... worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief figure in the book, is one of the greatest villains in fiction,—an ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various Read full book for free!
... author in the Contemporary Review, September, 1894, p. 365. For the papal condemnations of Lenormant and Bartolo, see the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Sanctissimi Domini Nostri, Leonis XIII, P.M., etc., Rome, 1891; Appendices, July, 1890, and May, 1891. The ghastly part of the record, as stated in this edition of the Index, is that both these great scholars were forced to abjure their "errors" and to acquiesce in the condemnation—Lenorment doing ... — History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White Read full book for free!
... and looked up. She had been standing against a post, not a tree—the moon was shining full on it now; and on the summit strangely distinct, and smiling ghastly, was a livid ... — Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray Read full book for free!
... by hard riding. He had a sword by his side, and pistols in his belt. His slouched hat, which he had not yet removed at entrance, gave an additional gloom to his dark features, which, wasted by sorrow and marked by the ghastly look communicated by long illness, added to a countenance naturally somewhat stern and wild, a fierce and even savage expression. The matted and disheveled locks of hair which escaped from under his hat, together with his fixt and unmoved posture, made his head more resemble that ... — The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various Read full book for free!
... reached out ahead of them like a thin, dark ribbon. Scarcely had they reached this point when a rifle shot sounded not far behind. It was followed by a second and a third, and after that came a shout. It was not a loud shout. There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly ... — The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood Read full book for free!
... the unfaithful lover espouses Creusa. In the next Creusa is seen burning in the poisoned shirt, given her by Medea. In another Medea is seen in a car drawn by dragons, bearing her two children by Jason, whom she has stabbed in revenge for his desertion. Nothing can exceed the ghastly reality of death, as shown in the stiffened limbs and sharpened features of those dead children. The whole drawing and grouping is exceedingly spirited and lifelike, and ... — Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe Read full book for free!
... to him from the bank. As the world faded from him, he still clutched them; handled and fondled them one by one,—and then he passed away,—his last effort being to finger his gold! Elwes the miser died shrieking, "I will keep my money!—nobody shall deprive me of my property!" A ghastly and humiliating spectacle! ... — Thrift • Samuel Smiles Read full book for free!
... tapping at the window an armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and ... — The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various Read full book for free!
... ministrant, place implicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unction,—these all inspire a confidence which without this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in over-sensitive natures. They have been peopled in earlier years with ghastly spectres of avenging fiends, moving in a sleepless world of devouring flames and smothering exhalations; where nothing lives but the sinner, the fiends, and the reptiles who help to make life an unending torture. It is no wonder that these images sometimes return to the enfeebled intelligence. ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) Read full book for free!
... me open the door for my little girl to come in; and she'll die if she is out on the Fells all night. Cruel, naughty Hester,' she said, slapping me; but she might have struck harder, for I had seen a look of ghastly terror on Dorothy's face, which made my ... — Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell Read full book for free!
... a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds—all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various Read full book for free!
... later the curtain stirred and the ghastly face of Scipio suddenly appeared. He moved out into the living-room and almost fell into the Windsor chair which had last been occupied by his wife. A sheet of notepaper was in his shaking hand, and ... — The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum Read full book for free!
... long hours of the night the scenes of the last few hours, of the last few days, came back to him and burnt into his soul. The gulf yawned before him now plain enough, open at his feet—black, ghastly. He shuddered at it, wondering if he should even yet fall in, felt wildly about for strength to stand firm, to retrace his steps; but found it not. He found not yet the strength he was in search of, but in the grey morning he wrote ... — Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes Read full book for free!
... of his soiled white tunic soaked and plastered against his breast-bone, staggered away from the water-pipe. Steadying himself on Ricardo's shoulder, he drew a long breath, raised his dripping head, and produced a smile of ghastly amiability, which was lost upon the thoughtful Heyst. Behind his back the sun, touching the water, was like a disc of iron cooled to a dull red glow, ready to start rolling round the circular steel plate ... — Victory • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... in direst terror. Her ghastly companion seemed to edge himself toward her, an illusion born in the changing position of the light as ... — Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon Read full book for free!
... spake and all indignantly, 'Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten, Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given, But must, to make the terror of thee more, Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries Of that which Life hath done with, and the clod, Less dull than thou, will hide with mantling flowers As if for pity?' But he spake no word; Which set the horror higher: a maiden swooned; The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and ... — Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson Read full book for free!
... moment the young officer gazed as though stricken with sudden horror, his blue eyes staring, his gaunt, pinched features ghastly white, and then Sergeant Haney and another trooper sprang from their horses and ran to his side. Weak, worn, starved, he had quailed at the dreadful sight, and was toppling head-foremost to the ... — Under Fire • Charles King Read full book for free!
... the deaths of many of them. Women were ripped open, or carried about impaled on spikes; men, women, and children, were flung from precipices, hacked, tortured, roasted alive; the heads of some of the dead were boiled and the brains eaten; there are forty printed pages, and twenty-six ghastly engravings, by way of Protestant tradition of the ascertained variety of the devilry. The massacre was chiefly in the Valley of Luserna, but extended also into the other two valleys. The fugitives were huddled in crowds high among the mountains, moaning ... — The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson Read full book for free!
... shall be a different woman by that time." The contralto voice dropped oddly and suddenly with these words: an effect of the headache, of course. And the pallor of the dark face was almost ghastly. Angela thought that her hostess looked very ill. "You may expect ... — The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson Read full book for free!
... pap it went, Amid the lungs was fix'd the winged wood, And quivering in his heaving bosom stood: Till from the dying chief, approaching near, The AEtolian warrior tugg'd his weighty spear: Then sudden waved his flaming falchion round, And gash'd his belly with a ghastly wound; The corpse now breathless on the bloody plain, To spoil his arms the victor strove in vain; The Thracian bands against the victor press'd, A grove of lances glitter'd at his breast. Stern Thoas, glaring with ... — The Iliad of Homer • Homer Read full book for free!
... grew almost ghastly at these shocking disclosures, and when Uncle Mosha concluded his audacious creed with a furtive ... — Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass Read full book for free!
... Major led the way on Badshah, the ponies of his followers keeping at a respectful distance from the elephant. When nearing the scene of the fight the tracks of the avenging herd were plain to see, and soon the party came upon ghastly evidences of the tragedy. The buzzing of innumerable flies guided the searchers to spots in the undergrowth where the scattered corpses lay. As each was reached a black cloud of blood-drunk winged insects rose ... — The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly Read full book for free!
... offering to Priapus. With the perfume of the roses into the open window came the stench of this hideous parody, as if in mockery. I removed it, and another appeared in the same place shortly afterward. The earthman was rampant and insulting. Pan is not dead yet. At least he still makes a ghastly sign here and there ... — A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs Read full book for free!
... her, took her in his arms, resting her head against his shoulder, loosened her coat about her throat, and chafed her cold hands, drawing the robes closely about her slender shoulders, but she lay there white and without a sign, of life. He thought he never had seen anything so ghastly white as ... — The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz Read full book for free!
... with an expression of terror. That pallid, thin face, with ruddy whiskers, and a collar of silvery fur, was visible for a moment with eyes widely open, with raised brows, with the words hanging on his lips: "She knows everything!—ghastly!" and after a while it sank again into the darkness which ... — The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa) Read full book for free!
... an interesting girl, Armitage could see even in the ghastly effulgence of the arc lamps. Slightly above the medium height, with a straight, slim figure, she was, he judged, about twenty-two or three years old. Her light hair flowed and rippled from under a smart hat; her face, an expressive oval; her mouth not small, the lips full and red. Armitage ... — Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry Read full book for free!
... I had brought myself, when I saw a white robe come round the corner, arm in arm with a frock coat of black broadcloth. Also there came Everett, looking still more ghastly, his nose and lip having become purple, and in places green. Also there was Korwsky, and two other men; Moneta, a young Mexican cigarmaker out of work, and a man named Hamby, who had turned up on the previous evening, introducing himself as a pacifist who ... — They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair Read full book for free!
... he shall shut his own eyes in death, shall first make him a ghost, and, smiting him on the crest, shall send him to Tartarus. We fear no camp of the Swedes. Why threaten us with ghastly dooms, maiden?" ... — The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned") Read full book for free!
... there massacred to the last man, so that the clatter of arms and the groans of the dying were distinctly heard in the neighbouring temple of Bellona, where Sulla was just holding a meeting of the senate. It was a ghastly execution, and it ought not to be excused; but it is not right to forget that those very men who perished there had fallen like a band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and, had they found time, would have destroyed ... — The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen Read full book for free!
... way to conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it—a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we first met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for that was his funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only have brought a "Why?" which we could not answer. He wanted us to help him invite his guests, and we did it—one can refuse nothing to a dying friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting ... — The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... only a turmoil of eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit ... — The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher Read full book for free!
...ghastly shortcoming of his letter as regards distinctness, and the prosaic misinterpretation it was open to, Wilfrid called his inventive wits to aid, and ran swiftly to the end of the street. He had become—as ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith Read full book for free!
... how different from the girl described in the opening of this tale. Her cheek was pale and wan, and the flesh had gone, and the yellow skin fell in from her cheekbone to her mouth, giving her almost a ghastly appearance; her eyes appeared larger than ever, but they were quenched with weeping, and dull with grief; her hair was drawn back carelessly behind her ears, and her lips were thin and bloodless. Two or three times during the day Mrs. McKeon had given ... — The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... the foul odor at least fifteen minutes before, and had dragged Jill back, and there had been no other sign of monsters or not-monsters upon the earth. Now he crouched down and crawled among the bushes. He came to the place where he'd smelled the ghastly smell before. He smelled it again. He drew back. It became fainter, though it remained disgusting. He moved forward, stopped, moved back. He went sideways, very, very carefully, extending his ... — Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins Read full book for free!
... house, to find her a corpse—laid out with all the ghastly ceremonial which Catholic fancy could devise—and to be told that his misconduct had killed her. The tribe of cousins, who had planned the coup de theatre, were there to enjoy its result. This did not fail them. Miranda fainted away. As soon as consciousness returned, he made his act of atonement. ... — A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr Read full book for free!
... the drawer of the table at which they were sitting, and drew out a pile of letters. "Here's your mail, Gracious. Go ahead and read it while I clear up the ghastly remains of ... — Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower Read full book for free!
... people began to run to and fro; and then he saw men carrying a beautiful dead girl in bridal costume, and in the midst of them one, who by his Sabbath garments and his white shoes was evidently the bridegroom, mazed and ghastly pale. He heard people telling one another that death had seized her as she stood under the canopy, before the word could be said or the glass broken that should have made her the wife of the richest man in the capital. The innkeeper ran towards them ... — Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill Read full book for free!
... his losing, the Northerners at his defending, that both were determined to hang him; he was running for his life. He took me to a hill from which I could see the Garrison, and the American flag flying over it. I looked, and saw we were standing in blood up to our knees, while here and there ghastly white bones shone above the red surface. Just then, below me I saw crowds of people running. "What is it?" I asked. "It means that in another instant they will commence to shell the town. Save yourself." "But Will—I must ... — A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson Read full book for free!
... bursting of a Prussian shell. His whole face, including his two eyes, were literally blown away, some scanty remnants of the osseous and muscular systems, and the skull covered with hair being left. His wounds healed, giving him such a hideous and ghastly appearance that he was virtually ostracized from the sight of his fellows. For his relief a dentist by the name of Delalain constructed a mask which included a false palate and a set of false teeth. This apparatus was so perfect that the functions of respiration and mastication were almost completely ... — Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould Read full book for free!
... fall, then numbness, and the silence of the grave,—she had her distant memories; of waking on a sunny afternoon, in bed, with a little cracked glass upon the opposite wall; of creeping out and up to it in her night-dress; of the ghastly twisted thing that looked back at her. Through the open window she heard the children laughing and leaping in the sweet summer air. She crawled into bed and shut her eyes. She remembered stealing out at last, after many days, to the grocery ... — Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Read full book for free!
... instant. There, at last, was that dreadful look—the very one he seemed to know so well and yet had never seen before—upon her face. There she stood, frozen to the ground, gazing with starting eyes, and livid cheeks, and every feature fixed and ghastly, upon the man he had encountered in the dark last night. His eyes met those of the locksmith. It was but a flash, an instant, a breath upon a polished glass, ... — Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... horrid apparition, tall and ghastly, That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand O'er some new-open'd grave; and, strange to tell, Evanishes ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various Read full book for free!
... "The ghastly head became more of a mystery than before. The baffled Detectives could again only look at it helplessly, and send descriptions of it over the country. At last it was seen by a woman named Callahan, living in Boston, ... — Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe Read full book for free!
... some startling and ghastly discoveries. He came upon a box containing human bones, and he was sufficiently experienced to recognize that, in the case of the remains, ordinary, decay had been supplemented by artificial processes, ... — The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth" Read full book for free!
... which were large and dark and luminous, and which seemed to grasp the object upon which they rested and to hold it in physical embrace, the face might have been that of the dead, so ghastly and ... — Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray Read full book for free!
... General Havelock and his little band of heroes—some one thousand Englishmen who had marched with him from Allahabad, recaptured by Neill for England, and on to ghastly Cawnpore—arrived at Lucknow, and relieved the slender British force which since May had been holding the Residency against the fierce and ever-renewed assaults of the thousands of rebels who poured themselves upon it. He came in time to save many a brave life that should yet do good service; ... — Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling Read full book for free!
... Philippa, in honor of my uncle. I never loved or liked dolls, though I remember taking some pride in the splendor of this, my first-born. They always affected me with a grim sense of being a mockery of the humanity they were supposed to represent; there was something uncanny, not to say ghastly, in the doll existence and its mimicry of babyhood to me, and I had a nervous dislike, not unmixed with fear, of the smiling simulacra that girls are all supposed to love with a species of prophetic ... — Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble Read full book for free!
... different kind. Many readers must have compared with Dante's original (in canto 33 of the "Inferno") Chaucer's version in the "Monk's Tale" of the story of Ugolino. Chaucer, while he necessarily omits the ghastly introduction, expands the pathetic picture of the sufferings of the father and his sons in their dungeon, and closes, far more briefly and effectively than Dante, with a touch of the ... — Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward Read full book for free!
... down weary, but Steenie set about lighting the peats ready piled between the great stones of the hearth. The wind howled over the waste hill in multitudinous whirls, and swept like a level cataract over the ghastly bog at its foot, but scarce a puff blew against the ... — Heather and Snow • George MacDonald Read full book for free!
... in the smoke. By degrees the heaps of ashes become about eight feet high; they are then used as sleeping-places and watch-stations by the natives, who, rubbing themselves all over with the ashes, have a ghastly and devilish appearance that is indescribable. The country is covered with old tumuli formed in this manner. A camp may contain twenty or thirty such, in addition to fresh heaps that are constantly burning. Fires of cow-dung are also made on the ... — The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker Read full book for free!
... her love within thy heart, Well may'st thou perform thy part, And to coming years proclaim Thou art worthy of her name. Home of the homeless!—friend to all Who suffer on this earthly ball! On thy bosom sickly care Quite forgets her squalid lair; Gaunt famine, ghastly poverty Before thy gracious aspect fly, And hopes long crush'd, grow bright again, And, smiling, ... — Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie Read full book for free!
... news quickly reached the deck, It sped from lip to lip, And ghastly faces everywhere Looked from the doomed ship. "Is there no hope, no chance of life?" A hundred lips implore; "But one," the captain made reply, "To run the ... — Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various Read full book for free!
