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More "Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does not half measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men that, breaking down, break fathers' and mothers' hearts; all those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into damnation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and torment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have discovered that the rector was paying away money, and the most miserable, tattered, whining specimens of humanity rang his door-bell. They had piteous tales to tell of children dying for want of proper nourishment, of wives lying unburied for lack of ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to my dinner, but couldn't touch a bit. It was a nice little dinner, too,—a little roast chicken and a scrap of bacon and some nice floury potatoes. No use. The thought of that child would come before me, and her piteous cry: "Oh, don't, dear Lord, don't!" and, "Sure you won't let Him, Mother; you said you wouldn't;" and with a great big lump in my throat I pushed aside the plate and went over to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he has taken!) and very like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... distresses, it is now an idle tale to tell. That night passed like none before it, and none which have come after it. My mind moved with a piteous monotony over and over and about the aching thought: to see Helen—to see Helen—to be patient till morning, and tell Helen—Only to get through this horrible night, and hurry, rushing to the morning ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... weakness, even the most irreproachable Philistine among us; and as Bertram said those words in rather a piteous voice, it occurred to Philip Christy that the loan of a portmanteau would be a Christian act which might perhaps simplify matters for the handsome and engaging stranger. Besides, he was sure, after all—mystery or no mystery—Bertram Ingledew was Somebody. That nameless charm of dignity ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... up the grand staircase, and would be announced. Eagle turned her face above me, the long line of her throat uplifted, and went courageous and smiling on her way. The marquis had adapted himself to the court requirements of the Empire. Noble gentleman of another period, he stalked a piteous masquerader where he had once been ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... inharmonious songs. Half- devoured carcasses of these "ships of the desert" lie every where, with jackals and vultures gnawing at them. Even living camels are sometimes seen staggering about, which have been left to starve by their masters as unfit for further service. I shall never forget the piteous look of one of these poor creatures which I saw dragging itself to and fro in the desert, anxiously seeking for food and drink. What a cruel being is man! Why could he not put an end to the poor camel's ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... between it and the wood. First, my hat blew off; then a pistol jumped out of the holster; but I was too near to give up, - meaning to return for these things afterwards. Two or three times I ran right over the fawn, which bleated in the most piteous manner, but always escaped the death-blow from the grey's hoofs. By degrees we edged nearer to the thicket, when the fawn darted down the side of a bluff, and was lost in the long grass and brushwood, I followed at full speed; but, unable to arrest the impetus of the horse, we dashed ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Common Prayer writ by grim males, so entranced her, that time flew by unheeded, and Christopher Staines came back from her father. His step was heavy; he looked pale, and deeply distressed; then stood like a statue, and did not come close to her, but cast a piteous look, and gasped out one word, that seemed almost ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... shall be When to my place of rest, With milder grace my wild fawn shall return Here where she looked on me Upon that day thrice blest: Then she shall bend her radiant eyes that yearn In search of me, and (piteous sight!) shall learn That I, amidst the stones, am clay. May love inspire her in such wise, With gentlest breath of sighs, That I, a stony corpse, shall hear her pray, And force the very skies, That I may wipe the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... o'clock in the afternoon when the first subterranean shock was felt; and long before five the agonized earth was still. Long before five, the stupefied survivors stood slowly recovering their faculties of speech and motion. Long before five, a piteous wail ascended to heaven from fathers and husbands and wives and mothers, desolately mourning the dead in the streets of Caracas, La Guayra, Merida, San Felipe, and Valencia. In this manner the Holy Thursday of 1812 drew toward ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... still unreleased can understand the pang that I felt with Allan sitting almost within my touch. Almost irresistibly the wish beset me to let him for an instant feel my nearness. Then I checked myself, remembering—oh, absurd, piteous human fears!—that my too unguarded closeness might alarm him. It was not so remote a time that I myself had known them, those blind, uncouth timidities. I came, therefore, somewhat nearer—but I did not touch ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Craddock's wife's mother took care that every communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three years and all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house for his wife and himself, in trying ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... had suffered all his mature life under a too painful and scrupulous sense that he, more than other men, was called to be his brother's keeper. It was natural that, during these exhausting days, the fierce death on Westall's rugged face, the piteous agony in Dynes's young eyes and limbs, should haunt him, should make his landlord's place and responsibility often mere ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ithaca, but Lycians more had fallen, Had not crest-tossing Hector huge perceived The havoc; radiant to the van he flew, Filling with dread the Grecians; his approach Sarpedon, son of Jove, joyful beheld, 810 And piteous thus address'd him as he came. Ah, leave not me, Priamides! a prey To Grecian hands, but in your city, at least, Grant me to die: since hither, doom'd, I came Never to gratify with my return 815 To Lycia, my ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Harry Stillman, who came on a few names further. Harry had pounded away all the week on Webster's reply to Hayne, and he now stood forth in piteous contrast to his ponderous theme. His thin, shaking legs toed-in like an Indian's, and his trousers were tight, and short, and checked, which seemed to increase the tightness and shortness. He had narrow shoulders and thin, long arms, which he used like a jumping jack, each ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... replied Wulf in a piteous tone, "is that Frederick-Christian or not, he's got a devilish heavy foot, and when ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... shriek. The continuance of these shrieks proved that the stroke had not been instantly fatal. I waited to hear it repeated, but the sounds that now arose were like those produced by dragging somewhat along the ground. The shrieks, meanwhile, were incessant and piteous. My heart faltered, and I saw that mighty efforts must be made to preserve my joints and my nerves steadfast. All depended on the strenuous exertions and the fortunate dexterity ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... is full of mystery. All that first morning, with a piteous earnestness, a piteous heartlessness, Hope Carolina played funeral in the front yard, in the place where the stone fort had once been and where the peach-pits were now planted. Every now and then she would stop patting the little mounds of earth—mounds of earth ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... a few consolatory words and jumped down from the wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a case, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open—it might kill him! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standing in awkward attitudes ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... and to abandon which was almost to acknowledge the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free States had waited with commendable patience for some symptom of vitality in the new Administration, something that should distinguish it from the piteous helplessness of its predecessor. But now their pride was too deeply outraged for endurance; indignant remonstrances were heard from all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend that ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... pig,' said she, 'it is so poor, its back is as sharp as a knife. It hurt me properly, that's a fact, and has most broke my crupper bone.' And she put her hand behind her, and moaned piteous. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of his danger, he stopped short, spread out all four legs, and set up the most piteous and discordant bray that ever wrung ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... buried that which remained of it, and raised over the ashes a great mound of earth. And this being done, they drew near to the place of the sepulchre; and as they approached, the king heard within a very piteous voice, and knew it for the voice of his son. Then he bade his attendants loose the door with all speed; and when they had loosed it, they beheld within a very piteous sight. For the maiden Antigone had hanged herself by the girdle of linen which she wore, and the young man Prince Haemon stood with ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... away?" They were afraid to answer her. With all her little strength, she clasped her beloved friend and play-fellow round the waist. "My own dear, you're not going to leave me!" The dumb misery in Sydney's face struck Linley with horror. He placed Kitty in her mother's arms. The child's piteous cry, "Oh, don't let her go! don't let her go!" followed the governess as she suffered her martyrdom, and went out. Linley's heart ached; he watched her until she was lost to view. "Gone!" he murmured ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... unnatural rigidity of her face broke up into piteous, terrible weeping, and she flung ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... been bursting with grief. Then for an hour he had lain quieter, except that he had looked sadly in my direction, and striven to make some sign with his death-cold hands. At last he again essayed his piteous request in a hoarse, deep voice, but the words issued in so many inarticulate sounds, and once more I failed to divine his meaning. By turns I brought each member of the household to his bedside, and gave him something to drink, but he only shook his ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... nerves were fast giving way under the strain, and no one could help her. If she left the room or the house, the consciousness that the helpless creature was lying silently weeping for lack of the sight of her pursued her like a presence. She saw the piteous old face on the pillow, and the slow tears trickling down the cheeks, just as distinctly as if she were sitting by the bed. On the whole, the torture of staying was less than the torture of being away; and for weeks together she did not leave the house. Sometimes a ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... pantomime seems like some horrible satiric picture of a world without cause or effect, a mass of 'jarring atoms,' a prolonged mental torture of irrelevancy. The ordinary farce seems a world of almost piteous vulgarity, where a half-witted and stunted creature is afraid when his wife comes home, and amused when she sits down on the doorstep. All this is, in a sense, true, but it is the fault of nothing in heaven or earth except the attitude and the phrases quoted at the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 'Catherine, my darling, you are the strong one. They will look to you. Support them.' And she could see in imagination her own young face pressed against the pillows. 'Yes, father, always—always!'