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More "Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus it was with this our hapless crew; For on the third day there came on a calm, And though at first their strength it might renew, And lying on their weariness like balm, Lull'd them like turtles sleeping on the blue Of ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm, And fell all ravenously on their provision, Instead of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... passion my heart was blown, Like an autumn leaf one hapless day. At my lady's window with tap and moan It burned and ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in the "Scissors Boy", Alas! death seems quite near; Her trust betrayed, This hapless maid Sobs ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... hand, kept quite still. He had taken his feet out of the stirrups and was swinging his short legs carelessly to and fro. His eyes flashed scorn as he looked at the hapless lieutenant. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... ruin of the peasants of these provinces [1] are the Zhyds. [2] As property-holders they are here second in importance to the landed nobility. By their commercial pursuits they drain the strength of the hapless White Russian people.... They are everything here: merchants, contractors, saloon-keepers, mill-owners, ferry-holders, artisans.... They are regular leeches, and suck these unfortunate governments [3] to the point of exhaustion. It is a matter of surprise that in 1812 they displayed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... were stretched forth to fasten on the hapless Count, who, with vacillating step, like the bird under the eye of the basilisk, involuntarily, though with a perfect consciousness of his awful situation, and the fearful fate which awaited him, every moment drew ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... who the merits of the dead revere, Who hold misfortune's sacred genius dear, Regard this tomb, where Collins, hapless name, Solicits kindness with a double claim. Though nature gave him, and though science taught The fire of fancy, and the reach of thought, Severely doom'd to penury's extreme, He pass'd in maddening pain life's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... on that hapless planet, Handsome and kind and true, Cry out, 'Hurry up!' O hang it! What else can a Wenus do? I suppose it was rather bad form, girls, But really we didn't care, For our planet was growing too warm, girls, And we wanted ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... almost drank my breath away; And, to her passion bending, She clasped me close, with her lion claws My hapless body rending. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... news that he was already dead. The mournful cavalcade returned, bearing his remains, and a grave was dug in the wilderness. A tree close by, on which his initials were cut, formed the only memorial of the hapless explorer. ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... evil case that day, as were all souls, rich and poor, throughout that hapless land. For three weary years, there had been no drop of rain: the earth beneath their feet had been like iron, and the heavens above them brass; and Obadiah had found poverty, want, and misery, come on him in the midst of all his riches: he ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the widow's tear, The hapless orphan's want supply, Guide to a blessed asylum here, And point ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... In every drop a torturing spirit flew, It pierc'd so deeply, and it burn'd so blue. Betwixt all this and Hero, Hero held Leander's picture, as a Persian shield; And she was free from fear of worst success: The more ill threats us, we suspect the less: As we grow hapless, violence subtle grows, Dumb, deaf, and blind, and comes when no man ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... 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 ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... on Charles alone, and he was surrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious as they were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with which in themselves they had no power to cope. It may easily be allowed, also, that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on the word of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason, madness and folly. She would seem to have had the women on her side always and at every point. The Church did not stir, or else was hostile; the commanders ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... Goddess, what offended Power Enflamed their rage in that ill-omened hour; anger fatal, hapless Phoebus himself the dire debate procured, fierce To avenge the wrongs his injured priest endured; For this the god a dire infection spread, And heaped the camp with millions of the dead: The King of men the sacred sire defied, And for the King's ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... 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
... My once-dear Love!—hapless, that I no more Must call thee so. . . . The rich affection's store That fed our hopes, lies now exhaust and spent, Like sums of treasure unto bankrupts lent:— We that did nothing study but the way To love each other, with which thoughts the day Rose with delight to us, and with ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sprawling, half lying over the heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it was the President—hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time. All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute adoration there is no telling. The restless, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... have been guilty of leading him to think . . .?' she said, in a tone that writhed, at a second discussion of this hapless affair. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... housekeeper, and could ordain how many French plums and how many muscatel raisins were to be consumed in a given period. She could bring her powers of arithmetic to bear upon wax-candles, and torment the souls of hapless underlings by the precision of her calculations. She had an eye to the preserves; and if awakened suddenly in the dead of the night could have told, to a jar, how many pots of strawberry, and raspberry, and currant, and greengage were ranged ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... looked around them in dismay. Here were no happy homes, no smiling fields, no bustling colonists. The island was deserted. What had become of the inhabitants was not easy to guess. Not even their bones had been left, as in the case of the hapless fifteen, though many relics of their dwelling-places were found. The only indication of their fate was the single word "Croatan" cut into the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the Cyclops seek mine; and if you ask me whether my love for Acis or my hatred of Polyphemus was the stronger, I cannot tell you; they were in equal measure. O Venus, how great is thy power! this fierce giant, the terror of the woods, whom no hapless stranger escaped unharmed, who defied even Jove himself, learned to feel what love was, and, touched with a passion for me, forgot his flocks and his well-stored caverns. Then for the first time he began to take some care of his appearance, and to try to make himself agreeable; he harrowed those ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... 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 ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... dismay, for the savage outcry burst forth the next moment with more ferocity than ever, and as it died away a single voice shouted in a tone of command some words, to which the rest responded by such a yell as later on curdled the blood of the hapless settlers at Deerfield and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... flames be doom'd thy hapless fate, To atoms thou wouldst quickly turn: My pains may bear a longer date; For should I live, and should she hate, In endless ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... I have reached one conclusion. I opine that the hapless prophet has no sort of time with that lady. I opine that he will soon wish himself in Paradise. For if Almighty God ever created a female ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... on the trail, and within a mile discovered that the hapless wolf was Blanca. Away she went, however, at a gallop, and although encumbered by the beef-head, which weighed over fifty pounds, she speedily distanced my companion who was on foot. But we overtook her when she reached the rocks, for the horns of the cow's head became caught and held ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of hap may cheer my hapless chance? What sighs, what tears may countervail my cares? What should I do, but still his death bewail, That was the solace of my life and soul? Now, now, I want the wonted