"Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... From behind the veil of the surrounding mist came the Falmouth and Nottingham, which with the guns in their turrets completely finished the hapless Mainz, and their sailors openly admired the bravery of her crew, which, while she sank, maintained perfect order and sang ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... When hapless Phaethon looked down upon the earth, now spreading in vast extent beneath him, he grew pale, and his knees shook with terror. He lost his self-command and knew not whether to draw tight the reins or throw them loose; he forgot the names of the horses. But when he beheld ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... difficult to imagine a childhood better calculated than this to encourage pathos in a humorist and fun in a sentimentalist. His account, in his brief autobiography, of the appearance and disappearance of his hapless brothers and sisters is a proof of how early life appealed to Laurence Sterne in the dappled colours of an April day. We read there of how at Wicklow "we lost poor Joram, a pretty boy"; how "Anne, that pretty blossom, fell in the barracks of Dublin"; how ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... as I have said, pay him no heed. The mayor, passing along the road, looks straight in front of him, with an elaborate assumption of unconcern. So do the councillors. But there are others who look maliciously up at the hapless figure. Now and again there comes a monk from the monastery on that hill yonder. He laughs into his beard as he goes by. Two by two, in their grey cloaks and their blue mantillas, the little orphan girls are sometimes marched past. There ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the cruel feast, By death's rude hands in horrid manner drest; Such grief as sure no hapless woman knew, When thy pale image lay before my view. Thy father's heir in beauteous form arrayed Like flowers in spring, and fair, like them to fade; Leaving behind unhappy wretched me, And all thy ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... playing Grieg and MacDowell, and Warrington was turning the pages. The chords, weird and melancholy, seemed to permeate his whole being; sad, haunting music, that spoke of toil, tears, death and division, failure and defeat, hapless love and loveless happiness. After ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... men told to each other when the world was still young, and the heroes were unforgotten.[EN34] And some said, too, that Brunhild, the fair and hapless queen, died then of a broken heart and of a hopeless, yearning sorrow, and that she was burned with ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... curtains, the three helpless captives were unable to break through the influence this lone bandit spread about them. The thought of St. Gudule, of the great gathering, of the impatience, the consternation, the sensation occasioned by the non-arrival of the bride, brought madness to the brains of the hapless trio. Like a vivid panorama they saw everything that was going on in the church. They saw alarm in faces of those closely interested in the wedding, heard the vague rumors and questionings, the order for the search, the report of accident, and ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... opposition of this solitary soul. Then, on the front steps, in the midst of these drunken and infuriate thousands, he stood up and besought them, if they cared nothing for themselves nor for these hapless orphans, that they would not bring lasting disgrace upon the city by destroying one of its noblest charities, which had for its object nothing ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... concocted his matin Martini, very dry, an hour before, said he regarded the success due as much to the management as to the artist. And Perkins believed it. Perkins usually took all the credit for a success, and with charming consistency placed all responsibility for failure on the shoulders of the hapless artist. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... yell burst from the lips of the pursuing savages, as they saw him, to whom the guardianship of the wretched Clara was now confided, suddenly spring from the sand bar into the lake, and in a few rapid strokes gain the side of the boat. Leaving the hapless Baynton to be disposed of by his companion, the foremost darted upon the bank, burning with disappointment, and resolved to immolate another victim. For a moment he balanced his tomahawk, and then, with the rapidity of thought, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... image in my grateful heart, the few tedious months I have to live; and there seems indeed a sort of poetic justice in the fact that the bride you covet, has become the truest, tenderest friend of the hapless girl whom you are prosecuting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... came peeping from behind a cloud, and fell upon the haggard face and wild eyes of the hapless prisoner, who until then had not ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Oh! hapless hour, when from the stormy North, This modern Cyclops marched repellent forth, To slake his thirst for blood and plundered wealth, Not as the soldier, but by fraud and stealth; To waft the gales of death with horror rife On helpless age, and wage with women strife: ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... Fairy Violet thought of herself. Then she discovered that her delicate gossamer wings were gone! Evidently they had been caught on a crooked stick as she fell to the ground and torn violently off, for there the remnants now hung, shrivelled and useless, flapping in the breeze. At this sight the hapless fairy threw herself by the side of the now withered Violet, and wept bitterly. When spring and the spring flowers were gone, and their work was ended, Violet and her sister fairies had been wont to spread their wings and fly back to fairy-land, ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... be lost in the wilderness, which I did not much relish. We were all at this time "hungry as hunters," and beginning to feel very miserable from being wet through. What little ammunition I had left I fired off as signals, or made tinder of to get up a fire, but the wood would not burn. In this hapless condition the black boys began murmuring, wishing to go on, pretending, though both held opposite views, that each knew the way; for they thought nothing could be worse than ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the hapless hindrance, now the holy sacrifice Was performed with joy and splendour and with gifts ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... a favourite pastime with the bullies of London streets. A dozen or more with drawn swords surround a hapless and unarmed passer by. They will close upon him in a circle, the points of their swords towards him, and then one will prick him in the rear, causing him to turn quickly round, whereupon another will give ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... somewhat humiliating to endure, and which he must have inherited in some extraordinary way from his great-uncle, King William IV. of Prussia, who died insane. There are certainly some traits of resemblance between this hapless monarch and the present occupant of the German throne, for in both there exists and has existed the same exaggerated and narrow-minded religious beliefs, bordering on mysticism, and also an all-embracing faith in ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... casting its blight over the fairest and happiest scenes of human life—and which from day to day, and from year to year, with intolerant and interminable malignity, sends its thousands and tens of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning and never-satisfied grave!"