years. There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is twenty-five, taking the last five years. Sir John could assign no particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it. But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five prisoners twenty had been previously convicted. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... doubtless fail utterly to understand the riddle of history, were we to regret the wild warring of these early times as a mere lamentable loss of life, a useless and cruel bloodshed. We are too much given to measuring other times and other moods of the soul by our own, and many false judgments issue from this error. Peaceful material production is our main purpose, and we learn many lessons of the Will embodied in the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... out the first number in 1709. His friendship for Addison amounted almost to a passion; their intimacy was cemented by harmony of tastes and diversity of character. Steele was ardent, impulsive, warm-hearted, mercurial; full of aspiration and beset by lamentable weaknesses,—preaching the highest morality and constantly falling into the prevalent vices of his time; a man so lovable of temper, so generous a spirit, and so frank a nature, that his faults seem to humanize his character rather than to weaken ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... separated themselves from the rest and came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and smooth-shaven, with a palpable limp; another, short, broad, and hairy, showed a lamentable absence of front teeth; and the third, a blue-eyed man, slight and graceful of movement, carried his arm in splints and sling. This last was in the van as they ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... on Wednesday a little more than four. This continued slow work gave Hubbard serious concern, and the condition of our larder and wardrobe was not reassuring. Our bacon and sugar were going fast. Fish had become an absolute necessity, and our catches had been alarmingly small. There was also a lamentable lack of game. Far below we had heard the chatter of the last red squirrel, and seen the last bear signs and the last tree barked by porcupines. There were caribou trails a-plenty, but seldom a fresh track. A solitary rabbit had crossed our trail since we entered the valley, and there ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the Tuileries, or let them out in such numbers, and under such leaders, as precluded the possibility of controversy. There was one among them however whom I resolved to save; she had been known to us in happier days; Idris had loved her; and her excellent nature made it peculiarly lamentable that she should be sacrificed by this merciless cannibal ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... but he is in his dancing-pumps; and they are on their way, no doubt, to sonic cotillon- party, or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward by a vision of festal splendor. But, ah! a most lamentable disaster. Bewildered by the red, blue, and yellow meteors, in an apothecary's window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods, at the corner ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who spent their days in punts and their evenings in the old oak parlour, where a picture in boxing costume of Mr Joe Bevan, whose brother was the landlord of the inn, gazed austerely down on them, as if he disapproved of the lamentable want of truth displayed by the majority of their number. Artists also congregated there to paint the ivy-covered porch. At the back of the house were bedrooms, to which the fishermen would make their way in the small hours of a summer morning, arguing to the last as they stumbled upstairs. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... my power to give you aid at this last, trying hour, and I implore you to listen to my words of sincerest friendship,—yes, adoration. To-morrow you are to pay to Prince Bolaroz over twenty-five million gavvos or relinquish the entire north half of your domain. I understand the lamentable situation. You can raise no more than fifteen millions and you are helpless. He will grant no extension of time. You know what I have proffered before. I come to-day to repeat my friendly offer and to give unquestioned bond as to my ability to carry it out. If you agree to accept ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... effect, making the adoption of it by the House a test of its confidence in the administration. Lord John Russell opposed the amendment with great vehemence, pronouncing the acceptance of it, if it should be accepted, and the House should thus consent "to retract its previous vote, a lamentable proof of subserviency, which would disgrace it with the country." What Sir Robert now asked was, substantially, that they should now declare that to be expedient which they had declared to be inexpedient only three nights ago; and Lord Palmerston insisted that the proper course to ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... "Lamentable," sighed the Mayor, raising his glass, "to think that quite a large number of his books have been put into the Institute library! We must use our influence on all hands, Mr. Vialls. We live in sad times. Even the theatre—I am told that some ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... were flung at midnight, when the alarum was given, and "it was a perfect sight to see the short flaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after their fall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes was most ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... answered, that they came from Britain. He asked if the people of that country were Christians or heathens, and was told they were still heathens. Then Gregory, fetching a deep sigh, said: "It was a lamentable consideration that the prince of darkness should be master of so much beauty, and have so comely persons in his possession: and that so fine an outside should have nothing of God's grace to furnish it within."