|
|
|
More "Cheerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the cheerless white hallway, his tall figure exaggerated in a long driving-cloak, his high features sharpened in the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the waning moon, When skies proclaim night's cheerless gloom, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round; And should a footstep haply stray Where caution marks the guarded way, Who goes there? Stranger, quickly tell, A friend. The word? Good-night. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... humane exertions to discover his retreat were successful; he could not long have subsisted by himself, and even had he been so happy as to fall in with, and receive hospitable welcome from the natives, he must of necessity have lingered out a life of toilsome, cheerless hardship while a companion of their wanderings, and when unfitted for this by old age, he would, according to the custom of the country, have been left to die, unfriended and alone, upon the spot where ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... long as it was directed upon them. She was thinking deeply—swiftly—and perhaps it was at this moment that Wilhelmine von Graevenitz vowed her soul to worldly success; her indomitable will directed to the goal of worldly power at all costs and at all hazards. She rose shivering. It was cheerless and cold in her room; the momentary gleam of the winter sun had died away, and the sky was grey and heavy with coming snow. She unhooked her cloak from the peg, fastened it round her, and with her letter hidden ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... battle with the selfish world as best they could. Since that time, life had been long and dreary to the poor widow, whose hours were well-nigh ended, for ere to-morrow's sun was risen, she would have a better home than that dreary, cheerless room, while Dora, at the early age of twelve, ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning moon, When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim night's cheerless noon, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... under their laws, which will be more just but not more severe nor more cheerless than ours; for it is a mistake to suppose that the dead love nothing but gloom; they love only the justice and the truth which are the eternal forms of happiness. From the depths of this justice and this truth in which they are all immersed, they ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... God pity the cheerless Widow Gray, And send from the halls of eternal day, The light of His peace to illumine ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... their home. She made a dissenting gesture without opening her eyes. She wished to be left alone, entirely alone, here in the orangery whither she had taken her dead child the night before. Archie, seeing that he could not persuade her immediately to leave the cheerless spot, spoke of other things. He was voluble about the cause of the fire, hinting at a dire "anarchistic" plot of some discharged workingmen. There was much talk in their neighborhood at this time of the efforts of "anarchists" to destroy rich people's ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... rule the night?" quoth I, and laughed. "The figure is more playful than exact, for whilst the moon is cold and cheerless, me you shall find ever warm and cordial. I could have wished, Monsieur de Chatellerault, that your gracing my board were due to a circumstance less untoward than ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... now people these cheerless primitive pit dwellings with their ancient inhabitants, and understand something of their manners of life and customs. Their rude abodes had probably cone-shaped roofs made of rafters lashed together at the centre, protected by an outside coat of peat, sods of turf, or rushes. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... dreary twilight. The windows broken, the rusty sashes rattling in their frames, the deserted house a dull barrier dividing the glaring lights and bustle of the street into two long lines, and standing in the midst, cold, dark, and empty—presented a cheerless spectacle which mingled harshly with the bright prospects the boy had been building up for its late inmates, and came like a disappointment or misfortune. Kit would have had a good fire roaring up the empty chimneys, lights sparkling and shining through the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... are generally better, and the charges not subject to the caprice of the landlord; and, secondly, for the sake of society; for what on earth can be more horrible than to be shut up in a lone room, a stranger in a provincial town, to eat, drink, and pass the cheerless hour, a prey ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... difficult to classify him under any school. His stories are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals, although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in 'All in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... whole stock of lemon syrup and lime juice, so that the salt meat on the "Southern Cross" will be counteracted in that way; and going round those islands we shall be ashore every few days. But what most surprises me is this: that when I am alone, as here at night in a great (for it is large) cheerless, lonely room, as I should have thought it once; though I can't help thinking of my own comforts at home, and all dear faces around me, though I feel my whole heart swelling with love to you all, still I am ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woodlands | strewing, By a | river | hoarsely | roaring, Isa | -bella | strayed de | -ploring. 'Farewell | hours that | late did | measure Sunshine | days of | joy and | pleasure; Hail, thou | gloomy | night of | sorrow, Cheerless | night that | knows ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in which he had set so much store by silence and good behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even for that purpose, he retired—ill, helpless, and starving—into a broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils—the same clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence and evil conduct generally—heard of his pitiable plight, and collected for ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... he would be in Wolverhampton, amidst grimy streets and dirty houses, in a leaden-hued atmosphere laden with damp and the fumes of chimneys, practically alone, with days of monotonous work before him, and solitary evenings to be spent in cheerless inns. What wonder if this seemed some brief vision of paradise—the golden light and glowing color, the soft strains of music, the ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... children's faces for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation, amusement, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... embers with a rueful face. "A cold hearth is more chilling than the mountains," she said; and she rose and went out of the poor little apartment, which, with all its poverty, would not have been cheerless had a bright fire glowed upon the neatly-kept hearth, and sat down upon the doorstep, where the sunlight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the first frost, were already falling from the branches, and, stamping their muddy feet on the outer steps, advanced into the vestibule. The wide corridor, flagged with black-and-white pavement, presented a cheerless aspect of bare walls discolored by damp, and adorned alternately by stags' heads and family portraits in a crumbling state of decay. The floor was thus divided: on the right, the dining-room and the kitchen; on the left, drawing-room and a billiard-hall. A stone ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossoms storms the world. A week ago the Sparrow was divine; The Bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet came; But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, The Bobolink has come, and, like the soul ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... on the tow-line, the other shoving on the canoe. They fought the gale up to their waists in the icy water, often up to their necks, often over their heads and buried by the big, crested waves. There was no rest, never a moment's pause from the cheerless, heart-breaking battle. That night, at the head of Tagish Lake, in the thick of a driving snow-squall, they overhauled the Flora. Antonsen fell on board, lay where he had fallen, and snored. Churchill looked like a wild man. His clothes barely ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... in that inscrutable silence denoting the crisis of a lifetime. Did his thoughts go back to that eventful hour when he was guiding a frail raft through the surging ice of the Monongahela? Knox was there animating the utterly cheerless scene by his loud commands to the men in charge of his precious artillery, for which the shivering troops were impatiently waiting. At three o'clock the last gun was landed. The crossing had required three hours more than ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... have never been brought into direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives, and breaking the chain of evil or ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... bare place! Even the vines look cheerless—and where have they put all the flowers? What a shame to send them away, and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a knowledge of either horses or wines was a gentlemanly accomplishment. The indulgence extended to the vendor of wines did not extend to the maker or seller of beer. I remember the resentment of the school when the sons of a certain wealthy brewer were admitted; and those boys had, I imagine, a cheerless time of it in their schooldays. The eldest of those boys, being now the head of the family, is to-day a peer. But at that time, though brewers or brewers' sons might be admitted grudgingly to the company ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... o' chap can whistle when his work is mostly fun; A hundred want the pleasant jobs to every sturdy one That'll grab the dreary duty an' the mean an' lowly task, Or the drab an' cheerless service that life often has to ask; But somebody has to do it, an' the test of me an' you Is the way we face the labor that we ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... Henry V. an infinitely better world than they had supposed possible; but, until the present moment, Esclairmonde had never felt the slightest call to take a permanent place there. Now however the cloister, even if it were open to her, presented a gloomy, cheerless life of austerity, in comparison with human affection and matronly duty. And most vivid of all at the moment was the desire to awaken the tender sweetness that slept in those steady gray eyes, to see the grave, wise visage gleam with smiling affection, and to rest in having one to take thought ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning of our Lord's Sabbath, the twenty-ninth of June, 1862, I sat in my saddle at Savage's. The gloom was very cheerless. A feeling of hopeless vagabondism oppressed me. I remembered the Disinherited Knight, the Wandering Jew, Robinson Crusoe, and other poor errants in the wide world, and wondered if any of them ever looked so ruefully as I, when the last wagon of the Grand Army disappeared ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... miserliness growing rapidly upon his cankered mind, never afterwards removed from the lodgings he had hired on first arriving there. Thus madly hugging to himself sharp-pointed memories, which a sensible man would have speedily cast off and forgotten, the sour misanthrope passed a useless, cheerless, weary existence, to which death must have been a ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... disappeared, the tramp of a procession became audible, and soon torches glared feebly through the damp, cheerless dawn. The monarch descended from his state elephant, and, prostrating ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... standing hitherto, fell with a crash during this