—[Loud and long applause.] The experience which they had had, that all the dangers, all the bloodshed and violence which were threatened, were merely imaginary, and that none of these evils had ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... colonies a feeling, of which, I grieve to say, the governors at home have ever and anon largely partaken, that there is something in the nature of a slave—something in the habits of the African negro—something in the disposition of the unfortunate hapless victims of our own crimes and cruelties, which makes what is mercy and justice to other men cruelty to society and injustice to the law in the case of the negro, and which condemns offences slightly ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... you to keep that vile tongue of yours still," he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... he could not stop with the unappeasable Terror clanging at his heels and the increasing crowd yelling in pursuit; but he turned to the left at each corner, and thus came back to pass Joe's stairway again, unable to pause there or anywhere, unable to do anything except to continue his hapless flight, poor meteor. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... desolation were no proof of savage desertion; nor did I believe that Indian strategy would leave the north of the Fort wholly unguarded. Any rock, any black ravine, any clump of trees or bushes, might well be the lurking-place of hostiles, who would only too gladly wreak their vengeance upon any hapless straggler falling into their hands. I was unarmed, save for the long hunting-knife I carried in the bosom of my shirt; but my thought was not of fighting,—it was to get through ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... the hapless people, doomed by John Adair's decree? Some linger in the drear poor-house—some are beyond the sea; One died behind the cold ditch—back beneath the open sky, And every star in heaven was a witness from on high. None dared to ope a friendly door, or lift a neighbor's latch, Or shelter ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the impulse to mother this kindred and hapless young being, averred to be the beggar's daughter. She placed a golden louis on the palm ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... hapless prisoners had been examined and searched and relieved of their few possessions, they were marched to the neighboring camp—a civilian camp it was called, although it was hardly limited to that. They made a sad little procession as they passed through ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... shall see too well before the story is ended. It may be true that John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence. Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly starved to death; and that she died by royal order the Issue Roll gives ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... feeling of the like distress Behold the Turk and his great emperess! Ah, mighty Jove and holy Mahomet, Pardon my love! O, pardon his contempt Of earthly fortune and respect of pity; And let not conquest, ruthlessly pursu'd, Be equally against his life incens'd In this great Turk and hapless emperess! And pardon me that was not mov'd with ruth To see them live so long in misery!— Ah, what may chance to ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... expression of the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its resemblance to the egg they ordinarily produce. In other lands the peculiar ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... "Ah! hapless maid, why daring dost thou prove "The hidden dangers of the urchin's dart; "Why fix thine eye on this, the god of love, "And heedless think thee ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... furnished with two loaves by a good fellow who lived in the same house, and who proffered his assistance so kindly, so generously, and well, that I received his benefaction only that I might not give him pain by a refusal. The second week of charity had already begun, when, entering my cold and hapless room in my return from the hospital, I was detained at the door by hearing my name pronounced in a loud and angry tone. I listened with a sickening earnestness and recognized the voice of my landlord and that of the good neighbour in high discussion. Something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... of praise. I have noted him many a time, and sometimes have had conversation with him, in the which I have been struck by his versatility and quickness of apprehension. Therefore (having in this matter certain powers from my lord cardinal in dealing with these hapless young men) I am most anxious so to work upon his spirit that he show himself not obstinate and recalcitrant. Almost all his comrades have proved their wisdom and the sincerity of their professed devotion to Holy Church by promising submission to ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and when he took down the receiver he heard Julia's voice. It was not unusual for her to call him about this time, but what she told him now caused a blank and hapless look to come over his face. She was not in her room, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... never more Still to be so displac't. I was all eare, 560 And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of Death, but O ere long Too well I did perceive it was the voice Of my most honour'd Lady, your dear sister. Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear, And O poor hapless Nightingale thought I, How sweet thou sing'st, how neer the deadly snare! Then down the Lawns I ran with headlong hast Through paths, and turnings oft'n trod by day, Till guided by mine ear I found the place 570 Where that damn'd wisard hid in sly disguise (For so by certain signes I knew) had ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herself that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached a fallen tree, where, with a gesture of disgust, she tore off her hapless duster and flung it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but after a moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet. A few paces distant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand, the young solitary of the Carquinez Woods advanced ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... private seal, is much more interesting, as an heraldic image of the man himself. Haughty, fierce, cruel, and pugnacious, his career not less inglorious as a military commander than as a churchman, this HENRY LE DESPENCER, agrandson of the unhappy favourite of the no less hapless EDWARDII., was one of the war-loving prelates who occasionally appear sustaining a strange, and yet as it would seem a characteristic, part in the romantic drama of medival history. His Secretum, No. 351, displays his Shield of Despencer, differenced with his bordure of ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... Achilles of the apparition of Patroklos after death in a dream. As he wakes suddenly the conviction comes upon him:—"Ay me, there remaineth then even in the house of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life be not anywise therein: for all night long hath the spirit of hapless Patroklos stood over me, wailing and making moan, and charged me everything that I should do, and wondrous like his living self it seemed." Il. xxiii, ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... thousand ingrates, but I shun Temptation and create but one, In whom the whole unthankful crew The rich man's air that ever drew To fat their pauper lungs I fire Vicarious with vain desire! From foul Ingratitude's base rout I pick this hapless devil out, Bestowing on him all my lands, My treasures, camels, slaves and bands Of wives—I give him all this loot, And throw my blessing in to boot. Behold, O man, in this bequest Philanthropy's long wrongs redressed: To speak me ill that man I dower With fiercest will who lacks ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;—this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt. ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... became of the hapless bank book? It was sent to Jim as he had demanded; and we may suppose that he drew the money and spent it. At any rate, when he next made his appearance at the old Squire's, two years later, he had ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... by the bold displays with which he celebrated his departures. We hinted this to Mrs. Johnson, but she could not enter into our feeling. Indeed, all the wild poetry of her maternal and primitive nature seemed to cast itself about this hapless boy; and if we had listened to her we should have believed there was no one so agreeable in society, or so quick-witted in affairs, as Hippolyto, when he chose. She used to rehearse us long epics concerning his industry, his courage, and his talent; and she put fine speeches in his mouth with ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... away home with a weird cry. He heard the strong pinions of the wood pigeon in the air, and then from the trees above his head came the soft call, "Take-two-cow-Taffy, take-two-cow-Taffy," with which that fair and false bird is said to have beguilled the hapless Welchman to the gallows. Presently, as he lay motionless, the timid and graceful little water-hens peered out from their doors in the rushes opposite, and, seeing no cause for fear, stepped daintily into the water, and were suddenly surrounded by little bundles of black soft down, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... exactly Agatha Merceron's time; yet Charlie leant back on his cold marble seat, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed up at the ceiling with the happiest possible smile on his face. For one steeped in family legends, worshipping the hapless lady's memory with warm devotion, and reputed a sincere believer in her ghostly wanderings, he awaited her coming with marvellous composure. In point of fact he had forgotten all about her, and there was nothing to prevent her coming, slipping down ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... one in whom we have already an interest like dreaming of him or of her. Many a calm suitor has been made passionate by a dream; many a passionate lover has been made wild and half beside himself by a dream; and now and then an infatuated but hapless lover, waking from a dream of bliss to a cold reality of wretchedness, has helped himself to eternity before he was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fair wife amid the battles of the Rebellion. The Duke of York promised to stand as godfather to the first child if it should prove a boy; but when a daughter was born, the Colonel in his mortification, it is said, "formally devoted, in succession, his hapless wife, his infant daughter, himself and his belongings, to ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... exclaimed, "Well-away and woe is me, O my lover, O Khudadad, do these eyes look upon thee in sudden and violent death? Are these thy brothers (the devils!) whom thy courage hath saved, the destroyers of thee? Nay 'tis I am thy murtheress; I who suffered thee to ally thy Fate with my hapless destiny, a lot that doometh to destruction all who befriend me." Then considering the body attentively she perceived that breath was slowly coming and going through his nostrils, and that his limbs were yet warm. So she made fast the tent-door and ran city-wards to seek a surgeon, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... connected, since it is spoken of by him as lying in patches; but he did not seek to ascertain whether any of the openings were passable for the Bridgewater, and might enable him to take those on board who had escaped drowning. He bore away round all; and whilst the two hapless vessels were still visible from the mast head, passed the leeward extremity of the reef, and hove to for the night. The apprehension of danger to himself must then have ceased; but he neither attempted ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 8. The latter form of the story seems more usual. See Gredt, pp. 28, 29, where we are plainly told that the hapless mortals are fetched away ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... other with less aversion than formerly; and it became safer and more profitable to purchase women, on the same principle that any other kind of merchandise was bought. Prices were regulated according to the supply in the market and the beauty or the muscular strength of the hapless creatures exposed for sale. Fathers sold or exchanged their daughters, brothers their sisters, without the slightest shame or remorse. Among the Tambanks, in exchanging the women for stock, a woman, full-grown and of ordinary strength, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... threw their fond arms around the necks of the children whom just before they had regarded with the averted eyes of despair; in the one sex, they then beheld the victims of, perhaps, the next requisition for blood; and in the other, the hapless prey of passions, more felt than the horrid rage of the beast of the field. But now all was secure again. These terrific tyrants were driven hence; and the happy parent, embracing her offspring as if restored from the grave, implored a thousand ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... arm, covered with mouths, like the ones the boys had seen absorb the rats, shot out of the sea. Another and another followed it, and hapless Sanborn, screaming in terror, was dragged from the structure of the aeroplane, to which he clung with a drowning ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... these hapless monks were engaged in a perilous mission in seeking to supplant the primitive faith of the Tusayan, for among the native priests they encountered prejudices even as violent as their own. With too great zeal they prohibited ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... dinner inadvertently let slip the word: "Ziska there? Deny it, slave!" cried Wenzel, frantic. Slave durst not deny. Wenzel drew his sword to run at him, but fell down dead: that was the last pot broken by Wenzel. The hapless royal ex-imperial phantasm self-broken in this manner. Poor soul, he came to the kaisership too early; was a thin violent creature, sensible to the charms and horrors of created objects; and had terrible rhinoceros ziskas and unruly horned cattle to drive. He was one of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his charge of quick return Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd To be returned by noon amid the bow'r, And all things in best order to invite Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose. Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve! Of thy presumed return, event perverse! Thou never from that hour in Paradise Found'st either ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the great scandals that come before the autocrats of the Jockey Club, where the tampering is clearly known, can the matter ever be really proved and sifted? Very rarely. The trainer affects stolid unconsciousness or unimpeachable respectability; the hapless stable-boy is cross-examined, to protest innocence and ignorance, and most likely protest them rightly; he is accused, dismissed, and ruined; or some young jock has a "caution" out everywhere against him, and never again ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments. Worldly cares melt into the airy stuff that dreams are made of, and reveries, mild and enchanting as the first hopes of love or the recollection of lost enjoyment, carry the hapless wight into futurity, who in bustling life has vainly strove to throw off the grief which lies heavy at the heart. Good night! A crescent hangs out in the vault before, which woos me to stray abroad. It ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... conjures up mental punishment in the shape of a scolding, for to be "lectured" is to be verbally flogged, and the wrathful words that smite the youthful ear carry with them just as sharp a sting as the knots of the lash that fall on the hapless ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Or a spigot in a butt? Thus I humm'd and ha'd awhile, When Madam Memory with a smile Thus twitch'd my ear—'Why sure, I ween, 25 In London streets thou oft hast seen The very image of this pair: A little Ape with huge She-Bear Link'd by hapless chain together: An unlick'd mass the one—the other 30 An antic small with nimble crupper——' But stop, my Muse! for here ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend—for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it.' Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the 'demon face' might be destroyed before his burial, 'lest it continues ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... out to sea from the bay, like a beacon welcoming the passing mariner to friendly shores—instead of which, the cruel crags that encircled the island only grinned through the surf, like the pointed teeth of a pack of snarling wolves, waiting to rend and tear any hapless craft that should ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... my hapless all went down 'Neath the mid arch, I go about the town, And make my neighbours' matters my sole care, Seeing my own are damaged past repair. Once I was anxious on a bronze to light Where Sisyphus had washed his feet at night; Each work of art I criticized and classed, Called ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... my boys, figure it out!" Balbus gaily exclaimed, as he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless pupils, and left ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... he enveloped it in eternal night and equipped it with torment, filling it with fire and fearful cold, with fume and red flame: then he commanded the terrors of suffering to increase throughout that hapless place. 45 ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... tiny wing— A bee it was—for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild bee's touch, How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be, The hapless heart that's stung ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... ever holding farther intercourse with her; and Benigna, in return, forbade me ever attempting to serve or befriend him, which I was well disposed to do. The errors of the father, however, are not to be visited upon the children. Moved with compassion for your hapless situation, I am come to take you under my future patronage, if you choose to ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... quiet, and in that silence she heard an inner sound—the awful pulse of the old clock beating steadily, calling her, demanding the evidence of her senses,—she who feared no ghosts,—beating out the hours of an agony she was there to witness. And she was yet in time. The hapless creature entrapped within that room dragged its weight slowly across the floor. The clock, sole witness and companion of its sufferings, ticked on impartially. Neither is this any new thing, it seemed to say. A life was starved in here before—not ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... misery breathed from those hopeless and agonizing features! There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins upon her head. Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large burdock* against the wall, and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Adieu, Maria!—adieu, poor hapless damsel!—some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips—but I was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk'd softly ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Some time ago the illustrated papers provided us with photographs of a person, originally female, "born to be love visible," as Ruskin says, who had mastered jiu-jitsu for suffragette purposes, and was to be seen throwing various hapless men about a room. And only the day before I write, the papers have given us a realistic account of a demonstration by an ardent advocate of woman, the chief item of which was that, on the approach of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... his own disappearance. Secondly, he alone knew how hopeless any attempt at a rescue must prove. Finally, he wished to spare the feelings of those who had befriended him; of what avail were useless mind-torturings regarding the hapless beings in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Hapless man! What cause could prompt, what fiend could urge thee on To this detested deed? Could I from thee Expect to meet this base return? from thee, To whom I ought to fly with all the confidence That giving bounty ever could ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... hell her spirit dwelt. Yet driven by her sisters' words at last, And by remembrance of the time now past, When she stood trembling, as the oracle With all its fearful doom upon her fell, She to her hapless wedding-chamber turned, And while the waxen tapers freshly burned She laid those dread gifts ready to her hand, Then quenched the lights, and by the bed did stand, Turning these matters in her troubled mind; And sometimes hoped some glorious man to find Beneath the lamp, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the two Many a hapless boy in blue Lay face upward to the skies; Many another, just as true, Filled the air with ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the battle, but the hapless prince Was weak to meet his foeman's myriad host; And Mamood Khan fell bravely lighting there, And with him many of his valiant men. The faithful steed that through all perils bore The prince was slain, and soon he fought ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... spare me, Callista!" cried Polemo, starting up with a violence unsuited to his station and profession. "Spare my ears, unhappy woman!—such words have never hitherto entered them. I did not come to be insulted. Poor, blind, hapless, perverse spirit—I separate myself from you for ever! Desert, if you will, the majestic, bright, beneficent traditions of your forefathers, and live ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... dogs of war. For four long years they rioted in blood. To advance dynastic ambitions and national greed, millions of Armenian Christians were tortured, outraged and murdered; hapless Belgians were ravished and put to the sword, their cities made charnal heaps; millions of men—the fairest sons of many lands—gave up their lives, and anguished hearts sobbed out their grief in desolated homes, while generations to come will feel ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... not even the prospect of my own sufferings that caused me this uneasiness. It was the thought of the tortures I should witness—the appalling spectacle of the crowded steerage—the endurance and misery of those hapless negroes, who were to be penned together with scarce room to sit down—not enough to lie down—who were to be kept thus for long, long weeks on scant food and drink—half famished—half dead with thirst—panting and fainting under tropic heat and foul air, many of them ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... sleep came to the eyelids of the hapless Margaret Cooper. The garrulous language of the mother had awakened far other emotions in her bosom than those which she labored to inspire; and the warning of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon herself the terrible conviction that she was lost. In the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... from