[4] This incident {570} ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... bombardment in 1830, separates the citadel from the town: but the effect of that bombardment has been to throw a wide area of fifteen hundred paces open to the very marge of the Scheldt; and to disconnect the fortress still more completely from the inhabited portion of Antwerp. Lamentable as may be the prospect, Antwerp, the mistress of the finest naval station and commercial port in Europe, is doomed to destruction, if a single gun be directed against its citadel. It is not possible for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... drawings and painings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry who might wish to complete their collections of modern art were invited to visit without delay. So ended Dick Tinto! a lamentable proof of the great truth, that in the fine arts mediocrity is not permitted, and that he who cannot ascend to the very top of the ladder will do well not to put his foot ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... labour, and undergo all sorts of hardships, to obtain some worldly advantage, some fancied fleeting good, and to avoid some slight ill or inconvenience, how little trouble do they take to obtain perfect happiness—eternal rest—and to avoid the most terrific, the most lamentable of evils, the being cast out for ever from the presence of the great, the glorious Creator of the universe, to dwell with ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... into his arms, 'having neither respect to herself, nor to the press of people that were about him.' He whispered some words of comfort and gave her his blessing, and 'the beholding thereof was to many present so lamentable that ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... and apprehension, that pockets are gradually falling into disuse. To use the flippant idiom of the day, they are going out! This is an alarming, as well as a lamentable fact; and one, too, strikingly illustrative of the degeneracy of modern fashions. Whether we ascribe the change to a contemptuous neglect of ancestral institutions, or to an increasing difficulty in furnishing the indispensable attributes of the pocket, it is alike indicative of a crisis; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... There are the same Parisian types—the omnibus-conductor, the washerwoman, the man who sells hot chestnuts—the same impressions of a sick and sorry landscape, La Bievre, for preference, in all its desolate and lamentable attraction; there is a marvellously minute series of studies of that typically Parisian music-hall, the Folies-Bergere. Huysmans' faculty of description is here seen at its fullest stretch of agility; precise, suggestive, with all the outline and colour of actual brush-work, it might even ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... kingdom are so bloody because of the matter of religion, that it is a lamentable thing. Ships are sent with great danger because of the close scrutiny that the Japanese make, in their fear lest religious are conveyed in them. The embassy returned, after so heavy expenses, without those barbarians having been willing to receive it. It sailed very late, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... institutions are merely conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of life—to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... as she snapped her box again, and dropped it into her pocket. "It must be that lamentable mixture in your blood. Whatever a Courtenay could be thinking of, to marry a Dissenter,—a Puritan minister's daughter, too,—he must have been mad! Yet she was of good blood on ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... to rub against another while they wait for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuffbox is empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright on a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and built a fire, while Jim dressed the chicken, and got the water to boiling, and the chicken was put in. For three hours we boiled the chicken, but each hour made it tougher. I told Jim he might be a success as a horse-thief, but when it come to stealing tender poultry he was a lamentable failure, but he said it was the only hen on the place, and if I didn't want to eat it I could retire to my couch and he would set up with the hen. I was so hungry, and the smell of the boiling hen was so Savory, that I remained awake, and at about midnight Jim ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... which will tempt those who are not interested in recipes and cooking to peruse its pages. The recipes are practical, and give just those facts which are generally omitted from books of this sort, to the discouragement of the housekeeper, and frequently to the lamentable disaster and failure of her plans. Mrs. Lincoln has laid a large number of people under obligation, and puts into her book a large amount of general experience in the difficult and delicate art of cooking. The book is admirably arranged, and is supplied with the most perfect ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... spoke only of a fray between Guise and Coligny, and stated that he wished to preserve order. But with these very {218} letters he sent messengers to all quarters with verbal orders to kill all the leading Protestants. On August 27 he again wrote of it as "a great and lamentable sedition" originating in the desire of Guise to revenge his father on Coligny. The king said that the fury of the populace was such that he was unable to bring the remedy he wished, and he again ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... necessary to state, that the third rogue—the nameless desperado of my report, or, if you prefer it, the mysterious "Somebody Else" of the conversation between the two brothers—is——a woman! and, what is worse, a young woman! and, what is more lamentable still, a nice-looking woman! I have long resisted a growing conviction, that, wherever there is mischief in this world, an individual of the fair sex is inevitably certain to be mixed up in it. After the experience of this morning, I can struggle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Horse". She was a slim, pretty, dark woman, quaint in her speech, whimsical, so that the sharp things she said did