... flash, and in the silence a sound. The flash was the flash of a knife which Leo had drawn. He was hacking at the cord with it fiercely, fiercely, to make an end. And the sound was that of the noise he made, a ghastly noise, half shout of defiance and half yell of terror, as at the ... — Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... had to sit with the coachman, thought that long drive would never end, and yet Dr. Abercrombie drove good horses. It seemed hours before they reached Mortimer Street, and the strain on his nerves made him look so ghastly as he went into the house to prepare Mrs. Blake, that she uttered a shriek as soon ... — Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey Read full book for free!
... was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They exchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened into the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola's heart guessed all at a single glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,—"Father, father, ... — Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton Read full book for free!
... and the adults were hardly clothed with a rag of that bark stuff, produced by certain trees, and called "mbouzon" in the country. Thus the state of this troop of human beings, women covered with wounds from the "havildars'" whips, children ghastly and meager, with bleeding feet, whom their mothers tried to carry in addition to their burdens, young men closely riveted to the fork, more torturing than the convict's chain, is the most ... — Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne Read full book for free!
... when the sun shall set in Heaven, Dark with the clouds of steaming blood, A ghastly, woeful, dying murmur Will be the Briton's ... — The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle Read full book for free!
... agents in condemning to a fearful death an innocent man. But if you cannot at so dark a crisis take that oath, then, oh then, be generous, even in guilt, and let me not be haunted through life by the spectre of a ghastly... — The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various Read full book for free!
... effect was dazzling as it was refined. It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, "'Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards, you know." St. Addlegourd was a radical. Having a rent-roll of 15,000,000 pounds, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he ... — The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... door opening into Mrs. Gibbons's quarters I went into Mrs. Cotter's room, but for a moment drew back. I had learned not to shrink at much that once I would have run from, but the gaunt body and ghastly face of the woman propped against pillows on the bed frightened me, and my feet refused to move. All the hardships and denials, the injustices and inequalities, of working womanhood, unfit to fight and unprepared for struggle, were staring at me, and on the open lips was something of ... — People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher Read full book for free!
... that taxed the strength of each to the uttermost. Those three puny creatures fighting against the might of the ocean for the body of a dead man! Dead the man seemed, at least, to the girls, who, after one glance into the drawn and ghastly face of their burden, dared not look again. The undertow writhed about their legs, jerked at them wrathfully. Waves crashed upon them with shattering force. Once, Florence was hurled from her footing, but her hands held their grip on the raft. The wrenching shock was sustained by Josephine and ... — Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily Read full book for free!
... how grim and ghastly looks her Grace, With both her knees drawn upward to her chin. There was an old-world tomb beside my father's, And this was open'd, and the dead were found Sitting, and in this fashion; she looks ... — Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson Read full book for free!
... said, peering at her uncertainly. "You're here—in the flesh? You've been having just a ghastly sort of game with me all these years, have you? Hang it, I didn't deserve quite that! And so the little newspaper chap spoke the ... — The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell Read full book for free!
... room to expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are precisely indicative of ... — Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... the mountains, and these last had, for the most part, fetters on their wrists, or were bound two and two together and guarded by the English, whilst many of them were drooping under the effect of ghastly wounds, and several forms lay stretched along the ground indifferent to, ... — The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green Read full book for free!
... villages. There were a few wretched survivors in a village above the Ruo; but the majority of the population was dead. The sight and smell of dead bodies was everywhere. Many skeletons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they had fallen and expired. Ghastly living forms of boys and girls, with dull dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the huts. A few more miserable days of their terrible hunger, and they would be with ... — A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone Read full book for free!
... anxiety lest any "hicht" should end in a "howe," but the parish had a genius for funerals. It was long mentioned with a just sense of merit that an English undertaker, chancing on a "beerial" with us, had no limits to his admiration. He had been disheartened to despair all his life by the ghastly efforts of chirpy little Southerners to look solemn on occasion, but his dreams were satisfied at the sight of men like Drumsheugh and Hillocks in their Sabbath blacks. Nature lent an initial advantage in face, but it was an instinct in ... — Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren Read full book for free!
... spite of Paul's cry for "silence," and then the crew scattered. The young commander looked very pale, and went below attended by Terrill, who had noticed his ghastly expression. He retired to his state-room, and but for his friend's efforts would have fainted away, so terribly had he ... — Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic Read full book for free!
... the tragic Muse, Rude were the actors, and a cart the scene, Where ghastly faces, smear'd with lees of wine, Frighted the children, and ... — The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin Read full book for free!
... scream of a horse came to him, and another lightning flash showed Conrad, ghastly and staring, leap from the saddle—in the middle of the little valley—and Tula ride down ... — The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan Read full book for free!
... her eyeballs rattled in her head. The doll fell to the floor and lay there with closed eyes. Her face was pallid and ghastly. Her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair stuck out wildly in every direction. Her legs were doubled under her in the most helpless fashion. She was the forlornest figure of a doll imaginable. Presently Mary drew her hands away ... — The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown Read full book for free!
... After that he became restless and increasingly snappish; his face darkened at "Fallen Leaves," and he began to look positively dangerous when a young man who was a railway porter in town, now home for a holiday, made a ghastly attempt at merriment by singing a low-class music-hall catch. What he would have done or said I do not know, for at that moment the announcement was made which the reader has been expecting—that Mrs. Abel would give ... — Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks Read full book for free!
... new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man's hand. Being thus made aware of the proximity of the corpse, he started back a little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,—cautiously ... — The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... already occupied. The exclamation of surprise he gave forth soon brought the others to his side; and to their horror, drunk as they were, they found that the body before them was that of a dead man, arrayed in all the ghastly pomp of a corpse. A little nearer inspection showed that he had been a priest, probably the Padre of the village; on his head he had a small velvet skull cap, embroidered with a cross, and his body was swathed in a vestment, such as priests ... — The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever Read full book for free!
... and astonishment. Sin and guilt bring weakness and faintness in this life; how much more when both, with all their force and power, like a giant fasten on them? As God saith, "Can thy hands be strong, and can thy heart endure in the day that I shall deal with thee?" Now will the ghastly jaws of despair gape upon thee, and now will condemnings of conscience, like thunderclaps, continually batter against thy weary spirit. It is the godly that have boldness in the day of judgment; but the wicked will be like the chaff which the ... — The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin Read full book for free!
... violent enemy to brave. The prospect of a slow and solitary expiation would have no congeniality with his wicked thoughts, but this throttling and strangling has. There is always before him, an ugly, bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her, as it were, and yet shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of murder. Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or old? It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly menacing ... — Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... generations of Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly lamp-glimmer that she could not bear to look at it—the first unpleasant feature of ... — The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy Read full book for free!
... for a second that the ghastly thought attracted him. He was a true white man and would not stoop to any hidden revenge. It is a white man's way to face his enemy in the open and under the sun, not to kill him by putting strychnine in his food. So Mick turned away and rode back to camp, and did not tell the boys what danger ... — In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman Read full book for free!
... wearing out the victim so slowly that he dies after long suffering; others violent and so quick, that they kill like a flash of lightning, leaving not even time for a single cry. Little by little Sainte-Croix became interested in the ghastly science that puts the lives of all men in the hand of one. He joined in Exili's experiments; then he grew clever enough to make them for himself; and when, at the year's end, he left the Bastille, the pupil was almost as accomplished as ... — CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE Read full book for free!
... is subject to some slight attacks of mental derangement,' remarked Bob Sawyer, with a ghastly smile; 'I fear I ... — The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... a tiger as make-believe war with an Indian. In both cases the fun may become ghastly earnest with no time for cry-quits. So it was with the great fur-trading companies at the beginning of this century. Each held the Indian in subjection and thought to use him with daring impunity against ... — Lords of the North • A. C. Laut Read full book for free!
... suggesting that this man should be invited to dinner. Everything had gone wrong. George was an undoubted success. The majority of the company were solid for him. As far as exposing his unworthiness in the eyes of Maud was concerned, the dinner had been a ghastly failure. Much better to have left him to lurk in his infernal cottage. Lord Belpher drained his glass moodily. ... — A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Read full book for free!
... enough." There was growing impatience in Christopher's voice. "She inherits this ghastly temper as I've told you. It's like a sudden gust of wind if she's not warned. It takes her off her feet, as it were, but she's nearly learnt to stand firm. She ... — Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant Read full book for free!
... opened with a pause of mute amazement! then rising slowly, to a solemn, trembling voice, he made the ghost equally terrible to the spectator, as to himself! and in the descriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of his expostulation was still governed by decency, manly, but not braving; his voice never rising into that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what he naturally revered. But alas! to preserve this medium, between mouthing, and meaning ... — The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold Read full book for free!
... he exclaimed at last, as he dragged a round object from the coffin and let down the lid with a bang, at the same time placing the savage's head with its ghastly features full in the ... — The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... and looked embarrassed. Who was there for him to talk to over the 'phone? And that brought another ghastly thought to mind. Who could he ask to give security for his or her appearance in the morning? He found words to say he would telephone to his friends, a bright idea suddenly coming to the rescue. Grace looked her amazement and alarm as he marched into the telephone booth. Bravely he called ... — Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon Read full book for free!
... which the Royal Servian Government made itself guilty, has lasted up to the moment in which the events of June 28th demonstrated to the entire world the ghastly consequences ... — Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History Read full book for free!
... at Leyden. It would be difficult to imagine two more entirely dissimilar individuals of the human family than this lunatic duke and that theological professor. And yet, perhaps, the two names, more concisely than those of any other mortals, might serve as an index to the ghastly chronicle over which a coming generation was to shudder. The death of the duke was at first thought likely to break off the negotiations for truce. The States-General at once declared that they would permit no movements on the part of the Spanish party to seize the inheritance in behalf of the ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley Read full book for free!
... her large, languid eyes, and looked upon her, but did not speak. She gave a ghastly smile, ... — The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton Read full book for free!
... I know. I will never forget that. He weighed only 195 pounds, but I am sure he had another couple of hundred tucked away somewhere. When I had finished counting a great variety and number of stars, it occurred to me that I had been in a ghastly railroad wreck, and that the engine and cars following had picked out my right knee as a nice soft place to pile up on. There was a feeling of great relief when I looked around and saw that the engineer ... — Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards Read full book for free!
... the morning he was awakened by the well-known signal. Descending to the door, he was filled with astonishment to find Macfarlane with his gig, and in the gig one of those long and ghastly packages with which he ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... sat mending bags. She wore a gray calico slip, tied in around the waist with her apron strings; both were ragged, abominably soiled. Her hair was white; strands of it hung around her neck from a little knot twisted tight on the back of her head. Her face was ghastly white, wrinkled, toothless, but the pale blue eyes, rolling wildly, senselessly, in the cavernous sockets, gave her an expression so terrible that Selah started back involuntarily as she lifted her head, stared at her, and went on with ... — The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris Read full book for free!
... discovered to my surprise, and—let me confess it—dismay, that my point of view has strangely altered. I still consider that I have been the victim of one of the cruellest deceptions which a woman could endure; I still believe that in that first ghastly hour of discovery, flight was justified and natural, but—Well, Evelyn, dear! I have been living for months in very close intimacy with a little girl who thinks no evil, and is always ready to find a good explanation for what may on the surface appear ... — The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey Read full book for free!
... the 15th, when the defeat at Futtehpore was known, the Nana had given orders for a general massacre of his helpless prisoners. There, in this ghastly well, were the remains, not only of those who had so far survived the siege and first massacre of Cawnpore, but of some seventy or eighty women and children, fugitives from Futteyghur. These had, with their husbands, fathers and friends, ... — In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty Read full book for free!
... feeble muscles strike 'deep' by choice, that is to say with a pointed weapon and aiming at a vital organ, whereas powerful murderers have a predilection for blows dealt 'superficially,' and for broad, ghastly wounds. Besides, that is only following a natural law; a weak man finesses with death, tries to make sure of it at some precise point, penetrating the heart or severing an artery; a brutal man does not care ... — Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre Read full book for free!
... magenta dye shading into blue, with a whole yellow-bird transfixed in the centre. When he triumphantly displayed it in their room, "Who's that for, Basil?" demanded his wife; "the cook?" But seeing his ghastly look at this, she fell upon his neck, crying, "O you poor old tasteless darling! You've got it for me!" and seemed ... — Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... sham sprightliness and real anguish, "Thank you, sir; I only trust that you will always find servants as devoted to your interest as my gratitude would have made me. Good-morning, sir." He clapped his hat on with a sprightly, ghastly air, and marched ... — A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... now began. The whole city was panic-stricken: nothing was talked of but the plague—nothing planned but means of arresting its progress—one grim and ghastly idea possessed the minds of all. Like a hideous phantom stalking the streets at noon-day, and scaring all in its path, Death took his course through London, and selected his prey at pleasure. The alarm was further increased by the predictions confidently made ... — Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth Read full book for free!
... the time was short. If they were to meet Nancy they must steal away almost at once. Pauline told her tale with scarcely any comment. When it was finished she looked at her sisters. The moonlight was in the room, and Pauline's face looked ghastly, but it looked beautiful also. Her eyes were very big and dark and solemn and beseeching. Briar and Patty glanced at ... — Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade Read full book for free!
... children. It is then that my feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with respect to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feel{335} ings which this recital has quickened, unfit me to proceed further in that direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly terror before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill my blood. I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling liability of his ... — My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass Read full book for free!
... that would not sleep. But the long unconsciousness, in which he had himself visited the regions of death, seemed to have restored him, in spite of his aching head, to perfect mental equilibrium. Or, at least, his brain was quiet enough to let his mind work. Still, he felt very ghastly within. He raised himself on his elbow, and looked into the room. Everything was the same as it had been the night before, only with an altered aspect in the dawn-light. The dawn has a peculiar ... — David Elginbrod • George MacDonald Read full book for free!
... chain, And his clogged tongue, that still he strove to teach, Denied all answering speech! The monarch bade him mark The clotted blood that, dark, Distained his royal bosom, and that found Its way, still issuing, from a mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful pride; There was the ... — Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various Read full book for free!
... than painful. It's horrible! It's ghastly!" cried Mr. Finn, in sudden shrill crescendo, leaping to his feet. In an instant the man's demeanour had changed. The mournful apostle had become a wild, vibrating creature with flashing ... — The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke Read full book for free!
... I couldn't bear the thought of your moping here by yourself, and it was a ghastly shame of ... — The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting Read full book for free!
... had disappeared, and the old man became the centre of the terrible picture. Slowly, with ghastly groans; as the heat below him increased into a steady glow, the aged body rose in a curve of agony, resting on the iron frame only where the chains held wrists and ankles fast. Cries and gasps filled the air, and Jones felt exactly ... — Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood Read full book for free!
... down it, caught first the face of Eleanor Burgoyne, and in the distance Manisty's black head and absent smile. The girl's young mind was captured by a sudden ghastly sense of the human realities underlying the gay aspects and talk of the luncheon-table. It seemed to her she still heard that heart-rending voice of Mrs. Burgoyne: 'Oh! I never dreamed it could be the same for him as for me. I ... — Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... people doomed to more bitter disappointment. The years which followed the Restoration were crowded with misfortunes greater than any that had befallen the colony since the ghastly days of the Great Sickness. Charles II, far from showing gratitude to his Old Dominion, overwhelmed it with injustice and oppression. The Virginians were crushed with tremendous duties on their tobacco and with ruinous restrictions upon their trade. The titles to their plantations were ... — Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker Read full book for free!
... to talk to Jane Nettles, and look out of the window. Those gossips in the nursery were a great source of disturbance to Beth when she ought to have been composing herself to sleep. She recollected nothing of the conversations more corrupting than that ghastly account of how the girl was exhumed, so it is likely that the servants exercised some discretion when they dropped their voices to a whisper, as they often did; but these whispered colloquies made her restless and cross, and ... — The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand Read full book for free!