guide and stay Of my desires and of my wreakless thoughts. My ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • 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 ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... here we know not. Neither do we know what induced him to make another move. But we soon find him pushing still farther back into the wilderness, with his hapless family of sons and daughters, dooming them, in all their ignorance, to the society only of bears and wolves. He now established himself upon a considerable stream, unknown to geography, called ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... half-a-crown," said one, in a dreadful voice. "Mr. BURROWES irregular in his attendance at Chapel, gated at eight," roared a second. "Mr. BURROWES persistently disorderly, sent down for the term," shouted a third; and then they all began to caper round the hapless man whom the Fairy Queen had betrayed into their power. They taunted him and reviled him. "You have mined our homes, poisoned our fathers' happiness, undermined the trusting confidence of our mothers. You have been a bad man. You must perish!" and thus the dreadful chorus went on while the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... Majesties' plans? Should Monsieur d'Angremont be induced to divulge their names they will inevitably be lost—their only hope is in immediate flight," says Adrienne, looking from the King, sunk in resigned silence, to the frantic, hapless Queen, and ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... shreds. "Find the seamless raiment!" they yelled to one another. The unbelievers stood aside; the believers did nothing, in a palsy of amaze; the poor woman, to whom her toil and pride in it had hallowed the stuff, sank down staying herself on her hands from the floor, in hapless despair. Her moaning and sobbing filled the place after the tumult of destruction had been stricken silent. "Oh, I don't care for the miracle," she kept lamenting, "but what are my children going to wear this winter? Oh, what will ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... being thus suddenly despoiled of everything, he retired to Cassandrea. His wife Phila, in the passion of her grief, could not endure to see her hapless husband reduced to the condition of a private and banished man. She refused to entertain any further hope, and, resolving to quit a fortune which was never permanent except for calamity, took poison and died. Demetrius, determining still to hold on by the wreck, went off to Greece, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the Revolutionary War, the Indians were as slow to lay down their arms as they had been after the French War. In each case they fought the victors, as far as they could get at them in the persons of the hapless backwoodsmen and their wives and children. These backwoodsmen did not change greatly, in their way of life, during that long Indian war of forty years. They were of the hardy English, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish stock ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine away in the atrophy of genius, or else turn drawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or newspaper-critics; how many hapless poets have sighed out their souls to the Muse in vain, without ever getting their effusions farther known than the Poet's Corner of a country newspaper, and looked and looked with grudging, wistful ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... harp, "drawing iron tears down Pluto's cheek," won his mistress half way to the upper light, and would have wholly redeemed her had he not in impatience looked back. The grim king of Hades, yielding to passionate entreaties, relented so far as to let the hapless Protesilaus return to his mourning Laodameia for three hours. At the swift end of this poor period he died again; and this time she died with him. Erus, who was killed in battle, and Timarchus, whose soul was rapt from him in the cave of Trophonius, both ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... within and without the house, met, and, by the force of sympathetic similarity, mixed in an instant, carrying away in their course, like floating straws, the strongest doubts that remained in the mind of the most sceptical man in Christ's Kirk, of the hapless daughter of Wat Webster having been carried off by the Devil. The town was in the greatest commotion; terror and pity were painted on every face; but the feelings of the public held small proportion, indeed, to the agony which overtook Wat Webster and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... and 1905 and was now an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in which hapless women ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... The sufferings of this hapless crowd were acute. Provisions were hard to obtain at the way stations. The water supply gave out. A little child died of exposure, and the heart-broken mother held the lifeless body twenty-four hours on her lap. There was no room to lay it to one side. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... Hapless one! with heart filled with sorrow, Lonely amid thy mates, Thy spirit sullen to the end Thou shalt behold the fondling mothers. A lonely wanderer everywhere, Cursing thy fate at all times, Thou the bitter reproach shalt hear... Forgive ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... for a 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 rope. That will be a sort of ladder, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... 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
... how soon The sad brief summer of thy joys hath fled: How sorrows Friendship for thy hapless doom, Thy beauty faded, and thy hopes all dead. Oh! 'twas that beauty's power which first destroy'd Thy mind's serenity; its charms but led The faithless friend, that thy pure love enjoy'd, To tear the beauteous blossom from its bed. How reason shudders at thy frenzied air! ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... every student of English literature must be familiar with the noble tale in verse which Dryden has founded on this part of the 'Decameron.' We all of us have followed Theodore, and watched with him the tempest swelling in the grove, and seen the hapless ghost pursued by demon hounds and hunter down the glades. This story should be read while storms are gathering upon the distant sea, or thunderclouds descending from the Apennines, and when the pines begin to rock and surge beneath ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... have described, and deported as a free emigrant to Australia (where he is welcomed), for L.25. Thus, even in an economical light, the reforming of the youth is a great gain. Magistrates are everywhere impressed with the hopelessness of a mere judicial treatment of these hapless children. They come back to the dock at almost regular intervals; severity is of no avail with a poor wretch who, on being discharged from jail, finds all honest employment denied to him. It is by reform ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... Dear, hapless Princess! She said to me, in one of her confidential conversations on these matters, "The Queen has been so cruelly deceived and so much watched that she almost fears her own shadow; but it gives me great pleasure that Her Majesty had been herself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this interesting but hapless girl, I proceeded to the house of Steffani. I heard from one of his mother's gondoliers that he had returned to Venice three days before, but that, twenty-four hours after his return, he had gone away again without any servant, and nobody ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... madman. The 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