storm. The wind howled amid the cracking wood, and mingled its moans with the ominous roaring of the rain. The heavy clouds, driving along toward the east, hung on the ground like rays of vapor, and deep, cheerless gloom intensified ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... place, and fills the mind with agreeable, home-like feelings and meditations. It seemed as if the spirit, in the one case, were set loose and etherealized to enable it to spread itself over the plains of cold, cheerless, illimitable space, and left to dwell upon objects too wide to grasp, too indistinct to comprehend; while, in the other, it is recalled and concentrated upon matters circumscribed and congenial, things of which it has ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the swelling tide which each year sweeps thousands of black men and women and children from the sunlit monotony of the plantation to the sunless iniquity of the slums, from a drudgery that is not quite cheerless to a competition that is altogether merciless. But the teaching of agriculture, even in its elementary stages, presupposes a considerable amount of academic preparation. To be sure, a flourishing garden ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... Anna's ambition to secure a harbor for maritime commerce in the more sunny climes of southern Europe. St. Petersburg, far away upon the frozen shores of the Baltic, where the harbor was shut up with ice for five months in the year, presented but a cheerless prospect for the formation of a merchant marine. She accordingly revived the original project of Peter the Great, and waged war with the Turks to recover the lost province on the shores of the Euxine. Russia had been mainly instrumental in ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Ulua, it has one interesting recollection attached to it, since on the same arid shores, Cortes disembarked more than three centuries ago. Unlike the green and fertile coast which gladdened the eyes of Columbus, the Spanish conqueror beheld a bleak and burning desert, whose cheerless aspect might well have deterred a feebler mind from going further in search of the paradise ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... officers were glad of me as a doctress and nurse may be easily understood. When a poor fellow lay sickening in his cheerless hut and sent down to me, he knew very well that I should not ride up in answer to his message empty-handed. And although I did not hesitate to charge him with the value of the necessaries I took him, still ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... region, the realm of departed souls. Still beneath this was the prison Tartarus, a pit deep and dark, made fast by strong gates of brass and iron. Sometimes the poets represent the gloomy regions beyond the ocean stream as the cheerless abode ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the negro, as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil.... Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter. What a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you, and sold like beasts to ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... the garden walk in vain We seek for Flora's lovely train; When the sweet hawthorn bower is bare, And bleak and cheerless is the air; When all seems desolate around, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... king's coin. It is impossible for us to realize the hideous ferocity of such a state of society as this; the women were as bad as the men, furious beldames, dangerous as wild beasts, without pity, without shame, without remorse; and finding life so cheerless, so hopeless, so very very dark and miserable, that when there was nothing to be gained by killing any ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... instant did it suggest the full and passionate life which is the theme and the background of the play. Nor is this strange. A Midsummer Night's Dream is plainly beyond the powers of our theatre. Individual scenes were well done, but the whole was a cheerless piece of business. ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... been very happy, but for a mental anchor fast to that gloomy mood of the morning.... Hours had flown magically. It was past mid-afternoon.... There was one more picture that had held him, not for itself, but like the Japanese scene, for the thoughts it incited.... An aged woman in a cheerless room, bending over the embers of a low fire. In the glow, the weary old face revealed a bitter loneliness, and yet it was strangely sustained. The twisted hands held to the fire, would have fitted exactly about the waist of a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... fell all about her, as it had on the first night of their arrival, a month before, but now it seemed cold and cheerless, and gave an added sense of loneliness to the silent house. She did not go inside to read, as she had promised to do, but sat for the next hour looking out across the harbor. She could not blame Alice. She considered that Alice always ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the top rail of the fence, his gaze roved over the sweep of valley, dull and cheerless in the early dawn, with a misty film rising up out of it to meet and mingle and evaporate in the far-flung colors of the slow-rising sun. Once his gaze concentrated on a spot in the distance. He detected movement, and watched, motionless, until he was certain. Half a mile it was to the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the morning succeeding this conversation, Mr. Stevens might have been seen in his dingy office, seated at a rickety desk which was covered with various little bundles, carefully tied with red tape. The room was gloomy and cheerless, and had a mouldy disagreeable atmosphere. A fire burned in the coal stove, which, however, seemed only to warm, but did not dry the apartment; and the windows were covered with ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Bernardine had suffered a cheerless childhood in which dolls and toys took no leading part. She had no affection to bestow on any doll, nor any woolly lamb, nor apparently on any human person; unless, perhaps, there was the possibility ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... Headmaster left Uppingham for a visit to the sites which promised most favourably. A deep snow on the ground made the departure from home seem the more cheerless, but it had melted from the Welsh hills before we reached them. On Tuesday, the party—which now consisted of the Headmaster, two of the staff, and one of the Trustees (whose services on this occasion, and many others ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the chill in the air of the cheerless room had suddenly accentuated itself, she arose, took a match-box from the mantel, and, stooping, lit ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... to Nan, shivering inside that cheerless cab, as if the world had stopped like a run-down watch, and that she alone, with her melancholy equipage, retained in all that vast stillness ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... round the drawing-room with satisfaction. At first it had borne the cheerless look of a house uninhabited, but she had quickly made it pleasant with flowers, photographs, and silver ornaments. The Sheraton furniture and the chintzes suited the style of her beauty. She felt that she looked in place in that comfortable ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... his way, and Paul raced upstairs two steps at a time and burst into the room he had left less than three hours ago in a mood so cheerless and despondent He kissed the letter and clapped it to his heart, and strolled up and down exulting. He was not to be dismissed; he was not to be sent ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... indulge in a morbid sentimental humor, dreaming over some "rare old poet" or blessed romance, to the exceeding great detriment of my household affairs, making my poor father sigh over a tough, badly cooked stake, and cheerless, dusty house; but these moods, to my credit be it told, were of rare occurrence; and I say now the best school for a dreaming, enthusiastic girl, who sighs for the realization of her fancy visions, is to place her in charge of some active duty—to make her feel it is exacted from her—that she must ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... his family gorging themselves on the solid eatables, a frost at Christmas is very pleasant. Poor people cowering in their rags before the door of a union, cold, hungry, and forlorn, or munching their dry bread in some cheerless garret, may not perhaps so fully appreciate its advantages; but then we all know that poor people never are contented, and seldom understand the fitness of things. Here in Paris, the numbed soldiers out in the open fields, and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... made away with all his property in so few years. And the manner being so invisible, the charge becomes stronger. Thus, labouring between the pain of misfortune and the want of means to resent suspicion, his cheerless chamber is all he can now call his home. But he has two good friends left-Franconia, and the old negro Bob. Franconia has procured a municipal badge for Daddy; and, through it (disguised) he seeks and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... The children could not cluster around me as they did before, and I got on with the lesson very badly. I am sure Maria Perry has no gift at teaching little children, and I feel quite vexed and disappointed. This has not been a profitable Sunday, and I and now going to bed, cheerless ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... proper state; Nor into distant climes would Avarice roam, To fetch delights for Luxury at home: Bound by no ties which kept the soul in awe, They dwelt at liberty, and love was law!" "Mistaken youth! each nation first was rude, Each man a cheerless son of solitude, To whom no joys of social life were known, None felt a care that was not all his own; Or in some languid clime his abject soul Bow'd to a little tyrant's stern control; A slave, with slaves ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... their eyes to regain their sight. A shrill wind pierced the slight covering of the litter, and blowing it aside, discovered the mist; or the gleaming of some wandering water, as it glided away over the cheerless waste. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... peasant-life, is usually considered her masterpiece in this genre. It was suggested to her, she tells us, by Holbein's dismal engraving of death coming to the husbandman, an old, gaunt, ragged, over-worked representative of his tribe—grim ending to a life of cheerless poverty and toil! ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... firm of solicitors which in its turn was served by the man who had received her. Romance and the clerk could never, she thought, meet under one roof. And such a roof! The room in which she sat was so dark, so gloomy, so bare and cheerless, that Juliet began to wonder whether she would not have been wiser not to have come. This was not a place, surely, which fond parents would choose for a long-deferred meeting with their child, after years of separation. She walked to the window, but the only view was of ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... hear the drum and fife, the blast of the bugle, and the playing of the band. It was glorious to look upon the star-spangled banner, waving in the breeze; but the excitement soon wore away. There were rainy days, comfortless and cheerless. Sometimes the rations were not fit to be eaten, and there was grumbling in the camp. There were days of homesickness, when the soldiers longed to break away from the restraints of camp life, and ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the intensity of the mental torture experienced by these unfortunate victims may, however, be conjectured from the fact that their senses at such junctures become so completely absorbed and overpowered by the cheerless prospect before them, that they oftentimes wander about in a state of temporary lunacy, without the power of exercising the slightest volition of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... cluster of native huts. One of the inhabitants, on being boldly accosted, was good enough to point out the way, and so the re-united party—tired, wet, and with no prospect of dry clothing—took possession of the cheerless-looking dak bungalow. Things now began to improve. To our joy we found our ekkas with their contents drawn up in the yard. And while a fire was being encouraged into a blaze, and the lean fowl was being captured and slain on the back premises, we obtained dry garments—of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... my dear son," said I. "Would to God we might always remain here happily together; but we are of different ages, and by the law of nature we must one day be separated. Consider, my dear son, if you should survive your brothers, how cheerless it would be to live quite alone on this desert island, without any one to close your eyes. But let us look at these trees; I see they are tamarind-trees; their fruit contains a pulp which is very useful in medicine, and which ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the music's mist, Roamed, rapt, 'neath skies of amethyst. The cheerless streets grew summer meads, The Son of Phoebus spurred his steeds, And, wand'ring down the mazy tune, December lost its way in June, While from a verdant vale I heard The piping of ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... It was cheerless. When I say we made a camp it is misleading, for we could not swing our kettles for fear of the betraying smoke. We sat down stiffly, for the ground was still wet from the night dew, and we passed our bags of dried maize and jerked meat from hand to hand. I made some ado to eat cheerfully, for ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places, stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part, there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed, I think I might have done a great deal worse; For I have ever gone untied and free, The stars and my high thoughts ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... "friend" passed through the door, into the long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the room, the goggling Rowley, the extinguished fire; my mind reviewed the laughable incidents of the day and night; and I laughed out loud to myself—lonely and cheerless laughter!....... ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and ill-used. He would stay in town and have a thoroughly good time. As the idea struck him he looked round the studio. The corners were dismal and shadowy. Everything not in the immediate circle of the fire looked grey and cheerless. His easel, with a bit of drapery thrown across it, was like a spectre with outstretched arms. It suggested despair. He could think of no one whom he wanted to see. There wasn't a soul he knew whom he would not in this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... without converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later, he passed them again in the same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of the cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house, that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... through the east windows of this room, big, shapeless clouds of gray could be observed slowly driving along; it looked, in fact, like a cheerless and stormy ocean, monotonous in its uniform tint. Now and then showers of cold hail or rain tore away from this chaos, and, pitched hither and thither by howling winds, swept across the town or ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... a very late comer into that sea, and its former pupil, I accorded amused recognition to the characteristic aspect so well remembered from my days of training. The same old thing. A grey- green expanse of smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam- ridges, and over all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of wet blotting-paper. From time to time a flurry of fine rain blew along like a puff of smoke across the dots of distant fishing boats, very few, very scattered, and tossing restlessly on an ever dissolving, ever ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... lulled youth asleep with was a very cheerless threnody, but he brightened once more at praise of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... anxiety; if so, in this respect it may be said to be next door to the beer-barrel, or to the use of spirits. If one man may soothe his feelings with this narcotic, another may stimulate them, when he is low and cheerless, with alcohol. The Apostle James says, "Is any merry, let him sing psalms." He does not say, Is any afflicted or low, let him smoke and drink! No; "let him pray," and depend upon God. Many a lesson which might be learned ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... dark when he reached home, and as the evening had closed in with a heavy rain, the house presented rather a cheerless appearance, particularly as, in consequence of Mrs. Noah's not expecting him that day, no fires had been kindled in the parlors, or in any room except the library. There a bright coal fire was blazing in the grate, and thither Guy repaired, finding, as he ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... very pleasant job in summer, but in early spring one of the most cheerless occupations conceivable short of gathering Iceland moss. The men wear waterproof boots, reaching up the thighs, and thick stockings inside these. But the water is icy cold. The cress plants are then not tall, as they ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... is not extinct," said Parkman twenty or thirty years ago; "in the cheerless wilds beyond the northern lakes, or among the solitudes of the distant west they may still be found, unchanged in life and character since the day when Louis the Great claimed ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... their ears by its irrational clamor to the voice of the Living God which whispers in these pages, through the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It has fathered the doubt which to-day sits, cheerless and chill, within the hearts and homes of thousands who once rejoiced in the warmth and light of God, but who now accept the alternative their teachers thrust upon them—"all or none"—and throw away the Blessed Book wherein God of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the deep chair. She was losing her clear, sweet vision of that blessed night when Gaston and she had stood transfigured! If only she could have held to that, all would have been so simple—but with that fading glory gone she would be alone in a barren, cheerless place to act not merely for herself, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... and roused herself. "The rooms look cheerless in winter without the open fireplaces we are ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... jesting, they pressed on until their advance guard met the plodding, cheerless, downcast refugees. The French peasants halted in their tracks, staring, unable to believe their eyes. Here, in the flesh, by thousands upon thousands, was the answer to their prayers. Perhaps it was not too late, after all. Here was new ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... and her mother were at church, and he had finished some work that he had brought from the bank, his former restlessness and sense of strangeness returned. The regular afternoon fog had thickened early, and, driving him back from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left him still more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he moved some of the furniture, and changed the disposition of several smaller ornaments. Growing bolder, he even attacked ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... very tired, and now scarcely had his head pressed the pillow ere he was asleep, dreaming of 'Lena, whose presence was to shed such a halo of sunlight over his hitherto cheerless home. The ringing of the bell next morning failed to arouse him, but when Mrs. Aldergrass, noticing his absence from the table, inquired for him, Uncle Timothy answered, "Never mind, let him sleep—tuckered out, mebby—and you know we allus ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... imagination, rather than through being waited upon by a delegation of legal gentlemen commissioned with the duty of enlightening her. And the colossal set-piece of the evening having been duly exploded, no sequel whatever could expect anything better than relegation to the cheerless limbo of anticlimax. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... looking restless and anxious, he sent her to the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a cheerless meal, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... reason to anticipate the remarkable achievements which the future held in store for him. He was fitted for no calling. Ever since his aunt had adopted him in far-away Scotland, where he was born of obscure parentage in 1833, he had led a life of complete dependence, not altogether cheerless but deadening to initiative and handicapping him terribly for the task of making his way in the world. His health was broken, his pockets were empty, he was without friends. Cast upon his own resources under such conditions, it seemed ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... I forget how cheerless looked the earth when first I came above it, so dull and black, save where a few snowflakes had been drifted by the wintry winds; all else was bleak and bare. There was not a gleam of sunshine athwart the leaden sky to cheer us, nor a bird ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... been his own. The ready-to-hand food gave him leisure. His days were all dreams. Weary of crouching over the fire before the opening of his humpy, he began to wander in the flesh as he was wont to wander in mind. He was seen a mile away from the cheerless camp, where his companions, with ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the room; And lo! it was cheerless and bare; Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,— And the lady was not there; Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom, As ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... It was a cheerless journey, harassed by thoughts and speculations that could be hardly considered illuminating. Curiously enough he had no thought of making a run for it to a district where he was still unknown. Why should he? There was not a guilty thought in his mind, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... to be raining harder than it really is when you look at the weather through the window. Even in winter, though the landscape often seems cheerless and bare enough when you look at it from the fireside, still it is far better to go out, even if you have to brave the storm: when you are once out of doors the touch of earth and the breath of the fresh air gives you fresh life and energy. Men, like trees, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and shrunken a life as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction but such as would put an end to it altogether. But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging. But now the fence was broken down—the support was snatched away. Marner's thoughts could no longer move in their old round, ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... coming to a sluggish stream, as quiet as the wood through which it crept, and following its slow windings, we at last heard a voice, and in the distance made out dark forms sitting on the earth beside that sombre water. We went on with caution, gliding from tree to tree and making no noise. In the cheerless silence of that place any sound would have shattered the stillness like a ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... many exclamations over the cosy dressing room which Anne occupied. As is the case in most of the recently built theatres, the star's dressing room had been comfortably furnished and was in direct comparison to the cheerless, barn-like rooms that make life on the road ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... done your poor poet, in writing him so very obliging a letter, and the pleasure the enclosed beautiful verses have given him, came very seasonably to his aid, amid the cheerless gloom and sinking despondency of diseased nerves and December weather. As to forgetting the family of Glencairn, Heaven is my witness with what sincerity I could use those old verses which please me ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... I was to sit, and another still smaller above it, in which I was to sleep. I remember that I sat down, and looked disconsolate about me—everything seemed so cold and dingy. Yet how little is required to make a situation—however cheerless at first sight—cheerful and comfortable. The people of the house, who looked kindly upon me, lighted a fire in the dingy grate; and, then, what a change!