... the lives in peril, and what might have been their fate Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late; And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame As I fancied the public clamor, the trial, and bitter shame. I could see the bloody wreckage—I could see the mangled slain— And the picture was seared for ever, blood-red, on my heated brain. That ... — Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various Read full book for free!
... recoiled back into the boat, staggering down upon their seats. One alone remained standing, and with an expression upon his face as if he was desirous of again beholding the sight. It was not a look that betrayed pleasure, but one grim and ghastly, yet strong and steady, as if it penetrated the profoundest depths of the ocean. It was the ... — The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid Read full book for free!
... objects: they also saw through them that which was contained. And to what purpose? The beauty straightway vanished; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse, behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart of ... — English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various Read full book for free!
... ride round in a circle, thinking he is advancing, till he dies. But it is as easy to be lost in a wilderness, where there is nothing to see, as in a wood where one can see nothing. And there is something even more ghastly in being lost below the broad heavens in the open face of day than 'in the close covert of innumerous boughs.' The monotonous swells of the sand-heaps, the weary expanse stretching right away to the horizon, no land-marks but the bleaching bones of former ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... minute the storm-light blazed up once more, and fell upon an object so fearful and startling that they both fell back amazed. A woman was standing before them, tall, upright, and bareheaded; her long black hair falling over a face as white and ghastly as a three days' corpse; her wild countenance rendered more terrible by the blue glare of the lightning shining on the rain that streamed from every lock of her hair and every shred of her garments. She looked like some wild daughter of the storm, who had lost her way, and came wandering ... — The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley Read full book for free!
... water like molten gold as they passed, and with tall buildings and chimney-shafts showing black against the calm night sky. Lefevre found it necessary at intervals to assure himself that he was not drifting in a dream, or that the ghastly, burning-eyed figure, wrapped in a dark cloak in the stern, was not a strange visitor ... — Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban Read full book for free!
... the savages made vigorous search for him, he remained undiscovered. You can imagine the horrible sight the fort presented when the sun went down, the soldiers in their red uniforms lying there scalped and mangled, a ghastly heap under the summer sky. And to just think it was only a short time ago, a little more than ... — Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various Read full book for free!
... servus est peccati, followed by the rendering in English, "Whosoever doeth sin is sin's bond thrall." The words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed stamped on Ambrose's brain and which followed him about into the nave, so that he felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and almost expected to feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him over to torment. He expected the consolation ... — The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... at once, he said, he felt as if he were adrift in space—and he had a wild desire to get back home to the old planet and the companionship of fellow creatures. He soon got over that feeling, but he says his first flight alone was a nightmare to him because of that dreadful sensation of ghastly loneliness." ... — Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery Read full book for free!
... with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa's head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, and of great and ghastly beauty. There were other grotesque visages, sprinkled here and there over that elaborate roof; but look at that Medusa from what point you might, the painted wooden eyes were cast with a stolid sternness upon you. When I had a bedfellow, it was ... — Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard Read full book for free!
... themselves—and who are in their way truly sincere. Joan, do you know, there were moments at the meetings I went to of those people—Christian Scientists, and my Spiritual Socialists, and all those philo-factory-girls and tramps, and philo-beasts, and philo-blacks and the rest of it—Moments when a ghastly wonder would come over me whether, if we were all stranded on a desert island with a shortage of food and water, it wouldn't be a case of fighting for bare existence and of Nature red of ... — Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed Read full book for free!
... Hugh Noland's appearance to terrify the girl as he lay before her, wasted and woebegone, his low forehead blue-veined and colourless, his hands blue-veined and transparent, and all his shrunken figure sharply outlined under the thin summer covering of the bed with ghastly and suggestive significance. Instantly she wanted to go down by his side and with her arms about him give him the sympathy and comfort his lonely heart craved, but because it was so deliciously tempting she distrusted the impulse ... — The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger Read full book for free!
... and turned his head with the idea of avoiding that ghastly nightmare of a pitiful little man falling down a fathomless gulf which had sprung up ... — Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... the people, the great defender of liberty," switched their murderous vengeance on to their late idol, and ere many hours the widow Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the appalling end and the brevity of time that seemed left to her impressed Josephine with all its ghastly horror. She had shrieked and wept herself into a deathlike illness. The doctor predicted that she could not survive more than a week, and for this reason she escaped ... — The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman Read full book for free!
... beams are bright, And Earth reposes in a belt of light. Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form, Armed with the bolt and glowing through the storm; Sets the great deeps of human passion free, And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea. Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise, Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies; Dim Superstition from her hell escapes, With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes; Here life itself the scowl of Typhon* takes; There Conscience shudders at Alecto's snakes; From Gothic graves at midnight yawning ... — The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... him the other day, of the head of a Jacobin," he tells St. Vincent, "and makes an apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it here!" Upon the copy of the letter accompanying this ghastly gift to him, Troubridge had written, "A jolly fellow. T. Troubridge." The exasperation to which political animosities had given rise may be gauged by the brutal levity shown in this incident, by men of the masculine and generous characters of Troubridge and Nelson, and ... — The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan Read full book for free!
... heads in his honour. Any person, not belonging to the place, whom the head-hunters come across will be killed by them and his or her skull added to the collection, which is neatly arranged on the shore. These ghastly trophies are believed to add fresh spiritual power (mana) to the ghost of the dead chief. Till they have been procured, the people of the place take care not to move about. The grave of the chief is built up with stones and sacrifices are offered ... — The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer Read full book for free!
... bridal chamber, Death! Come to the mother, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, 5 And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song, and dance, and wine,— 10 And thou art terrible!—The tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or ... — Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell Read full book for free!
... suppose we can find out soon, for tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," he said, with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well ... — The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... moon, as if invoking that luminary to shed more of its beams upon him. Then the body moved slowly, like some one writhing in pain, and yet unable to move from the spot on which it lay. From the head to the foot, the whole frame seemed to be convulsed, and now and then as the ghastly object seemed to be gathering more strength, the limbs were thrown out with a rapid ... — Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest Read full book for free!
... repulsive, uncouth, clumsy, ghastly, hideous, shocking, ungainly, deformed, grim, horrid, ugly, unlovely, disgusting, grisly, ... — English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald Read full book for free!
... wet this morning, and very dismal, for we are in a ghastly new Inn, the old one being shut up; and there is always a re-action after a strong excitement like the beauty of the Simplon yesterday, which leaves one very dull. But it is of no use growling or mewing. I hope to be at Milan to-morrow—at Verona for Sunday. I have been reading ... — The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood Read full book for free!
... if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain, ... — The Madonna of the Future • Henry James Read full book for free!
... Lizzie made a motion with her two hands upon her heart, and struggled, and gasped,—as though she wished to speak but could not. "I suppose it is that girl who has done it all," said Lucinda. Lizzie nodded her head, and tried to smile. The attempt was so ghastly that Lucinda, though not timid by nature, was frightened. She sat down and took Lizzie's hand, and tried to comfort her. "It is very hard upon you," she said, "to be twice robbed." Lizzie again nodded her head. "I hope it ... — The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning that seemed intelligent of Nature's devices, and pulled it out, as any angler ... — "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English Read full book for free!
... death—every breath was hushed and the persons assembled stood immovable as statues! Still she spoke not; but the violent heaving of her breast evinced the internal working of some dreadful struggle. Her face before was pale—it was now ghastly; her lips became ... — Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton Read full book for free!
... these evicted tenants was the object of a well-meant but hastily drawn "Disturbance Bill," which the Government passed through the Commons. It was rejected by an overwhelming majority in the Lords, and the natural consequence of its rejection was seen in the ghastly record of outrage and murder ... — Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell Read full book for free!
... Garman's rage was ghastly to behold. The flesh of his face seemed to swell in puffs, his nostrils widened, his eyes seemed to recede beneath the fleshy brows. He held up his great hairy hands, closing and opening them; but enough reason remained in his rage-drunken mind to comprehend the iciness of the blue ... — The Plunderer • Henry Oyen Read full book for free!
... It was a ghastly revel. Like sheaves in a harvest field, dead wolves lay around every open water. Some barely turned from the creek and fell, others struggled for a moment, while a few blindly wandered away for short distances. The poison had worked to a nicety; when the victims were collected, ... — Wells Brothers • Andy Adams Read full book for free!
... fear was shown by the convulsive trembling which agitated his wretched body, by his ghastly pallor, by the cold drops of sweat rolling down his forehead.... He was no longer a man: it was a lamentable bit of human wreckage the hooligans had before them!... And the more lamentable this wreck showed itself to be, the less worthy of their ... — Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre Read full book for free!
... labors of agriculture; the mournful dashing of waves along the firths and lakes: the portentous noises which every change of the wind is apt to raise in a lonely region, full of echoes, and rocks, and caverns; the grotesque and ghastly appearance of such a landscape by the light of the moon: objects like these diffuse a gloom over the ... — The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock Read full book for free!
... That I know. I will never forget that. He weighed only 195 pounds, but I am sure he had another couple of hundred tucked away somewhere. When I had finished counting a great variety and number of stars, it occurred to me that I had been in a ghastly railroad wreck, and that the engine and cars following had picked out my right knee as a nice soft place to pile up on. There was a feeling of great relief when I looked around and saw that the engineer of that ... — Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards Read full book for free!
... it there were ugly iron spikes; and sometimes the heads of those who had been executed were stuck on these spikes, and stayed there until they rotted away. All the people passing along the street could look up and see the heads, and sometimes, when the wind was high, a ghastly head came tumbling down into the street. We cannot think of such things without horror; but in those days people were accustomed to them, and did not mind them very much. When Mary came to Temple Bar she asked for ink and paper, and wrote there ... — The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton Read full book for free!
... occasionally he coughed, and the others seemed content to let him enjoy himself in his own way. His eyes had a singular brightness, and when he laughed his white teeth and rather drawn mouth gave him almost a ghastly appearance. He seemed as much of an odd number as Tom himself, but not in the same way, for Tom was matter-of-fact and stolid, and this little gnome of a scout seemed all ... — Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh Read full book for free!
... turning of the path, just where Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man's hand. Being thus made aware of the proximity of the corpse, he started back a little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,—cautiously ... — The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... you I won't take my affidavit—I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir—I may have been sleep- walking: perhaps am as I write now—I may have been under the influence of that astounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen— but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin ... — The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed. Read full book for free!
... of their astonishment, their indignation and their sympathy afforded the poor fellow the most visible satisfaction, harassed as he was becoming by one dread which entirely swallowed up the thought and fear of death. This ghastly terror was the then usual consignment of a body after death to the surgeons for dissection; and the uncontrollable trepidation which would take possession of him each time this hideous recollection forced itself upon him, although unaccountable to Reuben, was most painful for him to witness. ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various Read full book for free!
... without strife? Recall the tales of primeval chaos, when, as sang the Ascraean singer, love first darted into the midst; imagine the heave and throe of joining elements; conjure up the first living shapes, born of the fluctuating slime and vapour. Surely they were things incomplete, deformed ghastly fragments of being, as are the dreams of a maniac. Had creative Love stopped there, and then, standing on the height of some fair completed world, had viewed the warring portents, wouldst thou not have said—But these are the ... — Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton Read full book for free!
... almost desolate. At one of their ruined villages Livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon stakes stuck in the ground. In the old times the chiefs used to vie with each other as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest number of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable present from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. The Batoka have an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw. The lower ones, relieved from the attrition and ... — Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone Read full book for free!
... layman savored of the occult; at birth, God had been very good to him, in that He had ordained that during all his life the Desert Rat should be engaged in learning how to die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher, and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did not desert him. He sat down on the skull of one of the burros ... — The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne Read full book for free!
... could "get properly going" with the brumbies, two travellers rode into the homestead, supporting between them a third rider, a man picked up off the track delirious with fever, and foodless; and at the sight of his ghastly face our hearts stood still with fear. But the man was one of the Scots another Mac of the race that loves a good fight, and his plucky heart stood by him so well that within twenty-four hours he was Iying contentedly in the shade of the Quarters, looking on, while the homestead shared the ... — We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn Read full book for free!
... audacity, and strength. I had met my equal, and he came to it fresh and I jaded. I clenched my teeth and prayed with all my heart; I set her face before me, and thought if I should fail her to what ghastly fate she might come, and I fought as I had never fought before. The sound of the surf became a roar in my ears, the sunshine an intolerable blaze of light; the blue above and around seemed suddenly beneath my feet as well. We were fighting ... — To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston Read full book for free!
... from her life; and it was his honest hope that she would marry in her own world and forget him. In fact he was the prey of a kind of moral terror that here also, as in the case of his father, he might make some ghastly mistake, pursuing his own will under the guise of love, as he had once pursued it under the guise of retribution—to Elizabeth's ... — Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... and Breckinridge another Presidential ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had associated with him Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency. On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan ... — Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine Read full book for free!
... arranged, before starting, to meet at a certain tall tree, which stood up against the sky in the dim starlight. Green had gone only a few rods when he came upon three men. Their smoky lantern threw a ghastly light upon their work, and they were so busily engaged in digging that they did not notice him. He quickly withdrew and hurried after me. It was some time after he overtook me before we could find Knox, but ... — The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton Read full book for free!
... head, as if to be sure of his hold on himself. He was ghastly white about his smooth-shaven, thick lips. Both hands were thrust deep ... — Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich Read full book for free!
... secure; That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil; That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won spoil; That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and greed In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed; And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked sod. Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay For gold-lust and craft ... — The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various Read full book for free!
... the men upstairs were at work on their ghastly duty, before the coming of the doctor and the lawyer, she went down to him, to tell him something of the programme for the day. Hitherto he had simply been informed that on that morning the body would be buried under the walls of the old parish church, and that after the funeral the will would ... — Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints ... — The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc Read full book for free!
... Settlement, in the ancient Russian city of Nizhni-Novgorod, which sheltered a small Jewish colony of some twenty families. While comparatively circumscribed as far as the material loss is concerned, the Nizhni-Novgorod pogrom stands out in ghastly relief by the number of its human victims. A report, based upon official data, which endeavors to tone down the colors, gives the following description of the ... — History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow Read full book for free!
... something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which a pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind. Leibnitz was a rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in facts than most rationalist minds can show. Yet if you wish for superficiality ... — Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James Read full book for free!
... replied, turning to face her. Katherine thought how ghastly pale and pinched he looked. "I see the sort of creature she is—a doll that would sell her sawdust soul for finery and glitter; ay, and the lives of all who belong to her for ... — A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander Read full book for free!
... revolt. Already criminal attacks upon white women are not uncommon, and a virtual reign of terror exists in some portions of the South, where it is said that white women are never left unprotected; and the negro, if he attacks a white woman, is almost invariably burned alive, with the horrible ghastly features that attend an Indian scalping. The crowd carry off bits of skin, hair, finger-nails, and rope as trophies. In fact, these "burnings" are the most extraordinary features in this "enlightened" country. The ... — As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... in battle-time, When my beautiful heroes perished; The earth of the Lord shall bloom sublime By the blood of his martyrs nourished. "Amen!" I have said, when limbs were hewn And our wounds were blue and ghastly The flesh of a man may fail and swoon But God shall ... — The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine Read full book for free!
... 'Beating—his—wife! How ghastly!' said the Bride. 'Fancy YOUR beating ME!' She slipped an arm round her husband's waist, and, leaning her head against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley in deep ... — Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that ghastly hand. ... — The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood Read full book for free!
... interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it—would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea—tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it—against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid—caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have ... — Bressant • Julian Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... the very last. Hope there seemed none whatever—yet, strangely enough we were neither of us utterly hopeless, and even when the evil that we dreaded was upon us, and that which we greatly feared had come, we sat in the car of the balloon with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled with a ghastly hopefulness ... — Erewhon • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... been awed and overwhelmed by the accounts of the terrific cannonade and the murderous hand-to-hand struggles. At night she would start up from vivid dreams wherein she saw the field with thousands of ghastly faces turned towards the white moonlight. In her belief Merwyn was incapable of looking upon such scenes. Therefore why should she think of him with scorn and bitterness? She herself had never before realized how terrible they were. Now that the dread emergency, with ... — An Original Belle • E. P. Roe Read full book for free!