... two. You can have one of mine," cried Peace, forgetting wisdom, discretion, everything, in her great pity for this hapless bit of humanity. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... "Whence hapless Monsieur much complains at Paris Of wrongs from Duchesses and Lady Maries."—Dunciad, B. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... blow with such emphasis that Solomon's equanimity was seriously disturbed. He dashed forward with what speed he could command, Mr. Peabody holding on, in a sort of panic, till he was a hundred yards away. Then he stopped suddenly, lowering his head, and his hapless rider was thrown over it, landing some distance in advance. Solomon looked at him with grim humor, if a donkey is capable of such a feeling, and, apparently satisfied, turned and walked complacently back ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... either arm, "Spread out," he cried, "The meshes, that I take the lioness And the young lions at the pass: "then forth Stretch'd he his merciless talons, grasping one, One helpless innocent, Learchus nam'd, Whom swinging down he dash'd upon a rock, And with her other burden self-destroy'd The hapless mother plung'd: and when the pride Of all-presuming Troy fell from its height, By fortune overwhelm'd, and the old king With his realm perish'd, then did Hecuba, A wretch forlorn and captive, when she saw Polyxena first slaughter'd, and her son, Her Polydorus, on the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... "as to the whereabouts of the burn-brae on which be the graves of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray." Whether he actually visited the spot, near the Almond Water, ten miles west of Perth, is left uncertain. The pathetic story of these two hapless maidens, and the fine old song founded on it, had made it to him ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... bench, had grown rigid in the posture described above—his mouth awry, his eyes gleaming. So this is what has happened! In a few weeks after the death of the hapless Cara he is active and triumphant; he hurls his lariat on the golden calf and captures new millions. A demi-god! A Titan! The king of markets! He sweeps forward in seven-league boots over roads, at the crossing-points of which are Americans ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... improvident maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the procession should close: "Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." Alas, this was now the only alternative! Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless errand of buying oil for immediate ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... 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 ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... keenly, when, besides this secondary and, so to speak, historical merit, it exhibits such veracity in the portraiture of emotion, as, whatever be its drawbacks, whatever its little temptations to ridicule, distinguishes the hapless, and, when all is said, the noble and pathetic ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... skies with acclamation, Stun the woods and waters round— Till the echoes of our gathering Turn the world's admiring gaze To this act of duteous homage Scotland to her poet pays. Fill the banks and braes with music, Be it loud and low by turns— This we owe the deathless glory, That the hapless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... a cell adjoining that which the hapless queen had occupied that Madame Roland was cast. Here the proud daughter of the emperors of Austria and the humble child of the artisan, each, after a career of unexampled vicissitudes, found their paths to meet but a few steps from the scaffold. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... charities, that would not let anyone in our midst perish from want of necessary food and fuel. When she recovered from her illness, one relative, a widow now present in court, had from her own narrow means supplied the money to rent and furnish a small schoolroom, and this most hapless of women was once more put in a way to earn daily bread for herself and children. Nine years passed, during which she enjoyed a respite from the persecutions of the plaintiff. In these nine years, by strict attention to business, untiring industry, she not only paid off the debt ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... all Letta's doing! The more hopeless the struggle felt, the more hapless did Letta's fate appear to Robin, and the more furious did the spirit within rise above its disadvantages. In the whirl of the fight the pirate's head chanced for one moment to be in proximity to a large iron block. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... as closely as their steeds would allow them. But though they tarried till the flames had abated, and little was left of the noble grove but a collection of charred and smoking stumps, nothing was seen of the fiend or of the hapless girl he had carried off. It served to confirm the notion of the supernatural origin of the fire, in that it was confined within the mystic circle, and did not extend farther ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tears—each 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 me! these poor cheeks have been so blanched ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open his mouth. In fact Courtrey had been known to stop and chat with such a one, smiling his evil smile and enjoying the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... those petty shifts and miserable falsifications whereby the birds of prey thrive on the flesh and blood of hapless pigeons. Now the dovecotes were fluttered by a new destroyer—a gentlemanly vulture, whose suave accents and perfect manners were fatal to the unwary. Henceforth Horatio Cromie Nugent Paget flourished and fattened upon the folly of his fellow-men. As promoter of joint-stock companies that never ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and 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. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the hapless wretch, looking about him with an expression that denoted the consciousness of danger, though it was not possible he could comprehend the precise mode of his execution. I went to him, and pressed his hand, pointing upward, as much as to say his whole trust was now in the Great Spirit. The Indian ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... heard crying—"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive! Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chambermaid, and boots—each in a different key—from manly bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a madman—for, gentle ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... (mine often partook of his infantine mutton, in company with little Clara and the poor young heir of Newcome) in the room which had been called my lady's own, and in which her husband had locked her, forgetting that the conservatories were open, through which the hapless woman had fled. Next to this was the baronial library, a side of which was fitted with the gloomy books from Clapham, which old Mrs. Newcome had amassed; rows of tracts, and missionary magazines, and dingy quarto volumes of worldly travel and history which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?" The doom pronounced against Samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than "an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley," saith the Lord, "and I will discover the foundations thereof. And all her graven images ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... put an end unto my theme, There was an end of Ismail, hapless town, Far flashed her burning towers o'er Danube's stream, And redly ran his blushing waters down. The horrid warwhoop and the shriller scream Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown; Of forty thousand that had manned the wall Some hundreds breathed, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... been extinguished and from the folds of whose garments its flint and tinderbox had been taken, had now been completely trussed up, and lay helpless and perforce silent against the wall of the shed. From the time when the hapless man first felt the grip of the Gujarati upon his throat scarcely five minutes ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... should be crazy enough to obey that impulse, what would happen? Why, the king's guards would be upon me in a second, and I should be hacked to pieces by their terrible bangwans in the drawing of a single breath, while probably an even worse fate would befall my hapless followers! No, of course, the idea was madness, the act an impossibility; yet when a few minutes later I saw the tall induna, Logwane—Mapela's friend—led forth and mercilessly done to death, I could not refrain from leaning toward the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... as gently as I could, for her hapless condition appealed to me in spite of my well founded prejudices against her; and seeing she was growing incapable of response, I drew her up on the bed ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... distress and 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 from time to time the father cast his eyes upon them with a look in which might ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Argyle endeavour to prevail upon the honest and simple clansmen to renounce their allegiance to their chief, and to become his vassals.