not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself, rather querulous in her manner, but intrinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long lamentable complaints, when she raised her voice against her husband in particular and against everybody else after him, only made those who heard her wonder and feel affectionately towards her, even while they were irritated and impatient with her. She railed long and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... than strange that, tho the light of God is shining more brightly than it ever did before, there is a lamentable want of zeal! If the thought does not fill us with shame, so much the worse. For we must shortly come before the great Judge, where the iniquity which we endeavor to hide will be brought forward with ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... ridiculous circumstance: every one of the persons affected by it being suddenly taken with a fit of tragedising, spouting iambics, and roaring out most furiously, particularly the Andromeda {18a} of Euripides, and the speech of Perseus, which they recited in most lamentable accents. The city swarmed with these pale seventh-day patients, who, with loud voices, were ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... sounded like that: the music it would be impossible to give, for the whole blended together into so lamentable a howl, that both Barkins and Smith started up into wakefulness from a deep sleep, and the former looked wildly round, as confused and wondering ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... rightly, the late Richard Heber afterwards came into the possession of this curious and important volume. It is lamentable to think of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... entire people, so restless, so laborious, leaving its business on Sunday to occupy itself with the thoughts of another life; it suffices to observe the unanimous uprising of the public conscience at the rumor of an attack directed against the Gospel, to perceive that unity subsists beneath lamentable divisions, and that individual conviction creates the most active of all cohesive powers in the heart of human communities; I know of no ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... But we hear less of that silly nonsense than we used to, though now and then a Prohibitionist advocate still repeats the old and long exploded myth. It never was true, Jonathan, and it is less true to-day than ever before. Drunkenness is an evil and the working class suffers from it to a lamentable degree, but it is not the sole cause of poverty, it is not the chief cause of poverty, it is not even a very important cause of ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... single act or a single event which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the philologist Camerarius, his accustomed self-possession. He admitted that married life was a holy state, and one well-pleasing to God, and that its results might be beneficial to Luther's nature and character; but he was of opinion that Luther's lowering himself to this condition was a lamentable act of weakness, and injurious to his reputation—and that, too, at a time when Germany was more than ever in need of all his spirit and his energy. Luther had not invited him to be present on the 13th, from a suspicion ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Mavromichales, the great licenser and patron of pirates, so loudly and justly complained of. I am very low, and do not feel at all well. I cannot free myself from the oppression of spirits occasioned by seeing everything in the lamentable state in which all must continue in Greece, unless some effectual steps are taken to put an end to the intrigues and rivalships headed by unprincipled chiefs and backed by their savage followers. Believe ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... puppets and then toppling the whole uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which would soon sweep them far out to sea. In precisely the same way the natives of Old Calabar used periodically to rid their town of the devils which infested it by luring the unwary demons into a number of lamentable scarecrows, which they afterwards flung into the river. This interpretation of the Roman custom is supported to some extent by the evidence of Plutarch, who speaks of the ceremony ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was not half so wretched and lamentable as was expected of her. She even showed a brisk and pleasant air to the chief seamstress, and bade her keep some pretty things for the time of her own wedding. Even to her father she behaved as if there had been nothing more than happens every day. The worthy baron went to fold her in his arms, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... end of ten lamentable days Dennis came to the conclusion that Tom Barker wanted to kill him by the Chinese torture of Ling, or death by a thousand cuts. More than one of the boys said: "Why don't you get what dough is comin' to ye and skip?" Dennis shook his head. Not ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... McDowell's corps. The President very coolly telegraphed me yesterday that he thought I had better break the enemy's lines at once! I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself." Thus is made evident the lamentable relationship between the President, who could place no confidence in the enterprise and judgment of the military commander, and the general, who had only sneers for the President's incapacity to comprehend warfare. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... summers; he would now (Since then have passed ten years—nay, more—twelve years) He would have been of equal age to thee, And would have reigned; but God deemed otherwise. This is the lamentable tale wherewith My chronicle doth end; since then I little Have dipped in worldly business. Brother Gregory, Thou hast illumed thy mind by earnest study; To thee I hand my task. In hours exempt From the soul's ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... accumulating; but, unfortunately, they are more valuable for quantity than quality. It is almost impossible to rely upon the information which is communicated to me on the subject of the languages. There is a lamentable obtuseness of intellect manifested in both collector and contributor; and there is no systematic arrangement—no analytical process, and, in fact, no correctness of detail. I may safely say that what I received from you is more valuable than all ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... brought accidentally into contact with Christian Oakley on business matters after her father's lamentable death, speedily discovered for himself; and the result was one of those sudden resolves which in some men spring from mere passion, in others from an instinct so deep and true that they are not to be judged by ordinary rules. People call it "love at first sight," and sometimes tell wonderful ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... servants that attended him carried out that blood, he, by some supernatural providence, slipped and fell down in the very place where Antigonus had been slain; and so he spilt some of the murderer's blood upon the spots of the blood of him that had been murdered, which still appeared. Hereupon a lamentable cry arose among the spectators, as if the servant had spilled the blood on purpose in that place; and as the king heard that cry, he inquired what was the cause of it; and while nobody durst tell him, he pressed them so much the more to let him know what was the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... all this, or at least more lamentable, is the fact that it need not be. The soils of Virginia need not have become worn out and abandoned; because the earth and the air are filled with the elements of plant food that are essential to the restoration and permanent maintenance of the high productive capacity of these ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... effulgence and shot it forth, like the light of a pharos over dark waters; he, best of all men, understood it, and, most of all men, mourned to see its bright hope and glory perish out of the earth under the unconquerable superstition of mankind and the lamentable infliction of the Jewish race. Alas! The Jews have destroyed many other things besides ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... odour, do what they will, and this festering mass of decaying garbage, which goes by the name of The Independent, and which is unaccountably overlooked by the night men in their rounds, is fast breeding a pestilence in the pure air of Eatanswill." This lamentable ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... I sing the endless finales of things; I say Nature continues—Glory continues; I praise with electric voice: For I do not see one imperfection in the universe; And I do not see one cause or result lamentable ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... their journey on foot; Tony following behind, quite conscious that, if he had played the part of hero, he had done it with a lamentable lack of grace. ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: "I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... once summoned a number of his most trusted and most sagacious councillors together—the Intendant was not one of those summoned—to consider what steps it behooved them to take to provide for the public safety and to ensure the ends of justice in this lamentable tragedy. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rare delights. It is made up of opera 25, 26, and 39. Opus 25 contains four characteristic pieces,—a "Dance" full of dance-rapture, a most original "Impromptu," and a "Rondo Giocoso," which is just the kind of brilliantly witty scherzo whose infrequency in American music is so lamentable and so surprising. Opus 26 includes ten sketches, all good, especially "Woodnotes," a charming tone-poem, the deliciously simple "Wayside Flowers," "Under the Lindens," which is a masterpiece of beautiful syncopation, a refreshingly ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... difficulties increased every day, the Europeans falling ill, and the negroes refusing to carry the baggage. At last, when he was some 280 miles from the sea, Tuckey was compelled to retrace his steps. The rainy season had set in, the number of sick increased, and the commander, miserable at the lamentable result of the trip, himself succumbed to fever, and only got back to his vessel to die on the 4th ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... ... I am sorry to see so much violence in England at this moment; I consider it as the most lamentable circumstance, as it renders matters so very difficult to settle. Besides, the poor Crown is more or less the loser in all this, as it generally ends with the abolition of something or other which might have proved useful for the carrying on of Government. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... weakness, miserable, lamentable weakness, that is spread out before us in the bitter invective speeches against Life by those who are called pessimists, by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Ibsen, dragged along as they were in the ebb of life toward the ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... said Cobbett, "to say of the House of Commons, 'It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.'" Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial. The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact. "If a man," said Sydney Smith, "were to kill the minister and churchwardens of his parish nobody would accuse him of want of taste. The Scythians always ate their grandfathers; they behaved very respectfully ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... not prehensile) round their neck, and intertwine their arms and legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us, that in the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these animals, whilst others sent forth lamentable cries, because they wished to enter amid the group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these groups, a great number of young monkeys are taken alive at once. The titi in falling ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... America are declared prizes of war, and many of them have been violently seized and confiscated, in consequence of which multitudes of the people have been destroyed or from easy circumstances reduced to the most lamentable distress. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... houses with the best of everything, and making all welcome to see them, and believing that the grandchildren of those who come to see our Turners and Wilkies and Hogarths will be wiser and more refined than we? It is most lamentable to witness the loss of money, of energy, and in a measure of skill, and, above all, of time, on those engravings, which no one but a lodging-keeper frames, and those Parian statuettes and Etruscan pitchers and tazzas of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... had to pass an examination before the clergyman of the place by order of the inspector, the local authorities, owing to the lamentable life of a schoolmaster, were glad to find persons at all who were willing to accept an engagement for such a position. In consequence an otherwise intolerable indulgence in examining and employing teachers took place, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... statement and discipline must be regarded as an immutable type for all ages and countries; from which all departure is necessarily a corruption. They take the flexible sapling and compare it with aged knotty oak, and shake their heads over the lamentable unlikeness: "That this should be the natural outgrowth of that! ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... who hinder the cause of Jesus Christ, I think the most lamentable cases are those who go back upon their Lord. Having spoken, they do not fulfil their word; having vowed, they do not perform their vows. They lack that decision which can be expressed in the words, 'I will pay ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a spectacle at once tragic and whimsical—the brass lectern still stood upright in the nave confronting a congregation of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... period, Diderot compared his favorite painter to the Jupiter of Lucian, who, tired of listening to the lamentable cries of mankind, rose from table and exclaimed: 'Let it hail in Thrace!' and the trees were immediately stripped of their leaves, the heaviest cut to pieces, and the thatch of the houses scattered before the wind: then he said, "Let ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... the week, the Commons having called their Eldest to the chair, and furnished him with young stronger-lunged assistants,—can speak articulately; and, in audible lamentable words, declare, as we said, that they are an inorganic body, longing to become organic. Letters arrive; but an inorganic body cannot open letters; they lie on the table unopened. The Eldest may at most procure for himself some ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... actor. He fired off a musket charged with ball cartridge, supposing he was only snapping a cap, directly into the ranks of the Twenty-Eighth regiment of our brigade, wounding two men—one of them mortally. No sooner was the lamentable event known to the regiment than they took instant steps to make the only reparation in their power. They subscribed on the spot a purse of some twelve hundred dollars, which they duly paid, for the relief of the ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... the rows,—here a sick tree, there a dead one. A careless estimate placed these casualties at fifty-five or sixty, which I later found was nearly correct. This left 180 trees in fair health; and in spite of the tight sod which covered their roots and a lamentable lack of pruning, they were well covered with young fruit. They had been headed high in the old-fashioned way, which made them look more like forest trees than a modern orchard. They had done well without a husbandman; what could not others ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... have come in contact with the white man? Nor in India itself are we altogether without a well-marked instance of the value, for a time at least, of an entire social separation between the dark and white races; and the Todas, the lords of the soil on the Nilgiri Hills, furnish us with a lamentable example of what the absence of caste feeling is capable of producing. We found them a simple pastoral race, and the early visitors to the hills were struck with their inoffensive manners, and what was falsely considered ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... corollaries, suppositions, and distinctions, that will sooner terrify the congregation into an amazement, than persuade them into a conviction. Now comes the fifth act, in which they must exert their utmost skill to come off with applause. Here therefore they fall a telling some sad lamentable story out of their legend, or some other fabulous history, and this they descant upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically; and so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse, which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever Horace could ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... compositions of any of the national bards. Than "The Mitherless Bairn," it may be questioned whether there is to be found in the language any lyrical composition more delicately plaintive. It is lamentable to think that one who could write so tenderly should, by a dissolute life, have been the author of many of his own misfortunes, and a constant barrier to every attempt for his permanent elevation in the social circle. In person, he was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... more material for a life of Falstaff than for a life of Shakespeare, though for both there is a lamentable dearth. The difficulties of the biographer are, however, different in the two cases. There is nothing, or next to nothing, in Shakespeare's works which throws light on his own story; and such evidence as we have is of the kind called circumstantial. But Falstaff constantly gives ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... wave Heaves, and low sounds moan through the mountain cave; Then all at once is still, still as midnight, When not the lime-leaf moves: Oh, piteous sight! 