... departure. Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her. Then Aaron, who had stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down the passage and into the living room. His face was very pale, ghastly-looking. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal. But his heart did not relax, nevertheless. So he hurried into the night, down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the field ... — Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence Read full book for free!
... smoking their Alsacian pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little biniou man from the Cote-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating at every step. War! war! war! The burden of the ghastly monotone was in her brain, her tired heart kept beating out the cadence that her little slippered feet ... — Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... through my memory as he spoke:—"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough." And John would have said the same, could he have seen the ominous black holes between his shoulders, he never had; and, seeing the ghastly sights about him, could not believe his own wound more fatal than these, for all the suffering it ... — On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott Read full book for free!
... this ghastly forest, Dante is led to the third division of this circle, a region of burning sands, where hosts of naked souls lie on the ground, blistered and scathed by the rain of fire and vainly trying to lessen their pain by thrashing themselves with their hands. One figure, the mightiest among them, alone ... — The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber Read full book for free!
... song-birds singing at her heart, but there A thousand gnashing furies made their lair, And urged her on; her nearest pathway lay Over a little hill, and on its brow A group of trees, whereof each blackened bough Bore up to heaven as if in protest mute Its clustering load of ghastly charnel fruit,[12] The swaddled forms of all the village dead— Maid, lusty warrior, and toothless hag, The infant and the conjurer with his bag, Peacefully rotting in their airy bed. As on a battle plain she saw them lie, Fouling the fairness of the moonlit sky; And ... — Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various Read full book for free!
... "It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do—for Millings." He turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he did ... — Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt Read full book for free!
... with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness,—half-hidden—yet full-confessed. The place remains (1870) nearly unchanged in its larger features; but with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma—not by Campagna tomb,—not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of the English scene: nor ... — Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker Read full book for free!
... fuil!" cried the rabble on the stairs, and it seemed ghastly like an answer to the young laird's question; but Nicol Beg demanded peace, and assured MacLachlan he was only sought ... — John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro Read full book for free!
... first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there was a round black hole made by the bullet from his—Napoleonder's—pistol. And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again, "Why did ... — Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof Read full book for free!
... mutilated than those of his comrades; the nose having been slit, and subsequently sewed together again, but so clumsily that the severed parts had only imperfectly united, communicating a strange, distorted, and forbidding look to the physiognomy. Clement Lanyere, the owner of this gashed and ghastly face, who was also reft of his ears, and branded on the cheek, had suffered infamy and degradation, owing to the licence he had given his tongue in respect to the Star-Chamber. Prosecuted in that court by Sir Giles Mompesson, as a notorious libeller ... — The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth Read full book for free!
... few moments, to find his mother clinging to his father, ghastly with the horrible dread which had ... — In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... street that led past the banker's house. It was the most pretentious house in the town, of brick, trimmed with stone. In the yard, which was large, the great man had indulged his taste for art, stucco statuary—a deer, a lion, a dog, two Greek wrestlers, a mother with a child in her arms, and a ghastly semblance ... — Old Ebenezer • Opie Read Read full book for free!
... diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include both sides of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling evil, with its bitter pain, and with its ... — The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys Read full book for free!
... with both arms rigid at his side and his head bent forward. The dawn had just broken, and the two men saw each other in the ghastly gray light of the morning. "If any man," cried Stuart thickly, "dares to say that that blackguardly lie is true I'll kill him. You or any one else. Is that what you mean, damn you? If it is, say so, and I'll break every ... — Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis Read full book for free!
... hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid—except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against ... — Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin) Read full book for free!
... reached home she went directly to her room and had a cup of tea sent to her there, and the children and I had rather a solemn time at the table together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes or thin sliced things for the warm abundance of the week-day dinner; with the gloom of Mrs. March's absence added, this was a very ... — A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... forecastle, someone hurled a shoe at him. A blow so savagely well-aimed, that when he came running aft, howling with pain (for, for all his obstinacy, he seemed to lack courage)—to complain of the outrage, to Schantze—his eye popped out so far that it seemed as if leaping out of its socket! It was ghastly and bloody like a ... — Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp Read full book for free!
... suddenly ebbed, she grew ghastly in her colourlessness, and her bloodless lips writhed, as she called after the ... — Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson Read full book for free!
... promised Mrs. Errol that she would take a long rest, but there was no rest for her. She knew that she would hear from Lucas the moment he had anything definite to report; but a new and ghastly fear now assailed her. What if Nap had not returned to Baronmead? What if he had gone direct to the asylum, there to snatch his opportunity while his ... — The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell Read full book for free!
... success to the large public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the essayist. It did not seem likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs—who could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always ... — Essays in Little • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... must—let His will overpower your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will go through with it, and find your strength in Him. ... — Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson Read full book for free!
... but none of the rest seemed to heed it. Their attention was chained by what now happened before their eyes. The group of servants parted and a woman staggered on to the bridge. Antoinette de Mauban was in a loose white robe, her dark hair streamed over her shoulders, her face was ghastly pale, and her eyes gleamed wildly in the light of the torches. In her shaking hand she held a revolver, and, as she tottered forward, she fired it at Rupert Hentzau. The ball missed him, and struck the woodwork ... — The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope Read full book for free!
... Pontefract. The soldiers bearing Sir John de Bury had reached there some time before, and he lay on the couch in his own room. There was no material change in his condition, though under the candle-light there was less of the ghastly pallor of death in the face; and about the ears were evidences that the blood was beginning to circulate more strongly. The King's own physician, Antonio Carcea—an Italian—sat beside him with his hand on ... — Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott Read full book for free!
... down his head on the block, and spread forth his hands. The headsman instantly performed his office. The usual words, "This is the head of a traitor!" were heard as the executioner displayed the streaming and ghastly sight ... — Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson Read full book for free!
... while others, who knew he had aided them in the fight, stepped up and grasped him by the hand. One old warrior taking Carlos' arm in his, led him forward to the ring, and silently pointed to the now ghastly features, as though he was imparting to the cibolero the news that their chief ... — The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid Read full book for free!
... Monpavon was familiar with all these mysteries, gave a name to each of them: "That's from Madame Moor"—"Ah! Madame d'Athis." A confused mass of coronets and initials, passing whims and old habits, sullied at that moment by being thrown together promiscuously, all swallowed up in that ghastly place, by lamplight, with a noise as of an intermittent deluge, going to oblivion by a shameful road. Suddenly Jenkins paused in his work of destruction. Two letters on pearl-gray satin ... — The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet Read full book for free!
... horse and rode down to the House of Lords. There was a debate of some public interest, and a considerable crowd was collected round the Peers' entrance. The moment Lord Cadurcis was recognised, the multitude began hooting. He was agitated, and grinned a ghastly smile at the rabble. But he dismounted, without further annoyance, and took his seat. Not a single peer of his own party spoke to him. The leader of the Opposition, indeed, bowed to him, and, in the course of the evening, he received, from one or two more of ... — Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli Read full book for free!
... halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up, clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings, turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load, but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. ... — Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris Read full book for free!
... forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto ... — Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe Read full book for free!
... middle-aged man used to ships but now for some reason tired of them. My merchants had only eyes for the safety of their persons and their bales, plunged the third day into mountainous wild country echoing and ghastly with long-lasting war. Their servants and muleteers walked and rode, lamented or were gay, raised faction, swore, laughed, traveled grimly or in a dull melancholy or mirthfully; quarreled and made peace, turn by turn, day by day, much alike. One ... — 1492 • Mary Johnston Read full book for free!
... of these occasions I abandoned a post no longer tenable, and went into the small saloon close by, to seek a dry spot whereon to finish the night, I found it occupied by a ghastly man, with long, wild gray hair, and a white face—striding staggeringly up and down—moaning to himself in a harsh, hollow voice, "No rest; I can't rest." He never spoke any other words, and never ceased ... — Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence Read full book for free!
... distinguished himself in war, and his coronation did not take place until a successful campaign had provided enough captives to grace his triumphal entry into the capital, and enough victims for the ghastly sacrifices which formed an important part of all their religious ceremonies. Communication was held with the remotest parts of the country by means of couriers, who, trained to it from childhood, travelled with amazing swiftness. Post-houses were established on the great ... — The True Story Book • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... Ah! how different from the girl described in the opening of this tale. Her cheek was pale and wan, and the flesh had gone, and the yellow skin fell in from her cheekbone to her mouth, giving her almost a ghastly appearance; her eyes appeared larger than ever, but they were quenched with weeping, and dull with grief; her hair was drawn back carelessly behind her ears, and her lips were thin and bloodless. Two or three times during the day Mrs. McKeon had given her half a glass of wine, which she had ... — The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... firm as a rock, his lips compressed, his brow rigid, and his face livid in its ghastly pallor. Turning from his stern parent to the old man, he said, with an air ... — George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie Read full book for free!
... sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself, now: "I'm lost, no matter what turn things take! This man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sale; he said he had a letter from a passenger on the GRAND MOGUL saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... river, many lamps twinkling—with two or three huge chimneys, a couple of miles up, belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all around—and sometimes an electric or calcium, its Dante-Inferno gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly-powerful. Of later May nights, crossing, I like to watch the fishermen's little buoy-lights—so pretty, so dreamy—like corpse candles—undulating delicate and lonesome on the surface of the shadowy waters, floating with ... — Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman Read full book for free!
... the United States and the Indian confederates was measurably widened. The end was Tippecanoe, and the eternal enmity of the hunters and riflemen of southern Indiana and Kentucky who followed General Harrison on that day. One of the ghastly sights of that sanguinary struggle, was the scalping by the white men of the Indian slain, and the division of their scalps among the soldiers after they had been cut into strips. These bloody trophies were carried back to the settlements along the Ohio and Wabash to satisfy ... — The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce Read full book for free!
... whom the reader has seen already, accompanied him, and also the youth named Hippolyte Terentieff. The latter was only seventeen or eighteen. He had an intelligent face, though it was usually irritated and fretful in expression. His skeleton-like figure, his ghastly complexion, the brightness of his eyes, and the red spots of colour on his cheeks, betrayed the victim of consumption to the most casual glance. He coughed persistently, and panted for breath; it looked ... — The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read full book for free!
... sat by the side of the body of her dead husband cutting out his tongue; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and eaten. The daughter was seen eating the father; and the mother, that [viz. body] of her children; children, that of father and mother. The emaciated, wild, and ghastly appearance of the survivors added to the horror of it. Language can not describe the awful change that a few weeks of dire suffering had wrought in the minds of the wretched and pitiable beings. Those who one month before would ... — The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton Read full book for free!
... welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as Juliet saw "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance ... — Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson Read full book for free!
... could be. To burn powder hour after hour and day after day and week after week at a foe who never sees you and whom you never see; to go at this dreary, heavy trade of war with the sober, uninspired earnestness of convicts building a prison wall about themselves—the ghastly unreality of the proposition left me ... — Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb Read full book for free!
... though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open—and went forth Into a gallery, of a sombre hue, Long, furnish'd with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth. But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ghastly, desolate, ... — Don Juan • Lord Byron Read full book for free!
... they have been imported into this peaceful and common home, the camel of the Thebais, as he ruminates in his grassy parterre, surveys with composed surprise the wild dog of the Tierra del Fuego and the sharp-eyed dingo of Australia. Around the ghastly sloth-bear, disentombed from his burrows in the gloomiest woods of Mysore or Canara—and his more lively congener of Russia—the armadillo of Brazil and the pine marten of Norway display a vivacity of action and a cheerfulness of gesture which captivity seems powerless to repress. The elephant ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various Read full book for free!
... any of you!" And almost as if it were a real mother's heart, Christian felt hers yearn over the poor pale face, growing every minute more ghastly. ... — Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Read full book for free!
... question." He looked about upon his companions. Three of them shook their heads gravely; but the fourth, in his over-zeal, attempted to, say "No," and burst into a laugh; whereupon they all broadly smiled, while Camille looked ghastly. The speaker resumed. ... — Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable Read full book for free!
... roar, across whose base sharp bolts broke and burst perpetually; and with the outer world wrapped in quivering curtains of blue flame, now and then a shaft of fire lanced its straight spear down the dense darkness of the woods behind in ghastly illumination, and a responsive spire shot up in some burning bush that blackened almost as instantly. Flor fancied that the lightning was searching for her, a runaway herself, and the burning bush answered, like a sentinel, that here she was. ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various Read full book for free!
... lost no time in securing this acquisition; but on Diggory's arrival, Mr Glowry was horror-struck by the sight of a round ruddy face, and a pair of laughing eyes. Deathshead was always grinning,—not a ghastly smile, but the grin of a comic mask; and disturbed the echoes of the hall with so much unhallowed laughter, that Mr Glowry gave him his discharge. Diggory, however, had staid long enough to make conquests of all the old gentleman's ... — Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock Read full book for free!
... blot of ink he sits across the way, Upon the smiling terrace of the Cafe de la Paix; That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned, I know his automatic's ready waiting to his hand. I know a tragedy is near. I dread, I have no peace . . . Oh, don't you think I ought to go and ... — Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service Read full book for free!
... none but the Buttons of this world can appreciate, Paul was forbidden, under pain of ghastly tortures, to go near the Sunday school again, and, lest he should defy authority, he was told off on Sunday afternoons to mind the baby, either in the street or the scullery, according to the weather, while the other little Buttons were not allowed ... — The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke Read full book for free!
... of, when you think about being a Vestal. I've missed a lot of fine privileges, mighty valuable to any girl that would care for that sort of thing; but I've escaped a lot of things that would go with those privileges. I love bright colors, I always did and I look ghastly in white—I look like a ghost. And I'd have had to wear white and nothing else, even white flowers, like a corpse. And a Vestal has to keep her eyes on the ground and walk slow and stately and stand straight and dignified, and talk soft and low. I'd suffer, even if ... — The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White Read full book for free!
... besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed: Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his rotes, ... — The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman Read full book for free!
... restaurant. The full horror of what had happened to Dr. Marks was just having its effect. He found himself shivering as though with a severe chill. Marks was the victim of something ghastly. He seemed to be trying to make sense, as though there was still a glimmer of intelligence behind the blank stare. But his ... — The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine Read full book for free!
... it was notorious in Littlebath that she had never played well, and that she had long since forgotten all she had ever known. The poor old woman had already had some kind of a fit; she was very shaky and infirm, and ghastly to look at, in spite of her paint and ribbons. She was long in arranging her cards, long in playing them; very long in settling her points, when the points went against her, as they generally did. And yet, in spite of all this, Mrs. King Garded ... — The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... done it all. Now for the killed and wounded! Ghastly the spectacle! And happy those Whom Death had taken swiftly! Linda's mother Was one of these—a smile upon her lips, But her breast marred—peacefully she had passed. Percival's wound was mortal, but he strove, Amid the jar of sense, to fix his mind On one absorbing thought—a ... — The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent Read full book for free!
... of Mount Sneffels! It was in an awful mood of mind, that despite my fatigue, before I descended into the crater which was to shelter us for the night, I paused to behold the sun rise at midnight on the very day of its lowest declension, and enjoyed the spectacle of its ghastly pale rays cast upon the isle which lay sleeping at ... — A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne Read full book for free!
... not play well," said Risque at length, when the other, ghastly white, sat speechless upon the parapet; "if you were the student of chance, that I have been, you would know that at murder the ... — Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend Read full book for free!