[81] Every species of indignity and of plunder was inflicted upon these hapless, but faithful Highlanders in vain; a "monster," as he is termed, "bearing the stamp of human appearance, named Sir Neill Campbell," in vain chased the poor inhabitants to the hills, and there exhibited ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... When the bright Seraphim with joy prolong Through all eternity that thrilling song— The heathen's universal jubilee, A music sweet, O Saviour Christ, to Thee— Say, 'mid those happy strains, will not one note,— Sung by a hapless nation once remote, But now led Home by tender cords of love, Rise clear through those majestic courts above? Yes! from amid the tuneful, white-robed choirs, Hymning Jehovah's praise on golden lyres, One Hallelujah shall for evermore Tell of the Saviour's ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... fall'n. Whom answer'd then Pallas caerulean-eyed. Oh Jove, Saturnian Sire, o'er all supreme! And well he merited the death he found; 60 So perish all, who shall, like him, offend. But with a bosom anguish-rent I view Ulysses, hapless Chief! who from his friends Remote, affliction hath long time endured In yonder wood-land isle, the central boss Of Ocean. That retreat a Goddess holds, Daughter of sapient Atlas, who the abyss Knows to its bottom, and the pillars high Himself upbears which sep'rate earth from heav'n. His daughter, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... their trifling weight Through all my frame a weary aching leaves; For long I struggled with my hapless fate, And stayed and toiled till it was dark and late— Yet these ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... vain On radiant wings drew near; The hapless moth in vain grew wroth - The fair rose leaned to hear The deep-voiced stranger's low refrain That thrilled ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Harrington, returning to the hapless Luke, "has had every advantage. I suppose he will try to explain matters when he comes. I could explain ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... time, however, came when the nation could no longer suffer the barbarities of bygone periods to be continued. Accordingly, in 1608 a complaint was made to the Scottish Privy Council against persons in power for so torturing the hapless women that they died amid smoke and flame, blaspheming the Most High, and uttering imprecations against ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... to his room, and every restorative applied; but even the skill of Julien, well versed as he was in the healing art, was without effect. More than an hour passed, and still he lay like death; and no sound, no sob, broke from the torn heart of his hapless child, who knelt beside his couch; her large dark eyes, distended to even more than their usual size, fixed upon his face; her hands clasped round one of his; but had she sought thus to give warmth she would have failed, for the hand of the living was cold and damp as that ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... his eyes began to roll, In pleasing memory of all he stole— How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o'er like an industrious bug. Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here The frippery of crucified Moliere; There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore, Wished he had blotted for ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of torture for the hapless prisoners came laggingly to an end at last when, about half an hour after daybreak, the lashings which had confined their limbs all through the hours of darkness were loosed, and they were allowed to scramble to their feet and walk to and fro for a few minutes before partaking ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... is he whose card-rack or mantelpiece (I was going to say groans, but) laughingly rejoices in respectful well-worded invitations to luxuriously-appointed tables. I count not him, hapless wretch! as one who, singling out "a friend," drops in just at pudding-time, and ravens horrible remnants of last Tuesday's joint, cognizant of curses in the throat of his host, and of intensest sable on the brows of his hostess. No struggle there, on the part of the children, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... As ladies will, She sometimes wearies of her wooer; A goddess, yet a woman still, She flies the more that we pursue her; In short, with worst as well as best, Five months in six, your hapless poet Is just as prosy as the rest, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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
... great, the wise, If I have failed to please thine ear, thine eyes; My sorrowing spirit, torn by countless fears, Each sound forbiddeth save the voice of tears. With power to please thee wouldst thou me inspire?— Recall from exile now my hapless sire.” ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... impressions of it. You, with your brute preferences for literality, will not understand this, and I suppose you would say I ought to have got a purer and higher joy out of the little passage of drama, which followed, and I don't know but I did. It was nothing but the notion of a hapless, half-grown girl, who has run away from the poorhouse for a half-holiday, and brings up in the dooryard of an old farmer of the codger type, who knew her father and mother. She at once sings, one doesn't know why, 'Oh, dear, what can the matter be,' ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Mississippi was the life of the enterprise, the condition of its growth and of its existence. Without it, all was futile and meaningless; a folly and a ruin. Cost what it might, the Mississippi must be found. But the demands of the hour were imperative. The hapless colony, cast ashore like a wreck on the sands of Matagorda Bay, must gather up its shattered resources, and recruit its exhausted strength, before it essayed anew its desperate pilgrimage to the "fatal river." La Salle during his explorations had found a spot which he thought well fitted ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... at 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 little orphan-progeny: Alike the beauteous face, the comely air, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... door behind him. He mentally reiterated his determination to engage "Parthrick," as Mrs. Maloney's eldest son was called by his devoted mother. The youth should enter upon his functions the very night after, and if the ghost of the hapless George Talboys should invade these gloomy apartments, the phantom must make its way across Patrick's body before it could reach the inner chamber in which the proprietor of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... snares are set, the plot is laid, Ruin awaits thee,—hapless maid! Seduction sly assails thine ear, And gloating, foul desire is near; Baneful and blighting are their smiles, Destruction waits upon their wiles; Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, Vice clasps her hands, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... some sunny autumn 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 cleared of intruders. There is a dead silence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... wicked King and his castle attendants, who, seeing the predicament of the giant, fitted arrows to their strong bows, preparing to shoot the hapless fellow. ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... children were playing in the arroyo bed. Their voices came with a stifled sound. There was nothing else to hear save the far-off moaning of a wild dove somewhere up Gonzales canyon. The echo was like a soft, sad voice. It sounded like the mournful cry of one who, looking out of heaven, saw her hapless little daughter bereaved and abandoned, and was moved, even among the blessed, to a ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... Elizabeth had fallen asleep long before, full of years and honors—than his young heir, Osborn Fitz-Henry, displayed the cognizance of his old house, mustered his tenantry, and set foot in stirrup, well nigh the first, to withdraw it the very last, of the adherents of the hapless Charles. So long did he resist in arms, so pertinaciously did he uphold the authority of the first Charles, so early did he rise again in behalf of the second, that he was noted by the Parliament as an incorrigible and most desperate malignant; and, had it not been that, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... a thoughtful pace And slow, the young Ernestus took his place; Like Bernheim, graced with an illustrious birth, But hapless Sweden was his native earth. His father sunk by death's untimely doom, His youthful mother followed to the tomb, And to a honour'd friend's paternal care Bequeath'd her only hope, her infant heir. With wary steps had Harfagar pass'd o'er The ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... unfinished breakfast, much to the vexation of Mrs. Medler, a faded lady with everything about her in the extremest stage of limpness, who washed the breakfast-things with her own fair hands, in consideration of the multitudinous duties to be performed by that hapless solitary damsel who in such modest households is usually ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... these long evenings, Calyste sat between his mother and the little Breton girl, observed by the rector and Charlotte's aunt, who discussed his greater or less depression as they walked home together. Their simple minds mistook the lethargic indifference of the hapless youth for submission to their plans. One evening when Calyste, wearied out, went off suddenly to bed, the players dropped their cards upon the table and looked at each other as the young man closed the door of his chamber. One and all had ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... always bright and smiling, sharp and shining for a thrust; Use does not seem to blunt her point, nor does she gather rust. Oh! I wish some hapless specimen of mankind would begin To tidy up the world for me, by picking up ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in wish nor thought reverted To scene once cherished and beloved. His women to the eunuch's rage Abandoned, pined and sank in age; The fair Grusinian now no more Yielded her soul to passion's power, Her fate was with Maria's blended, On the same night their sorrows ended; Seized by mute guards the hapless fair Into a deep abyss they threw,— If vast her crime, through love's despair, Her punishment ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... strives amain, Conquers his fellows, or, too weak, Finds the great rest that wanderers seek! Grant me the joy of wind and brine, The zest of food, the taste of wine, The fighter's strength, the echoing strife The high tumultuous lists of life— May I ne'er lag, nor hapless fall, Nor weary at the battle-call!... But when the even brings surcease, Grant me the happy moorland peace; That in my heart's depth ever lie That ancient land of heath and sky, Where the old rhymes and stories fall In kindly, soothing ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... woman, and, secondly, because she was sick. This was the law of the Kady. Met a remarkable Touarick in the streets. This is an old worn-out man, with one eye, and that much damaged. In his day he has been a famous bandit, has plundered many a caravan and murdered the hapless merchants. He is now, in his dreadful old age, sheltered in the very city whose wayfaring merchants he so often plundered and murdered. The judgment of heaven seems pressing hard upon him; for he is poor and miserable, a beggar in the streets—all his ill-gotten wealth is gone! He leads about ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Rossignol—the wonder of his day, Sung through the winter—but is mute in May. Then bashful spring, that gilds fair nature's scene, O'ercasts our lawns, and deadens every green; Obscures our sky, embrowns the wooden shade, And dries the channel of each tin cascade! Oh hapless we, whom such ill fate betides, Hurt by the beam which cheers the world besides! Who love the ling'ring frost, nice, chilling showers, While Nature's Benefit—is death to ours; Who, witch-like, best in noxious mists perform, Thrive in the tempest, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... 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 little orphan-progeny: ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... remember the mingled horror and pity with which, when a Christian, I regarded the man who had no personal God, and no hope of a future life. I remember too how I wrote or spoke of such. I mourned over them as the most hapless and miserable of all living beings. Yet I myself have come at length, by slow degrees, after a thousand struggles, and with infinite reluctance, to the dread conclusion, that a personal God and an immortal life ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the piper sped over the moor and through the rain, plying a foot as good as wings. Not till they came in sight of the clachan of Fasagrianach, did the witches relinquish the chase. The exhausted piper had a sad tale to tell to the mothers of his two hapless friends. Next day a company of mourners went to the scene of the infernal dance, and, amid much mourning, they sang a weird wail with the sad refrain, Airidh mo Dhubhaich, which, being interpreted, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... emphasis that Solomon's equanimity was seriously disturbed. He dashed forward with what speed he could command, Mr. Peabody holding on, in a sort of panic, till he was a hundred yards away. Then he stopped suddenly, lowering his head, and his hapless rider was thrown over it, landing some distance in advance. Solomon looked at him with grim humor, if a donkey is capable of such a feeling, and, apparently satisfied, turned and walked complacently ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... of these apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum for his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain at the master's table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume talked of dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could never think of spending a night away from the house without having given, long before, a plausible reason for such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, two ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... I in this cage confined! No, now is the worth of my youth revealed! Three years of life I on him have spent— My husband—but were I longer content This hapless, hopeless weird to dree, Meek as a dove I needs must be. I am wearied to death of petty brawls; The stirring life of the great world calls. I will follow Gudmund with shield and bow, I will share his joys, I will ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or even supplication. Such conduct was, in them, applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indian it was reviled as obstinate and sullen! How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstance! How different is virtue clothed in purple and enthroned in state from virtue naked and destitute and perishing obscurely ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... gratuitously incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would have been as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the mainstream sense ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line:— No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honour's hapless wreck With all the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... from the intolerable stare that follows such victims of society. The girl's weak, pretty face, and soft, white hands were but too true an index to her infirm will and character, and, although fluttering and reluctant, she again fell helpless into the talons of the harpy. Hapless girl! you will probably stand at this bar again, and full sentence will then be given against you. The judge frowned heavily as he saw the result of his clemency, and then, as if it were an old story, he turned to the next culprit. Mildred had been much encouraged as she watched ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Brazilian nobleman who had, as he thought, been making very successful progress towards winning this girl's heart—if she had a heart. All was progressing smoothly enough till these hapless English sailors arrived. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... mistresses that he is able so well to understand the other. The flowers are maids to him, and the maids are flowers. In an ecstasy of tender contemplation he turns from those to these, exampling Julia from the rose and pitying the hapless violets as though they were indeed not blooms insensitive but actually 'poor girls neglected.' His pages breathe their clean and innocent perfumes, and are beautiful with the chaste beauty of their colour, just as they carry with them ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... with his little daughter for a distant settlement. He never reached the settlement, and all Miss Merivale's efforts to trace him proved fruitless. She at last accepted the belief of the lawyers that he had lost his way, and, like so many other hapless wanderers, had perished ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... battle was renewed with equal courage and equal hopes of victory on both sides: but the loss of the flower of their armies, and especially of their beloved spouses, had heavily oppressed the adverse monarchs: who, retiring to a secured spot, bemoaned in secret the hapless deaths of their queens, and bitterly bewailed that injudicious law which, of necessity, so much exposed their fair persons, by giving them such an unlimited power. The fortune of the day, therefore, remained in the hands of the respective commanders; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... desirability of withdrawal. The occupation of Mexico was, apparently, not popular in France, and in the face of American opposition the French government sought a means of dropping the project. Accordingly the invading forces were withdrawn early in 1867, leaving the hapless Maximilian to the Mexicans, by whom he ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the peasants of these provinces [1] are the Zhyds. [2] As property-holders they are here second in importance to the landed nobility. By their commercial pursuits they drain the strength of the hapless White Russian people.... They are everything here: merchants, contractors, saloon-keepers, mill-owners, ferry-holders, artisans.... They are regular leeches, and suck these unfortunate governments [3] to the point ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice, John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader of a desperate band of counterfeiters, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... assaulting their dyke at all. But Ostorius was no ordinary leader. Such was the enthusiasm which he inspired in his troops that they surprised the revolters by attacking along the whole line of the Fleam Dyke at once, and that with such impetuosity that in a moment they were over it. The hapless Iceni were now caught in a death-trap. Behind them the Devil's Ditch barred all retreat save through its one narrow entrance, and those who failed to force their way through the mad crush there could only fight and die with the courage ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Again the effort was made, and again failed through the determined and heroic 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
... deported as a free emigrant to Australia (where he is welcomed), for L.25. Thus, even in an economical light, the reforming of the youth is a great gain. Magistrates are everywhere impressed with the hopelessness of a mere judicial treatment of these hapless children. They come back to the dock at almost regular intervals; severity is of no avail with a poor wretch who, on being discharged from jail, finds all honest employment denied to him. It is by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... were fairly brimming with eager, happy vitality. While proclaiming his fate to Siegmund, she was first inspired by a noble dignity, then transformed instantaneously into a sympathetic woman by the hero's devotion to the helpless and hapless woman who lay exhausted ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... decided, starting up in bed; and if it was real where was the little princess? What had they done with her? Surely they had not given her to the ape-men—cowards though they were they could not have been cowards enough for that. And as I wondered a keen, bright picture of the hapless maid as I saw her last blossomed before my mind's eye, the ambassadors on either side holding her wrists, and she shrinking from them in horror while her poor, white face turned to me for rescue in desperate pleading—oh! I must find her at all costs; and leaping ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... heads of a crowd of hapless prisoners, who were barons, bishops, monks, and grand ladies. In the wings, balanced on their skates, all the ballet-girls were waiting ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... fee for 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 ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... matter? What did any untoward event or result matter? I was going to be a soldier, and, after the fashion of love-lorn Cherry-Cheeks, I said to myself, "I'll Jack him!" I was going to be near Margaret, and, so rejoicing, bethought me of the hapless Roman's "Infelix, properas ultima nosse mala." And what did that matter either? I rubbed myself the colour of a love-apple, humming the while old-time ditties long since driven out of my head by the Latin rubbish. Jack was right. Of course ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... down upon my bed with my bleeding, aching head in my hands, an object of abject misery. Not a sound beyond the clanging of doors was to be heard, punctuated at frequent intervals by the dull thud of blows, as some hapless wretch was being clubbed, the shrieks and howls of prisoners, and the groans of those on the verge of insanity. It was just as if all the demons of the Nether Regions were at work worrying and harrying their victims. While rocking myself ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... he had a point to gain, as we 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 ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... immediately a strong voice sounding from the end of the rope: "Go gently, Gonzague, and don't fall." For poor Bompard had made up his mind to follow his friend Tartarin to the summit of Mont Blanc. Since two in the morning—it was now four by the president's repeater—the hapless courier had groped along, a galley slave on the chain, dragged, pushed, vacillating, balking, compelled to restrain the varied exclamations extorted from him by his mishaps, for an avalanche was on the watch, and the slightest concussion, a mere ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... plots, no doubt, To please the more when all comes out! Of old the Prologue told the story, And laid the whole affair before ye; Came forth in simple phrase to say: "'Fore the beginning of the play I, hapless Polydore, was found By fishermen, or others, drowned! Or—I, a gentleman, did wed The lady I would never bed, Great Agamemnon's royal daughter, Who's coming hither to draw water." Thus gave at once the bards of Greece The cream ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... knew no bounds. He would have been as invaluable to a tailor as was to the Parisian decrotteur the poodle instructed by him to sully with his paws the shoes of the passengers; for, in the exuberance of his gladness, he but too often rent insufferably the vestments of the hapless pedestrians in his line of fire. Sometimes he would turn his assaults upon me, and, springing suddenly at my "wide-awake," take it from my head, trailing it wildly away through the mud, and dropping it in some place where it would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... iron walking' and daggers out, and playing the part of him who taketh a dog by the ears, 'purchased such a rap on the knuckles, that I wished both their pates broken, and so with much ado they staid their brawl to see my bloody fingers,' and then set to work to abuse the hapless peacemaker. After which things Raleigh writes a letter to Cecil, which is still more offensive in the eyes of virtuous biographers—how 'his heart was never broken till this day, when he hears the Queen goes so far off, whom he followed with love and desire on so many ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... know not how else we can meet the elements by a defiance so magnificent as that from this open hearth; and in burning drift-wood, especially, we turn against the enemy his own ammunition. For on these fragments three elements have already done their work. Water racked and strained the hapless ships, air hunted them, and they were thrown at last upon earth, the sternest of all. Now fire takes the shattered remnants, and makes them a means of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Ziska-berg (Ziska Hill); and none durst whisper of it to the King. A servant waiting at 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 worst kaisers ever ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... The spectacle was that of his beloved daughter, clothed in the garments of a slave, and attended by a company of other maidens, the daughters of the nobles and other persons of distinction belonging to his court, all going down to the river, with heavy jugs, to draw water. The fathers of all these hapless maidens had been brought out with Psammenitus to witness the degradation and misery of their children. The maidens cried and sobbed aloud as they went along, overwhelmed with shame and terror. Their fathers manifested the utmost agitation and distress. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hapless man of genius took place yesterday, and excited a deep and very general interest, in which there mingled the natural sorrow for high talent prematurely extinguished, with the feeling of painful regret, awakened by a peculiarly melancholy end. It was numerously attended, and by many distinguished ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... later, and the catastrophe was complete. The colliding steamer lifted with the 'scend of the waves and crashed down yet again upon the hapless torpedo-boat, and young Frobisher found himself in the raging sea, clinging instinctively to something—he knew not what—that had come away in his hands as he flung them out wildly to prevent himself from sliding off the deck. As his head ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... books, and we've come across from New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair departed sorrowfully. If I had read the service over them, possibly their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. Moreover, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... vainly for the bridegroom who would never come. His analytical mind fastened instantly on the theory that murder had been done to prevent a marriage. He took it for granted that the Jean de Courtois of the marriage certificate was dead, and his heart grieved for the hapless young woman whose aristocratic name was blazoned on that same document. So, instead of retracing his steps, and warning the officers of the law, he bent his brows over the certificate, and, in acting thus, unconsciously ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Oh, my lord! (she cries) Snatched in thy bloom from these desiring eyes! Thou to the dismal realms forever gone! And I abandoned, desolate, alone! An only son, once comfort of our pains, Sad product now of hapless love, remains! Never to manly age that son shall rise, Or with increasing graces glad my eyes; For Ilion now (her great defender slain) Shall sink a smoking ruin ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... music-room Patty was 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