—the dingy room seemed dingy no more! Oh the luxury of a cheerful fire after a chill night's journey! ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... its prisons in couleur de rose for my own private ends. I simply state what I saw on this and subsequent occasions, and am glad to say that in Yakutsk the condition of the political exiles was as satisfactory as it could possibly be made in such a rigorous climate and amidst such cheerless surroundings. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... just breaking, grey, cheerless, and chill, as I reached the cutter and stepped in on deck over her low bulwarks, wet to the skin, nerveless from exhaustion and hunger, and with my feet, elbows, and knees lacerated and bleeding from my battle with the rough ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... heat of summer, will never become too dry for the health of the vine. It is a sad spectacle to see the hopes of a whole summer frustrated by one cold night; to see the vines which promised an abundant crop but the day before, browned and wilted beyond all hopes of recovery, and the cheerless prospect before you, that it may occur every spring; or to see the finest crop of grapes, when just ripening, scorched and wilted by just one night's frost, fit for nothing but vinegar. Therefore, look well ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... all her speed, and the lieutenant felt the deck quiver as though it was in danger of being shaken out of her. But she was not followed by the Bellevite, and things began to look dark and somewhat cheerless to Christy. The firing came to an end, for the distance was becoming too great for it to be ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... forcibly than ever the barrenness of the room and of the house in general. True, his own home was very humble, and yet there was an air of comfort and refinement about it. The Duke home had always impressed him as being cold and cheerless and ugly. There were no protecting porches, no lawn, no flowers, and the barn yard had crept close up to the house. It was a place to work. The eating and the sleeping were provided, so that work could ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with thirty or forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions, counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was blowing whiffs of smoke ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... head, in some suspicious den. Flashing through the shadow of the police lamp, in "Cow Bay," a forlorn female is seen, a bottle held tightly under her shawl. Sailing as it were into the bottomless pit of the house of the Nine Nations, then suddenly returning with the drug, seeking the cheerless garret of her dissolute partner, and there striving to blunt her feelings against the horrors ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... matter over, and bear me witness that I state the fact correctly. It is so; you cannot deny it. The very terms "religion," "devotion," "piety," "conscientiousness," "mortification," and the like, you find to be inexpressibly dull and cheerless: you cannot find fault with them, indeed, you would if you could; and whenever the words are explained in particulars and realized, then you do find occasion for exception and objection. But though you cannot deny the claims of religion used as a vague and general term, yet how irksome, cold, uninteresting, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... have seen another spring In floral beauty rise, And happy birds on gladsome wing Flit through the azure skies. Though sickness bowed my feeble frame Through winter's cheerless hours, Life's sinking torch resumes its flame ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... but it was barred from those youthful and melancholy eyes: for Nature might tempt to a thousand thoughts, not of a tenor calculated to reconcile the heart to an eternal sacrifice of the sweet human ties. But a faint and partial gleam of sunshine broke through the aperture and made yet more cheerless the dreary aspect and gloomy appurtenances of the cell. And the young novice seemed to carry on within herself that struggle of emotions without which there is no victory in the resolves of virtue: sometimes she wept ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stood pledged to your country. What were we not to expect from the first patriot of modern story? Your lordship will readily imagine that our expectations were boundless and indefinite. "Glorious and immortal man!" we cried, "go on in this untrodden path. We will no longer look with drooping and cheerless anxiety upon the misfortunes of Britain, we have a resource for them all. The patriot of Stowe is capable of every thing. He does not resemble the vulgar herd of mortals, he does not form his conduct upon precedent, nor defend it by example. Virtue of the first ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... The daybreak came, gray, cheerless, very cold. A dense fog, white and raw, hung over the river; in the east, where the sun, they knew, was rising, they could only see the livid light of the still towering flames and pillars of black smoke ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... gray and cheerless. He was up with the first ray of light, shaved and dressed, and went over, under the gray-green pergola, to his father's house. He was up, also, and stirring about, for he had not been able to sleep. His gray eyebrows and gray hair looked rather shaggy ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... morning came, chill and cheerless. Mistress Croale stirred, moved, crept up rather than rose to a sitting position, and stretched herself yawning. Gibbie had risen and stood over her. She caught sight of him; absolute terror distorted her sodden face; she stared at him, then stared about her, like one who had suddenly ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... brothers, John Jacob Astor had to endure for some years a most cheerless and miserable lot. He lost his mother, too, from whom he had derived all that was good in his character and most of the happiness of his childhood. A step-mother replaced her, "who loved not Jacob," nor John Jacob. The father, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At last I bethought me, that I had ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... his dressing-bag, so they were not detained at the Customs. His valet was following with the rest of his luggage, and as soon as she had had a few hours' sleep, he would take her to different shops. She clung on to his arm. Paris seemed very cold and cheerless, and she did not like the tall, haggard houses, nor the slattern waiter arranging chairs in front of an early cafe, nor the humble servant clattering down the pavement in wooden shoes. She saw these things ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 's so keerless He draws Abe 'most eyeless and earless, But he's never yet pictured him cheerless Er with fun 'at he tries to conceal,— Whuther on to the fence er clean over A-rootin' up ragweed er clover, Skeert stiff at some "Rambler" er "Rover" Er ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... the storm shrieking about me, I was busy at work sketching out my plans. After a time I grew nervous. I did not smoke then, and so I had nothing to comfort me but my thoughts; and, in spite of my efforts to make them otherwise, they were cheerless enough. The forest grew to my door. In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the pine-trees over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning trees would reach down and sweep across my ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Cheerless and companionless did her husband feel as he let his eye fall upon her, buried in selfish enjoyment, while his own heart was wrung with the bitterest recollections and the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... paused on the threshold and took in the picture. He could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... A cold, cheerless room, bare of carpet or pictures, with just the study-table, bed, and two chairs. At the study-table, his huge bulk sprawling on, and overflowing, a frail chair, they had found the massive John Thorwald laboriously ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... when Cherry and her mother were at church, and he had finished some work that he had brought from the bank, his former restlessness and sense of strangeness returned. The regular afternoon fog had thickened early, and, driving him back from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left him still more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he moved some of the furniture, and changed the disposition of several smaller ornaments. Growing bolder, he even attacked the sacred shelf devoted to Tappington's ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... apartment boasted a larger dining room. But there are three girls in my Sunday School class that can't possibly go home this year, and I've no doubt you boys could find somebody that won't be invited anywhere. Thanksgiving is such a cheerless place in a boarding house! If we ask a few young people in for a party in the evening, it will liven things up a bit for them, and I think it will be pretty good fun for ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... pace on David's account. Even David did not think of stopping. He had no desire to stop so long as their way was lighted ahead of them. It seemed to him that the world was becoming brighter and the forest gloom less cheerless as they dropped that evil valley of Tavish's farther and farther behind them. Then the moon began to fade, like a great lamp that had burned itself out of oil, and darkness swept over them like huge wings. It was two o'clock when they camped ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... their stay at Mount Oliphant were years of unending toil and of poverty bravely borne. The whole period was a long fight against adverse circumstances. Looking back on his life at this time, Burns speaks of it as 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave'; and we can well believe that this is no exaggerated statement. His brother Gilbert is even more emphatic. 'Mount Oliphant,' he says, 'is almost the poorest soil ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... evening we rode into Carlsruhe. We made our entry in a crazy hackney cab behind a lazy horse that had been dragging us for a long time with cheerless industry between a double file of trees, along a road without a bend in it; a long, lanky, Quaker road, heavily drab-coated with dust; a tight-rope of a road that comes from Manheim, and is hooked on to the capital of Baden. Out of that allee ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... However, its cheerless aspect was for the moment rendered less apparent than usual by reason of many people gathered about the storm-porch, and the number and variety of farmers' sleighs grouped about the two tying-posts which stood by the roadside ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... fastened his eyes on the compass card, took refuge, in spirit, inside the binnacle. He felt chilled more than he should have been by the chilly dusk falling on the muddy green sea of the soundings from a smoothly clouded sky. A fitful wind swept the cheerless waste, and the ship, hauled up so close as to check her way, seemed to progress by languid fits and starts against the short seas which swept along her sides with a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... lieutenant, who, by-the-by, did not clearly comprehend all his captain's remarks; "but I suppose as there are some animals, polar bears and arctic foxes, who delight in snow and frost, so there are human beings who are content to live on in this cheerless region." ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... itself, has become too timid to tolerate such bold irony; it is always careful lest the mantle of its gravity should be disturbed in any of its folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to folly beside itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the ridiculous; but, alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule.[28] It would be easy to make a collection of the excellent sallies and biting sarcasms which have been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well known that they frequently told such truths to princes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... And cheerless was that resting-place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider-down! Through darksome night till dawn of day, Absorbed in wakeful ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... with well dressed meat supplied by his brother Vatapi (transformed into a ram). Then all those royal sages, beholding the mighty Asura Vatapi, who had been transformed into a ram thus cooked for them, became sad and cheerless and were nearly deprived of themselves. But that best of Rishis—Agastya—addressing those royal sages, said, 'Yield ye not to grief, I will eat up the great Asura.' And the mighty Rishi then sat himself down on an excellent seat, and the prince of Asuras, Ilwala, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... second day of forced marching found them at the Three Crossings of the Sweetwater, deep in a cheerless alkaline desert, and on one of the most depressing reaches of the entire journey. That night such gloom fell on their council as had not ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... When the day's nearly done, Looks in on the cheerless floor; And falleth the rain Through the broken pane— Shrill whistles the wind at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... battle with untoward circumstances, ending in defeat. If the hardest toil and severe self-denial could have procured success, they would not have failed. It was this period of his life which Robert afterwards described, as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of galley-slave." The family did their best, but a niggard soil and bad seasons were too much for them. At length, on the death of his landlord, who had always dealt generously by him, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but must go on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had been taken off, he was set down on the floor near a warm chimney in rather a bare and cheerless attic, and left to himself ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... luxury wealth could purchase, worlds seemed all too cheap to give to have him with them. But this could not be. The soldier of three battles, he was not willing to admit that he was sick until his strength failed, and he was actually dying. He was carried to this cheerless room, a rude table the only furniture; no door, no window-shutters; the western sun threw its hot rays in upon him,—no cooling shade for his fevered brow: and so he lay unconscious of the monster's grasp, which ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... and cheerless, colorless save for the torn red shades above the high dormer windows, and the crudely painted mottoes over the platform and around the wall. "Berry Hill for God!" sprawled along one side, flanked by "Remember Your Mother's Prayers!" and in front the sinner's trembling gaze was met by the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... did not come for us until four o'clock. He was a small, nervous gentleman, and lamps were already lighted in the smoky city when we started to drive twelve miles through spring mud, on a cloudy, cheerless afternoon. We knew he had no confidence in his power to manage those horses, though we also knew he would do his best to save us from harm; but as darkness closed around us, I think we felt like babes in the woods, and shuddered with vague fear as much as with cold and damp. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... something to be gained, by teaching him to think differently. It is better to leave him as he is than to teach him whining. It is better that he should go without the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and paralysing sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us, by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of sensation and sluggishness of mind which blurs and decolorises for poor natures the wonderful pageant of consciousness; ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and two benedictines,' cried Frank, and they relapsed into their chairs. But a half-hour passed and the grey cloud was thicker and the rain more heavy. The cheerless leaden river flowed slowly under drifting skies. Beyond an expanse of shining pavement the great black Abbey ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... table, you'll have to wait for me to dress and clean myself. Will we have time?" And Ralph's face told how much he appreciated a chance to spend an evening at the home of Frank Allen, his friend and chum; for his boarding house room did look a bit cheerless at night time. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... forth. It originally had a window, but the glass had long been broken and its place supplied by a large board, which failed to keep out the wind and rain, so that during the winter season the closet was a cold, cheerless place. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Jack. He observed with sickening distinctness that the night had begun to fall, the river's silver ribbon had become a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark and cheerless. "I guess I ought to be getting into my things," he said, moving toward his ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... odours; wells were completely choked, fountains were dried at their sources. The statues of monarchs which had adorned the Exchange, were smashed; that of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, alone remaining entire. The ruins of St. Paul's, with its walls standing black and cheerless, presented in itself a most melancholy spectacle. Its pillars were embedded in ashes, its cornices irretrievably destroyed, its great bell reduced to a shapeless mass of metal; whilst its general air of desolation was heightened by the fact that a few monuments, which had escaped destruction, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... length on the rug with his nose between his fore-paws, would wrinkle his brows and lift up his eyelids every now and then, to exchange a glance of mutual understanding with his master. But there was a chamber in Shepperton Vicarage which told a different story from that bare and cheerless dining-room—a chamber never entered by any one besides Mr. Gilfil and old Martha the housekeeper, who, with David her husband as groom and gardener, formed the Vicar's entire establishment. The blinds of this chamber were always down, except once a-quarter, when Martha entered ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the hills to Ain al Baidah in cold and cheerless guise. The villagers crowded round to stare at us in the familiar fashion. But there were grim looks and dark scowls among them, and, failing the truculent and determined bearing of Salam and the presence of the kaid we should have had ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... curiously-constructed houses which are only to be met with in old- fashioned neighbourhoods. It stood directly on the high road, a big grey building which could boast of no architectural beauty, and which indeed presented a somewhat cheerless aspect, with its wire blinds and tall, straight windows. A gaunt, town-like house—such was the impression made upon the casual passer—by; but appearances are apt to be deceptive, and that same stranger would have speedily altered his impression, if he had been ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... call which he heard when the others slept. Tonight he must share with his father the raw chores of the farm, and, when his studies were done, he must go to his bed, exhausted in body and mind, to be awakened at sunrise and retread the cheerless round of drudgery. Every other tomorrow while life fettered him here held a repetition of just ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and there: with a grandmother's corner by a sunny window, and a father's chair by the wide, cheerful chimney-piece, and a place for the children to play, with plenty of room to get about. Apples and nuts always taste so good in such a place! Instead, we have a stuffy little kitchen and a cheerless dining-room, that no one wants to sit in, and every member of the family goes to his or her room, and sociability is at an end. Then we must go to theatres, lectures, and concerts, just to catch a glimpse of the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... looking more cheerless than it had done of old, with its high-set windows and ghastly Crucifix, affected me in a singular manner. In this room I had known a sort of peace—the peace that is peculiarly childhood's own, whatever the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the naked room, The alien firelight died away, And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, I passed to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Dr. Richardson visited this place on May 10th the blade of wheat looked strong and healthy. There were only five acres in cultivation at the period of my visit. The prospect from the fort must be pretty in summer owing to the luxuriant verdure of this fertile soil; but in the uniform and cheerless garb of winter it has little to ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... unmarried, relieved the sombre severity of clerical life by teaching a few boys and girls. By that fond indirection he brightened with fresh air and natural music and sunshine the dry routine of his unmated days. For the cheerless solemnity of the life of the country clergy in those times it is hard to imagine. The missionaries to East London tell us that the peculiar characteristic of that vast region, swarming with human beings, is want of entertainment. The people there do not laugh. They have no diversion. There is ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... in a little cafe for a cup of chocolate. It was a raw, cheerless morning, with occasional snowflakes whipping by on the damp north wind, the streets were all but deserted, and in the room that used to be full of smoke and talk there were only empty tables, and you ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... if Hays' farmhouse, or "Hays," as it was familiarly called, looked any more bleak and cheerless that winter afternoon than it usually did in the strong summer sunshine. Painted a cold merciless white, with scant projections for shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... out into the garden; it was a small piece of ground that had once been a yard; it was inclosed within walls of great height, and to us would have seemed a cheerless place for horticulture, but to Robinson it appeared the garden of Eden. He gave a sigh of relief and pleasure, but the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... wear the colour of your heart, and be a Man. You grudge sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. Thereafter, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... sat in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its ugly shabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there swept through