... struck the first blow up there, not of importance to the strategical position, but ghastly to two battalions of the 1st Division, cut off on a spit of land at Lombartzyde and almost annihilated ... — Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs Read full book for free!
... "keep abreast of the times." These women belong to clubs and literary societies which are more serious than war. They are always reading papers or attending lectures, and at these lectures they get a strange assortment of "cultural" information and misinformation, delivered with ghastly assurance by heterogeneous gentlemen in cutaway coats, who go about and spout for pay. If you meet these ladies, and they suspect you of being infested by the germs of "culture," they will open fire on you with a "thought," about which you may detect a curious ghostly fragrance, as of ... — American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street Read full book for free!
... in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever—an infidel—one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last ... — Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll Read full book for free!
... to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of heartfelt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting in the pauper's grave! The children wild in the streets, the mother a destitute widow; both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband and father's name, and impelled by sheer necessity, down the precipice that had led him to a lingering death, possibly of many years' ... — Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... be, we have nothing to do with Him nor He with us; that our prayers cannot get to His ears, if He have ears, nor His hand be stretched out to help us, if He have a hand. I do not know how this cultivated generation is to he brought back again to faith in God and delivered from that ghastly doubt which empties heaven and saddens earth to its victims, but by giving heed to the word which Christ spoke to the whole race while He addressed Nathanael, 'Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.' ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... Sixth in Carson's study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears. "Well," said the head-prefect acidly. "You've made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke." ... — Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... pain-racked, ghastly face, Dru sat in silent meditation, and thought of the shame of it, the pity of it all. Somewhere amongst that human wreckage he knew Gloria was doing what she could to comfort the wounded and those that were in ... — Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House Read full book for free!
... Her face was ghastly pale, and perhaps rendered still more so by the Blueish light of the fire. It possessed beauty, but its beauty was saddened by care and anxiety. There was the look of one accustomed to trouble, but of one whom trouble ... — Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving Read full book for free!
... created between himself and his audiences, as they have watched in his impersonations the shifting tariff—the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ever has either dramatist or management wilfully biassed the effect of stage representation in favor ... — The Drama • Henry Irving Read full book for free!
... others, placed him in his own berth that he might the better attend to him. We then went to assist my uncle in looking after the other wounded men. Two were unfit for duty, but the rest managed to get about with bandaged arms and heads, and a somewhat ghastly crew they looked. The second mate and boatswain were slightly hurt, and Blyth had received two wounds, but neither were of much consequence; while the captain, though three bullets had gone through his clothes, was uninjured, as were the first mate and I. On going to the mast-head, ... — The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston Read full book for free!
... "hair raising" effect may be produced by painting the entire body of one of the male guests with phosphorus. As this glowing nude stalks uncannily through the darkened rooms you may easily imagine the ghastly... — Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart Read full book for free!
... copper-colored, and tints everything with a ghastly hue. The cattle and other animals seem to know that danger is near, and rush about ... — A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George Read full book for free!
... by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful distance, more skeletons—evidently those of slaves—whose fractured skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what was the sense of giving him ... — Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin Read full book for free!
... she had seen nothing while hearing much, lying through many sleepless nights with nerves strung to a pitch of torture far more terrible than any bodily exhaustion, and vivid imagination ever at work upon pictures more ghastly than even the ghastly reality which she ... — The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell Read full book for free!
... these sounds of evil omen died away, when, on a sudden, there started up before them a tall shape, with long arms outstretched, and all of a ghastly whiteness. The black giant stopped short, fixedly staring before him—all in an instant weak as a limber-jack, the whites of his eyes showing through the dark like half-moons. The thing, there dimly seen in the dusk of the overhanging trees, was, as superstitious fancy pictured it to the ... — Burl • Morrison Heady Read full book for free!
... the movement: none but a fool could have supposed that it would. Nevertheless, it had one ghastly effect on contemporary painting. When I returned to Paris in the autumn of 1919 I found the painters whom I had known before the war developing, more or less normally, and producing work which fell ... — Since Cezanne • Clive Bell Read full book for free!
... of this they give to be, his always going alone when he travels. The old villain then catches what he can. Myself, I hardly believe he continues his brigandage. He appears wholly worn out. I gave his little son 20 paras to buy camel's flesh. The old freebooter grinned a ghastly smile. Walking in Ben Weleed quarters, I heard a great to-do, and went to see what it was, when I saw the old chief, Haj Ben Mousa Ettanee, standing over his young truant son, whilst with a thick stick the servant of the schoolmaster was belabouring the feet ... — Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson Read full book for free!
... underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver, nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver, ... — The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung Read full book for free!
... purposes, the resolves, never grew into more than beginnings. God's angels bend down and see a great wilderness of unfinished fabrics, splendid possibilities unfulfilled, noble might-have-beens abandoned, ghastly ruins now, sad ... — Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller Read full book for free!
... standing by One replied, and in replying tears he shed abundantly: “O, poor youth,” ’twas thus he answered, “little, little dost thou know That in coming here thou comest not to joy, but bitter woe. Tears, and pains, and wounds most ghastly, wounds for which there is no cure, Every kind of evil treatment such as no ... — Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise Read full book for free!
... rapid strides, and he was at the spot whence Pow-wow's joyful barks had continued to resound. What found he there? The body, indeed, of his child; but whether as a waif unto life, or as a prize unto death—it were hard to tell. Stretched out on the ground, all ghastly it lay; the head toward him, and just beyond the naked feet—adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy self-assurance, the Manitou moccasins. As the father approached, the elfish little horrors, fetching a summerset aloft, ... — The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady Read full book for free!
... Where are the localities in these Territories where the strain upon popular government must come? The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this movement, appalled the country some months since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the Southern States. He proposes that $77,000,000 of the people's money be taken in order to strike down the great foe to republican government, illiteracy. How was that illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the suffrage to unprepared voters. It is not ... — Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar. Read full book for free!
... for the Day, you lied for the Day, And woke the Day's red spleen, Monster, who asked God's aid Divine, Then strewed His seas with the ghastly mine; Not all the waters of all the Rhine Can wash thy foul ... — New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various Read full book for free!
... stupor. On the morning of the fourth day, he almost unconsciously partook of the wretched provision which his gaolers brought him. Their torches, round which the bats whirled and flapped their wings, and twinkled their small eyes, threw a ghastly glare over the nearer walls of the dungeon, the extremity of which defied the vision of the prisoner; and, when the gaolers retired, Alroy ... — Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli Read full book for free!
... of October, about eight thousand Moslems were murdered, the last two thousand, chiefly women and children, being taken into a neighbouring ravine, there to be slaughtered at leisure. Two years afterwards a ghastly heap of bones ... — The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald Read full book for free!
... star-shell looped across the spongy sky, casting a lurid illumination over the ghastly field. When the three travellers caught the soft swish of its ascent, they "froze"—motionless as a shamming 'possum—mimicking death among ... — The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke Read full book for free!
... recalls that of the tamer reliefs set up by the first Sapor, but is less pleasing. Some of the prisoners appear to be well drawn; but the central figure, that of the monarch, is grotesque; the human heads are ghastly; and the soldiers and attendants have little merit. The animal forms are better—that of the elephant especially, though as compared with the men it is ... — The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson Read full book for free!
... earnest and eloquent in his condemnation of Mr. Sumner for proposing to give the ballot to the negroes and disfranchise the white Rebels, but his moral vision failed to discern anything amiss in his own ghastly policy of arming the white Rebels with the ballot and denying ... — Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian Read full book for free!
... his letters, of the three leading notions on which he founded the story. In his water-side wanderings during his last book, the many handbills he saw posted up, with dreary description of persons drowned in the river, suggested the 'long shore men and their ghastly calling whom he sketched in Hexam and Riderhood, "I think," he had written, "a man, young and perhaps eccentric, feigning to be dead, and being dead to all intents and purposes external to himself, and for years retaining the singular view of life and ... — The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster Read full book for free!
... inspiration. Even the poem in question cannot be pronounced entirely original, though its intrinsic beauty is unquestionable. It undoubtedly owes its origin to Burger's poem "Leonora," which has found so many English translators. Not content with a single development of Burger's ghastly production the Russian poet has directly paraphrased "Leonora" under its own title, and also written a poem "Liudmila" in imitation of it. The principal outlines of these three poems are as follows: A maiden loses her lover in the wars; ... — Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin Read full book for free!
... she's been here, but then she was reading a ghastly stupid novel, and wasn't company; and she went off to the big boarding-house down the road half a mile, to dine with a friend. I wouldn't go to the blasted place, and really think she didn't want me to. But where in thunder were you all ... — That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... I trudged off next day to see my luckless acquaintances. I secretly hoped—such is human weakness—that I should not find them at home, and again I was mistaken. Both were at home. The change that had taken place in them during the last three days must have struck any one. Punin looked ghastly white and flabby. His talkativeness had completely vanished. He spoke listlessly, feebly, still in the same husky voice, and looked somehow lost and bewildered. Baburin, on the contrary, seemed shrunk into himself, and blacker than ever; taciturn at the best ... — A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev Read full book for free!
... direction indicated by Pottle, when I caught a momentary glimpse of a tiny spark-like flash—which the ejaculations of my comrades told me they also had observed—and in another instant a glare of ghastly blue-white radiance streamed out over the sea and revealed to us two vessels alongside each other, the canvas of the one—a large lumbering full-rigged ship, gleaming spectrally in the light of the port-fire, ... — The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood Read full book for free!
... Quay made itself heard through the double windows. There was a clang of many tones, and the horses pulled up with a jerk. The color left Catrina's face quite suddenly, as if wiped away, leaving her ghastly. She was going to see Paul ... — The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman Read full book for free!
... amusement. He considered Viola in corals as too rude a jest to share with her. Had poor Viola once grasped Harold Lind's estimation of her she would have as soon gazed upon herself in her coffin. Harold's comprehension of the essentials was beyond Jane Carew's. It was fairly ghastly, partaking of the nature of X-rays, but it never disturbed Harold Lind. He went along his dance-track undisturbed, his blue eyes never losing their high lights of glee, his lips never losing their inscrutable ... — The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Read full book for free!
... rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head: As awaked from the dead, And amazed he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise! See the snakes that they rear How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew! Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the Persian abodes And glittering ... — The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various Read full book for free!
... would, however, this thriving tradesman could not act his part well. In the midst of his prosperity his smiles were ghastly and his laughter was sardonic. Even when commenting on the prosperity of trade his sighs were frequent and deep. One of his friends thought and said that prosperity was turning the poor man's brain. Others thought that he was becoming ... — Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... part of his mouth having been shot away in a fight with Indians near Walla Walla some years before, in which a Methodist missionary had been killed; but his revolting personal appearance was now worse than ever, and the sacrilegious use of Father Pandoza's vestments, coupled with the ghastly scalp that hung from his bridle, so turned opinion against him that he was soon captured, dismounted, and his parade brought to an abrupt close, and I doubt whether he ever after quite reinstated himself in the good graces ... — Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan Read full book for free!
... never want a skull to grin ghastly lessons of morality at me, while I have you," replied Helen, with ... — May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey Read full book for free!
... beast—I strode away towards Westminster, cured of half my indignation at the death of Charles the First. Many people hurried past me, chiefly of the more tender sort, revolting at the butchery. In their ghastly faces, as they turned them back, lest the sight should be coming after them, great sorrow was to be seen, and horror, and pity, ... — Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore Read full book for free!
... of the terrific bombardment. An aid-post is hastily placed in a huge shell-hole close by, and the wounded straggle back; those who are but slightly hit and can walk help each other along, while the others are carried on stretchers. Here, a man, ghastly wounded, minus one leg and with the other almost severed, lies on a stretcher, calmly puffing at a cigarette given him by the bearers, and attempts to raise himself on his elbow that he may gaze at the curious scenes ... — Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose Read full book for free!
... the door, seized the stout occupant savagely by the ear, and dragged him bellowing on to the highway. Then, very deliberately, he struck him twice across the face with his open hand. The blows rang out like pistol-shots in the silence of the night. The fat traveller turned a ghastly colour and fell back half senseless against the side of the limousine. The robber dragged open his coat, wrenched away the heavy gold watch-chain with all that it held, plucked out the great diamond pin that sparkled in the black ... — Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle Read full book for free!
... whisky—not much as yet, but enough to give him a greater command of words than he ordinarily possessed. When he saw Trenholme among the band who were inquiring for him, he manifested distinct signs of terror, but not at his visitors; his ghastly glances were at door and window, and he drew nearer to the company for protection. It was plainly what they had to tell, not what they had to demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, ... — What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall Read full book for free!
... of silence ensued. Huckaback was deep in the ghastly but instructive details of a trial for murder; and Titmouse, after having glanced listlessly over the entertaining first sheet of advertisements, was on the point of laying down his half of the paper, when he suddenly started in his chair, turned ... — Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren Read full book for free!
... was shown into the room which Fillet had prepared for his reception. While he sat musing on this untoward adventure, so big with disgrace and disappointment, young Oakley, according to the instructions he had received, appeared all at once before him, pointing to a ghastly wound, which the doctor had painted on his forehead. The apparition no sooner presented itself to the eyes of Gobble, than, taking it for granted it was the spirit of the young farmer whose death he had occasioned, he roared aloud, "Lord ... — The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett Read full book for free!
... eternal home, Child of its narrow house!—how late the bloom, The facile smile, the soft eye's crystal light, Each grace of Youth's gay morn, that charms our sight, Play'd o'er that Form!—now sunk in Death's cold gloom, Insensate! ghastly!—for the yawning tomb, Alas! fit Inmate.—Thus we mourn the blight Of Virgin-Beauty, and endowments rare In their glad hours of promise.—O! when Age Drops, like the o'er-blown, faded rose, tho' dear Its long known worth, no stormy sorrows rage; But ... — Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward Read full book for free!
... by the King, applied a patent mixture to stop the progress of its decay, but, last autumn, when seen by the describer, its naked gigantic trunk and arms, retaining not the least symptom of animation, presented a ghastly spectacle of the ravages of time, as contrasted with the rich verdure of ... — A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland Read full book for free!
... the fields, unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place where it had been held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the banquet pierced through the ... — Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Read full book for free!
... second-hand clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here and there, a strip of paper announcing ... — Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... he could find her—find her in this warm, human world, away from that ghastly border-land where they two met. For in that hour he knew he loved—what? A woman or a ghost? A creature of this world or a fantasy of the night? Wherever she was, whatever she was, he loved her and he wanted her. And in that hour of ... — Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan Read full book for free!
... it would not stand up and face the emphatic present. At the end of a few months, would there be anything left of her connexion with the place where she had passed six—seven years of her life? and such years! They had put scars on her soul, as deep and ghastly as ever red-hot irons had marked on tortured flesh. Perhaps it was because of this rabid agony undergone, that now she seemed to have scarcely any clinging to her home,—for the present at any rate. And she knew that she left only sorrow ... — The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird Read full book for free!
... a little more patience, a little more anguish; and he stood once again, a ghastly and crippled figure, before the outer cavity ... — Antonina • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... face looking ghastly in the red light, "this is perfectly dreadful for poor Mrs. Blodgett and the good deacon. Oh, if we could only help them!" She looked off at the clouds of smoke now obscuring the red glare, and her hands usually so quiet were wringing ... — The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney Read full book for free!
... sent for one of his grooms, who is hump-backed, big-bellied, crook legged, and as ugly as a hobgoblin; and after having commanded the vizier to marry his daughter to this ghastly slave, he caused the contract to be made and signed by witnesses in his own presence. The preparations for this fantastical wedding are all ready, and this very moment all the slaves belonging to the lords of the court of Egypt ... — The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... a moment, And nothing did he say, But the cheek of Argyle grew ghastly pale, And he turned his eyes away. The painted harlot by his side, She shook through every limb, For a roar like thunder swept the street, And hands were clenched at him; And a Saxon soldier cried aloud, "Back, coward, from thy place! For seven long years ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various Read full book for free!