... attendants forthwith to pitch a tent and set out a table with all manner of delicacies, and of these she invited Sir Percivale to partake, "I pray you, fair lady," said Sir Percivale, "who are ye that show me such kindness?" "Truly," said the lady, "I am but a hapless damsel, driven forth from my inheritance by a great lord whom I have chanced to displease. I implore you, sir knight, by your vows of knighthood, to give me your aid." Sir Percivale promised her all the aid he could give, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... every listener's thought These legends of Leucadia brought All that of Sappho's hapless flame Is kept alive, still watcht by Fame— The maiden, tuning her soft lute, While all the rest stood round her, mute, Thus sketched the languishment of soul, That o'er the tender Lesbian stole; And in a voice whose thrilling tone Fancy might deem the Lesbian's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of him!" That sentence has been my ruin; from my cradle upwards it has dogged my steps and proved my bane! Fatal injunction! Little did my parents think of the miseries those four small monosyllables have entailed upon their hapless son! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... ultimate thought is that the universe is blind and unconscious; that it knows not what it does. But, standing among the graves of those Wessex churchyards, or watching the twisted threads of perverse destiny that plague those hapless hearts under a thousand village roofs, it is impossible for him not to long to "strike back" at this damned System of Things that alone is responsible. And how can one "strike back" unless one converts unconscious ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... not record whether the hapless owner was indemnified for his loss. It was probably Queen Mary herself who caused the book to be bound as we now see it, in the worn crimson velvet binding, with the remains of large pomegranates embroidered at each corner, pomegranates being her ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... maidens, "give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the procession should close: "Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." Alas, this was now the only alternative! Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless errand of buying oil for immediate use in the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... companions were two men, tall, robust, red-haired, who belonged to a stock of Southern farmers, and who were possessed of the gigantic strength, the huge frame, and the sound digestion of Cork ploughmen. Every day these hapless creatures complained of hunger and of cold, and Mat and Charles Reilly, another member of the Irish People staff, sometimes found a sombre pleasure in finding and gathering snails for them. Whenever either ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... reaction began to happen, in consequence of the default in Mexico and the financial embarrassments of Brazil. Mexico had shown that the political stability which investors had believed it to have achieved was a very thin veneer and a series of revolutions had plunged that hapless land into anarchy. Brazil was suffering from a heavy fall in the price of one of her chief staple products, rubber, owing to the competition of plantations in Ceylon, Straits Settlements and elsewhere, and was finding difficulty in meeting the interest ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... ready money, though, I forgot that," Despard grinned, walking over to the hapless ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... methods all were wrong. Pity and censure both to them belong. Their woes were many, but their crimes were more. The soulless Satan holds not in his store Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath Keeps for the hapless victim in his path. And if the last lone remnants of that race Were by the white man swept from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... space between the two Many a hapless boy in blue Lay face upward to the skies; Many another, just as true, Filled ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Doria marries his wife 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
... The hapless piscator—the word ceased to be pretentious after Walton's use of it—refused to bait his hook again, and said, "I mean, what would happen if there were none of you professional chaps who write criticisms that nobody reads except the other dramatic critics?" To remark ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... and darkest nook, overgrown with grass, and overhung by a weeping-tree a little bank of earth betokened the rounding off of a hapless life. There was nothing to tell of rank, or wealth, of love, or even pity; nameless as a peasant lay the last (as supposed) of a mighty race. Only some unskilful hand, probably Master Odam's under his wife's teaching, had carved a rude L., ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... from under his buffalo robe what seemed like a long tress of blond hair, and held it aloft. Polly instantly recognized the missing scalp of her hapless doll. ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... Handle tenilo. Handmade manfarita. Handshake manpremo. Handsome bela. Handy lerta, oportuna (of things). Hang (intrans.) pendi. Hang up pendigi. Hanker deziregi. Hansom kabrioleto. Hap okazi. Hapless malfelicxa. Haply eble. Happen okazi. Happiness felicxo. Happy felicxa. Harangue parolado. Harass enuigi, lacigi. Harass (milit.) atakadi. Harbinger antauxulo. Harbour haveno. Hard malmola. Hard (difficult) malfacila. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... official walking along the upper gallery, and in pursuance of her grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room would be ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... not tasted of the unattainable. In one brief moment she saw that she had deliberately led him on, that she had encouraged him, that she actually had proffered him the cup from which he had begun to sip the bitterness. Pride and love were waging a conflict in this hapless southern girl's heart. But she was silent. She ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... last. Let nought, therefore, thee affright; But make forward in thy flight. For if I could match thy rhyme, To the very stars I'd climb; There begin again, and fly Till I reached eternity. But, alas, my Muse is slow, For thy place she flags too low; Yea, the more's her hapless fate, Her short wings were clipt of late; And poor I, her fortune ruing, Am put up myself a mewing. But if I my cage can rid, I'll fly where I never did; And though for her sake I'm crost, Though my best hopes I have lost, And knew she ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Hapless Washington of a betrayed revolution! In these latter days of enforced quiet in Palestine how his early scenes of African experience must have flooded his mind!—his birth, sixty-six years ago, in a family group of Moslem saints; the teachings of his beautiful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... imparted to me in almost the last interview I had with its hapless narrator. Either the recollections she had lived through, as she said, in so short a space, or the exertions caused by its recital, were too much for her enfeebled intellect. Delirium shortly after returned, and continued to within a few hours of her dissolution, which occurred on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in their blankets, Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian accent, All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and reverses. Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been disappointed. Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's compassion, Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near her, She in turn related her love and all its disasters. Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when she had ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Notes," p. 170; 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 by ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... want of trust; we might be led to doubt the sincerity of the hearts which surround us, and see but the allegorical symbols of human affections in the antique train of the beautiful Canephoroe, who carried the fragile and perfumed flowers to adorn some hapless victim for ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the keeper withdrew. Francis cared no more for the signature. It had been something of a solace to think that she was occupying the same room as that used by the hapless Jane; so small a thing does it take to comfort one in ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... and disgrace had already been made known to the Countess Frandina. When the hapless Florinda came in presence of her mother, she fell on her neck, and hid her face in her bosom, and wept; but the countess shed never a tear, for she was a woman haughty of spirit and strong of heart. She ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... world must prepare to shudder," he writes from Monastir, "when all that is happening on the Albanian refugee trails finally comes to light. The horrors of the flight of the hapless Serbian people are growing with the arrival here of each new ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the romance that a desperate young lady was collecting a huge supply of used stamps for the purpose of papering a room of untold dimensions. This feat was the single stipulation on the part of a tyrannical parent, on compliance with which the hapless maiden would be allowed to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 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 ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the French frontier, never to return to Spain as a sovereign. Prim's plot was attended with a fortune in excess of his most sanguine hopes; he entered Madrid in triumph in October, and was created a Marshal in November. All was joy and enthusiasm, but the hapless tools of ambition who had helped to prepare the way for him below in Algeciras were not ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of a distinctly pathetic flavor, concerning the case of a king without a throne. From days immemorial such hapless figures have been somehow invested by historians with a melancholy glamour; and yet this appears to be true only of those royal individuals who came by their thrones in the easiest way—that of inheritance. The ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Absalom behold, Suspended by his flowing hair: He might have 'scaped this hapless fate Had he ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... whose death is laid to my husband's charge, which death I have bewept as sore as it was grievous to me, for that, albeit I showed myself harsh and cruel to him before his departure, yet neither his long absence nor his unhappy death hath availed to tear him from my heart.' Quoth the pilgrim, 'The hapless youth who is dead you never loved, but Tedaldo Elisei ay.[176] But tell me, what was the occasion of your falling out with him? Did he ever give you any offence?' 'Certes, no,' replied she; 'he never offended against me; the cause of the breach was the prate of an accursed friar, to whom I once ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... chivalry of his labours that amongst a crowd of philanthropists draws us most to the work and character of John Howard. The sympathy which all were feeling for the sufferings of mankind Howard felt for the sufferings of the worst and most hapless of men. With wonderful ardour and perseverance he devoted himself to the cause of the debtor, the felon, and the murderer. An appointment to the office of High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1774 drew his attention ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... deep-shrouded an evil destiny taketh 5 From me, O hapless ghost, brother, O heavily ta'en, Yet this bounty the while, these gifts ancestral of usance Homely, the sad slight store piety grants to the tomb; Drench'd in a brother's tears, and weeping freshly, receive them; Yea, take, brother, a long Ave, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... be far from me; Tones 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 when life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... with pale and ashy faces. "What is the matter?" inquired my 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... warmer affection for the victim of his brutality. She threw off all disguise, and went frequently to Frau Proch's cottage, to aid in nursing the invalid during his slow and painful recovery. She had, one day, the unspeakable pleasure of catching the first gleam of returning sanity in her hapless lover, as she bent over him and with gentle fingers smoothed his knotted forehead and temples. An indissoluble tie now bound them together; their mutual love was consecrated by suffering and sacrifice; and they vowed to be faithful in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... had seen, but was powerless to help. The schooner was but the plaything of the waves, while to launch a boat—ah, how the storm-fiends would have laughed at the attempt! So leaving the hapless sailor to his fate, we drove on through a blinding wall of rain into the dark night, waiting for the end. No sky was visible, nor the light of any star, but the great cloud walls stood up thick on every side, and it seemed ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... made the briefest possible mention of the hapless condition our churches were in twenty years ago. The picture is neither flattering nor cheering; but right royally are the churches now redeeming themselves from the reproach they were under then. A pastor is now being settled in each church as fast as the pecuniary circumstances ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... seemed of endless duration to the hapless Lady Juliana, was passed by the aunts in giving sage counsel as to the course of life to be pursued by married ladies. Worsted stockings and quilted petticoats were insisted upon as indispensable articles ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... growth and of its existence. Without it, all was futile and meaningless; a folly and a ruin. Cost what it might, the Mississippi must be found. But the demands of the hour were imperative. The hapless colony, cast ashore like a wreck on the sands of Matagorda Bay, must gather up its shattered resources, and recruit its exhausted strength, before it essayed anew its desperate pilgrimage to the "fatal river." La Salle during his explorations had found a spot which he thought well ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... to his body. He was 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
... to 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 ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... witness to a harrowing scene there. A little boat, manned by three sailors, grounded on a rock not far from shore, at a terrible season, when to reach it from the land was, after many attempts, found impossible. The hapless crew lingered on for two days, suffering cruelly from hunger and thirst, their cries ringing in our ears above the storm's pitiless fury. On the third day, two of them took to the sea, and were drowned; the third was not strong enough to leave the ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... you coward!" yelled the old man in fury, as he kicked himself loose, then went bounding out upon the porch. God, what a sight! Sweeping up the gentle slope, brandishing rifles and lances and war-clubs, racing for their hapless prey, came fifty Ogallallas, Burning Star among the leaders. Bullets could not stop them now. The two men who had stood to their posts knelt grim and desperate, and Lannion's last shot took effect. Within fifty yards ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... parcel, succeeded in peeping through the aperture, but could perceive nothing except the broad sea stretching away in the distance until it was bounded by the horizon. As he was about to descend, one of the packages rolled from under the rest, and the hapless preacher came to the ground amidst a multitude of bales of cloth, logs of ebony, cramps, and spoiled martin-skins, and found himself half in and half out of a box of mildewed oranges, into which ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... task to the author to scan more closely the personality of the hapless Queen, and from the wealth of existing information shape for himself a creature in whom he could believe. Years elapsed ere he succeeded; but now that he views the completed picture, he thinks that many persons might be disposed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Burrow—it went by all of these names—was a hapless property that was trying to pay taxes on itself between the ebbing of one tide of prosperity and the hoped-for flood of another. Centres were shifting, values were see-sawing, and old Ezekiel Warren was waiting for the nature of the neighbourhood to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
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