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More "Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not recovered from his morning's anger, and she heard his voice, raised in some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head sagged forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening paper in his hand, and he gave it to her with his finger ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and bestoweth his mercy upon them not because they are deserving, but because he loveth to be merciful. When the flower buddeth forth in the spring with matchless beauty, no label is tacked on to its stem with ominous reminder: "Not to be gazed at by the eyes of the unworthy. All worthy persons, of good moral character, can obtain tickets by applying to Archangel Michael." When under His eternal laws the cooling spring babbleth forth merrily from the ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... constantly more ominous and menacing, but still we saw no sign of human life. Near the edge of the forest we came to a halt. Plainly it would be unwise to venture within range of the arboreal hailstones without protection, for though our pith-helmets ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... an ominous stillness reigned throughout the usually boisterous population of Masindi. Not a sound was to be heard, although the nightly custom of the people was ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... A pause succeeded this ominous declaration, and the crowd of passengers betrayed dismay, for all believed there was now no hope for the pursued. The wife bowed her head to her knees, for she had sunk on a box as if to hide the sight of her husband's ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... people would pay well to have it opened—that would be good medicine:—and simply keeping it shut would be bad medicine:—delightfully easy! How did it shut, by the by? He fumbled at the stick, but it did not close: he pushed and pulled, it made no difference. He pressed on the cloth; an ominous creaking warned him that Big Flower objected to being shut by force, ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... number of whom were armed, stood in front of Pegloe's tavern. Glancing in the direction of the court-house, he observed that the square before it held other groups. But what impressed him more was the ominous silence that was everywhere. At his elbow ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... type made up the blood-spillers of the French Revolution, and the packs of the earlier Jacquerie, the thugs who burned chateaux and shops, and butchered women as well as men, growling their ominous refrain: ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... you say, Artie," she warned in a quiet, ominous tone, with that in her eyes which should in prudence have halted him. "I am ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... yesterday? Ming-shu, you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?" demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... back into the room which we had just left. As he partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great straining and creaking—whereupon ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a moment or two of ominous silence, observing Hand's averted face and Schryhart's ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... be necessary, I believe, to explain why I have sent for you, Dr. Harpe." His cool, impersonal voice was more ominous, more final than anger, and she found it hard to preserve her elaborate assumption ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... colourless, but for two bright red spots, the size of quarters, beneath either cheek-bone. He was half a head shorter than the shipping clerk, and apparently about half as wide; but there was sincerity in his manner and an ominous snap in the unflinching stare ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Guthrie was turning in at the gate of the Greyfriars, who should cross the street before him, so as almost to run against him, but the city executioner! The omen—for it was a day of omens—made the young minister stagger for a moment, but only for a moment. At the same time the ominous incident made such an impression on the young Covenanter's heart and imagination, that he said to some of his fellow-subscribers as he laid down the pen, 'I know that I shall die for what I have done this day, but I cannot die ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... and gold, the country lay before us. Then, even as we watched from covert, our ears made acquaintance with a new and ominous sound. From an infinite distance the morning breeze from the north carried with it a deadened thumping sound, now regular as the muffled rolling of drums, now softly irregular with intervals of stillness. It ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... nothing. The situation was ominous enough at this point. A sudden gravity and dignity fell upon the young men who sat there, schooled in an etiquette whose first lesson was that of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff's voice, telling him it would go better with him if ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... called these dark areas? "Lake of Dreams" and "Lake of Death." Spud's superstitious mind was a-quiver with dread and an ominous premonition to which the empty, frozen wastes below him ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... recovered this shock, than they were horrified by the sudden discovery in a sequestered spot of some human bones, strewn upon the ground beside a broken-down cart. Whether accident or design had brought these unfortunates to an untimely end, none know; but this ominous appearance seemed to have terrified them even more than the bushrangers themselves. These accounts sobered our party not a little, and it was deemed advisable to double ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... concealed, under the drawing-room sofa. Conversation about the dearness of butchers' meat and the enormities of servants palled upon him, I think, after a time, but he had taken his wife's style of conversation for better for worse when he took her gayly dressed self under those ominous conditions, and he never showed impatience. He loved his wife, but I think it grieved him when smart-colored glass vases were strewn among the cherished bits of old china and enamel which his soul loved. He did not like chromo-lithographs, or the framed photographs which Mrs. Alwynn ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... fairy now entered, and walked straight up to the looking-glass to examine her paint—pronouncedly turning her back to the sofa, where Mr. Pericles still lay at provoking full length. Her panting was ominous of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thoroughly and intimately than any other man was privileged to do. Peel went out of office very soon after he had made Mr. Gladstone Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord John Russell had brought forward a series of motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, and Peel was defeated and resigned. It is almost needless to say that Gladstone went with him. Peel came back again in office in 1841, on the fall of the Melbourne administration, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... a late hour in the evening, and even then there were ominous red lines about her eyes, indicating that she had ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... "You sound alarmingly ominous." He smiled at her, and she had a moment of panic. "You don't look like a young lady with anything eating at her damask cheek, or however ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... answer your desires, and first, I will tell you, that from a child he was very bad; his very beginning was ominous, and presaged that no good end was, in likelihood, to follow thereupon. There were several sins that he was given to, when but a little one, that manifested him to be notoriously infected with original corruption; for I dare say he learned none of them of his father and mother; nor was he admitted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... advice and assistance from someone, he sent for M. des Aulnays. That worthy man had gone back to Saintonge on receiving a letter informing him of the illness of one of his daughters. This appeared an ominous circumstance to Cisy. Luckily, M. Vezou, his tutor, came to see him. Then he ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... ominous word went round, "No statement to-day." Sure enough, when the PRIME MINISTER rose and hushed the buzz of conversation that had rendered Questions inaudible, it was merely to observe that there were still some points outstanding, that no statement would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... A score of men still fought to reach their prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... seas to which inland waters are so liable, was running at the time, and there were evidences, too, of foul weather, for the wind that sets from the north-east for three-fourths of the season in these waters, had hauled more westerly, and dark, ominous looking clouds obstructed the light of the sun as it rose from the horizon. The wind came in sudden and unequal gusts, now causing the clipper to careen till her topsail yards almost dipped, and then permitting her to rise once more to the upright position. Capt. Selim noted these signs well, for ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... side of his theory which reflected harshly on Ferrari. While she was still speaking, the servant interrupted her by entering the room with a visiting-card. It was the card of Henry Westwick; and there was an ominous request written on it in pencil. 'I bring bad news. Let me see you for a minute downstairs.' Agnes ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... for him, also. Other men had wooed and pleaded, but she had ever mentally compared them with Graydon, and they had appeared insignificant. She had felt sure for a long time that he would eventually be at her feet, and she had never decided to refuse him. Now she was ready to accept but for this ominous "if," which her father had emphasized. She could not think of marrying him should he become a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the neighborhood of Rome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it. We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a storm. Don't trust, my Lord, to the appearance of the sky. Nothing is more deceitful. For the last two days the barometer has been falling in a most ominous manner, and is now at 27 degrees. This is a warning I dare not neglect, for there is nothing I dread more than storms in the Southern Seas; I have had a taste of them already. The vapors which become condensed in the immense glaciers at the South Pole ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of Alice on the deck, and turned quickly. He smiled at her, and the smile was in strange contrast to his rather ominous words. As Alice knew very little about the sea or boats, she paid ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... be dull postmen if they don't remark on the shower of envelopes that pass through their hands—ominous money-letters, all with the same address, and no detection remember. You don't know who will ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then he glanced at Alfred, utterly befuddled as to what had happened while he had been on a journey to happier scenes. Apparently Maggie was waiting for an answer to something, but to what? Jimmy thought he detected an ominous look in Alfred's eyes. Letting his hand fall over the arm of the chair so that Alfred could not see it, Jimmy began to make frantic signals to Maggie to depart; she ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... across the levels of the ranch, he heard the engine whistling for Bonneville. Again and again, at rapid intervals in its flying course, it whistled for road crossings, for sharp curves, for trestles; ominous notes, hoarse, bellowing, ringing with the accents of menace and defiance; and abruptly Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... said, and then he happened to glance into a mirror on his left hand between two windows. He saw the reflection of Jules, who stood behind his chair, and he saw Jules give a slow, significant, ominous wink ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... shallow ditch. Upon being questioned they said the ditch was a mile long and would carry water to the big dam in their pasture when the rains fell. They were finishing the ditch just in time, for the first of the season's storms was closing down upon us. There was an ominous stillness, then the black cloud was rent with tongues of flame. And the rains descended—more than descended. They beat and dashed and poured until it seemed that the very floodgates of heaven had opened over ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... dark eyes brightened for a moment, as the mild memories of love and fondness rose in his heart, and a bright smile played upon his haughty lip and lofty brow. Other thoughts arose, and the eyebrows that almost met over the straight Grecian nose of Lemercier, were knit as he recalled the ominous words ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... back to the fort with these ominous tidings was but the work of a few short hours. In