... not; but the shout of delight rose louder as they saw the flames dance higher o'er their victims; and Silas looked on all—but Leemah's eye was on his—he knew his slightest movement was death to her as well as to himself. Like a demon through the flame leaped the ghastly form of the Red Eagle, (he to whom Leemah had been espoused) and with searching glance glared on his victims, but saw not there the one he sought with deeper vengeance than the others—'twas Silas he looked for; and, with the speed ... — Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan Read full book for free!
... later General Havelock and his little band of heroes—some one thousand Englishmen who had marched with him from Allahabad, recaptured by Neill for England, and on to ghastly Cawnpore—arrived at Lucknow, and relieved the slender British force which since May had been holding the Residency against the fierce and ever-renewed assaults of the thousands of rebels who poured themselves upon it. He came in time to save many a brave life that should yet do ... — Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling Read full book for free!
... robed in a long red dressing-gown, a candle in one hand, a loaded blunderbuss in the other, and with a most ludicrous expression on his pallid face, as though he were making up his mind to kill somebody, but was a little afraid that somebody might kill him instead! His wife, looking ghastly in her curl-papers with her eyes and mouth wide open in fright, was trying to pull him back, and was evidently terrified to glance round the kitchen, lest some midnight robber should meet her gaze. Away I scudded, my sides ... — The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E. Read full book for free!
... a wailing chant—a hopeless prayer for mercy and deliverance. A guttering candle shed a ghastly light ... — Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens Read full book for free!
... effects of terror than those of the blow. His nose, however, again gushed out blood, a system of defence which seemed as natural to him as that resorted to by the race of stinkards. He then raised himself on his knees and hams, and raising up his ghastly face, while the blood streamed over both ears, he besought his life of his brother, in the most abject whining manner, gaping and ... — The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg Read full book for free!
... those, the fiends, who, near allied, O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside; Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, 20 Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare: On whom that ravening[15] brood of Fate, Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait: Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, And look not ... — The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins Read full book for free!
... to go out looking for work, but that ceased, and she seemed in a half-conscious state. As I was a charitable gentleman, would I go and speak to her? Well, rather reluctantly, I did. I went upstairs to a dreary back room, and found a decidedly lady-like young woman, neatly dressed enough, but ghastly white with dull eyes. She seemed to be dusting some books, but looked too weary to do much. She was not surprised or moved in any way at seeing me. When I apologized for intruding upon her, she murmured that I was very good. Then I asked if I could help her in any way. She thanked me, but suggested ... — A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander Read full book for free!
... she treats that ghastly experience! It is a dear and lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features of an experience. Susy had that disposition, and it was one of the jewels of her character that had come to her straight from ... — Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... every now and then to be photographed, and try to persuade her horse to stop also. Or keep looking up to see if another family jar threatened. Or look around to see if any of the party or the pack was rolling down over the spareribs of that ghastly skeleton. No; the little mermaid's problem was a simple and ... — Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart Read full book for free!
... fascinated theirs—they beheld in that fearful countenance the very image of a corpse!—the same, the glazed and lustreless regard, the blue and shrunken lips, the drawn and hollow jaw—the dead, lank hair, of a pale grey—the livid, green, ghastly skin, which seemed all surely tinged and tainted by ... — The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies—all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous Threnodies ... — The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair Read full book for free!
... covered the whole middle of the Place, reaching almost to the pavement on the other side—had their heads all turned towards the Cathedral. 'What are you gazing at, my friend?' I said to one by whom I stood. He looked up at me with a face which looked ghastly in the gloom. 'Look, M. le Maire!' he said; 'cannot you see it ... — A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant Read full book for free!
... condemned to disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are precisely indicative of ... — Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... stream they saw the fitful light of an eternal burning whose ghastly glare lit the water crests ... — Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris Read full book for free!
... the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country,—will it be said that all this ... — The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick Read full book for free!
... anti-human is better; outre-human, in the sense of beyond, outside, almost grotesque in its attitude towards, would nearly convey it. Everything is anti-human. How extraordinary, strange, and incomprehensible are the creatures captured out of the depths of the sea! The distorted fishes; the ghastly cuttles; the hideous eel-like shapes; the crawling shell-encrusted things; the centipede-like beings; monstrous forms, to see which gives a shock to the brain. They shock the mind because they exhibit an absence of design. There is no idea ... — The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies Read full book for free!
... same moment that my dream-self awoke in my dream, my actual self woke in reality, and with the same ghastly horror. ... — A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu Read full book for free!
... twist the lad's arms and administer a certain number of hard blows upon them. This he did every day so long as the whim lasted. As for the smoking, poor Brokenribs had to smoke a certain number of pipes every day. A single pipe made him look ghastly, and the whole series made him dreadfully ill. I remember his white face at such times; but he attained his reward in becoming an accomplished ... — Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al Read full book for free!
... Ojibway shone, Or the scalp-knife gleamed in a swarthy fist. Undaunted the braves of Wakwa's band Jumped into the thicket with lance and knife, And grappled the Chippewas hand to hand; And foe with foe, in the deadly strife, Lay clutching the scalp of his foe and dead, With a tomahawk sunk in his ghastly head, Or his still heart sheathing a bloody blade. Like a bear in the battle Wakwa raves, And cheers the hearts of his falling braves. But a panther crouches along his track,— He springs with a yell on ... — Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon Read full book for free!
... be conducted to the morning-room, and be rendered a less ghastly spectacle, by some very uncomfortable sticking-plaster moustaches, which hardly permitted him to narrate his battle distinctly. He thought the boys, even of Tibb's Alley, would hardly have ventured any violence after he had interfered, but for some young men who aught to have known better; he ... — The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... him, half frightened and much surprised, but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range ... — The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould Read full book for free!
... until her eyeballs rattled in her head. The doll fell to the floor and lay there with closed eyes. Her face was pallid and ghastly. Her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair stuck out wildly in every direction. Her legs were doubled under her in the most helpless fashion. She was the forlornest figure of a doll imaginable. Presently Mary drew her ... — The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown Read full book for free!
... and poets of the Middle Ages, representing a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which persons of every rank and age appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is perhaps more striking and picturesque than in any other—the ghastly nature of the subject being brought into very lively contrast with the festive tone of the verses. This grim fiction had for several centuries great success ... — Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta Read full book for free!
... vain— The deathlike spell was on him like a chain, And his clogged tongue, that still he strove to teach, Denied all answering speech! The monarch bade him mark The clotted blood that, dark, Distained his royal bosom, and that found Its way, still issuing, from a mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful ... — Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various Read full book for free!
... do no good,' he replied. 'We shall kill you, burn you in a fire slowly, scald you with boiling water, cut you in little pieces,' and he went on to threaten the lone woman with the most fiendish and ghastly outrages, such as I dare not even give ... — Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon Read full book for free!
... masses, fresh from the factory of God. There was not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a blade of grass. No bird sang its cheering song, or delighted the eye with its gorgeous plumage; not even a frog croaked, a cicada rattled, or a serpent hissed. All was barren desolation, fearful silence and ghastly newness. ... — The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James Read full book for free!
... time it was no false alarm. The bullet had done too well its cruel work. For a moment Valentine seemed to recognize him, and looking up, with his left hand still clutching at his breast, made a ghastly attempt to smile. Then, with a groan, he fell over on his ... — Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery Read full book for free!
... of those who had been executed were stuck on these spikes, and stayed there until they rotted away. All the people passing along the street could look up and see the heads, and sometimes, when the wind was high, a ghastly head came tumbling down into the street. We cannot think of such things without horror; but in those days people were accustomed to them, and did not mind them very much. When Mary came to Temple Bar she asked for ink and paper, and wrote there ... — The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton Read full book for free!
... his amusement. He considered Viola in corals as too rude a jest to share with her. Had poor Viola once grasped Harold Lind's estimation of her she would have as soon gazed upon herself in her coffin. Harold's comprehension of the essentials was beyond Jane Carew's. It was fairly ghastly, partaking of the nature of X-rays, but it never disturbed Harold Lind. He went along his dance-track undisturbed, his blue eyes never losing their high lights of glee, his lips never losing their inscrutable smile at some happy understanding between life and himself. Harold had fair ... — The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Read full book for free!
... over all of them a false and pallid light; his characters are seen in a spectral atmosphere. If a romance is to be judged, not by literary rules, but by its power of making an impression upon the mind, such power as a ghastly story has, told by the chimney-corner on a tempestuous night, then Mr. Brown's romances cannot be dismissed without a certain recognition. But they never represented anything distinctively American, and their influence upon ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner Read full book for free!
... one of the shops, and hastily bought her a feather fan,—a magnificent thing of deep magenta dye shading into blue, with a whole yellow-bird transfixed in the centre. When he triumphantly displayed it in their room, "Who's that for, Basil?" demanded his wife; "the cook?" But seeing his ghastly look at this, she fell upon his neck, crying, "O you poor old tasteless darling! You've got it for me!" and seemed about to ... — Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... earlier—it was a mere chance that I got it at all. The paper stated that you were to start immediately for your residence on the Isle of Wight, consequently I went directly there, thus losing much more time. But—oh, I cannot stop for all these details now," the young man cried, with a ghastly face, the perspiration standing in great beads upon his brow, while he was terribly excited. "Of course Violet is not your wife, even though ten thousand ceremonies were performed over you. She is mine—mine! Oh, Heaven! am I going mad? Where is she? Tell me—tell me! Why are you still here? ... — His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon Read full book for free!
... dropped asleep in a minute's interval between trains, and dreamed that she was lost in Fifty-Ninth Street. It was as long as the way to England, and a ghastly street to be lost in. Its sky line—if it knew anything about the sky—was as irregular as a Wagner dragon's teeth—high buildings and low buildings, and shanties where coloured families lived; little, sinister-looking houses where people could be murdered and their bodies ... — Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson Read full book for free!
... all Christina could say, for his effort at gaiety formed a ghastly contrast with the gray, livid hue that overspread his fair young face, his bloody armour, and damp disordered hair, and even ... — The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... I have told you how the great religious wars took place more than a century after the first open act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories of a number of French and German and English scientists. But the world at large took no interest in these strange contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion ... — The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon Read full book for free!
... to tell you the rest of this story as the old Pottawatomie told it to me, for it is near bedtime and these are the very trees between which the ghostly, ghastly figures flitted in the darkness. It is all past and gone now and you need have no fear. You boys on the outer edge who are crowding up to the light of the camp-fire are just as safe as the fellows in the middle. The thing to interest you is what the Indians did with ... — The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo Read full book for free!
... awoke with a start. It was his first experience with the shock of a Southern Florida dawn. Dawns of many sorts he had seen—the ghastly ashy, clanging dawns of cities, the gray, creeping dawns of Northern winter, the bluish dawns of the Western mountains—but a dawn which came flaring up from the sea like a clap ... — The Plunderer • Henry Oyen Read full book for free!
... at Dillon. He was pale and white as a ghost, but I could see that he was breathing, though with difficulty. In the glare of the headlight of a car which Garrick had turned on him, he looked ghastly. I looked again to discover traces of blood. But there ... — Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve Read full book for free!
... grief, or anger, or excitement—she was always being chided for not restraining her feelings—she was always being gently lectured for using too strong expressions. What did Primrose mean by throwing down this kind though somewhat mysterious, letter, and by making use of so ghastly a word as "separation?" Who was going to divide them? Certainly ... — The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade Read full book for free!
... us this day our daily bread!" O prayer By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair— A beggar's plaint when ... — Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove Read full book for free!
... hosts, Of ghosts, And that without reflectors; And creepy things With wings, And gaunt and grisly spectres! He can fill you crowds Of shrouds, And horrify you vastly; He can rack your brains With chains, And gibberings grim and ghastly. Then, if you plan it, he Changes organity With an urbanity, Full of Satanity, Vexes humanity With an inanity Fatal to vanity - Driving your foes to the verge of insanity. Barring tautology, In demonology, 'Lectro biology, Mystic nosology, ... — Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert Read full book for free!
... hour longer profound silence prevailed. Then Grandidier came out of the pavilion, bareheaded and still ghastly pale. Passing the little glazed work-shop on his way, he perceived Thomas and Pierre there, and at once came in. But he was obliged to lean against a bench like a man who is dazed, haunted by a nightmare. His good-natured, energetic face retained an expression of acute anguish; and his ... — The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola Read full book for free!
... the screen. Through ghastly photographic boulevards the spectre conquerors marched. They came on endlessly, as though somewhere out of sight a human dam had burst, whose deluge would never be stopped. I tried to catch the expressions of the men, wondering whether this or that or the next had contributed his toll ... — The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson Read full book for free!
... before us and seem present to the Eye without the Assistance of Bodies or Exterior Objects. He can transport the Imagination with such beautiful and glorious Visions, as cannot possibly enter into our present Conceptions, or haunt it with such ghastly Spectres and Apparitions, as would make us hope for Annihilation, and think Existence no better than a Curse. In short, he can so exquisitely ravish or torture the Soul through this single Faculty, as might suffice to make up the whole Heaven ... — The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele Read full book for free!
... flow'ret 'mid the desolation drear, Or a spray of pleasant verdure which the gloomy scene might cheer; Nought but frowning crags and boulders, and long sea-weeds, ghastly, dank, With the mosses and pale lichens, to the wet rocks ... — The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon Read full book for free!
... turned into the Old Bailey. The chief trade done by the coffee house was in the early morning. After market hours there were few customers save when there was to be an execution at Tyburn the next morning, and those eager to secure a good sight of the ghastly procession and perhaps take part in it, assembled opposite the prison door over night. Mrs. Fenton in the evenings thought no more of business, but betook herself to the theatre or one of the pleasure gardens in the ... — Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce Read full book for free!
... the heart of Peter the Brazen deliberately skipped a beat. Black swam into his eyes, and he trembled, then became stiff, as his gaze was glued to that ghastly pantomime. He hesitated, then leaped across ... — Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts Read full book for free!
... in college rooms. Thackeray, in the "Book of Snobs," describes youths at a University wine-party as "drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch—smoking—ghastly headache—frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco." But the satirist is often tempted to be epigrammatic at the expense of accuracy, and this picture is at least too highly coloured. In the recently published ... — The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson Read full book for free!
... of terror. My sister, who had gone to her room, rushed down to me; the girls, in their dressing-gowns, just as they were preparing for bed, followed, calling out, "Auntie! O Auntie! what is it? Who is screaming? What can be the matter?" Hardly were they in the room when Mary rushed in, ghastly, her eyes staring, and in a voice hoarse with terror, gasped out, "Come! come! he's found! he's murdered! I saw him. He's lying in the cellar, with his throat cut. Oh, it's horrible!" Then she began ... — J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand Read full book for free!
... ring-barked a couple of seasons or more before this time, with the result that they were now the very haggard skeletons of mighty trees, naked for the most part, their white bones open to all the winds of heaven, but here and there sporting a ghastly kind of drapery, remnants of their grave-clothes as it might be, in the shape of long hanging streamers of dead bark, which moaned and rustled eerily in the night breezes. High above the tattered grave-clothes of their lifeless trunks, the knotted, ... — Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson Read full book for free!
... from her retreat in the ravine, to which she had again retired. On the morning of Margaret's funeral she could be seen, pale and haggard, tottering toward the grave-yard. The simple peasants recoiled before the ghastly figure, which, tall and trembling, with a black gown and death-white face, passed among them like a spectre. Before she reached the church she fell senseless to the ground. The humanity of those who observed her triumphed over their fears, and ... — The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles Read full book for free!