the Gods is here? My mind is mazed with doubt and fear. How can I gainsay what I see? I know the girl Antigone, O hapless child of hapless sire! Didst thou, then, recklessly aspire To brave kings' laws, and now art brought ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... shall fare afoot on far-away paths, Shall bear on his back his burdensome load, Tread the dewy track among tribes unfriendly 30 Amid foreign foemen. Few are alive To welcome the wanderer. The woeful face Of the hapless outcast is hateful to men. One shall end life on the lofty gallows; Dead shall he hang till the house of his soul, 35 His bloody body is broken and mangled: His eyes shall be plucked by the plundering raven, The sallow-hued spoiler, while soulless he lies, And helpless to fight ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... the man who went to seek one filthier than she was? How could he ever find one filthier?' inquired Rashid, reverting to Suleyman's unfinished story of the foolish woman and her husband and the hapless cow, when we lay down to sleep that evening in the village guest-room. I also asked to hear the rest of that instructive tale. Suleyman, sufficiently besought, raised himself upon an elbow and resumed the narrative. Rashid and I lay ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... and defenseless womanhood? Could he ever again glory in his American citizenship, when any white man, no matter how coarse, cruel, or brutal, could buy or sell her for the basest purposes? Was it not true that the cause of a hapless people had become entangled with the lightnings of heaven, and dragged down retribution ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... contend with—this hapless and amiable queen—but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to woman—the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... for Trix was decidedly an old girl, and Tom was generally regarded as a hapless victim. Trix turned red; but before she could load and fire again, Emma Davenport, who labored under the delusion that this sort of skirmishing was ill-natured, and therefore ill-bred, spoke up in her pleasant way, "Speaking of pitying the poor, I always wonder why it is that we all like to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... to such temper, this is the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be the embodiment! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,—in the Mother's bosom ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... prudent silence, seeing that the butler, a serious-looking personage with a resigned-to-ill-usage demeanour, was already engaged in assisting the hapless footman to remove the remains of the spilt condiment, from the offended ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... All tremble; none dares even to remind thee Of what befell the hapless child; meanwhile Here in dark cell a hermit doth indite Thy stern denunciation. Thou wilt not Escape the judgment even of this world, As thou wilt not ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... of passion my heart was blown, Like an autumn leaf one hapless day. At my lady's window with tap and moan It burned and fluttered its ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... open sea. "Miller's seamanship has saved him once more!" said Matheson, the Cromarty skipper, as, quitting his place of outlook, he returned to his cabin; but the night fell tempestuous and wild, and no vestige of the hapless sloop was ever after seen. It was supposed that, heavy laden, and labouring in a mountainous sea, she must have started a plank and foundered. And thus perished,—to borrow from the simple eulogium of his seafaring friends, whom I heard long after condoling with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees—gaily they trip along and take charge of the hapless workers, until the poor fellows or girls are hustled this way and that, driven, coerced, commanded, and counter-commanded till, in desperation, they take refuge, one and all, in the nearest bar. Then the Fabians, the Social Democrats, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... tender truth; The genuine portraiture of studious youth— Task of such pleasing pain, as pierc'd the heart Of Daedalus, the sire of antient art! When, in fond zeal, his busy hand begun To mould the story of his hapless son, But falter'd, while, o'erwhelm'd in mournful thought, He work'd, and wept upon the work, he wrought. Ah peerless youth! whose highly-gifted hand Could all varieties of skill command, Ere illness undermin'd thy powers to use The Sculptor's chizzel, and the Painter's hues! Had thy ascending ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... drawn from the hapless fingers Of some great lady, many centuries nameless,— Or is that too sepulchral?—dulled with dust; And necklaces that crumble if you touch them; And gold brocades that, breathed ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious brother. For a while the attention of that brother was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of St. Louis to the African coast; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... ensued. Diana had to fortify her fictitious objection by alluding to her maid's prattle of the household below; and she excused the hapless, overfed, idle people ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sad procession moved from the prison's most private door, on the night fixed for the execution, the third after the hapless girl's arrival in Brussels. The persons employed were few; no sympathizing crowd attended to strain the victim's pride and courage, and make her for very shame's sake brave the terrific scene. Lone and desolate, she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... one hundred and twenty in number—were absolutely beggar-children, and the offspring of beggars, or of the lowest possible classes in society. They earned a livelihood by the craft of asking alms. Mr. Horschelt conceived the plan of converting these hapless little vagabonds into members of some honest and useful calling. He saw an active little match girl trip across the street, and solicit alms in a very winning and even graceful manner—"that shall be my columbine," ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with greater interest than even usurer charged his hapless client. I wonder which room the cursed Americano ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... in a very few words Mordaunt's tale of suffering, which he imparted at different times to Edward. The wreck of the vessel to which he belonged had cast him, with one or two others of his hapless companions, on the coast of Morocco and Algiers. There they were seized by the cruel Moors, and carried as spies before the Dey, and by his command immured in the dungeons of the fortress where many unhappy captives were also confined, and had been for many ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... Some hold, some stay, O difficult Joy, I pray, Some arms of thine, Not only, only arms of mine! Lest like a weary girl I fall From clasping love so high, And lacking thus thine arms, then may Most hapless I Turn utterly to love of basest rate; For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. Yea, who me shall secure But I of height grown desperate Surcease my wing, and my lost fate Be dashed from pure To broken writhings in the shameful ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... oh, that hapless maiden?— Where may she wander now, whither betake her, From the chill dew, amongst rude burrs and thistles? Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now. Or, 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What, if in wild amazement ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... our lads leaving the guns for a few minutes for the purpose; but—will it be credited? The Spaniards no sooner became aware of our purpose than they directed their fire upon the boats and their hapless occupants; so that we were compelled to quickly drag the unhappy blacks back on board the schooner again, to save them from being ruthlessly slaughtered. The worst of it was, that though Williams had succeeded in freeing many of them from the heavy chains with ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... dove, though seas divide, I'll seek my lonely mate; But if afar I find a grave, You'll mourn my hapless fate. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... 'Alas! hapless girl! had I known Thou hadst learnt to repine at thy lot; That splendour and rank were thy own, Thy ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... her chief charm. Her eyes were good and her mouth, with its small, even, teeth, attractive, but she would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again, had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) in these words: "I don't know what it is about her, old man, but she somehow ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... father had, with every ingenuity, converted the precious creature into a link between a mamma and a grandpapa. The Principino, for a chance spectator of this process, might have become, by an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Toni felt very pitiful towards the hapless cricket enthusiast. "After all, Fan, you and I once ran away to see the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... prose, with all a Poet's art, Tickles the fancy, while it melts the heart!— Since at apologies I ne'er was handy,— Come, while fastidious Readers run me hard, And screen, sly playful wag! a hapless Bard, Behind one volume of thy ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... sea, pure sky its waves, Whose beauty hides no heaving graves,— A sea all haven, whereupon No hapless bark to wreck ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... but few and rare. What, said I few? Aye! few or none at all, For cruel death made havoc of them all. Thrice happy they whose fortune was so good, To end their lives, and with their lives their woes! Thrice hapless I, whom fortune so withstood, That cruelly she gave me to my foes! Oh, soldiers, is there any misery, To be compared to ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... separation is. The amorous vine with wanton interlaces Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces: Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves, And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves: Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit, Yet dare not ask a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with lascivious brows Upon a hapless wife's adulterous spouse, Is this thy faith, to waste another's wealth. The guilty fruit of perfidy and stealth! She durst not be my foe in open light. But in my ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... had placed the hapless city in some kind of order and government, Gaston sent the Good Knight many presents and five hundred crowns, which he at once gave to his faithful archers. The Duke had, indeed, no choice about his movements, for he received most urgent letters ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... rescue!" ordered Tom, who had also, through a window in the floor of the pilot house, seen the hapless motor boat. The men in it were frantically waving their hands to those on the airship. "I'm going down as close as I dare," went on Tom. "You watch, and when it's time, have Koku drop from the stern a long, knotted ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... companion, taking hold of one of these men. "Say your prayers, for we are going down," was the brutal reply. For the first and only time during my American travels I was really petrified with fear. Suddenly a wave struck the hapless vessel, and with a stunning crash broke through the thin woodwork of the side of the saloon. I caught hold of a life-buoy which was near me—a gentleman clutched it from me, for fright makes some men selfish—and, breathless, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... for example, the worst, or the best, of the Stuarts; and Louis the Sixteenth, of the Bourbons? Look, again, at the fate of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the hapless monks of the Charterhouse. Were they sinners above all who upheld the Romish system in England? Were they not rather among the righteous men who ought to have saved it, if it could have been saved? And yet on them—the purest and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... from the great tower of the Abbey Saint-Martin, the lover of the hapless countess passed in front of the hotel de Poitiers and paused for a moment to listen to the sounds made in the lower hall by the servants of the count, who were supping. Casting a glance at the window of the room where ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the 'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... following year: the undertaking having originated in consequence of the loss of the ship Clarendon (see p. 85). From the frequent wrecks on this most dangerous part of the coast, it is rather surprizing that such a warning friend to the hapless mariner was not erected before: because many of the catastrophes were owing to the want of some light or signal in the night, which could be distinctly seen by seamen long ere they reached the fatal shore. It is true indeed, that ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... the threshing-floor, Futtehpore had fallen, and disaster had overtaken the rebel forces at Aoung. Reinforcements were despatched by Nana in rapid succession, but all was of no avail—on came Havelock and his handful of heroes, carrying everything before them in their determination to rescue the hapless women and children imprisoned at Cawnpore. About noon on July 15th a few troopers came in from the south and informed Nana that his last reinforcement had met the same fate as the others, and reported that the English were coming up the road like mad horses, caring for neither cannon nor ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and even madness, the Unwins took him under their roof, and gave him a home on the most generous terms. From this time until her death, the friendship of Mary was a necessity to Cowper, the greatest support and enjoyment the hapless poet knew, combining with his native humor and gentleness to combat his melancholy malady with frequent and long victories. In his fits of insanity, she watched and waited on him day and night, defying alike personal hardships and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return to Helen for a kiss. O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appear'd to hapless Semele; More lovely than the monarch of the sky In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms; And none but thou ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... forty-eight feet on each side of the bole, lifting a mountain of rich verdure above them, and casting a delicious shade upon the ground beneath them. Beneath one of these noble trees, some years after the arrival of the hapless Mary Stuart, a party of children were playing, much to the amusement of an audience of which they were utterly unaware, namely, of sundry members of a deer-hunting party; a lady and gentleman who, having become separated ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the woful'st husband comes alive, No husband now; the wight, that did uphold That name of husband, is now quite o'erthrown, And I am left a hapless widower. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... jeer at them for knowing nothing. He was very particular about the human race when it was likely to suffer by an injurious indulgence on the part of women, but when it was a question of extra port wine for himself, he never considered the tortures of gout he might be entailing upon his own hapless descendants. However, there was an excuse for him on this occasion, for it is not every day that an irritated man has an opportunity of railing at his wife's incapacity and the inconvenient intelligence of his daughter both in one breath. "But how has Evadne obtained all this mischievous ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was the lot of the hapless tutoress to select such a moment as this in which to sweetly chide the girl for some lapse of form. Allie exploded. She reduced the elder woman to tears, then, ashamed of herself, she flung blindly out of the room, crashing the door ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... family are depicted, but also in the use of symbolism after the manner of Zola: for the switching station, with its purposeless turmoil, its disquietude, its pulling and hauling, is a symbol for the noisy life in general, and in particular for the comfortless, hapless marriage in which a delicately organized artistic soul is worried to death. The fate of the woman who becomes the victim of a man is the theme of the succeeding novels, A Mother's Rights (1897) and Half Beast (1899), in which Helene Boehlau enters the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... must always have a manly support of some kind near at hand. Still less had she become a typical belle, and the aggressive society girl who captures and amuses herself with her male admirers with the grace and sang froid of a sportive kitten that carefully keeps a hapless mouse within reach of her velvet paw. The pale and saint-like image which he had so long enshrined within his heart, and which had been created by her devotion to her mother, also faded utterly away in the presence of the reality before him. She ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... austere, because austerity was all that he had ever known or had a chance of knowing; but too often austerity is but the dam that holds back the flood of potential passion. Not to know the power which rages behind the barricade is to leave the structure weak for a hapless day when, carrying all before it, the flood shall break its bonds and in its fury ruin fair field and smiling mead. It was well for Fred Brent that the awakening came when ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... preparation. He attacked. The Indians did run off, with the happy, shouting militia in full hue and cry after. The regulars followed slowly. When a gap of two miles had opened, as if from the very earth out sprang Little Turtle's whole remaining force, a thousand, and the hapless regulars were in the ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... at village door, The oaks were shatter'd on the green; Woe was the hour—for never more That hapless Countess e'er ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... resisted the temptation that arose violently within him to take her by force, if needs be, and carry her into the inner room, as the wild beast, tiring of playing with its victim, suddenly ends the game by seizing its hapless prey and drags it away to its lair. Was he not the master? Why should he allow her childish prattle to stand in the way of his desires. For years, Handsome had not known female society save that of those wretched ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... from one of the hapless prisoners, the officer dropped into the pit immediately and was gone for some few minutes, only to emerge again, dirty like the prisoners, but triumphant instead of crestfallen, his face beaming, his eyes sparkling with happiness. So pleased was he that he even ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... merely destroy it, but often ingeniously torments it by pulling limb from limb. If the duck be but wounded with the gun, his prey is not instantly despatched to spare all future pain, but feather is plucked out after feather, and the hapless creature is tormented on principle. I have frequently witnessed the cruelty with which parents will sometimes amuse their children, by catching young birds or animals, that they may disjoint their limbs to make them struggle in a lingering death. And a child is often seen twisting the neck of a young ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... spoken of Peter as a stubborn swordsman and a hard hitter, and both of these he now showed himself to be. As fresh to all appearance as when he ran the first course, he rained blow after blow upon the hapless Spaniard, till the sound of his sword smiting on the good Toledo steel was like the sound of a hammer falling continually on the smith's red iron. They were fearful blows, yet still the tough steel held, and still Morella, doing ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... and died out with the acceptance of Saul, by the Israelites, as "King of all the tribes of Israel." The incidents touched upon range from the proclamation of Saul as King, by Samuel (1095 B.C.), to the fall of the hapless Monarch at the battle of Gilboa, 40 ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... again. So, at least, they are pleased to declare, for the satisfaction of Albert Redmayne and yourself. Needless to say they went south together as man and wife, reported a ceremony that did not take place, and after a reasonable delay turned their attention to my hapless friend. ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... times ere now I had seen them fall and receive no damage—this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... shrieks, but shrieks in vain; for high The wild winds rising dull the cry; The Fiend exults; The Billows dash, And o'er their hapless Victim wash. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... be. He was loth to lose more time: the plight of a Chinese vessel was no concern of his; yet as he glanced up and down the bay and saw that it could obtain help from no other quarter, he could not bring himself to leave the hapless Chinamen to the fate that must overtake them unless he intervened. Slackening ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Boiled" Bland demanded more from his men than any other editor ever has before or since. Nevertheless he got results, and none of his experienced underlings ever kicked, for the pay was right. If a hapless scribe had the temerity to enter the editorial sanctum with a negative report, the almost invariable reply had been a glare and a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... blood-thirsty god, Moloch, the wretchedness of Hamilcar's slaves are presented with every ghastly detail, with every degrading trick of expression. Picture after picture of misery and foulness arises and pursues us as the grim witches pursued the hapless Tam O'Shanter, clutching us in ghastly arms, clinging to us ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... the warm blood bedews my veins, And unimpair'd remembrance reigns, Resentment of my country's fate Within my filial breast shall beat; And spite of her insulting foe, My sympathizing verse shall flow: Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the opening of the Green Box, not to mention the small fortune annexed from Mr. Marvel, was all gone. What he had not lost over the cards had been stolen while he lay fuddled. Thus he had been ready enough for another job from his patron. The hapless Marvel, by the way, had been left secure in a dungeon-like cellar, with enough bread and water to keep body and soul together for a couple of days. Bullard had not had time to decide what to do ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... masterships will, and when the children are born, they keep them or slay them as they will, as they would with whelps or calves. To be short, year by year these vile