a moment all was stir and bustle. The soldiers were not to be disheartened. They were ready and almost eager for the battle, having become weary of inaction and suspense. But the face of Colonel Monro was grave and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... commander, General Cameron and his escort had followed the line of battle for nearly a mile to the right of Ransome's battery, and there learned that the division commander had gone in search of the corps commander. It seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior—an ominous circumstance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron rode on for another half-mile, where by good luck he met General Masterson, the division ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... and ruthless remodellings to which Paris has been subjected. Mr. Hare speaks with just indignation of the destruction of Northumberland House at Charing Cross, but this has so far been an exceptional instance, though it is perhaps an ominous one. The traveller may still step aside from the busy Strand into the silent and beautiful Temple Church with its tombs of Crusaders, pause as he leaves his banker's in Bishopsgate to take a survey of Crosby Hall and Sir Paul Pindar's house with their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... prisoner from below. Looking at this dignitary one gets the poetic impression of a mass of white hair, white moustache, white whiskers, white beard and white wig, with little bits of bright red face appearing in between. From a crevice in one of these patches come the ominous words, of which we catch but a sample or two: "... Prisoner at the bar ... for that you did ... steal, take and carry away ... pairs of boots ... of our Lord the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... return—and then hurried from the room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... long and anxiously the slowly rolling log. Not a glimpse of the motive power could be obtained, but it ground and crushed its way along with ominous certainty, ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... accounts run thus:—Persecuted by Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friends and followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted by the Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain the Peloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from offended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declares that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at sea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for the Corinthian Isthmus. At the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the variety of their resources are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a most unpleasant sound to hear constantly repeated, "Keep a good lookout to leeward." On the 13th the storm raged with its full fury: our horizon was narrowly limited by the sheets of spray borne by the wind. The sea looked ominous, like a dreary waving plain with patches of drifted snow: whilst the ship laboured heavily, the albatross glided with its expanded wings right up the wind. At noon a great sea broke over us, and filled one of the whale-boats, which was obliged to be instantly cut away. The poor "Beagle" trembled ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... hotter and sultrier than ever. We were all seated out in the verandah, men-folk smoking, and aunt and Aileen fanning themselves and fighting the insects, when suddenly a low and ominous rumbling was heard which made us ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... it does not yet possess one, but it is a true fly of the family ASILIDAE, and being a veritable monster to merely sportful and persistent if annoying flies of lesser growth, no doubt it will continue to perform its part even though without a formal distinction. Its presence is announced by an ominous, booming hum. It passes on one side with a flight so rapid as to render it almost invisible. You hear a boom which has something of a whistle, and see a yellowish glint; the rest is space and silence. In half a minute the creature returns; and thus he scoops about, booming and making ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... freebooter of all others whom he sought—Capt. Jack Scarfield—seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great Bahama channel. It was the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... singing now seemed to fly off to dense coverts, and uttered only frightened cries. A dense, stuffy sensation seemed to be in the air, and there for a few moments every sound was hushed, and a calm, the most profound and ominous, seemed to fall upon the whole face of nature. Not a blade of grass or a tall reed in the marshy places near the shore made the slightest movement. Nature was absolutely still. It was the dead, weird quiet before the awful hurricane; the quietude of ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... most Cimmerian. But in fifteen days later, where would the Projectile be? In what direction would it have been drawn by the forces innumerable of attractions incalculable? To such a question as this, even Ardan would reply only by an ominous ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... his eyes moved uneasily in their sockets. It seemed almost as if he glanced backwards and forwards in order to look for a way of escape. But no escape was possible. Richard stood waiting, severe, inflexible, with that ominous gleam in his eyes. Hugo rose and followed like a dog at his master's call. From the moment that Brian marked his sullen, hang-dog expression and drooping head, he gave up his hope of proving Hugo's innocence. He would gladly have absented himself ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... beginning, suddenly remembered that some important business required his presence in the low lands where dwelt industry and peace, and accordingly recommending us to the skill of two guides, shook hands cordially with us, and in a few minutes his ominous face and oval form were hidden from our sight by the shrubs and stunted firs which covered the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;—no sophistry of self-delusion,—except only that previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings; and, after the deed done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers,—like delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... am sorry!" the priest exclaimed as Anubis disappeared. "It is an omen. Toth[2] visiteth Ptah; Wisdom seeketh Power! Came he by divine summons or did he seek the great god? It is a problem for the sorcerers and is of ominous import!" ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Shortland) 'it is always ominous to see the figure of an absent person. If the figure is very shadowy, and its face is not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized his prey. If the face of the absent person is seen, the omen forewarns the beholder ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that she had ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... been men of marked personality. Not all great tennis players have personality. Few of the many stars of the game can lay claim to it justly. The most powerful personality in the tennis world during my time is Norman E. Brookes, with his peculiar sphinx-like repression, mysterious, quiet, and ominous calm. Brookes repels many by his peculiar personality. He never was the popular hero that other men, notably M'Loughlin and Wilding, have been. Yet Brookes always held a gallery enthralled, not only by the sheer wizardry of his play, but by the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... avant-courriers of ground-swell: six hours more, and the storm which has been sweeping over 'the still- vexed Bermoothes,' and bending the tall palms on West Indian isles, will be roaring through the oak woods of Devon. The old black buck is calling his does with ominous croakings, and leading the way slowly into the deepest coverts of the glens. The stormy petrels, driven in from the Atlantic, are skimming like black swallows over the bay beneath us. Long strings of sea-fowl are flagging on ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... this camp-meeting hymn he sang in an ominous silence now, for it had crept into their minds that the hymn they had previously sung so loudly was a Protestant hymn, and that this was another Protestant hymn of the rankest sort. When he stopped singing and pushed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conceive it. Until man and woman are placed on exactly the same footing, until they stand on the same plane, so that there can be an intimate communion of thoughts, ideas, and interests, life will always be ominous and unhappy for one or for the other, and humanity will never overcome the evils with which it is now struggling. God made woman as perfect as man, and it is unjust to deprive her of any of the benefits and advantages which man derives from science, arts, and politics. Politics ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit, and enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in him seemed to crave. Such were the more patent attributes of a character that, ominous as it was, yet interested me, and yet appeared to me to be redeemable,—nay, to have in it the rude elements of a certain greatness. Ought we not to make something great out of a youth, under twenty, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... roof of the house to the floor of the cellar, ominous silence reigned in Deerham Court. Mrs. Verner lay in it—dying. She had been conveyed home from the Hall on the morning following the catastrophe. Miss Hautley and Sir Edmund urged her remaining longer, offering every possible hospitality; but poor Sibylla ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... followed, the ominous joggle of a glass at the speaker's elbow, the quick, sympathetic glance that Brant instinctively felt was directed at his own face, and the abrupt change of subject, could not but arrest his attention, even if he had overlooked the speech. His face, however, betrayed nothing. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... large fires, about which they flitted in an ominous and unpleasant fashion, that reminded me of some mediaeval pictures of hell, which I had ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... down to the high price of provisions. Bread at 1s. 3d. the quartern loaf, according to the London test. Wheat at 120s. per quarter, as the home-baking northerners viewed the matter; and then the conversation died away to an ominous silence. John looked at Jeremiah, as if asking him to begin. Jeremiah was the host, and had been a married man. Jeremiah returned the look with the same meaning in it. John, though a bachelor, was the elder brother. The great church bell, brought from the Monkshaven ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to care," she would say to herself, and then when she caught sight of his face and saw the cloud resting upon it she felt puzzled. She had asked regarding his father's illness and learned he was better, so the ominous shadow was not from that source. She felt sure it was not from an impending declaration of love brewing in his heart, for she knew him well enough to feel that when it came to that, he would have the manly courage to express his feelings in his ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... including Albany, were still under the autocratic sway of Clinton. Hamilton's colleagues, Yates and Lansing, had resigned their seats in the Great Convention. Among the signatures to the Constitution his name stood alone for New York, and the fact was ominous of his lonely and precarious position. But difficulties were ever his stimulant, and this was not the hour to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than anything that could have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... quiet, almost too quiet sometimes. On windless nights they are silent as the grave, and the house might be miles in the country. The roar of London's traffic reaches me only in heavy, distant vibrations. It holds an ominous note sometimes, like that of an approaching army, or an immense tidal-wave very far away thundering ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... say," went on Dunwody, "here is that same situation, twice in one lifetime! It's ominous, for somebody. There is trouble in the air, for some or all of us. But I say I offer you fair play, even, man to man. I ask no questions. I will not take any answers, any more than those two would have allowed any, that day on the train there, when they played, ten years ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... believes the latter would go to the bottom of the sea herself to find fish for B.'s dinner, &c." Augusta Ada was born in London on the 10th of December, 1815. During the next months a few cynical mutterings are the only interruptions to an ominous silence; but these could be easily explained by the increasing embarrassment of the poet's affairs, and the importunity of creditors, who in the course of the last half-year had served seven or eight executions on his house and furniture. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Ominous, threatening stillness filled the ship again, disturbed only by the whimpers and frightened growls of the dog. Trying to calm his overwrought nerves, Thad listened—strained his ears. He could hear nothing. And he had no idea from which direction ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... mud, and the palm-leaf roof was much damaged. However, it was better than nothing, so they slung their hammocks under it, kindled a fire, and prepared supper. While they were busy discussing this meal, a few dark and ominous clouds gathered in the sky, and the old trader, glancing uneasily about him, gave them to understand that he feared the rainy season was going ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... But more than one cause drove him to a bolder course; his passion, which increased in violence by contact with its beautiful object, and also a great uneasiness he felt at not hearing from Phoebe. This silence was ominous. He and she knew each other, and what the other was capable of. He knew she was the woman to cross the seas after him, if Staines left the diggings, and any explanation took place that might point ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chief boast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinary sensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docent on the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted to deprive of his licentia docendi[51] at the ominous instance of the absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of his peculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first case during the present century in which an assault has been attempted upon the freedom of scientific ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... but Roy's rags on the brookside, and over the brook on the high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... "Bertha Millner's" officers and crew. They seemed to Wilbur to look him straight in the eye. They neither moved nor spoke. The silence and absolute lack of motion on the part of these small, half-naked Chinamen, with their ape-like muzzles and twinkling eyes, was ominous. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... officer was known to the whole table; and the enquiries for the fate of their friends and France were incessant and innumerable. He evidently suppressed much, to avoid "a scene;" yet what he had to tell was sufficiently alarming. The ominous shake of the Jew's head, and the changes of his sagacious visage, showed me that he at least thought the evil day on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... not be alarmed at this rather ominous title. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... (a wild hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland); the signal that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is omitted from the history of the Cathedral, mention must be made of the valiant efforts that have been and are still being made to preserve the stability of the structure. A few years ago the east end showed signs of subsidence, and ominous cracks appeared in the north transept, a part of the old Norman church. An examination of the fabric proved that herculean tasks were essential to save this portion of the edifice. It was agreed that only by extensive underpinning could the work be accomplished. ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... reference; for the children there were only the wild romances of Southey, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish mother, and "some mad Methodist magazines full of miracles and apparitions and preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living," familiar to readers of 'Shirley.' To counterbalance all this romance and terror, the children had their interest in politics and Blackwood's Magazine, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... stiff order, and Ned had some fears for the result. Happily all went well, and in two or three minutes an audience of four trembling and well nigh panic stricken lads was sitting in the darkness, listening to Batter's ominous tale. ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... the children said there was a fire somewhere. They heard the alarm bell, and saw a red light in the sky. Presently we saw flames. Mr. Peabody was uneasy, and I walked out with him to see. Between the house here and the town lies the Common or City Park. As we crossed this, the signs became more ominous. We made our way into the principal street through the crowd, and then, looking down a cross street full of enormous warehouses, saw both sides of it in flames. The streets were full of steam fire-engines, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... appearance was Laurence Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have "anticipated the labours" of the biographer—"my birthday was ominous to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Weber. He and his family were unhappily suffocated in the cellars of their establishment during one of the conflagrations which marked the Bloody Week of the Commune. At the time when I met my father, that is about noon, there was nothing particularly ominous in the appearance of the streets along which I myself passed. It was a fine bright Sunday, and, as was usual on such a day, there were plenty of people abroad. Recently enrolled National Guards certainly predominated among the men, but the latter ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... secretary to take the chair for a few minutes," he said, and there was something in his voice that meant business. Something ominous. The delegates pressed closer. The secretary took the chair. "I've got something to say ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... their talk part of the time; and then again they lowered their voices to rumbling growls. At such times he knew that they were speaking of him, and the hum of the undertone was more ominous than open threats. When they talked aloud there was a confused clamor; when they were more hushed there was always the oily murmur of Scottie's voice, taking the lead and directing the current of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... gusts of popular opinion, now, in spite of a rising hurricane, held on its course. A new spirit, it was clear— a determined, an intractable spirit- - had taken control of the Sudan situation. What was it? The explanation was simple, and it was ominous. Mr. Gladstone ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... look back, I hardly know how we lived through that sorrowful day. The doctor came, and did nothing but shake his head in the ominous way which doctors have when they feel a case is beyond their power. I think Polly had so little hope herself that she did not care to ask him what his real ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... good deal of laughing, I remember, on what the public might be supposed to think, or say, concerning the gloomy and ominous nature of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming hurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable a name in English literature, first saw the light in an humble cottage in an obscure Bedfordshire village. His father, Thomas Bunyan, though styling himself in ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... were old and weather-worn; her sides badly needed paint; and as she rose and fell with the swell, she showed barnacles and "grass" below the water-line. At her mizzen-peak flew the American ensign, and at the fore-truck the ominous quarantine flag. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... in his efforts to wrench the iron bands asunder which bound his wrists, wondering what that ominous silence meant. ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... sun broke out just as they turned to go, and peered curiously through the boughs, till it found out and lighted on the angular ominous heap, shrouded with a cloak, that, ten minutes ago, was a strong, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The birds that sing all day have hushed, and the horned owls, the monster frogs, and that strange and ominous fowl (if fowl it be, and not, as some assert, a spirit damned) which we English call the whippoorwill, are yet silent. Later the wolf will howl and the panther scream, but now there is no sound. The winds are ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... prepostor would be seized with a fit of district visiting, and would make a tour of the passages and hall and the fags' studies. Then, if the owner were entertaining a friend or two, the first kick at the door and ominous "Open here" had the effect of the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard: every one cut to cover—one small boy diving under the sofa, another under the table, while the owner would hastily pull down a book or two and open ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... in the group that surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... became aware of a solid black mass looming in front of the bull's-eye window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... from Peshawur the wires began to flash their quiet and ominous messages. The road had been cut behind Linforth and his coolies. No news had come from him. No supplies could reach him. Luffe, who was in the country to the east of Chiltistan, had been informed. He had gathered together what ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the river on which our finding water depended, and the certainty that, wherever it was, there were our foes before us, exulting perhaps in the thought that we were seeking to avoid them in this vile scrub. On all sides the flat and barren waste blended imperceptibly with a sky as dismal and ominous as ever closed in darkness. One bleak and sterile spot hard by afforded ample room for our camp; but the cattle had neither water nor any ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... continued. The pressure for new issues became stronger and stronger. The Parisian populace and the Jacobin Club were especially loud in their demands for them; and, a few months later, on June 19, 1791, with few speeches, in a silence very ominous, a new issue was made of six hundred millions more;—less than nine months after the former great issue, with its solemn pledges to keep down the amount in circulation. With the exception of a few thoughtful men, the whole nation ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... wanting. Confederate wounded, stragglers, and skulkers were making for the rear; and the rallied brigades were again in disorder, with Bee and Bartow, two first-rate brigadiers, just killed, and other seniors wounded. Another ominous sign was the limbering up of Confederate guns to cover the expected retreat from the ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... funerals are witnessed before they occur, and 'corpse-candles' (some sort of light) are watched flitting above the road whereby a burial procession is to take its way. {228} Though we most frequently hear the term 'second sight' applied as a phrase of Scotch superstition, the belief in this kind of ominous illusion is obviously universal. Theoclymenus, in the Odyssey, a prophet by descent, and of the same clan as the soothsayer Melampus, beholds the bodies and faces of the doomed wooers, 'shrouded in night'. The Pythia at ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... seemed unstinted praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the curtain fell," ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Barbara's heart beat, for a yellow flag went up. She hated the ominous signal, and turning the glasses, followed the doctor's launch. The boat ran alongside Terrier, a man went on board, returned and climbed a ladder to Arcturus' deck. He did not come back for some time and Barbara looked for Lister, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... Neilson, whose position as a recognized opponent of the Union tied his hands, and Johnstone, a disappointed place man. Peace ruled in the Assembly, and the battle passed to the province, the newspapers, and most ominous of all for the governor, to the cabinet and public in Britain. A storm of abuse, criticism, and regrets broke over Bagot's devoted head. The opposition press in Canada called him "a radical, a puppet, an old woman, an apostate, a renegade descendant of old Colonel ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Americas, the three were always spoken of together as the Three J's—Jaggers, the Jockey, and the Jew. Wherever horses raced their fame was great, and amongst the English at least it was evil and ominous. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... outside for a moment, but for a moment only. The advancing cloud of savages were already coming up the slope, gradually spreading out into the form of a fan. The majority were mounted, although several struggled forward on foot. Near their center appeared the ominous gleam of a red blanket, waved back and forth as though in signal, but the distance was too great for my eyes to distinguish the one manipulating it. We were trapped, with our backs to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... now quietly arranging his men in such a manner as to insure the captivity or death of the outlaw, when one of the soldiers stumbled, and his musket struck the ground with a ringing noise. Jack, who had just awakened from his drunken nap, heard the ominous sound. He had no weapons, but relied on the security of his retreat and his activity and strength. He cautiously opened the door, in front of which stood a soldier with his musket pointed towards him. The sergeant cried, "Surrender, or you are a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... innocence and oldish prudence made a queer meeting; the slim little fingers that held the book; above all, the sweet calm of the face. June would not gaze, but she looked and looked, as she could, by glances; and nearly worshipped her little mistress in her heart. She thought it almost ominous and awful to see a child read the Bible so. For Daisy looked at it with loving eyes, as at words that were a pleasure to her. It was no duty-work, that reading. At last Daisy shut the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... by that dread place, He lifts his radiant face, And looks to heaven with reverent love and fear; Then, while the welkin quakes, The muttering thunder breaks, And lightnings shoot and ominous meteors drear, And all the daunted earth doth moan, He from the doors of death rolls back ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... La Barre's effort to maintain French sovereignty over the Iroquois is reflected in his request that they should ask his permission before attacking tribes friendly to the French. When he asked them why they had attacked the Illinois, they gave this ominous answer: 'Because they deserved to die.' La Barre could effect nothing by a display of authority, and even with the help of gifts he could only postpone war against the tribes of the Great Lakes. The Iroquois intimated that for the present ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... seen, to prevent the assailants from ascending their strange scaling ladder. So they determined to follow, hoping to overtake and dislodge some of them. But Herode, who had found the upper branches bending and cracking in a very ominous manner under his great weight, was forced to turn about and make his way back to the main trunk, where, under cover of darkness, he quietly awaited the climbing foe. Merindol, who commanded this detachment of the garrison, was first, and being completely taken by surprise was easily dislodged and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a loud clatter of rising feet, oaths, threats, and even a knife or two drawn; and, in the midst of it all, the ominous click of a pistol, and then dead silence; for it was Ransome who had produced that weapon. "Come, no nonsense," said he. "Door's guarded, street's guarded, and I'm ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... aghast as Zeuramaund uttered these ominous predictions; the whole council were dismayed at his words, and all fell again prostrate on ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Hester! I believe you are right," cried Gladwyn, as he listened to these ominous sounds. "At any rate, I will accept your warning, and make such preparations as will show those devils that we are ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... submit to our fate. The habit of loving, le besoin d'aimer, is more powerful than all sense of the folly and the danger. Nor is the tempest of the passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he hesitate? Why did he reason when he should have only ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... were heard. "I suspects, sir, as how we're in shoal water; they've let go an anchor," said Paul, calmly, though he knew full well the peril of our position. "But it doesn't hold, d'ye see, sir." Signal guns were heard. A few minutes passed, to most of us the time appeared far longer. A dull, ominous roaring sound reached even to our ears down in the depths of the ship. "We are among the breakers!" I sung out, jumping from my seat; and scarcely were the words out of my mouth when a cry was heard from above, and words of compassion reached our ears. "Pauvres Anglais! pauvres Anglais! ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... open-air pulpit there an impassioned sermon on the sacredness of human life, and referring to Zuleika in terms which John Knox would have hesitated to utter. As he piled up the invective, he noticed an ominous restiveness in the congregation—murmurs, clenching of hands, dark looks. He saw the pulpit as yet another trap laid for him by the gods. He had walked straight into it: another moment, and he might be dragged down, overwhelmed by numbers, torn limb from limb. All that was in him of quelling power ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... are spies—for they have no credentials. They may be imprisoned or executed. They passed through our lines but twenty miles from Richmond, seven days ago. I haven't been able to hear from them. The silence is ominous. ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... dream—a frightful dream— Tho' funny mayhap to wags 'twill seem, By all who regard the Church, like us, 'Twill be thought exceedingly ominous! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Pryor and Gass, met in one of the many little ominous groups that now began to form among the men in camp. Captain ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... An ominous owl, with his solemn bass voice, Sat moaning hard by; sat moaning hard by: "The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice, For he must soon die; for ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... words, yet ominous. Could we restore Our purchases, and make a treaty line, All might be well; but who would ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... assailants and defenders with equal fury. The black clouds that had been gathering over the battle-field opened and began such a cannonade as neither side could withstand. Wind, hail, lightning, and thunder, accompanied by an ominous darkness in which friend was indistinguishable from foe, played such havoc with the puny combatants and their mimic artillery, that all were forced to seek shelter and safety from the angry elements. Thus neither side was left in possession ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... the fittings for the series of "Tableaux" which had been proposed, remained half completed: the dresses that were to have been worn, lay scattered on the floor; the carpenter who had come to proceed with his work, gathered up his tools in ominous silence, and departed as quickly as he could. Here lay books still open at the last page read; there was an album, with the drawing of the day before unfinished, and the color-box unclosed by its side. On the deserted billiard-table, the positions ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... spake the Isle, but far aloft under the clouds a great eagle screamed thrice aloud, the ominous bird of Zeus. This sign, methinks, was of Zeus; Zeus, the son of Cronos, in his care hath awful kings, but he is above all, whom Zeus loved from the first, even from his birth. Great fortune goes with him, and much land he rules, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... rear of the moose came a faint sound. It was only the crackling of a twig, yet it served to break the spell under which the beast stood, for in the wilderness the snap of a twig is one of the most ominous of sounds. The animal wheeled sharply just as the hunter pulled the trigger. There was the sharp crack of a rifle which woke the echoes and startled the wilderness into an added alertness, while the ball sped across ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... his advances with an ominous scream, and Hitty hurried into the house to give him to the servant's charge, while she returned to the sitting-room, where the old man had seated himself in the rocking-chair, and was taking a mental inventory of the goods and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that fateful year was further darkened by the most dangerous and ominous event recorded in the United Kingdom since the war began. Over 200,000 coal miners of South Wales deliberately, obstinately and criminally withheld their labour from their own nation, whose existence at that moment was dependent on its bestowal. The coal pits of South Wales ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... eyeing her intently, a firm look upon his face that made its reserve more marked than common. I saw him gaze at her handsome head piled with its midnight tresses amid which the jewels, doubtless of her dead lord, burned with a fierce and ominous glare, at her smooth olive brow, her partly veiled eyes where the fire passionately blazed, at her scarlet lips trembling with an emotion her rapidly flushing cheeks would not allow her to conceal. I saw his glances ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... which had swept on their course, under various denominations, in rapid and stormy succession, were now followed by one which, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his anticipations ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... who, with lightness of heart, could wish to cause the loss of the stakes of the republic against royalty after having supported them with some glory and peril." Yet the importance he gave himself in his proclamations was ominous. He reproached the directory with the situation of France in a most extraordinary way. "What have you done," said he, "with that France which I left so flourishing in your hands? I left you peace, I find you at war; I left you victories, I find nothing but reverses; I left you ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... and takes precedence of every thing; its protection has become a sacred element of legislative and private action; and fair discussion is looked upon as ominous, and proclaimed as incendiary. But we speak for those who owe no allegiance to that delicate institution; citizens to all intents and, purposes (notwithstanding their dark skins) of the countries to which they severally ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... and deep silence. The fact, however, furnished as conclusive evidence of the cause of their peril to the minds of these untutored beings, as a mathematician could have received from the happiest of his demonstrations. New light broke in upon them, and the ominous stillness was followed by a general demand for the patron to point out the man. Obeying this order, partly under the influence of a terror that was allied to his moral weakness, and partly in bodily fear, he ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... shock, followed by ominous crackings. The car has grounded. The 'Geant' has made its descent. But in what part of the habitable globe, and under ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... him to assume. Full and deep upon the still night air rang out the tolling of the mysterious bell. To the anxious watcher, its tones no longer rang full and sweet as upon the previous evening, but sounded slow and threatening, as if freighted with an ominous meaning. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... gently lifted: he remained quiet and alarmed;—ere he could draw a second breath, a dark figure interposed between the light and the bed; and he felt that a stroke was aimed against that part of the couch, which, but for the accident that had seemed to him ominous, would have given his breast to the knife. Rienzi waited not a second and better-directed blow; as the assassin yet stooped, groping in the uncertain light, he threw on him all the weight and power of his large and muscular frame, wrenched the stiletto ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... state of being quite at variance with her usual calm. The air was sultry and, though no rain fell, ominous clouds gathered and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... had a great physical advantage, if I may say so, over the worse. They have given what I may call a CONFIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. The savage subjected to a mean superstition, is afraid to walk simply about the world—he cannot do THIS because it is ominous, or he must do THAT because it is lucky, or he cannot do anything at all till the gods have spoken and given him leave to begin. But under the higher religions there is no similar ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... left no doubt of the mournful truth. Something had gone wrong in the shipping of certain goods, which had required his immediate presence; they had therefore written and telegraphed to him repeatedly, but there had been no reply. Day by day the ominous silence had shaded into alarm, had deepened into ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations to the landing of an inn kept by Jacob Lavey, where I expected to overhaul my injured craft. To my surprise and great relief of mind there were found only a few superficial scratches upon the horn-like shellacked surface of the paper ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... learned to control my expression. I could not help showing what ruins of lofty castles that ominous "but" dropped ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... shall ride. Henry! thy ardent mind first pierced the gloom Of dark disastrous ignorance, that sat Upon the Southern wave, like the deep cloud 70 That lowered upon the woody skirts, and veiled From mortal search, with umbrage ominous, Madeira's unknown isle. But look! the morn Is kindled on the shadowy offing; streaks Of clear cold light on Sagres' battlements Are cast, where Henry watches, listening still To the unwearied surge; and turning still His anxious eyes to the horizon's bounds. A sail appears; it swells, it shines: ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... he would be condemned, for mediaevalism dies hard in Spain. But the incident was portentous, and the Archbishop and his keen secretary heard in it an ominous echo. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... before we knew that cholera was raging in Toulon, only some three miles away, how we watched a cloud gathering over the town, where it hung heavy and lowering, day after day. We felt that it was somehow ominous, and were vaguely depressed. We were told afterwards that at that very time great fires were burning in the streets of Toulon by order of the mayor, and that the people gathered at night around these fires capering fantastically in a ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... tallow candle, smoking and spluttering, throws a weird light, and more weird shadows, on the faces of clerks and President, on blank walls and ominous devices. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... There were some adherents to the traditions of the South in regard to firecrackers at Yuletide, albeit the six-shooter furnished the only firecracker obtainable. Yet upon that night the very shots seemed cheerful, not ominous, as was usually the case upon that long and crooked street, which had seen duels, affairs, affrays,—even riots of mounted men in the days when the desperadoes of the range came riding into town now and again for love of danger, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... regarding the threatening sky-line with an anxious frown on his forehead. A moment later a sudden gust of wind struck the boat, heeling it so far to one side that they had to grip the rail and each other to keep from falling, while the vivid flash of lightning, followed by a low, ominous roll of thunder, made them draw ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... she looked better already for these days spent out-of-doors—the tiny lines round her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however, he grew restless under her protracted silence; there was something ominous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her hand, began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink nails, or to gather them together, and let them drop, one by one, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... issue smile vpon the flood, 70 forme of a And in your mild'st aspect doe ye appeare Swanne. A To be her warrant from all future feare. constellation And if thou ship that bear'st her, doe proue good, ominous to May neuer time by wormes, consume thy wood Mariners. Nor rust thy iron, may thy tacklings last, Till they for reliques be in temples plac't; Maist thou be ranged with that mighty Arke, Wherein iust Noah did all the world ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... side. He tried in vain to lift up his hands. They repeated the solemn words he uttered. His speech grew fainter and fainter, then ceased altogether. A few faint groans followed, then there was an ominous silence. Robby held the lantern to the old man's face. The eyes were open, but all expression ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... related by O'Brien, an Irishman serving on an English naval vessel, that an elderly and respectable Malay woman, with whom he was conversing in an entirely unsuspecting manner, suddenly began to undress herself, and showed a most ominous and determined intention of stripping herself completely, and all because a by-standing friend had suddenly taken off his coat; at the same time she manifested the most violent anger at what she deemed this outrage to her sex, calling the astonished friend an ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... There is an ominous crack of a revolver, but it is not fired in the direction of the Indians whom the man sees are within a few yards of him. He sees the woman fall, and turns swiftly to the tent door. The child instinctively turns and runs inside. The man's ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... It was rather ominous. The mere fact of that cough and his weakness was enough. One would come to this. He had warned me, and he had besought me with the same ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... about a foot off the ground on the track he had to pass. When he came to the pole he fell over it flat on his face, and to the bystanders it seemed rather an inhuman proceeding on the part of the doctor, but he had observed an ominous pause before the convict had struck the pole ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... paper and letter heads and cost forms and production reports. For his father's sake, who had only him, he would carry on. And carry on he did, doggedly, wearily, bored to death, but sticking it. The reports from the works were often ominous. Things were not going well. There was an undercurrent of unrest among ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... pessimistic report on the health of an old place turn to a trusted carpenter or contractor. He congenitally dislikes old buildings and will point out all defects with ominous head shakings and subtle suggestions for new building. In this way the prospective buyer will know the worst, painted at its blackest. Somewhere between it and the rosy view of the real estate agent will lie the truth. Therefore, it is well to do some inspecting ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... periodically offered her his heart and hand, and the joint ownership of the village grocery store. She had looked into her little piece of mirror rather more closely of late than she had done hitherto, and had discovered two or three ominous lines round her fine, almond-shaped eyes, and noted that her nose showed of late a more marked tendency to make close ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said Leighton, but he said it too late. They discussed the beef and the moselle in silence. The air was heavy and ominous. Even the Wonham boy was affected by it, shivered at times, choked once, and hastened anew into the sun. He could ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Ravenna was glowing, less than a week since, as I edged along the narrow strip of shadow binding one side of the empty, white streets. After a long, chill spring the summer this year descended upon Italy with a sudden jump and an ominous hot breath. I stole away from Florence in the night, and even on top of the Apennines, under the dull starlight and in the rushing train, one could but sit ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... at my new trousers with feelings of dismay. Ominous spots of a dismal hue were certainly growing larger. I tried to get the tar out of my pockets, but only succeeded in covering my hands with the black, unmanageable stuff, which at that moment I ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... suspiciously and handed them to their husbands to verify. The girl saw, and flushed, but she continued. She went from table to table, and she bought everything, from quilts and hideous drawn-in rugs to frosted cakes. She bought in the midst of that ominous hush of suspicion. Once she even heard a woman hiss to another, "She's crazy. She got out ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... it has of old been observ'd that the bay is ominous of some funest accident, if that be so accounted which Suetonius (in Galba) affirms to have happen'd before the death of the monster Nero, when these trees generally wither'd to the very roots in a very mild winter: And much later, that in ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... twisting his arms behind him with such silent ease that it was ominous of what might be expected should the sheepherder set up ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... remarked, "there is a flower called Aconitum. It is also known by the ominous names of Monks-Hood and Helmet-Flower. Direct sunlight kills it. It flourishes only in shadow. Like the Kaiser-Flower it also is blue; and," he added, "it is deadly poison.... As you say, the necessary thing in this world is light ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... mystery was the only thing which could have conquered Mrs. Pomfret's love of talking. She was silent, and contented herself the rest of the evening with making signs, looking ominous, and stalking about the house like one ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... well down over the short, upper lip and broad mouth. His eyes were light blue, and so intense that he was never known to blink the lashes. Topping them were deep, wavering, black eyebrows that met above the nose, forming an ominous, cloudy line across the base of his thin, high forehead. The crown of his head, covered by long, scant strands of black hair, was of the type known as "retreating and pointed." The forehead ran upward and back from the brows almost to a point, and down from the pinnacle hung the veil of hair, just ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... unhesitatingly for a slip of paper which derived all its value from the resolves of a body of men who might, upon a reverse, be thrown down as rapidly as they had been set up. And then whom were they to look to for indemnification? But now began a sensible depreciation,—slight, indeed, at first, but ominous. Congress took the alarm, and resolved upon a loan,—resolved to borrow directly what they had hitherto borrowed indirectly, the goods and the labor of their constituents. Accordingly, on the third of October, a resolve was passed for raising five millions of dollars at four ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hissing spread to our starboard bow (west-south-west), and the vibration caused by the pressure could be felt intermittently on board the ship.... The incessant grinding and grating of the ice to the southward, with seething noises, as of water rushing under the ship's bottom, and ominous sounds, kept me on the qui vive all night, and the prospect of a break-up of the ice would have wracked my nerves had I not had ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... he was wearing a long motor-coat, of a smart cut, and a peaked cap which became him excellently, struck me as ominous. Had he caught the birds—our birds—after all, at the last moment, and had they been too cowardly ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... AMBASSADOR and the impassivity of the NUBIAN grow ominous. The two priests hang over the tripod. They cast herbs upon it. They pass their hands over it. The herbs begin to smoulder. A smoke goes up. The priests bend over the smoke. Presently they step back ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward for Gaetano, the bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not eager to shorten a solid enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not strike her as surprising, certainly not as ominous, that Gerald should write when he might expect to see her so soon. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Dweller, and closer, I following them step by step. The Shining One's whirling lessened; its tinklings were faint, almost stilled. It seemed to watch them apprehensively. A silence fell upon us all, a thick silence, brooding, ominous, palpable. Now the pair were face to face with the child of the Three—so near that with one of its misty tentacles it could ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... would soon come off, and was again asked to take a position to enfilade the schooners, so that the cannoneers of Jackson might be able to stand to their guns. Mitchell sent back word that he hoped to move in twenty-four hours, and received from Higgins, himself an old seaman and naval officer, the ominous rejoinder: "Tell Captain Mitchell that there will be no tomorrow for New Orleans, unless he immediately takes up the position assigned to him ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... when her daughter was brought back with ominous red stains upon the gray background of her traveling dress. But the wound was neither deep nor dangerous. The court surgeon was as consoling as he was complimentary, and by the time that messengers from the palace had ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... as I discovered when our bargain was completed. "What are you called?" I asked him. "Filippo Visconti, per servirla!" was the prompt reply. Brimming over with the darkest memories of the Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this answer. The associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man himself was so attractive—tall, stalwart, and well-looking—no feature of his face or limb of his athletic form recalling the gross tyrant who concealed worse than Caligula's ugliness from ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the first to break the ominous silence. Turning to face the speaker, I encountered the cold eye of a man with a retreating chin, a receding forehead, and a mouth large and cruel enough to stamp him as one of those perverted natures who, to the ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... into the western sea-rim, and there was still no sign of the captain's boat. On the shore an ominous silence prevailed, though now and then it would be broken by the weird, resonant boom of a conch-shell. The night was passed in the greatest anxiety by all on board, every man, musket in hand, keeping ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... sounds the ominous roar of the Big Cascade. At quarter past four we reach the head of the swirling fall. The underlying cause of the Big Cascade is a limestone ledge which cuts the channel diagonally and makes ugly-looking water. We plan to run the rapid one boat at a time. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... aroused, and though I could not stifle I concealed my selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my ominous and guilty love. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as an omen of good or evil she would not tell. On all matters connected with her religious notions she was shy and reserved, though occasionally she unconsciously revealed them. Thus the warnings of death or misfortunes were revealed to her by certain ominous sounds in the woods, the appearance of strange birds or animals, or the moanings of others. The screeching of the owl, the bleating of the doe, or barking of the fox, were evil auguries, while the flight of the eagle and the croaking of the raven were omens ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... happened that six weeks went by, and she heard nothing from Chupin. A month and a half! What had become of him? To Mme. Blanche this silence was as ominous as the calm that precedes ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... toned down that scene!—A translation by Frau Schuselka (who has performed here sometimes) of the "Pere prodigue" of Dumas fils was to have come on the boards; but it appears that there are scruples about making such very ominous demands on the customary powers of digestion of our un-lavish fathers of families! Amongst other inconveniences the piece also contains logarithms, to which the respectable German Philistine ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... without a shred of doubt, sat sunk in ominous silence. Catastrophes lead intelligent and strong-minded men to be philosophical. The Baron, morally, was at this moment like a man trying to find his way by night through a forest. This gloomy taciturnity and the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... public ceremonial. Soon after the great geometrician had drawn the circle for the beautiful dome, he sent a workman for a stone to mark the exact centre. The man returned with a fragment of a tombstone, on which was the one ominous word (as every one observed) "Resurgam!" The ruins of old St. Paul's were stubborn. In trying to blow up the tower, a passer-by was killed, and Wren, with his usual ingenuity, resorted successfully to the old Roman battering-ram, which soon cleared a way. "I build for eternity," said Wren, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... avenge you!" said he to Dinah in the ominous tone that delights a woman when her ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... them. Neither step nor balustrade invited confidence. The Individual stood on the lower one in a meditative mood for a while, and then gave a jump by way of test, thinking it best to go through the one nearest the ground, if she must go through any. An ominous creaking and swaying and cracking followed, but no actual rupture. The second step was tested with the same result; then the third and fourth; and, reflecting that appearances are deceitful, and recollecting ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... few moments' ominous quiet, and then Cecilia went over the top with a roar of artillery and the rattle of machine guns. John put up a defensive barrage. Cecilia raked him with bombs and Lewis guns. He replied with heavy stuff. The air grew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... preparations were simple, but much more elaborate than if the night had been clear. Then he would have made his fire, boiled coffee, spread his bed, and gone to sleep beneath the stars; but because of the ominous storm cloud he constructed a lean-to by driving two forked stakes and joining them with a crosspiece. From these he slanted two poles to the ground, and on the poles laid a tarp, lashing it in place. The mouth of the lean-to faced away from the cloud bank. In addition ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... curious people. For as cupping-glasses take away the worst blood, so the ears of curious people attract only the worst reports; or rather, as cities have certain ominous and gloomy gates, through which they conduct only condemned criminals, or convey filth and night soil, for nothing pure or holy has either ingress into or egress from them, so into the ears of curious people goes nothing ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Norton was evidently an important factor in the matter. He was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the relation between them, and what the object of his repeated visits? Was she his client, his friend, or his mistress? If the former, she had probably transferred the photograph to his keeping. If the latter, it was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... marries again, and becomes Lady Dungannon. This marriage, by the new scenes, ties, and pleasures it introduces, proves the undoing of poor Orinda's happiness. Lucasia cools towards her, allows her less space in her heart than she craves; and finally we have a reluctant farewell poem, bearing the ominous title, "Orinda to Lucasia. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... was thrown to the winds; all Landy considered was the rapidity with which he could get past that ominous ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... one of the small coastal type ships employed by the colonists, and the British blockade required such ominous precautions as "unmarked cases" ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... strict enforcement of conditions mentioned in that ominous card. I was unacquainted with the Bohemian "song and dance" parlance in such extremities, and wondered would letting my secret come out let a dinner come in. Possibly, I may have often been deceived when appealed to, but that experience has often been ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... in the past, when the gong had compelled silence, the crowd broke into an ominous "Aw, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... were enjoying one of those remarkable Arizona desert sunsets. Ominous clouds had been gathering in the afternoon, rising from the southwest, drifting across the canyon, and piling up against the north wall. A few fleecy clouds in the west partially obscured the sun until it neared the horizon, then a shaft ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... greatly enlarged from most interesting materials at a very considerable expense, has just issued from the press in 3 vols. 8vo. But 'Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?' It was not published by any of the favoured houses; hence the following ominous notice of it: 'Clouds and darkness rest upon it!'[19] Gentle reader, they are the clouds and darkness of Cheapside. It may be possible that some propitious golden breeze had driven all the clouds and darkness from Cornhill, Paternoster Row, the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... Much like his father, but his mother more, Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named: Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 At last betakes him to this ominous wood, And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered, Excels his mother at her mighty art; Offering to every weary traveller His orient liquor in a crystal glass, To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste (For most do taste through fond intemperate ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... knowing how to meet him, how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of personal grief,—almost an appeal to her,—the first he had ever made. Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined his own life in such ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sons of Hercules, with their friends and followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted by the Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain the Peloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from offended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declares that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at sea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Jenny's swifter feelings had sounded the depths of hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to let in Amalon; but up in the little-sunned aisle of Box Canon it was always cool. There the pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying away to mutter threats in the distance, and ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... closely to his signals and to our task, yet I saw Young Moll coming forward, step by step, as the "basket" went deeper and deeper into the gorge, her eyes riveted on it. She was very pale, and her hands were tightly clenched. The drivers cast ominous glances at her. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... vision of her as a child, perhaps ten. She, too, tried to remember that time and age. It was almost in her grasp, but her realization was spoiled by absurd mental fragments— the familiar illusion of a leopard and a rider with bright hair, a forest with the ascending voices of angels, and an ominous squat figure with ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cables, and began a furious cannonade. Meanwhile terror reigned in Charleston. As the sound of the first gun went booming over the waters toward the town, the trembling inhabitants who had been crowding the wharves and lining the house-tops since early morning, turned pale with ominous forebodings. Nor were the feelings of the defenders of the fort less anxious. Looking off, over the low island intervening between them and the city, they could see the gleaming walls of their distant homes; and their imaginations conjured up the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... as a man of few words, but Ripley wondered at the ominous silence with which his every attempt at conversation was met. During the whole seventeen days of the snow-trail, MacNair scarcely addressed a word to him—seemed almost oblivious to ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... early colonist—to my lodge in the wilderness. What emigrant rich enough to squander in the hire of such an equipage more than its cost in England, could thus be entering on my waste domain? An ominous thrill shot through me. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which the clouds have enveloped the sky and the earth itself trembles, this warrior can be none else than Savyasachin. Our weapons do not shine, our steeds are dispirited, and our fires, though fed with fuel, do not blare up. All this is ominous. All our animals are setting up a frightful howl, gazing towards the sun. The crows are perching on our banners. All this is ominous. Yon vultures and kites on our right portend a great danger. That jackal also, running through our ranks, waileth dismally. Lo, it hath ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... but the ominous hollow eye into which he looked was persuasive. He opened an inner compartment lined with bags of gold. These ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... famine, which was going forward on the earth beneath them. To all this, the thunder and lightning too, were constantly adding their angry peals, and flashing, as if uttering the indignation of Heaven against our devoted people; and what rendered such fearful manifestations ominous and alarming to the superstitious, was the fact of their occurrence in the evening and at night—circumstances which are always looked upon With ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... enjoined and encouraged, is not on the increase amongst us, to say the least of it; certainly the ignorance of the blessed Book even among candidates for holy Orders is sometimes, is not seldom, very great indeed. Nay more, there is sometimes, however rarely as yet, an ominous disposition even in clerical circles to shelve the Bible. Quite lately I heard, on excellent authority, that a certain large Clerical Society, revising its rules, deliberately decided that the meetings shall not in future be begun with the reading of Scripture. My friend and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... parties. The Elenas of to-day need not turn their eyes abroad to find their counterpart in spirit; so far at least the pessimists are refuted: but the note of death that Turgenev strikes in his marvellous chapter on Venice has still for young Russia an ominous echo—so many generations have arisen eager, only to be flung aside helpless, that one asks, what of the generation ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... which it had always delighted him to read in her features was become an ominous hardness. He felt his heart sink as he looked ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... peace and quiet when, late on the afternoon of July 27th, the ominous 'order' call broke the stillness ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering mass of sulphurous hue that already casts its ominous shadow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... may have reason to change your tune soon, old fellow," warned Giraffe with an ominous shake of ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... enough, at all events'—there was an ominous sparkle in her eye—'to listen to men speakers clever or dull—we listen quietly enough. But men!—a person must be of your own sex for you to be able to regard him without distraction. If the woman is beautiful enough, you are intoxicated. If ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... necessity of giving the most careful consideration to what they had heard. There was, however, no semblance of a discussion. Sir Joseph Hooker writes to me: "The interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel and too ominous for the old school to enter the lists, before armouring. After the meeting it was talked over with bated breath: Lyell's approval, and perhaps in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the affair, rather overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise have flown out against the doctrine. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the twinkling of Mr Wilkins' spectacles, and a peculiar clearing of the voice, which made Sergeant Brumpton, who had been hard at work making ominous sounds on the bombardon, turn his head and smile at Dick—then standing in his place waiting to begin—and making him lower his head to examine the music; for, if he had smiled there, just in front of the bandmaster, it must have ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... as though the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless, and spell-bound, and appalled at the spectacle; as though the prophetic admonitions of the Father of our Country were forgotten, and nature, with an ominous silence, conspired to lull you into forgetfulness, the more to astound you with the wonders and the woes of ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... hands placing the coronet on his head," and that the marriage took place on the 15th of May, at four o'clock in the morning in the presence-chamber at Holyrood; and that on the following morning a paper, with this ominous verse, was ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... Titmouse"—said Huckaback, knitting his brows, fixing his eyes, and appearing inclined to raise his arm. There was an ominous pause for a moment or two, during which Titmouse's feelings also underwent a slight alteration. His allusion to Huckaback's ruinous insult to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, unconsciously converted his remorse into rage, which ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the gate of the Greyfriars, who should cross the street before him, so as almost to run against him, but the city executioner! The omen—for it was a day of omens—made the young minister stagger for a moment, but only for a moment. At the same time the ominous incident made such an impression on the young Covenanter's heart and imagination, that he said to some of his fellow-subscribers as he laid down the pen, 'I know that I shall die for what I have done this day, but I cannot ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... experience of the last six months. We had the notable predictions attributed to the Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to fulfil themselves. We were infested at one time with a set of ominous-looking seers, who shook their heads and muttered obscurely about some mighty preparations that were making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of the majority. Organizations were darkly hinted at; some thought our armories would be seized; and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tree in a moist, delicately tinted carpet over the grass. An hour ago the sun had set in a purple cloud, and beneath the electric lights, which shone through the fog with a wan and spectral glimmer, the dark outlines of the city assumed an ominous vagueness. There was no light in the house; and the deserted yard, silvered from frost and strewn with dead leaves, which lay in wind-drifts along the flagged walk, had the haunted aspect of a place where youth and happiness have passed ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... at this station eight days, sometimes hearing ominous announcements of the terrible Dulbahantas, sent to frighten me by the Abban, and sometimes amusing myself in other and various ways. The Dulbahantas could not conceive my motive for wishing to travel in their land; no peddling Arab, even, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... they failed to discover any addition to the solitary track they were following. It was curious. It was almost ominous. But its significance was lost in the thought that here at least was shelter for themselves against the real winter ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... sky is orecast with friteful clouds. Darkness is on the face uv the waters. The waves is a rollin mountin high, the litenin flashes ominous thro the gloom, and the deep-mouthed thunder mutters angrily in the distants. Ez a sentinel on the watch-tower, I look out, and what do I see? I see the old ship uv State loaded down with a valuable ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... great tennis players have personality. Few of the many stars of the game can lay claim to it justly. The most powerful personality in the tennis world during my time is Norman E. Brookes, with his peculiar sphinx-like repression, mysterious, quiet, and ominous calm. Brookes repels many by his peculiar personality. He never was the popular hero that other men, notably M'Loughlin and Wilding, have been. Yet Brookes always held a gallery enthralled, not only by the sheer wizardry of his play, but by the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... on his allies, Austria and Prussia, to repel the Russians; and at Paris he strained every nerve to call the youth of the Empire to arms. The summons met with a ready response: he had but to stamp his foot when the news from East Prussia looked ominous, and an array of 350,000 conscripts was promised by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in an ominous tone of voice, "if you say that word to me again I will run into a tree or ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... head. Nevertheless Erik made dauntlessly for the bridge, and said: "On the bearer fall the ill-luck of what he bears! May a better issue attend our steps! Evil befall the evil-workers! Let the weight of the ominous burden crush the carrier! Let the better auguries bring us safety!" And it happened according to his prayer. For straightway the head was shaken off, the stick fell and crushed the bearer. And so all that array of sorceries was baffled ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... bridge head. His heart beat thick and fast as he flew across the open. The blows of the dah had ceased. Had the bridge gone or not? A little clump of water-grasses on the bank hid the bridge from him, but the silence was terribly ominous. He thought he saw a blue kilt disappearing among the trees, but he did not stay to intercept it. He shot up to the edge of the stream, and saw a horrible space of blank water between bank and bank. The bridge was swinging slowly towards the other side. Held fast there, the current ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... moment, his laughter sounded harsh and ominous; but I had done no wrong, and so, in conscious innocence, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... departure; but in this hasty and kindly designed visit there was hidden a fund of cruelty which Lizabetha Prokofievna never dreamed of. In the words "as usual," and again in her added, "mine, at all events," there seemed an ominous knell ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for much gratitude. But I shall be glad to know when it may suit you to settle with me. The account has been running on now for a great many years. Probably Pritchett may have sent it you." And as he spoke Mr. Bertram rose from his chair and took an ominous-looking piece of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... happy and light of heart; he dreamed of glory. He gave not another thought to the ominous words which fell on his ear as he stood by the counter in Vidal and Porchon's shop; he beheld himself the richer by twelve hundred francs at least. Twelve hundred francs! It meant a year in Paris, a whole year of preparation for the work that he meant to do. What plans ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... large fire was lighted on the platform of the fortress. My attention being drawn to that point, I perceived, by the now increasing daylight, a wooden scaffolding, on which were erected five black and ominous looking gibbets. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... sir. I've been waiting for you to come in." There was something ominous about this unexpected summons, or perhaps about the manner of its delivery. At any rate, suspicion ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... A little ominous, perhaps, that the Haymarket entrepreneur should bear the same name as the Calcutta judge who had unsuccessfully sought her hand. But Lola experienced no qualms. As she stood at the wings, in a black satin bodice and much flounced pink silk skirt, waiting for her cue, Lumley passed her with ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures—dingy moths, silent but ominous night-jars, forlorn women of the town—ill-favored and ill-dressed, some of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks looking for ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... empty streets paraded these worthies, pausing here and there at the door of some citizen that presented a tempting surface. One of their number would paint upon it the ominous red cross, whilst another who had skill enough (for writing was not the accomplishment of every citizen even then) would add in staring white letters the legend, "Lord, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... more deeply read in the Petit Catechisme than in heathen mythology, the dreaded god of the sea and his truculent trident were ominous, in his simple eyes, they symbolised the Prince of Darkness, "Le diable et sa fourche," the terrors ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... middle of August generally means a gay crowd of bathers, Cook's tourists tripping to Switzerland and so on; but our little party landed in silence, and anxious faces and ominous whispers met us on our arrival on Belgian soil. It was even said that the Germans were marching on Brussels, but this was contradicted afterwards as a sensational canard. The Red Cross on my luggage got me through the douane formalities without any trouble. I entered ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... it lay in mine, and his eyes, fixed upon his father's, wore again the ominous expression of the picture. He did not speak, and his father took a step toward ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Jane Shore was somewhat ominous for Hastings, as it was generally understood that since the king's death Lord Hastings had taken Jane Shore under his protection, and had lived ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Under the ominous indications which commanded attention it became a duty to exert the means committed to the executive department in providing for the general security. The works of defense on our maritime frontier have accordingly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he heard a curious noise — a far, faint sound such as he never before had heard. If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it. ... Probably some sort of unknown bird. ... Perhaps a bird of prey. ... That was natural, considering ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... black, as twilight brown, they spread, But feathered thick with flame that streaked and lined Their living darkness, ominous else of dread, From south to northmost verge of heaven inclined Most like some giant angel's, whose bent head Bowed earthward, as with message for mankind Of doom or benediction to be shed From passage of his presence. Far behind, Even while they seemed ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... confidence' in the Dutch Ministers has been passed, and an appeal for help has been made to the Government at Cape Town. It is not yet publicly known what the response has been, if there is any. I think it ominous that all of our Dutch pupils, save one, should have been hurriedly sent for by their parents before the ending of the term. Knowing my responsibility, I am sending all home, except the few who happen to be resident in this town, and the school will remain closed, at all events, until the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... An ominous murmur of displeased astonishment broke from the natives. Surely, they asked, they had a right to these three men. Why should three of their own people lie dead with gaping wounds and the man-eaters escape without punishment? Would ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... alarm to his enemies, upon the sight of so great a force. And now the vessels having their complement of men, and Pericles being gone aboard his own galley, it happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it grew dark on a sudden, to the affright of all, for this was looked upon as extremely ominous. Pericles, therefore, perceiving the steersman seized with fear and at a loss what to do, took his cloak and held it up before the man's face, and, screening him with it so that he could not see, asked him whether he imagined ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of ominous silence regarding the festival succeeded in Santa Ana. The local paper gave the fullest particulars of the opening of the hotel, but contented itself with saying: "The entertainment concluded with a dance." Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled to call upon ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... commencing to come in our direction; star shells were shooting up at short intervals, the gleam of a flare every now and then plainly revealing ourselves to each other. As we sat there the conversation seemed to lag and a silence that struck me as somewhat ominous pervaded our little group. I wondered if the rest were thinking of our number. One of my best chums, Corporal Lawrence, was sitting next me, and I thought I heard ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... troops with the caliph Mamun was an ominous event for the country. Up to 846 all the successive governors had been Arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. With some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple habits—the Arabs were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 17th, 1863, 8h. 55m. A.M., but neither myself, nor other Astrologers, are satisfied with this hour. I think he was born some minutes sooner. At his birth the Sun was in exact Square to Jupiter, and also in Square to Mars, and Mars was in Opposition to Jupiter. These are very ominous and important aspects. The former denotes great extravagance, and waste of money, and the latter gives impetuosity, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... a reply MacDonald walked swiftly in the direction of a ridge to the right. Already guards had been thrown out on all sides of the mountain and their thrilling warnings of "Fire—Fire—Fire," shouted through megaphones of birch-bark, echoed with ominous meaning through the still wilderness, where for the time all work had ceased. On the top of the ridge half a hundred of the workmen had already assembled, and as Howland and the superintendent came among them they fell back from around a big, flat boulder on which was stationed the electric ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... rivers, for secret whispers that mingle and confuse themselves with the general uproar of torrents, but which can be detected and kept apart by the obstinate prophetic ear, which spells into words and ominous sentences the distracted syllables of rial voices. Dr. Nichol is one of those who pass to and fro between these classes; and has the rare function of keeping open their vital communications. As a popularizing astronomer, he has done more for the benefit ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... much room as the width of the creek would permit, our helm was eased over and the Felicidad swept round toward the object of her first attack, which was the schooner flying French colours. A death-like and ominous silence now prevailed on board the four craft that we were so audaciously attacking, and not a man was to be seen on board either of them. This state of things continued until we were within forty fathoms of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... when he heard an ominous sound by his side. It was the cocking of Davy Crockett's rifle, and when he looked around he saw that Old Betsy was leveled, and that the sure eye of the Tennessean was ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with his entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under Sheridan's direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or audible suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to the new-comer. As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... outside, from one to the other, till they reached the city. Some confused account arrived before the occasion of these rejoicings was generally known. Suddenly the bells began to ring; bonfires were kindled; and in an instant all was a scene of public rejoicing. But ominous indeed were these rejoicings; for the greater part was occasioned by a false rumour that the duke was to be sent to the Tower. No one inquired about a news which every one wished to hear; and so sudden was the joy, that a MS. letter ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... from bashfulness into a pout, and from a pout into tears. "I don't care, so now. I think he was much nicer—much nicer than—" She sat upon a chair and kicked her little toes upon the ground. Red's dimpled face was flushing with ominous colour about the eyes. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... chateau the sound of my men singing. Their rude, strong voices were low at first, but they rose in pitch and volume as their song progressed. Mademoiselle ceased to smile, opened her eyes, again took on the look of dark foreboding. The song had an ominous ring. It was one of the Huguenot war hymns sung in ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the S. and S.W. district, the City and the East End may, for one year at least, rejoice in the supreme rule of the Savory. We can't write of SAVORY without adding MOORE, so we must mention that the name of SAVORY is ominous for the continuation of the Mayoralty. The Guildhall Banquets end with a Savory. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... her other stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion, while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed; and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous signs of coming storms, before we could hear the voice of the thunder. And once a royal messenger (called a pursuivant-at-arms) came down in person, and carried the great lady to London, and there she stayed many days, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... remained in revolt though I was convinced that I was no longer dreaming. I watched Therese coming away from the window with that helpless dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to feel. For in such a situation even the absurd may appear ominous. She came up close to the bed and folding her hands meekly in front of her turned her eyes up ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the ill-health of his youth, Conf., vii. 32, and describes an ominous head seizure while at Chamberi, Ib. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... draw off their attention from other places which were to be attacked. Adair was in a deeper sleep than a commander under such circumstances generally ventures to enjoy, when suddenly he was startled by a shock, accompanied by an ominous grating sound, the meaning of which he too ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... mountains began to show a shade of green on their lower slopes. Butterflies appeared also, and a vulture, a grand bird on the wing, hovered ominously over us for some miles, and was succeeded by an equally ominous raven. On the excellent bridle-track cut on the face of the precipices which overhang the Bhaga, there is in nine miles only one spot in which it is possible to pitch a five-foot tent, and at Darcha, the first hamlet in Lahul, the only camping-ground is on ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... the tent and backed noiselessly against the front pole. Indeed, not a sound was created by his entrance, not even the rustling whisper of bare feet on dry grass. It seemed very ominous, mysterious, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... "Correspondance inedite avec Josephine," Lettre v.] The glass broke the other day when I pressed it too violently against my breast. My despair knew no bounds, for love is superstitious, and every thing seems ominous to it. I took it for an announcement of your death, and my eyes knew no sleep, my heart knew no rest, till the courier whom I immediately dispatched to you, had brought me the news that you were well, and that no accident had befallen you. [Footnote: "Memoires sur Napoleon, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw me prepare to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path. I believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and other perilous chances of the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Nancy, with ominous slowness, "Will has been tellin' me that ye have been courtin' under me very nose. Do ye ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... back in 1910. For a minute he pressed the softness of her hand—then she smiled and withdrew it and, before he could spring to open the door, she had done it herself and was gone out into the turbid and ominous twilight that brooded narrowly over ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Carolina, Adams, of Massachusetts, and Clay, of Kentucky, were the most prominent candidates. In December, Barbour, of Virginia, was superseded, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, by Clay, of Kentucky; an event ominous to the hopes of Crawford, and to that resistance to the tariff, and to internal improvements, which was regarded as dependent on his success. The question whether a Congressional caucus, by the instrumentality of which Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had obtained ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... prison he had lodged in within three years, and by far the most hopeless of the three. His brother, Sir John of Desmond, through the representations of Ormond, was the same year arrested and consigned to the same ominous dungeon, from which suspected noblemen seldom emerged, except when the hurdle waited ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... excuses. When he returned, Dr. Lindsay had dried his face and was calmer. But his aspect was sufficiently ominous; he was both pompous ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... emotionless, implacable. He had been terribly shaken, and now a superstitious fright overcame him. The raven and the albatross were in his mind and he murmured under his breath passages from their ominous poems. The scholar had his raven, the mariner had his albatross and now he alone in the forest had his owl, to his mind the most terrible bird ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the outer door to the kitchen caused him to jump ever so slightly and to cast a glance of inquiry at Annie, who altered her original course and moved toward the sitting-room door. In the kitchen a perfectly innocent skillet crashed into the sink with a vigour that was more than ominous. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... and ominous unrest, so much in evidence of late, is ample proof of a latent popular dissatisfaction with the conditions of life and it is equally significant of the prevailing nervous tension—the obvious result of malnutrition of the system—which is one of the most prominent popular features ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... settled down over sandy plain and distant mountain. The silence of midnight reigned over the lonely bivouac and the somber ranch, yet had not Blake given orders that every man must remain close to the horses throughout the evening, adventurous spirits from the troop could surely have heard the ominous whisperings within the corral and marked the stealthy glidings to and fro. At nine o'clock the famous roan was cautiously led forth from the gateway and close under the black shadow of the wall, and not until well beyond earshot of the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... reign of Justinian (531 A.D.). A remarkable comet was observed in 1106, and in 1456, the year in which the Turks obtained possession of Constantinople and threatened to overrun Europe, a great comet appeared, which was regarded by Christendom with ominous forebodings. The celebrated astronomer Halley was the first to predict the return of a comet. Having become acquainted with Newton's investigations, which showed that the forms of the orbits of comets were either parabolae or extremely elongated ellipses, he subjected the next great ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... was small, thin, and unwholesome looking; his red face, covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; and he had, moreover, a trick of continually scratching his right arm. A wig pushed to the back of his head displayed a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation. This person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a green leather cushion, assumed an agreeable expression, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... thou burst my chamber's bolted door Where guest unbidden never trod before? Break this suspense, so horrible and still! Declare thy tidings, be they good or ill, Be thou from Heaven or from the realms below. I charge thee speak, be thou a friend or foe; Break thou thy silence, ominous and deep, Or hence! Pursue thy way ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... mineral resources and planning out practicable railway routes. Within the capital city the French seem entrenched. A French post-office, a French hospital, French shops, hotels, missions, and above all the huge consulate, are there like advance posts of a greater invasion. There is an ominous look to these pretentious establishments holding strategic points in this or that debatable territory. Take the French consulates, here in Yunnan-fu and in Hoi-hou, or the Russian in Urga, the North ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... frightful dream— Tho' funny mayhap to wags 'twill seem, By all who regard the Church, like us, 'Twill be thought exceedingly ominous! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
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