... a bride, who is fond and bold, And loveth the wood's deep gloom; And, with eyes like the shine of the moonstone cold, She awaiteth her ghastly groom. Not a feather she moves, not a carol she sings, As she waits in her tree so still, But when her heart heareth his flapping wings, She hoots out her ... — Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various Read full book for free!
... Lloyd was startled by a hasty rap at the door, and on opening it beheld her husband supported between two men, his face ghastly pale, and stained with blood from a wound on his forehead. She was a brave woman, and although her heart almost stood still with agonised apprehension, she did not lose control of herself for an instant. Directing ... — Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley Read full book for free!
... own hand. On account of my faithful services, he has given me a warrant to go straight to Paradise, without tarrying one moment in Purgatory." At these words the king and all the haggard train gave a ghastly grin, to escape from laughing outright; but the other full of wrath at their ridicule, commanded them aloud to show him the way. "Peace, thou lost fool!" cried Death, "Purgatory lies behind you, on the other side of the wall, for you ... — The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne Read full book for free!
... effective, as was remarked of old, to divert attention from scoundrelism as to make a brilliant show of patriotism. In the very act of looting Government and people and devastating the army and navy, the capitalists did the most ghastly business under the mask of the purest patriotism. Incredible as it may seem, this pretension was invoked and has been successfully maintained to this very day. You can scarcely pick up a volume on the Civil War, or a biography of the statesmen or ... — Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers Read full book for free!
... rode slowly back to Pontefract. The soldiers bearing Sir John de Bury had reached there some time before, and he lay on the couch in his own room. There was no material change in his condition, though under the candle-light there was less of the ghastly pallor of death in the face; and about the ears were evidences that the blood was beginning to circulate more strongly. The King's own physician, Antonio Carcea—an Italian—sat beside him with his hand on the pulse and, ever and anon, bent ... — Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott Read full book for free!
... heard a voice that awakened me. I drew the curtain, and in the casement of the window I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning through the casement into the room, in white, with red hair and pale and ghastly complexion. She spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard, thrice. "A horse;" and then, with a sigh more like the wind than breath, she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much frightened, ... — The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... was quite dark, the hollow echoes of old London Bridge responded to the rumbling of the cart which contained the ghastly load, the object of Will Marks' care. Sufficiently disguised to attract no attention by his garb, Will walked at the horse's head, as unconcerned as a man could be who was sensible that he had now arrived at the most dangerous part of ... — Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... second book, Salammbo—a romance of Carthaginian history at the time of the Mutiny of the Mercenaries. Even Sainte-Beuve—no weak-stomached reader—was put off by its blotches of blood and grime, and by the sort of ghastly gorgeousness which, if it does not "relieve" these, forms a kind of background to throw them up. It was violently attacked by clever carpers like M. de Pontmartin, by eccentrics of half-genius and ... — A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... The moment was ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden ... — The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green Read full book for free!
... confidential servant, I find he has obtained leave of absence, to attend a public entertainment to be given in Frankfort, on which occasion a magnificent sword, is to be presented to him. Never, Gerald," continued Matilda her voice dropping into a whisper, while a ghastly smile passed over and convulsed her lips, "never shall he live to draw that sword. The night of his triumph is that which I ... — The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson Read full book for free!
... of it, the ground was strewn thickly with the graves of Europeans, Indians, and Arabs, and so shallow were these that from each of them there oozed a dark, dreadful stain. To add to the horrors of the scene, portions of mangled and putrefying corpses protruded from many of them—ghastly skulls, from the sockets of which the eyes had been picked by vultures and other obscene birds. Limbs of brave men upon which the hyena had already begun his dreadful work, and half-skeleton hands, with fingers spread ... — Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... shot into the radio room. It showed me Snap lying there on the floor. He was bound with wire. His torso had been stripped. His livid face was ghastly... — Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings Read full book for free!
... made by the first, shows a great deterioration.[29] There was no acknowledged principle of succession. Arbitrary force determined it. One robber followed another upon the throne; so that the eastern despot seemed to imitate that ghastly rule, in the wood by Nemi, "of the priest who slew the slayer and shall himself be slain". If the army named one man to the throne, the fleet named another. If intrigue and shameless deceit gained it in one ... — The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies Read full book for free!
... lady's knees seemed to crumble under her. Her poor old painted face looked out ghastly and ashamed from her wedding finery. But Evelyn in her red coat flew to her and took her in her arms as though she was a child. And like a child, Mrs. Kingdon sobbed and made excuses and begged to ... — In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson Read full book for free!
... hardly dry on the grass in Lexington Common; on the very morning on which its session opened, the colonial troops burst into the stronghold at Ticonderoga; and when the session had lasted but six weeks, its members were conferring together over the ghastly news from Bunker Hill. The organization of some kind of national government for thirteen colonies precipitated into a state of war; the creation of a national army; the selection of a commander-in-chief, and of the officers to serve ... — Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler Read full book for free!
... of this lonely temple and the knowledge that it was Aphrodite's—she thought always of Hathor as Aphrodite—preyed again upon her spirit as when she first came to it. She felt the dreadful brevity of a woman's, of any woman's triumph over the world of men. She felt the ghastly shortness of the life of physical beauty. She seemed to hear the sound of the movement of Time rushing away, to see the darkness of the End closing about her, as now the dimness of this desolate shrine of beauty and love ... — Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens Read full book for free!
... grin was ghastly and pathetic. "I never could stand height," Carson confessed. "It always did get me. Do you mind if I stop a minute and clear my head? Then I'll make those heel-holds deeper so I ... — Smoke Bellew • Jack London Read full book for free!
... ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be. From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay, That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day; For swift to east and swift to west the ghastly war-flames spread, High on Saint Michael's Mount it shone, it shone on Beachy Head. Far on the deep the Spaniards saw, along each southern shore, Cape beyond cape in endless range, those twinkling ... — How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston Read full book for free!
... the contrary; as whether His Royal Highness has or has not actually appeared at one of his imperial mamma's drawing-rooms in a Newmarket cutaway,—how, it is asked, can we expect that beings of this bent may properly heed those ghastly and incessant wants which are forever making of humanity the forlorn tragi-comedy it is? The yawp of socialism is excusably despised by plutocracy. Socialism is not merely a cry of pain; if it were only that its plaints might have proved ... — The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various Read full book for free!
... cooling, distilling and mixing. I heard him sighing like a soul in despair; I heard him praying, and I noticed how he held his breath. The lamp burnt out, but he did not observe it. I blew up the fire in the coals on the hearth, and it threw a red glow on his ghastly white face, lighting it up with a glare, while his sunken eyes looked out wildly from their cavernous depths, and appeared to grow larger and more prominent, as if they would burst from their sockets. 'Look at the alchymic glass,' he cried; 'something ... — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen Read full book for free!
... Marsile reached Sarraguce.— Dismounting 'neath a shady olive-tree, He strips himself of breast-plate, helmet, sword, And sinks upon the sward with ghastly look. His right hand severed from the wrist whence blood Is gushing forth, has made him swoon with pain. Before Marsile, his spouse, Queen Bramimunde, Bursts into tears, and cries, and woeful moans. Around stand more than twenty thousand men Who with one voice accuse Sweet France and Carle; Apollo's ... — La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier Read full book for free!
... which felled him. He dropped across the threshold of Chorister's kennel; the doors of all opened outwards, and the weight of his body kept this one shut. But he saw the other three hounds run out, saw the Squire turn with a ghastly face, drop the lantern, and run for it as White Boy snapped at his boot. Jim heard the crash of the lantern and the snap of teeth, and with that he fainted off in the darkness. He had cut his forehead against the bars of the big kennel, and when he came to himself ... — The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch Read full book for free!
... had suddenly dropped dead; for I could not hear from her a single sigh or gasp or breath, though I stepped closer and listened—not a sign of life did she give. So I put my arm under her and raised her up, only to see that her face was ghastly white, and that she seemed quite dead. I picked her up, and found that, though she was slight and girlish, she was more woman than child, and carried her over to the well where there was cold water in the trough, from which I sprinkled a few icy drops in her face—and she gasped and looked at ... — Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick Read full book for free!
... Claiborne; it's funny. It's too funny for any use. When your teeth show it's something ghastly. For God's sake go in ... — The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson Read full book for free!
... it up again with an air of satisfaction. Then he resumed his seat, drew a folded slip of paper from his breast pocket, a chart from another, turned up the lamp and began to write. His face, as he stooped low, escaped the soft shade and was for a moment almost ghastly. Every now and then he turned and made some calculations on the blotting-paper by his side. At last he leaned back with a little sigh of relief. He had barely done so before the door ... — The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim Read full book for free!
... man," the woman said compassionately, seeing the ghastly pallor of his face, "but I pity you. The street is furious that these wretches should have carried off that sweet young creature, who was so good to everyone; but what could we do? We hissed the men, and we would have pelted ... — In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty Read full book for free!
... is terrible, ghastly. But how can you stop it? You wouldn't advocate the destruction of our Army and Navy. It ... — All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking Read full book for free!
... obliged to have distinguished himself in war, and his coronation did not take place until a successful campaign had provided enough captives to grace his triumphal entry into the capital, and enough victims for the ghastly sacrifices which formed an important part of all their religious ceremonies. Communication was held with the remotest parts of the country by means of couriers, who, trained to it from childhood, travelled ... — The True Story Book • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... her cattle, or less than cattle. As the life-giver and race- conserver, I should have imagined her a Lady Bountiful, tripping regularly into that ghastly steel-walled hospital room of the midship- house and dispensing gruel, sunshine, and even tracts. On the contrary, as with her father, these wretched ... — The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London Read full book for free!
... with his back against a gnarled stump, which gave him some support. He had his hand to his chest, and as he breathed a ghastly whistling sound came from the wound, and spirts of blood rushed from his mouth. His glazed eyes were fixed upon the man who had shot him, and a curious smile played about ... — The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle Read full book for free!
... attired in black, the first glimpse of whose face gave me such a shock as I had not experienced since the priest of the earth-worshipers seized me for his prey. I have never seen anything remotely resembling that face. It was without beard, and of a ghastly paleness. It was seen only in profile, except when, with a lightning-like movement, it turned, for the fraction of a second, toward us, and was instantly averted again. It made my nerves creep to look at it. The nose was immense, resembling a huge curved beak, and ... — A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss Read full book for free!
... her now—ill and exhausted from the combined effects of excitement, horror, and the unaccustomed ride across the desert—most anxious for his daughter—worried, to the verge of desperation, by the ghastly news ... — Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy Read full book for free!
... the drawing-room, ghastly pale, and almost immediately gave her the letter; then turned his back, feigning delicacy. In reality he was quaking with fear lest she should suspect the handwriting. But the envelope was addressed by Staines, and paved the way for the letter; she was unsuspicious and good, ... — A Simpleton • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... it up, saying in a loud voice, 'This is the head of a traitor.' He then dropped it into the coffin, which being removed, another was brought forward, and they proceeded to cut down the next body and to go through the same ghastly operation. It was observed that the mob, which was very large, gazed in silence at the hanging of the conspirators, and showed not the least sympathy; but when each head as cut off and held up, a loud and deep groan ... — Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell Read full book for free!
... Then I wheeled my office-chair in front of bird and bust and door; And upon its cushion sinking, "I," I said, "will smash like winking This impeachment you are bringing, O you ominous bird of yore, O you grim, ungainly, ghastly, grumbling, gruesome feathered bore!" Croaked the Raven, "You ... — Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various Read full book for free!
... tried to realize the scene which had once been acted there. She tried to imagine the poor Queen and her attendant and her favourite Rizzio, sitting there at supper, and how that door, that very door, had opened, and Ruthven's ghastly figure, pale, and weak from illness, presented itself, and then others; the alarm of the moment; how Rizzio knew they were come for him, and fled to the Queen for protection; how she was withheld from giving it, and the unhappy man pulled away from her, and stabbed with a great many wounds, ... — The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell Read full book for free!
... the dark beneath the broken window with Spike beside him, was presently aware of the sickening sounds of furious struggling close at hand, and of a hoarse, panting voice that cursed in fierce triumph—a voice that ended all at once in a ghastly strangling choke; and recognising this voice, the Spider hunched his great shoulders and bore Spike to a remote spot where stood a solitary lamp-post. Here he waited, calm-eyed and chewing placidly, one ... — The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol Read full book for free!
... were there so exquisitely blended, that to determine the leading characteristic of the scenery was impossible. Mountains, clad to the loftiest summit in perpetual verdure; gigantic trees, rich in blushing fruits; pensile plants, aglow with the choicest flowers; proud-rifted rocks, pale and ghastly, as if cleft by an earthquake; foaming cascades springing madly down the cliffs, leaping through chasms spanned with aquatic creepers, and then dwindling into ever-gurgling streams, that glided through ravines ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various Read full book for free!
... You may hereafter decide on millions of money, and on the lives of your fellow men; but it is not likely that a question of this magnitude will ever twice be brought before the same jurymen. Opportunities to extend a far-reaching and ghastly wickedness, or to do great service for mankind, come but seldom in any man's life. Your verdict concerns all the people of the United States; its influence will reach to ages far remote, blessing or cursing whole generations not yet born. The ... — The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker Read full book for free!
... scarlet Ghost Bear reared; on his crest the scarlet feathers slanted low. The Yellow Moth was unbelievably hideous in the poisonous hue of a toad-stool; his crest and all his skin glistened yellow, shining like the sulphurous belly of a snake. But the Grey-Feather was ghastly; his bony features were painted like a skull, spine, ribs, and limb-bones traced out heavily in yellowish white so that he seemed a stalking and articulated skeleton as he moved in the dim twilight of the trees. And I could see that he was ... — The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... be a joke at the bottom of it all. He therefore commenced searching for an opening, but had not proceeded far when a faint gleam of light flashed through a crevice near the entrance, and, to his horror, discovered rows of rude coffins, standing upright, but with the ghastly faces of their inmates exposed, and made more unnatural by a pale glow of light playing over them. "Protect me, O father, protect me, for I am but a weak sinner, at thy mercy," he muttered, and fell upon his knee, as every ... — The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale" Read full book for free!
... the shrubbery was full of blanched faces, rendered doubly ghastly by the faint glimmer of the lanterns and candles. Samuel was there, taciturn as usual, and the most self-possessed person present. He came direct from his room when the alarm was given. Miss Blake was led by Mrs. Schultz into ... — Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully Read full book for free!
... with them a long time without a word being said. Mr. Carleton knew that she was not weeping nor faint. But as the light of the lamps was now and then cast within the carriage, he saw that her face looked ghastly; and he saw too, that its expression was not of a quiet sinking under sorrow, nor of an endeavour to bear up against it, but a wild searching gaze into the darkness of possibilities. They had near ... — Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell Read full book for free!
... Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then tried the door myself, equally in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again that creep of horror came over me; but this time it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange and ghastly exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rugged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to human life. The door now very slowly and quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves into the landing-place. ... — Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton Read full book for free!
... her eyes met his without blenching she turned ghastly white, her face seeming to ... — Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various Read full book for free!
... reached our feet and threatened to tear away our boat. In order to prevent this latter calamity, we hauled the boat farther up and held the cable in our hands. Occasional flashes of lightning shone with a ghastly glare through the watery curtains around us, and lent additional horror to the scene. Yet we longed for those dismal flashes, for they were less appalling than the thick blackness that succeeded them. Crashing peals of thunder seemed to tear the skies in twain, and fell upon our ears through ... — The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... Then he fought for manly dignity, and said, with a lamentable mixture of sham sprightliness and real anguish, "Thank you, sir; I only trust that you will always find servants as devoted to your interest as my gratitude would have made me. Good-morning, sir." He clapped his hat on with a sprightly, ghastly air, and ... — A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... Ma'am," any romance that had gathered round him fled away, leaving the saddest of all sad facts in living guise before me. Not only did the manhood seem to die out of him, but the comeliness that first attracted me; for, as he turned, I saw the ghastly wound that had laid open cheek and forehead. Being partly healed, it was no longer bandaged, but held together with strips of that transparent plaster which I never see without a shiver and swift recollections of scenes with which it is associated ... — A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott Read full book for free!