—'Catherine, life is harder, the narrow way narrower than ever. I die'—and memory caught still the piteous, long-drawn breath by which the voice was broken—'in much—much perplexity about many things. You have a clear soul, an iron will. Strengthen the others. Bring them safe to the day of account.'—'Yes, father, with God's help. Oh, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were ushering in the spring. I had put Miss Marchmont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The wind was wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened, it took a new tone—an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the rub, patron," said Joseph in a piteous tone; "the scamps spoke English, so I could not understand them. But I am sure ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... account-books and coffers. There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... of piteous distress, If, carrying a secret grief about, We wish to bury it in a recess, And find another there, who ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... very deaf, very infirm—she fancied I was driving her away, as many others might have done; and, with a truly piteous ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the passion he evidently cherished for numismatics had reasserted itself, and he now stood with his eyes bent as eagerly upon the display of coins over which he hung, as if no shaft of death had crossed the space without and no young body lay in piteous quiet beyond ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... legs last night for three hours and three quarters, and I sat through it all. As far as I could observe through the bars I was the only person in the House who listened to him. I'm sure Mr. Gresham was fast asleep. It was quite piteous to see some of them yawning. Plantagenet did it very well, and I almost think I understood him. They seem to say that nobody on the other side will take trouble enough to make a regular opposition, but that there are men in the City ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I wonder what he means by looking at me in that piteous manner? I can do nothing to relieve him. I'm sure if I could I would. But 'the way of the transgressor is hard,' Mr. Le Noir, and he who ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... spirit although it keeps a man up puts no flesh on his bones, and soon it became a piteous sight to stand in the Town Square and mark the faces and figures of those who passed by. Strong men staggered from weakness as they walked, women glided along like mournful white wraiths, even the little children in their quaint garb looked worn and emaciated. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... faces broke into smiles as they hugged one another, whispering encouragingly, "Mother's coming, dear! Mother's coming!" Every one rejoiced but Beth. She lay in that heavy stupor, alike unconscious of hope and joy, doubt and danger. It was a piteous sight, the once rosy face so changed and vacant, the once busy hands so weak and wasted, the once smiling lips quite dumb, and the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the pillow. All day she lay so, only rousing now and then to mutter, "Water!" with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... carried off, so that the streets were now almost entirely deserted, and in many places the grass was shooting up thickly in the road. In some streets every house bore the sign of a red cross, and the tolling of the bells of the dead-carts and piteous cries and lamentations were the only sounds that broke the ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... instant it occurred to me it would be in my dungeon! No such good fortune! They passed my door. At any rate, my chum should know where I was, so I proceeded to make a demonstration against my door and beseech, in the most piteous way, to be released. Of course, it was no use, but that did not matter; ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... was something a great deal more than the physical shrinking from physical death in that piteous cry, Jesus Christ did not die nearly as bravely as many a poor, trembling woman who, at the stake or the block, has owed her fortitude to Him. Many a blood-stained criminal has gone out of life with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Daisy uttered a piteous little cry and, like a tender flower cut down by a sudden, rude blast, would have fallen at his feet had he not reached out his arm to ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... want to talk to you about your mother; I don't want to defend her to you; I'm past that. I'll say nothing of your summing up of her character,—it's grotesque, it's piteous, such assurance! But I do tell you straight what I've come to feel of you—that you are a cold-blooded, self-righteous, self-centered girl. And I'll say more: I think that your bringing-up, the artificiality, the complacent theory of it, is your best excuse; and I think that you'll never find any ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... candle lighted in the south room, and her grandmother sat there knitting. Ann Lizy, a piteous little figure in her white night-gown, stood in ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I can't!" said Olive Chancellor, with a face which seemed to plead for a remission of responsibility. "I want to give myself up to others; I want to know everything that lies beneath and out of sight, don't you know? I want to enter into the lives of women who are lonely, who are piteous. I want to be near to them—to help them. I want to do something—oh, I should like so ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... he had chosen to their king, and all the officers. Then came a scene fit, belike, to make one weep. They all crowded around him, as though his presence meant life to them, and his departure would reave them of their very souls; and what piteous pleading, what extravagance of grief did they omit? They kissed him; they hung about him; they were beside themselves for anguish of heart. "Wo is us," cried they, "for this grievous calamity!" They called him, Master, Father, Saviour, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... for the artist to return home. When it dawned upon the poor deaf mute he was about to lose his friend, he set up the most piteous wailing, and refused to be comforted, not even by ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... that I might best live down the misery of the time if I devoted myself to philosophy."[325] From this we may see how his mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "Nihil agere autem quum animus non posset!" How piteous was his position, and yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do—but there was nothing because hitherto there had been so much that he ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... hangs on Deronda, looks up to him, feels that for her every possibility of good lies in association with him, are those of a guileless, artless child. She has been called a hard-hearted, callous woman of the world: her worldliness is on the surface alone. Her first cry to Deronda is the piteous wail of a forsaken child; the letter with which their relations close is the fond yearning of a child towards one whom she looks up to ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... amiss,—because she was pretty and might be made bright again, and because he was young, and because he loved her, he longed, were it possible, to make her paths pleasant for her. Her fall, her first fall had been piteous to him, rather than odious. He, too, would have liked to get hold of the man and to have left him without a sound limb within his skin,—to have left him pretty nearly without a skin at all; but that work had fallen into the miller's ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... acknowledgment of a debt to Shakespeare (see p. 177). Finally, Dom Diego's plangent laments at Ginevra's cruelty recall Glaucus' unrestrained weeping at Scylla's cruelty in Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis. But whereas the "piteous Nimphes" surrounding Glaucus weep till a "pretie brooke" forms,[29] "the fayre Oreades pitty-moved gerles" that comfort Dom Diego are loath to lose the "liquid pearles" he weeps. Consequently they gather (and presumably preserve) them with "Spunge-like Mosse" (p. 95). Lynche extends his debt ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... small affluent of the St. John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonniere yielded, released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... day to day is changed in sundry sort; The proof whereof myself may well report, Who oft transformed by him may teach the same. I first was turned into a wounded hart, That bare the bloody arrow in my side; Then to a swan that midst the waters glide, With piteous voice presaged my deadly smart; Eftsoons I waxed a faint and fading flower; Then was I made a fountain sudden dry, Distilling all my tears from troubled eye; Now am I salamander by his power, Living in flames, but hope ere long to be A voice, to ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... the deck, the scene presented to our gaze was piteous beyond all description, the ship appearing to have been first run into by some other craft and then left to drift about at the mercy ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... And for to wit whom I would mean, The eldest son of the noble King Henry the Fourth; of knighthood well and spring; In whom is showed of what stock that he grew, The root is virtue; Called Henry eke, the worthy Prince of Wales, Which me commanded the dreary piteous tale Of them of Troy in English to translate; The siege, also, and the destruction, Like as the Latin maketh mention, For to complete, and after Guido make, (p. 400) So I could, and write it for his ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... but look to mun! so fine a sailor as ever drank liquor; and now greedy after a hit of sweet trade! 'tis piteous like; but I bring mun a hit whenever I come, and he looks for it. He's one of my own flesh like, is old Martin. He sailed with my father Captain Will, when they was both two little cracks aboard of a trawler; and my father went up, and here I am—he didn't, and there he is. We'm up now, we Hawkinses. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... on Greased Lightning's back, and the manager cracking his whip, the beautiful horse began to trot round and round the arena. At first the creature went fairly quietly, and Orion managed to keep his seat. His piteous white face, the black shadows under his eyes, his little trembling hands were noticed, however, by Susan. She kept near on purpose and tried to encourage him by smiles and nods. When he passed close to her he heard her hearty voice saying, "Well done, little chap! You ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the gallows at last. What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both our gentlemen now sunk into a reverie, from which they were awakened, at the entrance of the park, by a young man in rags, who, with a piteous tone, supplicated charity. Clarence, who to his honour be it spoken, spent an allotted and considerable part of his income in judicious and laborious benevolence, had read a little of political morals, then beginning to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... and stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... what thou dost not say. Be not troubled, but speak out thy soul to me;" and presently he told her more. As I do live, never listened I to sadder story. So piteous it was that my tears fell down like rain, and I was sore afraid that my sighing would discover my whereabouts. But the Almighty is merciful even to sinners, and I remained unnoted. 'Twas the old tale ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... that the girl had directed to her old friend before she bowed and passed on had filled him with dismay and despair. It was somehow like the piteous look of a wounded animal, incapable of expressing its pain. All thoughts and fancies of his own little vexations or embarrassments were instantly banished from him: he could only see before him those sad and piteous eyes, full of kindness to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... gestures of the little preachers were corresponding words learned by heart and false enough to make one squint. To the comic encouragement, to the "consolations lavished" in prize-book phrases by the voices of young urchins with colds, were the affecting benedictions, the whining and piteous mummeries of a church-porch after vespers. And the moment the young visitors departed, what an explosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dance in a circle round the present brought, what an upsetting of the arm-chair in which one had pretended to be lying ill, of the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... than I am (as she ought to be, with Burne-Jones nose and eyes), but this morning, when I sprang at her out of the bath-room, like a young tigress escaped from its cage on its ruthless way to a motor-boat, she looked so piteous and yielding, that I felt I could carry her—and my point at the same ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... not used to it," pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought to herself, "I wish the creatures ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... revived, and saw that piteous one Above me standing, who had been conductress Aforetime of my ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... only in that still night air that we could have heard it, but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timbre. It spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent—a piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I stood for an instant staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rude gateway stood a waggon of stones. Harnessed to this were three sorry-looking mules and, leading them, the piteous wreck of what had been a blue roan. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... slaves. Finally appeared the Musgow, a more distant and savage race, mounted on small fiery steeds, covered only with the skin of a goat or leopard, and with necklaces made of the teeth of their enemies. They threw themselves at the feet of the sultan, casting sand on their heads, and uttering the most piteous cries. The monarch apparently moved by these gifts and entreaties, began to intimate to Boo Khaloom his hopes, that these savages might by gentle means be reclaimed, and led to the true faith. These hopes were held by the latter in the utmost derision, and he privately assured Major Denham, that ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... birds so terribly wounded in the first onset that, although not killed, it was impossible for it to continue the fight. His rage at the mishap knew no bounds, and he vented it madly on the poor creature. He roasted it alive—standing by and hearing its piteous cries. In the midst of the horrible torture the wretched man became so excited that a fit of apoplexy supervened, and he positively expired before the poor ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... The piteous appeal went to the heart of the monk, and he knelt down, and by the aid of a small lamp, examined the wounds of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... consciousness, the youth was seized with a fit of trembling so violent that he with difficulty stood upright, and cried out in piteous tones,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the closed door—tears excited by the terrible look of anguish, so steady, so immovable—so the same to-day as it was yesterday—on her nurse's face. The little creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it shivered with the cold. Bridget stirred; she moved—she listened. Again that long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that Mary had cherished. She opened the door, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hair from thy veiled eyes, show thy face as thee beseems, For yet is starlight in the skies, weird woman piteous through my dreams, 'Nay,' she mourns, 'forsooth not now, veiled I sit for evermore, Rose is shed, and charmed prow shall not touch the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... bird had crept into the hollow tree to hide, and so to Bob's whine, which expressed fear and asked what he was to do, the shepherd answered, "Get him." Bob dashed in, but quickly recoiled, whining in a piteous way, and began rubbing his face on his legs. Bawcombe in alarm jumped down and peered into the hollow trunk and heard a slight rustling of dead leaves, but saw nothing. His dog had been bitten by an adder, and he at once returned ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... upon his vis-a-vis, the boys, he tapped sternly upon the table. This happened at a juncture when Themistocleus had bitten Alkid on the ear, and the said Alkid, with frowning eyes and open mouth, was preparing himself to sob in piteous fashion; until, recognising that for such a proceeding he might possibly be deprived of his plate, he hastened to restore his mouth to its original expression, and fell tearfully to gnawing a mutton bone—the grease from which ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and raved in the most distressing manner. The unfortunate haricot was still on his mind, and he was persecuted by men with strange-shaped heads and carrot eyes. Sometimes he imagined himself pursued by Caddy, and would cry in the most piteous manner to have her prevented from beating him. Then his mind strayed off to the marble-ground, where he would play imaginary games, and laugh over his success in such a wild and frightful manner as to draw tears from the eyes of all around him. He was greatly changed; the bright colour ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was to be given to the French emperor her girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread she questioned the archdukes who ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Jester felt its throbs he gave no sign. Seated beside him on the grass he talked in the light tone that served his trade, as if Aldebaran's woes were but a flight of swallows 'cross a summer sky, and would as soon be gone. And when between his quirks he'd drawn the piteous tale entirely from him, he doubled up with laughter and smote ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and stretching her arm toward him as a child does toward its mother when danger threatens, she laid her head upon his bosom with a piteous wail—the only really audible sound she ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... our meeting Gabriel Harvey with his new Italian books and pamphlets; and Spenser, if possible, should be there; Dr. Dee would tell the piteous story of his four thousand volumes, printed and unprinted, Greek, in French, and High-Dutch MSS., etc., and of forty years spent in gathering the books that were all on their way to the pawnshop. He might have told the fortunes of all the books with the help ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... of being paid for what she had so freely given hurt Jane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had been truly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in to fill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with more childish ways, might not so fully have compassed Jane's awakening; for this had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornly made plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... considerable distances from each other, were seated about a dozen characters, male and female, all of them dressed in sable, and wearing countenances of woe. Sawley advanced, and wrung me by the hand with so piteous an expression of visage that I could not help thinking some awful catastrophe had ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... men-of-war, an English merchantman had to risk attack by any one who was either passionately Roman or determined to use religion as a cloak. Raids and reprisals grew apace. The English were by no means always lambs in piteous contrast to the Papal wolves. Rather, it might be said, they took a motto from this true Russian proverb: 'Make yourself a sheep and you'll find no lack of wolves.' But, rightly or wrongly, the general English view was that the Papal attitude was one of attack while their own was ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... vigor made it seem all the more piteous that he should now be lying in the very extremity of suffering, unable to bear even the weight of the bed clothes. But all through that weary time his fortitude never gave way, and the vein of humor which had stood him in such good stead all his ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... was almost past discernment or thought. The events of the day succeeding one another so swiftly, and fraught with panic, had, despite her hope and fortitude, reduced her to a helpless condition of piteous fear. She understood that the savages scented danger, or had, in their mysterious way, received intelligence such as rendered ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... when they first realize her loss, is of a peculiarly mournful character; it sounds something like a succession of wails on the minor key, and can no more be mistaken by the experienced bee-keeper, for their ordinary, happy hum, than the piteous moanings of a sick child can be confounded, by an anxious mother, with its joyous crowings, when overflowing with ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... looked down at the child once or twice in a state of puzzle. A third time she looked up with her great eyes, and said, "Oh, please carry me a bit!" and her piteous, tired face turned the scale. "If she were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche," thought he, "I should pick her up at once, and be proud of the burden. Here goes!" And he took her up in his arms, and walked ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... persuade the princess Blanche to accompany him into France, under the pretext of forming an alliance for her with Louis's brother, the duke of Berri. The unfortunate lady, comprehending too well her father's real purpose, besought him with the most piteous entreaties not to deliver her into the hands of her enemies; but, closing his heart against all natural affection, he caused her to be torn from her residence at Olit, in the heart of her own dominions, and ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... "and know where all along your love has lain. That other way is only darkness—the convent, which will keep you buried, while you will never have heart for the piteous seclusion, till your life is broken all to pieces; till you have no hope, no desire, no love, and at last, under a cowl, you look out upon the world, and, with a dead heart, see it as in a pale dream, and die at last: you, born to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which drew them away from obedience to their natural king; and that with such an example [as this of the Lutaos before them] the peoples [of Mindanao] would not change sides in order to please a nation so unreliable [as the Spaniards]. The Subanos also presented their piteous remonstrances that as a people of the hill-country, and of timid disposition, they were exposed to greater misfortunes. They went to the fort and renewed their importunities, saying that the Spaniards were deserting and abandoning them [notwithstanding] their humble submission, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... history we have to ascertain is one, the tragedy of whose fate has blotted the remembrance of her sins—if her sins were, indeed, and in reality, more than imaginary. Forgetting all else in shame and sorrow, posterity has made piteous reparation for her death in the tenderness with which it has touched her reputation; and with the general instincts of justice, we have refused to qualify our indignation at the wrong which she experienced, by admitting either ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the whole thing, the self-deception of a criminal idealist shattering his existence like a thunder-clap out of a clear sky, and re-echoing amongst the wreckage in the false assumptions of those other fools. Fancy that hungry and piteous imbecile furnishing to the curiosity of the revolutionist refugees this utterly fantastic detail! He appreciated it as by no means constituting a danger. On the contrary. As things stood it was for his advantage ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... At this piteous sight, Richard became a hero. Being an extremist in all things, Richard, roused, caught Dorothy to his bosom—the first embrace since that blessed boot-heel evening in the Waldorf! He folded her in those Pict arms in most radical fashion, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... next day Rataplan presented a piteous sight. His poor ankles were swollen enormously; his eyes were so inflamed that he was quite blind, and, to make matters worse, the mahouts saw that he was suffering now from the ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... of them, said: "We had such piteous cases of perfectly well-dressed, well-educated, gently-bred women that we hardly dared offer them the one-franc-fifty and 'gouter' (bowl of cafe-au-lait with bread and butter), which was all we were able to give for four hours' work ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... heroes. Let him face me then!— Ay! though he be a God whose anger burns Against the Danaans! Yea, mine heart forebodes That this my smiter was Apollo, cloaked In deadly darkness. So in days gone by My mother told me how that by his shafts I was to die before the Scaean Gates A piteous death. Her words ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... held frequent councils with all the old women of the neighborhood, not omitting the parish dominie; scarce an hour in the day but a knot of them might be seen wagging their white caps together round her door, while the poor woman made some piteous recital. The daughter, too, was fain to seek for more frequent consolation from the stolen interviews of her favored swain, Dirk Waldron. The delectable little Dutch songs with which she used to dulcify the house grew less and less frequent, and she would forget her ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... beheld them mourning he had compassion on them, and shook his head and spake to his own heart: "Ah, hapless pair, why gave we you to king Peleus, a mortal man, while ye are deathless and ever young? Was it that ye should suffer sorrows among ill-fated men? For methinketh there is nothing more piteous than a man among all things that breathe and creep upon the earth. But verily Hector Priam's son shall not drive you and your deftly-wrought car; that will I not suffer. Is it a small thing that he holdeth the armour and vaunteth himself ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... for the Turk, who, under the pleasing conviction that his brains were knocked out, uttered a piteous groan, and fell fainting on ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... on board. In accomplishing this, the boy was completely ducked; but whether he was otherwise hurt, or this catastrophe occurring when out of breath or fatigued with over-exertion, I do not know; but he began to cry in a more piteous manner than could be justified by the cause alleged, namely, the wetting of his only garment, an old piece of sacking. I directed Mohammed to reward his services with a piastre, a small silver coin of the value of ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... where his gentleness won him many friends. But they could not stop the progress of his disease, or comfort his poor, lonely heart. The night before he died, no one near him could sleep for his piteous moaning and sad cries,—"I am afraid to die; I ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... you know, With all us old ones in the camp, For that little child to go! It's right the old should die, but that A harmless little child Should miss the joy uv life 'nd love— That can't be reconciled! That's what we thought that summer day, And that is what we said Ez we looked upon the piteous face Uv Marthy's younkit dead; But for his mother sobbin' The house wuz very still, And Sorry Tom wuz lookin' through The winder down the hill To the patch beneath the hemlocks Where his darlin' used to play, And the mountain brook sung lonesomelike ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... great grief, since there was scarce here and there a piece of goods among these costly gifts, things given as great treasures, which faintly upheld the ancient fame of the cradle of the industrial arts. Nay, in some cases, it would have been laughable, if it had not been so sad, to see the piteous simplicity with which the conquered race had copied the blank vulgarity of their lords. And this deterioration we are now, as I have said, actively engaged in forwarding. I have read a little book, {3} a handbook to the Indian Court of last year's Paris Exhibition, which takes the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... French and Latin, and applied himself with ardor to the study of the classics; at fifty he gave himself up to Greek. His first tragedy (for he was chiefly a dramatist), entitled "The Destruction of Jerusalem," was not very successful. The second, "Palamades," in which was delineated the piteous and terrible tale of Olden Barneveldt, a victim of Maurice of Orange, caused a criminal action to be brought against the author. He fled, and remained in concealment until the unexpectedly mild sentence ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... piteous eyes behold The very soul that over England flamed! Deep, pure, intense; consuming shame and ill; Convicting men of sin; making faith live; And,—this the mightiest miracle of all,— Creating God again ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... at the head and the foot, upon which flags are placed; the grave is then inclosed by pickets driven in the ground. The funeral ceremonies now begin, the widow being the chief mourner. At night and morning she will go to the grave and pour forth the most piteous cries and wailings. It is not important that any other member of the family should take any very active part in the "cry," though they do participate ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... candlelight. Once, not long after his marriage, he had appealed to his wife in the same way, when, after an unusual run of luck, he had returned in triumph with his winnings. She, poor girl, looked first at them and then at him, with a piteous little attempt at a smile; then suddenly burst into tears, and turned away. It was the first and last time he tried to win her sympathy in these matters, and was, perhaps, the beginning of the sort of estrangement that ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... groaned the other, and for the first time the words held a note that was not wholly boyish, it sounded wistful, even rather piteous. "People's ways are all so different. It's rather infernal—trying to please everybody, ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... lips There speak her grievous woe, Though in her chamber in the night Her frequent tears would flow. She dreamt of wrong where love was sought, Of crafty cruel eyes, Of one steep stair, of grasping hands That stifled piteous cries; ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... balance she fell forwards, and was precipitated through the bushes into the ravine below, conscious only of unspeakable terror and an agonising pain in one of her ancles, which rendered her quite powerless. The noise of the stones she had dislodged in her fall and her piteous cries, brought Louis and Hector to her side, and they bore her in their arms to the hut of boughs and laid her down upon her bed of leaves and grass and young pine boughs. When Catharine was able to speak, she related to Louis and Hector the cause of her fright. ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... of mortal man Whose life is but a span, I count ye but the shadow of a shade! For he who most doth know Of bliss, hath but the show; A moment, and the visions pale and fade. Thy fall, O Oedipus, thy piteous fall Warns me none born of women blest ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a sensation singularly ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... furniture and loading trucks. Ruffians were pushing in at the open doors, snatching valuables and insulting the owners. There was a hasty seizing of goods, and a wild dash into the street from imperiled houses, a shouting for trucks and carriages, piteous inquiries for absent friends, distressed cries for absent protectors, screams of little children, swift, wild faces pushing eagerly in this direction and that; oaths and prayers and shoutings; women bowed beneath mattresses and heavy furniture; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... his head somewhat as Jack explained how he wished to wed the daughter of the chief of the crew; but when the lover pleaded his cause with all the eloquence at his command, and painted in piteous words the misery the gentle girl had endured in the midst of her unhallowed surroundings, the kind-hearted ecclesiastic relented, and forthwith despatched Brother Lawrence to examine and counsel the maid, hear her confession, and absolve her from her ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... natural disposition, facing hatred and obloquy. She whose life was one long martyrdom, for conscience' sake offered up a whole holocaust of martyrs: she who thirsted for love died clothed with a nation's hate. Where in all history is a tragedy more piteous than that ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Spanish and in a very delicate hand. Brant knew Spanish well, and in twenty minutes he had read them all. They proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the writer's sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from the gangway and then the stout figure of the detective came staggering into the circle of light around the shaft. He had evidently been wounded seriously, for he fell as he drew near to where the boys were standing and raised his eyes in a piteous appeal for help. Will stooped over ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... Truth, where wert thou then When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? Wert thou in heaven, and busy with thy hymn When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? Art thou a phantom that deceives! men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim? And wilt thou ever speak to him again? "It moves, it moves! Alas, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... a sudden stop, lifted his head with a jerk, his ears set forward, snorting an alarm. Quick on his action there came a shot, close at hand. Whetstone started with a quivering bound, stumbled to his knees, struggled to rise, then floundered with piteous groans. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... yourselves by an attentive examination of the patient." And, with a rapid movement, Dr. Griffon, throwing the bed-clothes back, almost entirely uncovered Jeanne. It is repugnant to our feelings to depict the piteous struggles of this poor creature, who wept bitterly from shame, imploring the doctor and his auditory to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... of her. Bebee gave a great cry, and stood still, trembling and trying not to sob aloud. She had never thought of money; she had forgotten that youth and strength and love and willing feet and piteous prayers,—all went for nothing ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... thinking of? She did not run. Robbie looked at her in piteous distress; Duncan was beside himself. He cast a beseeching glance at Elsie, a momentary one of resentful anger at his mother, an impatient one at Robbie, the unfortunate messenger ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... starting to her feet, "I must go to him! go at once. O dearest mother, do not hinder me!" and she clasped her hands in piteous entreaty, the big tears rapidly chasing each ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... in the weather seemed to have come at last. A deluge of rain was what I wanted, something to soak the earth and turn the roads into water-courses and clog the enemy transport, something above all to blind the enemy's eyes ... For I remembered what a preposterous bluff it all had been, and what a piteous broken handful stood between the Germans and their goal. If they knew, if they only knew, they would brush us ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Bob—and he was saying something unspeakable—about her! She listened like one in a trance—then she struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the cry that rang from her lips was piteous. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... conflict through which he was passing in his last hours. While sitting near his bedside on one occasion, she was suddenly recalled from a revery by the sound of the sighs and sobs of the royal patient. To her solicitous questions as to the cause of his distress, she received the most piteous exclamations, interrupted by weeping: "Ah, my nurse, my friend, how much blood! how many murders! Ah, what wicked counsels have I had! My God, have pity upon me and pardon me! I know not where I am; so perplexed and agitated have they ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... himself—direct, simple, telling her all she wanted to know, yet leaving much unsaid. Rose had once been shown a love-letter in which the word "kiss" occurred thirty-four times. She was glad that there was nothing of that sort in Jervis's letter, and yet she longed with a piteous, aching longing to feel once more his arms clasping her close, his lips trembling ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... would at once go to the palace, that she would do so, if possible, before Mrs. Proudie could have had an interview with Mr. Slope, and that she would be either submissive, piteous, and pathetic, or else indignant, violent, and exacting, according to the manner in ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... shut up in haste, when the emptied streets are flooded, and almost black, and the paper lanterns, piteous objects, wet through and extinguished,—I find myself, I know not how it happens, flattened against a wall, under the projecting eaves, alone in the company of Mdlle. Fraise, my cousin, who is crying bitterly because her fine dress is wet through. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... tokens of mourning, and the monotonous, piteous plaint of the wailing women, which ever and anon rose into a loud, shrill, tremulous shriek, echoed through the silent rooms within to this hall, announcing that death had claimed a victim ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on his heart, heavy with thoughts of her, and would he rather it were Maddy there in the bridal room? If so, his burden was hard indeed, but not so hard as hers, and kneeling on the floor, poor Maddy laid her head in the chair, and, 'mid piteous moans, asked God, her Father, to help them both to bear—help her and Guy—making the latter love as he ought the gentle girl who had left home and friends to live with him in a far-distant land; asked, too, that she might tear from her heart every sinful thought, loving Guy only as she ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... had I noticed that peculiarity in a cripple before? That I had observed it somewhere I felt certain. For nearly half the day I turned this over and over in my mind, and then, in the middle of our evening meal, enlightenment came to me. I remembered the man whose piteous tale had so much affected Beckenham on the day of our arrival, and the sound his crutches made upon the pavement as he left us. If my surmise proved correct, and we could only manage to communicate with him, here was a golden opportunity. But how were we to do this? We discussed ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... happened. Father and son were waiting for him in the library. They instantly saw by his face that things had not gone well, and each snarled according to his nature. When he heard that the money was gone the old man broke into piteous lamentations. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... entered a cottage, never sat beside a sick bed, nor smoothed a dying pillow. Edna would have been horrified at such a suggestion. What had her bright youth to do with disease, dirt and misery? "Don't tell me about it," was her usual cry, when any one volunteered to relate some piteous story. That such things should be allowed in a world governed by a merciful Providence was incredible, terrible, but that she should be brought into contact with it was an offence to her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... But The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a book to be read by any who want an insight into the conditions of working-class life at its average, with its virtues, its vices, its courage, its intolerable piteous anxieties. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... fifteen hundred. He explained all this personally to Mr. Bonteen, who condescended to see him. He was very eager to make Mr. Bonteen understand how bad even then would be his condition. Mr. Bonteen was, of course, aware that he would have to pay very heavily for insuring his wife's life. He was piteous, argumentative, and at first gentle; but when Mr. Bonteen somewhat rashly told him that the evidence of a former marriage and of the present existence of the former wife would certainly be forthcoming, he defied Mr. Bonteen ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... looked but like pits of shade. Presently the other began to move towards him, waving a large misshapen hand which gleamed with a kind of scurfy whiteness; and he cried out unintelligible words, which seemed half angry, half piteous. Ralph knew that the Leper was before him, and though he loathed to fly before so miserable a wretch, he turned and hurried on into the forest; the creature screamed the louder, and it seemed as though ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spell Of my heart's frenzy, that a living hell Be burning there!—Back! back! if thou art mad— Methought thou wast, but thou art only sad. Is this thy child, old man? look, look, and see! In truth it is a piteous thing for thee To become childless—Well-a-well, go by! Is there no grave? The quiet sea is nigh, And I will bury her below the moon; It may be but a trance or midnight swoon, And she may wake. Wake, ladye! ha! methought It was like her—Like her! and is it not? My angel ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... said Priscilla, starting forward and a flush coming into her face. "I know that— that is what it is for. To pay back worthily— to give back a thousandfold what you have received. Those girls can't be idle, can they?" she added in a gentle, piteous sort of way. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting alone, deserted, while her husband and her ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her poignant sensation was that she had no friends. It did not matter to Jeannette that history was being made before her, and one of the great battles of the world was about to be fought. It only mattered that she should discern the Fraser plaid as far as eye could follow it. There is no more piteous thing than for one human being to be overpowered by the god ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... pointing out that in this factory precious machinery had been swept away—in that house a mother and five children had been drowned in their beds—here some wonderful escape had taken place—there had befallen some piteous tragedy. Soon clearing the village, we came to a factory which stood in the bottom of the valley, with some ruined buildings beside it. This had been the property of a Mr Sandford, and he lived close to his mill. Taken completely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... tears run slowly down her face, O piteous Christ upon the Cross! And through her tears she ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... of which I here make a summary, she told me in all their dark extent, with every piteous detail of conjugal battles ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... rain; next morning they were brought back to town still manacled, under the scorching beams of a sun intensely hot, and must infallibly have expired, had not nature expelled the fever in large painful boils, that covered almost the whole body. In this piteous condition they were embarked in an open boat for Muxadavad, the capital of Bengal, and underwent such cruel treatment and misery in their passage, as would shock the humane reader should he peruse the particulars. At Maxadavad they were led through the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... made to bring the President's votes to Webster. This was agreeable to Fillmore, who placed a letter of withdrawal in the hands of a Buffalo delegate to be used whenever he deemed it proper. But twenty-two Southern men declined to be transferred, while the most piteous appeals to the Scott men of New York met with cold refusals. They professed any amount of duty to their party, but as regards the Fillmore combine they were implacable. They would listen to no terms of compromise while their great enemy remained in the field. Meantime, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... reduce in veritie Historiall, the great siege, cruel oppugnation, and piteous taking of the noble and renowmed citie of Rhodes, the key of Christendome, the hope of many poore Christian men, withholden in Turkie to saue and keepe them in their faith: the rest and yeerely solace of noble pilgrimes of the holy sepulchre of Iesu Christ and other holy places: the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... there was something a great deal more than the physical shrinking from physical death in that piteous cry, Jesus Christ did not die nearly as bravely as many a poor, trembling woman who, at the stake or the block, has owed her fortitude to Him. Many a blood-stained criminal has gone out of life with less tremor than that which, unless you take the explanation that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... a pity that England did not show some of this sympathy sooner, instead of standing idly by until Turkey had brought Greece to her present piteous plight. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will shine on all alike. There will he meet the little child who strayed from the fold into the snows of death early in the married life, and there will he sit beside that fond old heart who heard his first piteous wail in this cold world, and nestled him to her bosom all warm with a ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... widely opened eyes, gazing wildly straight before him, his hands extended, and trembling violently; while, as his fellow-prisoner leaned forward and caught him by the arm to try and soothe him, believing him to be in pain, he snatched his hand away, and in a piteous cry uttered the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... in a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... arcade. Make men to see their eyes, Forced to suspect behind each reed or rose The thorn of lurking foes. And O, before the daylight goes, After the deed against the skies, After the last belief and longing dies, Make men again to see their eyes Whose piteous casements now all unafraid Peer out to that far verge where evermore, Beyond all woe for which a tear atones, The likeness of our own dishonor moans, A sea that has no ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... differences of taste and time, the vogue of the Novel in Richardson's day can easily be understood, and through all the stiffness, the stilted effect of manner and speech, and the stifling conventions of the entourage, a sweet and charming young woman in very piteous distress emerges to live in affectionate memory. After all, no poor ideal of womanhood is pictured in Clarissa. She is one of the heroines who are unforgettable, dear. Mr. Howells, with his stern insistence on truth in ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... then who and what she was, he would not have deemed it a disgrace to love a child of Hagar Warren. But Margaret did not know him, and when he said again, "Will Maggie answer me?" there came from her lips a piteous, wailing cry, and turning her face away she answered mournfully: "No, Mr. Carrollton, no, I cannot be your wife. It breaks my heart to tell you so; but if you knew what I know, you would never have spoken to me words of love. You would have rather thrust me from you, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... screen shading the light, near the stove in the middle ward, until the next were due. One night I heard a cat mewing. It seemed to be almost under my chair, I got up and looked everywhere. Yes, there it was again, but this time coming from under one of the men's beds. It was a piteous mew, and I was determined to find it. I spent a quarter of an hour on tiptoe looking everywhere. It was not till I heard a stifled chuckle from the bed next the Dutchman's that I suspected anything, and then, determined they should get no rise out of me, sat down quietly in my chair ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... quite easily she felt her heart die in her breast, leaving only the shell, the husk, of what had been Randalin, Frode's daughter. Her first thought Was a vague wonder that after it she could breathe and move as if she were still alive. Her next, a piteous desire to escape from him while she had this strength, before the end should really come. Clutching the broken chain, she drew herself up bravely, her words coming in uneven breathfuls. "I want not that recompense, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to me! No, give me the cannon!" mamma began begging like a little child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it. Kolya was disconcerted. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... struggling in the agitated water, those who still lived endeavouring to extricate themselves from the mass of corpses, falling fast, but often rising again with their last energies, streaming with water and blood, and uttering piteous cries and appeals for mercy, which were mocked by the fiends around them. Many women were amongst them; one I noticed carrying a little child, which, struggling forward, she held up to the soldiers as if in appeal. As she reached the bank, one of the wretches ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Whatever the cause of my yielding may have been, I did yield. I prefer to pass over in silence the doubts and hesitations which beset me for the remainder of the day; the arrival, toward evening, of the piteous note from Von Rosenau, which finally overcame my weak resistance to his will; and the series of circumstantial false statements (I blush when I think of them) by means of which I accounted to my sister for ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... turned her heavy eyes With such a piteous glance upon my face; It pierced my heart, and fast the gathering tears Blinded my sight. Alas! poor maniac; For thee no hope shall dawn—no tender thought Wake in thy blighted heart a thrill of joy. The immortal mind is levelled with the dust, Ere the tenacious cords of ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... is little and unimportant. The most remarkable circumstance, is the extreme poverty to which the monks were reduced in 1384; when, on being called upon to pay the sum of forty-six shillings and eight-pence, they pleaded their utter inability, and presented to the king the following piteous remonstrance:—"Cette Abbaie, etant frontiere de l'Anglois, n'aiant ni chateau ni defense, a ete arse et mise en un si chetif point, qu'il y a peu de lieux ou nous puissions habiter, si ce n'est es demeurans des anciens edifices, et es vieilles masures.......... ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... A feeble piteous sound answered him, and following the direction of the reply, he strode along, between the rocks and thorn-bushes that guarded the slope of the hill, to a valley covered with thick moss, veiling treacherously marshy ground in which it was easy ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... loose adventure, and had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "wonderful," to which one of the boys retorted that it was not wonderful at all but "merely natural and could not be helped." Personally I think singing was the most effective medium for passing the time which we could have hit on. It drowned the volleys of oaths, curses, wails, groans, sobbings, and piteous appeals which rose to Heaven from all around us. If we had kept dumb our minds must have been depressingly affected if not unhinged by what we could ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... up, much against his will, and his piteous protests no longer added to the girl's agony. She clung to the after rail, and watched the boat, now a tiny dot hard to discern amidst the ripples caused by the inflowing tide. Her intimate acquaintance with the daily happenings of life ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... disapproved his conduct, that she never admitted him to her conversation, nor suffer'd him to enter her house. She, indeed, often relieved him with such donations, as spoke her generous disposicion.—But this was on the sollicitation of friends, who frequently set his calamities before her in the most piteous light; and from a principle of humanity, she became not a little instrumental in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... support. Then it slid down, its movement visible in the bulging of the drenched cloth. This was followed by a heavy, squelching flop. The body, whatever it was, had fallen into the streaming water pouring from within the hut. Then came a long-drawn, piteous moan that held the men gazing silently and stupidly at ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... provisions; in another, they were slaying men, horses, and cattle, and these actions were accompanied with appropriate sounds. The cattle, particularly, had become sensible of their impending fate, and with awkward resistance and piteous cries, testified that reluctance with which these poor creatures look instinctively on the shambles. The groans and screams of men, undergoing, or about to undergo, the stroke of death, and the screeches of the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... thousands of weak and immature elk have perished in the Jackson Hole country, from starvation and exposure. The ranchmen of that region have had terrible times,—in witnessing the sufferings of thousands of elk tamed by hunger, and begging in piteous dumb show for the small and all-too-few haystacks of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... her for whose sake thou art thus, ask not of her case on shine account. But thou keptest thy secret and fellest sick, while she told her secret and they said she had gone mad; so she is now in prison, with an iron chain about her neck, in most piteous plight; but, Allah willing, the healing of both of you shall come from my hand." Now when Kamar al-Zaman heard these words, his life returned to him and he took heart and felt a thrill of joy and signed to his father to help him sit ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... sullen in the white abyss. The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils, Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs, As weak against the mountain-heaps they push Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray, He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows, And with loud shouts rejoicing bears ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... means Gerard escaped a witness of his anguish at leaving her he loved, and Martin escaped a piteous sight. He did not see the poor young things kneel and renew before Heaven those holy vows cruel men had interrupted. He did not see them cling together like one, and then try to part, and fail, and return to one another, and cling again, like drowning, despairing creatures. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the arm, crying, "They are batooning my husband!" Another shrieked from a window, 'Help, help, they are killing my father!' Children ran about the streets, crying, "Oh, my father!—oh, my mother!" It seemed a heartless task to be going from one to another begging something to eat under such piteous circumstances; and yet how knew I that as bad or worse a tragedy might be acted at my uncle's if I failed ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... their feet at the piteous sigh which came from the back drawing room, and it was followed by ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... ripple went the water, and the cries whispered away as fading echoes, and then Pete's voice rose in a piteous wail. ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... dwell upon the incidents of the execution than attempt a sentence upon those who willed that it should be. It was at once most piteous and most inevitable. The hour of retribution had come at length, when at the hands of the Roman church was to be required all the righteous blood which it had shed, from the blood of Raymond of Toulouse to the blood of the last victim who had blackened into ashes at Smithfield. The voices crying ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appealing, even piteous, looked from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and even, flashed behind the natural crimson ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... away. Yet the victims were soon replaced by others, for had not the cardinal-archduke sworn to extract the thorn from the Belgic lion's paw even if he should be eighteen years about it, and would military honour permit him to break his vow? It was a piteous sight, even for the besieged, to see human life so profusely squandered. It is a terrible reflection, too, that those Spaniards, Walloons, Italians, confronted death so eagerly, not from motives of honour, religion, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lift the baby she was holding,—when her husband came in. He was a working man, tall and robust looking. He walked toward the pantry. "You mustn't cut a pie," the little wife called out laughing. Then turning to me, she said, with a sort of appealing, piteous glance, "He don't understand how hard it is for me to make pies." I know a young woman, not a strong woman, who, with a family of very little children, does her own work, and makes from one to two dozen pies at a common baking, "'cause hubby loves ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... she sailed for Norway, and Joergen made himself useful on the farm, and at the fishery, in which there was much more done then than is now-a-days. The shoals of mackerel glittered in the dark nights, and showed the course they were taking; the crabs gave piteous cries when pursued, for fishes are not so mute as they are said to be. Every Sunday when he went to church, and gazed on the picture of the Virgin in the altar-piece, Joergen's eyes always wandered to the spot where Clara had ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... came up from the darkness of the pit in a piteous howl. Betsy made a great effort and stopped crying. She sat down on a stone and tried to think. And this is what came into her mind as a guide: "What would Cousin Ann do if she were here? She wouldn't cry. She would ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... revelry of the village; but sounds of another kind were heard on the surrounding hills; piteous wailings of the women, who had retired thither to mourn in darkness and solitude for those who had fallen in battle. There the poor mother of the youthful warrior who had returned home in triumph but to die, gave full vent to the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Ev'n there sad sights we cannot miss; 200 Beggars at every corner stand, With doleful look and trembling hand; Hear the shrill piteous cry of sweep, See wretches riddling an ash heap; The streets some for old iron scrape, 205 And scarce the crush of wheels escape; Some share with dogs the half-eat bones, From dunghills pick'd with ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... intertwined with Portia's? What dramatic purposes does it serve? Are Jessica and Launce alike justified in leaving Shylock? Why? (See Introduction to the Play in First Folio Edition for suggestion). Is the Jew's lament for his daughter although piteous, inadequate. ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... and bite the tip of his toe and nibble at his heel; and the man feels no hurt and his sweet sleep is not broken by my biting. But there are two things I fear above all else the whole world over, the hawk and the ferret—for these bring great grief on me—and the piteous trap wherein is treacherous death. Most of all I fear the ferret of the keener sort which follows you still even when you dive down your hole. [3601] I gnaw no radishes and cabbages and pumpkins, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... to the river's brink, and was deliberately taking aim at her. Furious at such brutality, Berenger fired the pistol he held in his hand, and the wretch dropped from his horse; but at the same moment his pistol exploded, and the child rolled down the bank, whence a piteous wail came up, impelling Berenger to leap down to her assistance, in the full face of the enemy. Perhaps he was protected for the moment by the confusion ensuing on the fall of the officer; and when he reached the bottom of the bank, he saw the little creature on ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Persons who had pitied me for having "such a big head and so much hair" now found reason for comment "on my small head with no hair." The most expensive head cover never deceived anyone, however simple, and I was obliged to make my debut in St. Louis in this piteous plight. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... figure of Christ received more emphasis, until it became the vehicle for exhibiting those painful aspects of death from which no divine message of resurrection could be inferred. The big crucifix ascribed to Michelozzo shows how far exaggeration could be carried.[49] The opened mouth, the piteous expression, the clots of blood falling from the wounds, combine to make a figure which is repellent, and which lost all justification, from the fact that this tortured dying man shows no conviction of divine life to come. Donatello's bronze crucifix at Padua, made years afterwards, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... monster, carp or sturgeon, trout or crocodile. The left of the sign was none the less tempting; it represented a roast chicken lying upon its back with its head under its wing, and raising its mutilated legs in the air with a piteous look; it had for its companion a cluster of crabs, of a little too fine a red to have been freshly caught. The whole was interspersed with bottles and glasses brimful of wine. There were stone jugs at each extremity, the sergeants of the rear-rank of this gastronomic platoon, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... He to another river came, That smoothly flowed, a silent stream: This he thought easily to pass; But ere he in the middle was, He plunged into a gulf profound, And for his feet no bottom found; But, forced to swim with all his might, Got to the shore in piteous plight. ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... numbered by God, I know; but man can number them also, if he pleases, and make them longer or shorter by his obedience or disobedience. Secondly, Phebe, our sons have gone on before us as pioneers, and they send us piteous accounts of the spiritual needs of the colonists and the native populations out yonder. I preach often on the evils of over-population and its danger to our country, and I prescribe emigration to most ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... jaws of a rude gateway stood a waggon of stones. Harnessed to this were three sorry-looking mules and, leading them, the piteous wreck of what had been a blue roan. The latter was ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... it is so dreadful!" she moaned in piteous tone as she sank upon the cushions of the divan, Adam sitting beside her, her hand tight clasped in his own. "I didn't think Phil would bring all this trouble on us. I would forgive him anything but the way in which he deceived papa. He knew there was no copper in the mine, ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... nightingale, And, entering, found, sunk in mysterious swoon, A little maiden dreaming there alone. She babbled of her father sitting pale 'Neath wings of Death—'mid sights of sorrow and bale, And pleaded for his life in piteous tone. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... long brilliant rays of light. The unclouded sky met the sparkling earth, and both glittered with unnatural brilliancy. To Paulett and Ellen, every thing spoke of desolation and death; and an exclamation escaped Ellen, in a low tone, that it was a piteous and horrible spectacle. But Charles, standing still at their side as they looked on the scene, cried it was beautiful; the colours of the sun were so splendid on the fine white trees, and one could see so far, and every thing was so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... to Fricka proclaims her queenly and overbearing, with right and power on her side, and relentless determination to use them. Then there is the Valkyries' war-whoop—well known from its use in the Valkyries' Ride. Sieglinda has tender, piteous cries. In the scene of pleading and counter-pleading between Siegmund and Brunnhilda we have Wagner at the zenith of his powers: the pleading of the man, the calm, cold majesty of the Valkyrie, awe and pathos ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... "A most piteous scene took place," he said, "on the day when Sister Seraphine first heard again the call of the outer world. Most moving it was, as told me by the Prioress. The distraught nun lay upon the floor of her cell in an abandonment of frantic weeping. She imitated the galloping of a horse with her hands ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the proposition; But poor Dudu, with large drops in her own, Resulting from the scolding or the vision, Implored that present pardon might be shown For this first fault, and that on no condition (She added in a soft and piteous tone) Juanna should be taken from her, and Her future dreams should ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... hint so? The going's hot, and the steeds must go! Chargers entered for such a race Must not complain of the pounding pace; Must not grumble at crushing weight. Yes; they appear in a piteous state, Almost foundered, and well nigh blown, With the burden big o'er their shoulders thrown. Ever swelling, like miser's sacks; But why have horses such broad strong backs, If not to bear—to the death at need, Though lungs may choke, and though flanks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... but my gown and swam a little way, till I happened upon one of the ship's planks whereto I clung and bestrode it like a horse, whilst the winds and the waters sported with me and the waves carried me up and cast me down; and I was in most piteous plight for fear and distress and hunger and thirst. Then I reproached myself for what I had done and my soul was weary after a life of ease and comfort; and I said to myself, "O Sindbad, O Seaman, thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... faith might be. Thus, in addition to danger from pirates, privateers, and men-of-war, an English merchantman had to risk attack by any one who was either passionately Roman or determined to use religion as a cloak. Raids and reprisals grew apace. The English were by no means always lambs in piteous contrast to the Papal wolves. Rather, it might be said, they took a motto from this true Russian proverb: 'Make yourself a sheep and you'll find no lack of wolves.' But, rightly or wrongly, the general ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... would change her residence to the Locusts, in case the peddler had no further use for her services. After a few preliminary conditions on the part of the wary housekeeper, the arrangement was concluded; and making a few more piteous lamentations on the weight of her own losses and the stupidity of Harvey, united with some curiosity to know the future fate of the peddler, Katy withdrew to make the necessary preparations for the approaching funeral, which was ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the unsack'd shalt be, So thick from dark Achaia's shore The cloud of war hath covered thee. Ah! not again I tread thy plain— The spear—the spear hath rent thy pride; The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide; Thy coronal of towers is shorn, And thou most piteous art—most naked and forlorn! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... ribbons. The road led them across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn about. There they noticed a large bird hovering in the air, flying slowly round and round above them; it sank lower and lower, and at last settled near a rock not far away. Immediately they heard a loud, piteous cry. They ran up and saw with horror that the eagle had seized their old acquaintance the dwarf, and was going to ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... bent over his account-books and coffers. There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... corner to the byre, whence through all the roar, every now and then they had heard the cavernous mooing of Crummie, piteous and low. He found a stream a foot deep running between her fore and hind legs, and did not wonder that she wanted to be on the move. Speedily he loosed her, and fastening the chain-tether to her halter, led her out. She was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and would not go back to it; and after a few minutes he telephoned Adelaide, ordered a cart, and set out to take her for a drive. Mrs. Whitney watched him depart with a heavy heart and so piteous a face that Ross was moved almost to the point of confiding in her what he was pretending not to admit to himself. "Ross is sensible beyond his years," she said to herself sadly, "but youth is so romantic. It never can see ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... all the spirit and wrath of the old woman: her cries of distress as she darted from one to the other, striking to the right and left with her feeble arms, her form trembling with passion, were at once ludicrous and piteous; and these were responded to by the shrill exclamations of the fierce tymbesteres, as they retorted scratch for scratch, and blow for blow. The spectators grew animated by the sight of actual outrage and resistance; the humpbacked tinker, whose unwholesome fancy one of the aggrieved tymbesteres had ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 12th of the month, empty handed. They all felt the danger that again threatened them, as it had done twice before during the winter, when they had to kill and eat some of their starving dogs. People spoke to each other in whispers, and everything was quiet, save for the never-ceasing and piteous cries of the hungry children, begging for food which their parents could not give them. Most of the time I stayed in bed, trying to keep warm and to avoid exercise that would only make me all the more hungry. It was impossible to keep warm this night, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... to know him, and stretching her arm toward him as a child does toward its mother when danger threatens, she laid her head upon his bosom with a piteous wail—the only really audible ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... the night. My heart bounded as for an instant it occurred to me it would be in my dungeon! No such good fortune! They passed my door. At any rate, my chum should know where I was, so I proceeded to make a demonstration against my door and beseech, in the most piteous way, to be released. Of course, it was no use, but that did not matter; I never expected ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... down, her face was pinched and piteous; there was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he spoke, and now threw out her arms to draw him back. He eluded her clasp, and dropped to the ground on his feet, but fell backward, and did not at once rise again. She shrieked, and then called out in a piteous tone: "Speak to me, Colonel L'Isle. For Heaven's sake, speak. Say ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... man. It needed no second glance to tell me that this was Judge Hammond. I put my hand upon him, and uttered his name; but he answered not. I spoke more firmly, and slightly shook him; but only a piteous moan ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... words. But every novel experiment seems doomed to fail, or meet with some disaster. The water in the bottle had been reduced too low by vaporism, and the bottle burst suddenly, with a loud report. That report was followed by a piteous wail. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... us to believe those piteous tales about your losing flesh and colour with homesickness," declared Max, his hand on his sister's shoulder, as he turned her full toward the firelight. "Jove, I never saw you look more like one of those pink peonies you think so much ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that every communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three years and all the money that he had saved toward ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... all her life, since she was a baby, not a day, not a night, Evelyn, and now—so sweet, so dear—why Mrs. Mavick!" And the Scotch woman, dazed, with a piteous appeal in her eyes, trying in vain to control her face, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... [COMING FORWARD.] Do, good Detraction, do, and I the while Shall shake thy spight off with a careless smile. Poor piteous gallants! what lean idle slights Their thoughts suggest to flatter their starv'd hopes! As if I knew not how to entertain These straw-devices; but, of force must yield To the weak stroke of their calumnious tongues. What should I care what every dor doth buz In credulous ears? ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... made to revive him as soon as he was placed in a comfortable position on the bed in the room, sweet-scented with herbs, and with such success that in a short time there was a movement of the eyelids, followed by a low moan which, though piteous, was welcomed by the boys gladly, for ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... On the floor of its chancel the brasses of his father and his grandfather mark their graves. A step nearer to the altar, unmarked by brass or epitaph, lies the grave in which, with bitter tears and cries, his greencoats laid the body of the leader whom they loved. "Never were heard such piteous cries at the death of one man as at Master Hampden's." With him indeed all seemed lost. But bitter as were their tears, a noble faith lifted these Puritans out of despair. As they bore him to his grave they sang, in the words of the ninetieth psalm, how fleeting in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... reasoned, in piteous argument. Her gnarled hands trembled as she worked, and now, with nobody to note her weakness, tears fell unregarded down her face. "There's things I wouldn't ask for, whether or no. Mebbe they'd have to be took away from somebody else; an' I never was one to plead up poverty. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... still pursued Apollo, thinking that he was Agenor, but at last the god made himself known to his pursuer. The hero reproached him angrily for his deception, and then with the utmost speed he hastened across the plain towards the city. From the ramparts the aged King Priam beheld him coming, and in piteous words he cried out to Hector, imploring him to take refuge within the walls. Queen Hecuba, too, with tears in her eyes, begged her son to withdraw, and not be so mad as to encounter the terrible Greek chief alone. But Hector would ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... extravagant as the scene was, it was faithful to the facts, in all its absurd details. The thing happened in Lampton's own house, and I was present. In fact I was myself the guest who ate the turnips. In the hands of a great actor that piteous scene would have dimmed any manly spectator's eyes with tears, and racked his ribs apart with laughter at the same time. But Raymond was great in humorous portrayal only. In that he was superb, he was wonderful—in a word, great; in all ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... consent to a compromise with her would be manifestly useless. Her first and foremost interest now was to find out how she really stood in the estimation of Julian Gray. In a terror of suspense, that turned her cold from head to foot, she stopped him on his way out, and spoke to him with the piteous counterfeit of ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Achilles dire to both. He stood, and weeping spake withal: "Achates, lo! forsooth What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored? 460 Lo Priam! and even here belike deed hath its own reward. Lo here are tears for piteous things that touch men's hearts anigh: Cast off thy fear! this fame today ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... zeal, and tumbled over Ramgolam, who was stooping remarkably near the keyhole. Dodd hastily bolted the cabin-door, and looked with trembling lip and piteous earnestness in Kenealy's face and Fullalove's. They were mute with surprise at a gaze so eloquent and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... so tender." Even the beautiful suggestion that Shakespeare as he wrote had in mind his own dead little son still fresh and living at his heart can hardly add more than a touch of additional tenderness to our perfect and piteous delight in him. And even in her daughter's embrace it seems hard if his mother should have utterly forgotten the little voice that had only time to tell her just eight words of that ghost story which neither ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... through the air — with heavenly plunder? — Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew? Nay! but a piteous freight, A dark and heavy weight Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled, — All of the wonder Gone that ever filled Its guise with glory. Oh, bird that I have killed, How brilliantly you flew Across my rapturous ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of girl-babies so prevalent in India in the old days before England laid the iron hand of her prohibitions upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge of how prevalent the custom was, by one of Sleeman's casual electrical remarks, when he speaks of children at play in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... And another piteous cry was wrung from the hearts of the people to know how long, O, Lord! were these terrible scenes—killings, not battles; and with no result but blood ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... buried, inviolate Of body and soul, in the very space By the altar,—keeping saintly state In Pornic church, for her pride of race, Pure life, and piteous fate. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. A grave without repose, death without the privileges of the dead, who have no debts to pay, and need write neither letters nor books—that is a piteous condition. Long ago the measure has been taken for my coffin and for my necrology, but I die so slowly that the process is tedious for me as well as my friends. But patience: everything has an end. You will one ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... case it is of piteous distress, If, carrying a secret grief about, We wish to bury it in a recess, And find another there, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... personal distinction. He is indeed most keenly sensible of the favour which bestowed them all. But his deep gratitude must ever be given to the goodness which dictated the touching assurance he has now received of your Majesty's interest in the piteous fate of one who for eighteen years has been all the world to him, whose patient, gentle spirit, and whose brave heart had turned aside so many perils, and who yet has sunk at last under the very means on which all had securely reckoned as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... drew back her arm for the first blow, and the whip hissed through the air. He winced slightly under the blow. Then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, blue eyes. ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... voices—which they can distinguish as those of the house-Servants—male and female—all negroes or mulattoes. There are shrieks, intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... come!" said the poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!" she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried, "you won't leave me? I have been kind to you—say you ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... plainly the elder sister's duty to stay on over the important meeting with Stanor Vaughan. The modern girl scoffs at the idea of chaperonage, but the O'Shaughnessys were not modern. Bridgie felt the impulse to protect, and Pixie's piteous "Stay with me, Bridgie!" marked the one moment of weakness which she had shown. So Bridgie remained in London, comforted by the knowledge that her husband was well and her children in good hands, and seldom in her life had five days passed so slowly. Sunday itself had seemed a week ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... use in trying to ameliorate the condition of the Gipsy while he remains a traveller. He will tell you piteous stories, but he will take care of himself. As ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... dismiss'd Him thence rejoicing also, for we hoped 370 To mix in social intercourse again, And to exchange once more pledges of love. He spake; then sorrow as a sable cloud Involved Laertes; gath'ring with both hands The dust, he pour'd it on his rev'rend head With many a piteous groan. Ulysses' heart Commotion felt, and his stretch'd nostrils throbb'd With agony close-pent, while fixt he eyed His father; with a sudden force he sprang Toward him, clasp'd, and kiss'd him, and exclaim'd. 380 My father! I am he. Thou seest ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,—usually so brisk, so authoritative, so unhesitating,—looking helplessly into the face of the ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... him! Look you, how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me; Lest, with this piteous action, you convert My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... enough; for Roger, coming through the fields with the milk, heard this piteous sobbing, and setting down his cans, parted the branches of the apple tree, saying in his kindest voice: "Why, my Kitty, my Pretty, what is the matter with you? who hurt my little—I—I ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... dogs, Turk and Juno, on the wreck, as they were both large mastiffs, and we did not care to have their additional weight on board our craft; but when they saw us apparently deserting them, they set up a piteous howl, and sprang into the sea. I was sorry to see this, for the distance to the land was so great that I scarcely expected them to be able to accomplish it. They followed us, however, and, occasionally resting their fore paws on the out-riggers, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to his chariot, lashed his horses to speed, and dragged him about in sight of the wailing wife and parents of his victim. This he repeated several times, aggravating the atrocity a hundredfold by his intention—in spite of the piteous entreaties of the dying Hector—to throw his corpse to be eaten by the dogs, thus depriving even his spirit of rest, and his family of religious consolation. Nay, Achilles expresses the savage wish that his rage might lead him so far as to carve and eat ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... I saw the slashings, gold on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One little crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand. But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy—shoot po' nigga and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... rank vegetation of the garth, in whose coarse herbage here and there I stumbled upon a limp white form stretched out—a waif the less in the world! I don't say it was a happy passage for me: it was made to the visible consternation of her I wished to befriend. Her piteous yellow eyes searched mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and I wouldn't understand! As I neared her she shivered and mewed twice. Then she limped painfully off—poor soul, she had but three feet!—to another tree, leaving behind her, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... be termed an assistant, of his labours, was his trusty agent, who trotted from room to room after him, affording him exactly the same degree of sympathy which a dog doth to his master when distressed in mind, by looking in his face from time to time with a piteous gaze, as if to assure him that he partakes of his trouble, though he neither comprehends the cause or the extent of it, nor has in the slightest degree the power ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Coffee and pipes were now brought in; and sitting down on a low marble bench, we consigned ourselves to the influence of the melting atmosphere, thinking of the unhappy condition of the mutton-chop, when it exclaimed in a piteous voice to the gridiron, "I am all of a perspiration." There were several other bathers undergoing this process of fermentation; and when the coffee was finished, and the pipe laid aside, two fellows placed ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... worked and played so many happy hours, and on to the back pasture where the Dillon sheep had been killed and she had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack. And she saw and noted everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she gave no sign that night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered head give way. Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad way with women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
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