her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it on a hot September evening. A blaze of light—delicious ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... night had to be passed on board by our weary shipwrecked visitors. Dark and dreary it proved. The wind came off cold and cheerless, in fitful gusts, from the shore, and moaned and howled through the rigging; the rain beat on our decks; and broken cross-seas tumbled and danced round us like imps of evil, eager to prevent our escaping from their malign influence. Thus ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the room. "I think the Kennedys were mad to build this confounded barrack. I've always disliked it, and old Quentin hadn't any use for it either. Cold, cheerless, raw monstrosity! It hasn't been a very giddy ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... step sweet Memory comes, And leads me gently through her twilight realms. What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung, Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed The enchanted, shadowy land where Memory dwells? It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear, Dark-shaded by the lonely cypress tree. And yet its sunlit mountain tops are bathed In heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs, Robed in the dreamy light of distant years, Are clustered joys serene of other days; Upon ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... when he saw it last. The walls, bare as his hand, stretched without relief from baseboard to ceiling, and the floor from door to window showed an unbroken expanse of unpainted boards, save for the narrow space between chair and table, where a small rug had been laid. A cheerless outlook for a tired man, but it seemed to please Hammersmith. There was paper and ink on the table, and the lamp which he took care to examine held oil enough to last till morning. With a tray of eatables, this ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... company aboard. But the snap-shot of the Tyro surreptitiously taken by Judge Enderby—he having borrowed Alderson's traveling-camera for the purpose—showed a face which might suitably have been used as a marginal illustration for that cheerless hymn, "This world is all ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have first a duty to perform. Mother, please prepare a little lunch, and put a glass of your old currant wine on the tray. Hobart must not come to a cold, cheerless home. I'll go and have his old servant up and ready to ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... a marriage with me had been a hope abandoned by her years since. No woman looks forward willingly to a life of cheerless celibacy. In thinking of her future, Mary naturally thought of herself in the character of a wife. Could she fairly expect in the time to come to receive any more attractive proposal than the proposal now addressed to her? Mr. Van Brandt had ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... and looked into the room; And lo! it was cheerless and bare; Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,— And the lady was not there; Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom, As ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... came to a small cluster of native huts. One of the inhabitants, on being boldly accosted, was good enough to point out the way, and so the re-united party—tired, wet, and with no prospect of dry clothing—took possession of the cheerless-looking dak bungalow. Things now began to improve. To our joy we found our ekkas with their contents drawn up in the yard. And while a fire was being encouraged into a blaze, and the lean fowl was being captured and slain on the back premises, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... because the woman herself was not intended by nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose temper was quick to leap into the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... farewell to the Swan's daughter: and Queen Helen vanished as a bright mist passes, not departing swiftly, as had departed Queen Guenevere and Queen Anaitis; and Jurgen was alone with the black gentleman. And to Jurgen the world seemed cheerless, and like a house that none has lived in ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... simply tied; the whole outward man, except for a pointed beard, tentatively clerical. There was a thinning on the top of Pitman's head, there were silver hairs at Pitman's temple. Poor gentleman, he was no longer young; and years, and poverty, and humble ambition thwarted, make a cheerless lot. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of parents by children in old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... sudden realization of the passing of the years. For the first time, he had allowed himself to face the fact that it was some time now since he had crossed the summit of the hill, and that under present conditions, his old age promised to be a lonely, cheerless affair. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... one another; to bear misery, need and death, without measure and without object, in the form, for instance, of millions of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who, in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in damp rooms or the cheerless halls of a factory. What a pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used to another ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his binoculars and climbed down the rocky pinnacle on which he had been perched, and went to eat a cheerless meal where Badshah grazed a ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sail hence for a brief sojourn to those distant western shores, whence thou, though thou sayest naught of them, must assuredly have come; I have often dreamed idly of a gray coast washed with dull rain and swathed in sweeping mists, where ever and anon the sun shines through,—a country cheerless, where a poet's fame like mine might ring the darkness of the skies with light, and stir the sleepy silence ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... emblazonings"—steeping the altar in rich suffusion, chequering the walls and pavement with variegated hues, and filling the whole sacred spot with a warm and congenial glow, these panes produce a cold, cheerless, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... solemn tick marked one hour of waiting, and still he did not come. She arose and added fuel to the fire, and then, taking a book, tried to read. It was of no use, she could not fix her mind upon anything, and she laid the book down and, crossing the room, looked out of the window. How cheerless the snowclad dooryard, and what a cold glitter the stars seemed to have! She sat down again and watched the fire. The tall clock just outside the parlor door seemed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... was coming on, it was raining, and we were told that there was a very bad road before us over mountains, and no other house for three leagues. We determined to stay at the hut, although the prospect of our night's entertainment was a most cheerless one. The hut was about twenty feet square, with a small attached shed for a kitchen. The floor was the natural earth, littered with corn husks and other refuse. There was not a bit of furniture, excepting some rough sleeping-places ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth and brightness are as evanescent as love's young dream. And your solid log has a certain irritating inertness. It is an absentee fuel, spending its fire up the chimney, and after its youthful clouds of glory turns but a cheerless side of black and white char towards the room. And, above all, the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with the poker, and you get but a sullen resonance, a flight of red sparks, a sense of an unconquerable toughness. It is worse than coke. The crisp ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... second examination before the magistrate on January 30. To avoid excitement, both on the part of the prisoner and the public, the court sat in one of the corridors of the Town Hall. The scene is described as dismal, dark and cheerless. The proceedings took place by candlelight, and Peace, who was seated in an armchair, complained frequently of the cold. At other times he moaned and groaned and protested against the injustice with which he was being treated. But ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Bangkok and established rice-mills, factories for the production of sugar and oil, and warehouses for the importation of European fabrics. They found a ready market for their wares, and an aspect of thrift and comfort began to enliven the once neglected and cheerless land. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... be a more cheerless spot in London than the Queen's Club on a foggy December afternoon, but when I arrived there and found that we had got to play in ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... ailments, but they were nothing compared to my mental trials. Grief, hatred, jealousy, and revenge had well-nigh bereft me of reason. I had lost a home of plenty, been reduced to almost abject poverty, and had become a cheerless woman,—could not smile without feeling ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... on things to come into any fatiguing sketch of reflection.—From your window, however, there was a tedious scope of black atmosphere, that I think won my mind into a sort of fellow-travellership, pacing me again through the cheerless waste of the past, and presenting hardly one little rarified cloud to give a dim ornament to the future;—not a star to be seen;—no permanent light to gild my horizon;—only the fading helps to transient gaiety in the lamps ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... later years when my income has been sufficient to warrant me in buying any thing I desire for personal comfort, I often think of the cheerless experiences of that winter. And I can truthfully say that my heart goes out to the homeless and destitute, and I am always willing to extend a helping hand to those who show a willingness ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... performance of a clear duty. Still, as he looked over the dreary Northern field in those chill days of early March, he must have had a marvelous sensitiveness in order to perceive the generative heat and force in the depths beneath the cheerless surface and awaiting only the fullness of the near spring season to burst forth in sudden universal vigor. Yet such was his knowledge and such his faith concerning the people that we may fancy, if we will, that he foresaw the great transformation. But there were still other ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... they had walked, when suddenly the walls fell away, and Donald found himself in a large, low room, bare-floored and cheerless, that occupied the other third. Smoky torches of wood standing out from crevices in the logs gave light, and around the wall he could see perhaps fifty men, standing or squatting. Directly before him at the opposite end was a sort of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... picture such as may be seen at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; if a musician, a cantata; if an architect, the plans for a public building. At the time when we are penning the words, this menagerie has already been removed from these cold and cheerless buildings, and taken to the elegant Palais des Beaux-Arts, which ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... always been his own. The ready-to-hand food gave him leisure. His days were all dreams. Weary of crouching over the fire before the opening of his humpy, he began to wander in the flesh as he was wont to wander in mind. He was seen a mile away from the cheerless camp, where his companions, with smoke-dried ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... beckoned her towards me, but my hands refused their office. I felt I know not what charm she possessed to calm my throbbing brain and burning heart; but as I turned from the gloom and darkness around to gaze upon her fair brow and unmoved features, I felt like the prisoner who turns from the cheerless desolation of his cell, and looks upon the fair world and the smiling valleys lying sunlit ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the diagram. On the whole, it is the best form of close-side tent I have found. It admits of a bright fire in front, without which a forest camp is just no camp at all to me. I have suffered enough in close, dark, cheerless, damp tents. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... The brilliant red of the Echo cliffs is wanting. The towers and walls of Castle Canon are yellowish-gray. But their forms are incomparably various and grotesque—in some instances sublime. The valley of Green River at this point is a cheerless sage-brush desert, as it is further north. To be sure, this uninviting stream, a couple of hundred miles further south, having united with the Grande, and formed the Rio Colorado, does indeed, by dint of burrowing deeper and deeper into the sunless chasms, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... window. The day was gloomy, with a bitterly cold blustering east wind, which made the loose window-sashes rattle in their frames, and blew the pungent smell of city smoke in at every crack. She sat up and looked round at the small cheerless apartment, with no fireplace, and for only furniture the bed she was lying on, one cane- chair over which her clothes were thrown, and a circular iron wash-stand, with yellow stone jug and ewer, and underneath a shelf for the ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the novices—there being, as you know, ten other 'unclothed' boys besides myself—had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong resemblance to a flock of lambs in some strange ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Memoranda" will cease permanently with this issue of the magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in the profits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in a cheerless time is drearier. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... this, when the miserable little outcasts return to their cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent which they have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed insufficient, the children are carefully searched ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... still empty, scarcely even held romance now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed worse than the most ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... his black alpaca coat hung on it like a sack, and his whole attitude spoke of sorrow. He might have been the presentment of an unwilling ghost, who stood with the Ferryman's farthing under his palm, waiting to be taken across the cheerless, dark waters to a limbo of drifting souls. He took his hands from before his face and clasped them over the book, looking out of the window to the evening shadows, as if he tried to find peace in the very ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... fleeting, wav'ring Sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne, Wilt thou, now, wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... three score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets, one leading from the harbor, and another striking out from it at right angles; and, at the corner of these two, a very dark and cheerless tavern, by ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... as you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning moon, When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim night's cheerless noon, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... out for her amusement quacked of school and duty; she could not play games all by herself and Grandma was too busy; dolls long since had lost their charm; it was too stormy for callers; and altogether world seemed a dull and cheerless place. Even when the girls returned from school the atmosphere did not clear. Peace was plainly out of sorts, and it was with a sigh of thanksgiving that the household saw the dismal day draw to ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... gone home; many of them for hours. The hall—brilliantly lighted up, and gaily attended, as was, and perhaps is still, the custom at the beginning the last evening of a session—had become cold, dark, and cheerless. Of the members who remained, to prevent the public business from dying for want of a quorum, most but himself were sinking from exhaustion, although they had probably taken their meals at the usual hours, in the course of the day. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Lady Anne's confidence for the moment had almost deserted her. The girl's face was invisible and the interior of the passage looked cheerless. Nevertheless, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day, which was Sunday, Francesco called me at five. There was no visible sunrise that cheerless damp October morning. Grey dawn stole somehow imperceptibly between the veil of clouds and leaden waters, as my friend and I, well sheltered by our felze, passed into the Giudecca, and took our station before the church of the Gesuati. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Margot felt a sweeter satisfaction in being so protected than in all her former independence. They climbed the hillside which led to the moor and set out radiantly to traverse the grey expanse; grey and cheerless to-day in very deed, with a thick, blanket-like dampness in the atmosphere of which dwellers in southern climes are ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... getting her off. He then turned to where the Admiral's ship lay aground, and found that, to all appearance, she was in even a worse plight, as the rocks to leeward of her were above the water, and she was much more exposed, should bad weather come on. Never, perhaps, was there a scene more cheerless and appalling: a dark wintry sky—a sky loaded with heavy clouds—the wind cold and piercing—the whole line of the coast one mass of barren rocks, without the slightest appearance of vegetation; the inland part of the country ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Major-General Butler, first of all the generals in the army of the Republic, and anticipating even Republican statesmen, had clearly pointed to the cause of the war. At Craney Island I met two accomplished women of the Society of Friends, who, on a most cheerless spot, and with every inconvenience, were teaching the children of the freedmen. Two good men, one at the fort and the other at Norfolk, were distributing the laborers on farms in the vicinity, and providing them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... glories of our line: Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls, The spinning Jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls. Sing not, sing not, my Angeline! in days so base and vile, 'Twere sinful to be happy, 'twere sacrilege to smile. I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob I'll muse on other days, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... water. This lake apparently increased in width as it stretched away to the northward, as far as the eye could reach, when viewed from the farthest point attained by me in 1839, named by Colonel Gawler, Mount Eyre. Dreary as had been the view I then obtained, and cheerless as was the prospect from that elevation, there was one feature in the landscape, which still gave me hope that something might be done in that direction, and had in fact been my principal inducement to select a line nearly ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... more sensible to the cold, perished by hundreds. As the Spaniards huddled round their wretched bivouacs, with such scanty fuel as they could glean, and almost without food, they waited in gloomy silence the approach of morning. Yet the morning light, which gleamed coldly on the cheerless waste, brought no joy to them. It only revealed more clearly the extent of their wretchedness. Still struggling on through the winding Puertos Nevados, or Snowy Passes, their track was dismally marked by fragments of dress, broken harness, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... villages, and the well-dressed population of the improved districts of the Upper Province, she had not formed the slightest conception. To her fancy, it was a vast region of cheerless forests, inhabited by unreclaimed savages, or rude settlers doomed to perpetual toil,—a climate of stern vicissitudes, alternating between intense heat and freezing cold, and which presented at all seasons a gloomy picture. No ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... want me any longer ma'am?" inquired Liddy, at a later hour the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large parlour beside the first fire of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and dress by candle, lamp, or gas-light. When they are ready to ride perhaps a long distance to covert, there is often only sufficient daylight to see with, rain drizzling down steadily and everything looking cheerless. A light meal, if it be only a cup of cocoatina and a slice of bread and butter, should be taken before starting, and if it is wet or threatening, a good rain coat should be worn. Towards the end of September and throughout ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And 'mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she press'd, The babe was sleeping ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... later a few of the miners played on. Some, whose well filled "pokes" permitted had gone to warm and comfortable beds, others to cold and cheerless bunks, as the case happened; but the Eskimo woman, with her sleeping boy on her lap, slept heavily. Sitting on the floor in a corner, with her head against a bench, she had for a time ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... stopped. Her hand went up to her mouth and her head was thrown back, and out upon the still air rang a cry so mournful that even the forest gloom was rendered more cheerless by its sound. High it rose, soaring upwards through the trees until the valley rang with its plaintive wail. As if recognizing the distressful howl of their kind, the cry came back to her from the deep-toned ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to a dusk corner of the cheerless attic-room, and returned with a little Brazilian monkey in her arms,—a poor, mild, drowsy thing, that looked as if it had cried itself to sleep. She sat down on her little stool, with Furbelow in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reinforcement was numerically small; but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians: and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan succours was calculated to create ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... left him alone in the world. There was none willing to assume the burden of bringing up the lonely little pilgrim, and he was sent to the poorhouse. It was a hard fate for the tender child to be removed from the endearments of a mother's love, and placed in the cheerless asylum which public charity provides for the poor ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... alone over a plain so desolate that, if you have never seen it, the mere word desolation could never convey to you the melancholy surroundings that mourned about this man on his lonely walk. Far off a vista of trees followed a cheerless road all dead as mourners suddenly stricken dead in some funereal procession. By this road he had come; but when he had reached a certain point he turned from the road at once, branching away to the left, led by a line of bushes that may once have been a lane. For some ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... for the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and pleasant. A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable. The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally. This might have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... brought into direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives, and breaking the chain of evil ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... used to take pleasure in showing compassion for the distressed, the helpless, the aged, the weak, the sick, and women, and enjoyed all their possessions by sharing these with them. They always used to assume and comfort the agitated, the cheerless, the anxious, the terrified, the diseased, the weak and emaciated, the robbed, and the afflicted. They followed the dictates of virtue and never injured one another. They were ready and well-disposed for action of every ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... approve of late marriages, observing that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... eyes of brown, This is but a cheerless town; You should beam 'neath warmer skies, Matchless, melting, dark ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... through the cheerless, mist-laden skies, the engine well throttled back and running as smoothly as any engine could. To make sure that all was in perfect working order, they circled for ten minutes over the town, trying the different controls, then ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... on, wet, dark, cheerless, in the shackling, half-built little village, and Johnnie saw for the first time what the distress of the poor in cities is. A temperature which would have been agreeable in a drier climate, bit to the bone in ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the Englishman when he could get rid of some portion of the toil that wears away his life, in exchange for the lighthearted pleasures and simple occupations of foreign existence. Nor is there any man who less prefers the dogged round of his cheerless exertions, or who is more genuinely susceptible of essential enjoyment. We even think that the cultivated Englishman has a finer relish for enjoyment than the man of any other country. The caperings of the Frenchman, or the grimaces ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... or happiness, or even melancholy pleasure among the inmates of Ferdia's camp that night: they were all cheerless, and sorrowful, and low in spirit; for they knew that whenever those two champions, those two slayers of hundreds met, one of the two must fall in that place, or that both of them should fall: and if one only was to fall they were sure that that one would ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... dearest friend will feel for you a hearty pang of sorrow, and go to his business as usual. I could divine, but would not care to describe, the life which my poor Clive was now leading; the vulgar misery, the sordid home, the cheerless toil, and lack of friendly companionship which darkened his kind soul. I was glad Clive's father was away. The Colonel wrote to us twice or thrice; could it be three months ago?—bless me, how time flies! He was happy, he wrote, with Miss Honeyman, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with water. The few sidewalks in the part that escaped the flood were inches thick with black, sticky mud, through which tramped a steady procession of poor women who are left utterly destitute. The tents where the people are housed who cannot find other shelter were cold and cheerless. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... pastor now can lend His whole attention to his latter end, Remarking with a martyr's prescient thrill The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill. The holy brethren, lifting pious palms, Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms, Chant De Profundis, meaning "out of debt," And dance like mad—or would if they ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... is thus described in a letter written by Stein during a journey in 1802:—"I found the aspect of the country as cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for colored children, No. 2 and 3, are in the rear of church, in 2d street, near 6th avenue; the rooms are dark and cheerless, and without the needful facilities of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... in a cheerless hall of the Gravenhof, Danvelt's defence was a denial upon oath that he had ever taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter made everything ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... one lives there. It, like the log hut of Nevil Steyne on the bank of the White River, stands alone, a relic of the dim past. But it serves a good purpose, for one can break the journey there, and sleep the night in its cheerless shelter. Furthermore, within the ruins of its old-time stockade is a well, a deep, wide-mouthed well full of cool spring water, which is ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... curling vines and twisted ivy bound; While Bacchus headlong sought the briny flood, And Thetis' arms received the trembling god. Nor fail'd the crime the immortals' wrath to move; (The immortals bless'd with endless ease above;) Deprived of sight by their avenging doom, Cheerless he breathed, and wander'd in the gloom, Then sunk unpitied to the dire abodes, A wretch accursed, and hated by the gods! I brave not heaven: but if the fruits of earth Sustain thy life, and human be thy birth, Bold as thou art, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... messenger; and the employment of the man himself, detains him at some distance from his home from morning till night. Sunday is the only day on which they could all meet together, and enjoy a homely meal in social comfort; and now they sit down to a cold and cheerless dinner: the pious guardians of the man's salvation having, in their regard for the welfare of his precious soul, shut up the bakers' shops. The fire blazes high in the kitchen chimney of these well-fed hypocrites, and the rich steams of the savoury dinner scent the air. What care they to ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... appeared above his door, but the paint had been soiled by time, and the letters for the most part reduced to shadows; so that, taken in conjunction with the gaunt staircase and bare walls, the place had a cheerless look. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... lies in wait, Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossoms storms the world. A week ago the Sparrow was divine; The Bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet came; But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... vessels that were to carry them back to the Fatherland, and British crews were put aboard the vessels. Then, their eyes sad and watching what had once been the pride of Germany, the German officers and sailors began their cheerless journey home. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... he entered the mill, he had felt that his burden was almost greater than he could bear. He was disgraced and thrown out of his position, and was about entering upon a cheerless life, where there was but little ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... sandy parishes of Worcestershire, but here in the Forest it is a splendid feature, growing to a great size and height. In winter its bright shining leaves reflecting the sunlight enliven the woods, so that we never get the bare and cheerless look of places where the elm and the whitethorn hedge dominate the landscape. In spring its small white blossoms are thickly distributed, and at Christmas its scarlet berries are ever welcome. Its prickles protect it from browsing cattle and Forest ponies, but it is interesting to notice ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... being broken. Nielsen found a poor, miserable, little fox in a trap, where it had been for days, and was nearly dead. Edd found a dead skunk in another. He had to call the hounds in. We returned to camp. That night was really the only cheerless one the men spent around the fire. They did not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a locality there could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched upon the countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... a handful of boughs upon the fire. The room was cold and cheerless, and the still, white figure in the chair seemed the quiet, chill heart of it all. And yet—how she had loved and laboured for the boy! Was she passionless or had her passion been ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... in total blackness. My song rose from the cheerless shade, and was the first to rise. It is when Night prevails that it's fine to believe in ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... came to my hands in Philadelphia. So long a time has elapsed since we have been separated by events, that it was like a letter from the dead, and recalled to my memory very dear recollections. My subsequent journey through life has offered nothing which, in comparison with those, is not cheerless and dreary. It is a rich comfort sometimes to look ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be coming down in sheets. Fortunately the lot chosen for pitching the tents was on a strip of ground higher than anything about it, so the footing remained fairly solid. But it was a cheerless outlook. The performers, with their rubber boots on, came splashing through a sea of mud and water on their way to the cook tent that morning, Phil and ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... small room, up two pair of stairs, in which I was to sit, and another still smaller above it, in which I was to sleep. I remember that I sat down, and looked disconsolate about me—everything seemed so cold and dingy. Yet how little is required to make a situation—however cheerless at first sight—cheerful and comfortable. The people of the house, who looked kindly upon me, lighted a fire in the dingy grate; and, then, what a change!—the dingy room seemed dingy no more! Oh, the luxury of a cheerful fire after ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... whose lands surround thee: on this side, Gaetulian cities, an unconquered race, Numidians, reinless as the steeds they ride, And cheerless Syrtis hold thee in embrace; There fierce Barcaeans and a sandy space Wasted by drought. Why tell of wars from Tyre, A brother's threats? Well know I Juno's grace And heaven's propitious auspices conspire To find for Trojans here ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the erection of Sage College was the establishment of Sage Chapel. From the first I had desired to have every working-day begun with a simple religious service at which attendance should be voluntary, and was glad to see that in the cheerless lecture-room where this service was held there usually assembled a goodly number of professors and students, in spite of the early hour and long walk from town. But for Sunday there was no provision; and one day, on my discussing the matter with Mr. Sage, he said that he would be glad ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... most absorbed him. Finally, skim the collection of his official messages, as Commissioner, as Governor, or as President, and you will discover that he had the gift of infusing life and color into the usually drab and cheerless wastes of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... alone with the sun and the wind and all the murmuring voices of Nature, God's life he had called it then. And now! The stress of battle was hard upon him. He was fighting in the front ranks, a somewhat cheerless battle, fighting for great causes with inefficient weapons. But he could not go back. Life had become a more strenuous, a more vital, a less beautiful thing! He felt himself ageing. All the inevitable sadness of the man in touch with the world's great problems was in his heart. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... greatest pleasures which a teacher's life affords, is, the interest of seeking out such an one, bowed down with burdens of depression and discouragement,—unaccustomed to sympathy and kindness, and expecting nothing for the future, but a weary continuation of the cheerless toils, which have imbittered the past;—and the pleasure of taking off the burden, of surprising the timid disheartened sufferer by kind words and cheering looks, and of seeing, in his countenance, the expression of ease and even of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