90 For now the glittering domes crash from on high— And hark, a strange and lamentable cry! It ceases, and the tide's departing roar Alone is heard upon the desert shore, That, as it sweeps with slow huge swell away, Remorseless mutters o'er its buried prey. So Ruin hurrieth o'er this shaken ball: 97 He bids his blast go forth, and lo! doth fall A Carthage or a Rome. Then rolls ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... noticed to our right, stretching east and west, which were generally rich in point of soil; but we passed through much brushy land during the day. It was lamentable to see the state of vegetation upon the plains from want of moisture. Although the country had assumed a level character, and was more open than on the higher branches of the Macquarie, the small freestone elevations, backing the alluvial tracts near the ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... language of a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the demand for rents answered by assassination; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... balloon section of the Army, and revealed services to which it was specially adapted, but which had previously more or less been ignored. The British Army possessed indifferent maps of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. This lamentable deficiency was remedied in great measure by recourse to topographical photographs taken from the captive balloons. The guides thus obtained were found to be of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... with the announcement that the T Square Club, of Philadelphia, has been awarded the medal offered by the St. Louis Architectural Club for the best Club-exhibit of Mention Designs comes the news of John Stewardson's lamentable death. As a founder of the Club, as its president, and for years a member of its Executive Committee, he remained to the last one of its most enthusiastic supporters. Many of his drawings are now in the Club rooms, and his record as the winner of many competitions is upon the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... always agreeably cool, and frequent showers and breezes allay the sultriness of the days. I never saw the thermometer above 90 deg. in the shade, and seldom below 65 deg.. It once fell to 54 deg., to the lamentable discomfort of our feelings and fingers. Of course, where the sun for months is nearly vertical, and twice in the summer actually so, the heat of his direct beams is intense. But those careful precautions of avoiding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... require too much encouragement to tell her lamentable tale, and Aunt Polly in return advised her to leave her place when her month was up, informing the family of her intention, that they might supply themselves. This Susan promised to do, with a full heart, and Aunt Polly ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... impossible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may be so. However, I much fear his instructions have edified out of their place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he never intended they should; for it is lamentable to behold with what a lazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-days twirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which is the usual modern stint), as if it were so much Latin. Though ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... influence of western education in India has had much to do with the present state of things. It is true that India is still a land of ignorance. It is a lamentable fact that only 1 in 10 of the males and 1 in 144 of the females can read. Only 22.6 per cent of the boys of school-going age attend school, and only 2.6 per cent of the girls. And yet the enrolment of more than five million scholars in the public schools ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... all the advantages which modern authors enjoy, the great demand for literature of all kinds, the justice and fair dealing of publishers, the adequate remuneration which is usually received for their works, the favourable laws of copyright—in spite of all these and other advantages, the lamentable woes of authors have not yet ceased. The leaders of literature can hold their own, and prosper well; but the men who stand in the second, third, or fourth rank in the great literary army, have still cause to bewail the unkindness of the blind goddess who contrives to see ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... why so many of us shirk this question is the lamentable want of the habit of living by principle and reflection. Most men never see their life steadily, and see it whole. They live from hand to mouth, they are driven this way and that way; they adapt means to ends In regard to business ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... have left records behind them, one strange and the other cruel, in the parish annals. One was a remarkable person named Mary Tofts, wife of a clothworker, who in 1726 professed to have had a lamentable misadventure. She asserted that while she was weeding in a field she was startled by a rabbit jumping up near her, and that subsequently, she presented her husband, instead of a fine boy, with quantities of rabbits. The effect of the announcement was prodigious. More than one ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... his hand upon Mr. Gooch's arm. Deep emotion was written upon his careworn face. "For Heaven's sake", he said fervently, "help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out Mrs. Billings, and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable folly. Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her back to his heart and home—promise her anything that will induce her to return. I have heard of your success in these matters. Mrs. Billings cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... For example, the unlovely character of Mrs. Lovegrove's drawing-room engrossed his attention—the dirty-browns and tentative watery blues of it, the multiplicity of flimsy, worthless, little ornaments revealing a most lamentable absence of artistic perception. In that fine booming clerical voice he detected a kindred absence of delicate perception, a showiness born of very inadequate conception of relative values. Indeed, the voice and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... their babes in their bosoms. These with tears and shrill lamentations fell at Arthur's knees right humbly, weeping, clamouring, and imploring his grace. "Sire, gentle king, have mercy and pity," cried these lamentable women, "on this wasted land, and on those wretched men who are dying of hunger and misery. If thou hast no bowels of pity for the fathers, look, sire, and behold these babes and these mothers; regard their sons and their daughters, and all the distressful ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... dwell on the splendid work done by Assistant-Commandant-General De la Rey in the western districts. Commandant-General Botha was also hard worked at this stage, and was severely taxed reorganising his commandos and filling up the lamentable vacancies caused by the deaths of ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... action and passion, the tones and methods, types and objects of thought, are also not equal only but identical. An all but absolute brotherhood in thought and style and tone and feeling unites the quasi-tragedy of Troilus and Cressida with what in the lamentable default of as apt a phrase in English I must call by its proper designation in French the tragedie manquee of Measure for Measure. In the simply romantic fragment of the Shakespearean Pericles, where there was no call and no place for the poetry of speculative or philosophic ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... miracles of bravery, were to be witnessed by these standards on many a battle-field! What fatigue, what suffering, what sacrifices, dangers, wounds, how many glorious deaths, what seas of blood, to come at last to the most lamentable disasters I Had the future been seen, those drums would have been draped in black. But the army imagined itself invincible. The thought of defeat would have called forth a smile of pity. Proud of itself, of its commander, it shouted with joy and pride as it passed ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... answer to him: "Ah me, my child, why reared I thee, cursed in my motherhood? Would thou hadst been left tearless and griefless amid the ships, seeing thy lot is very brief and endureth no long while; but now art thou made short-lived alike and lamentable beyond all men; in an evil hour I bare thee in our halls. But I will go myself to snow-clad Olympus to tell this thy saying to Zeus, whose joy is in the thunder, [perhaps rather, "hurler of the thunderbolt."] if perchance he may hearken to me. But ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... and goodly Woods destroy'd. Whose growth their Grandsyres, with such sufferance sought, That faire Felicia which was but of late, Earth's Paradice, that neuer had her Peere, Stands now in that most lamentable state, That not a Siluan will inhabit there; Where in the soft and most delicious shade, In heat of Summer we were wont to play, 70 When the long day too short for vs we made, The slyding houres so slyly stole away; ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... time—a night of wild wind and driven rain—Mrs. Hopper came rushing into the shop, her face a tale of woe. Warburton learnt that her sister "Liza," the ailing girl whom he had befriended in his comfortable days, had been seized with lung hemorrhage, and lay in a lamentable state; the help of Mrs. Allchin was called for, and any other that might be forthcoming. Two years ago Will would have responded to such an appeal as this with lavish generosity; now, though the impulse of compassion blinded him for a moment to his changed circumstances, he soon remembered ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Northern-born, General Pemberton was a gallant officer—none of our own Southern leaders was more gallant—but it has always seemed to me that his defense of Vicksburg was marked by a series of the most lamentable and disastrous mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain further." And he squared himself forward, with one short, plump hand raised, ready to tick off his points against Pemberton ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... moment she might go down with me; it was dreadful, I say, to be thus placed, and to feel that I was in the heart of the rudest, most desolate space of sea in the world, into which the commerce of the earth dispatched but few ships all the year round. But no feature of my lamentable situation so affrighted me, so worked upon the passions of my mind, as my loneliness. Oh, for one companion, even one only, to make me an echo for mine own speech! Nay, God Himself, the merciful Father of all, even He seemed not! The blackness lay like a pall upon the deep, and upon my soul. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... demanded, and when, in the hall of the Muses, the men who were cleaning the pavement and scraping the columns loudly clamored for torches and lamps, a young man's head peered over the screen which shut in the place reserved for the restoration of the Urania, and a lamentable voice cried out: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a most grievous loss, if loss is a word that can be applied to my being bereft of so distinguished a man. Corellius Rufus is dead, and what makes my grief the more poignant is that he died by his own act. Such a death is always most lamentable, since neither natural causes nor Fate can be held responsible for it. When people die of disease there is a great consolation in the thought that no one could have prevented it; when they lay violent hands on themselves we feel a pang which nothing can assuage ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Christ came not to save us from our sins, but in our sins; not to take away sin, but that we might sin more freely at his cost, and with less danger to ourselves. I say, this ensnared divers, and brought them to an utter and lamentable loss as to their eternal state; and they grew very troublesome to the better sort of people, and furnished the looser with ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
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