... and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter, and Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with double ... — Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy Read full book for free!
... sometimes be called rough as to workmanship. But, unhappily there are few of the lesser arts that have fallen so low as the plasterer's. The cast work one sees perpetually in pretentious rooms is a mere ghastly caricature of ornament, which no one is expected to look at if he can help it. It is simply meant to say, 'This house is built for a rich man.' The very material of it is all wrong, as, indeed, mostly happens with an art that has ... — Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris Read full book for free!
... Heracles. It is all in keeping that he should arrive tired, should feast and drink and sing; should be suddenly sobered and should go forth to battle with Death. It is also in keeping that the contest should have a half-grotesque and half-ghastly touch, the grapple amid the graves and the ... — Alcestis • Euripides Read full book for free!
... directions they turned and fled, the sailors in their eagerness dashing after them and cutting them down. The scene of the fight was a ghastly sight now. All around lay the dead and dying, and every minute added fresh victims ... — Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott Read full book for free!
... the great square, with its obelisk and circle of statues, its pavilions and balustrades; beautiful now, and peaceful, but peopled with ghastly memories—for it was here the Revolution set up its guillotine, and it was here that some four thousand men and women, high and low, looked their last upon this earth, mounted the scaffold and passed under the knife. Surely, if any ... — The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson Read full book for free!
... bygone happiness, flock to your recollection at the sound of that gasping, breathing, while big hot tears fall slowly from your eyes. Poor wee man. Your hand seeks his little legs, and you dare not touch his chest, which you have kissed so often, for fear of encountering that ghastly leanness which you foresee, but the contact of which would make you break out in sobs. And then, at a certain moment, while the sunlight was flooding the room, you heard a deeper moan, resembling a cry. You ... — Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz Read full book for free!
... I shall be a different woman by that time." The contralto voice dropped oddly and suddenly with these words: an effect of the headache, of course. And the pallor of the dark face was almost ghastly. Angela thought that her hostess looked very ill. "You may expect me," ... — The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson Read full book for free!
... left hand on the gunwale and vaulted lightly upon deck. He stood a few moments as if transfixed, then turning abruptly about leaped to the ground, and, breaking into a run, hurried back to his friend, who noticed that his face was more ghastly than before, while his eyes stared as if they ... — The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis Read full book for free!
... a most kind motley woman," Harry said. "But it isn't the Back Kitchen, neither," he added, with a ghastly sigh. ... — The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray Read full book for free!
... as his predecessor did. Now when the stomachs of those that are thus turned out of doors, grow keen, they rob no less keenly; and what else can they do? for when, by wandering about, they have worn out both their health and their clothes, and are tattered, and look ghastly, men of quality will not entertain them, and poor men dare not do it; knowing that one who has been bred up in idleness and pleasure, and who was used to walk about with his sword and buckler, despising all the neighbourhood with an insolent ... — Ideal Commonwealths • Various Read full book for free!
... as well as to the material prosperity of the passive elements of the community and stung the poilus to the quick. "But what justice," these asked, "can the living hope for, when the glorious dead are so soon forgotten?" For one ghastly detail remains to complete a picture to which Boccaccio could hardly have done justice. "While all this wild dissipation was going on among the moneyed class in the capital the corpses of many ... — The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon Read full book for free!
... I looked at her in surprise. She had suddenly turned ashen and ghastly; her face had set like a mask of stone, with parted lips and staring eyes that were fixed in horror on ... — John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman Read full book for free!
... strangely enough we were neither of us utterly hopeless, and even when the evil that we dreaded was upon us, and that which we greatly feared had come, we sat in the car of the balloon with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled with a ghastly hopefulness to one another. ... — Erewhon • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... block?" Lord Kenmure, in reply, laid down his head on the block, and spread forth his hands. The headsman instantly performed his office. The usual words, "This is the head of a traitor!" were heard as the executioner displayed the streaming and ghastly sight ... — Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson Read full book for free!
... given the place its name. A troop under Captain James camping at this point, because of the water and grass, had been surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the wicked and famous Red Crow. There were ghastly signs about the place yet; Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves, and it ... — Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) Read full book for free!
... I cannot see. Oh, my God!" His staring eyes saw something invisible to the others; his hands plucked continually at the counterpane. Suddenly he shuddered and gasped: "The cemetery—me—my God!" He did not speak again. He lay there motionless and ghastly. The hours dragged on; the clock of a neighboring convent ... — Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant Read full book for free!
... popular mourning for the Barmecides,[FN277] whose echo has not yet died away, must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence. The crime still "sticks fiery off" from the rest of Harun's career: it stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded by history, and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject ... — The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton Read full book for free!
... man was dead. Dr. Church, physician of the prison, examined the wound, and said there was scarcely a possibility that he could survive, though the wind-pipe was not entirely separated. But even the terrible admonition of that ghastly spectacle produced no relenting feelings in the hard heart of the slaveholder. He still demanded to have his victim delivered up to him. When the keeper declined doing it, and urged the reason that the physician said he could not be moved ... — Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child Read full book for free!
... Hal's face turns ghastly. "Do you believe me guilty, sir?" Detained in camp on parole. "I'll fight every inch of the way." Word that the Mexicans are rising. American women in peril. Lieutenant Overton's ... — Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock Read full book for free!
... glimmering. We shall see in its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before he commences his operations, in order to scare the public imagination, he raises by art magic a thick mist before our eyes, through which glare the most ghastly... — The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke Read full book for free!
... another form of industry that is a ghastly hybrid, the "home-work" that has been born of the union of advanced factory methods and primitive home appliances. Such a combination could never have come into existence, had the working classes at ... — The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry Read full book for free!
... face turned ghastly white; she put her hand upon her heart, and was on the point of falling to the ground when McKay vaulted lightly over the fence and saved her by putting his ... — The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths Read full book for free!
... her thought. He had taken his flask from the saddle pocket, and was kneeling down by the Squire. Roderick had lifted the heavy head, and turned the ghastly face to the waning light. He tried to force a little brandy between the ... — Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon Read full book for free!
... with agitation, he set forth to pay this call. For two or three nights he had scarcely closed his eyes; he looked ghastly. The weather was execrable, and on that very account he made choice of this afternoon, hoping that he might find his widowed Laura alone. Between ringing the bell and the opening of the door, he could hardly support himself. He asked for Mrs. Palmer in a gasping ... — Born in Exile • George Gissing Read full book for free!
... the soul by the difference; he was tired of her ignorances, which she showed every minute, of her ghastly, unclean ... — Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis Read full book for free!
... the first spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of a ghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on the sandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised—and with some plausibility—that here had perished some portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. ... — French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson Read full book for free!
... the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not a whisper from a sap-headed youth or a yap from an aged degenerate or a giggle from a silly woman broke the ... — The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon Read full book for free!
... slight frame collapsed in some way, and leaned heavily against him as he sat. Turning his eyes from the dim, rippling water, so little of which could be seen in the darkness and the fog, to the face of the priest, he saw that it had turned ghastly pale, and that the eyes were glazing over as if with the approach of death. Plainly the fugitive had received some bodily hurt of which he had not spoken, and the question what to do with their helpless burden became ... — The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green Read full book for free!
... and refused to revolve. It was the merest skeleton of a coach. The cushions had long since been removed, and the leather hangings, where they had not crumbled away, dangled in shreds from the worm-eaten frame. A load of ghosts and a span of phantom horses to drag them would have made the ghastly thing complete. ... — The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... scarce Columbia's arms the fight sustains, While her best blood gushed from a thousand veins. Then thine, O Brown, that purpled wide the ground, Pursued the knife through many a ghastly wound. Ah! hapless friend, permit the tender tear To flow e'en now, for none flowed on thy bier, Where cold and mangled, under northern skies, To famished wolves a prey, thy body lies, Which erst so fair and tall in youthful grace, Strength in thy nerves and beauty in thy face, Stood ... — Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe Read full book for free!
... grey; What ho! bring book and bell! Ban yonder ghastly thing, I say; And, look ye, ban it well! By cock and pye, the Humpty's face!" The form turned quickly round; Then totter'd from ... — The Book of Humorous Verse • Various Read full book for free!
... Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said during the course of that weird interview I cannot—indeed, I dare not—tell. Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing a brain- eye-and-stomach chimera." It was a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience. Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect ... — The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. Twenty-three ghastly figures staggered out of the charnel-house, one hundred and twenty-three bodies were hastily thrown into a pit and covered up, and the Black Hole of Calcutta has gone into history as a synonym for all that is dreadful and all that is possible ... — Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot Read full book for free!
... free from privations, free from danger, let us, each of us, do his part as nobly as those heroes of ours are doing it at the front. [Cheers.] It would be horrible for us to think that those who fall fall through our neglect. It would be a still more ghastly reflection to think that those who fell have given their lives in vain through any slackness or selfishness on the part of any one of ... — New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various Read full book for free!
... houseful of—well, you know the sort of chap the average Kayite is. They'd keep me busy even if I were allowed a free hand. But I'm not. Whenever I try and keep order and stop things a bit, out springs the man Kay from nowhere, and takes the job out of my hands, makes a ghastly mess of everything, and retires purring. Once in every three times, or thereabouts, he slangs me in front of the kids for not keeping order. I'm glad this is the end of the term. I couldn't stand it much longer. ... — The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse Read full book for free!
... not mention the visit, but you quite recognize the fact, Isobel, that he does not regard you as being in any way concerned in this ghastly affair." ... — The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer Read full book for free!
... his arm; "we banish thee from our presence! This is our palace!—and our guards are at hand!" pointing to the still and skeleton trees that grouped round in ghastly bareness. "Begone!" ... — Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... took me to Christina's room. The poor girl was under the influence of morphine and sleeping a troubled sleep. Her face was very pale from loss of blood; and her head and neck were all bound up in white bandages, here and there stained with the ghastly fluid that flowed from her wounds. It was a pitiable sight: her short, crisp yellow curls broke here and there, rebelliously, through the folds of the linen bandages; and I thought how she used to shake ... — Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly Read full book for free!
... amongst us did not arrive until something like two hundred and sixty years had winged their flight from Agincourt. And yet Pope's doctrine had been that, in the conquest of France, we English first met with the Prometheus that introduced us to the knowledge of fire and intellectual arts. Is not this ghastly? Elsewhere, indeed, Pope skulks away from his own doctrine, and talks of 'correctness' as the particular grace for which we were indebted to France. But this will not do. In his own 'Art of Criticism,' ... — Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... to be another dream, I turned over and shut my eyes. The waiter approached and, touching me on the arm, repeated his ghastly communication. With a frightful effort I explained that I had the ague and could see nobody for some days. Mercifully he retired, and for a little space I lay in a sort of trance. After a bit I began to wonder what, in the name of Heaven, I was to do. I was afraid to get up, and I was afraid ... — Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates Read full book for free!
... that gentleman, if you please," dodging his head towards an old gent in specs, who sat near the head of the table, grinning a ghastly smile over the field of ... — The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley Read full book for free!
... no answer, unless by a motion of his hand. As he turned back the collar from his face, we saw by the waving light that it was pale as death. The long wet locks already lay upon his cheeks, making them more ghastly as he struggled to speak. "O Stephen Lee, it's no time to be sitting by the fire, when old Asa Osborn is rolling in the waters. A man's drownded; and who's to get the body for the wife and the children—God pity them!—afore the ebb carries ... — Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various Read full book for free!
... severing my jugular vein, even going so far as to test against my throat the edge of a razor which, after the deadly impulse first asserted itself, I had secreted in a convenient place. I really wished to die, but so uncertain and ghastly a method did not appeal to me. Nevertheless, had I felt sure that in my tremulous frenzy I could accomplish the act with skilful dispatch, I should at ... — A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers Read full book for free!
... not seem to realise it. Sometimes I would rise up with the sole intention of finding out whether this frightful thing was or was not a ghastly dream. Then my memory would go back over the long years, and every little instance of unselfishness and devotion would rise before my mind. As I looked at the prostrate and attenuated form that lay silent ... — The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont Read full book for free!
... the occasion of a previous play, and then had appeared at breakfast the next morning with lowering eyebrows and a hectic flush on each cheek. "You must remember that foot-lights take a lot of color," she explained condescendingly. "You'd look ghastly if I let you go the way you wanted to ... — When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster Read full book for free!
... leaden clouds were scourged through the sky by a howling southeastern gale, and the lashed waters of the bay broke along the shore with a solemn, continued boom. The rain fell drearily, and sheet lightning, pale and constant, gave a ghastly hue to the scudding clouds. It was one of those lengthened storms which, during the month of August, are so prevalent along the Gulf coast. Clara Sanders sat near a window, bending over a piece of needlework, while, with her hands clasped behind her, Beulah ... — Beulah • Augusta J. Evans Read full book for free!
... that he was witnessing? Or were his eyes playing some ghastly joke upon him? No, impossible though it was—it was true—the head was moving slowly to the fallen body. It placed itself upon the shoulders, the body rose, and the creature, seemingly as good as new, ran ... — The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs Read full book for free!
... refined. It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, "'Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards, you know." St. Addlegourd was a radical. Having a rent-roll of 15,000,000 pounds, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he could afford ... — The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... ornaments, —weak, helpless, naked,—and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastly secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woe before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by prescription,—the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to. He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the splenetic, ... — The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier Read full book for free!
... that which was contained. And to what purpose? The beauty straightway vanished; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart of the listener sank ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord Read full book for free!
... terrible disappointment to him," said Marjorie. "It's a ghastly mistake if poor old Captain Dinshaw really believes ... — Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore Read full book for free!
... make haste." And the horses, black as night, were urged on and on. "See those ghastly skeletons dancing!" Faust screamed, as the fearful spectres ... — Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon Read full book for free!
... her and tried to smile, but the attempt was a ghastly failure. Katie, gazing up into his face, saw that he was unhappy, and slunk away, without further speech, to her distant chair. There, from time to time, she would look up at him, and her little heart melted with ruth to see the depth of his misery. 'Why, oh why,' thought she, ... — The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... Fargo's messenger was the neatest practical joke that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at feeling the ghastly chain of probability that ... — Red Men and White • Owen Wister Read full book for free!
... well be phantoms in this ghastly mansion; but they had nothing to do with me; only the absent master of the house was any concern of mine; and, finding at last the window I sought for, I shoved it open and climbed to the sill, landing upon the floor inside, my moccasined feet ... — The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... then pull a string and the poor spectator, besides being nearly deaf, would see some hideous recoiling portion shoot straight at his stomach, stop within an eighth of an inch of his belt buckle, and slide slowly back—a ghastly ordeal. ... — The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills Read full book for free!
... of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head; As awaked from the dead, And amazed he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise! See the snakes that they rear, How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band, Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew! Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the ... — Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various Read full book for free!
... health had been just struck down by a violent kick from a horse, and was not expected to live more than a few hours. The blow had broken his skull bone, and cut out a piece as large as the palm of his hand, presenting a ghastly... — Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb Read full book for free!
... laugh scornfully, but her heart gurged within her, and instead of laughter, her voice broke out into wild and horrid yells, and falling back in her chair, she grew stiff and ghastly to behold, in so much that both Elspa and my grandfather were terrified, and had to work with her for some time before they were able to recover her; nor indeed did she come rightly to herself till she got relief by tears; but they were tears of rage, and not shed for any remorse ... — Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt Read full book for free!
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