wretches grow fiercer and more beastly, and their thralls more hapless and down-trodden; and now at last is come the time either to do or to die, as ye men of Burgdale shall speedily find out. But now must I go sleep if I am to be where I look to ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than historic reasons for ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Calabria's coast, And Murat's little fleet wore sailing there; No peering moon lit up the lonely sea, But all was sable as his wayward fate. A storm dispers'd them, and Sardinia's isle Receiv'd the bark that held the hapless king, And morn beheld it on the main again; But far apart his faithful followers. Calabria's beach was gain'd; where Murat stood Amidst the dastard throng that hemm'd him round, With heart of adamant, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... each man clinging to his assigned post of duty in desperation. There was but little firing—the defenders nursing their slender stock, the savages biding their time. When night shut down the latter became bolder, and taunted cruelly those destined to become so soon their hapless victims. Twice the maddened men fired recklessly at those dancing devils, and one pitched forward, emitting a howl of pain that caused his comrades to cower once again behind their covers. One and all these frontiersmen recognized the inevitable—before dawn the end must come. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... could remove The pangs of guilty power or[421] hapless love; Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more, Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep, undisturb'd, within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... months—long after Dan had left the district—did exact information as to the fate of the hapless girl reach our ears. Wethera told of the tragedy. Duckbill had followed her tracks from the house towards the mountain, had overtaken her, and, since she had fought frenziedly, had "killed her alonga head little bit," not intending to kill her "dead, finis." Carried to the camp, it had been ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for those hapless artificers who perform the most abject offices, of any authorised calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vainglory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for one ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a feeling of quick pity for the hapless situation of the great brute rendered futile and helpless by the wiles of the Gomangani. Enemy though the beast was, he was less an enemy to the ape-man than those blacks who had trapped him, for though Tarzan of the Apes ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... conveyed through the gloomy streets of the lower city to his solitary prison in the Tower. The streets were filled, after he had passed, with groups of men of all ranks and stations, discussing the strange and mournful vicissitudes in the life of this hapless monarch, now for the second time cut off from all his friends, and immured hopelessly in a ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the fields near the mighty Pont du Gard, Vincen's victory in the trial of strength, the treachery of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable. The ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... Here the hapless AEgeon ended the account of his misfortunes; and the duke, pitying this unfortunate father who had brought upon himself this great peril by his love for his lost son, said, if it were not against ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... flames had passed over the spot where we had last seen him— far beyond—leaving the ground charred and black behind them. Though the smoke hindered our view of the plain, we knew that the climax had passed: the hapless victim had succumbed; and it remained only to look for his ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... of that which had taken days of labor. He used vigorously the only weapon which he possessed, his tongue, but the big moose cared nothing for the sound of the human voice raised in protestation. Having vented his rage upon the hapless fence, he took up his position beneath the tree, rumbling threateningly and tearing up the ground with his sharp hoofs, one blow of which would have ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... one is yours, is wept for you! Oh, if to soften that proud will of yours this hapless woman must needs open all her weak heart to you, if she must needs tell you that she lives only in your life and dies in your death, her lip will brace itself even to that pitiful confession! Ah ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contained into his pocket, stood motionless an instant, his hand pressed to his head, muttered a few inarticulate sounds, and then, perceiving that his servant had placed his cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the carriage, ordering the postilions to drive to M. de Saint-Meran's. The hapless Dantes ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... woman, in a feeble tone, "I know it all; I know He is able and willing to take care of my hapless children. I can and do trust them to Him; feeling sure He will more than supply the place of the only parent left them; but, oh, my dear sir, convinced, as I am, of all this, it is, nevertheless, hard to leave ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... name of the Earl of Rags was bestowed upon him, and the miserable companions of his wretched plight were never tired of tempting him to recount his adventures, for the sake of entertaining themselves by teasing that which they supposed to be his hapless mania. ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... be found in a milliner's shop that was condemned to remain in the window, or to be packed off to the colonies, Granville was certain to see it on his wife's head; if a material of bad color or hideous design were to be found, she would select it. These hapless bigots are heart-breaking in their notions of dress. Want of taste is a defect inseparable from ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... be an exceedingly hapless young man!" she commented with serious disapproval. "I imagine your life must be a monotonous round ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the before-mentioned words, "When I'm gone," over again. As she came to the last words, Miss Sharp's "deep-toned voice faltered." Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and to her hapless orphan state. Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music, and soft-hearted, was in a state of ravishment during the performance of the song, and profoundly touched at its conclusion. If he had had the courage; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with its noble qualities but half in abeyance, and abounding spirit and humour and reckless fancy making its course of wild adventure comprehensible even to the gravest. Perhaps the licence of the Stewart blood carried the hapless northern prince into more dangerous adventures than the wild fun of Gadshill and Eastcheap. And Prince David's future had already been compromised by certain sordid treacheries about his marriage when ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... They were kept in a wretched, old, tumbledown house, without doors or windows, during the bitter cold of a Kansas winter, guarded by "Law and Order" militia, exposed to every insult, wallowing in filth, and eaten up with lice. But there was one circumstance to mitigate their hapless condition—their jailer was a good-hearted, honest Kentuckian, who had humanity enough to pity them, and bravery enough to do what he could to mitigate the hardships of their lot. Their hard-hearted judges had condemned them to ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler |
