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More "Unavailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regard for Messer Musciatto; and there it so happened that he fell sick. The two brothers forthwith placed physicians and servants in attendance upon him, and omitted no means meet and apt for the restoration of his health. But all remedies proved unavailing; for being now old, and having led, as the physicians reported, a disorderly life, he went daily from bad to worse like one stricken with a mortal disease. This greatly disconcerted the two brothers; and one day, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... were seized by the English. Some accounts state that Alexander went voluntarily towards Plymouth, others say that the Governor told him that if he did not go he was a dead man. But all accounts agree that he was soon violently sick, and that the efforts to relieve him were unavailing. He was allowed to return home and was borne away upon the shoulders of his faithful warriors. Hubbard says, "Such was the pride and height of his spirit, that the very surprisal of him so raised his choler and indignation, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... trembling, during which the sands of Richard Calmady's life ran very low, and his brain wandered in delirium, and he spoke unwittingly of many matters of which it was unprofitable to hear. Periods of unconsciousness, when he lay as one dead; periods of incessant utterance—now violent in unavailing repudiation, now harsh with unavailing remorse—alternated. And, at this juncture, much of Lady Calmady's former very valiant pride asserted itself. In tender jealousy for the honour of her beloved one she shut the door of that sick-room, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... hardship is specially worthy of attention. The bark Masonic, bound for Japan, entered Manila in distress, and is there sought to be confiscated under Spanish revenue laws for an alleged shortage in her transshipped cargo. Though efforts for her relief have thus far proved unavailing, it is expected that the whole matter will be adjusted in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... it, she never knew it." It is no wonder that Mr. Froude was compelled to write of Carlyle these sad words: "For many years after she had left him, when he passed the spot where she was last seen alive he would bare his gray head in the wind and rain, his features wrung with unavailing sorrow." ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst
... manoeuvering and of using his war chariots, their inferiority was marked. Cyaxares, now, if not previously, actual king, withdrew awhile from the war, and, convinced that all the valor of his Medes would be unavailing without discipline, set himself to organize the army on a new system, taking a pattern from the enemy, who had long possessed some knowledge of tactics. Hitherto, it would seem, each Median chief had brought into the field his band of followers, some mounted, some on foot, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... thine amid these pleasant plains, Know'st thou not, child, what surely coming pains Await thee, for that eager heart's annoy? Misunderstanding, disappointment, tears, Wronged love, spoiled hope, mistrust and ageing fears, Eternal longing for one perfect friend, And unavailing wishes ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... he got near enough to the water to let go he might yet be saved, but this would not be for some time at the present rate the balloon was falling. The performer realized this, and, as the fire was getting hotter, he made another desperate attempt to reach the parachute. It was unavailing and he had to drop back, hanging ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... times of terrible strain and stress, and we cannot easily fall back upon those sources of power which seem so distant and unavailing. I like to think of you as in our last talk in the Millers' drawing room, where you had a much better opportunity to express yourself than in the one that we later had out on the porch. You then seemed to live your thought and to have the capacity ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... been entertained. Yet, almost immediately after General Coke's departure Colonel Thorneycroft issued an order, without reference to superior authority, which upset the whole plan of operations, and rendered unavailing the sacrifices which had already been made to carry it into effect." In face of this severe, and in the author's judgment merited, condemnation, it would be less than just not to quote also Lord Roberts' further words. "Lieut.-Colonel ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... President was unwilling to resort; yet the necessity of doing something that did not transcend the law, was morally right, and would tend to the ultimate freedom of the slaves was felt to be an essential and indispensable duty. Unavailing but seductive appeals continued in the mean time to be made by the secessionists to the people of the border slave States to unite with the further South for the security and protection of slavery, in which they had a common interest, and against which ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Quite so. Though I dismiss Dark, unavailing reverie, I just hint, in parenthesis, There is no stupid calumny Born of a babbler in a loft And by the world repeated oft, There is no fishmarket retort And no ridiculous report, Which your true friend with a sweet smile Where fashionable circles meet A hundred times will not repeat, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Concerning the unavailing love borne to the Queen of Castile by a gentleman named Elisor, who in the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... children's ornaments, which they find at the entrance of wolves' dens. In every part of India, a great number of children are every day murdered for the sake of their ornaments, and the fearful examples that come daily to the knowledge of parents, and the injunctions of the civil authorities are unavailing against this desire to see their young children decked out in gold ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Warsaw. Nobody doubted that there was some connexion between the crime and the singular occurrence at the ball, although it was impossible to say what that connexion was. Every attempt to discover and apprehend the murderer proved unavailing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... rally her on her love of solitude. But he soon perceived this to be more a subject of concern than of light laughter, and, changing his manner, affectionately expostulated with Emily, on thus indulging unavailing regret; who, though she acknowledged the justness of all he said, could not restrain her tears, while she did so, and he presently quitted the topic. Expressing surprise at not having yet heard from his friend, the Advocate ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... city and the lives and fortunes of its inhabitants. The people in their darkened dwellings fell a prey to the helpless bewilderment which comes over men before the floods, the devastating upheavals of the earth, against which all wisdom and all force are unavailing. The same phenomenon occurs each time that the established order of things is overthrown, when public security is at an end, and when all that the laws of man or of nature protect is at the mercy of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... regret, the struggle and the failing! Oh the days desolate and useless years! Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing! Stings of my shame ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... play-games? Where the joyous troops Of children, and the haunts I did so love? 0 my companions! O ye loved names Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some: And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! I only am left, with unavailing grief One parent dead to mourn, and see one live Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate: Am left, with a few friends, and one above The rest, found faithful in a length of years, Contented as I may, to bear me on, T' the not unpeaceful evening of a day Made ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... imaginative character, inspired apparently by grief, love, or domestic feeling, rather than by the ruder passions of pride, anger, and revenge. Their music all has a wild, strange sound to a foreign ear, but it conveys to the mind in some way a sense of sorrow, and vague, unavailing regret for something that has for ever passed away, like the emotion excited by a funeral dirge over the grave of a dear friend. As Ossian says of the music of Carryl, "it is like the memory of joys that are past—sweet, yet mournful to the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... apace; one of the few remaining days was wholly occupied with preparations for the last. A final jaunt together was charged with a poignancy of unavailing regrets which made it a harder trial than the supreme moment. Never, never, had she thought this bright and intense living thing which she had made, so beautiful and so dear. Nor did it make a straw's worth of difference ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... would have held him back, but in that supreme moment of supernatural exaltation of courage he was strong as well as bold. As he would others should do for him so would he do for them. It was the thought of his wife and children that nerved him to such heroic, desperate effort, and alas, so unavailing! ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... obtain any thing belonging to his mistress, he imagined it of singular advantage, and deposited in the earth beneath the threshold of her door. Besides these, they had a variety of other methods equally ridiculous and unavailing, and of which it would be trifling to give a minute detail; we shall, therefore, just take notice as we go along, that such of either sex as believed themselves forced into love by the power of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Guy de Chauliac, who vindicated the honour of medicine, by bidding defiance to danger; boldly and constantly assisting the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who held the Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion justified flight. He saw the plague twice in Avignon, first in the year 1348, from January to August, and then twelve years later, in the autumn, when it returned from Germany, and for nine months spread general distress ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... given to understand that General Hull's insidious proclamation, herewith enclosed, has already been productive of considerable effect on the minds of the people. In fact, a general sentiment prevails, that with the present force resistance is unavailing. I shall continue to exert myself to the utmost to overcome every difficulty. Should, however, the communication between Kingston and Montreal be cut off, the fate of the troops in this part of the province will be decided. I now express my apprehensions ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... scaffold, he exprest anew his forgiveness of those who persecuted him, and a prayer that his deluded people might be benefited by his death. On the scaffold he attempted to speak, but the commanding officer, Santerre, ordered the drums to beat. The King made two unavailing efforts, but with the same bad success. The executioners threw him down, and were in such haste as to let fall the ax before his neck was properly placed, so that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to obtain any refuge from the storms of a tempestuous world; and the unceasing efforts of his young and affectionate sister to reconcile him to a bitter lot were not wholly unavailing. Summer had spread her richest treasures upon the lap of Nature; and the fairy hands of Beatrice transformed the bare walls of the dilapidated edifice which they inhabited into bowers of luxuriant foliage; the most delicious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... your opinion that, without altering the system of land tenure in Shetland, a system of cash payments would be unavailing to improve the condition of the people?-If no landlord and no tacksman under a landlord was in the fishery trade, then an improvement might be effected, but so long as landlords and tacksmen-who have power over the land sometimes to a much greater degree than the landlord himself ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Ah, the bitterness of unavailing regret, the anguish of compromise with conscience, the remorse of a bad deed done in a moment of excitement. Ah, the humiliation of detection, the degradation of being caught, caught like a schoolboy pilfering his fellows' desks, and, worse than all, worse ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... crushing burden of taxation, will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first time in history great reading and thinking communities ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... to suggest things that might be done to him. The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why should anything be ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... of such a commission much unwise and useless expenditure of money, waste of materials, and unavailing efforts might be avoided; and it is hoped that this or some measure which the wisdom of Congress may better devise to supply the deficiency of the present system may receive your consideration and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... in which this challenge to a possible burglar was uttered rendered it unavailing, for there was no reply; but that there was some one below who could reply Thaddeus was now convinced, for there were sounds in the library—sounds, however, suggestive of undue attention to domestic duties rather than of that which fate has mapped out for house-breakers. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... unto the teaching of Donran-Daishi, Doshaku-zenji, the Great Priest, thus declareth: "To toil and labour after righteous deeds in this life is the unavailing toil of self-effort." ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... sand. The work, when provided with guns and troops, commanded the passage, and was christened "le Fort de l'Aiguille." In vain did the Rochellois attempt to destroy or capture it; the carack, while it proved unavailing to prevent the entrance of an occasional vessel laden with grain or ammunition, remained the most formidable point in the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... confirm to their full extent the particulars of Sir William Macnaghten's fate, and of the fate of that remnant of gallant men who, on the faith of a capitulation, had evacuated that cantonment which they had defended with unavailing courage. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... be satisfied. Nevertheless he found it absolutely necessary to practise other expedients for allaying the ferment of that nation. His ministers and their agents bestirred themselves so successfully, that the heats in parliament were entirely cooled, and the outcry of the people subsided into unavailing murmurs. The parliament resolved, that in consideration of their great deliverance by his majesty, and as next, under God, their safety and happiness wholly depended on his preservation and that of his government, they would support both to the utmost of their power, and maintain such ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... in her mind she was continually fighting over again the battle of the trousers. Had she done right? Had she done wrong? And now she would applaud her determination; and anon, with a horrid flush of unavailing penitence, she would regret the trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of a remittance; they were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Maxwell Mainwaring had been drawn and executed as such on the night preceding his death, its intent and purpose being to reconvey to an elder son the family estate, to which he had previously forfeited all right and title; that efforts made to communicate with the beneficiary had proved unavailing, as he had left the country and his place of residence was unknown. Then followed Hugh Mainwaring's signature. At the bottom of the page, however, was a foot-note of much later date, which put a different complexion on the foregoing, and ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Ogden Hoffman sitting as associate. The trial came off September, 1856, and on the 23d of that month the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. Adjutant-General Kibbe, of the State militia, meantime made unavailing demand upon the Executive Committee for the arms. They were not returned to the State until after the ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... coruscated with a wild and savage fire, that shot from under brows knit in a spirit that deemed to cry out Blood, vengeance—blood, vengeance! The expression was truly awful; all what rendered it more terrific was the writhing reflection, that numbers and physical force were unavailing against a comparatively small body of armed troops. This condensed the fiery impulse of the moment into an expression of subdued rage, that really shot like livid gleams from ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... somersault was devoted to that operation. The superfluity went to the reservoir. So, also, when in his play of scaling imaginary rocks after fictitious wild beasts he endeavored futilely to walk up the play-room wall, the unavailing energy went to augment the stores from which Jarley hoped to extract so much that would prove of value ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... spent in festivity, in which Catherine was too ill to join. She retired to her chamber, not to give way to unavailing grief, but to fortify her mind against the worst. Mrs Hardman's duties as hostess could not be neglected, and she mixed with her guests with the dignified affability of former years. In watching her son's proceedings, she had frequent occasion to bewail a coarseness ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... should injure it in the violence of his insanity; but, terrified by the alteration of his features, stood transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my shoulder convulsively, and, striking his breast with the other hand, made a desperate attempt to articulate. It was unavailing; he extended his arm towards them, and made another violent effort. There was a rattling noise in the throat—a glare of the eye—a short stifled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... from under the wharf, and seized the unfortunate man by the leg, while his companions in the boat laid hold of his shoulders. The poor fellow called out to his friends, "Pull; hold on; don't let go"; but their utmost exertions were unavailing. The alligator proved the strongest, and carried off his prize. The scene was described to me by a bystander, who said, he could trace the monster's course all the way down the river with his victim ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... his feet, and walked up and down the beach. "Ah, you hide your feelings well," he cried, and his laughter was a trifle unconvincing and a bit angry. "But it is unavailing with me. I know! I know the sick and impotent hatred of me that is seething in your heart; and I feel for you the pity you pretend to entertain toward me. Yes, I pity you. But what would you have? Frankly, while in many ways an estimable man, you are no fit ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... On receipt of the first Brief he did not oblige Michael Angelo to return, hoping that the anger of the Pope would abate; but when a second and a third arrived, he called Michael Angelo to him and said: "You have braved the Pope as the King of France would not have done, therefore prayer is unavailing. We do not wish to go to war with him on your account and risk the State, so prepare yourself to return."(37) Michael Angelo, seeing it had come to this, and fearing the wrath of the Pope, thought of going to the Levant, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... intrigue which science has now become; of the disrepute into which we English must fall as a nation if such practices as Mr. Darwin had attempted in this case were to be tolerated;—when I thought of all this, I felt that though prayers for the repose of dead men's souls might be unavailing, yet a defence of their work and memory, no matter against what odds, might avail the living, and resolved that I would do my utmost to make my countrymen aware of the spirit now ruling among those whom they ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the third time when Tharald had thus protested his blamelessness, that his guest, feeling that reasoning was unavailing, let drop some rather commonplace remark about the culpability of all ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... subdued. Pyrrhus ought not, they said, to go away and leave them until their independence and freedom had been fully established. They remonstrated with him against his design, but their remonstrances proved wholly unavailing. ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... separated from the S.W. land, but by a narrower passage, and what had before been considered a continued coast, was now found to be a cluster of islands. Some agreeable appearances induced several attempts at landing, but they were unavailing, and only exposed those that made them to attacks from the natives, who seemed to concur with the natural difficulties around their islands, in preventing too near an approach. Bougainville bestowed the name of Archipelago ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... destruction of the project, and of the projectors, would quickly follow the discovery. It has been said that the provision which limits the appropriation of money for the support of an army to the period of two years would be unavailing, because the Executive, when once possessed of a force large enough to awe the people into submission, would find resources in that very force sufficient to enable him to dispense with supplies from the acts of the legislature. But the question again recurs, upon what pretense could he be put ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the doctor said, that the first paroxysm of grief should have full vent. All attempts at comfort and consolation were unavailing. I raised her from the ground, and when she saw my face ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... himself was threatened. "If you will be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall die" (one form of the legend of Rome's first king represented him as having been torn to pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was unavailing. The new command was created, and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The price of corn, which had risen to a famine height in Rome, fell immediately the appointment was made. The result, indeed, amply justified the choice. The new general made short work of the task ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... solemn companionship he saw all that he had been blind to for so many years. Then he understood what it must be to sit in the silent halls of eternal despair, and count over and over the wasted blessings of love and endure the agony of unavailing repentance. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... shall kill myself. Could I twine, to gratify my friends, a laurel with the cypress I would not repine; but to sacrifice the little inward peace which the wreck of passion has left behind, and relinquish every hope of future excellence and future usefulness in one wild and unavailing pursuit, were indeed a madman's act, and worthy ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... aware that this protest will be altogether unavailing with the majority of this body. The blow has already fallen, and we are compelled to stand by, the mournful spectators of the ruin ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... not a patch of grass was seen. The character of these islanders is of the most savage kind; their ferocity led to the belief that they are cannibals; one seaman of the expedition was carried off, and all attempts to rescue him were unavailing. Clad in coats of mail, and helmets made of the skin of a horny kind of fish, with weapons of the most frightful character, formed from the teeth of some of the voracious monsters of the deep, they appeared to the number of more than five hundred, prepared for resistance; their numbers continuing ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... swept—with all other and meaner beliefs and hopes—faith in the higher Selfhood and its immortal Life. The Soul must perish! Despair seizes the Mind of man. For some time he resists the cruel demand; he produces argument after argument, appeal after appeal. All are unavailing. Why should the Soul be respected where nothing else is spared? Forced into surrender, the Mind at last yields up his best-beloved. Life is no more worth living now; black death and despair confront him; he cares no longer to be ruler over a miserable kingdom bereft of its fairest treasure, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... efforts at discipline were unavailing. The speckled chicken surreptitiously introduced under the yellow hen's hovering wings, enjoyed the briefest possible period of maternal protection. Before Peggy could get back into the house, the yellow hen was chasing him all around the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... unavailing search among Robert Turold's papers for proofs of his statement about his marriage. The lawyer believed that they existed, and his failure to find them brought with it a belated realization of the fact that he, too, had been cherishing hopes of Sisily's innocence. It was the memory ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... time allowing us to cherish the joyful hope of receiving, in all humility, further undeserved gifts from the same hands—where is there any giver like that, unless it be Chance? who understands the kingly art of showing the recipient that all merit is powerless and unavailing against the ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... result, it did not alter the fact that her mind was distracted by tumult. The divers perplexities and questionings that had troubled her with the oncoming of the year now assailed her with increased force. She tried to repress them, but, finding the effort unavailing, attempted to fathom their significance, with the result of increasing her distress. The only tangible fact she could seize from the welter in her mind was a sense of enforced isolation from the joys and sorrow of everyday humanity. More than this she could ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Disinherited Knight repeatedly endeavoured to single out each other, spurred by mutual animosity. Such, however, was the crowd and confusion that, during the earlier part of the conflict, their efforts to meet were unavailing. But when the field became thin, by the numbers on either side who had yielded themselves vanquished or had been rendered incapable of continuing the strife, the Templar and the unknown knight at length encountered, hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honour, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... illness, and the remedies which he used, under the title of Aegri Ephemeris, which he began on the 6th of July, but continued it no longer than the 8th of November; finding, I suppose, that it was a mournful and unavailing register. It is in my possession; and is written with great care ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... moment; and, as their capital was already taxed to its utmost, it was plain that unless a better process should be speedily discovered, they must become involved in irretrievable disaster. Their efforts were unavailing, however. No better process was found, and the disgust of the public with their goods was soon general and unmitigable. India-rubber stock fell rapidly, and by the end of the year 1836 there was not a solvent company in the Union. The loss of the stockholders was complete, and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bear himself that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush for him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason, too, should have told him that lamentation and supplication would be unavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He was in the grasp ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pestilence of 1637 was much more severe than those periodical afflictions by which the Indians were visited. Virulent smallpox was a feature of the plague, and the pious offices of priests and the incantations of the medicine-men alike proved unavailing. Clearly, some black spell had been cast upon the nation. First it was ascribed to a serpent, then to a spotted frog, then to a demon in the muskets of the French. The Jesuits were accused of compassing ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... men for an instant, and then, with a growl of convulsed, expiring rage, plunged into the water, and, seizing the largest cur, crushed him to death. Ringwood and Jowler, whose sagacity had hitherto led them to keep in some measure aloof, knowing their efforts would be unavailing against so powerful an enemy without the fatal aim of their master, now sprang forward to the rescue, both seizing the prostrate foe by the throat. But he could not be made to relinquish his victim, nor did he make resistance. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... foemen Camped upon a Scottish field; I had mourned thee hadst thou perished With the foremost of his name, When the valiant and the noble Died around the dauntless Graeme. But I will not wrong thee, husband! With my unavailing cries, Whilst thy cold and mangled body, Stricken by the traitor, lies; Whilst he counts the gold and glory That this hideous night has won, And his heart is big with triumph At the murder he has done. Other eyes than mine shall glisten, Other hearts be rent in twain, ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... and all the artful questions put to the young Spaniard, who played croquet with the girls, were unavailing. Nothing was discovered, except that little Mirandola had a title, and might be sent back to Spain any day to lose his life or liberty in some rash plot, which circumstance made the black-eyed boy doubly interesting to the free-born ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... circulates. He even computed elements for the nearer of the two, and fixed its place on the celestial sphere;[1146] but the photographic searches made for it by Dr. Roberts at Crowborough and by Mr. Wilson at Daramona proved unavailing. Undeterred by Deichmueller's discouraging opinion that cometary orbits extending beyond the recognised bounds of the solar system are too imperfectly known to serve as the basis of trustworthy conclusions,[1147] the Edinburgh Professor returned to the attack in 1901.[1148] He now sought ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... table was the unfailing prelude to every meal. His hired man, Bill Taylor, an unconverted and impatient youth, had fallen into the evil habit of commencing his meal before the blessing thereon had been fully invoked. The frown and rebuke of the good deacon were alike unavailing in effecting the desired reform. Righteously indignant thereat, the deacon, in a spirit possibly not the most devout, at length gave utterance to this petition, 'For what we are about to receive, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters (probably another ruse of Pope's) formed an additional ground for urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... rolling now here, now there, obstructed the view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The soldiers, too, unaccustomed to the perils of the sea, in their alarm embarrassed the mariners, or, helping them awkwardly, rendered unavailing the services of the skilful. After this, the whole expanse of air and sea was swept by a southwest wind, which, deriving strength from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers, and boundless tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigor of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Madame St. Aubert, and he now admitted a presentiment, that this illness would be a fatal one. But he effectually concealed this from her, and from his daughter, whom he endeavoured to re-animate with hopes that her constant assiduities would not be unavailing. The physician, when asked by St. Aubert for his opinion of the disorder, replied, that the event of it depended upon circumstances which he could not ascertain. Madame St. Aubert seemed to have ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... purchaser. Probably to facilitate transportation, the boy removed his hat and placed the pot obliquely on the back part of his head, but a sudden movement caused it to slip forward and downward over the head. Unavailing efforts were made at the time and after he reached home, to remove the pot from his head, but in vain, and he continued all the night greatly prostrated by fright, hunger, and thirst, together with the efforts at removal. The next morning ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... fulsome.' To most it will seem a delightful extravagance. To contemporaries the extravagance itself would appear not very glaring. Elizabeth aroused both fascination and awe in her own period which justified high flights. After her goodness and wrath were become alike unavailing this is how a cynic like Harington spoke of her: 'When she smiled it was a pure sunshine that every one did choose to bask in if they could; but anon came a storm, and the thunder fell in wondrous manner on all alike.' Ralegh doubtless ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and the master of the ship having weighed anchor, hoisted sail and departed: the lady in vain entreating him to wait the return of her beloved, or send her on shore, for he was captivated with her beauty. Finding herself thus ensnared, as she was a woman of strong mind, instead of indulging in unavailing complaint, she assumed a satisfied air; and as the only way to preserve her honour, received the addresses of the treacherous master with pretended complacency, and consented to receive him as a husband at the first port at which the ship might touch. With these assurances he was contented, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... injunctions that none of his family should go to meet the procession; but M. Lajetchnikoff knows that all such orders are unavailing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... she said, or what de Crucis answered, he could never afterward recall. He had a confused sense of having cried out a last unavailing protest, faintly, inarticulately, like a man struggling to make himself heard in a dream; then the room grew dark about him, and in its stead he saw the old chapel at Donnaz, with its dimly-gleaming ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... finances. The hour for saving had passed. The imperious necessities of war take no heed of economic principles. The work which the secretary had done became as the rope of sand. It is not surprising that Gallatin wearied of his post; that he watched with vain regret and unavailing sighs the unavoidable increase of the national debt, and that he sought relief in other services where success was not so evanescent as in the Treasury Department. Before the close of Madison's administration, February 12, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... happened to him, his brother's fury would fall on them. They stated their readiness to assault the place; but in case Budrudeen insisted on leading in person, they must decline accompanying him. Budrudeen was angry, I was angry too, and the doctor most angry of all; but anger was unavailing: it was clear they did not intend to do anything in earnest; and after much discussion, in which Budrudeen insisted that if I went he should likewise go, and the Malays insisted that if he went they would not go, it ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... one of the Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, by whom he was left under the impression that the words of warning he had been instructed to speak to the Austro-Hungarian Government had not been unavailing, and that the note which was being drawn up would be found to contain nothing with which a self-respecting State need hesitate to comply. At the second of these interviews he was not even informed that the note was at that very moment being presented ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... back in his chair frowning. Washington was not a large city, yet under certain circumstances she could be lost in it—and stay lost, with all the efforts of the police quite unavailing to find her. It seemed improbable that she had been abducted; as Ranleigh had said, they had nothing to gain from her. She could neither advance their plans nor hinder them; she was purely a negative quantity. Spencer might be striking at him through Mrs. Clephane, ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... twenty skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through the apertures, until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphorae for the prolongation of agonized life. The sand, consolidated by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Accordingly, the Lutheran Church has the mission to lead the way in the efforts at healing the ruptures of Christendom. But in order to do so, the Lutheran Church must be loyal to herself, loyal to her principles, and true to her truths. The mere Lutheran name is unavailing. The American Lutheran synods, in order successfully to steer a unity-union movement, must purge themselves thoroughly from the leaven of error, of indifferentism and unionism. A complete and universal return to the Lutheran symbols is the urgent ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... here many invaluable relics of Ptolemaic arts were unearthed. The results of researches were published at this date bearing upon the Great Pyramid. Accurate measurements had been undertaken by Professor Petrie, who was able to prove that during one epoch systematic but unavailing efforts had been made to destroy these ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... "necessary and proper" clause was a restrictive clause, meant to safeguard the rights of the States, that a law in order to be "necessary and proper" must be both "necessary" AND "proper," and that both terms ought to be construed narrowly. Jefferson's opposition, however, proved unavailing, and the banking institution which was created continued till 1811 without its validity being once tested ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the ground:— And he who thus has borne his part assigned In the sad fellowship of human kind, Or for a moment soothed the bitter pain Of a poor brother, has not lived in vain! But 'tis not that Compassion should bestow An unavailing tear on want or woe: Lo! fairer Order rises from thy plan, Befriending virtue, and adorning man. 110 That Comfort cheers the dark abode of pain, Where wan Disease prayed for relief in vain; That Mercy soothes ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... similar misfortunes, they gave each other the tender names of companion, friend, sister. They had but one will, one interest, one table. All their possessions were in common. And if sometimes a passion more ardent than friendship awakened in their hearts the pang of unavailing anguish, a pure religion, united with chaste manners, drew their affections towards another life: as the trembling flame rises towards heaven, when it no longer ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... misery he endured more than avenged the wrongs he inflicted; and, while admiring the productions of a genius, of which even his enemies could not deny him the possession, we are more than ever compelled to avow how unavailing is this glorious gift to confer happiness on its owner, or to secure him respect or esteem, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... summoned. Major Thornhill, with a few companies of the 21st Regiment, was sent to support the Landrost in arresting the rioters, and special constables were enrolled to assist him in restoring order. But these united exertions were unavailing. All attempts to carry out the arrests were openly set at defiance. This scene occurred on the 11th of November 1880. On the 26th Sir George Colley—who had relieved Sir Garnet Wolseley as Commander-in-Chief—was applied to for more troops. Sir George, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the spirits was next dwelt upon. The strength of man, it was stated, was unavailing in opposition to theirs. No human power could prevent the table from moving when they pulled it. During the evening this pulling of the table occurred, or rather was attempted, three times. Twice the table moved when my attention ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... prisoner; and the law would have borne him out in the act. I saw, I comprehended the whole. I groped, as far as I could without letting my wife drop, for my pistols; but all that I could do would have been unavailing, and too late—she would have been murdered in my arms. But—and that was what none of us saw— neither I, nor Pierpoint, nor the hound Manasseh—one person stood back in the shade; one person had seen, but had not uttered a word on seeing Manasseh advancing ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... firmest holding ground. Science will tell us that by working with the great forces that move the world, we may contribute some fragment to an edifice which will not be broken down; that to think for others instead of limiting our hopes to our petty interests is the best remedy for unavailing regret. We can take our part in the long warfare of man against the world, which is nothing else but the gradual accommodation of the race to the conditions of its dwelling-place. By so disciplining our thoughts that we may fight ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... friend was providing herself with a weight of cares, that she would soon find infinitely too much for her strength to bear—she would have reasoned with her, but all her arguments had long since proved unavailing. She wished to speak to Lord Elmwood upon the subject, and (unknown to her) plead her excuse; but he apprehended Miss Woodley's intention, and evidently shunned her. Mr. Sandford was now the only person to whom she could speak of Miss Milner, and the delight ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... world, the windows had been carefully nailed down above, and the lower sashes could only be raised in the mildest weather, for the men lay just below. I had suggested a summary smashing of a few panes here and there, when frequent appeals to headquarters had proved unavailing, and daily orders to lazy attendants had come to nothing. No one seconded the motion, however, and the nails were far beyond my reach; for, though belonging to the sisterhood of "ministering angels," I had no wings, and might as well have asked for Jacob's ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... suffereth long, but is kind. "It is benign, bountiful, courteous, and obliging." But why did the apostle couple these two dispositions together? "Charity suffereth long, AND IS KIND." Evidently, because long-suffering without kindness would be unavailing. If you bear with the injuries or supposed offences of another, and yet suffer your mind to be soured, and your kind offices remitted, the wound will corrode and inflame, till it breaks out with tenfold violence. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... The search was unavailing. No sight was gained of the buckskin pouch, while every stool in the room was upright ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... simple cordiality which leaves no doubt of a sincere welcome. The common remark was, "How well you are looking, Mr. Van Quintem!" And it was very true. Few men at seventy could show a figure so straight, cheeks so smooth, and an eye so bright. The unavailing sorrow which tenanted his heart two years before, had gradually disappeared. From the hour that his son fled abashed from his presence, he had not seen or heard of him, and had at last come to regard him as dead—though the old gentleman could not have ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... working in her mind, and they showed their nature on her astute brow; she was meditating some CHEF D'OEUVRE of policy. Convinced by several months' experience that the affectation of virtues she did not possess was unavailing to ensnare me—aware that I had read her real nature, and would believe nothing of the character she gave out as being hers—she had determined, at last, to try a new key, and see if the lock of my heart would yield to ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... country, that Romans accepted no conditions from enemies in arms. The Gauls might, if they pleased, send a deputation to Caesar, and hear what he would say to them. For himself, he had no authority to listen to them. Force and treachery being alike unavailing, they resolved to starve Cicero out. They had watched the Roman strategy. They had seen and felt the value of the entrenchments. They made a bank and ditch all round the camp, and, though they had no tools but their swords with which to dig turf ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and regardful of the views and business interests of the numerically weak but financially strong minority of Democrats, and by supporting a compromise ticket that gave most prominence to the minority sought to preserve harmony. But the efforts of such men have proved unavailing to stem the tide of political usurpation, now rampant at many ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... her? For the hundredth time he asked himself that question, for amid these hectic surroundings that first haunting suggestion of familiarity had become more pronounced. But patient delving into the dark corners of his memory was unavailing, and her conversation afforded ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... faithful prophet were all unavailing either to silence his voice or to avert the calamities which his warnings portended. At the appointed time, the judgments which had been so long predicted came in all their terrible reality. The Babylonians invaded the land in great force, and encamped about the city. The ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... out, we were fed—by the milk of a wolf, and the morsels of a woodpecker, as we lay in a little trough by the side of the river. The trough is still in being, and is preserved, with brass plates round it, and an inscription in letters almost effaced, which may prove hereafter unavailing tokens to our parents when we are dead and gone." Numitor, upon these words, and computing the dates by the young man's looks, slighted not the hope that flattered him, but considered how to come at his daughter privately (for she was still kept under restraint), ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the most raised expectations; and its objects were pursued by them with untiring zeal and unsparing self-devotedness, through continual hindrances. The opposition which they met was encountered with "all long-suffering and patience;" but their best efforts were unavailing; "and their mission closed, too speedily, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... set him thinking again. So we went "ashore," and had a nightcap at the Magpie, where the flippant youth was announcing to an admiring circle that if he had half a dozen pals to go with him he wouldn't mind joining the army himself! Having scoured the village in an unavailing attempt to round up half a pound of butter, we put off down stream, and spent the night in the beautiful backwater. No one suggested cards after supper, and we lay long into the night discussing, as thousands of other people ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... some expression in the treatise, he learned that the allegorical drawings on the fourth and fifth leaves, enshrined the secret of the philosopher's stone, without which all the fine Latin of the directions was utterly unavailing. He invited all the alchymists and learned men of Paris to come and examine them, but they all departed as wise as they came. Nobody could make anything either of Nicholas or his pictures; and some even went so far as to say that his invaluable book was not worth a farthing. This was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... subject. It was for want of seeing things in their proper light, and putting them in their proper shape before their hearers and readers, that made their efforts to keep people from doubt and unbelief unavailing. They, in truth, made unbelief or infidelity to consist in something in which it did not consist, and made people think they were infidels when they were no such thing. If they had given up all that was erroneous with regard to the Bible, and undertaken the defence of nothing but what was true, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no employment not connected with those sufferings. Forcibly to turn away our attention to other subjects is a painful and in general an unavailing effort. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the lads were unavailing. Gruenwold was determined in his decision. Ned's explanation of the presence of the blood in the vessel was listened to, but without ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a different original. He was refined and urbane; of a casuistical and prying disposition; like many sensitive men, unduly preoccupied with the sexual life of youth; like a true feudal aristocrat, ever ready to apply force where verbal admonition proved unavailing. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... if I shall fail to be of service to thee. Then will I turn quickly homeward, and busy myself with mine own anxieties.' So the man returned from him too empty-handed and baulked at every turn; and he cried misery on himself for his vain hope in those ungrateful friends, and the unavailing hardships that he had endured through love of them. At the last he went away to the third friend, whom he had never courted, nor invited to share his happiness. With countenance ashamed and downcast, he said unto him, 'I can scarce open my lips to speak with ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... of intensest suffering. One is an enraged tiger, the other a wounded lion. Both are maddened—the one with wrath, the other with pain. But in the last act, with the unutterable anguish of its closing scenes—the swift remorse, the unavailing agony of that noble nature, too late undeceived, the wild, pathetic tenderness wherewith Othello clasped the dead Desdemona to his heart, smoothing back her loosened tresses with an inarticulate cry of almost superhuman love and woe—the horror of the catastrophe was all swallowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... weakness is a matter of a degree, and in its lowest grades shades into insanity, the state wherein motives have lost their usual power—when pleasure and pain cease to be apprehended by the mind in their proper character. At this point, punishment is unavailing; the moral inability has passed into something like physical inability; the loss of self-control is as complete as if the muscles ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... known her sentiments to him, and thus to open the way. She did so; but she found, unhappy maiden, that Brihtric did not feel, himself, the love which he had inspired in her, and all the efforts and arts to which she was impelled by the instinct of affection proved wholly unavailing to call it forth. Brihtric, after fulfilling the object of his mission, took leave of Matilda coldly, while her heart was almost breaking, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... or properly accredited—they treated with an even more pronounced disdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete. But the utmost precautions are sometimes unavailing; and one night at Botzen one of the two English ladies in the room across the passage (whose names, dress and social situation were already intimately known to Janey) had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs. Archer had a bottle of liniment. The other lady—the intruder's ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... time to time, protests, unavailing however, against the tyranny of the opera-managers. In his "Seven Years of the King's Theatre" (1828), Mr. Ebers publishes the remonstrance of a gentleman refused admission to the opera on the score of his imperfect costume, much to his amazement; "for," ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... to London in a state of extreme mental and emotional unrest. The sight of Lady Harman had restored all his passion for her, the all too manifest fact that she was receding beyond his reach stirred him with unavailing impulses towards some impossible extremity of effort. She had filled his mind so much that he could not endure the thought of living without hope of her. But what hope was there of her? And he was jealous, detestably jealous, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... acts and harmless joys The minutes will not stay; We 've always time to welcome them To-day, my love, to-day. But care, resentment, angry words, And unavailing sorrow Come far too soon, if they appear To-morrow, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... had scruples on this point, but M. Delacour overruled my scruples. Your objection is answered by the theory that individual sacrifice is unavailing: indeed, it is as useless as giving charity, quite. A case of intense suffering is brought under the notice of a bourgeois; it awakens in him a certain hysterical pity, or, I should say, remorse, for he feels that a system that permits such things ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... her answer, had fallen senseless at the wicket. Rosina was present at the narration; her heart told her who it was; also told her that I had not been faithless. Joy at my fidelity, and grief at her own precipitancy, which rendered it unavailing, overpowered her, and she was led to her cell in a state as ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their heels, and Moylan, picking up the wounded officer, brought him to a place of safety. He was made a sergeant on the spot by the Colonel, but all efforts to obtain the Cross for this gallant fellow were unavailing. In those days the distinction was but seldom given; probably so many names were submitted for the General's consideration that only a few could be approved, and the application ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... DUNTAXAT UNA LITERA, one Letter," and little more, "the said King of Borussia has, with about 2,000 horse and foot, and warlike engines, in this month of September, entered the Territory of Liege;" [Helden-Geschichte, ii. 88.] which is an undeniable truth, but an unavailing. Borck is there, and "2,000 good arguments with him," as Voltaire defines the phenomenon. Friedrich, except to explain pertinently what my readers already know, does not write or speak farther on the subject; and readers and he may consider the Herstal Affair, thus ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... very painful and affecting in the situation of the beautiful wounded dove. Even Mr. Sinclair himself, in witnessing its unavailing struggles, felt as much; nor were the other two girls unaffected any more than Jane herself. Their eyes became filled with tears, and Maria, the eldest, said, "It is better, Jane, to return home. ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... were unavailing. Even when the platoon was paraded and every man's rifle examined ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... fell transgression ravaged here And reft Man's garden-joys away, He weeps his unavailing tear, And straggles, like ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... troops. She lavished presents upon her officers, and in high-sounding phrase harangued the soldiers; but there was not a private in the ranks who did not know that she was a wicked and a polluted woman. She had talent, but no soul. All her efforts were unavailing to evoke one single electric spark of emotion. She had sense enough to perceive her signal failure and to feel its mortification. No one either loved or respected Catharine. Thousands hated her, yet, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... were protests: one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man could refrain from declamation under a grievance; but with such impervious skulls and thick hides protests would be unavailing. The mischief was done: he was numbered amongst the rebels, the lost souls, the unhappy beings who dared to have notions of their own. He neglected his studies and sought refuge in his drama. I wonder if he found, or made, an opportunity ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the chief: his unavailing prayer Great Jove refused, and toss'd in empty air: The God averse, while yet the fumes arose, Prepared new toils, and doubled woes on woes. Their prayers perform'd the chiefs the rite pursue, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... exactly a Corsair, as he was great in authority over the London police,—but a powerful, fine fellow, who would know what to do with swords and pistols as well as any Corsair;—and one, too, no doubt, who would understand poetry! Any such dream, however, was altogether unavailing, as the major had a wife at home and seven children. "If you will only tell me what to do, I will do it," she said, looking up into his face with entreaty, and pressing ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I not give to see you? Oh, this fearful curse of poverty! I must find some means of escape from my difficulties, or go mad. I cannot live without you. I have planned a thousand impossible schemes, which I have been obliged to abandon as unavailing. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... better, who hoped to keep them straight. Euphrosyne protested that it was impossible to get home, to pack up their goods: and even if they were at home, there was no time to do it properly. When she found all her objections of this class unavailing, she gravely said that she fully believed what her grandfather had just declared—that he would die before they had been a week at sea; and nothing, therefore, should make her consent to go. A compromise was at length agreed upon. Euphrosyne promised to enter the convent, if her grandfather ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... been at work here, as at Panama, and wire gauze and the kerosene spray had captured the first trenches of yellow fever and malaria, and against these weapons of the medico all counter-attacks have been unavailing. Some strong hand was ruling in this town, for the streets were spotless and the dogs lean. And, oh, how the nigger does hate cleanliness! Evidently this town was free in a real sense because well disciplined. We were told that all the white people lived up on the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... futile, shadowy, unsatisfying, baseless, idle, trifling, unserviceable, bootless, inconstant, trivial, unsubstantial, deceitful, ineffectual, unavailing, useless, delusive, nugatory, unimportant, vapid, empty, null, unprofitable, visionary, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... thy flame? Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee, Or threats thy Heaven born spirit tame? Or threats thy Heaven born spirit tame? Too long the slave has groaned bewailing The power these heartless tyrants wield; Yet free them not by sword or shield, For with men's heart's they're unavailing, Have pity on the slave: Take courage from God's word; Vote on! vote on! all hearts resolved—these ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... the sea which frequently pass over these banks, and it is to be regretted that we had none to plant upon them. A cluster of these majestic and useful palms would have been an excellent beacon to warn mariners of their danger; and in the case where darkness might render them unavailing in this respect, their fruit would at least afford some salutary nourishment to the shipwrecked seamen. The navigator who should distribute ten thousand cocoa nuts amongst the numerous sand banks of the Great Ocean and Indian Sea, would be entitled to the gratitude of all maritime ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... of this sportful proposal appealed to them at once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their guns when he would have interfered to stay the execution ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... themselves doomed and the leadership of the Germans given to the Christian Socialists. None of the representatives of the curia system fought so tenaciously for their privileges as did the German nominees of the curia of large landed proprietors. Their opposition proved unavailing. The emperor frowned repeatedly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of desperate resolve seemed to have reawakened within him at the sound of that long-hoped-for train and Pee-wee was no more to him than an insect to have his life trampled out if he could not be used or if his use were unavailing. Here, unmasked, was the man who had braved the tempestuous river on that dreadful night. Truly, as the sheriff had said, "desperate characters ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... in India, in which they all bore testimony to the excellent character, high abilities, and important services of the late governor-general. All the exertions of the friends of Hastings, however, proved unavailing. At a late hour Pitt delivered his authoritative opinion; and he having declared that it was impossible for him to vote against the motion, and that the house could no otherwise consult its own honour, its duty to the country, and the ends of public justice than by sending ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... coward, who fear not to face willingly in combat anything natural, would, in certain circumstances, trust to swift flight for your protection. Very well, my Lord, you are now confronted with something against which your stout arm is as unavailing as it would be if an apparition stood in your path. There is before you the spectre of subtlety. Use arm instead of brain, and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... words, and unavailing, Swift she threaded through the quire, And with arms outstretch'd, unquailing Leap'd into the crackling fire. But the deed alone sufficeth— Robed in might and majesty, From the pile the god ariseth With the ransom'd one on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... This consolation, however, proved unavailing at the time, and Specht, indignant at the treachery of his opponent, enjoyed at least the mournful satisfaction of having the whole counting-house on his side, and hearing Pix universally condemned as a hard-hearted, selfish fellow. But time gradually poured ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... efforts were unavailing. I told her so, and that all hopes of happiness for me in this world were ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... volition actuates the system, but not without the counteraction of unavailing smaller ones; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of the pure in heart. One child she bore,—Eumelus,—and he throve. Yet none the less because they sacrificed The firstlings of their flocks and fruits and flowers, Did trouble come; for sickness seized the king. Alcestis watched with many-handed love, But unavailing service, for he lay With languid limbs, despite his ancient strength Of sinew, and his skill with spear and sword. His mother came, Clymene, and with her His father, Pheres: his unconscious child They brought ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Abraham, was in the act of passing away, confessing that God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones at the water's edge; and demanding that those who would enter the Kingdom must be born from above, of water and of the Spirit. It was the outward and visible sign that Judaism was unavailing for the deepest needs of the spirit of man, and that a new and more spiritual system was about to take its place, and Christ said, in effect, "I, too, though King, obey the law of the Kingdom, and bow my head, that, by the same sign as the smallest of my subjects, I ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... luxurious, affected, foolish, and disingenuous; unworthy, in short, to be mentioned in the same breath with those who have preceded them, and have left to their degenerate successors a brilliant but unavailing example of youthful conduct. These diatribes may or may not be founded to some extent in truth. At the best, however, their truth is only a half-truth. So long as the world endures, it is probable that young men will have a large allowance of follies, of affectations, of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... and the ever-increasing points of divergence had so estranged the different churches that the labors of Calixtus to unite them proved unavailing. His influence was lessened because of the disputes into which his bold undertaking led him. But he quickened national thought, turned theologians to looking deeper into the Scriptures than had been the practice since the Reformation, and established the difference between the essential and non-essential ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the Reverend HENRY BURROWES, was sitting in his comfortable rooms in the Great Court. He had, for reasons of his own, decided to spend the Christmas Vacation in Cambridge. His bed-maker, Mrs. JOGGINS, had entered a mild protest, but it been unavailing. Mr. BURROWES was a man of forbidding aspect and of unbending character. During the five years that he had held his office, he had enforced discipline at the point of the bayonet, as it were, and he boasted with pardonable pride that he had broken the spirit of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... the correct use of the breathing apparatus determines the question of success or failure; for without mastery of the motive power all else is unavailing. For a voice user, therefore, the first requisite is a well-developed chest, the second, complete control ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... would wish to lead a wrong course of life? "No one." Who would live deceived, erring, unjust, dissolute, discontented, dejected? "No one." No wicked man, then, lives as he likes; therefore no such man is free. And who would live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, with disappointed desires and unavailing aversions? "No one." Do we then find any of the wicked exempt from these evils? "Not one." Consequently, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before one of the children danced across ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Prince Alexis, and the protection of the sacred amulet, were alike unavailing. The babe sickened, wasted away, and died in less than two months after its birth. There was great and genuine sorrow among the serfs of Kinesma. Each had received a shining ruble of silver at the christening; and, moreover, they were now beginning to appreciate the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... magnanimity, astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. BOSWELL. In The Spectator, No. 436, Hockley in the Hole is described as 'a place of no small renown for the gallantry of the lower order of Britons.' Fielding mentions it in Jonathan Wild, bk. i. ch. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... in my zeal to serve you, I hazard your displeasure. Think of your wretched state. Already want surrounds you. Is it in patience to bear That? To see your helpless little one robbed of his birth-right? A sister too, with unavailing tears, lamenting her lost fortune? No comfort left you, but ineffectual pity from the Few, out-weighed ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... known to sportsmen. In years to come, when the lines of communication are better and tourist hotels are established on its banks, the river may then begin to conform to the qualifications of a conventional fishing stream, and then Ben's crude tackle will be unavailing. But at present the salmon were not so particular. As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman's ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... that a trap had been laid for me, and the vexation of knowing that I had fallen into it, fortunately restrained me from making my position still worse by an unavailing struggle with two men, one of whom would, in all probability, have been more than a match for me single-handed. I repressed the first natural movement by which I had attempted to shake them off, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble, telling of the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... with lightning swiftness through the neighbourhood and to Warsaw. Nobody doubted that there was some connexion between the crime and the singular occurrence at the ball, although it was impossible to say what that connexion was. Every attempt to discover and apprehend the murderer proved unavailing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... degradation, a share in the dominion which manhood has in Christ attained, for though we see not yet all things put under Him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. It prophesies, too, His final victory over all that sets itself in unavailing antagonism to His love. It points us backward to an historical fact as the basis of all our hopes for ourselves and for our fellows, giving us the assurance that the world's deliverance will come from the slow operation of the forces already lodged in its history by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of delegates, priests, and augurs having proved unavailing, that of women was next sought. A noble lady, Valeria by name, who with other suppliants had sought the Temple of Jupiter, was inspired by a sudden thought, which seemed sent by the god himself. Rising, and bidding the other noble ladies to accompany her, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... soul out of her body with its despairing quavers. Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was departing ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... friendship—the desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion—anything but love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of his life to her. She is sure of that—but always it would be a life filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... chase, an unavailing one, he believed, only because the game used quite unfair tactics of concealment, he remembered the shell. A longing for possession seized him. It was more than that. The thing was already his; had always been his. Yet he foresaw complications. His ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... knowledge admitted, with the exclusion of other truths equally indispensable to be known, may not only be unavailing, but may in effect lend force to destructive error, is dreadfully illustrated in the final catastrophe of that favored guilty nation. They were in possession of the one important point of knowledge, that a Messiah was to come. They held this assurance not ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... those should know no kisses, that eyes like those should never swim in love! What robbery! What crime! And this man, thief of this woman's life, felt his heart pinch again in the old, sharp anguish of remorse, bitterest because unavailing. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... unbidden, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet that veiled face, I know Is lit with pitying eyes, Like those faint stars, the first to glow Through cloudy winter skies. That they may never tire, Angels, by God's decree, Bear wings of snow and fire, — Passion and purity; Save one, all unavailing, (The Prophet saith), His wings are gray and trailing, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet the souls that Azrael brings Across the dark and cold, Look up beneath those folded wings, And find them ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... recommended as a routine procedure. There are reasons, however, which may be urged against its continuance. High amputation is unnecessary in the more benign sarcomas, and in the more malignant forms is usually unavailing to prevent a fatal issue either from local recurrence or from metastases in the lungs or elsewhere. Following the lead of Mikulicz, a considerable number of permanent cures have been obtained by resecting ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... knew it to be an old-fashioned ailment known as heart-break—the result of disappointment, want of affection, and over-work. The old bitterness gripped the organ of life then; it brought me to my knees. I tried to call out, but it was unavailing. Sharp, fiendish pain, and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... which boasts of its popular education, that the Sequoia, a race 10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the United States, with individual trees older than the entire history and civilization of Greece, that an appeal to the American people was unavailing, that the finest grove was cut up for lumber, fencing, shingles, and boxes! It must not be recorded that races of animals representing stocks 3,000,000 years of age, mostly developed on the American continent, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... be calm. It is my situation, it is confinement, the bars I see and the bolts I hear that inspire these gloomy thoughts. They are unfounded, and certainly unavailing—He may have escaped! He may at this instant be in search of me! Hurrying, enquiring, despairing, and distracted; in much deeper distress than I am: for were I but sure of his safety, I could almost defy misfortune! Let not the world lose him! Oh! If any ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... chamber; many others of the King's servants fell victims to their fidelity. I mention these two persons in particular because, with their hats pulled over their brows and their swords in their hands, they exclaimed, as they defended themselves with unavailing courage, "We will not survive!—this is our post; our duty is to die at it." M. Diet behaved in the same manner at the door of the Queen's bedchamber; he experienced the same fate. The Princesse de Tarente had fortunately opened the door of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... then mounted, and marched off with much mirth and laughter among themselves, leaving the Milnwood family in great confusion. The old Laird himself, overpowered by the loss of his nephew, and the unavailing outlay of twenty pounds sterling, did nothing the whole evening but rock himself backwards and forwards in his great leathern easy-chair, repeating the same lamentation, of "Ruined on a' sides, ruined on a' sides—harried and undone—harried and undone—body and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... first residence in London are meagre, but not unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him by his father. For Paley's, or ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Sigismund himself who had bestowed on him the powerful duchy of Lithuania,) was still unappeased, and he insisted upon including the son in the guilt and punishment of his parent. The representations of the minister were here unavailing; he would listen to nothing but the dictates of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Archibald rough," she said to Miss Polly, after a fortnight of unavailing opposition to the new influence in Archibald's life. "Until we came here," she added despondently, "Archibald loved me better than anything in the world, and now he seems to think ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... sent for by the Emperor, in order that he might state his case. His journey to Worms was one long triumph, especially at Erfurt, where he was received with enthusiasm by the Humanists as the enemy of the Papacy. But his presence in the Reichstag was unavailing, and the proceedings resulted in his being placed under the ban of the empire. The safe-conduct of the Emperor was, however, in his case respected; and in spite of the fears of his friends that a like fate might befall him as had ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and practical, and more frequently than we would like to think possible, resemble our own in many ways. For the possibility of this we are largely indebted originally to the scholars of the Renaissance. Without their work that of our investigators would have been quite unavailing. It is to be hoped, however, that our recovery of this period will not be followed by any further eclipse, though that seems to be almost the rule of human history, but that we shall continue to broaden ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... she should keep still, and allow the husband she worshipped to walk unconsciously to his death, or that she should, by trying to give him a word of warning, which perhaps might even be unavailing, actually give the signal for her own brother's death, and that of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... fleet. The Niagara sailed from Ireland; the sister ship proceeded to Newfoundland, and was to meet her in mid-ocean. When the Niagara had run out 335 miles of her cable it snapped under a sudden increase of strain at the paying-out machinery; all attempts at recovery were unavailing, and the work for that year was abandoned. The next year it was resumed, a liberal supply of new cable having been manufactured to replace the lost section, and to meet any fresh emergency that might arise. A new plan of voyages was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... whirligig of time brings round his turn of triumph, takes, in French revolutions and such other fits of madness, his own period of wild revenge. The service of truth is made to appear as one thing, the service of God as another; and in that fatal separation religion dishonours itself with unavailing enmity to what nevertheless it is compelled at last to accept in humiliation; and science, welcoming the character which its adversary flings upon it, turns away with answering hostility from doctrines without which its own highest achievements ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... way, I addressed the servants in the most tranquil tone. I promised, with the most solemn vows, to make at some future day their fortunes, if they would but consent to my escape. I entreated them; I tried caresses, and lastly threats; but all were unavailing. I gave myself up to despair. I resolved to die; and threw myself upon the bed, with a firm determination to quit it only with my life. In this situation I passed the night and the following day. I refused the nourishment that was brought to me ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... Finding all remonstrances unavailing, Sam pulled his hat firmly on, threw his father's coat over his arm, and taking the old man round the waist, forcibly dragged him down the ladder, and into the street; never releasing his hold, or permitting him ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and for this purpose criminally thwarted the purposes of nature. Then comes death and snatches away their solitary consolation: and they spend their old age childless and loveless, in mutual upbraidings and unavailing regrets. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... all precautions may, in the end, be unavailing. 'On extraordinary occasions,' says Ricardo, 'a general panic may seize the country, when every one becomes desirous of possessing himself of the precious metals as the most convenient mode of realising or concealing his property, against such panic banks have no security on ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... they recognised the claims of the classical models. The more the dramatic fervour failed, the more the professed critics counselled observance of the rules. In 1702 Farquhar had pleaded for the freedom of the English stage in his Discourse upon Comedy, but his arguments were unavailing. The duller men found it easier to support the rigid doctrines, which had been fully expounded by the French critics. The seventh or supplementary volume of Rowe's edition of Shakespeare was introduced by Charles Gildon's Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the floor that are continually used as sleeping places, and in the hammocks. Occasionally an effort is made to scrape them out, but they are so cunning in concealing themselves and breed with such rapidity that efforts to get rid of them are unavailing. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... may not have done their duty as regards the Repeal; it is too certain that they have not, because they have done nothing at all. But it is also certain that their very uttermost would have been unavailing for one principal object concerned. Other great objects, however, might have been attained. Foreign nations might have been disabused of their silly delusions on the Irish relations to England, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... our unavailing exertions to accomplish a cordial good understanding on this interest will not have an unpropitious effect upon the other great topics of discussion between the two Governments. Our northeastern and northwestern boundaries are still unadjusted. The commissioners under the seventh article of the ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... years. In the United States adultery is everywhere ground of divorce, and there is commonly no prohibition against marrying the paramour or other re-marriage by the guilty party. Even if there be such a prohibition, it would be unavailing out of the state.in which the divorce was granted; marriage being a contract which, if valid where executed, is generally treated as valid everywhere. Adultery gives a cause of action for damages to the wronged husband. It is in some states a criminal offence on the part of each party to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshipping the sepulchre whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... subsistence for the future. It had none of the usual features of a prison; neither the hardened profligacy which scoffs down its own sense of guilt, nor the hollow-eyed sorrow which wastes away in a living death of unavailing expiation: there was neither the clank of chains, nor the yell of execration; but a hardworking body of men were seen, who, though separated by justice from society, were not supposed to have lost the distinctive attribute of human nature: they were treated ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... thought to keep it secret, perhaps, until Bassus should send to take me away from here; for you imagined that I might attempt escape. But you do not know me yet. Am I a child, to kick and scream, and waste my strength in unavailing strife against a fate that, in my heart, I feel must sooner or later be submitted to? Not long ago—it matters not how or when—I could have avoided it all, but would not. Now that I have sacrificed that chance, I will go to my doom with a smile upon my lips, whatever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and humor of this sportful proposal appealed to them at once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their guns when he would have interfered to stay the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... tinge of sadness in his tone, as he pronounced the last four words; but Dick's temperament was sanguine, and he never gave way to unavailing sadness. Accordingly he began to whistle as he turned away, only adding, ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... escaped with his life, and Pompey himself was threatened. "If you will be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall die" (one form of the legend of Rome's first king represented him as having been torn to pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was unavailing. The new command was created, and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The price of corn, which had risen to a famine height in Rome, fell immediately the appointment was made. The result, indeed, amply justified the choice. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... in her situation; while faction was exerting itself, and gathering new strength every day. He exerted the utmost of his skill to unite the ministers, and to cement the apertures of the state: but he found his pains fruitless, his arguments unavailing, and his endeavours, like the stone of Sisyphus, rolling back upon himself. He retired to a friend's house in Berkshire, where he remained 'till the Queen died. So fatal an event terminated all his views in England, and made him return as fast as possible to his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... that rule. They resolutely declined to legislate by entering upon a consideration of the soundness or reasonableness of the policy which underlay the action of the legislature. In the one case as in the other the effort was unavailing, as Jefferson prophesied that it would be. I have told of Marshall's overthrow in the Charles River Bridge Case, and in 1887, after controversies of this category had begun to come before the Supreme Court of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, Mr. Justice ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... distance from their habitations, to gather flowers with which to adorn their rustic fire-places. They were suddenly surrounded by half a dozen Indians. Their shrieks and efforts to flee were alike unavailing. They were dragged rapidly beyond the power of making themselves heard. As soon as they were deemed to be beyond the danger of rescue, they were treated with ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... were hysterical and the efforts of her mother, her aunt and the nurse to quiet her were alike unavailing. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... drifts to the glad shore of a glittering isle; the overjoyed savage bounds on the prize, and proceeds to announce his good fortune to his bosom friend. Then the pleased cronies decide that they will have a good, wholesome, thorough shave, and they will turn all rivals green with unavailing envy. Solemnly those children of nature go to a quiet place, and savage number one lies down while his friend sits on his head; then with a shred of the broken bottle the operator proceeds to rasp ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done—of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... upon her fate — Death, with its formidable band, Fever and pain and pale consumptive care, Determin'd took their stand: 55 Nor did the cruel ravagers design To finish all their efforts at a blow; But, mischievously slow, They robb'd the relic and defac'd the shrine. With unavailing grief, 60 Despairing of relief, Her weeping children round Beheld each hour Death's growing power, And trembled ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... bestowing on him and his heirs "the most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of giving the same thing ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... "E'er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, "E'er vanity had led my way to guilt, "But, soon arriv'd at my celestial goal, "Full glories rush on my expanding soul." Joyful he spoke: exulting cherubs round Clapt their glad wings, the heav'nly vaults resound. Say, parents, why this unavailing moan? Why heave your pensive bosoms with the groan? To Charles, the happy subject of my song, A brighter world, and nobler strains belong. Say would you tear him from the realms above By thoughtless wishes, and prepost'rous love? Doth his felicity ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... night-dew and the mountain breeze had cooled my burning brow, and my thoughts had resumed their usual course, I realized that to pursue my perished happiness would be unavailing and unreasonable. What more did I want?—To see her?—Why? Was not all over between us? A single, bitter, farewell kiss would not have enriched my recollections, and, after it, parting would only have been more ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... would seek to refute the concrete decisions of such persons by tracing them to abstract premises, such as that 'all actresses must marry,' 'all clergymen must be laymen,' 'all politicians should resign their posts'? Yet this type of refutation, absolutely unavailing though it be for purposes of conversion, is spread by Mr. McTaggart through many pages of his book. For the aboundingness of our real reasons he substitutes one narrow point. For men's real probabilities he gives ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... regrets were bitter and unavailing. 2. The anger of the righteous is weighty. 3. The air seemed deep and dark. 4. She had grown tall and queenly. 5. The peacemakers are blessed. 6. I came into the world helpless. 7. The untrodden snow lay bloodless. 8. The fall of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... which is kept by conforming Jews as a day of mourning and humiliation. The valour exhibited by our ancestors on this sad occasion is no doubt well known to you, Sir Sidney, and to the other gentlemen present, and I feel sure that you will understand our grief that it was unavailing to save the Holy City and the Temple. But we treasure the memory of it as a bright example to ourselves and to all following generations, how to fight and to sacrifice our lives for the land in which we were born and which ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... No passionate regrets, no unavailing self-pity; nothing to tell her what it cost him to resign her; no word to comfort her for the hopelessness of his desertion; ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... lips of Flora, and flinging herself past Varney, who stepped aside, she clung to her brother, who made an unavailing pass with his sword at the vampyre. It was a critical moment; and had the presence of mind of Varney deserted him in the least, unarmed as he was, he must have fallen beneath the weapon of Henry. To spring, however, up the seat which Flora had vacated, and to dash out some of the flimsy and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... give to Italian beggars. One of these pieces satisfies a beggar when it drops into his hat; and then it detains him long enough in the examination of it, so that your carriage has time to get so far away that his renewed pursuit is usually unavailing. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and pine-trees of Nova Scotia. The foundation of the enterprise was a monopoly of the fur-trade, and in its favor all past grants were unceremoniously annulled. St. Malo, Rouen, Dieppe, and Rochelle greeted the announcement with unavailing outcries. Patents granted and revoked, monopolies decreed and extinguished, had involved the unhappy traders in ceaseless embarrassment. De Monts, however, preserved De Chastes's old company, and enlarged it, thus making the chief malcontents sharers in his exclusive rights, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at all accord with my notions of consistency, after their having suffered the preceding half hour's bombardment, I requested to be shewn to the chamber of the invalid, saying that I was a medico, and might be of service to her. When she found remonstrance unavailing, she at length shewed me into a room up-stairs, where there was a very genteel-looking young girl, the very picture of Portuguese health, lying with her eyes shut, in full dress, on the top of the bed-clothes, where she had hurriedly ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... cannot have forgotten. I do not blame you for your refusal; it was founded, I am convinced, on principle, and not on indifference to your sister's fate. For me, judge of me as a man frantic; I knew not what hand to turn to, and all my efforts were unavailing. In this condition, and close beset on all sides, I thought of what might be done by means of my family, and their influence. I fled from Scotland—I reached this place—my miserably wasted and unhappy appearance procured me from my father that pardon, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... brink, and, hurrying towards them, began to relate, with expressions of grief and consternation, the sad fate which he believed to have befallen the young stranger, and the exertions that he had made to save his life, but which had, unhappily, proved unavailing to avert the calamity. The sorrow of the Nausett Indian seemed excessive; and Tisquantum probably considered it so, for he listened with perfect calmness to his recital, and then merely replied, 'Happily, the youth is safe. Mahneto has ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... means solaced in his misery. In those days he was very miserable. It was only now that he knew how thoroughly he loved this woman—now that she was so utterly beyond his reach. Weak and wavering as he was in many things, he was not weak enough to abandon himself altogether to unavailing sorrow. He knew that work alone could preserve him from sinking—hard, constant, unflinching work, that one great cure for all our sorrow, that only means of adapting ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... family was swept from his side. His brother disappeared for a moment under the water, but came to the surface and was hauled upon the roof. The brothers then strove frantically to tear a hole in the roof of the house with their bare hands, but their efforts were, of course, unavailing, and they were soon struggling for their own lives in the wreck at the viaduct. Both finally reached the shore. The body of Mrs. Gilmore, when taken from the ruins this morning, was but little mutilated, although her body was bloated by the water. Two of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Stood beside the mast; From his yew-bow, tipped with silver, Flew the arrows fast; Aimed at Eric unavailing, As he sat concealed, Half behind the quarter-railing, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... foundation for the important work to come. Without these exercises, all of which are set to inspiring music, muscles employed in dancing would remain taut or soft and not respond properly, the pupil would quickly tire, and the attempt to dance become an unavailing effort. With the limbering and stretching course, time is saved in preparing the student for the lessons to come, and the time necessary for the training and development of a dancer is much shortened from the long apprenticeship that ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... horn at Faversham, Kent, but of Scotch parents; received a university training at Glasgow and Goettingen, and in 1822 went to Greece, where he met Byron and fought in the War of Independence; henceforth Greece became his home, and there, after an unavailing effort to promote agriculture, he betook himself to a studious life and to writing the history of his adopted country; his valuable history, published in various parts, traces the national life of Greece from 146 B.C. to A.D. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... can't swim neither. Let me go, ye black villain. Thunder an' turf! will ye see the poor lad drownded forenint yer two eyes?" cried the poor Irishman, as he made violent but unavailing struggles to get free. But Massan knew that to allow him to escape would only add to the number requiring to be saved, and as he himself could not swim, he saw at once that the only service he could render under the circumstances would be to hold the Irishman down. Clasping him, therefore, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... move the constellations, Lessening nor increasing since the birth of nations: Sun and moon unfailing keep their times and seasons,— But man, unavailing, pleads to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... grief the sympathy of friends, and the words of consolation bring no relief. How much more harshly do such words grate on the ear when the soul is bowed down by remorse and unavailing regret! Then the wounded spirit finds peace nowhere ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... monarch, who, unconscious of the extent of her ambition, believed her to be simply anxious to secure herself against future disappointment and the anger of her family; and thus finding that his entreaties were unavailing, he resolved to employ another argument of which he had already frequently tested the efficacy, and on his return to Fontainebleau he despatched the Comte de Lude to the lady with what were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... in a national council, to which the most learned of the new sect should be offered safe access. As to punishments, while the seditious, who took up arms under color of religion, ought to be repressed, experience had taught how unavailing was the persecution of those who embraced their views from conscientious motives, and history showed that three hundred and eighteen bishops at the Council of Nice, one hundred and fifty at Constantinople, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... now plain that you knew me to be within. Further resistance was unavailing and useless. The door opened, and I shrunk backward. Seldom have I felt deeper mortification, and more painful perplexity. I did not consider that the truth would be less injurious than any lie which I could hastily frame. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... am now given to understand that General Hull's insidious proclamation, herewith enclosed, has already been productive of considerable effect on the minds of the people. In fact, a general sentiment prevails, that with the present force resistance is unavailing. I shall continue to exert myself to the utmost to overcome every difficulty. Should, however, the communication between Kingston and Montreal be cut off, the fate of the troops in this part of the province will be decided. I now express my apprehensions ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... but cannot think of making you my son:—I would recompence what you have done for me with any thing but my daughter, and as a proof of my concern for your happiness, I exclude you from all society with her, in order to prevent so unavailing a passion from taking too ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... he, "we fly from the city to the country, what do we there behold? Fields abandoned; the hospitable mansions of our fathers deserted; agriculture drooping; our slaves, like their masters, working harder, and faring worse; the planter striving with unavailing efforts to avert the ruin which is before him." He drew a sad picture of the once thriving planter, reduced to despair, gathering up the small remnants of his broken fortune, and, with his wife and little ones, tearing himself from the scenes ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... eyes out of their loathsome, featherless, naked heads, drawing nearer—nearer—nearer. He could do no more. His voice was gone. His strength was gone. He closed his eyes, but the sight was still before him. His bleeding, foamy lips mumbled one unavailing word: ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... sleepless night or two the thought flamed red on his darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining impulse was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose his victim... So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose the truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he tried to pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity. But every issue seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued together to cheat one man ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... even the children could hardly extract a smile from her. She seemed to have made a determination to do all that Lucy or herself had ever done, and more too, and listened to no entreaties to spare herself. Commands were met with sullen resignation, entreaties were unavailing, and both in the sickroom and the parish, she insisted on working beyond her powers. It was a nightly battle to send her to bed, and Albinia suspected that she did not sleep. Meantime Lucy had sailed, and was presently ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... superhuman struggles for freedom and his ear-splitting yells were simply dreadful beyond all description to see and hear. The fetish-man and his assistants, confident of the reliable character of their work, stood back and looked on quietly at the miserable wretch's unavailing struggles; they seemed to be regarded as quite a part of the entertainment, and the unhappy creature was allowed to continue them unmolested until they ceased from exhaustion. Then, when he lay quite still, panting and breathless, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... at my promise that at least if other measures proved unavailing, we should adopt that course, and her brightening flattered me, for it bore witness to the supreme confidence ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... politics he represented, Smith encouraged moderate policies, urged frank recognition of the just claims of the minority, and sought to prevent the stalwart managers from too widely breaching the proprieties that should govern political organisations. If his efforts proved unavailing, it seemed that he had at least mastered the art of being regular without being bigoted, and of living on good terms with a machine whose methods he could not wholly approve. Nevertheless, there came a time when his associations, as in the career of Raymond, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... how futile was his attempt to sunder his bonds and how unavailing to contend against the Almighty, he returned to his throne and resumed his speech, in words somewhat more calm, but twice as malignant: "Though none but the Omnipotent Thunderer could overcome my power and my guile, to Him I am unwillingly constrained to submit; but ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... and told him of the unavailing attempts that had been made to find him. There were a great many detectives out, constantly ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... it was Mr. Potter to whom he was referring Mr. Emberg added at the bottom of the story, and under a separate single-line head, a note to the effect that all efforts were unavailing to get an interview with Hamden Potter, the financier, who that day had returned from Europe with his family, as Mr. Potter would see no reporters. It was added that Mr. Potter's connection with the subway interests might ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... and brother George—and things went smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... every house where his calling led him. He was not always as fortunate as in the instances we have mentioned. Sometimes all his arguments were unavailing, and after he had spent half an hour of valuable time in setting forth the merits of "The Wayfarer," he was compelled to retire without having effected a sale. Sometimes, too, he was rudely repulsed; hard epithets were applied to him; old ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... forsaken and fell into the extremes of poverty in any tolerably well-ordered city or government. Wherefore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to such cases in the following terms: Let there be no beggars in our state; and if anybody begs, seeking to pick up a livelihood by unavailing prayers, let the wardens of the agora turn him out of the agora, and the wardens of the city out of the city, and the wardens of the country send him out of any other parts of the land across the border, in order that the land may be cleared of this ...
— Laws • Plato
... foreign nations at the port of Canton is so well known, that it would be superfluous for me to dwell on that subject. The complaints of all nations against the extortions practised there have been loudly and frequently heard in Europe, but the steps that have hitherto been taken have proved unavailing. The common answer is, "Why do you come here? We take in exchange your articles of produce and manufacture, which we really have no occasion for, and give you in return our precious tea, which nature has denied ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the grave which Uncle Joshua had thought belonged to his daughter. No tidings of her had been heard, although one gentleman thought that he once had met with a girl answering to her description in the stage coach between Lexington and Cincinnati. All search in that quarter was unavailing, and over her fate a dark mystery lay, until Julia suddenly appeared and threw light on the matter. The afflicted father (for she had no mother) was sent for, and when told where his child was laid, asked permission to have her disinterred and taken ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... the boots, is in the best comic style. In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. "The infamy of the plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his testimony on such a charge as this wholly unavailing." "M. Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the attorney, in a fright, "you are for the plaintiff!" "This, my lords, is what the defendant WILL SAY. This is the line of defence which the opposite party intend to pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh with an enlightened jury, or injure the spotless ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fading flowers upon their tomb. But sweet is the consolation to the dying man, who, conscious of imperfection, believes that even after his own time of merit is expired, there are others to make intercession on his behalf; soothing to the afflicted survivors the thought, that instead of unavailing tears they possess more powerful means of actively relieving their friend, and testifying their affectionate regret, by prayer and supplication. In the first moments of grief, this sentiment will often overpower religious prejudice, cast down the unbeliever on his knees beside the remains of his ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... way. Again and again, they were grilled, and, again and again they began to drag their miserable existence in this wonderful world. And their desires were unfulfilled, the objects unaccomplished, and their knowledge became unavailing. And their senses were paralysed and they became apprehensive of everything and the cause of other people's sufferings. And they were generally marked by wicked deeds, and born in low families; they became wicked and afflicted with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... WAS an answer to this, but, being wise, also felt that it would be unavailing. He smiled politely and said nothing, at which the first ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was making a victim of him as he had done of many before, and as soon as he had used him would fling him off with scorn? He would not listen: and so, as Dobbin, upon those days when he visited the Osborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting his old friend, much painful and unavailing talk between them was spared. Our friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only,' continued Miss Anne, 'but our Saviour's also; all His griefs and sorrows may prove unavailing, as far as my uncle is concerned. Perhaps He will say of him, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent My strength for nought, and in vain." O my Saviour! because I love Thee, I would have every immortal soul ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... he would venture too near the edge; a sudden gust of wind came, he was carried off his equilibrium and fell into the lake. His companion did all he could to save him, but as there was a storm raging at the time, his efforts were unavailing. He said Ginsling's bloated face appeared for a moment in the hollow of the waves, and with an agonizing tone he cried to God to save him; then a huge wave, more mighty than its fellows, engulfed him, and he sank in life ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... enquiries. Honduras, an establishment on the American coast, was occupied by adventurers from Jamaica. At first interlopers, their presence was for a time unnoticed by the Spanish crown. A hundred years were passed in unavailing protests and opposition, when the court of Spain reluctantly recognised the location of the cutters of logwood within ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... carried through the heart of that quarter, teeming with historic "Hotels" of the old aristocracy, where beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn down to make way for the new avenue. The cajoleries which Eugenie first tried and the blows that followed were alike unavailing. Even her worship of Marie Antoinette, between whom and herself she found imaginary resemblances, failed to warm the stony hearts of the proud old ladies, to whom it was as gall and wormwood to see a nobody crowned in the palace of their kings. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... perhaps the third time when Tharald had thus protested his blamelessness, that his guest, feeling that reasoning was unavailing, let drop some rather commonplace remark about the culpability ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hear, excepting that the last word was die. She had often heard the wicked wish that his life might not be prolonged; but how to lead him from the constant contemplation of his deformity so as to make him resigned, if not cheerful, had, as yet, been an unavailing study. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... draw from the girl any clear idea of the symptoms were unavailing. All she could tell me was that the cellar boiler wouldn't work. Beyond that her answers were mere confusion. I gathered enough, however, to feel sure that her main feed was still working, and that her top story check valve was probably in ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... correct use of the breathing apparatus determines the question of success or failure; for without mastery of the motive power all else is unavailing. For a voice user, therefore, the first requisite is a well-developed chest, the ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... the bubling cry of their agony, as they sank to their chins in the water, there to remain for ever, beholding and regretting the rewards enjoyed by the good, and doomed to struggle, till the stars shall cease to shine, in unavailing endeavours to reach the blissful island. They beheld the lake thick and black with the heads of the unhappy swimmers, as the surface of the Great Bear Lake is dotted in summer with the wild fowl that seek subsistence in ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... massy prison's mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children play, 485 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, There rust amid the accumulated ruins 490 Now mingling slowly with their native earth: There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Company of their stores. The miscreant was only too successful. Not content with plunder only, he set fire to the buildings and reduced them to ashes. He gave further proof of the possession of a cruel and barbarous disposition, by enjoying the unavailing efforts of a poor horse to extricate itself from a burning building to which it had been inhumanly attached, to be burnt to death, after having been employed the greater part of the day in carrying off the plunder from the stores. This wretch, accompanied by nine ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... when on mine ears There fell chaotic sounds of earthly life, Shrill cries of triumph, and hoarse shouts of strife; A medley of despairs, and hopes and fears. Then silence came, and unavailing tears. The stillness stabbed me, like a two edged-knife; Until I found the Universe was rife With subtle music of the neighbouring spheres. Such harmonies, such congruous sweet chords, Wherein each note conveys a healing balm. And now no more I miss men's spoken words; ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... would you not do as I wanted you to?" he murmured bitterly to himself. A second groan answered him. Smith called for water, and from a canteen drenched the pallid forehead, talking softly meanwhile; but his efforts to restore consciousness were unavailing. He turned to where two of the cowboys had dragged Karg to the ground and three others had their old companion Seagrue in hand. While two held huge revolvers within six inches of his head, the third was adjusting a ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... in the subject, and a Boston physician of high standing within a few months confided to the writer that he had made use of hypnotic methods, with gratifying success, in the case of a patient where ordinary remedies had proven unavailing, but he did not venture to make the results public, since his fellow doctors might be inclined to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... treasure, they form a rich hoard, laid up where neither moth nor rust corrupt; but if we let them escape unheeded, or sit and idly watch their flow, and even shake the glass to hasten it, they will gather into a millstone weight to sink us in endless, unavailing regret. Though she is dead, Mrs. Judson's works still live; and generation after generation of Burmans will associate her name with that of her honored husband, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... service of the confederation. Another question was that concerning the western posts. As has been already pointed out, Washington's keen eye had at once detected that this was the perilous point in the treaty, and he made a prompt but unavailing effort to secure these posts in the first flush of good feeling when peace had just been made. After he had retired he observed with regret the feebleness of Congress in this matter, and he continued to write about it. He wrote ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of Indians passing through the skirt of the marsh turned their left flank, which was composed of militia, and poured a heavy and most destructive fire on their rear. The word "retreat" was pronounced by some person and the efforts of the officers to check it were unavailing. The fate of the day was decided, and a flight commenced on the left which was soon followed by the right. As soon as the line was broken the Indians, throwing down their rifles and rushing upon them with the tomahawk, completed the confusion. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... predecessors. But science had been at work here, as at Panama, and wire gauze and the kerosene spray had captured the first trenches of yellow fever and malaria, and against these weapons of the medico all counter-attacks have been unavailing. Some strong hand was ruling in this town, for the streets were spotless and the dogs lean. And, oh, how the nigger does hate cleanliness! Evidently this town was free in a real sense because well disciplined. We were told that all the white ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... they possessed by secessionist Indians,[563] who would not, however, permit them to go in search of relief northward.[564] When all efforts to induce them to throw in their lot with the Confederacy proved unavailing, the strict watch over them was somewhat relaxed and they eventually managed to make their escape. They, too, fled into Kansas. And so did about one hundred Delawares, who had been making their homes in the Cherokee ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the regret, the struggle and the failing! Oh the days desolate and useless years! Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing! Stings of my shame and passion ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... indulgence. Unable to educate her sons, or impress them with respect; for it is not a play on words to assert, that people are never respected, though filling an important station, who are not respectable; she pines under the anguish of unavailing impotent regret. The serpent's tooth enters into her very soul, and the vices of licentious youth bring her with sorrow, if not with poverty also, to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... by the Ojibways themselves. Even the strong national prejudice of the narrator, which has evidently colored his statement, leaves the evidence of the magnanimity and prudence of the Iroquois elders clearly apparent.] These efforts, however, to preserve the ancient amity proved unavailing. Through whose fault it was that the final outbreak occurred is a question which the annalists of the two parties differ. But the events just recounted, and, indeed, all the circumstances, speak strongly in favor of the Iroquois. They had shown their anxiety to maintain ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary. For Barrow's efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing. Always the first question asked was, "What Union do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who had rendered himself so illustrious. General Bonaparte, offended at this behaviour, refused to receive him again, and expressed himself to me with much warmth on the occasion of this visit. All my efforts to remove his displeasure were unavailing this impression always continued, and he never did for M. de Cominges what his means and the old ties of boyhood ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more stage of the history of English laws in that immense process of the secularisation of the state, against which, in his book of 1888, Mr. Gladstone had drawn up, with so much weight of reading and thought, a case so wholly unavailing. The legal doctrine of marriage had been established against the theological doctrine by Lord Hardwicke's famous act of 1753, for that measure made the observance of certain requirements then set up by law essential to a good marriage. A further fundamental change had begun ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... simply imagined myself to have recognised the words lengthening and losing themselves in a blur before my eyes. Carmel was no fool even if she had wild and demoniacal moments. This could not be my note to her,—that fatal note which would make all denial of our mutual passion unavailing. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... the Chinese sovereign (still more over his agents) at present. The other thing which occurs to say is this: that, if we do not interfere, some morning we shall probably all be convulsed with unavailing wrath at a repetition of Mr Stead's tragic end, on a larger scale, and exemplified in ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fall on them with his single division. The spirit of the soldiers fully justified the gallant resolution of their commander. Having been formed as speedily as the ruggedness of the ground would admit of, they proceeded to the assault. The Republicans made a stubborn resistance, but it was an unavailing one, as they were finally driven from the Morne with considerable loss. Nevertheless, as the second column did not arrive till the combat was over, the fugitives succeeded in making good their retreat. On the following day the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... of moneyless vagabonds. What added to the consternation of all who heard of it, was the sickening conviction that the extreme measures which they had resorted to in order to free the city from the ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done, had been utterly unavailing, successful as they had proved in every other known case of the kind. For, urged as well by various horrid signs about his grave, which not even its close proximity to the altar could render a place of repose, they had opened it, had found in the body ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... alarmed her family, and search was made far and near—but in vain. On the fourth day, they at length discovered her lying dead at the foot of a tree. The pages of her book were covered with sentences, pricked in with a pin, expressive of her sufferings and of her unavailing efforts to retrace her steps. She was only three miles from her father's house when she sank down to die of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion; and probably during the whole time of her wanderings had never exceeded ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... for limiting expense in dress, entertainments, funerals (Sulla, c. 35), amount of debt to be incurred, and so forth, all of which were unavailing. The notion of regulating private expenditure was not peculiar to the Romans among the states of antiquity; and our own legislation, which in its absurd as well as its best parts has generally some parallel in that of the Romans, contains many instances of sumptuary laws, which prescribed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Queen; and above all, poor Queen's Husband, who means well, had he any fixed meaning! Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand. Few months ago these Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which might have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the very mention of it slighted; Majesty's express orders set ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... by your unsleeping watchfulness and admirable pertinacity. And now here is a volume that goes into the world and lacks your imprimatur; a strange thing in our joint lives; and the reason of it stranger still! I have watched with interest, with pain, and at length with amusement, your unavailing attempts to peruse The Black Arrow; I think I should lack humor indeed if I let the occasion slip and did not place your name in the fly-leaf of the only book of mine that you have never read—and never ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... who, being distinguished by an experimental and inventive tendency, was generally believed to have poisoned himself with an infallible panacea of his own distillation),— since that final bereavement, Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing business had lamentably declined. After a few months of unavailing struggle, he found it expedient to take down the Brazen Serpent from the position to which Dr. Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of his shop in the main street, and to retire to his private dwelling, situated ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed—I, who had lived with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... nuptial joy. Her private orchards, wall'd on every side, To lawless sylvans all access denied. 20 How oft the satyrs and the wanton fauns, Who haunt the forests or frequent the lawns, The god whose ensign scares the birds of prey, And old Silenus, youthful in decay, Employ'd their wiles and unavailing care To pass the fences, and surprise the fair! Like these, Vertumnus own'd his faithful flame, Like these, rejected by the scornful dame. To gain her sight a thousand forms he wears; And first a reaper from the field appears: 30 Sweating he walks, while loads of golden grain ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... a taciturn man naturally, and had not been rendered loquacious by his calling. He hardly spoke to his PEONS. They understood their duties perfectly. If one of the mules stopped, they urged it on with a guttural cry, and if that proved unavailing, a good-sized pebble, thrown with unerring aim, soon cured the animal's obstinacy. If a strap got loose, or a rein fell, a PEON came forward instantly, and throwing off his poncho, flung it over his beast's head till the accident was repaired ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... woke up afterward, an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop. Lois, divested of her rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up-stairs, to find ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
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